God's Gym

by John Edgar Wideman

  His father's face looking good, holding on in spite of scalding daylight powering from the window above the alcove. Still a striking face, a brown-eyed, handsome man, uh-huh, he was a brown-eyed handsome man, this pretty daddy who stares without blinking at a landscape only he's able to see, a place elsewhere demanding more and more of his attention until one day his father had shrugged his shoulders and let the weight of this world slip off his back. As simple as that. As simple and quick as standing up when the barber finishes and letting the white cloth drop behind you onto the empty stool.

  Are dreams faster than the speed of light. He had asked himself the question after Lisa related a story about a Chinese physicist at Cal Tech or Berkeley or UCLA, he doesn't remember which university, just the fact it was a West Coast school because he recalls imagining out loud a life for the scientist, how the guy winds up in charge of a world-class experimental physics lab after being born in an internment camp out West. Would a spotless lab coat, a droptop BMW erase memories of almost starving to death, a nisei father killed defending American interests in the Pacific, the bittersweet day of release from the camp, his mother's tears, her brown hands eternally cracked from trying to grow food in Arizona sand, wait a minute Lisa interrupts in the middle of my riff, Chinese not Japanese, she says, but who cares about such fine distinctions when war fever's high, he says. A chink's a chink. Yellow peril. Yellow menace. This article's about today, not World War Two, stupid, so stop raving, she says, waving in his face a clipping from the Times that describes an experiment a Chinese scientist conducted and experts from around the world either hailed enthusiastically or dissed as a crock of inscrutable shit, the division of opinion duly noted and quoted so discriminating readers of the science section could decide for themselves.

  Something about light waves behaving weirdly when superheated in a bath of cesium. Light wave/particles accelerated till they're simultaneously here and there, present and absent, moving faster than light's supposed to move, faster than 186,000 miles per second, the speed everybody agreed till now nothing can move faster than. About kung fu a Chinese physicist performed with microwaves, mirrors, and lasers, a trick comparable to marking and releasing a rat before it's been captured. The scientist proving with measurements of before and after that no reliable measurements of before and after exist, since the rat/light breaks free on the far side of the labyrinth at precisely the instant it's about to enter. One impossibility—motion faster than the speed of light—proving another impossibility possible. You know, like a unicorn's mother appearing on Oprah with a photo of the son she's begging viewers to help her locate.

  Wow. Flying faster than the speed of light you could travel through time, Lisa hollers. And then, as if the news too urgent to wait till she finishes showering, she shouts through the bathroom door, A person could be in two places at once.

  I'm always in two places, he almost shouts back. Too goddamned many different places at once, thinking of himself dispersed as data on some marketing consultant's spreadsheet or as a blip on a Pentagon doomsday planner's screen estimating acceptable first-strike losses. His mom in heaven, smiling down on him. Hungry worms slithering in the mud smiling up. Here. There. Everywhere. In a different place from Lisa, as usual. Locked up in one of America's concentration camps while she hitchhikes through history.

  Do you think this advance in science will prevent roundups of civilians, rape, torture, mass exterminations in the next world war, my sweet.

  C'mon. Stop being a grouch, Lisa says. And he decides to let her enthusiasm infect him, especially since she's standing beside the bed naked. Why worry about his looming death. Why not thank goodness no world war at present. None he's aware of, at least. Lots of small flare-ups, police actions, rebels in the hills, terrorists, spasms of ethnic cleansing, etc., but no knock-down-drag-out global conflict, unless Big War too has learned to be in many places at once, no place and everywhere, like the rat, the particles. Like him.

  He intended to keep the clipping, can't remember if he did or where he might have stashed it, but recalls they'd made love not war that night. Lisa moist and warm from her shower, his hand running up and down her thigh, fingertips tickling her hipbone, the smooth hollow of her flank, his hand sliding around and up to sample the flat, limber strength above her butt's mmmmm good, buttery curve.

  Your father's a fine-looking man, sir, the barber says, stepping back from the stool to admire his handiwork. Does he expect a tip. Where's the motormouth dentist who was next.

  No sign his father heard the barber. No sign his father still on the planet except for the shell of body abandoned on the stool.

