Stuckey

Stuckey is driving to RestUp to buy a footstool for Zorba. RestUp is a half-mile from Stuckey's house. He'd thought about walking. Doc Capshaw says a mile a day keeps the doctor away, but walking home with a footstool in January with a windchill of cold doesn't seem like a good idea. Stuckey parks his Soul at RestUp and walks in.

"May I help you? I'm Molly."

When did big hair come back? thinks Stuckey. "I need a footstool for my dog. He can't jump into bed anymore."

"What kind?"

"A rat terrier."

"No, what kind of footstool."

"I don't know. Square? Cushy?"

"Follow me."

Stuckey follows Molly down a row of sofas, past a stand of floor lamps, and through a room of beds. He thinks he might get in his mile after all.

"Will this do?" asks Molly, pointing to a footstool.

"Paisley?"

"This is our only square, cushy footstool."

"I'll take it."

"Excellent choice."

Stuckey picks up the footstool and heads for the register, giving his back a rest in a loveseat along the way. When he arrives at the register, Molly asks, "Would you like to enter our Back-to-Life contest? The proceeds go to the dog park. Five dollars a chance."

"I don't believe in dog parks. But what would I win?"

"A Back-to-Life Super Bed."

"What's so super about it?"

Molly tells Stuckey that the Back-to-Life's memory foam will remind his back how good it once felt. The bed lifts at the head and feet, heats on either side, and vibrates in two intensities—"one for physical relaxation and one for mental relief. A moment of Zen at your fingertip. And a surprise for you to discover."

"What kind of surprise?"

"It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you."

"Guess not. Add five dollars to my bill," says Stuckey, opening his wallet, a retirement gift from Lucy, his ex. Zzzppptt (Velcro).

Stuckey places the contest ticket in his wallet, the footstool in his Soul, and drives home. Entering his driveway, he admires his holly tree. Any day now, he thinks.

Stuckey always looks forward to that single day in winter when robins by the hundreds swoop in and strip the tree of berries. Stuckey fertilizes his holly twice a year—for the holly's sake, the robins' sake, and his. Seeing the robins swoop and strip makes him feel a part of things. Of nature, anyway. It's been awhile since he's felt a part of anything else.

At the door, Zorba greets Stuckey with joyful yelps and numerous body-twirls. After walking down the hallway to his bedroom, Stuckey drops the footstool beside the bed and gives the stool a pat—sufficient encouragement for Zorba to jump from the stool and onto the quilt, a Lucky Stars pattern. "Good boy," says Stuckey, following Zorba into bed, "time for our nap."

Within minutes, Zorba is asleep, front paws flicking the stars as if chasing rats in his dreams.

Stuckey is envious of Zorba's ability to dream. He hasn't dreamt since Lucy left five years ago. Ironic, since Lucy's reason for leaving was he was living his life with no dreams. "It's like you're sleepwalking through life," Lucy had said.

"Aren't sleepwalkers dreaming when they walk?" Stuckey asked.

"You're missing the point," said Lucy.

At the time, Stuckey had been produce manager at Target for 36 years. Not once had he tried to advance. He'd been comfortable in produce. Lucy had encouraged him to take up tennis, golf, anything. "I'm on my feet all day," he said. She'd bought season tickets to the Muncie symphony. "If I hear one more timpani, I'll explode," he complained after suffering through Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. On Lucy's urging he gave pickleball a shot. "Too noisy." Finally, he consented to adopting a dog. When the adoption counselor said Petey could be aggressive to other male dogs but loved to play with females, Lucy said, "Like Zorba the Greek. We'll take him."

Yet pickleball had paid off for Lucy, Stuckey supposed. While retrieving one of his errant shots, she'd met Carl Ball on court three. Carl, a widowed heir to the Ball (jar) family fortune, would soon become her doubles partner—in pickleball and more.

