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The Rapidly Disappearing Life of R. Shumway

By Nathan Eckstrom

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I cut the sandwich in one, two spots that left three sections out on the wooden cutting board in the kitchen of my small apartment. That made it a ham-n-swiss club, I thought, along with some potato chips and a big Vlasic pickle on the side, just like at Tommy’s Diner in town. I couldn’t remember if I liked Tommy to put mayo on. It seemed likely, but I wasn’t so sure so I held off. I made it for breakfast, can you believe that!? I just wanted to do it. I did all kinds of queer things at this point in my life, but it IS good to eat a big breakfast, to get the metabolism going.

I had just read in the paper that day it was Arnold Palmer’s birthday. It’s too bad he doesn’t live in Latrobe anymore, or maybe we could have a party for him, I thought. He and my friend Jimbo and I could raise a glass or two. I saw him a few times around the used car lot, you know. He used to sit on the board of directors. I thought, maybe he would come back to town if he knew it was his birthday. I didn’t get my own joke, however.

As soon as I set the plate on the table, the phone rang. It rang three times and I bit into my sandwich. It rang maybe seven times and I finally got up to answer it.

“Mr. Shumway?” A young man’s voice said. “Hi Mr. Shumway, we’re coming over to work on the sewer tank in the back of your unit, and I just wanted to give you a head’s up, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s okay if you want to come over.”

“Good. Well then, we’ll be over around eleven. We’ll be in the back, and we’ll try to keep it quiet.”

“Say,” I said. “Who is this?”

“My name?” the voice asked. “Oh, my name’s Ray. I won’t actually be there though, it’ll be the workers. Ah, the foreman’s name is John, but you won’t even know he’s there, we’ll be real quiet.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s okay then.”

I sat back down to my meal, and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember something. I had been thinking of it before the telephone rang. Something while I was cutting the sandwich. Something important. It was something I had been trying to come up with for a long time, I thought. Maybe it was just a word from the puzzles. I couldn’t remember it right then. I crunched into the pickle and it snapped like a good pickle should. I wondered though about a small darkened part of my brain. My idea was hiding in it, and I couldn’t quite flush it out.

Anyway, I’m being rude. I should introduce myself. My name’s R. Shumway. The R. stands for Richard, but only my friends called me by my first name and they always said Dick. So it’s not important about the Richard. I don’t have any more friends really, so R. Shumway will do. R. Shumway of Palmer Used Cars. I don’t work there anymore either, but it’s better than R. Shumway of Unit G2, right?

As I was saying, I always ate a big breakfast in the morning to get my metabolism going. Then I took a long, hot shower after to get my mind going. This morning, Arnold Palmer’s 80th birthday - I remember now, but I didn’t remember then - I went and turned on the shower and let it run until steam filled the small room. I had my head under the water. I could feel the thoughts percolating like black coffee, but then I got dizzy. It felt like spider webs were gently tickling my soft brain. I got very dizzy, and I couldn’t see anything but a pinpoint, so when I reached out for the water knobs I hurt my finger against the spout.

It seemed like just a second and then suddenly the water was cold, and I was sitting down on the floor of the tub. I thought, I must’ve fallen again. Maybe I shouldn’t have had the ham-n-swiss. Messed up my digestion. The phone was ringing again, but I couldn’t be bothered to get it. My finger hurt, and I just wanted to shut the cold water off. I got up stiffly and turned the knobs off, and climbed, dripping and freezing, out of the shower. The machine would answer the call. There, it was answering right then with its funny beep and the voice like the person was surprised to find themselves suddenly in my apartment. I would have been surprised to find them in my apartment, too. It probably would have scared me to death.

I checked my watch lying on top of my clothes. 11:25am.

“Hi, Mr. Shumway. Just calling to warn you that the hot water might be off for a few hours while we work on the sewage tank, and so that’s all. Apologize for the inconvenience. Take care.”