  Hey. Yo. You. Mr. brown-eyed, handsome Bojangles man, the barber turned you into a movie star, mister. All the ladies swoon, they see you struttin' down the avenue.

  Does the man on the stool respond with the slightest of twinkles, a tiny, teasy pursing upturn of one corner of his mouth, Daddy's way, his way Do the man's eyeballs roll toward the ceiling because his son's talking trash, or is he remembering scissors, remembering he must sit very still to avoid danger in the air above his head, the helicopter blades still up there snip-snipping, clipping away hair, bone, brain if you're not careful. If you make a sudden wrong move.

  Later, walking the ward, fingers pinching his father's blue-green sleeve, he thinks you could call it a freak show—that one's glare, this one's wailing, that poor soul sitting on the side of the bed diddling himself, pajama bottoms down around his ankles—or just concede craziness its due, let craziness convince, let it suck you in or the effort of resisting can make you crazy. When it comes to reality, one man, one vote. Purest democracy on the seventh floor. Equal opportunity votes for men who believe they're women. Only the doctors and staff try to convert. But no sudden turnabouts here. No compromises, deals, consensus. Each aqua fish swims in a different sea. Even when they bump or fight or scream at each other, the water's different for each one. Different bumps, different fights. Real craziness is believing otherwise.

  On the seventh floor the sensible question always why not. Why isn't his father's tale of a nurse fondling him a possibility. Not a tale exactly. His father couldn't string enough words together to construct a tale. A kind of sweet wonderment, a bedazzled grogginess in his father's voice and movements, pleasure expressed with body language, winks, sighs, exclamations, his large, knotty hands eloquently molding shapes out of thin air. Signs of a very intimate encounter a slightly embarrassed son must witness. Maybe an incident earlier this morning. Or days before or weeks or never. For sure it's happening now. A minidrama staged on the screen of his daddy's face. Is his father frowning because he's suddenly been deserted by his angel, required to speak to the figure beside him, a figure bewildering till it morphs again into a woman with soft, curious hands, her warmth, her perfume melting him, lifting him, then the beam of her dissolves to his son and he wants the son to meet this nice lady, the pretty woman he can't say with words, who breaks apart and floats away when he reaches for her, for the next word, for a way to keep her or let her go while he explains her to this ghost who claims to be his son.

  As if I know. As if I'll ever know. As if anybody ever knows. Hard enough to live in his own dreams. A nightmare of emaciated naked people passing by in an endless line. His job hosing them down before they vanish in roiling clouds of disinfectant that's also poisonous gas. Then he's knee-deep in piles of bloody, contorted corpses he must untangle, arrange in neat rows according to gender color age size. A nightmare equal parts Holocaust and Middle Passage and him equal parts victim and executioner. The whole evil concoction like a program he's watching on the History Channel, safe until it snatches him inside and the images on the screen are his memories, his heart pounding because he knows his father's lollipop head will scroll by on one of those stick people, his father's face, his own, face after familiar face asking why, why, why are we here and you there, why are you combing through heaps of mangled dead bodies searching for us when we're beside you, right here in front of your ey
es.

  Maybe a routine wash-up his father is embellishing. An aide's daily chore to change the soiled diaper, scrub the old man clean, shave him, perhaps oil and talc his skin. A particularly kind nurse reminded of a father or husband or son or lover by this good-looking, helpless, brown-skinned man, gentle, gentle as a newborn on his good days. An extra portion of TLC administered. Her soft, firm hands massage bare shoulders and back. His father amazed. Reminded of the truth of himself. Of desire belonging to him, the terrifying, demanding return of focus when the fog is pierced and a bright, solid world of haunting clarity streams through the needle's eye faster than the speed of light.

  Tell me again, son. I hate to keep asking you to repeat things but it's getting harder and harder for your old father to keep it all straight. Play my numbers in the tobacco shop over by where Sears used to be, you know, over there on Hiland Avenue. Walk out the tobacco shop and half-hour later can't remember whether I played my goddamn figures or not. It's vexing, vexing. Standing there on the sidewalk not knowing what I did or didn't do. Come next morning I think about putting my numbers in and damn, realize I ain't checked what hit yesterday. Forget to check, forget if I played or not, forget there's a goddamn lottery, forget all that money white people owe me. What I'm trying to say is I know you already told me once, but I can't keep nothing straight in this feeble-ass mind of mine anymore. So tell me again, son. Why do I have to die. Why you have to kill me.

