Every time Mrs. Quiggley looked at Bobby in his wheelchair she remembered her pregnancy. It was a miracle Bobby wasn’t born crippled, being as Mr. Quiggley was drunk and angry most of the last three months. He’d get angry over the least little thing and beat her, hitting her in the stomach and then yelling at her that his son would be born deformed and it would be her fault for making him angry. He’d be real sorry as he sobered up, go to church, bring her flowers and three weeks later get all riled up again.
Her folks were poor and didn’t want to hear her problems and anyway, she knew her Dad would smack her Mom upside the head when he was drunk on a Friday night. The minister of her church told her a woman’s place was beside her husband. So she stayed and figured out that life was indeed not that proverbial bowl of cherries. She got her pleasures vicariously from the television. She did stop going to church, a small rebellion that didn’t bring down the wrath of God upon her head. Her husband had enough wrath for both of them. Only after Bobby’s accident on the Fourth of July last did she begin to wonder if maybe she’d been wrong, sinful, and Bobby’s condition was her punishment. She started wheeling him into church with her every Sunday regular. Mr. Quiggley would grumble, because he felt guilty still, never realizing what a friend he had in the minister.
Bobby would wake up slowly in the early spring mornings, listening to the sweet sounds of birds outside his window that he begged to have left open and he wouldn’t remember right off what part of his life he was in, the crippled part, the longest part. He’d begin to stretch a body he couldn’t move and feel pain in his imagination and sometimes it took a full half hour for him to realize he couldn’t run outside and look furtively for crocuses. He started recalling things he’d long ago forgotten, like an old person getting ready to die. He remembered showing his mother the first spring crocuses and she’d get excited with him but his father would growl and call him a sissy.
His Dad was calling him a sissy for as long as he could remember. Until he started riding the bulls. Then his Dad would grumble about “that nigger Lance” and the “little nigger boy” Adam, but Bobby could see that his Dad was afraid of Lance and let escape a certain surprised awe of Adam, and Bobby knew that the fear and the awe were as close as his Dad would ever come to respecting anyone. It was the closest he’d ever seen his Dad get to being proud of his son. That “crazy-assed bull-riding good-for-nothing son of mine” he’d call Bobby and Bobby felt loved by his old man for the first time ever.
His Dad never actually saw him ride. He wouldn’t go to the rodeos because Bobby always went with Lance and Adam and Mr. Quiggley wanted no contact with “the nigger” and his encouragement and pride were so subtle that it was easy enough for him to blame them when Bobby had his accident. The first time he found out that Lance and Adam were coming to his home to visit his son, he got so enraged he hit Bobby in the face and almost dragged him out of his chair before Mrs. Quiggley could stop him. Bobby heard them yelling and screaming and his Ma crying and pleading. She was grateful for any visit, any attention, any friendship that cheered her poor boy.
“Alright, alright, but not when I’m home dammit! Jesus Christ woman don’t you know it’s all that black-assed cowboy’s fault our poor boy is in that chair?!”
“You encouraged him yourself. You were proud of him and he always wanted you to be proud of him. He did it for you anyway. He’d have done anything to get you to love him.”
“Shutup.”
Then his Dad got quiet and calm and went in the other room to watch TV. He had on a ball game fairly loud, annoyingly loud actually, but after being very still and listening very carefully, it seemed to Bobby he could hear his Dad crying. His Mom had already cried herself to sleep in the bedroom and he could hear her soft snores. He wished then that his poor mother could sleep forever and that his father would cry again and again and that someday he could see it. It wasn’t hate, his poor body didn’t have the energy to fuel hatred. It was just curiosity maybe, wondering what his Dad would look like with tears instead of rage on his face.
Adam was still visiting with Bobby feeding him the dinner Mrs. Quiggley brought into the room for the two of them to share. Then they heard Mr. Quiggley’s truck drive up, unexpected so early in the afternoon and Mrs. Quiggley started to tell Adam to run out by the back door, but it was too late, and Mr. Quiggley yelled at her to come in the kitchen and then Adam heard such a crashing and screaming while Bobby’s Dad knocked his mother all over the kitchen into pots and pans that fell from the stove and crockery that broke when it was knocked from the counter to the floor and all the while him cussing and her screaming at him to stop. Adam looked at Bobby and Bobby told him:
“It’s not your fault. He’s just using that as an excuse. He gets this way every couple of months or so and it don’t take nothing to set him off. He’ll quit soon and go get drunk and then he’ll pass out and be sorry in the morning. He’s always been like this.”
Adam heard the door slam shut and the jeep start up and go screeching out of the driveway. Then he slowly and quietly went to the window to make sure Mr. Quiggley was really gone and when he saw it wasn’t a trick he walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Quiggley was picking up pots and pans and dishes slowly like a zombie and there were tears soaking her face and her nose was running. He began to help her clean up the mess, wanting somehow to apologize and then the most extraordinary thing happened. Mrs. Quiggley let her pots and pans drop again and grabbed Adam. She hugged him very close and cried out loud shaking and sobbing. He dared not hold her back or push her away. He remembered his mother holding him the same way, his real, long-ago mother, after she had beaten him after his stepdad had beaten her. He didn’t understand any of this. He never knew what it was he had done. But Mrs. Quiggley finally quit and let go of him and dried her face and said:
“It’s not your fault, Adam. Ask Bobby, he’ll tell you. But please don’t say nothing to your Ma, OK?”
Adam promised not to say nothing and he left very quietly through the front door and ran on home.