Last Chapter Marguerite Lawrence

Marguerite Lawrence

In a facility at the base of Boise’s foothills, her friend is dying. Cancer has wrapped itself around his organs and is having its way with him. She has camped out with Craig’s family and friends in his room for weeks now. They talk pain management, and how the morphine, fentanyl, Tramadol affect his eating, sleeping, half-sleeping, breathing. They also tell stories, mostly from college that usually start with, “I remember a time in Craig’s green panel wagon…”

* When she’s alone with him, sometimes they have conversations about how she’s supposed to do this without him. He’s been a protector, confidant, friend for 53 years. He tells her, “One of us has to go first.” She cries and whispers close to his ear, “Well then, I guess it’s my turn to be here for you.” * There was a time when she was fresh out of college and he was almost 30 – a wedding in northern California and a wild weekend with college friends, and a posse of guys from Whittier. She lost her backpack but was fairly certain she left it in a surfer guy’s red VW Bug the night before. Craig drove her through a couple motel parking lots looking for a car matching her hazy recollection. Eventually, they found the VW, located the guy, got the pack. As she slumped in the passenger seat of Craig’s Cadillac, embarrassed and hungover, he pulled an apple out of his jacket and handed it across the seat. “I think you need food,” he said.

* He’s being washed, dressed, helped in ways a proud man must truly find deplorable. Sometimes the caretakers refer to him with names like My man, Hun, or Craiger. It cracks her up, but at the same time, she cringes. Craig has always been quiet, dignified, independent, and alone but not lonely, and so she’s thinking he hates all the monikers. There’s only one nickname, given to him in the ‘70s, when he pitched for the Rural Raiders intramural softball team. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was in the theaters and because of Craig’s imposing stature and quiet stoicism on the mound and off, his teammates deemed him Chief in reference to the story’s character by that name. The title stuck, and all these years later, 120

as he lays in his bed, his teammates and friends still come in and say, “How ya doing, Chief?”

* When his meds take hold, he sometimes asks where he is, wonders how he’ll get his Jeep over the boulders in Moab, or points his finger at galaxies and garnets above his head. One day he sees Bob, our friend who died 11 years ago. Chief says Bob is in the room with him. She looks where he’s looking and only sees a hospital wall and a watercolor. She asks him what Bob is doing. Chief says, “Bob’s smiling.” * Dogs come to visit – Virgil, Tuklo, Gus, Emma, Louie, and Theo. His brother lowers Chief’s hospice bed so he can lay his hand on the dogs’ heads. They give him comfort and at this point in his life, it’s all about that. * A few days ago, the lady next door, Jeanne, was moaning, calling, “Help help.” The man in the room with her kept asking, “What can I bring you? Do you want water? Can I put your head down? Up?” Jeanne kept bawling, loud like an injured animal.

In Chief’s room, she stood by his bed that day and talked about nothing – the weather, a backyard project, her car – and everything she pattered on about, she said loud to try to drown out Jeanne. But she could tell Chief was waning weary of her nonsense. He turned his pale face to the window, so she stopped yammering, opened the window so he could feel spring, sat in a chair, and worked a Sudoku. The next day Jeanne was gone, and the day after that Frank from across the hall was gone, and Sue’s and Juan’s rooms were cleaned and remade, the same week. The facility operates and looks the same – halls, cafeteria, sunroom, offices. But the people, compromised and vulnerable who are brought to these sterile rooms in ambulances, their names printed in washable marker on doors, after a while go away. * When she was 26 her best friend committed suicide. A few days after the death, Chief sat with her at her house, a beer in his hand, a dog at his side. She looked at her feet. “What a tragedy,” she said. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “One person’s tragedy is another person’s answer.”

Later that night, she wrote about this in her journal because she wanted to remember. She knew, even back then, that Chief was a man of few words and when he spoke, it was from a place of both wisdom and logic. * Chief loves Sunday dinners. She likes cooking for him, and her family and mutual friends. He’s especially fond of prime rib with all the fixings. She made him that dinner before he was too sick to come to the table. He also loves ice cream and Crème Brule, both of which many good friends bring to him in his final weeks.

* March 31st. She is pretty sure this is the last Sunday Chief will have on earth. His breathing is now a death rattle and his eyes no longer focus on anyone or anything. He’s in between here and elsewhere, being birthed into a new world, and morphine is his midwife. “Remember the time,” she says, softly holding his hand, “you drove a bunch of us in your van to a canal south of town?” She must have been 14, she guesses, and August, because the corn was up. Chief had tied one end of a rope to the back of the van; the other end was knotted to the drilled-out hole in the front of a home-made skim board. The group took turns two-at-a-time, lying belly-down on the board in the water. When they yelled “Ready,” he’d hit the gas and pull them till the board was jumping and bobbing in the water, and the kids were careening into each other, and shouting, “Faster, Faster.” When she closes her eyes, she sees Chief that day sitting behind the wheel of the wagon, his mustachioed-face and toothy grin filling the side-view mirror. As her sister and she splashed along, holding tight to the board, his eyes darted from the dirt canal bank in front of him, to the side-mirror, constantly watching out for the screaming weenies he was towing. He was laughing and they were too young to be scared. * Minutes before sunset, as she shares vigil with Chief’s brother and sister, the sky turns purple. Across the street from the facility, a Cooper’s hawk flies to a tall elm. A kestrel flies out of the same tree, and takes umbrage against the hawk, diving and screeching for all it’s worth. The Cooper is unimpressed, unmoved, and stays still on a high branch. Eventually the small122

er bird gives up and flits off, and moments later, the Cooper’s hawk also flies away. When this happens, she looks back to Chief and says, “What a show,” but her words drift. Chief’s chest has fallen, and his ragged breathing has stopped. The echo of his last exhalation wafts through the open window and joins the night air.

* When she leaves the facility for the last time – stars are out, and the March wind is down. She drops her backpack on the front seat floor, wipes her eyes, and as she starts her car, a mild whoosh brushes her face. She turns to the passenger seat, and filmy, like from the other side of a rain-soaked window, his hands on his knees, is Chief. “Oh,” she says. “Thank God. Can you help me get home, Chief? I don’t think I can go it alone.” He nods and she puts the car in gear. As they navigate the dark streets she tells him how relieved she is he’s out of pain, how blessed she is to have known him, asks him to watch over her husband and kids from wherever he’s headed now, because they love him too. She tells him if she could have chosen a big brother in this life, it would have been him. When she pulls into her garage and turns to thank him for this one last rescue, characteristic of the Chief, her dependable, quiet friend, who always leaves parties without goodbyes or fanfares, is gone. She sighs, picks up her backpack overfilled and thick with snacks, books, Sudokus, crosswords – the weight of which has proven too much for the bag – the strap breaks. The pack falls back to the floor with a thud, and a bruised but beautiful, Honey Crisp rolls out.