by Jay Varner
That night, my father walked the bike onto our driveway. The sun had already set and the sky looked milky.
“The important thing is to not be afraid,” he said. “Just because you fell off doesn’t mean anything. You have to get back on and just keep going.”
For a few minutes, my father pushed the bike. I experimented with turning the handlebars, judging how far the bike would move. Finally, my father let go and I pedaled fast. This time, I felt like I was in control. I turned the bike with confidence, sharply and quickly, and rode back toward my father.
“I’m doing it,” I said. “I’m doing it!”
We finally went to Hershey Park in July, and my dad and I rode the Superdooperlooper together — twice in a row. We laughed and screamed as the coaster twisted around turns and careened down dips and hills. Afterward, my mother bought my father and me matching pins that read I SURVIVED THE SUPERDOOPERLOOPER! In the evening, we rode the Giant Wheel, like always, our last ride of the day. My mother took a picture of my father and me sitting next to each other, smiling.
She sat next to my father and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“This has been nice,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“How much time you’ve spent with us,” she said. “I wish it had happened for a different reason, but it happened.”
One night the next week, my dad came home with a maroon Zebco fishing rod. I held it in my hand, felt its weight, imagined casting the line into a creek.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you. When can we go?”
“I was thinking maybe tomorrow? How’s that sound?”
“It sounds great,” I said. I shook my head and hugged him. “This is so great, Dad. Thanks.”
The next morning, my mother made us ham sandwiches and packed cans of Mountain Dew in a cooler for my father and me. He laid the rods on the bed of his truck along with his tackle box. We drove to Kline’s Market in McVeytown. Next to the lunch counter, they sold wax worms, earthworms, and hooks for fishing. My dad bought two Styrofoam cups full of moist dirt and red worms.
The man behind the counter smiled. “Where are you two going fishing?”
“Little ways up past our house,” my dad said.
“That’s great, Denton. Seems like you’re feeling better.”
“Getting there. How much do I owe you for these worms?”
The man laughed and turned away, walking toward the sink in the back of the store. “Didn’t you see the sign out front? They’re free today.”
“Come on,” my dad said.
The man shook his wet hands in the sink and looked at me. “Just make sure you catch something.”
My father turned off the highway and drove over a gravel road. He parked and handed me my fishing rod, and I followed him down a narrow trail along a bustling stream. The water hissed and bubbled.
“See how the water’s dark in that spot,” he said. “That’s where the fish will be.”
“Really?”
“Yep. They like dark water. It’s cool for them in there.”
He placed a sinker on my line and a worm on my hook. He handed me the rod.
“Just drop it right into that spot,” he said.
I followed his instructions and then sat down on the bank next to him. His rod still lay on the ground.
“Aren’t you going to fish?”
“I’ve caught plenty of fish,” he said. “You need to catch one.”
His pager sounded. Loud beeps and tones. My dad stared ahead and looked as if he was holding his breath, waiting for the dispatcher’s voice.
“Two-vehicle crash on state route one zero three,” the dispatcher said. “Caller reports debris in the roadway just past Fisher’s Store.”
My dad grabbed the rod from my hands and quickly reeled in the line.
“Dad?”
The dispatcher continued. “One vehicle is on its roof with multiple occupants still inside. Other vehicle left the roadway and traveled down an embankment near the Juniata River. Their conditions are unknown.”
“Come on,” he said. He grabbed his tackle box and rod and then ran down the dirt path toward his truck. He tossed our gear into the back of his truck.
“Are you going?” I asked. “I thought you quit going.”
“Jay, someone might be hurt,” he said. “Don’t you want me to help them?”
He gunned the gas and the truck fishtailed on the gravel road. He flipped a switch on his dash and the siren wailed under his hood.
“Buckle up,” he told me.
When we pulled onto the highway, I looked at the speedometer — eighty miles per hour. We veered around cars in our lane. I held on to the dashboard, too scared to feel sad that our day together, our first time fishing together, had been ruined.
