"Mooney, come down here Honey. Your daddy's dyin'."

There was silence from the second floor.

"Moone?" Mama-Mae called out lyrically - pressing her face to the small mirror at the foot of the stairs. She grinned and rubbed lipstick from her teeth with a pinky finger.

"Just a minute, Mama!" a thin voice responded. "I gotta get the coins."

The slapping of leather soles on hardwood echoed above. A moment later, the boy bounded down the stairs. He was slight, pale, with round eyes and small, hazel irises. His hair was home-cut - uneven and long - with honey-brown tufts framing his angular, oddly pretty face like brush strokes.

The boy stopped on the second step, at eye-level with his mother and waited for her to acknowledge him in his Sunday suit. It was a dull brown hand-me-down worn to a shine in the knees and seat. The trousers were gathered over a pair of weary Hush-Puppies, the sleeves extending inches beyond the knuckles of his clenched fists where he held a silver dollar in each moist palm.

"Well, my goodness!" she exclaimed, turning from her reflection, noting the similarity of her son's eyes to her own. "I was waiting for my Mooney-Boy, and you've startled me, sir. I don't believe I've had the pleasure..."

She offered her hand and batted her eyes.

Mooney blushed. He lifted her long elegant fingers with the sleeve of the suit jacket and kissed her hand. Ma-Mae sighed deeply and smiled. She had a wide, contagious smile that caused her left eye to fall lazy.

The rest of the family was already gathered in the small humid room where Joe-Deal Rivers lay on his deathbed. Ma-Mae sat in a straight back chair near the headboard and leaned forward to smooth a delicate strand of white hair that had fallen out of place on her husband's forehead. She smiled sadly, fanned herself with her puzzle book, and winked at Mooney. The boy had taken his place on the love seat beside his sister Crymia.

"The good Reverend will join us shortly," Ma-Mae announced, lifting her chin to cool her neck and run her fingers along its graceful length.

Mae Reed Rivers was a woman whose beauty had come late in life. She had been a thin, plain girl who suffered through school with a learning disability and the encumbrance of being taller than the majority of boys her age. She remained gangly and unnoticed throughout her twenties. On their honeymoon in Virginia Beach, Joe-Deal forbid her to exhibit her boyish figure in the two-piece bathing suit she had bought for the occasion. The new bride sat stoically in the sand, wrapped in a cocoon of terrycloth, though weeping behind her Ray-Bans.

They were an odd coupling at the onset. He was noticeably older and abhorred the "father/daughter" references, as if it were Mae's youth, not his age, evoking the misconception. "Dress your age," he would command.

Mae fell in love with Joe-Deal at the Bingo Bonanza. He was approaching retirement at an accounting firm, newly widowed and had nothing left to lose. She was terminally available. On their third date - after Mae won the Hamilton Beach Crock Pot with the matching soup bowls - Joe-Deal popped the question (never one to ignore good fortune, even when spelled out as B-I-N-G-O). It was as simple as that. He was not the Cary Grant to her Audrey Hepburn, but he would do. And he could see that she was lucky; he liked that in a woman.

They moved into the big house her grandmother left her and discovered the only two things they would ever have in common (other than Bingo and their respective need for privacy): fertility and timing. The couple were blessed with three children in the first two years of marriage - a boy, followed by twin girls. But, however, due to "technical difficulties," Joe-Deal would only manage the act on fewer than a dozen occasions throughout the years they shared the same bed. "Lucky." He would say, and nod toward his wife in rare compliment.

With the birth of her fifth child, Moone, at thirty-five, Mae suddenly matured with a divine beauty. Her once elongated nose and pronounced cheekbones fell into place as age arranged and defined her features. The weight of childbearing receded, but, as never before, her breasts and hips remained full and shapely; her skin, previously dry and ashen, now accepted the sun and glowed throughout the year. She contributed the miraculous transformation to little Moone and heaped affection upon the child. There was a loud snort, followed by a gurgling gasp from Daddy Joe-Deal. Mooney looked up expectantly and fingered the damp coins.

"Get off your daddy's hose, Red." Ma-Mae said in the same tone she would use to thank the bagboy at the supermarket.

The heavy boy sitting on the side of the bed shifted his weight - leaning forward over the comic book spread on the sheets before him. The compressed oxygen hose regained its shape upon being released from beneath Red's prominent buttock. There was a soft whistling sound followed by a sucking click from the back of the old man's throat.

