What It Takes (23 page)

They were going to ship him back to Kansas, to the Winter General Army Hospital, some Quonset huts in a camp near Topeka. There wasn’t anything they could do there, but it was policy: if they were going to die, they should die near home ... saved the shipping cost.

Bina was there when he got to Winter General on June 12, 1945. Bob had the nurses take his arm out and lay it on his cast, so his mother could see it. She’d steeled herself, but the minute she came into the room, Bina broke down in tears. When she saw the way he looked at her, she told herself that was the last time she’d cry in front of Bob. And she sat down next to him and touched his face.

She had to pick eight cigarette butts out of his plaster cast. She told her sisters: they’d used her boy for an ashtray on the train.

Bina moved into an apartment across the street from the hospital. She was there every day, to take care of Bob. When she was with him now, she was brave, but she’d sob on the phone to Doran: he was like a baby again ... she had to feed him with a spoon, wipe the drip from his chin. ... Bina washed every bit of him that was out of the cast. Bob was always so particular ... but the smell that came up from that cast! It was enough to make you retch! The nurses who’d fed him for the last two months had spilled bits of food down into the cast. It smelled like something died in there. Maybe something did. Sometimes she’d look at him and she had to run out of the room, to weep in a corner of the hallway.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” Bob used to tell her. He tried to be brave for her, too. “I’m gonna be back, good as before.” That wasn’t exactly what the doctors said, but if it was a matter of will, he’d make it. He knew what he had to do: get back on his feet, get his strength back. Then, he was going back to school, to play for Phog Allen. Maybe not this September, no, but he was going to play again.

As for the doctors, they talked about a long haul, chipping away bit by bit at the body cast, as feeling and movement came back to his legs, his left arm. As for the right arm, well, they didn’t say much. Even at best, it was going to be months before he could start to relearn the basics: to control his bladder and bowels, to sit up, maybe turn himself over. And longer still for bigger things, like walking to a bathroom, or bringing food from a plate to his mouth. That’s what preyed on him: he couldn’t do anything. He lay there, day after day, one day like the last, marked, if he was lucky, by some medical event, another few inches off the cast, or a moment’s success moving one leg, then the other, under his sheet.

In those moments of triumph, he was sure: he’d make it back; he was going to play again. Then there’d be days of failure, no progress, or worse, constant pain, a seizure, violent shaking when he tried to move. He itched. He felt dirty in his cast. He stunk. Then the bleakness would descend upon him, or the rage. Why him?
What the hell did I do so wrong?
What Bina saw, what broke her heart was, he was so ashamed. He was a boy who’d defined himself by the strength of his body, how he could run, how hard he could work, how much he could lift. When her sister, Mildred, came to visit, what struck her was the way Bob talked about himself, like a piece of garbage, a cake dropped on the floor. Mildred came in and saw him in the bed, on his back. The face looked like Bob, but the rest was plaster. She bent down and patted his chest, tried to kiss him. He cringed. She said, “I brought you a banana pie.”

“Good,” he said, but then he was silent.

She tried to smile. “Well, you listen to us jabber,” she said, and she turned to Bina. Then, she heard his voice:

“Don’t have anything to say, anyway.”

After that, he asked his mother to keep everybody else away. Doran and Bob’s sister, Norma Jean, drove the hundred and eighty miles east, every weekend. But Bina was there day after day. She’d always hated tobacco, but she sat by his head and held cigarettes to his mouth. A smoke was the only pleasure left to him. Sometimes she read to him, but she kept the papers away, in case there was news about Bud Smith. Bud was lost in the Pacific, listed officially “missing in action,” but no one from Russell, Kansas, would be fooled by that. They knew they’d get the bad news on Bud.

Bob’s KU housemate, Dick Finney, from Topeka, had also been shot down in the Pacific, and his mother used to stay with Bina at the hospital. Helping Bina with Bob took her mind off her own son. It was near the end of June when Mrs. Finney was called away to the hospital phone. Her husband was on the line: “We got a message from the War Department.” Bina couldn’t be much comfort to her friend. Bob had caught a fever, it wouldn’t leave him ... and the doctors had no idea what to do.