“It’s the middle of the day,” he said. “A lot of guys will be at work. They can’t go out on calls, so I have to do this. We’ll go fishing sometime later this week.”
He pulled into our driveway and slammed the brakes. “See you later,” he said. “Tell your mother where I’m at.”
When I closed the door, he sped away. I stood in the yard until I no longer heard his siren. My mother walked outside with a basket of laundry to hang on the clothesline.
“What happened?”
“Dad,” I said. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “He had a call. He left.”
In early August, he returned to Overhead Door, working only half days but slowly getting back to his normal life nonetheless. At the start of August, he bought a new Chevrolet Blazer — or, at least as new as he could afford: a 1985 model with seventy thousand miles. His truck had broken down for good. A few days later, he drove us to State College for some back-to-school shopping. As we crested a hill going into town, he pushed hard on the gas and sped up. The engine roared.
“What’s the matter?” my mother asked.
“I’m gonna be sick,” he said.
He swung the Blazer into a parking lot, opened his door, and vomited onto the pavement. Next to us, a woman sat in her car; she had seen all of it. She looked repulsed and shook her head, disgusted. My father saw her too.
“Guess I made her upset,” he said. “If she only knew what I’ve been through.”
He shifted the Blazer into gear and pulled back onto the road. My dad thought the steroids might have upset his stomach. Or maybe he had just eaten something that didn’t agree with him.
A few days later, during one of his routine checkups, his blood work showed low white blood cells again. Perhaps it was the medications, the doctors said. They gave him different prescriptions and ordered a bone-marrow biopsy just to be certain. I couldn’t understand why the doctors would do this again — he had just endured the transplant, and the cancer had been in remission before that.
“Can the cancer come back?” I asked.
“The doctors could only get ninety-nine percent of the cancer,” he said. “If they find a hot spot — “
“Hot spot?” This was the term he used to describe fires sometimes. Once the firefighters had extinguished a blaze, they would sometimes have to return a few hours later after the fire rekindled because of a hot spot.
“Hot spot means a place where there might be cancer,” he said. “But I’m going to be fine. This is just my body readjusting and healing.”
Still, I waited in fear for the results of the test. Nothing compares to news from a doctor — when just a few simple words can change everything. Each time the phone rang, my parents and I looked at each other, silently hoping the voice on the other end would deliver good news.
On an overcast afternoon in mid-August, my father rested on his recliner after work. He was flipping through the television stations when the phone rang. He stood, walked down the hallway, and answered the phone in my parents’ bedroom.
“Just pray that it’s good news,” my mother said.
The wait seemed to last f
or hours. Finally, my father walked back into the living room and sank into the recliner.
“That was the doctor,” he said. He lowered his head into his chest and sighed. “The shit’s back.”
“No,” my mother said. In just a few seconds, she seemed to crumple, doubling over, holding her hands to her face, rocking back and forth.
My dad looked at her. A tear ran down his face. “They want me to start chemo again next week.”
Chemo. The word lit a spark in me. I bolted outside, mounted my bicycle, and pedaled hard, so hard that my legs burned. I rode through the fields, the alfalfa lapping against my bare legs. Not more chemo, I thought. That meant more hospitals and another transplant. My father would be gone just like before.
“Just have faith in God,” I said. The louder I said it, the truer it would become. But I had said that the last time. I breathed harder and felt the anger wash through my blood.
“Just have faith in God.”
It became a mantra — I repeated it again and again, each time pedaling harder and faster, hoping that somehow my bike would lift off the ground and I could fly far away.
Twenty
My dad finished out the week working only half days at Overhead Door. He still slept for hours on the couch in the living room, covered up with a blanket despite the late August heat. The stoic defiance he had demonstrated before seemed less potent now — he looked depressed, not ready to muster the will for another round of chemo. On the Saturday before he was to leave for the hospital, his pager beeped while he slept. The tinny sound of the dispatcher’s voice gave the address of a structure fire in McVeytown. My dad sat up, swung his legs onto the floor, and tied his steel-toed boots.