I thought he said he’d be here at eleven, I thought. I checked the time, 11:25. I dried off and pulled on my underwear and my socks over my spidery-veined legs, then my trousers, then my undershirt on over my bare chest, almost all with one hand because my finger hurt so much. It didn’t hurt THAT bad, I don’t want to complain, but pretty bad. I combed my hair over, and I didn’t think I looked too shabby in the mirror. An older gentleman, with thin grey hair, but a distinguished chin and a wide smile. A smile that could still sell a ‘52 Pinto. If anyone had been looking over my shoulder they would have seen a dumb, crooked grin and they wouldn’t even notice my dead, confused eyes. I’d be all right, I told myself. I just needed to get out of the bathroom and sit down someplace. I need to let the ham-n-swiss sit, I thought, apparently it wasn’t so good for the metabolism after all.

The comfy chair in my living room had a wooden lever that operated the foot rest, and a tray table on the side for the remote, or for the puzzles and things. I didn’t watch too many programs, only the Wheel of Fortune or if there was something special listed in the papers, you know. I opened up a big book I’d been reading by Stephen Ambrose, a history of D-Day. I couldn’t get enough of Stephen Ambrose. Well, maybe I could eventually. He had written a lot of books about D-Day it seemed like.

The print was real small too, and I had a scare when I went to reach for my glasses and I couldn’t remember which side I’d put them on. Marge had never had to remind me which side I put my glasses on. I remembered that. She’d always say, “That’s the only thing I don’t have to remind you about.” That dark empty hole in my brain leered at me. I snapped my hand down on the right hand side, and there they were! I smiled and admired the glasses. Right there, hah! I laughed. There you were you little buggers. I’ll read ten books about D-Day. To be honest though, I had only reached down there because that was the hand that wasn’t hurting from the shower.

When it got to be around one or two, I usually got pretty tired of reading or doing puzzles and I’d nod off for a little bit in bed. Just catch a couple of winks. Today though, with my nap in the shower, I kept on with this book until around three, and I was at the part where the hand-to-hand fighting became the only way to keep moving forward, and the artillery had to hold off because nobody knew where anybody else was anymore in the smoke and, like I said, hand-to-hand fighting. I got up at the end of the chapter, and went for a little walk around the apartment, throwing my hands around, imagining what it must have been like for the boys that got sent there.

A piercing ring split the air. I shrank away from it, and backed into the corner.

“Hey, Mr. Shumway, just letting you know that they’re all done now, and you should have your hot water back on. This is Ray. Again, sorry if we caused you any inconvenience. Have a good day now.”

Pretty soon the kids came home from school in the apartment upstairs, and they made a big noise running up the stairs like they had four legs each and big boots on, too. I sat down heavily at the kitchen table and started to take a look at the mail. Mostly crap. My check. I’ll take it easy, but I’ll take it just the same. That’s what I always said when the checks came in. I’ll take it easy, but I’ll take it just the same.

There was a form that asked me questions about my health, and how I was getting along, and I told them everything was just fine. As long as I did that they wouldn’t send one of these guys around that picked and snooped through my personals. I wouldn’t mind talking to a normal person, but this guy … if I’d been younger I would’ve sent him on his way. I filled it out, and put it in the envelope, and licked it and sticked it, and set it on the kitchen table standing up against the salt and pepper shakers.

My hand hurt pretty bad after all that. I sat down in the living room in my comfy chair, but I didn’t really feel like reading anymore Stephen Ambrose right then. I went and got out my little book of numbers. Maybe, I thought, I’ll call Jimbo. I looked up his number, and picked up the phone, but then I stopped.

Next to his name I had written the word PASSED.

It wouldn’t be a nice thing for his family to have one of his friends call, and invite him out to a movie that night, if he had passed. My hands shook, and there was that fearsome black hole again. It wanted me to let go. It made me dizzy.

I woke up on the floor again. On the carpet this time, which was better. I crawled over to the chair and got up into it, shivering. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but my whole body was shivering. I think now of that moment in the service I just wanted to call my father and mother. They were long dead, I knew that, and I was long grown up, but I was my mother’s son and the spitting image of my father. If I could have called them they would have had something to say. I'd thought that time that my plane would be shot down over the Atlantic. Shivering in the chair, I begged someone to tell me what was happening. Everything was narrowed down to a pinpoint, until I felt the spider webs washing against my soft brain.

I unhinged my muscles. My skull lay back into the darkness like floating in the water, the back of my skull just below the surface. The water was deeper and colder than the Atlantic Ocean, miles deep down into unbelievable blackness and coldness. Huge, shadowy objects swam below me, bigger than anything on land. Ancient and powerful. Skrppp! Something tore a chunk of my brain. Skriipp!

