The Changing Lives of Joe Hart Read online

  The Changing Lives

  of Joe Hart

  The Changing Lives of Joe Hart

  by Shawn Inmon

  Copyright 2018 © Shawn Inmon

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, with the exception of brief quotations in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to events or people, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One | 1960

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four | 2004

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by Shawn Inmon

  Chapter One

  1960

  Chandra Hart screamed.

  Her cry was a thing of beauty. From the diaphragm, with a full column of air to support it. It climbed in register, but never moved to shrillness. The scream of a trained singer, it was heard in every corner of the Middle Falls maternity ward.

  Abigail Bunting bustled into to the room at a trot. Given her impressive size, it was as if a tank entered the room at full roll.

  She walked to Chandra’s bedside and slapped her face. It cut off the scream just as it seemed it would go on forever.

  The slap was forceful, but Nurse Bunting’s voice was calm when she said, “That’s enough.” Turning to the younger nurse, she said, “Where’s Doctor Graham?”

  “Not here yet, ma’am. We’ve called his house and practice.”

  Bunting looked back at Chandra Hart, who was not cowed by the slap, but had quieted. “This won’t be the first baby I’ve delivered without Doctor. Likely won’t be the last. Let me have a look.”

  THIRTEEN HUNDRED MILES away, a Cessna 172 was buffeted by high winds. It was flying blind because of a sudden blizzard. The pilot, twenty-four-year-old Andrew Dahl, was not rated to fly by instruments only. This had not been discussed, but was evident to his passengers by the huge, stomach-tumbling drops and painfully slow climbs in altitude they experienced.

  Inside the plane were Dahl, Rodrigo Hart, and two other members of Rodrigo’s touring band. They had played a gig in Bismarck the night before and were scheduled to play in Billings in twenty-four hours.

  They would not make the show in Billings, or any other, ever.

  At the precise moment that Chandra Hart’s scream pierced the quiet halls of Middle Falls hospital, the Cessna slammed into the ground and everyone but Rodrigo Hart was killed instantly.

  The plane bounced skyward after that first impact, but gravity and momentum twirled and smashed it to the ground, where it skidded to a stop. The second impact broke the rear half of the fuselage off. Dahl and Hart, who were strapped into the front seats, tumbled end over end, until the front of the plane came to rest, nose down.

  Rodrigo was knocked unconscious, but revived an unknown time later. “Billy? Slim? You guys okay?”

  The whistling wind provided the only answer.

  “Oh.” Rodrigo tried to reach out to shake the pilot. The movement made him nauseous, and he could tell he was pushing against dead weight. He did his best to crane his neck to see, but there was nothing visible except destruction and blanketing snow.

  He tried one last time. “Guys? Pilot? Anybody there?”

  He realized he was about to die. His thoughts focused on Chandra, and their unborn baby. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re going to have to take care of our little one. I’m sorry to leave you on your own.” Hot tears ran down his rapidly freezing cheeks.

  Rodrigo lingered an unfair amount of time, waiting for his fate. He spent the next few minutes in an unaccustomed state. He prayed. As there are no atheists in foxholes, there are rarely atheists who are the sole survivors of plane crashes. He didn’t pray for himself. He knew his life was ebbing away. Instead, he prayed for his bride and soon-to-arrive baby.

  If an ambulance had been standing by the crash site to rush Rodrigo Hart to the hospital in Dickenson, he might have survived. As it was, he died of internal bleeding, alone and shivering, on a flat stretch of nothingness. It looked like every other flat stretch of nothingness in western North Dakota, and the wreckage and bodies would not be found for many days.

  Rodrigo Hart took a last, shuddering breath, said, “Damn it,” and died.

  CHANDRA WHIPPED HER head back and forth. The pain of her contractions had grown to fill her world. She couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t being contracted, stretched, and torn.

  Dr. Graham arrived just as the baby’s head was crowning. He rubbed his hands together, looked at the gathered nurses, and said, “Let’s deliver a baby, shall we?”

  If Chandra Hart had been capable, she would have risen from the bed, ripped his arm off and beaten him senseless with it. Instead, she continued to see-saw her head back and forth, seeking some part of her that wasn’t in pain. No matter how hard she sought it, it never appeared.

  Dr. Graham leaned forward, said, “Now, Mrs. Hart. Push!”

  Tears of effort, relief, and frustration coursed down Chandra’s reddened face. She breathed deeply, gathered her strength, and pushed.

  The room, which had been a minor cacophony of instruments jangling, feet shuffling, and voices overlapping, stilled instantly.

  Coming back to something approaching full awareness, Chandra noticed the sudden silence. “My baby. Is my baby okay?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dr. Graham said. His voice had lost its normal imperious edge. “Just a bit of an unusual birth. Baby was born with a caul on, and... well, never mind. Everything is fine.”

