Joey wedged a carefully packed box of dishes into a secure spot of the U-Haul. They’d bought most of their household at flea markets and garage sales when they first moved West, and they’d sold or would leave most of what they’d accumulated, but a potter back in Pennsylvania had crafted the dish set to celebrate their marriage, and it would make the return trip East.  Maggie could always turn a place into a home. They would just do it all again when she was healthy and they came back to Colorado.

A horn toot alerted Joey and he leaned out of the U-Haul to see a powder blue 1962 GMC pickup, Benito Vasquez’s meticulously cared for pride and joy.  Joey jumped from the back of the truck.  Ben couldn’t read or write much more than his name, but there was a lot to admire about this old Mexican Zorba.  “Chump,” said Ben, gripping Joey’s outstretched hand with massive paws.  He held the pose for a moment longer than usual.  “My Chump,” he said again.  He had once heard Joey jokingly refer to someone as a chum.  Ben apparently liked the sound.  Only when Ben said it, it always came out chump.  He let go of Joey’s hand and turning to his own truck said, “I bring something for your Maggie.”

As if on cue, Maggie appeared on the porch, a bandana covering her head, looking like a gypsy princess with big hoop earrings.  The dog, a chocolate lab named Emma, had been at her side ever since the first box was packed.  A veteran mover, Emma made sure she would not be left behind.  Ben, a small plant in hand, cut across the yard, walking with his own peculiar stride, the product of years bent over shearing sheep and riding in a saddle.  He climbed up onto the front porch, hugged Maggie with one arm, protecting the plant with the other and gave her a kiss.  Ben was devilish with the ladies, but they didn’t seem to mind.  Ben, Maggie had once said, made a woman feel special, without being threatening.  “Consuelo and I give you this,” he said, and he handed Maggie an African violet.  “She make the pot.”

“Oh Ben, it’s beautiful,” said Maggie, holding the yellow ceramic pot up for Joey to examine as if to say, so there!  They had just been discussing her plants.  There was no way, Joey had insisted, that they could move them back East.  Even though today was an Indian summer, seventy degrees, it was almost December.  The plants would die in the back of the truck on a trip across the northern plains.

“The pot’s pretty,” said Joey, joining them on the porch.

“A new plant for your new home,” said Ben.  “In Pheeely.”  Ben started to shadow box Joey.  They’d taken him to see Rocky to show him where Joey came from, and Ben insisted that Joey sounded just like Rocky Balboa.  “Yo!” he said feigning a right and then throwing a left hook towards Joey’s midsection.  “Yo, chump.”

“Yo this,” said Joey grabbing his crotch, feeling he sounded nothing like Rocky Balboa.

“Be nice now, boys,” said Maggie.  “I just put a pot of coffee on.  How about it?”

“Si,” said Ben, rubbing his hands.  He was always drinking coffee.

“What about you?” she said to Joey.

“Naa.”

Ben mimicked Joey’s Philadelphia accent, “Naaaaa.”

“For a guy who spent most of his life in this country and still can’t talk right, you gotta a lotta balls,” said Joey, after Maggie and the dog went back inside.

“Sheeet,” said Ben putting a friendly hand on Joey’s shoulder.  “I don’t wanna sound like you, chump.”

“It’s chum,” Joey said pointing to his lips.  “Chummm.  You better get it straight.  You start calling somebody else chump, they’re liable to kick your ass.”

Ben looked at Joey, then at his own well-worn cowboy boots, shy, almost childlike, not the sixty-year-old knockabout he was.  “I don’t say anybody else is my chump.  You my chump.”

Joey had to turn away.  It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to him and certainly the nicest thing a man had ever said.  It saddened him that he didn’t know how to respond, but it was no surprise.  His own father, who was no older than Ben, hadn’t managed to soberly say he liked a single thing about Joey.  Emotions didn’t come easy for his father, and now didn’t come easy for Joey, either.  Maggie walked onto the porch with a tray containing a thermos, sugar and three coffee mugs.  Joey slipped inside, partly to hide watery eyes and partly to retrieve his wine.  Most of the work was done and a mug or two could do no harm.

