Eat Read online

  Eat

  by David Beers

  Copyright © 2013 by David Beers

  Table of Contents

  Beginning

  Middle

  End

  Momma was sick.

  Brody knew that even if he didn’t know why.

  Momma was real bad off though. Sure was.

  He sat on their porch, staring at the dirt path which led down the hill before him. Their pickup truck sat to the right of the trail, yellow grass underneath it. Brody wanted to get in that truck and drive to town, but knew he couldn’t. Momma was hurting but would be plenty mad if he tried something like that. No, Momma wouldn’t let him drive.

  Brody rocked in the chair, his mind slowly turning over the possibilities underlying his mother’s sickness—trying his best to figure out how to help.

  * * *

  She held the cup in her shaking hand, phlegm dribbling from her mouth into the Styrofoam container. Mary Windolen continued coughing, her lungs and stomach knotting tight as they tried to force the yellow snot from its place inside her. The hand not holding her cup grabbed her midsection, giving as much solace as possible to the nearly unstoppable eruptions of air and mucus from her body.

  Finally, the last of the stuff came out and she relaxed. She lay back on her bed in a relief she felt very few people understood. Breathing in deeply, Mary placed the cup on her nightstand and tried to gain some control over herself.

  Where’s Brody?

  The familiar thought, the one which seemed as close to her as her actual son. It came to her more and more now, because she was leaving her bed less and less.

  “Brody?” She called, her voice struggling to leave her room.

  She heard him stand on the porch, then his huge feet begin moving over the wooden boards. The screen door opened, next the aluminum one—Brody coming to her as he had so many times before.

  “Yes, Momma?” He asked from down the hall, plodding forward.

  “Will you make me some chicken noodle soup? There should be some in the cupboard.”

  He stopped walking, and while she couldn’t see him, knew he stood in the hallway digesting what she asked him.

  “Okay.” He turned and went back down the hall.

  Mary closed her eyes, trying not to think about what was happening to her, but knowing she couldn’t avoid it much longer. Whatever lived inside her was getting worse, not better.

  She’d worry about it later. Right this moment, she only wanted to rest.

  Mary listened to Brody moving around dishes in the kitchen, preparing her lunch.

  * * *

  Brody had down syndrome.

  “He’s a goddamn retard,” his father had said.

  Mary cried at that. Cried and held her goddamn retard baby to her chest, not wanting to look at the man who had impregnated her. Not wanting to see his eyes judging both of them from across the trailer. It wasn’t her fault but she didn’t care even if it was. Her child, her Brody, wasn’t perfect—but was anyone? Certainly not the sperm donor glaring and cursing at the malformed child.

  “I don’t want nuthin’ to do with him. He ain’t no child of mine.”

  Mary cried harder, and Brody—feeling the surroundings around him shake—began screaming as well. His father walked out of the mobile home, pulling a cigarette from his shirt pocket as he did.

  He didn’t leave that night, but it didn’t take too many more with her and her retard child to make him take off for good.

  When Mary finished crying over what she’d lost, she realized she hadn’t lost much of anything—only a man she’d let squirt inside of her. That squirt then a few tears later and Mary realized the man had given her the greatest blessing of her life. So enough with him. She had Brody to think about. She had a life to raise.

  * * *

  Brody carried the bowl into her room, a spoon resting inside. He stared at the bowl as if it held gold instead of Campbell’s soup; Mary knew he was doing his best to keep it from spilling. He handed the bowl to her, not releasing it until she obviously had control of it.

  He took a step back from the bed and looked to the floor. A few seconds later, he moved to the chair in the corner and sat.

  “Momma, what’s wrong?” Brody asked, his blue eyes looking right at Mary. When Brody was in school, classmates hated the way he looked at them. Without any self-conscious, just a deep, deep stare that Mary thought went straight through her. He saw all of her at once, but the information got lost when his brain tried to assemble it. Brody knew everything there was to know about his mother, but didn’t have the power to make the connections. He’d made this one though, and it wasn’t a hard one to make—was it, Mary?

  She knew what was wrong, or thought she did. This was no winter cold. It was something deep, something coming from her insides and not her head. Mary was beginning to think this was The Big C. Cancer. Eating her alive from the inside. Taking her organs apart bit by bit, causing all the coughing and phlegm, as well as the blood she saw in the toilet now. Brody asking meant…well, it meant even his head could make the connection. It meant there was less time than she thought.

  “I’m sick,” she said, not dropping her eyes from his. “I’m real sick.”

  He only stared for a minute, working things out in his mind.

  “Want to help.”

  Oh, Brody. Oh my dear Brody. She had to get down from this mountain and into town. His question showed her the stark truth. He could do nothing to help and if she died up here in this bed, on this mountain, he’d die soon after.

  “Get me some clothes laid out. We need to go into town and see what the doctors tell Momma.”

  * * *

  Brody’s body shook as the truck bounced along the paved, but decaying road. He didn’t feel a single bump. Momma was going to the doctor and he was riding with her, both of which were good. He’d laid out her clothes, done what she asked, but knew it wasn’t enough. Knew Momma was sick and knew that’s why she carried her white cup even in the truck, so that she could spit when she started coughing.

