The Book of Days

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  The possibility of poison not only made life more interesting, it was pretty much essential.

  It was true he wore the plastic jacket to protect himself– disease was rampant, the possibility of infection a serious one, he’d read it in the papers. But poison was cleaner, mathematical, a choice on the wheel, a roll of the dice.

  After a few months he grew tired of all the random trips to drugstores and grocery stores, the extensive planning, the sleight-of-hand. Around his apartment he filled cereal bowls full of medicines, his own special cure a random prize.

  A few weeks later they found him naked among the colorful capsules, his mouth full of grins, his hands full of risk.

  OCT. 6

  1973: The Yom Kippur War begins.

  On one of his calendars the October picture showed a narrow dirt road receding into the distance.

  One of his neighbors told him that a man had been in town asking questions about him.

  A man leaves his wife and children and takes a cross-country train trip. He explains to them that his new knowledge of geography will make him a better provider.

  A man leaves his wife and children and takes a transatlantic cruise. He explains to them that water is the source of all life, and when he returns to them their lives will be immeasurably improved.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes a traveling Bible salesman in the Southwest. He explains to them that salesmanship is important if you want to get into heaven.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes a king-size bed with scarlet pillows. He explains to them the importance of sleep to a close-knit family life.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes an eastbound ’52 Ford with one bad wheel. He explains to them how everything’s gotten worse since the heyday of Route 66.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes a bridge in poor repair.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes a paperback western with the last fifty pages missing.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes a dead spaniel with two empty eye sockets.

  A man leaves his wife and children and becomes an empty cupboard with four dead flies.

  A man leaves his wife and children and no matter how much he pleads, how much he tearfully explains, they stubbornly refuse to understand.

  OCT. 7

  1849: Poet, lecturer, and newspaperman James Whitcomb Riley is born.

  1942: FDR promises US will join investigations of war atrocities after the war.

  Now that Cal thought his family might have sent somebody to look for him he found himself spending a lot of time away from the cabin. Actually he almost hoped the fellow who’d been asking questions would find him and drag him back where he belonged. Of course he couldn’t know for sure that Linda would even take him back. And certainly he hadn’t learned enough, hadn’t healed enough.

  One of the places he liked going on these long walks was up the hollow on a narrow dirt trail to Hermit John’s shack. It had been a road back when he was a teenager, but now it had bushes and trees growing in the middle of it, and floods had washed parts of it away and put stones down in the ancient ruts. If Hermit John ever came out of there it would have to be on foot or on horseback.

  Hermit John had always kept pretty much to himself, just him and his son Roy who had been born severely mentally handicapped. People in town had referred to the pair as “the hermit and his feeb.” Cal had always liked Roy, and he’d always found Hermit John highly entertaining with his stories and his accent so harsh and broad that it became nearly a kind of poetry.

  When he got to within a few yards of the shack he was pretty sure it was abandoned– it leaned crazily to one side and there were at least twenty holes in the tin and shingle roof– but then he saw Hermit John sitting on the porch just like the last time he’d seen him decades ago: a little red sack of a man with bulging eyes and almost no hair except for bushy sideburns.

  “Mr. John!” he called, the polite way to greet him; no one knew his last name.

  “Ay-yuh,” the hermit grunted.

  “You recognize me?”

  “Why course you the boy what left us. Had the momma with the mumblin’ hart.”

  Cal came up to the porch and eased down on the step below Hermit John, which put their heads at about the same level. “How have you been? How’s Roy been?”

  “Far,” the old man said, gazing down the hollow. “Purty far. Wunt beleeve sich a feelin’. Purty, purty far.”

  Cal hesitated, then, “Well, that’s good news … I mean they grow up, I’m learning that one. Even Roy, and I know that’s not what you ever expected. But it’s good for Roy, I expect.”

  The hermit just stared at him, a confused look on his face. “I heard ’im raspin’, out thayr in the madder. Raspin’ an’ clackin’ like a hurt chick. Other fellers out the high school, they’s round early in theyr yeller car, with theyr wimmern-folks out struttin’ callin’ out hallylooyers like they’s preachers o’ the healin’ kind. Feeb, they callin’ ’im.”

  “Roy.” Cal looked away from the face made suddenly ugly in its earnestness.

  “Why they do wha they do? I dunno. Some folks roun here put a pole through a hosses belly las yeah jes fer fun, I dunno why.”

  “People are capable of anything, Mr. John. Someday I’d like to explain about that to my kids, if I could find a way that wouldn’t scare them.”

  “Scare em … scare em,” the hermit recommended. “Purty far, tha was the thing.”

  “They scared him away from here? Those high school boys scared Roy away? And you haven’t seen him since?”

  But the hermit was looking past him, as if he wasn’t there. “Sees ’im alls the times, I do, mah little Roy. I sees ’im. Sich a purty far. Tha was the thing. I walked on down the madder, I did. To see it. Dint know what it was. Jes a purty far.”

  Cal felt salt lacing his tongue. He eased away from the hermit, wishing he hadn’t come, thought about running back down that path away from there. But he could barely move. “Mr. John …”

  “Purty far. My boy. Got closer I cud smell the gasoline in the madder. And I had me this feelin’. And thar my boy was afar, sich a purty far.”