Ben loaded his coffee with four heaping spoons of sugar.  For the three years that Joey had known him, Ben never drank, though from the stories he shared when they worked together as janitors at the university, or lately, when they fished together, he must have been a hell raiser in his time.  “You might as well eat candy,” Joey said, pouring Modavi red in his own mug.  He’d been drinking less himself since Maggie’s diagnosis of late stage lymphoma; to set his limit, he discretely marked every bottle with a line on the label before he drank.  Instead of volume, he now opted for variety.  “A toast,” he said, raising his mug.  “To chumps.”

“Chumps,” echoed Ben and Maggie.  They all clinked mugs.

After a pause, Ben asked, “Where’s de car?

Joey got up.  “You’ve got to see this.”  Ben followed and they headed for the U-Haul.  At the back of the truck, Joey pointed in, “Check it out.”

The VW station wagon was inside the cargo area of the U-haul surrounded by their possessions.  The station wagon’s rear door was open and faced the back of the truck, ready to be loaded with the last of their things.  “Jesus,” said Ben.  “How you do that?”

“At the old freight depot by the train tracks,” said Joey, proudly.  “Drove the car up through the depot and onto the loading dock.  Backed the truck up and wallah.”

Ben put the coffee cup to his lips, holding it with both hands, and took a loud slurp while looking over the cup at Joey.  “You crazy.”

“It was the only way I could figure to get the car back east without Maggie having to drive it.  Tow hitches don’t work on VW bumpers, a trailer with a truck would cost too much, so I rented a big enough truck to stuff the car inside.  Pretty slick, huh?”  Joey sipped his wine.  “What U-Haul don’t know won’t hurt them.”

Ben just shook his head and they went back onto the porch.  Joey knew the sudden move and all the snap decisions might seem rash to most, but Ben could understand.  Years of migrating with crops and sheep, from the Mexican border in Texas all the way to Canada, had conditioned him to know that sometimes you just had to move on, or move back.  Staying wasn’t always an option.  And they had to do something.  Maggie had come through her first round of radiation pretty well, Joey driving her an hour and a half each way to Denver and back for treatments, but the doctors said that was only the beginning.  After a two-week hiatus, to recover, she would have another three-week round of daily radiation, another break, and then an operation.  After that, if all went well, chemotherapy.  Friends had been helpful, but they needed more support.  Hahnemann Hospital in Philly had a team specializing in lymphomas, one of the tops in the country.  They would be closer her family and their old friends, and in Philly, he could probably get a real job to support them.  If they left now, she wouldn’t miss a beat.

From the porch, he and Ben both watched through the picture window as Maggie, in the half-empty house, groomed the plants in the dining room, pulling off any dead leaves.  Getting them ready for someone else, she looked ready to cry, and Emma, always attuned to Maggie’s mood, nuzzled her leg.  Many of the plants had come from friends who’d given up on them– half dead, wilted, barely alive.  Maggie had adopted them and brought them back to life, until there was a glorious houseful.  “We can’t take her plants,” said Joey.

Ben said nothing, but when Joey looked, he saw Ben wipe a tear from his brown leathery cheek.  Though Joey had hope–he had to–he knew without being told, that to Ben, a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence.  Joey looked away, to the street, to nothing in particular, to anything but his cancer-ridden wife or the soon-to-be-left-behind friend.  “Why?” said Ben.

“They’d freeze in the back of the truck,” said Joey, hearing the weariness in his own voice.  “We don’t have time to take a southern route.”

“Sheeet.”  Ben gulped what was left of his coffee.

Joey finished his cup of wine and reached for the bottle.  Ben pushed his mug toward Joey.  “There,” he said, a pained look on his face, indicating Joey should pour him wine.  Ben was as close to Maggie as he was to Joey, staying friends with her even when the couple had been separated, being the one person with guts enough to tell Joey he needed to go back to Maggie.  And Ben had been right.  If Joey hadn’t come back before her diagnosis, he knew Maggie wouldn’t have taken him back.  She’d have worried that he only felt sorry for her.  Most times this old Mexican knew what he was doing, but not now, thought Joey, as Ben looked him in the eye waiting for Joey to fill his mug.

He put the bottle down.

Joey knew that Ben never buried feelings.  He’d been through pain and sorrow, as well as joy, and he had earned the right to hide nothing.  When he hurt, he hurt.  When he loved, he loved.  “Pour,” he said, now with an angry edge.

