When my uncle Walter Ryan gave up drink—this was after the school department fired him for stealing linoleum tiles on top of everything else, and after his wife, Aunt Reba, ran off with my other uncle, Raymond Paradise–he planted all his whiskey bottles, Uncle Walter did, in the backyard, necks up, and pressed rubber dolls’ heads over their mouths, brown- and blue-eyed ones and an eerie eyeless few. The lesson of the doll-and-bottle garden, he told me, was this: Our Lord was buried for three days, and all that are in the grave shall hear His voice, and we, too, shall rise from the dead. And he asked me was I ready for the new morning. I told him I was ready to drive him to the V.A. hospital. It’s the second Tuesday, remember. Get your test results today. Uncle Walter put on his pork pie hat, his good T-shirt, the one that said, REPENT NOW! And in smaller letters: SAY, JESUS, I’M A SINNER. PLEASE COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART, SOUL, SPIRIT, AND MIND! That afternoon we learned Uncle Walter had pancreatic cancer and had it bad. Well, that explains a couple of things, he told me, without elaborating. We drove to Sister Livinia Smith’s home on the Southside. In the truck, Uncle Walter told me how you can’t even be a decent derelict if you’re not drinking. The sign on Sister’s door said, PALMRED, CARDRED, TEALIEF, MINDRED. When he came on back out the house, Uncle Walter said we got one more stop. I told him how doctors are performing miracles these days. He told me not to blaspheme. At the Crosstown Lounge we ordered bourbon and Cokes. Uncle Walter took out his wallet and emptied it on the bar. Not much, a 1997 card calendar from Rudy’s Barber Shop; a photo of himself as a boy, holding up a thirty-pound channel cat; an old lotto ticket; seventeen dollars; a mildewed newspaper clipping which he unfolded. Was his mother’s obituary notice from the Clarion-Ledger. And a phone number on a Post-it note. He handed me the number. He said, You’ll call Reba when it’s time. I ordered two more. He said, Johnny, I thought as a sober man I’d have all this time on my hands.
John Dufresne has written two story collections and seven novels, including Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His newest novel is My Darling Boy. He’s also written four books on writing, two plays, Liv & Di and Trailerville and has co-written two feature films. His stories have twice been named Best American Mystery Stories. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and teaches creative writing at FIU in Miami. He is a co-editor of Flash Fiction America.
