He listened to the rasp of his own breathing. He focused on each breath. In and out. The rhythm made him calmer and softened the panic that crept in if he listened to the rest of the world. He knew the breaths were noisy like the sound of crosscut saw tines ripping into southern yellow pine. In and out, back and forth. It was a raspy, wet sound, “Worse than I really feel,” he thought.
The rhythm made him feel drowsy and his mind drifted away leaving the saw sound in the distance. In its place came a blanket of soft darkness, swirling and sweet, floating and soft. In the warm breeze he heard a song voice. It came around his head and spoke wind words. It spoke his name, ‘Kit, Kit’ full of sweetness. This voice was his, almost. Not quite his, but so close. He listened to the name-song and suddenly knew that voice. Not quite his, but brother Tom.
“Tom? Is that you Tom?” He sent the thought out into the darkness and the warm breeze wrapped around him, smiling.
“Kit, of course it’s me. I’ve missed you Kit.”
“Tom, my brother, I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
“We’re all here Kit- Annie, Juanita, Floyd, Browder, Mama. We’re all here. Just the other day I was tellin‘ stories about you. Remember sneakin‘ away to fish on Sundays? I tell that story about how Mama caught us comin‘ in one Sunday. We said, ‘naw, Mama, we weren’t fishin‘. Then she found our fish and gave us a whupin‘ not for fishin‘ on Sunday, but for not tellin‘ the truth.”
“Tom,” he groaned back, “You know that’s not right. Mama was a compassionate woman, but you and I both know she whuped us fair and square for the fishin‘. You’re not rememberin‘ right.”
“Kit, I’m not rememberin‘, I’m tellin‘. That’s a fine story and you know it. You go back to that hospital bed if you want rememberin‘. I’m not about to remember the truth about the 12 of us growin‘ up on that share croppin‘ farm. You left it for your good life in Washington with Arleo and I left it for Evelyn and Dare and Dare’s children. I’m here with a grin and my stories. If you stay I’ll tell you that one about when my favorite bird dog Boy was lost for 2 whole years. Then one day Dare’s husband Dick found him in the parkin‘ lot at Piggly Wiggly. I cried tears of pure joy when Dick opened that car trunk and Old Boy jumped out. Now that’s a story worth tellin‘.”
Kit floated a moment in the quiet darkness. He could feel Tom’s smile beside him. Could he go back to his old body full of remembering? Return to the lungs full of air from the Mars Hill home of his last years, the soft bones that no longer held his suit coat or his voice once able to command those around to do his bidding and now unable to speak. He could return to the flesh of red-hot-poker-remembering or glide on the warm updrafts of Tom’s stories. “A pleasant choice,” he thought as he floated over the eddies of the warm whisperings in Tom’s wake.
Dare sat beside the hospital bed and held the right hand of her uncle in both of hers. She gently rubbed the loose fragile skin that draped his finger and touched the stump that was the remainder of his right index finger. She smiled remembering that Kit had never once mourned the loss of that finger that got caught in a printing press when he was 18. Kit, like all the Beasley’s she had ever known including her father Tom, had never remembered the bad things in life.
Kit’s breath rattled and sucked in his frail chest. Kit had been a proud and independent man all of his life, but in the 3 to 4 years past his 80th birthday he had become thin and quiet. Tom had died 8 years ago and she knew that these were last moments for Kit. In the 2 days she had been by his bed he had not been awake enough to speak. Before he had been restless, but in the past hour his arms and legs had relaxed. She remembered his good life and wished him peace.
