This Is Only a Test (11 page)

Intrigued, Commander Bowser wrote the Baltimore Fire Works Company: “Will you please advice [
sic
] us if you have available for demonstration purposes any small incendiary bombs. Also, quote us prices, quantities and delivery date.”

There is no evidence Fort Wayne ever purchased a bomb, nor is there evidence we ever experienced one.

A few years back, while driving along Jefferson Boulevard, I momentarily lost sight of the city's one and only skyscraper. Thankfully, it remained intact—just hidden in the fog.

Q. Do you feel that because of our inland location, the possibility of an air raid is very remote and that all these preparations are in vain?

A. I certainly do not want to say such a raid is impossible here, nor do I want to say that it is sure to come. I do
however know that if we are raided these precautions and this training program will be invaluable. You don't carry fire insurance on your home because you are sure you will have a fire. You carry it for protection when it might be needed.

If you look hard enough in Lindenwood Cemetery, eventually you'll stumble across the gravestone of Victor F. Rea, the man responsible for creating the Rea Magnet Wire Company and bringing Hitler's name to every citizen's lips. If you look harder still, you'll find Ryan Woodward's grave as well, a slab of perfectly polished black marble, photos of him and his family laser-etched into the stone. Fourteen flags surround the monument, and even though the burial took place in 2007, at last glance there were still fresh roses resting their petaled heads against his name.

I wonder what room we were in at Lindley Elementary when Ryan and I first learned of Hitler, learned what a bomb was, what small arms were, wondering if we would ever die by them and if so, who would remember our names.

The day Truman announced the end of the war—August 14, 1945—the Fort Wayne newspapers were on strike. Airplanes buzzed over the city, though they did not drop bombs.

They dropped leaflets.

JAPAN SURRENDERS! TUNE INTO WGL FOR NEWS
.

According to local newspapers, Fort Wayne's children crouched over the fallen materials and struggled to make out the words. When they finally did—sounding out every last syllable—the
children ran up and down Bowser Avenue banging pots and pans, no longer fearing even fear itself.

On Calhoun Street, cars honked as bells rang from the spared church steeples, while not far away, the GE symbol re-lit the sky.

For the first time in a long time, Fort Wayne's newspaper's had good news to report

Q. If we were to be subjected to a bombing attack, what type bombs would probably be used against us?

A. We would first, in all probability, be bombed by Incendiary Bombs.

But we were not.

We were just prepared for it.

You, too, have observed the drama of self-defense.

TEMPERATURE UNKNOWN

The fever strikes, and we, too, are struck by it, my wife and I suddenly jarred awake by the same cold sweat that's worked into Henry's small frame. In his eighteen months (541 days), this is the first of these sweats, and therefore the scariest. Mainly because it is without cause, an unexpected overture to an illness we can't yet see.

All of this takes place a thousand or so miles from our home, in a cabin in the woods in the Poconos. We'd found ourselves there at my mother's suggestion. “A nice halfway point,” she'd argued, “so we can spend a little quality time together.” I agreed to the trip, not because the Poconos were a halfway point by any measure, but because I'd recently endured an existential crisis brought on
by the purchase of a minivan, and a road trip, I figured, might help me acclimate to my new life in the slow lane.

Once the decision was made, I immediately began poring over maps, a maniacal Magellan hell-bent on arranging a 2,800-mile road trip from Wisconsin to the east coast. As a result of my overzealousness, what began as a three-night stay in the Poconos quickly morphed into what we'd later call a “cross-your-legs-because-I'm-not-pulling-over” death march, complete with stops in Hartford, Salem, and Niagara Falls. We had no vested interest in any of these places, but I was lured by the open road.

We are the proud-ish owners of a minivan
, I reminded myself.
Shouldn't we at least see what this baby can do?

What that baby did was safely transport us to a resort in the Poconos, which I will politely describe as “rustic.” Perhaps I am being polite even to call it a resort. The place was a shadow of its former grandeur, a towering farmhouse surrounded by paper-thin cabins, each in a unique state of disarray. We occupied one such cabin when Henry's cries burst through the night, stirring the surrounding wildlife, or at least my parents in the next cabin over.

