Blood: Arkansas Evening

34

But a man’s life breath cannot come back again — no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,once it slips through a man’s clenched teeth.

Homer, The Iliad

1951

The red light pulsed up into the branches of the tree overhanging the driveway behind the house. A long, white, high-topped Cadillac with torpedo-shaped silver sirens on its fenders and the red light on its roof was there, its engine idling, the gate-like rear door open, light pouring out. It waited.

Voices out on the sleeping porch, but I could not go out there. I had to stay in my room with my brother. My grandmother had told us to go there and stay there in a firm voice. So I opened my window and looked down through the screen and watched the ambulance and wondered about the sound of my grandfather falling off the bed on the sleeping porch.

I had fallen out of bed myself before, but not this night, so I knew what the fall was like. I remembered how confusing it was to wake up on the floor. I knew how different the room looked from down there — the narrow oak planks, the throw rugs, the little clusters of dust under the bed, the smell of floor wax and time.

But this sound was not quite like anything I’d ever heard before. It was a grunting sound and a thud like a feed sack falling from the bed of a truck. I hadn’t been quite awake. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d heard. I thought I remembered something my grandmother had said. It sounded like, “Oh! Jim!” I had heard the sound of the phone dialing, that clickity, clickity, clickity of the dial twirling back. I remembered being walked half asleep from the sleeping porch to my room where I now sat on the window ledge and stared down at the revolving red light.

I listened to thumping and grunting and a clattering sound on the stairs. Then I saw the white-jacketed men walking through the pool of light above the kitchen door carrying the gurney. I saw my uncle’s Packard drive up just as they were pushing the gurney into the back of the ambulance. The red light bounced off the Packard’s windshield.

I watched my uncle talk to the men. One of them shook his head. My uncle came into the house as the ambulance drove away. I watched the flashing of its red light diminish as it went down the hill. I wished they would turn the great silver sirens on. I’d like to hear that. It would tell all the town that my grandfather was coming down the hill.