Stuck in Neutral

by Terry Trueman

  DAD: (Smiles, then pauses and grows serious.) We came to talk about your son, Earl, about Colin and what happened to him. Are you ready to discuss that?

  EARL: (Swallows hard and stares down at his hands, crossed in his lap.) It’s hard, but yeah, I’m ready.

  DAD: Why did you kill him, Earl?

  EARL: Nobody will ever understand this. I’m not saying it to be understood. I’m saying it because it’s true and because you have a son like Colin. Maybe it’ll help you and other people with children like Colin. I don’t feel now and I will never feel that I killed or murdered Colin. I did what I did with my son to end his suffering. (Earl pauses a moment and takes several slow, deep breaths. He looks up at Dad. The camera slowly closes in on his face.)

  If you love your child enough and you see him suffering horribly, and you know, both medically, ’cause of what the docs tell you, and in your heart, that his condition is hopeless, and that his life is nothing but pain and agony—if you love him enough, what do you do? Colin was helpless. It was like he was in the hands of invisible demons whose only reason for existing was to torture him. (A tear slowly slips out of the corner of Earl Detraux’s left eye. He wipes it off his cheek with the back of his right hand.)

  It had to stop. I didn’t care about what the laws or the cops or anybody else had to say about it … hell, they didn’t know, they weren’t there watching Colin, they weren’t in his head or in my heart. I didn’t care about what could happen to me. It had to stop. I loved Colin. I still love him and I’ll always love him. Ending his suffering was all I cared about. I did that, and whatever anybody else thinks of me, I feel that what I did is between me and Colin and his mother and our God.

  DAD: If you had it to do over again, would you do it?

  EARL: (Smiles a little.) I guess I’m supposed to say, “No sir, I’ve learned my lesson.” I mean, I would like to get out of this place someday, so I’m supposed to say that I know what I did was wrong … but the truth is I’d do it again this second. I’d do it every day they let me out if I saw Colin suffering. Yeah, I’d do it again.

  DAD: What if next week they invented a new medication or a new procedure that could have cured Colin? How would you live with yourself if that happened?

  EARL: Well, the docs said that wasn’t going to happen, but if it did, how would I feel? How will I feel if, at the end of my life, I’m cast down into Hell for all eternity for what I did?

  (Earl smiles sadly and looks away from the camera. He pauses and takes a sip from a glass of water on a table off camera, then sets the glass back down. He takes a deep breath.)

  You know, when I did it, I put the pillow over Colin’s face and held it there, not hard so as to hurt him, but just enough to cut off the air. I held the pillow and I prayed as hard as I could. I hoped God might intervene, like he did with Abraham, when he provided a ram and spared Isaac. Only I wasn’t praying for God to stop me; I was praying that Colin wasn’t suffering. He didn’t struggle against me at all. He was real still and quiet the whole time. (Earl pauses again and breathes slowly, steadying himself.)

  I prayed for God to let Colin’s suffering end and to take care of him for me. When it was over, when I felt Colin go, he lay there like an angel, so beautiful, and I could tell that for the first time in his life, I knew in my heart, that for the first time in his life he was without pain. I looked into his eyes and saw that he was gone. For the first time ever, I saw peace in his face. (Earl looks up and tears stream down both his cheeks. He is finished talking. His face, although tear streaked, looks calm and peaceful. He sits straight, with dignity and quiet pride.)

  DAD: Thank you for talking to us, Earl. That’s enough for today. (The camera clicks off and the screen goes blank.)

  We are suddenly back to Alice Ponds, who stands quietly for a moment, then speaks, her voice full of emotion. “We’ll be right back.”

  Our family room is utterly silent. I can hear Mom breathing. I see Paul and Cindy, speechless, staring vacantly at the TV as a lady on the screen talks about the bright whiteness of her wash. No one looks at me.

  I think about Earl and Colin, about Dad and me. What good is love if it isn’t about putting somebody else ahead of yourself? I don’t think Earl was playing God when he killed Colin. He believed that loving his son meant ending the kid’s suffering by any means necessary. Earl’s action and Dad’s decision to study it convince me more than ever that Dad is still working out what he should do with me. Dad knows that Earl loved his son, just like Dad loves me. I have this feeling, a gut feeling, so real that I can’t deny it, that right now Dad is trying to find a reason, any reason, not to kill me.