  The academy's retractable roof opens and warm starlight bathes father and son. Lutes strum just loud enough to be heard, not exactly breaking the silence, more a reminder of silence, a pulse within night's quiet, this night with qualities of day exhaling the freshly scrubbed breath of dawn. His father's face glows. A zigzag vein pulses in his temple. His proud, high forehead imposing as the brows of Benin nobles sculpted in bronze.

  Levitating like Yoruba priests he'd read about, they float two or three inches above the treadmill looping of a path contrived to convince you you're strolling or running or flying faster than the speed of light and the sham works until a moment like this one beside his father, when he peers down and observes the peculiar laxness of their ankles, their dangling feet not quite brushing the path that revolves beneath them, feet supple as fins, as the naked, boneless feet of blond angels hovering and strumming lutes in the ether of medieval illuminations. Not very high but sufficiently high to understand they are being taken for a ride, each step forward on the rotating path also a step in place, a step backward, the world surrounding them a painted backdrop or dancing shadows on a screen, you know, the way a filmstrip projected behind stationary actors animates Hollywood scenes, just mirrors and shuck and jive, the son understands, gazing down past his father's mashed-back slippers, his own clownish, overbuilt, winged sneakers, shoes tied to feet tied to ankles limp as a lynched man, shoes freed of the body's weight, trussed-up feet going nowhere fast, a mountain of empty shoes, shoes, shoes, late and soon.

  It's about me, Daddy. Not you. Something awful's happening to me. The doctors say I have just a little time left. And some of it will be bad, very bad. The disease killing me will kick up its heels and party hearty. Oh-la-la, Daddy. I'm not scared for myself, but I'm scared for you. Don't want to leave you behind to suffer.

  His father's head droops. Perfect haircut, courtesy of the state, intact. He could be nodding or he could be ratcheting down one notch further into Zombieville.

  Why his father and no one else. Why did he confess the dirty secret of the disease only to his father. If Lisa was as helpless as his father, would he have shared the news of his death with her. The huge, trifling news. All these years assiduously looking out for himself as if he'd been entrusted with a project of cosmic significance. Hmmmm. Not much to him after all. Maybe that's why he hoarded his news. No news, really. No big thing. Everyone dies sooner or later and oop-poop-a-doop, surprise—surprise—one less monkey don't stop no show. Did he believe withholding his little secret would inflate it into big news. Wasn't he like those homeless particle waves flying faster than the speed of light—gone, gone before he even got here.

  Only once, when she was leaning over the sink, intent on cleaning up a mess they'd made, her thin back looking even smaller with her little girl's shoulders hunched forward, both arms invisible from where he sat, only that once had he almost said to anyone other than his father, I'm going to be very sick and soon after that I'll die. Dressed for court in elegant business suits with short skirts and double-breasted jackets, shiny pantyhose encasing shapely legs, black hair precisely bobbed, Lisa could transform herself into a cartel-busting, justice-for-the-wretched-of-the-earth, petite Abrams tank. He'd feel proud of her glamour, her gleaming impenetrability and incorruptibility. When she smiled at him, testing him one last time on the intricate maneuvers required to mesh and unmesh his sloth with her complicated schedule that particular day, he loved her, loved how full of herself, how undaunted she could be, marveled at the distance between them, distance they sometimes miraculously closed, but distance that also stunned him each morning. Would he matter enough to woo her back. Slouched in the fat chair, staring at the stalled novel in his notebook, he'd exhale a sigh of relief after the door closed behind her slim, perfect hips, hopelessly missing her, but also glad she was gone so he could get on with the rest of his life.

  After the phone rings, in the instant between recognizing Lil Sis's voice and listening to what Lil Sis is saying, he wonders why he hadn't thought of her, isn't Lil Sis the perfect person to tell the news of his death, this stranger, this half-sister, strangely closer now because the father they share, a stranger during his life to both of them, is dying. Should he tell her about hemlock too.

