Sourland (19 page)

His eyesight? The vision in one eye? His hearing? What about an arm? Which arm? His right? What about a leg? And what of his “future”—would he give that up? Never play any game again: softball, soccer, basketball? Would he give up his trombone? His friends? His high grades? His special feeling for math? His soul?

A sacrifice must be made. But what?

Around the house he was a sleepwalker-zombie; it wouldn't be a surprise if an accident happened. Turning an ankle on the stairs and falling. Shutting a car door on his hand. All of them were distracted and not themselves. Mother on the telephone, Mother walking slowly through the rooms she seemed not to recognize. There was nothing for them to talk about except the father's condition, yet there was so little
for them to say of it that they hadn't already said. Through this, the God-voice taunted the Raineys' youngest son, the coward.

What would you give up? give up? give up?

He did return to school for a morning. There was a midterm test in solid geometry he didn't want to miss. He made certain he failed, hoping his teacher wouldn't be suspicious. He got enough answers wrong so he calculated his numerical grade was about 55%, a letter grade of F.

Maybe that would help?

10.

On the fourth morning Mr. Rainey was strong enough to endure a heart-probe procedure, and afterward Mrs. Rainey was crying, clutching at their hands. “It's all right! The doctor said there were
no blood clots.
”

11.

Yet the father's arrhythmia didn't respond to medication as the cardiologist expected. There was the probability that, if Mr. Rainey was removed from his intravenous medication, the atrial fibrillation would return. For that was the rhythm which his fifty-one-year-old heart, like a suddenly deranged clock, had taken on. So they might try electric shock.

Admittedly this was a more extreme procedure with some element of risk.

How much “element of risk” the Raineys wanted to know.

The cardiologist's reply was lengthy, tactful, and, in the end, vague. For each heart patient is a unique problem, each heartbeat a unique beat, and any general anesthetic is a trauma to the brain.

“And to the heart?” Mrs. Rainey asked.

“Well, yes.” The cardiologist cleared his throat.

12.

David wondered if the Cheetah had noticed: room 833 and room 837 were mirror-rooms.

Each was private and of the same proportions, bathroom to the rear, a single window. In each, as you approached, you could see a gowned man in bed, attached to intravenous sacs on poles. In each, you often saw visitors sitting or standing around the bed. Each room exuded the possibility of the
empty bed.

After a few days, David began to worry not just that he'd return to room 833 and see his father's bed empty, but he'd return to see the bed empty in room 837, too. That would mean he'd never see the Cheetah again. For the Cheetah's father did seem sicker than David's father. He was still breathing oxygen through a tube in his nose. There was more often a curtain drawn around his bed. Rarely did the Cheetah's father sit up to talk with visitors or watch TV as David's father had done since the second evening, and not once had David seen the Cheetah's father walking in the corridor as David's father did, slowly but gamely, twice a day, with one of the West Indian orderlies, hauling his two jingly IV poles and his blood-pressure paraphernalia with him. (“Like a cyborg.”) Once, when David was prowling the corridor, he passed the open door of 837 and happened to see the patient being prepared by two orderlies for a trip on a gurney, lifted stiffly out of his bed like a dead weight. There was the Cheetah at the foot of the bed, and there was the plump, anxious-looking woman David supposed was the Cheetah's mother. David circled the floor, and when he returned to his corridor, there was the ravaged man, barely conscious, being wheeled to an elevator; in his wake, the Cheetah and his mother followed slowly, gripping each other's hand. David would have liked to say, “If it's the blood-clot test, it isn't too bad. My dad had it and he's okay. Good luck!” Of course, he said nothing.

Yet the Cheetah glanced at him in passing, a swift sidelong look of fear, hurt, anger, and an obscure shame.

13.

He wasn't spying on the brothers. Yet it happened he saw them everywhere.

In the parking garage, for instance. By what coincidence did Mrs. Rainey park one morning, on level B, close by the “foreign” family's car? Both cars were large, new-model luxury cars, but the Raineys' was mud splattered and its chrome fixtures dimmed as if in mourning while the other family's car gleamed and glittered as if it had been driven directly out of a dealer's showroom.