  He felt certain the doctor would give her medicine that would help, but this was his Momma, not theirs. He should be doing more. He couldn’t even drive the stupid truck and let her sit on his side. He only rode along, dumb as always, unable to help at all.

  Brody could figure something out, he just needed to think more.

  * * *

  Brody remembered what Momma did for him when he got sick.

  Chicken Noodle Soup.

  Brody would eat it slowly, his nose stuffy and his head hot with fever.

  “It’s good for you,” Momma said, sitting across from him at their small table.

  He brought the spoon to his lips, letting the salty and warm food into his mouth. If Momma said it was good for him, then he’d eat it until he burst because he didn’t want to feel like this anymore. Momma wouldn’t tell him wrong.

  Brody remembered sipping the soup, his mother rubbing his back.

  Brody remembered getting well soon after.

  * * *

  Mary gripped the steering wheel tight. She bit the tip of her tongue, focusing on the pain and the road in front of her. To keep the tears from coming. She didn’t want Brody to see them, not now, not until she had time to think of what she’d heard. She was returning from her second trip down the mountain. The first had been to get the tests and the second to get the results.

  “At the longest, you have six months to live.”

  “The cancer has spread to your lymph nodes. It’s still spreading and there isn’t much that can be done. We can begin chemotherapy if you want, but I honestly don’t think it can help.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you so bluntly, but I want you and your family to know the truth.”

  She hadn’t wept then, even tho
ugh Brody was alone in the hallway, drinking a Coke. She looked at the doctor with dry eyes, wanting to ask him to repeat himself. To say all those things one more time so she could be sure she heard him correctly. That she was, indeed, going to die. That Brody would be without a mother and living on the state, probably in a mental institution where he took medicine and played board games with people who didn’t know him. Would the doctor please repeat all that for her? Because if he didn’t, Mary wasn’t she sure she could believe him.

  She couldn’t leave Brody which meant she couldn’t leave this world.

  Brody sat next to her now, looking out the truck’s window, his large, abnormal head probably turning things over in the slow way it did. Trying to figure out what to ask his Momma because she wasn’t saying anything. His Momma was silent.

  What would she do with him? Brody would be lost. Her life was his life and if she left him, especially through death, he wouldn’t make it. He’d likely die, not from natural causes but from a broken heart. Brody was strong in a lot of ways, but owned such a tender heart.

  “Momma?” He didn’t look away from the window.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “I love you.”

  * * *

  At ten years old, Brody hulked over his peers. That didn’t stop them from bullying him, though. Even with a foot of height and fifty pounds on them, he never touched any of the kids who picked on him.

  Retard.

  Dumbass.

  Sloppy Sperm.

  Mary heard it all over the years. Heard Brody cry from the insults at first, but finally only telling her those things in the same way he might describe what the cafeteria served for lunch. He hardened to the cruelties.

  “Water on a duck’s back right, Momma?”

  “Right.”

  She would have left him in school until he turned eighteen or they asked him to leave, trying to get him the best education she could. Except at fifteen, he arrived home with his face ripped open from the corner of his lip to nearly his earlobe. Bleeding everywhere, drenching his skin and clothes in a seemingly endless supply of the warm liquid. He walked all the way from that damn school to their trailer with blood leaking onto him—trying his best to keep the wound closed with his left hand, reaching up to his ripped flesh and holding the two flaps together so all of his blood couldn’t empty at gravity’s pace. Tears didn’t drop, but he screamed as loud as he could with his hands holding his face together.

  “OMMMMAAAA!”

  She ran to the porch, the screen door slamming against the side paneling.

  “Brody!” She called back, rushing down the stairs and across the lawn to her child.

  Somebody had put a hook, a fishing hook, in his sandwich while he was distracted. Lodged it nice and tight in his cheek when he took a bite, then pulled with all the fury of the devil. Splayed his cheek open and then ran off laughing. No one saw him eating on the bench outside the school, no one besides the boys who hooked him like a catfish. No one even noticed his absence until Mary called, irate. The boys responsible did five years in juvenile and Brody finished high school at home.

  The scar didn’t disappear, but Brody never complained about the pain during the entire healing process. He drank his food through a straw but kept quiet. The insane itching and infection (brought on by the three mile walk home from the school) didn’t make him complain to Mary. Whatever pain he bared, he kept to himself.

  * * *

  “Momma is going to go away.”

  “When?” He asked.

  “In a little while.”

  Brody was silent for a few seconds.

  “For how long?”

  Words caught in Mary’s throat, hitching as a sob threatened to grab her. Threatened to batter down her exterior of strength—to send it to the ground and replace it with the wreck existing inside her.

  Mary swallowed and focused on her breathing.

  “Forever, honey.”

  Brody’s eyebrows knotted together. No tears ventured to his eyes because he didn’t understand what this meant. Mary knew confusion must be raging inside his head, the inability to figure out why his mother would leave him forever. Where she would go and how come he couldn’t accompany her.

