Stuck in Neutral (2 page)

Experiencing life the way I have—that is, only through what I see and hear—has made it hard for me to really understand some things. I've seen people run, but I have no idea what your legs feel like when you do that. What does your arm feel like throwing a baseball? Your fingers holding a pencil? What do your lips feel when you kiss somebody?

Also, sometimes just hearing things can create confusion and misunderstanding: When I first heard my mom talk about “turkey dressing,” I wondered why the hell she would dress a turkey. When I first saw a billboard picturing the Marlboro Man, I thought that cowboy up there smoking must be Mr. Marlboro, so for the next six months I thought of my dad as the McDaniel Man, our next-door neighbor, Bob Mayer, as the Mayer Man, the guy who brings our mail as the Postal Man, etc. A lot of these things I eventually figured out, but I'm still confused about some stuff. For instance, how does a car wash work? Do they actually have a bathtub big enough to fit a whole car in there? What about a truck? And doesn't putting the car under the water mess up its engine? And here's one it took me a long time to figure out: Until I actually saw the word written out, I always wondered why nobody realized that calling the killing of sick people “youth-in-Asia” might not be just a little bit offensive to young people in places like Japan and China. Maybe it's a good thing that I can't communicate; otherwise I'd probably act like a fool.

I don't like to feel sorry for myself, but I'm aware of the trouble my condition has put on my family, and I can't help but feel sorry for them. They've all handled it in different ways. My mom is very loving and patient, my sister a lot like my mom. My brother gets impatient and angry sometimes. I wish I could communicate with them to tell them what my life is really all about, but I can't. My condition changed all their lives. It's hurt everyone. Thinking about that is one of the few things that can really bum me out, so I try not to think about it much. I do sometimes wonder what life would be like if people, even
one
person, knew that I was smart and that there's an actual person hidden inside my useless body; I
am
in here, I'm just sort of stuck in neutral. If I think about it too much, I can get real nutso!

My mom, Lindy, still talks to me as if I were a newborn baby or an idiot. She can't know that I understand everything she says to her friends when they drop by to visit her or when she's chatting with them on the phone, everything she says to Cindy and Paul, everything she says period. So my contact with her is limited to “Goo-goo-baby boy-go … you a big baby boy … boogie woogie googie snoogie.” You know, sweet baby talk. I wish just once I could say to her, “Geez, Mom, I'm fourteen friggin' years old.” But I can't. That's just how it is.

I try not to spend too much time worrying about how “hard” my life is. Of course, it's kind of difficult not to think about it at least part of the time. What else is there for me to do? For the most part, though, I just live and try not to bitch to myself too much about the bad-news stuff of my life. Bitching doesn't change anything.

Is it frustrating, being trapped inside a useless body? Of course it's frustrating! Have I ever felt frustrated? Hell, yes! But what am I supposed to do? Getting crazy doesn't help. In fact, I figured out a long time ago that the crazier I get, the worse it feels.

There is one final bad-news punch line to my life. This bad news is complicated, difficult to explain. In a nutshell, it's that I am pretty sure that my dad is planning to kill me. The good news is that he'd be doing this out of his love for me. The bad news is that whatever the wonderfulness of his motives, I'll be dead.

D
ead. I'm only fourteen years old. What do I
think about death? I'm not sure what I
think,
but I sure know what I
feel,
because I have looked into death's eyes one time, and it was horrible.

Last winter—in early January, just after Christmas—Mom drove us to school one morning. My brother, Paul, a three-letter jock in football, hoops, and baseball, had gone in early for his usual weight training, so it was just Mom, Cindy, and me in the van. We have a wheelchair-loader Dodge Caravan, burgundy. I sat strapped in my wheelchair, which in turn gets locked into these big bolts that hold the chair in place. Cindy sat up front, riding shotgun.

The road shone wet; Seattle drizzle made the windows on the sides of the van all steamy and beaded with raindrops. I happened to be focusing out the front, through the
clip-clap
slapping of the windshield wipers. In front of us was an older car, an ugly junker, beat-up, dirty, a brownish color.

Suddenly, streaking in from the right side of the road, a dog flew into the path of the brown car. I watched as the dog, twisting and turning under the car, seemed to bend up, flip over, and turn inside out.

In another horrible moment, the back left tire of the car seemed to spit out the broken body. The dog rolled and tumbled along the road several times, tried to right himself, running a couple of awkward, horrible steps to the side of the road, but then collapsed.

Cindy screamed and burst into tears as Mom slammed on the brakes and whipped over to the roadside, sliding in the loose gravel and almost running over the dog too.

Before the van even stopped, Cindy was out of her door and running toward the dog.

“Cindy,” Mom screamed. “Cindy!”

But before Mom could even open her car door, Cindy already sat at the dog's side, lifting his head gently onto her lap.

Mom got out of the van. My eyes were only partially focused through the steamy side window. I watched Cindy sit there on the wet, muddy side of the road. As she stroked the dog's face, I could see Cindy's lips moving, speaking into the dog's ear. It looked to me like tears streamed down Cindy's cheeks.

After only a few seconds the dog began to jerk. Blood gushed out of his nostrils and mouth. Cindy held him still and steady, stroking the side of the animal's face through all the blood.

Suddenly, directly in front of my view, a thick stream of rainwater let loose from the top of the van window, and for a second the glass cleared where I happened to be looking out. In that second I saw, perfectly, the brown eyes of the dog. They were streaked with blood. And in that instant the dog stopped squirming. His body caved in, changing from something terrified and hurt and suffering into—nothing. The dog died. His eyes seemed locked onto mine at that moment when life left him; I wasn't watching a dog then, I was looking at death looking back at me.

Cindy knew it too; in that exact second, her hand stopped stroking the bloody black fur, her lips stopped moving. Cindy let death alone, sliding away from the dog's body, carefully easing his limp head down onto the wet gravel.

