by Owen Thomas
“Fine. Do what you want. My life is in your hands. I’m sure years from now I’ll be slinging hash in a truck stop diner owing you a big favor. Will you at least, for the love of God, give me some of your pasta?”
“Focus, Dave. Your life is in your own hands.”
“Easy for you to say. Is that a no?”
“No.”
“Why do you hate me?”
“Here Bro-Dude,” says Ben holding up his plate, “you can have some of mine.”
* * *
By the time we emerge from the Safari Hut, the sun is on its way over the cliff, shooting flames wildly as it plunges backwards into space, setting fire to the contrails and the undersides of the bloated bows of a cumulus armada that has been sailing hard all day in hot pursuit. That’s the way I’m going out, I decide. They may get me in the end, but I’ll take out every last muther-fucker that I can on the way down.
Either that or maybe just the ten-pound last meal of Wildebeest Burger and Lion Fries that stays my execution for several weeks. Decidedly less dramatic, but maybe more effective in prolonging the day. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Tonight, some undetermined number of days before my sentencing, I have taken but a single bite of my wildebeest. Indiana Jones’ dickish cousin has packed all the rest of my dinner into a box and then lowered the box into a large white paper bag affixed with genuine-imitation hemp rope handles and emblazoned with the restaurant logo – a savage roaring lion’s head beneath a sprawling acacia and a triple-layer rainbow made from the words Wes Hampton’s Safari Hut! Columbus • Dayton • Cincinnati.
Cait and Ben moan at how full they are. The crocodile wings have settled and I am suddenly hungry. I consider raiding the securely packaged burger and fries, but the idea of refusing my food inside the restaurant and then devouring it as I traverse the parking lot strikes me as just a little crazy. Besides, I have given the bag to Ben to carry because he likes the picture. He makes soft growling noises as he walks, swinging the bag like he has a savage beast on a leash.
On the way through the city, I fill Cait in on my discussion with Shepp. She nods, seeming to take it in, but without much comment. I take to looking idly out the window at the city. I can feel myself sinking into the daily mire of inexorable darkness where one day slips quietly into another and all of the potential of my last waking falls suddenly into the stillness of history.
There is something in the air, moisture or dust, something invisible that holds the reddening light, cupping the heat, keeping it from falling with the sun. The buildings get shorter as we move away from the center, like they too are in a kind of slow motion, tumbling cascade into the rich loam of the Ohio River Valley, soil that is beneath me and around me for hundreds of miles.
It is my father’s city, Columbus. Not of his birth, but he has adopted it; invested himself; shaped it in his own image. It is gleaming, triumphant. Pure. Like some miraculous plant rising out of the earth, its roots tapping the mighty Ohio, that he has devoted himself to nurturing, carefully pruning it into something he can recognize and call his own. And then entrust to me. My father’s Columbus is my birthright. And my charge. It strikes me as a profound cruelty that he should be so limited in his options. It will not be Tilly. It cannot be Ben. It must be me. It could be me. It should be me. And yet I am far too bound by the gravity of history – my own history of Columbus – to aspire to the height of his dreams for this place.
Christopher Columbus had two sons, Diego, the oldest, and an illegitimate son, Fernando. Fernando came to the New World on the Santa Maria in 1502, on his father’s fourth voyage. Unlike Diego, who eventually married King Ferdinand’s niece and made his mark in the New World as the governor of Hispaniola, Fernando was a bit bookish; a dogmatic devotee of God and history, of all things. Rather than conquering and building the new world that might have been uniquely his, Fernando Colon became a priest in the old world, built a library, and devoted himself to the role of biographer, teaching and cultivating the history of his fathers, spiritual and biological. He died at the age of fifty-one, leaving to the textbook writers of posterity a seminal work: The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, by his son, Fernando Colon.
I am left to wonder in which son the Admiral would have taken the most pride had he lived to know them as men: the son who pruned the dream of the New World, or the son who pruned the memory of the dreamer. I suppose that the pride might have gone to Diego, and the gratitude to Fernando. I, alas, can deliver neither.