“You don’t want that,” said Joey pushing the thermos a couple of inches closer to Ben, who, to Joey’s relief since there would be no stopping Ben if he set his mind to it, grabbed the thermos testily and poured himself more coffee.  Half of Ben’s stomach had been removed, and doctors had told him if he kept drinking it would kill him, but he drank after the surgery anyway.  Fear of death, didn’t mean much.  But, Ben had stopped later on, and Joey didn’t want to be the one who got him started again.  Ben threw spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, stirring forcefully, his eyes drying and growing angrier.

Maggie, with Emma still at her side, came back out with a bag of Oreos and the African violet in a small box with a dishtowel around the ceramic pot to protect it.  “This,” she said, showing Joey the plant, while she put the cookies in front of Ben, “is going to ride up front with us.  No arguments.”

While she and the dog went to the cab of the truck, Ben dipped an Oreo in his coffee, and then shoved it whole into his mouth.  Maggie passed by them on the way back.  She forced a smile, but Joey knew she’d been crying and probably would be again once inside before Ben’s friends and family showed up to pick through the stuff they were leaving behind.  She went in, though the dog, eyeing the cookies, stayed behind on the porch.

Joey poured himself a little more wine.  He was near his mark on the label, but he wished he’d never made it.  He wished he could pour himself more and even wished he had poured some for Ben, so he and his friend could drink the whole damn jug and then another and another.

Ben’s mood was no better.  “Dis fucking God,” he blurted.  “Why he pull this sheet?”  Pieces of Oreo flew from his mouth toward the window as he watched Maggie.

Emma, realizing she was not going to get any Oreos and leery of the mood on the porch, went to the screen door.  As Joey got up and let her in the house, Ben pulled out his wallet with such urgency that it startled him.  “Look.”  He pointed to a photo of a teenage Mexican girl, standing next to a blossoming cherry tree.  She held a plump Chihuahua in her right hand  “Maria.  You never meet.  She the youngest; she in Texas.”

“Nice,” said Joey, not sure what to say.

“Look!  Ben pointed a bent callused finger at the picture.  “Look at her.”

Joey looked again; Ben’s daughter was turned sideways, the fat dog partially hiding the fact that she had no left arm.  “What happened?”

“It come off in a thrasher.”  Ben chopped at the table, rocking the whole porch.  “Like that.”

Joey drank more wine.

“This God,” said Ben.  He looked away from the photo and in towards Maggie.  “Why not me or you, we hurt people, we fight, we drink.  Not them.”  He drowned another Oreo, letting this one float in his coffee, and then spit off the porch.  “That’s what I think of this fucking God.”

Joey cleared the back of his own throat and spit a wad of phlegm into the yard.

“Maria was only thirteen, she go to the field with Consuelo that day alone, `cause I drink all night.  If I there, it maybe no happen.”

“Jesus,” said Joey, nervously playing with his mug.

“After, I see my Maria in the hospital, my poor little girl.”  He sank his fingers into the hot coffee, not seeming to feel a thing, as he retrieved the Oreo.  Joey thought of his own mother, her hand scarred by boiling tea water, and shivered.  “I promise God I no drink.”  On the way to his mouth the Oreo broke apart and most of it went back into the coffee with a plop, splashing Ben’s jacket.  Joey hadn’t talked to God since he was a young boy, not even when he was locked up or half dead himself, but when he found out how bad Maggie’s diagnosis was, he had prayed God to spare her and that he be given the strength to be there for her, no matter what it took.

“How long ago was that?” asked Joey.

“She be twenty next month.”

“And you haven’t had a drink since?”

“No.”  Ben looked back through the picture window.  Maggie sat among the plants as if in a trance, Emma’s head resting on her thigh.

Joey threw what wine was left in his mug into the yard and poured himself coffee from the thermos.  He held the mug in both hands under his nose.  The warmth and aroma were comforting.

Ben, still looking in the window said, “Your Maggie need her plants.”

“They’ll freeze,” said Joey in a worn out voice that, even to him, sounded older than his twenty-seven years.  He watched Ben dip his fingers in the scalding coffee, fishing for parts of Oreo.  Joey had watched his mother severely burn herself, managing to get a pudgy hand stuck inside a boiling teapot, scarring herself for life.  He sensed now what he couldn’t then, that his mother had been punishing herself for some sin.

After a few moments, Ben jumped up, “Sheeets!”  He sprang from the porch and ran to the back of the truck.  “Come.”  He was practically jumping up and down, impatiently waiting for Joey to get there.  “The station-wagon, chump.  Put plants in de station-wagon.”

