The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “Where’s Diana?”

  “The girl?” I imagined the nurse saying. “She’s in surgery.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “We hope so, of course,” the nurse imaginatively said. “But it’s much too early yet to know for sure.” Then she asked me if there was anything that I imagined I needed. Did I imagine needing something to eat? I said no, but I imagined I needed a drink of water. She got an imaginary glass for me, and some imaginary pills, and told me to pretend that I was taking them. Then she said that she imagined a doctor would be coming in soon to see me, and meanwhile, if I needed anything, just to push the button. Then she vanished. Later a man seemed to materialize at the foot of my bed, and appeared to introduce himself. I did not hear his name, but it seemed to me, unless I was mistaken or confused, or both, or delirious, or all three, that he said his name was Doctor Henry Fox. Anyway, this Doctor Fox told me where I was, he said that I was in Woodstock Hospital, then he told me how I had come to be there, he said that I had collapsed with “the girl” (as he called her) on the doorstep of a farmhouse south of Bridgewater, and that the noise of my collapsing had roused the occupants from their TV set and they had driven us, “the girl” on the rear seat of their car, I on the floor, into Woodstock. Now, said this Dr. Fox, he needed to ask me a few questions. First, what was “the girl’s” name? It seemed to me that I answered him by saying, Diana Whittacker. And it seemed he asked then, And what is your name? Day Whittacker, I think I replied. She’s your sister? he seemed to ask. I’m almost sure I said, She’s my wife. It seemed that he was giving me an unnecessarily long and skeptical look, but that he said simply, Oh. And then he asked, Do you carry Blue Cross-Blue Shield? I imagined successfully what the blue cross and shield were, and I said, Insurance, you mean? No, but don’t worry about that. She’s got—we’ve got—plenty of money. Then I imagined that he sat down in a chair beside my bed and in a friendly voice asked me to tell him about the accident. So I found myself imagining how it might have happened, that she had gone up to the cemetery to cut brush and when she didn’t come back I had gone up there and found her. This doctor said that he imagined that it was rather late in the year to be out camping in the woods like that, but I just said that my wife and I imagined ourselves to be ardent and dedicated campers and naturalists. He appeared to be smiling. Then I took what I thought was a deep breath, and conceived a question which I conceived that I asked him: “Listen, tell me the truth: is she going to live?”

  “I imagine so,” he exhibited the semblance of saying, making an effort to sound gentle. Then he contrived to tell me that she was still in surgery, and that he, being my doctor, not hers, could not even tell me how long she would be in surgery. In addition to the severe wound, there was also apparently shock, which had delayed the surgery. All that he could permit himself to seem to say at the moment was, he said, that her condition appeared to be quite serious.

  Then this Dr. Fox seemed to wave his hand and cause another woman to materialize. This one did not seem to be a nurse, although she was apparently dressed like one. Now, Dr. Fox seemed to be saying, We will have to fill out admission papers for you and your wife. Mrs. McLowery here [I thought he said] will ask you a few questions. I’ll check back with you later. I stopped him as he appeared to be vanishing and asked him, When can I get out of bed? We’ll have to see what can be seen, he said. Not for a while, it seems. Not for several days, I should imagine, he said. What seems to be wrong with me? I asked. Your temperature, apparently, is 103°, he said. You have suffered apparently from exposure, from what is thought to be fainting, from seeming overexertion and from God knows what else. Both of your lungs appear to be inflamed. The doctor looked as if he were smiling, though. I think perhaps your brain is probably inflamed also, he said. He appeared to give my shoulder a gentle punch with his fist. See you later, he said.