My mother walked into the living room and shook her head. “Denton, do you really think you should go?”
He rolled his eyes and stood. “It’s right downtown.”
“You’re sick,” she said.
“I’ll be fine.” He walked outside, stepped into his truck, and drove away.
My mother folded his blanket, sat down on the couch, and then she cried, squeezing the blanket tight against her chest.
“He’s sick,” she said. “It’s not just the cancer. There’s something not right in his head. He can’t stay away from those fires. It’s like he’s addicted to it.”
My father returned home from the house fire hours later, stumbling as he walked through the door. His legs dragged, as if weight had been tied to his feet. He leaned against the kitchen counter for a moment and caught his breath. Then he peeled off his wet jeans and unrolled his sopping socks.
“What in the world did you do?” my mother asked.
My dad laughed softly. He explained that water from the fire hoses had flooded the basement of the house.
“Unfortunately, the circuit breaker was down in the basement,” he said. “We had to get down there and turn off the power.”
My father volunteered for the job, wading through the basement with a flashlight while water poured down his bunker boots. He found the circuit breaker and turned off the power. After he finished telling the story, he nodded, as if it were all in a day’s work.
“You walked in water to turn off electricity?” my mother asked. Her jaw tightened and I saw the raw anger in her eyes. “Are you stupid, Denton? Did you want to get electrocuted?”
My dad shrugged. “If I didn’t do it, it might have blown up. Didn’t want someone getting hurt.”
• • •
Just before going into the hospital again, my father came up with an idea to breed animals. He would raise pheasants and then sell them. Best of all, my dad said it was a project that he and I could work on together. Lucky gave my father an old incubator flecked with rust. It opened like a waffle iron and had indentations for eggs. My father bought thirty-one pheasant eggs and showed me how to care for them. Each morning and night, I would turn the eggs, allowing them to warm on alternating sides.
He even gave me a demonstration about the eggs, taking me outside and dropping a chicken egg on the ground.
“See the yellow?” he said. “That’s the yoke. With eggs like this, it means that a chick won’t hatch.”
He dropped one of his pheasant eggs onto the ground. Instead of yellow, the insides looked red and pulpy.
“See the blood? That means there is a chick inside of that one. If we keep it warm and care for it, all of them should be fine and we’ll have a bunch of pheasants.”
“And you want me to do this?”
“We’ll do it together,” he said. “But you’ll be in charge when I’m in the hospital. Think you can handle it?”
“You bet,” I blurted. I didn’t want to let him down.
In September, he returned to the hospital for chemotherapy. My mother and I visited him the first night. He watched television. The same machines as before sat next to his bed.
“Don’t worry,” he told me. “Remember what I told you about learning to ride your bike?”
“If I fall, get back on,” I said.
“Yep. That’s what I’m doing. The chemo didn’t work last time. This time it will.”
A few nights later, he suffered a seizure while he slept, ripping IVs out of his arms. After that, the doctors moved him to the hospital’s intensive care unit.
The ICU hallway seemed quiet and still. Large trash cans with biohazard warning labels on their lids sat outside the rooms. I peeked into some of the rooms — the patients all looked close to death. Machines sat next to their beds; there were hoses stuck in their mouths; family members huddled inside and cried.
My dad looked worse than I had ever seen him. He slipped in and out of consciousness — the doctors wanted to sedate him to prevent any more seizures. We sat for fifteen minutes and talked to him, unsure how much he could even hear. Before I left, I told him about starting fourth grade. I explained that my new teacher seemed kind and funny, that I sat near many of my friends. As I stood to leave, my father’s eyes opened.
I leaned toward him, trying to hear his weakened voice. He smiled, weary and tired, and said, “Be good for your mother.”