Red was smiling, pointing a blunt finger to each new frame of the comic strip as he mouthed the words. Deep in concentration, his thick tongue would snake out over his tiny, Chicklet teeth, curl, and touch the tip of his nose, an unfortunate distance above (a habit his sisters found particularly offensive). A new pair of high powered eye-glasses that Ma-Mae had pulled from the display at the Drug Fair were all but concealed behind the kink of tangerine hair gathered over the boy's forehead. He grunted in amusement. Joe-Deal always said Red was part boy, part sheep dog, and two-hundred pounds of wasted space.

"Preacher man!" Sippy announced from the window and sat with a satisfied bounce on the opposite side of Mooney from her twin sister.

Ma-Mae rose from her chair and the children listened to her high heels snapping on the hardwood foyer. The only other sounds in the house were the rustling of Red's pages and the hissing of Daddy Joe-Deal's oxygen. There was a loud knock on the front door.

"You may think so. I find him tedious and crude," Crymia said abruptly, breaking the silence. She didn't look at her sister, but off into the impressionistic fields of the painting above Daddy Joe's bed (another of Mae's bingo prizes). Mooney jerked his head around and looked at Sippy. Her reply was as silent as her original thought had been.

The telepathy the identical twin sisters shared since birth had been shorted out the previous summer by a violent hail storm that broke the stained glass windows out of the neighboring church and rendered the then thirteen year-old Sippy, unconscious. A particularly large stone glanced off the back of her neck at the base of her skull and partially severed the silent mode of communication to her sister. She could send, but could not receive. Crymia was forced to reply verbally, something she felt was beneath her and resented in her flawed sibling.

"I'll be in good company!" Crymia spat and took a swig from her cherry Coke.

Preacher Ansel Thorndike stepped into the room behind Ma-Mae and removed his hat. He wore green fishing waders over a soiled button-down shirt and a tie imprinted with tiny sperm whales. He nodded to Sippy and sat in the empty chair at the foot of the bed facing the comatose old man. The distinct aroma of what must have been the previous day's catch filled the room.

The boyish preacher loved to fish as much as drink bourbon and recite the word of God. He forever reeked of his first two passions, and the penalty for those late to Sunday services was a front row seat (left empty as the congregation filled the pews from the back to avoid the foul mixture of stale booze, perspiration, and trout). Few knew that the young man's gift for pontificating would only rise when prompted by the demon liquid. Sober, he could rarely think of a thing to say.

The room was close. Ma-Mae's makeshift fan fluttered like a butterfly held by one wing. Red removed his tongue from his nose and looked out through the thick lenses, trying to locate the source of the odor. The preacher placed his fishing cap upon the Bible in his lap - careful to avoid the array of furry flies and shiny lures. He looked none too happy to have been snagged from Snotty Creek before his hook had been set or the seal on a pint of Old Forester broken.

"Anytime now, Ansel . . . I'm nearly certain." Ma-Mae apologized to Preacher Thorndike. He looked her hard in the eye and then turned back to face Joe-Deal. It was the third time in as many days that he had been called to the man's bedside to fulfill the final request of being read the Psalms as he died. They all sat solemnly listening to the old man's fading, ragged breath, waiting for Ansel to locate an appropriate verse to begin with.

"THE LORDT IS MY SHEPARDT!" the preacher's sermon voice boomed throughout the house. Red jumped and simultaneously farted. He nearly fell off the bed.

"Christ!" Crymia spat. "Scared the shit out of me, Ansel!" She wiped at the cherry Coke that had spilled down the front of her blouse and then swung her head around to give her sister a dirty look. "You wanna talk about blasphemy, you horny little choir girl?"

Sippy's eyes flashed open wide. She glanced at the preacher - realizing her sister's voice was heard by all - and ran crying from the room.

"You go right on, Preacher," Ma-Mae said. She smiled warmly and returned to her crossword puzzle. Ma-Mae loved word puzzles. She had yet to finish one, but delighted in the way the words fell across one another; the way they sounded as they rolled off her tongue. Daddy Joe-Deal said she could have been a book writer if she'd only gotten properly educated or had any short term memory. Ma-Mae studied big words as if in awe - losing herself in the combination of vowels and consonants - the way most folks stare into a fire. Upon hearing a new word, she would repeat it aloud, over and over. The trouble was, she couldn't retain them long enough to use them in a sentence. "In one ear and out the other," Joe-Deal used to say, "nothing to grab on to."