  The woman whom I had thought was introduced as Mrs. McLowery had some forms to fill out, and seemed to want to know our full names and our home address and a lot of other stuff. I had to do some quick thinking and use my imagination to fabricate most of it: changing the date of my birth so I would be older than Diana, making up the names and addresses of my parents and hers, and so forth. Then the woman told me that they apparently had not been able to find anything in the way of seeming identification in my clothing or Diana’s clothing. I said anything we had in the way of identification would conceivably be back among our ostensible possessions in our ostensible camp, and she would just have to take my word for it. Then the woman told me that because Diana had not appeared to be wearing any wedding rings, she, the woman, did not frankly believe, accept, swallow or allow, the appearance or semblance that Diana was my wife.

  “Have you ever tried to use an axe with rings on your fingers?” I thought to ask her. “No? Well, I can tell you you have to take your rings off before you can use an axe, or else you get blisters, and that’s what my wife was doing when she was shot, cutting brush with an axe.” The woman appeared to be momentarily uncertain or even abashed, and I told her that I resented the apparent insinuation that this lovely girl who might be dying this very minute if not already dead was not in fact my beloved wife. So the woman contrived to apologize and then finished filling out the imaginary admission papers. Before she vanished, I thought to ask her, “Is this going to be in the newspapers?” She said that apparently Woodstock didn’t have a newspaper, but the story might conceivably appear in the Rutland Herald, and might even be seen and picked up by the wire services, and she personally hoped it would be, because she thought it was a shame the way somebody always appeared to be getting killed by careless deer hunters, and the more people who knew about it, the more pressure would be invented to do something about these phantom hunters.

  She disappeared then, and I took on the semblance of lying there in dread, imagining that any moment now somebody else would appear with the bad news that Diana had not seemed to survive the operation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take it if somebody materialized with a sympathetic frown and started to speak. I would go unconscious again. I would shut it out and not listen. I would imagine I was deaf. I seemed to be trembling all over. What if they forced me to accept the fact that Diana was dead? What if I were unable to keep fleeing from reality? What would I do then? What will I do when they tell me she is dead? If she dies, I seemed to be telling myself, I will kill myself. If she dies, I will go back to Five Corners and hang myself from a maple tree.

  What seemed to be hours later—I had drifted off to sleep and other dreams and come back again, I thought—it was Dr. Fox, or whatever his name might seem to be, who appeared. Dr. Fox did not seem to be wearing a sympathetic frown when he materialized, but on the other hand he didn’t seem to be smiling either; I fancied that his years of breaking bad news to people must have taught him how to keep an expressionless image. “It’s over,” he said. Did I faint again? I must have, because I seemed to remember other dreams that appeared to go on for a while before I came out of them, to this other dream, to feel something that felt like he was shaking my shoulder and saying, “The operation, I mean. The operation’s over. She still seems to be unconscious, and is needing one hell of a lot of transfusions, but I believe the operation appears to be successful in terms of patching up the damage.” Then he attempted to tell me in detail a vision of what the damage had appeared to be; I don’t remember everything he said, but I visualized this close-up interior view of Diana’s right side with fragments of metal and blood scattered all over. Then he did not vanish but stayed and chatted with me a while, his hand exhibiting the appearance of patting my shoulder from time to time. It turned out that he seemed to be something of an outdoorsman himself, when he could get away from his practice, and we appeared to have several interests in common, particularly trees. But he started asking more questions, just trying to be conversational, but causing me some trouble, like where I had gone to school and what I was doing for a living and how long Diana and I had been on this “honey
moon” of camping out. I contrived to answer as best I could. I never mentioned anything about Daniel Lyam Montross. Then, as he was vanishing, I asked him where Diana was now. He appeared to hesitate. He said he was given to believe that she was in the recovery room. I asked him if there was any apparent possibility that Diana and I could share a room when she got out of the recovery room. He said he would see what could be seen.