The next day, another seizure hit. This time, he nearly bit off his tongue. The doctors decided that sedation wasn’t enough; they induced a coma and my father became unresponsive.
My mother, Pap, Nena, and I all sat in a cold hospital room in the evenings and watched my father lie motionless in bed.
“Where are Lucky and Helen?” I asked.
“They come during the day while you’re at school,” my mother said. “That way, you and I can visit him at night. We’re only allowed to have four people in his room at a time.”
Within a few days, the cancer had spread and now burned inside his brain. The doctors slithered a ventilator hose down his throat. Each time the machine pumped air into his lungs, it hissed like a deflating tire. On the monitor, his heart line spiked and sank, bleeping with each beat. IV tubes pricked the veins of his arms. We stared at him until we cried, and then sat in silence until we cried again.
Sometimes Pap took me to McDonald’s for supper or to Kmart to look at the toys — anything that might cheer me up. One night he bought me my first watch, a Timex Ironman just like my father’s. I had always asked my father for the time and then grabbed his thick, strong arm to look at the digital numbers. When it was dark, I pressed a button on the side that illuminated the face in a green glow.
The next day, I held the watch in front of my father’s face as he lay on the hospital bed. His eyes were closed and his chapped lips separated by the white gauze wrapping his tongue.
“Look Dad,” I said. “It’s a watch just like yours.”
The beat of his heart bleeped on the screen next to the bed.
Somehow I thought that trying to be more like my father might bring him out of his coma. Throughout those weeks at the hospital, I had begged my mother to buy me a Honda CR70, a newer model of the same motorcycle my father once said that he had owned when he was my age. But my mother wouldn’t even all
ow me to page through the motorcycle magazines in the grocery store, let alone look at a real motorcycle, always telling me that I was too young for such a dangerous machine.
We continued to visit my dad in intensive care, and each time, we stood next to the bed and cried. Now, however, the nurses came inside and ushered us away soon after we arrived.
“How come we could visit him so much longer before?” I asked my mother.
“They want to make sure your dad doesn’t have any distractions,” she said. “Intensive care is for very sick people, and the nurses would rather not have many people in the room.”
But a week later, the doctors moved my father from intensive care to a private room. He had developed pneumonia and a tube that looked like the hose from a vacuum cleaner pumped air into his lungs. After what my mother had told me, I thought that moving my father from intensive care meant that he had improved. I looked at my father, unmoving in his hospital bed, and thought that in a few days he would come out of his coma. I would be able to talk with him again and hear his voice.
The next day, my mother and Nena sat in the living room and talked with me. I remembered when they had first told me about the cancer. Just have faith in God, Nena had told me. Now, I thought that they were going to tell me that my father had come out of his coma, that he was better, that God had blessed us with a miracle.
When I asked them this, my grandmother cried. She sat on my father’s recliner and her chest heaved so hard that she began to cough. I had never heard anyone cry like this before — miserable, mournful wails.
“They don’t think your dad is going to get better,” my mother said. She sat next to me on the couch and wrung her hands together. “The doctors did something called an exploratory operation. They wanted to go inside of him and look. The cancer was all through him.”
But that didn’t make sense. What about the faith we had in the doctors and in God? I remembered the day he learned that the cancer had returned: “Just have faith in God,” he said.
“But what about a miracle?” I asked.
The phone rang at 3:00 a.m. on a rainy late September morning in 1990. My mother, exhausted from worry and dread, answered. A nurse from the hospital explained that my father’s condition had worsened during the night, and the doctors believed he wouldn’t live much longer. In the dark of night, Nena and my mother drove to the hospital to see my dad one last time. Little had changed. He still lay unresponsive in his hospital bed and the respirator pumped air into his lungs. IVs were still hooked into his veins, but they knew now that the machines and medicine only delayed the inevitable — the cancer had poured from his bones like lava, washing through his organs and brain. His lungs had flooded with pneumonia.
