Mr. Johnston Arrives

Atmar Johnston checked himself into the Waco Veterans’ hospital in September, 1964 to get sober. He’d done this before after spending months poisoning himself good and proper with numerous gallons of cheap hooch. Eighteen years, off and on, of hard drinking had left Atmar with a fibrotic liver and dropsy in his gut. The VA doctors held Atmar three weeks, sedating his delirium tremens and laboring over a nasty bacterial peritonitis. Again, they sent Atmar home sober, but this time with a thirty percent chance of living another year. Atmar would soon die for lack of a liver — the one he’d slowly murdered with rotgut booze.

To get his dad to Waco, George Johnston borrowed Larry MacKay’s pickup. Mrs. MacKay put twenty dollars in George’s shirt pocket and James, her eldest son, gave George their Gulf card for gasoline. Momma ordered George to stay in Waco overnight.

“I don’t want you driving back after dark,” she cautioned him. “And anytime you get tired, George, you pull off and rest a while. You hear?” She waved goodbye and watched the truck ’till it was well down the dirt road toward Highway 7.

Then she turned to James and said “I want you and Larry to go over there.”

“Where? The Johnston place?”

“You boys go see what Mr. Johnston needs to get through the winter.”

Hours later James and Larry came home with news of the worst sort. They’d looked over the house and spent some time propped against Johnston’s propane tank. The yard was a weedfield around a trash pile of tin cans and mason jars — food Momma had sent over there via George. Atmar had flung his empty whisky bottles out the back door too. Lots of them. The brothers discussed matters, then took the word to their mother.

“Can’t fix that house, Momma,” James said. “Every single window’s broken out. The floor’s fallen out of the back bedroom.”

“Fallen out?” Momma asked.

“There’s weeds, Momma,” Larry said, “growing where the back room rotted away. Ivy grown up the walls.”

Shocked, Momma asked “Inside? You mean the floor’s gone? What about the rest of the house? Can it be closed up for the winter?”

James and Larry exchanged looks. As the oldest, it was James’s duty to say “Not enough house left to close up. The sheetrock’s gotten wet and come down off the ceiling — dropped all over the front room. Rain’s come in. Everything’s ruined in there.”

“I think… ” Larry hesitated, Momma’s eyes on him. “I think Mr. Johnston’s been living in the kitchen. There’s a big old slumped down easy chair pulled up in front of the oven.”

“Some time or another,” James said, “there was a fire in there. Black scorch going all up the wall behind the stove.”

“Oh, Lord,” Momma said. “He’ll burn the place down on himself, drunk and all.”

“Propane tank’s empty now. What do you want to do?”

Hands braced on the table, she raised herself out of the chair, sighed, and went to the stove. “Make supper, I suppose. Can’t see anything else to do right now.”

•••

On Momma MacKay’s instructions, George brought his dad from the hospital straight to the MacKay place. Atmar, thin-legged and big of belly, made his way up the back steps and inside to the kitchen table. He sat there, coffee and blackberry cobbler in front of him, fidgeting with the spoon while he repeated to Momma what he’d been told by the VA doctors.

At last he said, “I guess it means I’m dying, Miz MacKay. Oh Lordy, I did it up good this time, didn’t I, ma’am?”

“There’s no knowing that, Mr. Johnston. God sows and reaps in His own time.”

Nevertheless, seeing Atmar’s color, Momma had no doubt the doctors were right. She knew at that moment that she’d done the right thing, having her boys make room for Mr. Johnston in their home.

All summer Momma had pushed the boys to clean out and fix up the Little House. The idea came to her last spring, long before the need arose.

The boys rolled their eyes when she told them to turn it into another bedroom. What for?, they asked. Why? Needless questions, for Momma had spoken. She wanted the Little House habitable before school started again. Why and what for, truth be told, was a mystery even to Momma MacKay. Call it a premonition, a feeling last spring that extra space would be needed in the fall.

In form, the Little House was a mother-in-law cottage situated behind the main house. In function, however, it was a storage shed packed with eighty years’ worth of accumulated overrun from the MacKay clan. The Little House held things that, at one time, seemed too good to be discarded. Things there had been useful or treasured, then set aside in case they should again be wanted or loved. They were the common items of everyday life, like Tut’s tomb.

The Little House had meaning and purpose as it sat, and there was no good reason for Momma MacKay to want it “fixed up”. Though the boys carped about it amongst themselves, they held their tongues around Momma.

Over the summer, the boys hauled the contents to the barns and sheds. They evicted wasps, spiders, and sundry vermin. They lay new wallboard over new insulation, glazed the windows, and re-hung the door. Little by little, task by task, the boys worked on it through the summer. With new shingles and fresh paint matching the main house, the Little House reached the point of readiness. Momma approved. She said it looked like something that belonged in the backyard, instead of behind the barn.