Lucy married Carl. The following year, Stuckey retired. Since then, he's spent his retirement walking Zorba, streaming nature documentaries, and playing Wordle.

A short time later, Stuckey wakes up from his nap (dreamless). After getting COLIC in three, he repairs to his chair by the window, the one that looks onto the holly.

No robins.

 

A week has passed. Earlier this morning, Zorba used the footstool to jump down. Then, over Cornflakes and white toast, Stuckey got SQUID in two. Plus, he's looking forward to receiving the latest Birds of a Feather Monthly in the mail and watching a gall wasp documentary on Nature Channel. The day is shaping up nicely.

It had gotten down to 20 degrees that night. Taking his seat by the window, Stuckey thinks the ground must surely be frozen by now. Too hard for robins to dig up worms. Could today be berry day?

No. What Stuckey first thinks to be a robin is a male towhee. Then the mail truck passes by without stopping. But with two hours to go before naptime, the phone rings. RestUp Furnitu, reads the landline.

"Stuckey, here."

"Mr. Stuckey, this is Molly from RestUp. Have I caught you at a good time?"

"Good as any."

"Well then, you'll be happy to know that you are the winner of a Back-to-Life Super Bed! What time would be convenient for delivery?"

"Anytime, I guess. Will you haul away my old one?"

They will. The next morning, they do. But what they had not done is inform Stuckey that, in addition to Molly and the delivery men, a TV crew will come, too.

"Just a quick video of you and your pooch enjoying your Super Bed. We can include our footstool in the shoot! I'll introduce you," says Molly, grabbing a microphone with one hand and patting her hair with the other. "What's your dog's name?"

"Zorba. But forget the video," says Stuckey, who doesn't need anyone to see him napping with his dog. Carl Ball, for one. "Off you go."

"But Mr. Stuckey, I haven't shown you how the bed works."

"We'll figure it out. Won't we, boy?"

Zorba twirls.

With everyone gone, Stuckey fits his old sheets onto his new bed, spreads his Lucky Stars, and repositions the footstool. "A little early in the day, but we've earned it," says Stuckey, giving the stool a pat and following Zorba's lead.

Remote in hand, Stuckey punches this, that, and the other button. In short order, the head lifts, lowers, and Zorba's side heats up. The button with a picture of two squiggles induces a gentle shimmy. The button with three squiggles—a shimmy that hums. Must be my moment of Zen, thinks Stuckey, imagining that very thought inside a bubble.

Before meeting Lucy in college at Ball State, Stuckey met a girl in an off-campus head shop while looking for a scented candle (he rarely did laundry). Moondance, the girl, introduced him to meditation a week before dumping him with the words, "Get a life, why don't you."

Dumped, alone in his dorm room, Stuckey would imagine a thought bubble rising from a calm sea into a cloudless sky. Thinking about the thought inside the bubble would cause the bubble to burst, sending the thought into the calm sea. Then a new thought inside a new bubble would inevitably arise.

As Stuckey understood it, the idea was to keep popping bubbles until empty bubbles arose from the sea. It seemed to him he'd be thinking about thoughtless bubbles, but who was he to say? Regardless, each time he meditated, he dozed off by the fifth or sixth bubble.

This moment of Zen, with Zorba asleep on the Lucky Stars beside him, is no different.

Upon awakening, Stuckey stands, puts his hands on the small of his back, and thinks his back remembers how good it once felt. He fills the day with SPURT, a one-mile dog walk, and the gall wasp documentary. The next three days pass similarly: CRAMP, FILCH, and SPITE; one-mile dog walk, one-mile dog walk, one-mile dog walk; and bulldog bats, red-bellied piranha, and Bigfoot documentaries.

"Time for bed, little buddy," he says on this, the third night, Bigfoot credits rolling.

By now Stuckey has grown accustomed to his moment of Zen. And a brief moment it unfailingly is, with him falling asleep before a thoughtless bubble rises from the sea. This time, his first thought is, Funny, you never hear about Bigfoot women... POP. Followed by, Carl Ball has big feet... POP. Then, I wonder if he has a big... POP. And finally, My life has come to nothing...