I couldn’t remember the words that I needed to describe my parents. I couldn’t remember what it was when you went from one room to the other. Skripp! I decided to call it port because I couldn’t think of anything to call it. It. It? What? Did I … ? I’m sorry. Out of the blackness, Skrripp! I’m sorry. R. Shumway. The R. stands for it. R. Shumway. I sold it. It? Ham-n-swiss is it. The big guy ate it. It? The big guy? Skrripp! R. ate it. Did I … ? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. R. Shumway. R. Shumway sold ‘em all. R. Shumway. Ha ha ha. Take it easy. It? R.? Skkripp! Ha ha ha. He he. Skrripp! R. Shumway. Take it easy, Jimbo. R. Shumway. Skrriipp! R. ...

I’m afraid that I’m not doing very well here. I ended up regaining consciousness, but I’m not actually going to go on with this. I can tell it’s too dark for you. I have better stories about me.

Here’s one. It’s from when I was just out of the service and my friend Jim Czarnetski was running for Rep here in Pennsylvania. It’s a good one. He and I were pretty wild, and politics were different back then. I still had my pilot’s license, and we’d raised a few glasses the night before coming up with a plan to win the election. All right, you want to hear this? So, there are three bridges in Pittsburgh, the Hot Metal Bridge, the P&G and the Polish Bridge, all of which you are absolutely, positively not supposed to fly UNDER. Well, I ended up under all of them. You listening to this? No, you’re still thinking about me when I was dying. Forget about it. I’m sorry I even told you about that stuff.

Okay, I’d raised a few glasses that morning, as we campaign boys were wont to do. I “borrowed” a little Piper, just a little two seater, off of the airbase one sunny, crisp Autumn day in Pittsburgh right before the election, and Jimbo lifted himself a megaphone from his campaign headquarters, who by the way didn’t authorize this at all, and we came through in the Piper under the Hot Metal, under the P&G and under the bridge by the old Polish hill - where our voter base was at the time, and this was right at lunch in the early autumn so they were all out there on the banks with their lunch pails and all - and I take the little Piper under the bridge a few times, and Jimbo leans out with his megaphone shouting, Vote For Jim! Vote For Jim! And whole crowds are cheering us.

Anyway, the police come down and I let them chase us from the shore, until we’re just about out of gas, just a gallon from sputtering out and so I set us down in the middle of a parking lot and we surrender ourselves and spend a night in jail. I still remember the look on my old lady's face, a look to knock the liquor right outta you, but she bails me out. Jimbo’s campaign staff got him out. You want to know who won? Oh, they were taking publicity shots outside the jail! Our own staff drove the reporters there. He won, of course.

That’s more like it. I’m kind of glad that no one was around when I died, the only reason I’m telling you about it is because I’d heard your wife was in the same way and I thought I could ease your mind a little. You’re not eased at all are you? I’ll explain.

It was only when I finally gave in, and let myself be pulled in there, down with the fishes, that I found all the things I had been missing. Everything was there. I was just too scared. I mean, no one was around to tell me if it was okay or not.

I spent the last day of my life in that apartment, wondering what was happening to me. Imagine that. First, imagine not knowing whether or not you should put mayonnaise on your ham-n-swiss, being completely tied up trying to decide if that’s the way you usually have the old ham-n-swiss. Now imagine a man calls your apartment, and you’re not sure if it’s your brother or not. Now imagine having no one to call to say that you think you’re dying.

Down a black tunnel there’s some mystery, something that might answer your questions. Your family is down there, your friends. You are down there. You feel paralyzed and your muscles go limp the closer you get to the tunnel, which inside is a whirlpool and you’re fighting back, like a plane prop biting against the wind, fighting to take off.

But here’s the important part of the story. When I finally gave in and my mind and my muscles shut off for good, I found a light switch and there I was in the mirror. Richard Shumway, with the distinguished chin and the beguiling smile and, most important, the eyes that were bright and blue. It was always the eyes that could sell that ’52 Pinto.

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Nathan Eckstrom is a writer living in Brooklyn.

© 2003 Me Three