  OCT. 8

  1918: Sergeant Alvin York single-handedly kills 25 and captures 132 German soldiers.

  He’d always wanted to be a hero. Not a moral or a social hero, really. Only physical heroes were pretty much accepted at face value. Their motives went unquestioned.

  After all this time it embarrassed Cal that this fantasy of becoming a hero was still there. But becoming a hero in his children’s eyes was the only possible reason he could imagine they would have for ever forgiving him.

  So many children doubted their parents’ love even in the best of circumstances. But if a parent were to risk his own life for his child– who could doubt that kind of devotion?

  His son Parker is trapped under an automobile. With the adrenaline strength he’s read about in ‘Strange But True’ he lifts the car from his son before serious damage can be done. He receives a grievous and permanent back injury which will keep him in a wheelchair for life, but the trade-off seems only fair. His son, of course, adores him to the point of spontaneously delivering public speeches concerning his father’s bravery whenever he has the chance.

  Or: his daughter Jennie is being chased by a wolf. He does not pause in his fantasy to consider where such a giant wolf might have come from– he is too busy leaping into action because, of course, he values his daughter’s life far above his own flawed existence. He thrusts his hands into the wolf’s mouth just as she is about to be bitten, losing several fingers in the process. In the hospital she is at his side constantly, bursting into tears whenever she is forced to leave the room. She also sticks by him through the many painful weeks of physical therapy.

  In his imagination he has just put his children through terrible trauma and pain, all so that they might have the opportunity to forgive him his weaknesses. Heroic fiction
, he concludes, is not terribly moral. And heroes do not necessarily make good fathers.

  In another world, which may be the real one but he can never be sure, a father is willing to die for his children but is never given the opportunity, for which he is grateful. He is seen as a comical and blundering figure by his children, but not without some affection. They hate him for what he does sometimes and sometimes they are both resentful and frightened of him.

  They will never understand how much he loves them, despite whatever cowardice or bravery he might have displayed. Never. He thinks that fiction writers must be very sad sometimes about the things they know, but cannot change.

  OCT. 9

  1890: Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson is born.

  1922: Karel Capek’s play R.U.R., which introduces the word

  “robot,” opens.

  Cal wouldn’t have let the woman in if he hadn’t been so sick. In fact, he didn’t realize he’d let her in until suddenly she was there. Shimmering, like some sort of celestial apparition. He’d woken up with a terrible headache that morning, the “fuzzy” head he had once a week but with a lot of pain this time. He’d staggered to the door and found her knocking there. He told her he didn’t want any and then turned away, went over and flopped down on the couch.

  “I knew your mother,” she said, suddenly there and standing over him, something cradled in her hands, “and I know she’d want me to talk to her only son about the Lord.”

  “Ma’am, I really …”

  “Children need their daily doses. Their daily doses of food, medicine, love and the Lord. You have children of your own?”

  Because she’d mentioned his kids, he had to listen to her. “Looks to me like you’ve been sitting around this house too much, thinking too much. Sometimes you just have to let the Lord do your thinking for you. Whenever I have a problem I can’t solve, I just let the Lord do the thinking, and everything turns out fine.”

  The thing in her arms looked like a bowl. She kept shoving it toward his face. It had a red cloth covering it. Its aroma was overpowering. Some sort of baking, cinnamon dough or something. She kept shoving it into his face. The smell of it was like a punch in the nose. His stomach rolled. “Please,” he said. “I can’t eat anything just now.” He crawled backwards across the couch away from her, feeling desperate.

  “But I know what you need!” she cried. “You need the Lord’s brain. All these people out there in the world, drinkin’ and crimin’ and sinnin’ their lives away, they’re lost until they get the Lord’s brain, let the Lord’s brain take over. It tells them what to do! Here, here, here …”

  He was going to be sick. He kept moving his eyes around, but he couldn’t escape her. She kept shoving this thing into his face.

  Finally he looked down. The cloth had fallen away. And inside the bowl there was a brain. Not quite like other brains– it was white as snow, and shiny, but with its shape and its ridges it was still quite definitely a brain. And it had two little red eyes like twin wounds near the top of it, which stared at him unblinking as if they could peer into his very soul. Little red eyes without lids, staring. Waiting to be dropped into his skull. Eyes of universal love.

  OCT. 10

  1973: Agnew resigns as Vice President.

  A rat runs for high office and the people are not amused. “What makes a rat qualified?” they ask. In reply a rat bites off a baby’s nose and spends hours licking up the blood.

  A cat runs for high office and the people are not amused. “Cats are so selfcentered. What makes a cat qualified?” they ask. In reply a cat climbs up on a toilet bowl and uses the bathroom just like a person. The people are so amazed by this trick they burst into cheers.

  A dog runs for high office and the people are not amused. “Dogs are so stupid!” the people cry. “What makes a dog qualified?” In reply a dog licks the peoples’ hands and they fall instantly in love.

  A baboon runs for high office and the people are not amused. “He’s a baboon, for Christ’s sake!” the people cry. “What will the rest of the world think if we elect a baboon?” In reply the baboon picks and eats the vermin in his fur, grabs a handful of his feces and throws it at the people.

