The Mentor (36 page)

"The
same sort of work, very productive but, between you and me… don't put this in
the piece or anything… but it's a far cry from that first effort.  The first
lab."

"What
happened to--"

"Fire.
 Huge fire, took the whole place with it.  There were supposed to be
precautions but, you know, it's a lab.  A lot of things that can go boom,
right?"  The forced smile left his face.  "And the man on
the right, there?"

Yes.  
The
man on the right there.
 

Yes.  

Him
, I knew him.

"He
went up with the place," Timothy said, his voice quieter.
 "Tried to put it out, everybody else got out but him.  He
literally died for the research."

Yes.
 Something in my brain said:
Yes, he did.  I think he did
.

I must have
asked the man's name because Timothy told it to me but it wasn't the name I
knew.  That man I remembered.  Most of that memory, lost, buried, I
had only fragments.  But I recognized his face.

Archimedes
and Newton probably know him now, too, because for some reason I was sure he
was dead.

Yes.
 I recognized that face.

I
recognized my old college professor.   Professor Jepson.  

Chapter
Twenty-one

Back at the Dvoraks, I
had to quickly turn the alarm off as my friend burst through the front door
looking to drain the two big gulps he'd had on the way back from Nashville.

"
Ay
carbón
," Pavan jumped back from the front door and fell into me.
 "You have got fat, rabid squirrels in the lady's house!"
 I pushed him back up, toward the "squirrels" (which had begun
to purr), into the dark house.

With the
click of the light switch, a medium-sized chandelier came to light and the two
cats leapt from Pavan, who'd begun high-stepping like a man walking on coals,
and began to warm my feet.

"Hey
Rummels," I said and felt my chest soften a little.  "Hey other
Rummels."

"What
the fuuu'…?"  He hadn’t seen the kitties in all their
whirling-dervish
glory earlier that day.

"My
guard cats," I said and looked down at the two of them, each alternating
in looking up at me.  "Lemme check their dishes.  You mind
feeding Toby real quick?"

Pavan
calmed down after his scare with the kitties and seemingly forgot all about
having to go the bathroom so badly.  At least, I'd hoped he'd simply forgotten. 

Heading
into the garage he muttered to himself, "These people are some crazy
people with half-dog, half-bears and squirrel-cats.  They must be rescue
animals or something because…"

I flipped
on a couple more lights and tried to convince myself that I was just doing my
job, as a house-sitter, checking out the house.  But, each dark corner
stole a little breath and each new light calmed my stomach.  Thankfully,
my writhing slippers were close at hand if I needed any protection.

They hadn't
needed anymore food-- I'd gone overboard anyhow, plenty left.  I refilled
the water dish and plopped onto the couch.  The cats lost themselves in
the kitchen for a moment, and I had a quiet moment.

Stillness.
 

I tried to
relax, wind down, because we'd need some sleep because, after seeing a photo of
my old professor (with a different name?) at Solomon-Bluth, we were heading to the
Georgia Science Academy, my Alma Mater, the next day.

Everything
inside me wanted to collapse, fall asleep, but I'd left the place a bit of a
mess and didn't feel that I could totally--

Wait a
minute
.

On the
coffee table in front of me, the notes, doodles, grocery lists were all
scattered.  One of the papers had been crumpled, even.

"Dog-bear
is fed and happy," Pavan said, returning with a goofy grin.
 "Toby, I like.  Not sure about the rat-squirrels.  Too
freaky."  

Pavan
dropped onto the reclining chair and yanked the lever, kicking his feet up, as
if he'd done it a million times in the house.  A relaxation pro, my friend
could have found a way to chill on the
Titanic
, ten minutes
after
it sank.

Obviously,
my rattled aura or jumpy chakras was rippling his zen-Lazy-Boy experience.

"What's
wrong?"

"What
do you mean what's wrong?" I said, slowly sifting through my papers,
trying to remember what I'd left there.

"Your
face is all scrunchy."

I looked
over at Pavan.  "Man, your eyes are closed how can you tell my face
is all scrunchy?"