Exhausted from the drive, I remained in my stupor throughout his first wave of wails, trapped in a half sleep that, for eighteen months, I'd persuaded myself was all the sleep I needed. Meanwhile, Meredith—for whom sleep has become a hypothetical—walks with her arms outstretched toward the crib, my zombie bride tripping over suitcases and still-wet swimsuits on her way to our burning boy.

She presses a hand to him, and he sizzles.

“He's hot,” she whispers.

“How hot?” I ask.

“Hot-hot,” she says. “
Scary
hot.”

There they are again—the words that stir me awake. Suddenly I am groping for the thermometer, running my hands over countertops and patting the carpet. I frisk suitcases, unzip zippers in the dark, turn inside out every last sock on the off chance the thermometer is hiding.

The thermometer, apparently, is hiding. At least from me.

“So what now?” I ask. “Do we turn on the light?”

“Do you want him up for the next three hours?”

The tone of her voice indicates that we do not, so I try a new tack: relying on the glow of my cell phone screen to sweep the room for the thermometer.

“Just . . . forget it,” Meredith shouts over his wailing. “Grab a wet washcloth, would you?”

Washcloth
, I think,
washcloth, washcloth
 . . .

I repeat the word all the way to the bathroom, then flick on the light, startling myself with my reflection.

Jesus!
I think, staring hard at the sallow-faced creature staring back.
Aren't you supposed to be on vacation?

But much like sleep, vacations, too, have become hypotheticals—another concept my wife and I once knew but now know better.

I turn the faucet and watch the washcloth bloom in my hands.

Meanwhile, just a wall away, Henry continues his ear-splitting vibrato. My blood pressure rises as he moves up the scale, until at last he hits a pitch I never knew possible. In that moment—as he holds his note—what I want most in the world is to take cover beneath the cool side of my pillow. But since I'm the father and this banshee is allegedly my son, I know my role is to provide protection, not take it.

Washcloth in hand, I bypass my pillow and start the walk toward his crib.

Why can't this be something simple?
I wonder.
A bee sting or a bear attack? Something we know how to fix
.

103.1

The following morning, Meredith taps her hand to the glass of a Walgreens as the employee unlocks the door.

“Good morning,” the employee says.

It isn't. Our boy is feverish, after all, and we are in need of a thermometer.

Meanwhile, in my own attempt to keep his body cool, Henry and I search for deer in the windblown field directly behind the cabin.

“We're looking for
deer
,” I say, waiting for him to parrot it back.

“Deya,” he says.

“Deer,” I correct.

“Deya,” he says again.

This goes on for quite some time.

My parents exit their own cabin, and suddenly half the resort knows of Henry's condition.

“He'll be fine,” I assure every well-wishing stranger. “Just a fever, nothing more.”

By the time Meredith returns, we have seen no deer, though I have undergone any number of religious conversions, promising everything but my firstborn in exchange for my firstborn. I cash in my karma, then pray to all the smiting gods that they might take their smiting elsewhere. I barter, I bargain, I beg. I swear off every last vice that I know.

As I carry Henry back into the cabin, as we insert the thermometer into his rectum, it becomes clear that my prayers have missed their mark.

Our hearts sink as the numbers continue to climb.

99 . . . 100 . . . 101 . . . 102 . . . 103.1 . . .

Henry laughs as the thermometer beeps, while Meredith and I look to one another.

And then, the afterthought amid all of this:

“Hey,” I say, “happy five-year anniversary.”

99.3

Suddenly, like an Old Testament miracle, our prayers are answered. By mid-afternoon the fever has broken, his temperature dropping to near normal. There is no explanation for the change. I have sacrificed no rams upon any altars. In fact, we have done nothing but wet washcloths and search for deer and hurl our prayers to the sky. Thankfully, one of the prayers seemed to have stuck, though it prompted a new fear: Which promise to God do I now need to make good on?