  The people are shocked and dismayed. Then pause, considering.

  OCT. 11

  1963: Painter, playwright, and filmmaker (Beauty and the Beast, Blood of a Poet) Jean Cocteau dies in Paris.

  In college Cal had wanted to be a writer. Rebel against convention, Cocteau had said, or art will stagnate and die. The muses were praying mantises, Cocteau said, who consumed those who loved them. Cocteau thought every writer was a medium for the mysterious force, a darkness, that rises within– that darkness needed to be put on paper. Cal decided he’d never be good enough, and he’d been just plain afraid.

  But now he had begun redecorating the cabin into what might be called a series of theater sets: the walls painted with abstract trees and stars, unusual objects placed strategically to enhance their significance, as if they were props. Each day he passed from room to room, as if he were changing worlds.

  He thought of Linda and the kids and he wondered how any husband/father could risk the unconventional when it might mean hurting the ones you loved the most.

  Once upon a time there were two children whose father abandoned them over and over again. They were too young to understand that fathers were mere flesh and blood, prone to mistakes like every other human being. He was their father– he should be there for them.

  Their father would not have disagreed.

  The final time he left them his children cried and begged him to stay. How could he tell them that seeing them cry like that, seeing the pain he caused and the clear evidence of his responsibilities, made him want even more to leave them?

  Instead he took the handkerchief out of his pocket and began wiping the tears from their faces, then wiping more to clean away the dirt-tracks left by their tears (he’d always done this, since they were small children), then wiping even more vigorously because they told him to, they begged him to, even through their screams they were begging him, until he took the handkerchief away and discovered to his surprise that he’d wiped the features completely off their faces.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” cried their mouths from inside his handkerchief.

  He opened up the handkerchief and discovered his childrens eyes, noses, ears, and mouths embedded in the cloth in jumbled order so that he couldn’t be sure whose was whose. But as far as he could tell they did not appear to be unhappy features, at least taken singly. In fact one mouth– his little girl’s mouth he thought– was giggling. He put the handkerchief back into his pocket– there was an immediate, muffled cheer– and went out the door.

  He kept his handkerchief with him constantly the next few weeks– dropping crumbs into his pocket to feed it, draping it over his dashboard so that it might see the countryside, washing it carefully to keep it fresh. It seemed to appreciate the attention.

  Then one day he was running the shower and the mirror steamed up, and without thinking he grabbed the handkerchief and tried to rub the fog away. And rubbed two mouths, two noses, four ears and four eyes onto the gray glass.

  They all looked surprised, but quickly acclimated to their new situation, singing, laughing, and telling childish jokes with no punchlines.

  After that he did not hesitate to move them around, rubbing them off with his handkerchief then transferring an ear to his glove compartment door, an eye to his apartment’s kitchen window, two noses to a portrait of George Washington hanging on the wall, one mouth to his alarm clock and the other to the refrigerator door. His childrens features seemed to appreciate the change of pace and he appreciated the variations in decor.

  One night he had them all back on his handkerchief, spread across his bedside table for some rest. He went to sleep with a severe cold and woke up the next morning with a handkerchief clean, white, and empty.

  He has not been back to see them since. but still he imagines he can hear them w
hispering to him, giggling, singing. He imagines he can hear what they must be hearing, see what they must be seeing.

  But he smells only himself.

  OCT. 12

  Columbus Day.

  The old man had left his apartment after days inside and sat out on the front stoop. It had been a hot October, the hottest he could remember– the leaves had gone from yellow to burnt in a matter of days. Unnatural, uneasy weather. There had been an agitation in the neighborhood, which was what had kept him inside until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He had heard people outside arguing: bumping into each other, their voices boiling into unintelligibility.

  His classic Studebaker had been parked in front of the apartment building all this time. Now it had someone’s name spray-painted on the side, and the date, as if they’d just made claim to it. As if they’d cleaned it all these years, oiled it, polished it, babied it, when all they’d done was made a sign. He would have gotten up and checked his car for more damage, but he was just too tired.

  A fat man in baggy shorts and a stained T-shirt was trotting up the sidewalk with a golf club in his hands, a sock tied beneath the head like a flag. He stepped up onto the bumper of the Studebaker, then onto the hood, then pounded the windshield with the club until it cracked and shattered. He stuck the handle of the club into the broken window. He gently prodded the sock with his finger, as if encouraging it to wave, but it was stiff, dormant. He straightened up and raised his head. “I claim this in the name of Byron Mengele!” he shouted.

  “Hey!” the old man cried. He stood up. Mengele began dancing on the hood. “Hey hey hey!”

  Out of the corner of his eye the old man saw a series of bright colors. He turned just in time to see a squad of joggers in spandex race up his steps with long fiberglass poles, a silken purple cloth flying from the top of each one. One rammed his pole into the flower box by the front door. Another stuck his in the trash can by the street. Another threw his javelin-style through the manager’s first-floor window. Another used his to vault to the second-floor balcony where he erected it proudly by his side. “We claim these in the name of the 42nd Avenue Athletic Club!” they screamed in unison.