  Later that day (night? I never knew just what time it was), after I’d been taken away and given some injections and chest X-rays and then wheeled back to my room, Dr. Fox seemed to be waiting for me along with two other men, one of whom appeared to be wearing a state trooper’s uniform with sergeant’s stripes, the other ostensibly a deputy sheriff. I felt as if I might be panicky at first, but Dr. Fox told me that they were making an investigation of the shooting, as required by law, and hoped to find some clue to the identity of the hunter who had shot Diana. They just wanted to ask me some questions, he said, but the next hour was an unpleasant fantasy for me. I think they were even a little suspicious that I might have shot Diana myself, and anyway they wanted to fingerprint me in case the weapon were found, and I think they did, at least I looked at my fingers later and saw what appeared to be smudges of ink on the tips. Then they asked for permission to search our camp. I wondered about that, trying to visualize if there was anything lying around loose which might be incriminating, or which might give away the fact that we weren’t married. Did Diana have her driver’s license or something in her purse? They would see the empty Pill package. And where was my draft card? I hadn’t even thought about it lately; for all I knew, it was in my stuff that got burned back in Dudleytown.

  “We’d just like your permission, fella,” said the state police sergeant. “If we didn’t have your permission, we’d get a search warrant anyway, no trouble, but if you don’t have anything to hide, why not?”

  “Okay,” I said, and they disappeared.

  The next day (the next night? the weather outside my window was dark), the next day, the next night, I had a nice vision, a sweet dream: the door of my room seemed to open, and a table was wheeled into my room, and on the table was the body of my ideal concept of a girl, but the body appeared to be alive. Dr. Fox and another doctor, and a couple of nurses, also materialized. One of the nurses strapped an imaginary face mask on me so that I wouldn’t be able to give Diana my imaginary pneumococcal germs, so I couldn’t kiss her. “Well, here she seems to be,” said Dr. Fox, “but we can’t leave her with you, just now. So have a look, and a few words, and then we’ll have to wait until you’re well enough so she won’t catch anything from you.”

  The four of them vanished for a minute to leave us alone.

  “Hi,” I think I said. “How do you seem to be feeling?”

  Apparently she could not lift her head but she could attempt to turn it toward me, and give me a semblance of a smile. “Hi, Day,” it seemed she said. “You saved my life, didn’t you? I’m going to live, aren’t I?”

  “You’re going to live a long, long time,” I said.

  She seemed to smile. “Do you think why I am?”

  “I know why you am,” I said.

  “Her story conflicts a bit with yours, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Fox to me later. “She claims the two of you are married, all right, but she says you are Mr. and Mrs. Daniel L. Montross.” He shrugged. “Well, I don’t care what your names are, but I don’t think you’re really Mr. and Mrs., now are you? I don’t care about that either. Still, I’d just like to know, for my own satisfaction, what you imagine that you’re doing. Two kids don’t camp out for ten weeks in a place like Five Corners at this time of year, regardless of how much they like the outdoors. Do you feel like talking to me about it?” So I told him. Again, I didn’t mention anything about Daniel Lyam Montross; a cool doctor like Fox would be the last sort of person to swallow anything along that line. I just told him that Diana and I had a great interest in American ghost towns and were doing research now into Five Corners. He said, “I shouldn’t think it would take that long to find out all there is to know about Five Corners. Have you talked to Mrs. Peary in Bridgewater?” When I said no, he told me about this old lady, Mrs. Peary, who had been born and raised in Five Corners and whose family was one of the last families to leave the place. He told me how to find her house in Bridgewater, in case I wanted to interview her when I got well enough to leave the hospital. Then, before leaving me this time, he gave me a copy of that day’s issue of the Rutland Herald, which carried this brief story:

  WOMAN IN PLYMOUTH SHOT BY DEER HUNTER

  Mrs. C. Day Whittacker, 22, of Dudleytown, Conn., is listed in critical condition today in Woodstock Memorial Hospital after receiving an apparent gunshot wound at the Five Corners cemetery in Plymouth. State Police have found no clues to the identity of her possible assailant.