But before that bubble pops, Stuckey sees a young him opening a Christmas package containing two pairs of boxing gloves. A small pair for him. A large pair for his young dad, kneeling in front of young him. "Let's see what you got there, partner," says Dad, chin out, as little Stuckey takes a swing. "Not bad. Now let's see if you can take one."

He does. A left jab into his little belly. Not much more than a tickle, really. After a right hook to Dad's ear, young Stuckey thinks, Dad is the greatest.

Old men's prostates what they are, Stuckey is lucky to get a few hours' sleep before needing to pee. But awakening now, the first thing he does is to recognize the dream for what it was: a dream! But why now? thinks Stuckey. Did my moment of Zen have something to do with it? Possibly. But I've had other moments of Zen in my Super Bed before tonight. No dreams. Did the spicy General Tso's I had for dinner cause it? Possibly. Bigfoot?

Asleep beside Stuckey, Zorba starts to whimper and paw-flick. As Zorba flicks, Stuckey sees that the quilt is not all Zorba has flicked. The remote is on its back (flicked), an inch away from Zorba's front paw. And there, on the remote's back, is another button—a button with a picture of a brain. Had Zorba flicked the brain button, too?

Stuckey pees.

Returning to bed, after setting the mattress a-hum, Stuckey presses the brain and starts filling bubbles. How can a mattress cause dreams... POP. Then, If only my back had a button... POP. Followed by, I would have pressed it, and Lucy would still be here... POP. And then, How did I go so wrong?

But just as that bubble pops, Stuckey finds himself in bed with Moondance. Up to this moment, 19-year-old him has never been in bed with anyone, aside from the night his cousin Marlin slept over. But that was nothing like this: Moondance straddling him, taking his penis with her hand and guiding it into her as her breasts sway within inches of his face. "It's a marvelous night for a moondance," sings Moondance.

 

A lifetime ago, Stuckey's Ball State psych professor assigned the class a paper. With his eyes glued to the podium, the professor read instructions. Finding the instructions vague, Stuckey asked the professor to repeat them. This time, he looked Stuckey in the eyes and said, "A ten-page paper illustrating the five steps of the scientific method. An experiment, if you will. Clear enough, Mr. Stuckey?"

It was. So much so, it gave him an idea. Wanted: Psych Subjects. Meet in Elliott Hall lobby, 2:00 Saturday. 4 dollars—1 hour, his flyers read.

That Saturday, standing before five student listeners, Stuckey read a 200-word summation of hummingbird migration, replete with wing flap, heartbeat, and flight speed information—all without lifting his eyes from the page. He administered a subsequent quiz.

Standing before five new subjects, he recited the hummingbird info from memory, allowing him to maintain eye contact with his listeners, theoretically. But midway through the talk, while iterating a hummingbird's heart beats up to 1,260 times a minute, his heart sped up, too.

Her eyes are blue, he thought. No, green. No, blue.

"Their wings can flap up to eight times a second."

They twinkle.

"And can reach speeds of 30 miles an hour."

Like twinkling stars.

The subject, Lucy Furness from Ypsilanti, Michigan, an English major, scored highest on the quiz. It didn't take Stuckey much fudging to prove the entire experimental group scored higher than the control group. His paper earned a C-.

It was easy to find Lucy's phone number. Not so easy to persuade her to go out. She was seeing 62 at the time, 62 being her endearment for defensive lineman Kirk Peterson. But with a persistence Stuckey would fail to repeat in his lifetime, he persisted.

One weekend, with the team playing away, Stuckey took Lucy to see the movie Slaughterhouse Five. Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack were inside the dome on the planet Tralfamadore when Montana bared her breast to nurse their baby. "I didn't expect anything like this," Stuckey said to Lucy. "I'm sorry. I should have read the book first."