  But before Alice Ponds and her astonished audience and my dad and my sister and another commercial and all the rest can come back, the seizure I fought off a little while ago charges back into my head. There’s no stopping it this time as it begins its march up my spine, down my arms, and across my forehead. Crackle—crackle—crackle—that’s all the Alice Ponds I’m going to get today.

  12

  Months break over us.

  Shawn is dead,

  only he eats, breathes, defecates,

  trapped inside some kind of being

  that no one will ever

  understand.

  This seizure is a doozy. I hear Alice Ponds mumbling some questions to Cindy on the TV, but I find it impossible to stick around. Soon I am floating over the roof of our house, soaring up and down, eyeing the landscape, not really feeling anything—you can’t feel without your body—but experiencing everything in me and around me as pure joy.

  I love my mom, brother, sister, dad. Although I can’t connect with things through my senses, there is an energy inside me and around me; somehow all the things I think about and remember turn to joy. Pure joy: favorite movies, paintings I’ve seen and loved, music on compact discs, pinecones, chocolate pudding, the taste of smoked oysters (thank you, Paul!), the sound of motors, a bright-red 1966 Ford Mustang. I love the idea of books and the dusty smell of them on bookshelves, the scent of Comet in a stainless steel sink. I think of the way, on cool mornings in November, the sun pours in through the window, and covers my hands. I think about my baths every night with Mom dripping warm water from a big soft sponge down my back, the hairbrush passing through my hair after the tangles are all gone, all of it turning to joy. Life can be great, even for me. Even for me.

  I begin a slow, easy weave around the sky above our house and Mom’s little garden. I soar, glide. I know with a certainty beyond all doubt that I am a part of all of this and that I belong here. I don’t want to die! I want to live! I want to stay here and …

  I wake up in my body, tired. I never remember the actual moment of my shift back into myself from a seizure. One second my spirit is out surfing cumulus clouds or playing with the wind, and the next moment I’m back in my body again, awake, exhausted, “real.”

  This time as I arrive back in my body, I realize that I’m still in my wheelchair, in my usual spot, but the TV’s been turned off. Mom has left the room. Cindy and Paul are talking quietly, seriously. The first few words they speak, I can’t understand them. It sounds like they are talking with mouths full of sawdust. It’s not them, of course; it’s just that sometimes it takes a few moments for my senses to come back online after I’ve been outside myself.

  Finally, I understand Paul saying, “He doesn’t have the guts. He wouldn’t do it.”

  Cindy answers, “I know he wouldn’t; I don’t think it’s about courage, though.”

  “No,” Paul says, “maybe not. But Detraux was willing to give up his whole life for it. Dad’s too selfish for that. Besides, if Dad were willing to do that, why would he have waited so long?”

  Cindy pauses a moment. “Maybe he needed somebody like Detraux to show him the possibility?”

  Paul thinks a moment about it. “Maybe,” he says. He pauses, then speaks again, slowly; he seems to be picking his words carefully. “I liked what you said to Alice Ponds about Shawn, ab
out how hard it is.”

  I realize that Paul is talking about a part of The Alice Ponds Show that I missed while in my seizure.

  Cindy says, “I always feel so guilty complaining about it at all!”

  Paul nods agreement. “Yeah, I know.”

  They are both quiet for a moment.

  I’ve never heard them talk about me like this before. It doesn’t really hurt my feelings. I mean, I’ve always thought that they must feel bad about me sometimes. Still, it surprises me. I wonder how many other times they’ve had talks like this one.

  “Anyway,” Paul says, “you were great on the show. The things you said about how Shawn’s condition affected us all, how it changed us forever, that was such a great way to put it.”

  Cindy smiles, then speaks in a real stupid, nasal type tone, “Do you wanna kill your bruvver, too?” I can tell that Cindy is imitating one of Alice’s audience members.