It was Ma-Mae's own little word game to name the children; Red Rock Rivers, born first. He was exactly eleven pounds at birth with spongy amber hair. Rock, his middle-name, was after Rock Hudson, her favorite movie star. She might have called him Rock Hudson Rivers had she retained the Hudson River. The twins came next. She thought it would be charming when Sippy grew to be a young woman, to be referred to as "Miss Sippy Rivers." She was mistaken. And Crymia Rivers, well, she had to stretch a bit for that one. "I have yet to see that child sleep, Joe-Deal," she said in the hospital as the nurse returned the agitated infant to her leaking breast and removed the slumbering Sippy to the nursery. "Just cries on like a rain storm."

There was another boy-child born before Moone. He died shortly after birth, but not before the certificate was imprinted with the name: Tennessee Elvis Rivers.

Preacher Thorndike had a commanding voice, developed from imitating television evangelists. In the summer, with the church windows open, his sermons were said to scare the fish in the creek. He loudly pronounced every syllable - exaggerating the consonant at the end of a phrase: "Jesus said" becoming, "Jee-suss saidt!"

In the close room where Daddy Joe continued to breath (despite the doctor's 36 hour prediction) the preacher paused in the silence of the twin's argument. He adjusted his tie and tilted his head until his neck cracked like a prizefighter. Then he continued to read from the Psalms. "Unto thee, O Lord-ta! Do I lift up my so-wul."

He was nearly handsome. If not for the bulbous forehead and a cleft chin jutting from his soft face like the cow-catcher of a train, he might have been movie star material - tall and lean with a head full of wavy blond hair and green, deep-set eyes.

Sippy swooned over the bachelor reverend. He was twice her age, but a perfectly acceptable span of years when compared to the successful marriages of the Rivers' family tree. After all, Daddy Joe-Deal would be seventy-nine years old (if he only lived till Monday), while Ma-Mae turned forty-two the day before Easter.

Sippy thought the world revolved around the man's large head. On one particular Sunday, the pretty twin sighed at dinner and silently communicated to her sister that she had seen a halo hanging over him during the service that morning.

Crymia rudely repeated aloud to the family that Sippy had seen a halo surrounding the preacher's head. She added that it must have been a whopper. The others contained their amusement on Sippy's behalf.

Then Moone suggested it could have been flies. The whole family erupted in laughter. Sippy, whose sense of smell may have been affected by the hailstone as well, sulked and silently (in vain) swore to keep her thoughts to herself.

It was apparent that her crush had not gone unnoticed by the preacher. He was more than a little taken with the blonde, blossoming girl. He would often rest his hand upon Sippy's arm when he spoke to her, and study the willful swing of her behind over the chilly shoulders of parishioners departing the church. Crymia, for the life of her, could not see what the man saw in her sister.

Sippy returned to her daddy's room, her eyes swollen from crying. She avoided Crymia by stepping to the left - intentionally lingering - brushing her breasts against the preacher's back. He stopped reading momentarily and grimaced, as if realizing some inner conflict (perhaps considering the obvious adversity suddenly confronting his waders).

Moone watched his daddy for a sign. There was a place on the old man's chest where his paisley pajamas shirt would rise and fall with each breath. Moone stared at that spot until his eyes filled with big tears - not blinking, should he miss the moment of death. His siblings considered his apparent weeping an unnecessary plea for attention. After all, Daddy Joe had entrusted him, above the others, with the coins.

If there was love lost within the walls of the Rivers' house, it was by design of the old man himself. As Mae found as quickly as her honeymoon night, Joe Rivers was nearly incapable of returning love in any way. He became like a demanding house guest to the rest of the family. They respected him - feared him at times - but had long given up the notion of a loving relationship with their father. Joe-Deal wouldn't have it. Even little Moone, bringing the old man his Wall Street Journal and ice for his Scotch, failed to rouse a smile or response.

"It's like he used it all up 'fore we was born," Red once said.

It was uncommon for Red to say anything intelligible. But sometimes, as if channeling some wiser being, the boy would come out with something that was nearly prophetic, usually punctuated by one of his chronic belches.

