So Long, Chester Wheeler(36)

“What does he want from me?” she asked after a time. Her deep voice was set hard.

“Some kind of closure, I guess. I think he just wants to talk.”

“Why didn’t he come up my walk himself?”

“He can’t. He’s in a wheelchair. It takes some doing just for me to get him out of the RV and into the chair, and even then he can’t wheel up the walk by himself.”

I watched her eyes cloud over further. They were a deep shade of blue, those eyes. I found something in them that I liked, and that felt welcome. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but the feeling was pronounced and unmistakable.

“It’s that bad, is it?”

“It’s very bad,” I said.

“Well.” Then she didn’t speak for a weirdly long time. “At least that makes him easy to walk away from. I don’t really want him in my house. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel about it. I suppose you could wheel him into the yard. But he has to behave himself. Any yelling, any abusive language, anything like Chet being Chet and you can just load him back into that giant rig and drive on.”

“That sounds fair enough,” I said.

“Okay. I know I’ll regret saying this. But go get him.”

I looked over my shoulder. I could see one of Chester’s eyes peering out under the passenger window curtain.

Before I could get away she said, “You couldn’t at least have let me know this was going to happen?”

“He figured if we asked, you’d say no.”

“He figured right.”

I trotted back down the walk to the curb and opened the side door of the rig.

“What happened?” he asked immediately.

“We’re going in,” I said.



“We only get to go into the yard,” I told him as I wheeled him up the concrete walkway. “Not the house.”

“That seems a little miserly.”

Sue had disappeared from the front of the house while I was getting Chester down and into his chair, but the side gate to the yard had been propped open.

“Chester,” I said. “You’re supposed to be giving me a medal for getting her to agree to this at all.”

“Oh. Okay. I’m sorry.”

Another stunning statement from Chester Wheeler. First “thank you” and then “I’m sorry,” both spoken as if they might even possibly be true. I would have marveled over the turn of events longer and more deeply if I’d had the time. But in that moment life just kept happening.

“And you have to behave yourself, or we’ll be asked to leave.”

“I always behave myself.”

“Is that a joke?”

“What? No. What do you mean?”

“If you think you always behave, then we’re in trouble, Chester. You never behave. Do you honestly not see that?”

“Okay, define ‘behave.’”

“No yelling. No cursing. You have to be polite to her.”

“Or else what? She’ll kick us out?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

I stopped walking, and the wheelchair of course came to a stop. The path was slightly uphill, so I had to brace myself to keep it from rolling back on me.

“Don’t ‘try,’ Chester. Just do it. Succeed.”

“How am I supposed to know how to do that?”

“I guess we’re about to find out,” I said. “Say what you want to say right up front. Because this could be a very short meeting.”



Sue came out into the backyard quite a long time later. Long enough that I’d begun to worry she’d jumped into the car and gone on a spontaneous vacation.

She was carrying an amber glass pitcher in one hand and three nested drinking glasses in the other. She set it all down on the glass-topped table between my lawn chair and Chester’s wheelchair. We were sitting under an awning that provided some blessed shade.

“Thought you might like a cold drink of water,” she said.

Then she sat down and looked at Chester. And Chester looked back at her. And the moment stretched out. Nobody said a word.

I thanked her, and reached over and poured two glasses of ice water. One for Chester and one for me.

It was something of an early litmus test. I already knew there was no love lost between Chester and water. How politely or rudely he received the refreshment might be a good indicator of how the next chapter of my life was about to go.

He took it from me and took a long swallow, then set it on the arm of his wheelchair. It was too narrow a resting place, and the patio was concrete underneath us, so I grabbed it up and put it back on the table.

He was still staring at Sue and Sue was still staring at him. And they were still not saying a word.

“How does it manage to be so hot here so late in the season?” I asked.

It broke the trance, and she looked away from Chester and turned those deep blues on me, which felt like a relief.

“You’ve never been to Arizona before,” she said, “have you?”

“No. Never been west of Chicago.”

“It shows.”

A silence fell, but not for long. Chester opened his mouth and broke it.

“I know I look like crap,” he said. “You might as well just go ahead and say it. I know you’re thinking it. I know you were about to say it. Go ahead.”