The Hawk was driving. In the harsh early sunshine he looked older than seventeen. He drove with a slight edge of impatience, pulling into the parking space and braking almost simultaneously. Beside him was his mother; in the backseat were an elderly white-haired woman, a young girl, and the Cheetah slouched and sullen, a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. David looked quickly away.

“Those people,” Mrs. Rainey sighed. “Either they all look alike, or they're everywhere.”

14.

On the morning of the sixth day the father began to cry, whispering he'd failed them. The children were sent out of the room. The cardiologist came to explain the electric-shock procedure in such clinical detail, Mrs. Rainey began to faint—“Oh, God. An electric shock to his
heart
.”

15.

That night, David opened his window wanting the ache and hurt of cold. Damp sleeting rain like needles.
What would you give up? What would you give?
Quietly he went downstairs in his pajamas, barefoot. Stepped outside into the harsh cold air. His head, which had felt fevered, like a burning lightbulb, was immediately wet, and it wasn't much but it felt good.

How long he wandered about in the sleety rain, on the driveway, in the grass, tilting his head back, exposing his throat, he wouldn't know. Lost track of time. Thinking
This might be the last night I have a father
.

16.

Next morning, his head ached, his eyes were running, and his nose—“Oh, Davy. You've given yourself a cold.” Somehow, his mother knew, scolding him, but kissing him, pressing him against her so he hadn't any choice but, gently, to push away.

Mother was saying in her new, wondering voice, “The life we live in our bodies, it's so strange, isn't it? You don't ever think how you got
in
. But you come to think obsessively how you'll be getting
out
.”

Later, when they were preparing to leave for the medical center, she laid her hand on David's arm in that way he'd come to dread. “Your father loves you very much, honey. You know that.”

David nodded, yes.

“He told me. He's thinking of you. All the time. He wants you to know that. I hope you do.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Desperate to escape, but where to escape
to
?

17.

Like puppets on a string! That was what the Raineys had become.

Even Mr. Rainey in his cranked-up bed, listening to the beat-beat-beat of his crazed heart.

For no sooner did they arrive in room 833 than they were informed by the head nurse that the electric-shock procedure was postponed until the next morning. When Mr. Rainey's vital signs might be more stable.

“Hell,” said Mr. Rainey, managing a ghastly-ashy smile, “I'm set to go right
now
.”

18.

“Hey-
hey
!”

A sharp little cry not meant for him. As the flat stone came skittering and skidding across the icy pavement.

Behind the medical center, adjacent to the parking garage, there was
a construction site and in the foreground, an unused, slightly littered space.

It was truly chance! David hadn't followed the brothers here, hadn't had any idea they might be here at all. He'd fled the eighth-floor corridor and the stifling air of room 833 where even the numerous fresh-cut flowers exuded an odor of dread. He hadn't taken time even to put on his jacket, desperate to flee.

And there, in early winter sunlight were the brothers kicking a stone like a hockey puck between them. It was an idle, desultory game. A cigarette slanted from a corner of the Hawk's fleshy mouth. The Cheetah, languid and sulky-seeming, wore a gray baseball jacket. During the night the sleet had turned to snow; there was a light dusting on the ground and ice patches on the pavement. The brothers communicated with each other in grunts of challenge or derision. The Hawk was the louder and the more skilled at the impromptu game. “Hey-
hey
!”—he kicked the flat stone so hard it ricocheted and caught his brother on the ankle; the Cheetah winced, then laughed. David was uncertain whether he should acknowledge watching the brothers or pretend not to see them; he continued along the edge of the pavement as if he had a destination and wasn't just walking to kill time, as the brothers were playing their aimless game to kill time. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the younger brother run to catch the skidding stone with his foot and give it a sidelong kick. There came the stone as if by magic, skittering in David's direction, so with a clumsy, eager kick he sent it spinning back toward the Cheetah, and with a haughty nod the Cheetah both acknowledged David's charitable gesture and dismissed it, sending the stone flying back toward his brother with renewed zest—“Hey-hey-
hey
!”

Elated, David walked on. The brothers continued their rough play behind him; he didn't give them a second glance.

19.

Tomorrow morning?

Something would be decided.

David's mother urged him and his sister to return to school for the afternoon at least. “Some semblance of a normal life”—but neither David nor his sister wanted a normal life right now. Their older brothers Pete and Billy were grimly waiting, too.