At noon, Ma-Mae called the family and Preacher Thorndike to the dining room. There was potato salad, cold cuts, baked beans, butter pickles, and a large pitcher of sweet tea. Sippy sat Ansel at the head of the table where her father once reigned, before he began taking his meals alone in his room. They passed condiments and talked about the weather and the increase in crime around Hornsby. Ma-Mae asked the preacher if the fish were biting. Crymia blew an exasperated breath from the side of her mouth and whispered, "Whew, I'd say!"

Sippy kicked her sister under the table and sent a telepathic message that made Crymia's jaw drop. Moone speculated that Sippy had used foul language; she would never use a four-letter word aloud.

The preacher told Ma-Mae, that if he could turn all the fish in Snotty Creek into loaves of bread, he could feed the County. Crymia, having recovered from her sister's silent reprimanding, offered, "Well, Ansel, why don't you and Sipp climb in that little boat of yours, be fruitful and multiply. God knows we could use the bread."

Red stopped chewing - a fork-full of beans suspended before his gaping mouth - and contemplated his sister's suggestion. Moone choked on restrained laughter, and milk streamed from his nostrils and splattered his suit.

Ma-Mae thought for a moment and replied, "Why . . . yes, Reverend. Sippy loves the water. I believe it would do her good to get out of the house . . . when Joe-Deal moves on, of course."

Mae had not given much thought to life after Joe-Deal. When the doctors threw up their hands and sent him home to die like he insisted, he called her to his bedside one night and read her his Will. There wasn't much left that he hadn't lost on "sure things" in the stock market or at the dog track. An insurance policy would keep the family on its feet for a while, and a small mutual fund that he had given Mae to play with had nearly tripled - securing the twin's enrollment at the local community college.

"You find yourself a good man," Joe-Deal had said, returning the parchment to the envelope. "I've taken enough of your time."

Spoken as the humorless, rigid accountant he would always be, it was the most loving thing he had said to her in years. Mae searched for the right words, then simply kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "I will."

Moone was awakened by the cuckoo in the hallway. It was three o'clock. Ma-Mae, Red and Crymia still napped. Red snored on the bed beside his daddy; Ma-Mae slept upright, her chin on her chest and the puzzle book face-down on her lap. Crymia, in her slumber, had fallen over on Moone with her head resting on his shoulder. Her breath smelled fresh and felt cool against his face. Moone noted her pretty mouth uncharacteristically turned up at the corners. On impulse, he leaned over and kissed his sister on the lips. She lightly stirred and smiled in her happy dreams. He had never kissed a girl before and was surprised by the sensation it caused in his belly and other places he had had no use for up till now.

He leaned farther, pressed his lips to hers and rotated his head the way he had seen people kiss in the movies.

Crymia's eyes flashed open and her smile turned upside-down in a startled scowl. She let go with a quick left jab that caught Moone under the jaw and began screaming obscenities as he took inventory of his teeth. Ma-Mae blinked herself awake, but Red slept on - snoring loudly, his tongue lodged in the corner of his mouth and a stream of drool running down his pink cheek and pooling on Joe Deal's pajamas.

At first, no one noticed that the preacher's chair was empty, that he must have left while they were sleeping - gone fishing, no doubt. Crymia stopped gagging and wiping Moone's affection from her mouth the moment she realized her sister was not in the room. She instinctively closed her eyes and bowed her head as if praying - tracking her sister through the mysterious corridors connecting their minds. Then, a veil of sadness enveloped her face, as if she had suddenly suffered a great loss.

Moone was looking past his brooding sister. Ma-Mae had removed a compact from her purse. She held it up and studied her face - delicately touching and brushing - as if to be certain all was in order. Then she carefully removed the oxygen hose from Daddy Joe Deal's nostrils and placed the mirror in front of his open mouth. After a few moments, she turned her head and looked Moone in the eye. She did not smile.

Moone walked dutifully to the bedside. His mother rose and placed her hands upon his shoulders - perhaps as much to steady herself as comfort the boy. He meticulously rolled the long sleeves of Red's old suit jacket above his wrists and lifted his elbows as if preparing to do a magic trick.

Daddy Joe looked asleep to Moone, the way he had always looked when the boy stole into his room at night and kissed him on the forehead. It was the only affection shared between the two.