  Paul bursts out laughing. “Wasn’t she amazing? You wonder if she spells it b-r-u-v-v-e-r.” He pauses, then laughs again. “And you asked, ‘Which brother?’ That was classic.”

  Cindy laughs too. “You should have seen Alice Ponds’s face then, I mean off camera. I thought she’d faint.”

  They are quiet for a few moments. Finally Cindy speaks softly, as though wanting to be sure that Mom can’t hear. “So you think Dad’s all right? You think Shawn’s safe?”

  My ears perk up at that one. They are talking about my safety. They’re thinking the same things I’ve been thinking.

  “Yeah, Shawn’s safe,” Paul says, sure and definite. “Even if Dad’s gone nuts and wants to do something, he’d have to come through me.”

  Cindy nods. She knows what that means. Actually, we both do.

  One day last summer I was out on our front porch sitting in my wheelchair. Paul, grounded that day, had missed the chance to meet friends at the Queen Anne cinema to take in a matinee. He’d stayed out too late the night before, and his punishment had been house arrest and rock-garden weeding. He was not in a very good mood. The rock garden starts at the front of our house and goes around the side. It’s flat in front and sloping on the side, filled with small plants: pansies, hens-and-chickens, I don’t know all the names. It looks hard to weed, uncomfortable and awkward. Never having weeded myself, I can’t say for sure, but the amount of time Paul spends grunting, groaning, swearing, and stopping to stretch his back always makes the job look miserable.

  Paul worked around the side of the house when two guys, both about his age, fifteen or so at that time, walked up the sidewalk to wait for the bus just outside our fence. My head/neck/eyes were not cooperating at all that afternoon, so I managed only a slight glimpse of the two strangers when they got to the bus stop. They joked together for a few moments, swearing a lot, loud and cocky. One of them said some mean-sounding stuff about a girl; the other one laughed.

  “Hey,” I heard one of them yell in my direction. “You know if the bus has come by or not?”

  His voice sounded nervous, even a little short, as though he felt angry with me.

  When I didn’t answer, the same voice snapped, “Hey! You there, Roller Derby,” He must have meant my wheelchair. “Has the bus come by or not?”

  His friend laughed and said, “I think he’s the short, stupid type.”

  “No duh,” snarled the one who’d spoken first.

  In the brief glance I’d had of them, one looked big and heavy. He wore a black T-shirt, black jeans, and boots. His friend was shorter but muscular and tough, his T-shirt a mesh muscle-type shirt that showed off his body. He stood about Paul’s height, three or four inches shorter than his big friend; they both looked rough: dirty hands, scruffy long hair, a little scary.

  “Hey, Ricky Retardo? Where’s the bus?” said the other voice.

  “Yeah,” the first voice laughed, “Retardo Montobon, where’s that streetcar named desire?”

  They both laughed. I’d have laughed too if I could. I thought their references were pretty witty. But then the first one said, “Why don’t we come up there and slap you around till you show a little respect?” He sounded mad, mean.

  “Yeah,” said the other voice. “If you can give us one good reason why we shouldn’t mess you up a little, we’ll leave your ugly ass alone. Otherwise …” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  His friend laughed again. None of their laughter sounded happy. Although I couldn’t see them, I heard them come in through the gate. My spot on the porch was only ten paces from the sidewalk. They were standing right in front of me before I knew it.

  “Hello, Ricky,” the first of the voices said. “Seen any buses around here? What on earth are you?” he asked, flipping his finger against my nose. “He looks like some kind of cartoon geek. You’re one messed-up geek there, bud.”

  A moment later I felt a warm sensation under my chin. It turned from warm to hot very quickly. My brain stem started twitching me around. I heard them both laugh.

  “Don’t like the hot stuff, hey, Mr. Wizard? Can you say ‘Bic lighter’ …?”

  That was the last word that voice said.

  I managed to catch only a glimpse of Paul as he came at them from around the corner. He moved so fast that he was just a blur. Their bodies seemed to explode when he hit them. I heard a muffled cry from one of the strangers and a huge gasp from the other. For the next minute the world filled with the sound of fists hammering into flesh. Within a matter of seconds I heard only the whimpering of one of the strangers, complete silence from the other.