  Chandra’s eyes rolled back in her head. With an effort, she focused on the doctor. “What?”

  “Born with a caul on. It’s an old phrase. It’s unusual. I’ve never delivered a baby with one before, but it’s completely harmless. It’s a part of the amniotic sac that has adhered to the baby. In old wives’ tales, it was thought to be good luck. We’ll take baby out, clean him up and bring him back in a few minutes. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Him? It’s a boy? Can I see him?”

  Nurse Bunting stepped between Chandra and the baby. “All in good time. You’ve done your job, now you must let us do ours
.”

  Chandra craned her neck, but couldn’t see around the imposing form of Nurse Bunting. The other, younger nurse had a bundle in her arms and carried it out of the delivery room.

  Dr. Graham pushed down on Chandra’s stomach, which caused another nauseating wave of pain.

  “What? What are you doing?”

  “Helping you deliver the placenta, so we can get you cleaned up, too. You want to see your baby, don’t you?”

  Sometime later, Chandra laid back, wan and exhausted, but aching to see her son.

  The younger nurse pushed through the door, followed by Dr. Graham.

  The nurse was carrying a wrapped bundle, but didn’t hand it to Chandra.

  Dr. Graham approached, solicitously. “We’ve got a good, healthy boy here, Mrs. Hart.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Chandra cried. “When everyone got so quiet, I was worried something was wrong with him.”

  “Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the baby. But, well...” He groped for words that he could not easily find.

  Chandra, fed up with the delay, threw the sheets back and moved to get out of bed. Dr. Graham held up a hand to stop her and nodded at the nurse, who handed the baby over.

  She pulled back the blue blanket and gazed into the deep blue eyes of her baby.

  “Oh, he’s beautiful!”

  “Yes. Well...”

  Chandra noticed a rough red patch on the left side of the baby’s face. When she peered more closely, she saw that it ran from his forehead all the way to his chin. She smoothed at it, but it didn’t go away.

  “What’s this?” she said, curiously. “Is it dry skin? Do I need to get a special lotion or something?”

  “No, that’s what I was attempting to tell you. He’s been born with a rather substantial hemangioma.” He noted Chandra’s blank look. “A birthmark. It’s somewhat faint now, but in all likelihood, it will deepen and become more obvious over time. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? What in the world for?” She gazed down at her newborn. “His name is Joe, and he is absolutely perfect.”

  Chapter Two

  As the doctor predicted, Joe’s birthmark deepened with time. By his first birthday, it was his most noticeable feature. At age three, he noticed that other children didn’t have markings like he did.

  One day, as they rolled through the supermarket, Joe pointed at another boy his age, then pointed at his own face. “Why, Mama?”

  Chandra leaned close to him until their noses touched. “Because you are special. You were born special, and you will always be special.”

  By the time Joe turned six, that explanation was no longer acceptable. Over a dinner of Salisbury steak and potatoes, sitting around the dinner table of their ranch-style house in Middle Falls, Oregon, he asked again. “Why do I have this? Other kids don’t.”

  Chandra considered for some time before she answered. “Everyone has a mark. Most people wear theirs on the inside. Your inside is perfect, so you have yours on your face. It’s part of what makes you who you are. It’s one small reason why I love you the way I do.”

  In between bites of steak, he asked, “Where’s your mark?”

  She nodded, as though she knew that question was coming. She answered quietly, “Mine is inside. I’m not as special as you are.”

  Chandra and Joe Hart were a complete unit. No one else was needed, or wanted. Since Rodrigo had died, Chandra had never bothered to date anyone else. Rodrigo had been it for her, and looking for another would only frustrate her and disappoint anyone she brought into her life. Chandra’s own mark—her mourning at the passing of her soul mate so early in her life—deepened for her as well. She was twenty-seven years old on the day Rodrigo died and Joe was born. Before she turned thirty, she had begun to self-medicate with alcohol and whatever she could talk her family physician into prescribing her. The drugs she was prescribed changed from year to year, but alcohol—clear, easy-to-disguise vodka, to be precise—was ever-present.

  She was the perfect alcoholic. She didn’t have to work, so she was able to just maintain a nice, mellow drunk, all the time. No blackouts or binges for her, just a steady influx of vodka that started with her first cigarette in the morning and was ever-present until she closed her eyes at night.

  Chandra Hart didn’t need to work because, in the end, Rodrigo provided for her, even if he never knew it. During their marriage, she and Rodrigo had struggled to get by financially, and although he was moving up the ranks of singer-songwriters making their mark in the late fifties, he hadn’t fully arrived when he died in that frozen North Dakota field.