“What good will that do?” said Joey, annoyed that this plant business would just not go away.

“They live.”  He grabbed Joey’s arm firmly with a grip hardened by years of fieldwork.  “Leeesin.  What you do wit tomatoes if it freeze?”  Ben tilted his head and smiled.  “You cover.  They stay warm.”

“But they’re just in pots,” said Joey not convinced.  He didn’t want to arrive back East with Maggie and a car full of dead houseplants.

“It hot today,” said Ben.  “We load de wagon wit plants, cover wit sheets, close doors and windows, cover wagon wit blankets.”  Ben stroked his mustache as he talked, and Joey saw there would be no stopping him.  “They bring hay from Texas to Montana in de winter, the hay in de middle it still warm.”

“I guess,” said Joey, starting to believe.

Ben rushed toward the porch.  “We don’t lay down for no fucking God.”

By the time Joey got there, Ben had picked up two of Maggie’s plants.  She looked up at him, bewildered, her wet cheeks glistening in the streaming sunlight.  Joey unhooked the big hanging spider plant and picked up a small cactus with his free hand.  “Don’t just sit there,” he said.

“What?”

“I thought you wanted to take these with you,” he said as he followed Ben out to the truck.

Joey climbed up and into the U-haul to do the packing.  He had to crawl in through the back of the station wagon to place the plants on the front floor and seats.  Maggie appeared holding her large aloe.  “We’re hoping this acts like a mini hot house,” he said.  “Ben thought of it.”

Maggie placed the aloe at the back of the truck, pulled Ben’s head down, and kissed his cheek.  For the first time all day, Maggie’s eyes sparkled.  She mouthed, I love you, silently to Joey over Ben’s shoulder, before hurrying back toward the house.  Emma, picking up on the excitement, rushed ahead and then back to Maggie. “If this doesn’t work,” said Joey, taking the aloe from Ben and wedging it between the front bucket seats, “I’m coming back here and personally kicking your ass.”

“Like Rocky,” said Ben, raising his arms in victory.

“That’s right,” said Joey.  “Just like fucking Rocky.”

Maggie and Ben danced the plants out to Joey who packed them in as close-and-secure as he could.  He had to find and unpack boxes with their sheets and blankets, but otherwise the job went quickly.  When all the plants were loaded and sealed in, Joey suggested they’d best leave while the warm afternoon air was trapped in the car.  What he didn’t say, but was thinking, was that he wanted to leave on a high note, rather than wait until later when people would come to pick through the bones of what they had left behind.  Maggie agreed, and Ben offered to take care of whatever was left to do, get what money he could for stuff, and then give the rest away.  Ben would know, Joey figured, who needed what and who would appreciate whatever they got.

After one more sad walk through the house they’d once been so thrilled to rent, they stood by the U-haul.  Maggie kissed Ben; they hugged, and then she climbed into the passenger seat.  When Joey opened the driver’s side door, the dog jumped in, climbed over Maggie’s lap and stuck her head out the window.  Ben offered his hand.  Joey reached for it slowly.  “We’ll see you in eight, nine months, a year tops,” he said.  “When Maggie’s better.”

“Take care of her,” said Ben squeezing Joey’s hand so hard it hurt.  Joey sensed Ben had said goodbyes like this before, and knew, all too well, that goodbye was often for good.

“I will,” said Joey as he broke the handshake and turned away.  He climbed in.  Ben moved along with the truck, his arms out wide, as if he were herding a sheep, while Joey slowly backed down the driveway.  At the street when Joey was pulling away, Ben called, “Adios, my chum.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Joey shifting into second.

Maggie giggled.

“Did you hear that?”

“Uh huh,” she said.

“I bet he knew all along what he was saying.”

Maggie moved the African violet, keeping the dog from stepping on it. “I wouldn’t doubt that one little bit.  Ben lets people think he’s not as smart as he really is.”

“He almost drank with me just now.  He was upset about you, but.… I wouldn’t give him any.”

Maggie squeezed Joey’s thigh.

“I’m not sure he really would have, but I just couldn’t pour him any.”

“He didn’t drink,” said Maggie.  “That’s the important thing.”

“I guess.”

“He thinks I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying,” said Joey as he looked in the mirror and saw Ben was still watching.

“You don’t know that,” said Maggie.

Joey shifted into third gear and looked again in the mirror.  Ben, his chum, turned toward the house and then was gone.