  Mrs. Whittacker, who was said to be camping with her husband in the area, had apparently been clearing brush with an axe in the abandoned cemetery when the injury was thought to occur. She was discovered there later by her husband, who carried her on his back a distance of some four miles to the nearest house, that of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Tindall of South Bridgewater, who transported the couple to Woodstock Hospital.

  Mr. Whittacker is also in Woodstock Hospital, where doctors say he is recovering from exposure, bronchopneumonia and what is said to be nerves.

  Mrs. Whittacker was hit in her right side with what appeared to be a 30–30 bullet fired from an apparently considerable distance.

  Mrs. Lucille Johnson of Pomfret, speaking on behalf of the Windsor County Gun Control Society, remarked, “This senseless killing should serve to renew our efforts to have hunters in this county submitted to more rigorous tests and licensing procedures.”

  Quite often Dr. Fox would drop in for a visit, not just to check up on my condition but because he really seemed to enjoy talking with me. We became good buddies, and talked about everything under the sun. I was almost sorry that I would have to leave the hospital and might never see him again. He seemed to be an extremely intelligent person, and was a storehouse of information on any subject. I had no reservations about expressing all my real feelings to him, and I almost decided to tell him about Daniel Lyam Montross. I felt that he would probably understand, and wouldn’t laugh at me. But somehow I still felt that Daniel Lyam Montross was something private between Diana and me, and shouldn’t be shared with anybody. So I never told him anything about that subject. I did tell him about our time in Dudleytown, and how the presence of those Jesus freaks had caused us to get evicted. And I told him that it was our intention to go on exploring other ghost towns. He said I’d better pick one down south somewhere because winter was coming on.

  One time I asked him if he had ever had the feeling that he was the only person in the world, that is, that he was the only “real” person and everybody else was imaginary. This was an idea that had been bothering me a lot, I said. He laughed and said he imagined that everyone must have had that notion at one time or another, including himself. Then he told me about a philosophical theory called “solipsism” which derived from Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” idea, and which could be expressed as “I think, therefore I am. But because I am, everything else is only what I think or imagine.” In a joking mood, Dr. Fox even coined an imaginary disease, “solipsitis,” and he gave me that familiar mock-punch on my shoulder and said, “That’s your real affliction, Day. Solipsitis. And we can’t cure it.”

  But soon after that, Dr. Fox apparently decided that I was well enough not to be quarantined from Diana. “I should imagine solipsitis isn’t contagious,” he said, and he arranged for another bed to be put into my room, and for her to appear in it. She still seemed to be very weak, and because of gastrointestinal damage could not have food, and had to have her nourishment intravenously. Ironically it was Thanksgiving Day, and our first meal together was Thanksgiving dinner, but she just had to lie there and watch me eat my turkey because she couldn’t have any
. She was still often in pain, and had to take injections when the pain got bad, and in order to sleep. But she told me that just holding my hand was better than an injection. There was a television set in our room, but we never turned it on. When we didn’t feel like talking, we just lay there in our beds, not far apart, holding hands. I knew that we were often thinking about the same thing, but she was the first to put it into words:

  “Do you miss Daniel? Have you been thinking about him?”

  I said of course and she asked if I would mind if she put me to sleep in order to “reestablish contact” with him, and I thought it would be stronger proof that both he and she existed if she could do it under the circumstances. So I said all right.

  When she brought me back, Dr. Fox was standing in the room, giving me a rather puzzled look, and he said to me, “So that’s how you wake up.” Then he said, “There’s a man on the telephone, long distance from New Jersey. Says his name is Chuck Whittacker, and a friend of his called him about the story in the newspapers of the shooting, and he wants to know if by any chance you might happen to be his son who ran away from home early last summer. Says his son’s name is C. Day Whittacker and he would be nineteen years old. Says his son is tall and skinny and brown-haired. And do you happen to have a birthmark on your left thigh?” Dr. Fox lifted the sheet and lifted my bedgown and looked at my left thigh. “Well,” he said. “So what shall I tell the man?”