In the mirror-room 837, the Cheetah's father seemed little changed. The door was only partway closed, as if in the patient's stuporous state privacy made little difference. David passed on an errand, hoping he wouldn't be seen by anyone inside, and he wasn't.

The patient continued sleeping as before and several visitors were sitting about watching TV.

Entering the men's lavatory which he'd come to know in too much detail. And there at a sink, washing his hands, was the boy he'd remember for the rest of his life as the Cheetah.

Loud splashing water from the faucet, and anger in the very sound. The boy's eyelids looked inflamed as if with fever.

David halted just inside the door. He swallowed, embarrassed. The Cheetah was watching him in the mirror. David tried to show no emotion though a shock ran through him as if he'd carelessly touched an electric wire.

For the first time, the Cheetah smiled. His lips smiled. He was watching David in the mirror. “Somebody in your family sick, eh?” His voice was low and hoarse, almost inaudible.

David said, swallowing again, “Yes. My father.”

The Cheetah nodded, drying his hands on a paper towel. “My father, too.”

David said, “Something happened to my dad in the middle of the night. He hadn't ever had any heart trouble before. He couldn't breathe, his heart was racing. My mom called an ambulance. That was last week. They said, in the emergency room, my dad's heartbeat was two hundred twenty beats a minute.”

“Je-sus.” The Cheetah whistled, as if impressed. “I've been seeing you around here, it's shitty, eh? Y'want to go out back for a smoke?”

“—smoke?”

“Just hang out, then. Get out of this shitty place.”

David smiled uncertainly. He heard himself say, “Okay.”

On his way out of the lavatory the Cheetah cuffed David lightly on the shoulder as a big cat might, in play. He winked at David and drawled, showing the tip of his tongue between his lips. “O-
kay.
Out
back.
”

When David left the lavatory, the Cheetah was nowhere in sight.

He returned to 833; his parents were expecting him. It was almost 6
P.M
. when an orderly brought his dad a special-diet supper. He wasn't certain whether he was supposed to meet the Cheetah outside immediately, or another time. He kept glancing at the doorway when someone passed by. The network news came on TV. Every night that he'd been strong enough to sit up, Mr. Rainey watched the news. David's mother propped pillows behind him. He'd become one of those patients bent upon “cheering up” visitors. He was saying to David, “—should be in school, Davy, shouldn't you? Don't want to fall behind and I'm going to be fine in a day or two, you'll see.” David said “I can't fall behind, Dad, it's like a Möbius strip. Anyway, it's after school now. See?—it's
dark.
” He pointed toward the window at the rear of the room as if his father required proof. But his father was laughing, a dry, mirthless laugh, the remark about the Möbius strip was so clever. David reached for his jacket, laid over the back of a chair. His mother called after him but he didn't hear. He'd let forty minutes pass; he was in a desperate hurry.

20.

Where the brothers had been playing their rough game earlier that day, there were patches of ice treacherous underfoot. A boy who might've been the Cheetah signaled to David from the far side of the open space, near the parking garage. He walked rapidly away, turned, and beckoned to David mysteriously. They'd entered the parking garage at the rear. This was level A, now mostly deserted. The Cheetah was smoking a
cigarette and trailing smoke over his shoulder, exhaling through his teeth. He held out a pack of cigarettes and David was about to stammer, “Thanks, but—I don't—” when he understood that he must accept the cigarette from his friend and learn to smoke it. He laughed, excited at the prospect. His hand reached out and the Cheetah's hooded eyes flashed and in that instant David was grabbed from behind, and his arms yanked painfully back. Someone had been waiting behind one of the posts. A tall, strong boy, of course it was the Cheetah's brother. David was too surprised to cry for help. He might have thought this was part of a game. He heard his cracked voice, “What?—what—” Already a flurry of hard blows like horses' hooves struck his chest, his stomach, his thighs. He fell, or was pushed. Sprawled on the gritty pavement. The Hawk stooped over him, his breath in short steaming pants. He punched and kicked him and spat in his face and the Cheetah, making a high, whimpering sound like a malicious child, stooped over him too, striking him with his fists, not so hard or with so much fury as his brother.