  “I go too?”

  She lost her fight with the tears as they sprouted then, breaking through her façade. She reached forward, grabbing her son and pulling him close.

  “No, baby. I’m sick and the doctor can’t help. I’m dying.”

  Brody shrieked.

  His arms scrambled to Mary’s back, gripping her with all the strength in him, immediate yet unknown terror grabbing him.

  “Brody, you’re hurting me,” Mary said as the air squeezed from her lungs. He didn’t let go. Held on just as tight, as if by not releasing her he could keep her from dying. Could hold her to this life.

  “Let me go, honey.”

  Brody pulled back, his body wracking with sobs.

  “Doctor can save you. Can save you, right?” His voice, thick with tears, would be mush to anyone but Mary.

  She wanted to hold him again, but was too scared he would freak and grab her. He didn’t understand his strength and the fear he felt was out of his control. He could kill her and not know it until he released her. There would be time for hugging later, but now he needed space, needed time.

  “No, they can’t.” Mary wiped water from her eyes, looking at Brody’s scared and scarred face. “Momma’s going to die but you’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Brody looked out at the world through his big, blue eyes and faced something that had never crossed his mind. That his mother might not be there forever. Tears swelled and dripped nearly as fast as a waterfall. His face was corrupted into a horrible symbol of the pain he felt inside, the confusion, and perhaps somewhere deeper—a rage he had never felt towards anyone before.

  He stood from the chair and walked out of the room, angry screams erupting from his mouth as he walked down the hall.

  * * *

  Nine. One. One.

  Momma made him write it down over and over again.

  “Write it and hang it on the fridge. That way you’ll remember it.”

  He looked at the thirty or forty small slips of paper, all pinned to the refrigerator. He knew what they meant. When Momma left, he hit those three numbers on the phone and told whoever answered that Momma had died.

  Momma’s not gonna die.

  The voice spoke up whenever he reminded himself of what he was supposed to do. The voice said he would save her, said she wouldn’t leave him. He told her this, but Momma only smiled and hugged him.

  Brody opened the refrigerator and pulled out the remaining half can of chicken noodle soup. He’d been feeding her soup, grilled cheese (although it was much tougher to cook), salads, and whatever meat they could afford for the past three months—though the exact length of time was lost on Brody. He did know that this was the last can of soup left in the house. He knew Momma would need to drive to the store or he would need to walk it, but they needed groceries. Momma had to keep her strength up to beat this stuff and she couldn’t do that if she didn’t have food.

  She didn’t look strong, not to Brody.

  Despite his attempts to feed her, she continued losing weight—so much that she now resembled a bag made of skin, meant only to carry bones. She hardly got up, and when she did the coughing began with renewed vigor. Her Styrofoam cup filled at least twice each day with her green mucus. She moved from her bedroom to her bathroom and she slept. That was all. She would wake up coughing and reaching for her cup before the drippings could land on her comforter. Brody emptied the cup, washed it, and gave it back whenever she needed. He cleaned the bathroom if she didn’t make it in time and he rode with her on the rare trip she took to the hospital. That hadn’t been in quite a while; Momma said she was done with the hospital. She said there wasn’t any use anymore, said it was too late for them to help, but Brody didn’t care if she ever saw another doctor again. They had only brought bad ne
ws and no good to go along with it. The doctors were as bad as the cancer inside Momma.

  He heated up the remaining soup and brought it to her room.

  “Time to eat.”

  Mary opened her eyes, rolling over from her side to look at him.

  “Thanks, honey,” Mary said, closing her eyes again and making no motion to reach for the food. “Just sit it on the table, will you?”

  “Momma, we’re outta food. You drive?”

  Mary shook her head slightly, her eyes shut and her breathing even.

  “I go?”

  Momma didn’t nod this time; she slept with the soup cooling next to her. Brody needed to handle this. Brody needed to find Momma food.

  He reached between her mattress and box springs, pulling his hand out carefully.

  Fifty bucks.

  That would be enough. Brody left the house, beginning the five mile trek to the grocery store on foot.

  * * *

  Brody stared at the word broth.

  He looked for a long time, people passing behind him and sometimes reaching in front of the silent giant. He didn’t notice their looks or the way they moved quickly past his five mile hike stench. The word broth held all of his attention as he struggled to make the connection.

  After a half hour or so, he turned from the can and walked to the meat department. Prices were higher here, Brody could tell that even if he couldn’t tell by how much.

  Slowly, the scarred man was coming to the realization of conserving money. The fifty bucks he held was all the money Momma had under her mattress. He didn’t know how much food he could buy with the fifty, but he knew more of the broth than the meat—also knew he could make soup with the broth.

  He walked to the original can, resuming his stare.

  He could buy a lot of these. He could fill up a whole buggy (which he’d forgotten at the front of the store).

  Brody could buy more and consequently provide Momma with more food. He could feed her, make her well, and Holy Jesus, the idea came at him like a stampede of animals. It rushed over everything, flattening all the other thoughts his mind was attempting to grow.