Not even
lifting his hands from the arm rests, he pushed both his thumbs toward his
ears.  "I can hear your face being scrunchy.  
You
remember all the words and dog farts you've ever heard--"

"Whatever."

"--me,
I can hear scrunchy faces.  So," he said cracking open one eye.
 "What's up?"

Of course,
I'd told him earlier about my encounter with the Phi Beta Ass Kicker, but
detailed it now again much slower.  In part for him but I think mostly for
me, trying to recall exactly what I may have missed.

"So,
she thought I'd left, I suppose.  When I came in, she must have jumped
back into the shadows but I'm guessing," I said, looking down at the nine
or ten sheets of paper, "she had been going through… this."

Pavan
leaned forward and snapped the footstool in place, nearly being launched into
the kitchen in the process.  When he recovered, it took a moment, he
dropped to his knees onto the carpet and looked at the papers.

"This
is, like, grocery lists and weird drawings and--"

"They're
not weird!  It's just freehand, doodling stuff."

Pavan
raised his hand and said, "Oh my God."

I caught my
breath and looked at the paper he'd locked onto.

"You
bought
cabbage
?  Why would you buy cabbage?"

Snatching
my grocery list back, I said, "I like cabbage."

"It's
smells like balls.  Old man balls.  Old man balls after an old man
played handball at the YMCA with old man balls."

I eyed my
friend.  "There is some trouble in your past, son, that you have
never told me about.   You should talk to somebody about it.  Not me,
but somebody."

"I
tell you I never fucking ate cabbage in my past.  Nasty."  

The cats
darted through the room and up next to me on the couch.  As I pet them, I
felt myself moving closer and closer to sleep.

"So
the hot chick comes in here and goes through your lists and doodles.  Why
would she do that?"

"Dunno."

"Maybe
she took something, right?  Like your
Publisher's Clearing House
entry or something," he said, then rubbed the scruff on his chin that I
knew took, pitifully, three or four days to grow.  "What do you have,
some sort of paper-thing, that a hot, mean chick and a crazy, ninja black dude
would want?"

The cats
switched places, crossing my lap at the same time, and Pavan let out a laugh
like only a lifelong stoner can.

"Yeah,
they're cool, huh?"  I said, and then turned back to his thought.
 "Okay, a document, right?  What sort of document would I have
that people would want?"

"We
have the police report from the van."

"Public
record.  If they took it, we could get another.  If they wanted a
copy, they could just go pay for it."  Sleepy, I looked down at the
papers again. What was I missing?

Pavan said,
"Do you have anything, you save anything over the years that someone might
hear about and goes, 'hey I want that.'"

Pavan and I
went back and forth for a few more minutes like this and it got more ludicrous
at each step.  He was into it, sure, but I only was playing along to see
if it would ever end.  

I realized
it wouldn't.  Minutes later, still at it:

"Okay,
so did you ever get like a painting at a garage sale one time and give it to
your mom or something and, maybe, there's like a copy of the Declaration of the
Independents back, underneath--"

"No,"
I said.  "Seriously?"

Pavan
shrugged, finally giving up.  We made plans to get up when the sun was
warm-- neither of us are usually big alarm clock users-- and he headed upstairs
to the guest bedroom.  My body was still sore from the long trip in the
car but despite that, I'd planned on sleeping on the couch likely adding a few
more aches and knots to my body.

Truth was,
the kitties were all settled in and I didn't have the heart to move them.

Hours
later, it seemed hours later at least, the dream came back, the one on the day
of Ruthie's funeral.

But, the…
the reception was bad.  I'm not sure how else to say it, so there it is.
 The dream fluttered in and out, interrupted by other images, flashes of
light, moments of… water?

It was
familiar like a sort of déjà-vu.  Yet, even straddling between wakefulness
and sleep, I knew it wasn’t.  It's memory.  Memory searching for the
cracks, trying to come back.

So
strange.  After all this time, it was coming back.  Why now?

After the
crash, the one where I killed my sister, I had to recover from some head
trauma.  Not like a linebacker nailed me before the snap, more like the
entire D-line of a pro football team blitzed and hit me on the crown of my
head.