  Hate to call with bad news, but Daddy's had a fall. Doesn't sound too good. The doctor wants to operate right away.

  A fall.

  That's what they claim. But you know as well as I do the rough stuff goes on at the VA. They say one of the nurses found him lying on the floor and Daddy couldn't get up. Sounds like his hip busted up really badly. In splinters, they say. Lots of bleeding inside the joint and that's why they have to operate quick, before it gets infected. I want to know how in hell he wound up on the floor. But Daddy can't tell us, so I guess we'll never find out, will we.

  Operate how soon.

  If we say okay, they'll try to schedule him for tomorrow morning.

  After he hangs up the phone, he thinks he should have said no. Let nature take its goddamn course. Out of it as his father already is, he'll be worse after surgery. Old people can't deal with anesthesia. His grandfather never the same after they knocked him out and cut on him.

  But you can't just let a person rot. Surgery or not, his own rot-smart bones whisper, this mugging will finish off your father. Is he just a tiny bit disappointed he's lost the chance to play hero. After all the agonizing, rationalizing, and fighting with himself, finally, a rush of cool determination. Clarity at last. Yes, yes. Ready to purchase poison, activate the plan. A hem-locked vanilla milkshake the final solution. A special treat he'd bring to the hospital next Sunday. Vanilla milkshake my dad's favorite thing, folks. Sharing one with him for old time's sake. Father and son on the last train out of Dodge. A carefully drafted note in plain view on the bedside table explaining everything so nobody gets the wrong idea.

  To top off the plan, he'd prepay a double funeral. Ride off with his daddy in a horse-drawn black hearse. A glorious New Orleans goodbye parade winding through the streets of Homewood. The Pittsburgh Rockets Drum and Bugle Corps leading the march. Shiny trumpets and tubas. Umpah-umpah. Ratta-tat-tat-tat. Tease of jive and boogie in their mournful playing, their precise highstepping. Barbequed kielbasa with red-hot sauce. Coolers full of icy Iron City. Hmmm. Oh, didn't we ramble, Daddy. Oh, didn't we.

  You never know, do you.

  The big-eared, retro phone smirks at him. So much ado about nothing. No opportunity, after all, to play God. Game called on account of rain. The coy old AME Zion deity working in his own good time his wonders to pe
rform.

  At the hospital, not counting his father, three of them in the room when a nurse breezes in to brief the family. Very sound reasons not to count his father, but how could you ever be sure. Introducing himself as Clarence, folks, the nurse flashes a silver-starred front tooth. In six months, if he lives that long, will his eyes still be able to read the tattoo on the nurse's hairy forearm. A posse of needles, tubes, gauges, pumps, suction, drips protects the bed. Virtual life puttering on forever in printouts, on screens, in beeping monitors, whether or not a glimmer of vitality in his father's eyes.

  Of course, even now, at his dad's direst moment, at this sad, affecting denouement, the son flies elsewhere, faster than the speed of light, father forgotten, son dreaming ahead to what it will be like at his own miserable countdown. Shit, he's thinking. Shit. What's the point. What's the horseshit stinking point.

  The nurse updates them.

  We can't get Mr. Wideman to eat. Goes on to explain why it's important for patients to eat. Explains that patients die if we don't manage to start them eating post-op. Explains the options, mouthwise or IVs, folks, and how the mouthwise method is much preferred by doctors, staff, studies, you know. And next thing I know, after Lil Sis's husband and I crank up the bed, I'm standing beside my father waving a spoonful of vanilla ice cream (go figure) I'm supposed to coax, wheedle, beg, sneak, lever, ram down his throat. I try to steady my shaky hand. Inch the spoon closer, closer to cracked lips the exact shape and color of mine, lips I swam through like a fish when I was birthed a second time John Edgar, John my dead mother's dead father's name, Edgar my father's, both names chosen by my mother to bind me to the men she'd loved most in the world. Entitles, my South Carolina grandfather would have called the names my father whispered to Reverend Felder and the good reverend's bass intoned loudly to family and friends gathered around the baptismal font of Homewood AME Zion.