There was nothing more to do.

Cindy and Mom got back into the van. We turned around and began to drive back to our house. Cindy sat smeared in blood, mud, her white Pearl Jam T-shirt soaked, stained, and ruined.

Mom said, “I'm so sorry you had to see this, sweetie.”

“No,” Cindy answered.

“I mean—” Mom began.

Cindy cut her off. “No, it's all right,” her voice low, emotionless. “It was just like I thought it would be.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean—death, you know, being so near it. It was just like in that novel
Barabbas
when Lazarus tells Barabbas about death. It was just like that.”

Mom said, “A lot of people believe in life after—”

Cindy cut her off again. “No. It's like Lazarus says. Death is nothing, just a big, empty nothing.”

Cindy began to cry again. So did Mom. We rode along in silence.

Nothingness, I thought, emptiness. My body breathed evenly, my heart beat slowly. I felt the leather straps on my legs and across my stomach and chest. I remember the sound of the rain, of the tires over the wet pavement, and the feel of the damp air in my throat and nose—emptiness, nothingness.

The thing is my life has always been just in my head. If you think about it, I haven't really got a body. Because of my condition, I get confused about things sometimes. Hearing things, or hearing about things, is different from actually experiencing them. I can imagine what it's like to walk, talk, or sigh, but I don't
really
know. I've seen thousands of people “die” on TV, so I thought I understood what death looked like. But watching that dog lose his life, watching death take his life away, made my stomach weak, my skin tingle, and my heart pound harder in my chest. It made me feel sick.

Death. That was the closest I've ever been to it. I could feel what it was like, which was just like Cindy said—nothing, a big fat nothing. It looked to me like when you die, you just, I don't know, your life just disappears. That day death stared at me through bloody eyes, and it terrified me.

Of course I didn't know then what my dad might be planning. I didn't know then what I know now. Thinking about death again, I get that same sick feeling inside.

I
guess I should explain about my father, about
why I think he's planning to kill me. It's not as though he's stated it directly. It's more an intuition—intuition and a thing that happened last week when my dad stopped by the house.

It was a nice day, sunny and warm. Mom had me out on the deck that runs along the back of our place. I remember that the breeze was kind of tickling my nose and ears. Dad, who hardly ever comes by, showed up, walking through the family room and coming outside to where Mom and I were. He and Mom hugged, and for a moment he didn't say anything to me. Then he walked over and kissed the top of my head. I felt his lips lift a few strands of my hair and the rough palm of his big hand beneath my chin. Dad and Mom began to chat and then the phone rang inside.

Mom disappeared through the sliding glass door, and Dad and I were alone. I remember exactly how many times Dad and I have been all alone together, just the two of us, since he left ten years ago: six times. Exactly six times. This one was the sixth.

Dad began small talk to cover the silence. “How're you doing, big boy?” he asked. “Everything going okay for you? Any hot news for me?” He laughed at his joke, not a big or happy or mean laugh, but a quiet, sad one. Then he leaned over in front of me and brought his face down close to mine. With his brown eyes only inches away from my eyes, it felt as though he were trying to stare through me, straight through my eyes and into my brain. “You're not getting any of this, are you, Shawn?” he asked softly. In fourteen years I've heard him say my name aloud in my presence a total of sixteen times.

Suddenly a big, black crow landed on the telephone line that runs down the alley directly behind the house. It cawed so loudly that it startled both Dad and me. The bird's beady eyes stared at us, its fat black body so huge and heavy that the wire, which held its weight, sagged under it. It cawed loudly once again, then twice more.

Dad looked at the crow and put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing a little too hard.

“You wanna get at this boy?” Dad said, his voice sounding like a stick breaking. Dad didn't yell, but his voice was cold and hateful.

“You guys peck the eyes out of babies, don't you?” Dad asked. I'd never heard him sound so mad. “You would love a shot at this boy's eyes, wouldn't you?”

The crow cawed again, as though answering Dad's questions. To my dad I'm sure that caw sounded like “Yeah, that's right, what're you gonna do about it?”

“Assholes,” Dad muttered, although only one crow sat there staring at him. “Black rainbow, my ass,” Dad said, his words low but filled with that same hard anger.

Mom had been drinking a glass of iced tea. The glass sat on a small table on the deck. Dad noticed it there, still half full of melting ice cubes and reddish-brown liquid. Suddenly Dad grabbed the glass and in one frantic, violent motion threw it hard at the crow. “Asshole,” Dad grunted again as ice cubes and tea soared out, arcing into the air, and the glass, as if shot from a cannon, flew toward the crow.

The throw had such force that Dad nearly lost his balance. The glass hit the wire, exploding, no more than a foot or two from where the crow perched. Glass showered down onto the pavement below, and the crow quickly unfolded itself; with more of a screech than a caw, it disappeared over the neighbors' rooftops.

Dad watched the crow fly away, looked at the broken glass on the pavement, and breathed deeply and slowly, as if trying to quiet and steady himself.

He turned to me and spoke, the rage in his tone gone, replaced by a sad, slow, tired voice. “What if I hadn't been here?” I could hear his fear. “What if your mom ran in to grab that phone, planning to only be gone a minute or two, and that devil had taken your eyes while she was gone?” He paused again, breathing deeply. “You can't protect yourself at all! How can your mother or I or anybody ever keep you safe? My God, Shawn, you'll never be safe. How can we protect you? You're helpless.” He turned away and spoke. “Hopeless.” Then he added, so softly I could barely hear, “Maybe you'd be better off if I ended your pain?”

We sat there quietly, and I thought about what my dad had said. I had no idea what he meant, but it made me feel strange and a little nervous, so I tried to put it in the back of my mind.