During Henry's afternoon nap we grow bold, Meredith and I charging my mother with babysitting duty while we slip off to a nearby waterfall we'd discovered in the woods.

The previous night, as I searched on hands and knees for the thermometer, I'd considered carrying Henry to those falls. At 3:00
AM
it seemed logical, imperative even—no better way to break the fever than by drowning it in a stream. Thankfully, sounder minds prevailed, and rather than a nighttime hike down a ravine with my son, we made do with the washcloth instead.

Now Meredith and I take that walk without him, slipping down the slope until our sandals return to flat ground. I unpack
the wine and cheese and chocolate atop a mossy rock and we clink plastic cups to our marriage.

“Let's make a wish,” Meredith says, “for anything in the world.”

We close our eyes, take a sip, and wish for 98.6.

99.5

Thanks to my white-knuckled driving (not to mention my high tolerance for backseat screeching), we make it to every last stop on the itinerary. In Hartford, Henry's screaming gets him kicked out of the Mark Twain house (“A regular Huck Finn,” I joke). He fares better in Salem, where we remove ourselves on our own accord from the good ship
Friendship
docked in the harbor.

Henry's best behavior occurs in the place we need it least: at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where thousands of gallons of roaring water immediately lull him to sleep.

After surviving all of this, we pull back into the driveway, where I promise myself to dedicate the rest of August to not going anywhere. Twenty-eight hundred miles have left us weathered, and though the minivan has performed admirably, we know it's time to let that baby cool.

From here on out we walk
, I proclaim, and for most of that month we do.

Thankfully, we live just a few houses down from a playground, which satisfies most of Henry's hierarchy of needs. And what needs we can't fulfill in the sand, or on the slide, or in the swoop of the swing, we find in the river instead. This, too, satisfies our walking requirement. We regularly march our swimsuited bodies down the hidden path toward the river's inlet. It's a freshwater paradise, a shaded glade once used to float timber into the river in the days when timber still ruled this town. Now, all that remains
are the splintered pylons protruding like spikes from the sand, each of which Henry hugs while trying to keep from tumbling into the water.

Amid all this summertime fun I forget about his fever, and when it returns in mid-August—lingering for well over a week—we just continue our afternoon swims as if nothing has changed.

What this boy needs
, I think,
is cool waters
.

It is a theory I'd nearly put to the test during our burning night in the Poconos. There, in that strange place with the waterfall so near, it had seemed the only logical choice.

And now, though we are closer to home, it still seems worth a try.

After all, if this fever refuses to reveal its source, what choice do we have but to exorcise it by equally mysterious means?

For weeks, I return Henry to the stream under the auspices of play.

“Shall we play?” I ask as I tug his trunks over his thighs. “Let's just go for a little play in the water.”

“Wawa,” he says.

“Water,” I correct.

“Wawa,” he says again.

99.5

Despite the stream's best efforts, we cannot break our boy's fever. Cannot even lower it a tenth of a point. Though his temperature is hardly extreme, it is nonetheless troubling—proof of some cog out of alignment.

I take to the phones, calling nurse after nurse like a seasoned telemarketer. I beg them for answers, and when none are given, I beg for a doctor instead.

Fine
, a nurse finally relents.
We'll set something up
.

Upon our arrival at pediatrics later that day, the nurse begins with Henry's temperature. Henry's eyes roll across his brow as she sweeps a path across his forehead.

As the nurse peers down at the reading, I await confirmation that all my worry was reasonable, that I was right to advocate so fiercely on his behalf.

“Ninety-eight-point-six,” she says, jotting the numbers down on her sheet. “Right this way for the doctor.”

As a result of his perfect reading, the doctor has a hard time taking me seriously. He has seen parents like me before.

“Viral,” he says. “It's probably just viral, and it'll pass.”

I don't believe him. Don't believe the nurse, either.

They're in cahoots, I reason, part of some grand conspiracy to mislead parents into thinking their children healthy.