Still, despite it all, he loved the old man. But never as much as the moment Daddy Joe had placed a silver dollar in each of his outstretched hands, and asked him to do the honor, and folded his son's fingers over the shiny coins - enclosing them with his own trembling hands. Money, to Joe-Deal, had always seemed more important than life itself. And though every desperate attempt he had made to hold onto it caused it to slip through his fingers like sand or water, it was money, or the lack thereof, that inspired his every move - kindness or cruelty.

Crymia shook Red awake. He wiped his chin and then jumped from the bed when he saw the hose removed from his Daddy's face.

"Go on now, Mooney Honey," Ma-Mae whispered and released his shoulders - easing him forward.

The small boy edged up to the bed and raised his arms high over the dead man's head. The afternoon sun flooded the bedroom. Crymia's eyes were following a beam of illuminated dust through the window and out across the fields to where the pines shadowed the deliberate current of Snotty Creek. A single tear had fallen for Daddy Joe-Deal. Another followed as she stared off to where Sippy lay in the arms of Ansel Thorndike.

Drifting downstream until the creek grew narrow and shrouded in willow, the couple moved together upon a blanket spread over the flat bottom of the boat - fading away like the growing distance between the sisters. The psychic sounds of Sippy's quickening breath and pleading moans retreated from Crymia's mind as the passionate twin gave herself to another and consequently severed those delicate threads of communication forever.

Mooney held a silver disc in the fingers of each hand. They sparkled as he trembled, as each coin came to rest squarely over the old man's eyelids. Ma-Mae daintily dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.

"That was done with the utmost proficiency. And may I say, that Daddy Joe would be gratified - having entrusted this sacrosanct chore to a young man of your aptitude."

The children stared in awe at their momma and her sudden, fervid vocabulary. She smiled, pleased with herself, and licked her lips as if the profusion of vowels and consonants tasted as sweet and rich as cream upon her tongue. It suddenly occurred to the young widow that life would continue after all. That she had, indeed, "loved the old fool with all of her heart;" and her sincerity in that fact would balance the release she felt as his soul lifted from the ravaged flesh and bone and went forth to cleanse in the "perfumed pool of that sanctification called Heaven."

Ma-Mae had become pedantic in thought.

"Let us pray children."

The three remaining Rivers children held hands, bowed their heads, and recited the Lord's Prayer. Each one knew that Daddy Joe would have preferred the Twenty-Third Psalm, or even the one about the "rivers of Babylon," the one they made the song about. But the Lord's Prayer was all they knew.

Afterwards, as the sun fell behind storm clouds building on the horizon, and a cool breeze transformed the yellowed sheer curtains into soiled ghosts, the Rivers' stood without speaking. Crymia listened to the deafening silence and felt liberated, alone with her thoughts for the first time. She bit her cheek to keep from smiling and remembered the sensation Sippy's departing muse had stirred in her as the preacher offered the young girl his blessings, and consummated his love by groaning the Lord's name in vain.

Red Rock removed his tongue from his nose and released a comforted breath. It whistled past his deviated septum like the air brakes on a semi, like the sound Joe-Deal would make when someone was frivolous with his money or neglected to replenish his oxygen. The breath caused Ma-Mae and Crymia to glance quickly toward the rigid old man who now resembled Little Orphan Annie with the coins for eyes. They sighed with relief upon realizing Joe-Deal was still dead.

It was the small boy who had taken a mighty step toward manhood only moments before who moved to touch Daddy Joe. Moone Rivers laid his small hand upon his father's forearm and leaned on tip-toe to kiss his forehead. He kissed him gently - like a snowflake resting upon skin - as if afraid to wake the terminally absent man who ate his dinners alone, who ignored his "dull-witted" young wife but for duty, and who dismissed affection from his son as weakness.

"Goodbye, Daddy Joe," Mooney whispered.

"Spend it wisely."

Copyright © 2002 James Waine Carpenter
All rights reserved

About the Author

James Waine Carpenter lives in coastal Connecticut with his wife and son. He has written two collections of stories: Delmarva and Box of Sin, two collections of humor: The Gecko Traveling Circus and Guano Bay, A Bawdy History, and a novella: Black Narrows.

An award winning songwriter, he is currently writing, recording and performing with two New England bands, as well as solo efforts throughout the East.