There were
a bunch of different names for it that they threw at me, which only told me
they really didn't exactly know what it was.  
Post-traumatic brain
injury
was one but so cumbersome I've rarely said it aloud.

The one I
hated the least was
retrograde amnesia
or just RA.  It was
unnecessarily explained to me that RA had hidden the memory of the accident and
events leading up to it.  I knew that's what happened to me because any
recollection of that day, that year and a lot of the previous year, were gone.
Not gone, hidden.  A blind spot.  All of it.  

I'd lost
the time from the crash all the way back to a couple weeks after I'd started at
Georgia Science Academy.  Returning there a couple times, trying to patch
together the previous years, shame would surge through me when a friend from
school would approach me.  Back then, I couldn’t recall more than two or
three people-- and then, still, with the RA, I barely knew them.  

Over the
past several weeks, though, so much was coming back.  

Soon, I’d
remember the crash, when I’d killed my sister.

Ruthie died
because I couldn't control the car we were in.  The pain, shame, pitiful
looks hurt and I wanted it to hurt.  

I'd failed
her.

Falling
deeper into sleep…

Another
flash, more clearly, more brilliantly and this time a sound-- a sickly
crack,
like an arm breaking.  

Years ago,
investigators cleared me of wrong doing, in part, because the one surviving
witness couldn’t remember what had happened.  The investigators chided me
when they'd learned I'd shunned some conditioning therapy that might help me
get my memories back.  Learned response sort of stuff-- think bells and
drooling dogs, rats in mazes looking for food-- that sort of thing.

One even
accused me of faking the RA or at least avoiding memory recovery to avoid any
prosecution.  He was a dick but he was doing his job, whatever.  But,
and maybe it's just me, if you killed someone you loved more than yourself,
would you
want
to remember that?

The pain of
shame, pity that I could handle.  Remembering the last words Ruthie ever
said or the sound of her head and body exploding against the steel car door-- that
I could never bear.  Maybe that means I'm a coward.  I don't care.
 Didn't want to ever remember.

But, over
the past couple weeks; I'd begun to see bit and pieces.  Flashes, sounds,
blurs of colors and knew that it was only a matter of time now: somehow a hole
had been poked in the dam and soon, the whole
damn
thing was going to
come flooding down.

I'd been
told by the nurses to stay away from beer and booze because alcohol is no
friend to the RA sufferer.  But, I didn't want those memories and drank
more the past few years than the previous twenty-three odd years combined.

Yet, still
here, it was coming.

Another
flash and that sickening sound… not a bone breaking--
crack
! -- it was a
thunderclap.  I'd been driving that night.  The moonlight or street
lights of the interstate formed into a long eye on the reflective surface of my
steering wheel.  Couldn't see the wheel but that eye, it stared at me.

Then,
everything was like shuttling through some video.

A blur
and then
I'm playing some
fighting video game with a friend at a pizza place… it's a restaurant near my
old college.

blur and
then
back is sore, hard
chair pressing into my spine

blur
it hurts, my back, but now I'm in the car
again

blur
back in class, like flipping through
baseball cars: it's professors, lectures, chatting girls up in the back of
class, smells, sounds…

blur
I'm in the car and still hear one of my
professors, lecturing.  Rain, I see the rain on the windshield now,
Christ
it looks like we're underwater
, but I still hear that chattering away in my
ear, in my head, it's all meshing into one moment, collapsing upon itself and
then buzzing becomes ringing, louder and louder,
it hurts
my ears.

W
hen I wake up, arms swimming at the air
above me, as if forcing myself to climb from the muck of the dream back into
the real world, my throat feels shredded.

My eyes
barely split open, my face and body is soaked.  Body with sweat; face with
tears.

Rummels and
Rummels have fled, and I don't blame them.

Of all the
times for these memories to fight their way back…
now?  
When some
maniac is torturing me, and I’m fighting to find some way to stay alive?

Maybe it
was just time.  That's why they were coming back.  Time to face it.