"The book is even better," said Lucy.

Returning to her dorm, Lucy told Stuckey his innocence was a relief from 62's "cocksureness."

"You're blushing," Lucy said. And then she kissed him.

Looking back now, it seems to Stuckey that everything happened so quickly: dating, graduating, marrying, discovering a liberal arts degree qualified him to work at Target. Having their son, Frankie.

Frankie grew up, met a Kuwaiti oil minister's daughter at Purdue, moved to Kuwait, and changed his name to Franklin Muhammad. Maybe Stuckey's life is the dream. A dreamless dream, Lucy might say.

 

"RestUp, Molly speaking."

"Stuckey, here."

"Stuckey?"

"The guy who won the bed."

"Oh, the Super Bed. Can you hold a moment, Mr. Stuckey?"

Before Stuckey answers, he's put on hold to an orchestral version of "Stairway to Heaven." While waiting, he settles into his holly chair and lifts Zorba onto his lap. No robins.

"How can I help you, Mr. Stuckey?"

"About that surprise you mentioned. Could the button on the back of the remote have something to do with it? The button with the brain. If I punch it after I punch the three squiggles—"

"Let me guess, dreams."

"Yeah. What's the deal?"

Molly says the Back-to-Life people won't say how the button works, but she thinks it tells the bed to make the kind of brain waves that cause dreams. "Cool, huh? I hope your dreams have been sweet. Goodbye, Mr. Stuckey."

They have been sweet. Not only that, in spite of his life now, they remind him his life has had its sweet spots: boxing with Dad, Moondance.

Tonight, bed humming, Stuckey presses the brain and dreams of hummingbirds, blue-green hummingbirds flying in a star-filled night sky. He can't take his eyes off the stars. And if stars had eyes, they can't take their eyes off his. The way the hummingbirds fly by makes the star eyes twinkle. Blue, green, blue, green... in the sky, like diamonds.

 

The next morning, before Stuckey has a chance to check for robins, the doorbell rings. It's Lucy. She visits every few weeks. Usually, they share news about Franklin and Sharifa, Franklin's wife. Entering the house, Lucy asks, "How's my little guy?"—meaning Zorba, who greets her with but one yelp and a single body-twirl, Stuckey can't help but notice.

"The usual?" asks Stuckey.

The usual for Lucy consists of coffee—light on cream, heavy on sugar—while seated in the same kitchen chair in which she'd sat for decades. "What's new?" she asks.

"Zorba got a footstool, and I won a bed. It lifts, heats, and vibrates. And there's a button on the remote that makes you dream. I've had dreams."

"What kind of dreams?"

"Good ones," says Stuckey before describing dream one and dream three. No point in going into Moondance.

"You do seem, I don't know, chipper."

He feels chipper. The dreams must be the reason, reminders as they are of past sweet spots. "My dreams are advancing in time," he says. "A pattern, like."

Finishing her coffee, Lucy says she doesn't see how two dreams establish a pattern. Bending toward Zorba, she gives his head a pat and apologizes for having to leave so soon. "I have to pick up Carl at the podiatrist's office. He broke a toe in a pickleball tournament. We still won the 60s and over."

Suddenly, less chipper.

"Oh, Franklin and Sherifa are coming for a visit in April, after Ramadan."

"Super."

Hours later (naptime), Stuckey presses first the squiggles, then the brain. Within minutes, he's inside a dome on Tralfamadore as, beside him, a breast is pulled from a blouse. Lucy's blouse. The baby is Frankie. Outside the dome, Tralfamadorians cheer.

 

A week has passed. Still, no robins. But one day Stuckey walked two miles, carrying Zorba partway. Another day, on his way to buy some Honey Nut Cheerios and banana bread, he stopped his car to watch three squirrels running up and down an oak tree. How had he never noticed this before? Yesterday, he took Zorba to the dog park. Zorba played with Myrtle, a shih tzu, and Sally, a dachshund. A threesome, thought Stuckey, grinning.