  Rodrigo’s one and only album, called This... is Rodrigo Hart!, sold well after his death, as fans are attracted to the macabre idea of a singer reaching out to them from beyond the grave. Rodrigo Hart started a sad tradition that Janis Joplin and Otis Redding continued years later when they had the biggest hits of their careers after they died. For Rodrigo Hart, that song was Beautiful Tomorrow, an ode he wrote to Chandra celebrating a life they never got to live. The royalties from that song and album gave them enough on which to live modestly for a few years. They didn’t buy new cars, and they ate a lot of casseroles, but they got by.

  Just when that small stream of income was drying up and Chandra was perusing the Want Ads for jobs as a secretary or waitress, she heard from Rodrigo’s agent. He handled any remaining business items for her, and called to tell her that Paramount Pictures had inquired about using one of Rodrigo’s songs over the end credits of a movie.

  That movie—Christmas with the Smiths, starring Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O’Hara—became a smash, and it vaulted the song—When Christmas Comes Again—onto the upper reaches of the pop charts. As a holiday song, it became a staple, and resulted in enough airplay to more than cover their expenses every year, casseroles or not.

  The windfall was good for their financial health, but detrimental to Chandra’s overall well-being. With no need to work, and no desire to leave the house if she didn’t have to, she slipped into a routine that continued without end, until her chickens inevitably came home to roost.

  In 1977, Chandra Hart was forty-four years old, but looked a decade older. Her hair was brittle and gone to a mottled gray. The skin around her eyes and chin had started a race to the floor that appeared to be a dead heat. The years of steady alcohol consumption had destroyed her once-perfect complexion. In a word, she looked like death.

  When the symptoms of alcohol abuse and potassium deficiency began to show, she ignored them as long as she could. Until a doctor told her what she was suffering from, she wouldn’t have to pretend to change any habits she never intended to change. Eventually, she looked so poorly that Joe himself insisted she go.

  Joe was a handsome boy, aside from the purple-red blotch that discolored the left half of his face. He wore his hair in long bangs to cover some of it, but that was akin to using a squirt gun on a three-alarm fire.

  When Joe dragged her to the clinic, the doctor told Chandra that she was killing herself. “But,” he insisted cheerfully, “if you’ll stop drinking and take the supplements I’m prescribing for you, you can recover.” She took the supplements, but never bothered to sober up.

  Like a bookend to his birth, Joe’s graduation coincided with another life-altering event. On the day he graduated from high school, Chandra woke up feeling poorly. That in itself was not news. She woke up feeling poorly every day. Her morning drink usually eased those symptoms. This day seemed a little worse, though, as her words slurred, and she staggered a bit more than usual when she tried to move from bed to couch.

  Joe decided to skip his graduation, which was not a terrible loss to him. He hadn’t been bullied at school, but he had never quite felt like he fit in, either. He had two friends he hung out with from time to time, named Bobby Stuckey and JD McManus. Beyond them, he thought it unlikely that he would ever spend time with anyone else from his school. He admired any number of girls from afar, but he never let himself fantasize about being in a relationshi
p with them. He believed that no girl would ever be interested in him.

  Chandra would not listen to the idea of him skipping his graduation.

  “Thirteen years, Joe. Thirteen years! We’ve already got your cap and gown. I’m so sorry I’m sick and won’t be there, but you are going. Take the car. There’s plenty of gas, just promise me you won’t drink tonight. It seems like every year some kids get drunk and get in an accident.”

  Do as I say, not as I do, right, Mom? Got it. After watching you drink yourself almost to death, I have no interest in ever touching the stuff, so no worries.

  Joe looked at Chandra, lying on the couch, head lolling slightly to one side, eyes semi-glazed. Oh, hell, she’ll probably just sleep the whole time I’m gone.

  “Okay, Mom. I’ll go, but I’m coming straight back here afterward. I’ll stop by that new Shakey’s that just went in out by the freeway and bring a pizza home for us. Canadian Bacon and pineapple okay?”

  “Yes, if you want to be permanently disowned. You know what I like.”

  He did. At some point in the previous eighteen years, Chandra had stopped taking care of Joe, and Joe began taking care of her. By twelve, he had become at least as capable of making dinner as she was, and one by one, he took over the responsibilities for running the house. By fifteen, he was paying bills, balancing the checkbook, doing the shopping, and enabling her to slip further into her own oblivion.

  Joe kneeled down in front of her and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mom.”

  She focused her attention as much as she was able. “You are my beautiful boy, Joe. Now, go make me proud.”

  THE GRADUATION CEREMONY drug on for hours, a seemingly-endless litany of clichéd speeches, prayers, and exhortations to go and make the world a better place. By the time Joe shucked his robe off and got to his car, he was worried he wouldn’t get to Shakey’s in time to get their pizza.

  Bobby and JD caught up to him just as was climbing into the Oldsmobile.

  “A bunch of kids are ditching the Senior Party and heading to a kegger out at the lake. Bobby and I are heading that way. Come with us.”