  My head and eyes shifted, focusing over and beyond them, but even my out-of-focus view saw something horrible. The bigger guy did not move at all, just lay facedown in a puddle of blood. It looked like he’d been shot in the face, not Hollywood or TV “shot in the face,” but really shot. I thought he might be dead. The smaller guy looked even bloodier than his friend did; his left nostril looked torn open. One of his eyebrows looked half torn off too, and his nose looked flattened, his eyes bloodshot. He was terrified.

  The worst sight of all was Paul. He looked like a machine, pounding away at the guy still standing, turning away from him only long enough to kick and stomp the unconscious guy who lay motionless on the ground. I’d never seen such an expression on Paul’s face before: The veins in his neck looked ready to pop; his fists, already dirty from the weeding, were covered with blood. He looked like a monster, barely recognizable.

  In another few moments the shorter guy fell to the ground too, curling into a ball, whimpering next to his unconscious friend.

  Paul ran to the side of the house, leaving them there at my feet. I could hear the smaller one muttering, “Adam, wake up … Adam, please … oh God.”

  In only a few seconds, Paul came back.

  “You like fire, huh?” he muttered, so low and cold that it scared even me. “You’re going to walk up to my brother and burn him? You think you’re going to do that?” He kicked each of them, hard.

  “Burn my brother?”

  It wasn’t until then that I saw the gasoline can Paul had brought back with him. He lifted it up, quickly unscrewed the lid, and poured the contents onto them. The fumes almost knocked me out; waves of gas shimmered up from their backs.

  “You’re going to burn my brother and laugh?” Paul said as he finished emptying the can. He reached down and grabbed the arm of the smaller stranger. The guy began to whimper and tried to hide his hand under himself, but Paul jerked his arm out, then bent his fingers back until I heard a sickening crack. The Bic lighter fell to the ground. Paul picked it up.

  “You like fire, huh?” Paul asked.

  The guy who could still talk pleaded, “Please don’t … please … oh God … please.”

  Paul grabbed the back of the guy’s mesh shirt and wadded it up, jerking it close to his other hand. The guy’s body looked like a rag doll. The whole world smelled of gasoline.

  Paul held the lighter against the gas-soaked wad of garment. He flicked the Bic. It didn’t spark. His thumb went back t
o the little lever to press it once again.

  I heard a scream come from behind me: “Paul!”

  Cindy flew off the porch and pushed Paul, who fell back onto his butt. He was up instantly, grabbing Cindy by her shirt front. He pulled back his fist to hit her, but she screamed again, “Paul! Paul! Stop it! Stop!”

  Something seemed to snap in Paul. He blinked his eyes hard and stared at Cindy for what seemed like minutes, really only a few seconds.

  “Okay,” Paul mumbled, his voice shaky, even a little frightened. He patted Cindy’s arm. “Okay, okay.”

  Cindy looked down at the strangers. The big one sat up now too, both of them terrified, soaked in gas, one Bic misfire from death. They sat frozen, staring down at the ground.

  Cindy said, “What’s going on here?” She sounded just like Mom.

  Paul’s lower lip began to quiver as he spoke to Cindy. “They were going to hurt Shawn. They were going to burn him.”

  Cindy looked at them again and said angrily, “You better hurry up and get out of here. If I let my brother go, he’ll kill you.”

  Without a word the two strangers managed to help each other up and scurried out our open gate. In ten seconds they were gone. We never saw them again.

  I never loved and feared Paul more than in that moment.

  Yes. Cindy knows what Paul means when he says that Dad would have to come through him to hurt me. Cindy understands. So do I. Yet each of us knows too that Paul can’t really protect me forever. The fact is, if Dad decides that Earl Detraux is right, no one can protect me.

  13

  Shawn and I

  are alone in the darkness.

  Shawn and I are alone.

  We are disappearing.

  We are disappearing.

  It’s been five days since The Alice Ponds Show. Five days. I can’t stop thinking about my dad. Is my father going to kill me? When? How? What’s going to happen?