Bina sat helpless in the smell of the ward at Winter General, while the fever grew and took Bob away. All the progress, the tiny triumphs of movement, were lost. Finally, Bina called Doran in Russell: “You got to come down. I’m afraid he won’t make it through the night.” Doran and Norma Jean started racing east on Route 40. Police cars with sirens gave them an escort into Topeka. The Russell police had called ahead. When they got to the hospital, Bina was still in the room, but it didn’t matter. Bob didn’t know who was there anymore. The nurses kept a tongue catcher on Bob’s tray in case he went into seizure. A chaplain was hanging around in the hall, to be there, “in case ...”

Finally, the doctors decided it had to be his kidneys: he couldn’t make water, even with a catheter. His right kidney was full of stones, infected. They could take out the kidney, but not with this fever. It was measured at 108.7 degrees. They’d have to wait, try to force it down with the miracle drug of the age, penicillin. It could cut the infection and fever in a few days—if he could hold on a few days ...

Bob held on, and made it through the operation. The fever disappeared and the other kidney worked, and by fall, they’d chipped away the whole cast. Now they were trying to get him out of bed. They hung his legs over the edge of the mattress, but it made him weak with fatigue. It took days to get him on his legs, and then he shook so, with the pain and the strangeness, they had to set him back in bed.

When Bob would start to shake, Bina had to leave the room. But soon she’d be back smiling bravely again. Now only the right arm was in traction. Every day, they’d get him out of bed, and he could take a few steps before he got tired. He could still barely move, but the doctors said he could go home. There wasn’t anything more they could do. So Doran drove east and took Bob back to Russell. The neighbors watched from their windows, while the Doles got their boy into the house on a stretcher. The biggest, strongest kid from Russell High now weighed 122 pounds.

Bina and Doran put Bob in their bedroom, the front room with the French doors that led to the living room. They slept in the back, the children’s bedroom. They rented a hospital bed and a rolling tray. Bob liked to have those French doors open, while Bina rushed around, cooking and doing for him. Kenny was just back from the war, but more than ever, Bob came first. Bina would feed him, bathe him, dress him, comb his hair, hold his cigarette to his mouth, carry the bedpan back and forth, go to the bathroom with him. There weren’t enough hours in the day for all she wanted to do for him. She’d wake up at dawn thinking about what he could wear that would be comfortable to lounge in, and what she could cook, what he’d like, what would make the day special. She worked herself to the frayed edge of exhaustion, though she would never let Bob see that. And when Bob got down, Bina would crumble. Sometimes, with her sisters or her daughters, safe in the kitchen, where Bob couldn’t hear, Bina would cry like a baby. She’d stand at the kitchen sink sobbing. “I’m afraid we brought him home to die.”

At night, Doran would sit with Bob, read to him from
The Salina Journal
. Or he’d have Chet Dawson and his wife, Ruth, over to play bridge late at night, after the drugstore closed, so Bob could listen through the open French doors to news of the town and the farmers. Chet would call in the afternoon, say: “Bina? What’re you cookin’? ... Well, save some for me. I’ll be by sometime.” Bob didn’t mind the Dawsons, but he didn’t want anyone else to see him. He was so ashamed of the way he looked. There’d be time enough for them to see, when he was whole again, when he could play. That was the dream that kept him going. He was going to play ball for Coach Allen. It was more than a dream. It was a plan. He’d count off months in his head, what he’d be able to do with his arms and legs two months from now, four months, six ... how he’d start to run, build his endurance. ... But then, when someone came, even a good friend, he’d see in their eyes: “Poor Bob!” Their eyes made him see himself as they did ... “Poor Bobby Joe!” ... And then the plan was only a dream, a pipe dream.

Bina let him talk on about how he’d play ball ... whatever he wanted. What was the point of telling him anything else? For her part, talk of the future was bright, and immediate.

How about his favorite, liver and onions, tomorrow?

Bob, will you wear your new sweater this Sunday?

Or Christmas! ... Christmas was always a big deal in that house, and this year, it would have to be double-special. Doran always got the biggest tree. If it didn’t touch the ceiling, it was no good. And by the time he finished, that tree was a work of art. He’d trim off the uneven branches, and wherever the tree was thin, he’d drill into the trunk and insert the branches that he’d trimmed off before. Then, when he’d hang the icicles, he wouldn’t throw them on any which way. He’d start on the inside and work his way out in circles, every icicle just right or he wouldn’t be satisfied. Of course, that’s how Bina wanted it, too.

