Page 34 of Poison Wood

I catch Debby looking up over her readers at me. I look back at her.

“What are you up to, Rita?” she says.

I look back at my father. “Maybe we need to walk those laps,” I say.

He glances at Debby. “Right.”

I start for the door and then realize he is still trying to stand up from the hospital bed. He’s got his hands beside him, and he’s pushing off so slowly, I wonder if he’s going to make it to standing. I hurry back to his side and take his left arm.

“I got it,” he snaps.

I pull my hand back even though he very clearly does not got it. I stand next to him just in case he falls. Two laps is now seeming like asbig an ask as him running a marathon. I notice a walker propped by the far wall. I walk over and open it and offer it to him. He looks at me as if I’ve offered him a casket brochure.

“I don’t need that,” he says.

“Okay, well let’s take it just in case,” I say. “I may need it.”

He shoots me a look, but he smiles.

It takes a painfully long time to make it to the door. Half a lap may be the goal today. His hospital gown is open in the back, and I can see his boxer shorts. I try to close it, and he swats my hand away.

“Leave it,” he says as we exit into the hallway opposite the nurses’ station.

Everything about this moment feels entirely wrong. I keep my eyes forward so I’m not tempted to look at how thin his legs have gotten.

“Good job, Judge Mac,” one of the nurses at the station says.

I want to tell her to shut up. This is a man who broke horses in West Texas as a kid. A man who built his farmhouse with his own hands. Three steps are not a good job for him. But he gives the nurse a thumbs-up, and it’s clear the rules for success look different for him now.

And maybe that’s what’s causing this thorn under my skin. His mortality has never been in question for me, an odd thing for a woman who lost a parent at an early age and chose a career where she sees mortality up close every day.

I know all too well nobody makes it out of life alive.

But my father was my constant. While everything else in my world whirled around me, he stayed steady and true. He never gave me a reason to think that would change, and watching him shuffle his feet instead of picking them up drives home the reality that my perceptions were those of a child. A child in denial.

I rub my face and slow my pace to keep up with him.

“How are you?” he says.

Of course he’s asking how I am when he’s the one in the hospital. “I’m good,” I say. I hear the twangy drawl in the wordgood. $10K on a voice coach and after two days in Louisiana, the drawl is back. Butthat’s what coming home does to you. It replants you right where you left off, bringing with it all the feelings from whatever age you left, as if they’ve been preserved in mason jars and stored on a shelf, waiting.

“You’re all I’ve got left, Dad,” I say, keeping my eyes forward as we pass by rooms. “You have to promise me you’ll take better care of yourself.”

He clears his throat. I hear a rasp in it I don’t like. “I’ll do better,” he says.

“Promise.”

“I promise.” Then he says, “You know, you need to do better too.” I stop and he stops. This time he looks at me. “You’re too thin,” he says.

“It’s part of being on camera, Dad. You know that.” I look him over. “I could say the same about you.”

“Widow-maker diet.”

I don’t respond, and we start walking again. Although this normal banter has been nice, we have other things to discuss. “Lots going on around here. News-wise,” I say.

“Yes, there is,” he says.

We make it to the end of the hall. He’s breathing fast, so I let him pause a minute more before turning and starting back.