Events that fall vindicated Momma. The MacKay household expanded in October. Larry brought Mike Lamont home with him for a lengthy stay. The MacKays inherited Howie Jensen, orphaned when his mother died. Angelina county fostered him to Mrs. MacKay. Now came Atmar Johnston, sickly. George had been welcome, his father would be too. Most people were.

“I’m sure you’d be comfortable on your own,” Momma lied. She knew winter would be miserable in a house gone to shack. “But Atmar, we want you to stay here for the winter. We’ve made room for you.”

“No, Miz MacKay,” he said. “It’s kind of you, but I couldn’t. I’ll be more trouble than you need, ma’am.”

“Well, we can have a polite yes and no back and forth, Atmar, but I’ll insist, and in the end you’ll agree. Just say yes now and we’ll be done with it. Then I can get on with dinner. I’ve got potatoes need peeling.”

She left the table to tie on an apron. Sweet potato pies in the oven were about ready to come out. She slid a knife into each one to check. Then she punched down her bread dough, judging it ready to follow the pies into the oven.

Atmar took a while — long enough to spoon up the cobbler — then he said “Thank you, Miz MacKay.”

“You and Robert go back a long time, Atmar. Robert would have wanted you here. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yessum, he would have, I expect. Robert was a good man. He’s ’bout the only one could keep me off the bottle. Sorry we lost him.” Atmar stood. “Let me wash up and I’ll peel those spuds. I can still sing for my supper.”

•••

Larry and Mike were due home from school, so Momma sat on the back porch waiting to hear the pickup. She intended to catch the boys in the yard. Besides, she needed a few minutes to cool off with a glass of tea. Atmar was at hand, watching the potatoes so they wouldn’t boil over into her clean burners. Just what potatoes are prone to do.

She had six loaves of bread in the oven and meat loaf ready to go in next. Like a stoker in the Queen Mary’s boiler room, Momma shoveled enough fuel each day to keep six teenage boys running at 28 knots.

First to hear the approaching truck, the dogs — Pickles and Ketchup — bounded off the porch and stood, tails wagging. Momma heard the engine rev to get over the cattle guard at the front gate. By some prior arrangement, each dog greeted a boy. They liked Mike; he always spoke to them and was apt to bring something challenging or witty into a otherwise mundane herding dog’s day.

“School?” Momma asked.

“Unparalleled,” Larry said, without the enthusiasm that would have made it sound plausible. “Hoover died yesterday.”

“J. Edgar?”

“No, Momma. Herbert. The President before Roosevelt.”

“Mercy. Was he still alive? Well, I haven’t seen the newspaper today.”

“The Hoover Commissions, you know.” Mike said.

Momma and Larry looked at each other. No, they didn’t know. Larry hadn’t yet encountered any Hoover Commissions in school. Momma, educated, nevertheless didn’t keep such historical esoterica at her fingertips.

“Plural?” Momma asked.

“Yeah, two of ‘em.”

“They couldn’t get it right the first time?”

Momma figured she’d someday become accustomed to Mike’s occasional outbursts of erudition. Erudite — one of Mike’s words, used three times in one day to plant it in his vocabulary. What else would you expect from a kid that read the dictionary the way other boys his age ogled the Sears and Roebuck lingerie pages.

Mike asked Pickles “What is life but a series of inspired follies?” It was an earnest inquiry, one Pickles would no doubt ponder later.

“And where did that come from?” Momma asked.

“George Bernard Shaw.”

Larry said “We started Pygmalion today in English. Mike memorized it yesterday.”

“Nu-unh. All I did was read through it during Homeroom.”

“That’s what I said. You memorized it yesterday.”

“Boys,” Momma broke in, “Mr. Johnston’s here. And I want to ask a favor. I know this isn’t going to be any fun, but please make the best of it.” She had their attention. “Mr. Johnston’s not well. I want him to stay inside. I don’t want to put him out in the Little House.”

Larry said “We’ll go out there, if you want us to. He can have the middle room.” Larry looked to Mike for agreement.

Mike shrugged and switched dogs. “No spiders. I won’t sleep with spiders.”

“We got a Flit gun,” Larry said.

“What’s a Flit?” Mike asked.

Momma said “Look, if you’re just too miserable out there, we’ll make room in the back bedroom.”

“With Donny and Willy? That would be too miserable. No, Momma, I’d rather pitch a tent behind the barn.”

“Are you sure. I mean…”

“Momma! It’s okay. We can stay in the Little House. It’ll work fine.”

“Well then, I’ll put George in the middle room with his dad. Eddie can sleep in my room. Then if it doesn’t work out, we’ll make some other plan,” she said, picking up her tea glass and leading them toward the house. “Oh, and Michael… wash your hands before you come to the kitchen.”