Meanwhile, his dreams moved on. One recounted his first employee of the month award at Target. He received a $100 gift card. Another recalled a weekend trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Lucy. But in the dream, Peter Gabriel came on stage and dedicated "In Your Eyes" to them. It remains there in your eyes, sang dream-Peter, reminding awake-Stuckey how lucky he was to have loved.

Then last night, he dreamt of carrying a footstool into his house. Zorba, twirling on hind feet, holding a cane, and wearing a top hat, met Stuckey at the door and sang, Forget your troubles, come on get happy, get ready for the judgment...

"Naptime!" says Stuckey on this cold, January day.

With Zorba in place, Stuckey hits the buttons, moving from bubble to bubble to dream. In this dream, Lucy comes to the house. She's sipping coffee in her usual spot. Before she leaves, she says, "Oh, Franklin and Sherifa are coming in April, after Ramadan." It occurs to him in the dream: Lucy could have told him about Franklin and Sharifa's visit over the phone, but she'd done it in person—as someone who cares about someone might do.

 

Lucy is driving to Sports Where to buy some pickleballs. But since she's in the neighborhood, she decides to stop and see Stuckey first. She worries about him sometimes. Though the last time she saw him, he seemed different. He's home, thinks Lucy, spotting his Soul in the driveway.

Before Lucy left for college, her mother advised her to, above all else, fall in love with a kind man—that most men weren't. 62 might have been good-looking. An econ major, he was bound to make money. But as for kindness, he once broke into his defensive left-tackle's dorm room and dropped a TV from a tenth-floor window. "I warned him at halftime," 62 had said, "if he let one more runner through the line, he'd regret it."

On the other hand, that day in Elliott Hall, she'd never seen kinder eyes. Then, on their first date, Stuckey had apologized to her when Montana Wildhack nursed her baby. How many men would do that? In some ways, back then, Stuckey reminded her of Billy Pilgrim. In recent years, more of an Olive Kitteridge. Would you look at the berries on this holly, she thinks as she walks to the door. Why isn't he answering the doorbell?

Sometime in the 1990's, Stuckey placed a gazing ball atop a concrete pedestal in the front mulch. "We can't kill a gazing ball," he'd told Lucy after an azalea died. "And we can hide a door key under the pedestal." The gazing ball died: cracked into pieces during an early 2000's cold snap. Stuckey tossed the ball, but he never got around to either buying a new one or removing the pedestal.

It's easy for Lucy to tip. Sure enough, there's the key. Decades old dirt falls from its teeth as she whacks the key against the pedestal. Slipping the key into the lock, she calls out, "Stuckey, it's me."

No answer. No yelp. They must be on a walk, thinks Lucy. But on his days off, this was always his naptime. "Stuckey, Zorba."

They're not in the kitchen. No coffee perking. And there's Zorba's leash, hanging outside the laundry room. A Birds of a Feather Monthly lies open on the couch. Then, peeking down the hallway, Lucy hears a muffled thump-thump-thump...

"Stuckey!"

Lucy follows the thumps, and there lies Stuckey, on his back beside Zorba, whose tail thump-thumps the Lucky Stars. "Stuckey? Stuckey!"

Calling Franklin that night (6:00 AM Kuwait City time), Lucy tells him there is no need to rush home. They'll have a memorial service when he comes in the spring. Stuckey had few friends. But Lucy would still like to tell any Target co-workers who might come to the memorial that Stuckey died with a smile, as if his final thoughts were pleasant. Or his final dream, sweet.

"And the darnedest thing," she tells Franklin. "When I left the house this morning with Zorba, hundreds of robins were swooping in and eating berries off the holly, the one your father planted. He fertilized it twice a year, you know. The way the robins swooped and chirped, it was like they were paying their respects to a great man."