She’d wreath every doorway in the house with evergreens. And every table had to be covered with Christmas cookies. Not just the tables. The counters, the floor ... cookies everywhere, and all made with butter and cream, and frosted by Bina herself. Bina did everything for Christmas herself ... her own popcorn balls, with caramel coating, or red ones, or chocolate-covered. She’d make her own taffy, so the family could come for taffy pulls. And shopping! That year, when Bob came home, she was already shopping for Christmas in the summer. And she was going to Kansas City for special things. She had her list for Bob all ready in a drawer.

But by Thanksgiving, Bob was gone again. He went to a special Army hospital in Michigan, where they did modern miracles in orthopedics. It was Uncle Sam’s special center for paraplegics and amputees. Why should he wait around for Christmas?

More movement, more feeling in his left arm! The strength to walk on his own legs for ten minutes, twenty, an hour! To run! And a miracle for his right arm, to let him play ball. To be whole again. That’s what he wanted for Christmas.

But there was no miracle for Bob. On the fourth day before Christmas, he woke with a savage pain in his chest. It was a blood clot in his lung, the price of lying immobile so long. The doctors in Michigan started treating him with dicumarol, a vicious drug to thin the blood. It turned him, temporarily, into a hemophiliac.

But there was no choice. If the blood clot loosened from the wall of his lung and went to his heart, he was a dead man. He was strictly confined to bed again. This time he demanded that doctors tell him the outlook, straight. And they told him, it was fifty-fifty he’d live.

So he stayed in bed for weeks, then months, while all his strength ebbed away. As the new year stretched into its second month, he was weaker and weaker, and now the fever was back. The doctors tried cutting off the dicumarol. But the pain returned, and chills ... the fever was eating him away. So they started the drug again, with penicillin, but the antibiotic couldn’t stop this infection. He was coughing and rattling in his bed. Pneumonia was filling his lungs.

Bina and Doran drove back and forth from Kansas to Michigan, but they could see that the doctors had no plan. They couldn’t stop the fever, so they packed him in ice. They had Bobby Joe packed like a fish in the market! By the end of February, Bob grew worse and the hospital called again, but Bina couldn’t bear to go back ... when Bob didn’t know her, when the fever had him. So Kenny went to Michigan. He figured he was going just to pick up the body. It wasn’t even Bob in that bed. It was just a shell of him.

“Is there any hope?” Kenny asked. They told him about an experimental drug. The Army had the only supply, a thirty-day dose for three patients. Bob would be the third. Would Kenny authorize the treatment?

“Well, what happened to the others?”

One died and one went blind, but he lived.

“What are his chances without it?”

Without it, nothing.

So Kenny called home, and Bina and Doran came back to Battle Creek, to sign the form, to watch the treatment. They had Bob tied down in bed, so he’d be still while the new drug took hold. Doctors told them not to expect much. Even if it worked, there was no guarantee he’d know them, be able to move, get the strength back he had before. No one really knew what this drug would do. It was called streptomycin.

So, beginning of March, they put him on it. Four days later, he sat up in bed, asked Kenny to go downtown and get him a milkshake.

L
ANGUAGE, THE FIRST AND
most basic tool of culture, is also its truest mirror. Any culture worthy of consideration will have created language to reflect its special preoccupations. Eskimos, it’s said, have a hundred words for snow.

In fact, the power and precision of language is the surest pointer to a culture’s attainments, just as export of its vocabulary is the surest mark of its sway in the world. Gallic pride is engorged, with reason, when speakers of forty languages turn to French for verbs in the kitchen and nouns in the boudoir. And it is a distinction of undying greatness that half a world may call to God with names invented by a couple of small Levantine tribes.

Alas, it is the surest sign that official Washington remains a precultural swamp that it has not offered mankind any refinement of language to illumine its own constant preoccupation, the basic activity of its single industry, the work of its days and the spice of its nights, which is
knowing
. There are, in the capital, a hundred different ways to know and to be known; there are fine gradations of knowing, wherein the subtlest distinctions are enforced. But to discuss this art and passion, we have only the same bland flapjack of a verb that flops each day onto our plates, along with the morning paper: To Know.