“Are you going to call those teachers?” Cait asks.
“I dunno.”
“You do need a friend in the room, Dave.”
“I guess. I just want it over. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.”
“You should call your dad.”
“No.”
“Your mom.”
“No.”
“Dave, isn’t that what family is all about?”
“I’m not telling them.”
“Look, take it from someone who doesn’t have family any more …”
“No, Cee Cee. Drop it.”
Before we hit the freeway, she pulls over for gas. I ask if she wants help, but she shakes her head and gets out. I offer some of my dad’s cash for fuel. She closes the door and sticks a credit card into the pump.
I watch her in the side mirror remove the cap and insert the nozzle. She leans her back up against the wall of the van and wedges the heel of one boot up against the tire. She pulls her cap off and folds it in half and sticks it in her back pocket. She rakes her fingers back through her hair and shakes it loose.
“Bro?”
“Yeah Ben?”
“Are we watching T.V. when we get home?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Okay. Will Fantasia be on?”
“I dunno, Ben. We’ll see.”
“Daws?” calls Cait.
“What?” I ask, but then realize she is not talking to me. I find her in the mirror. She pushes off from the tire and steps over the hose, passing up along the van.
Directly in front of us, out beyond the well-lit sheltered island of the pumps, is the vacuum cleaner station; two silver canisters the size of water heaters sitting on a gray concrete pedestal. There is a black trash bag at one end.
“Daws?” she says, bending down, looking at the bag.
The bag moves. I do not see the man at first because he is propped up against the far side of the concrete block, everything above the waist cast in the darkening shadow of the vacuum tanks. Cait kneels, her back to me. The man tries to sit up into the light. Cait slides the bag out of the way and it rattles, filled with cans.
She pulls him forward so he can lean against the pedestal. He looks to be in his mid-seventies. He is probably in his fifties. His hair is thin and white. His face is sallow and so drawn that it is caving inwards beneath the cheekbones.
I open my door but that is all the uncertain state of my resolve will allow.
The man is obviously disoriented. He looks at Cait warily. She has not let go of his wrists. Then he opens his mouth in a near toothless smile of recognition. He leans forward and Cait receives him in an embrace.
The gas pump kicks off and the sound is enough to dislodge me from my seat. I tell Ben to stay put and climb out. I circle around the back of the van and top off the gas to replace the nozzle and the cap. Cait is standing now, pulling the man to his feet, bracing one boot against the concrete pedestal. I jog forward to help.
“Dave,” she says as I grab one arm and stoop and swing it over my shoulder, “this here is Irving Daws. Daws, this is my friend David Johns.”
Daws, who reeks powerfully of urine and Jack Daniels, nods in my direction. He wears filthy cargo pants that want to slip off the ledges of his hips, and a ratty gray sweatshirt smeared with grime and all manner of expectoration.
“Howdy, Daws,” I say with way too much cheer because I have absolutely no idea how to behave in this situation, I follow it up with a folksy “howz i
t goin’?”
I have a new sympathy for every person who has ever felt frozen in the headlight moon of my brother’s face. Even the Safari Hut server. I am full of shame and guilt and remorse for this man. I cannot bring myself to look at him in the eyes. We stand with him, one of us under each arm, waiting for him to adjust.
“Oh,” says Daws, “I ‘spose I been … I ‘spose I been better, Dale. But I sure am glad to see Sissy here.” He opens his mouth in what I can only assume to be an expression of something positive and pats Cait’s arm.
“Daws is an old pool shark, aren’t you Daws? Back in the day. Remember all those stories you told me? About winning Alice in a game of eight-ball?”
“Yep. Yep. Ol’ Alice.” He turns to me. “That’s the truth, Dale. Won her fair and square and we got married in the park.”
“Where is Alice, Daws?” asks Cait.
He coughs, but doesn’t answer.
“Daws, Dave and I are going to walk you over here to my van, okay? And we’re going to get you over to a shelter where you can spend the night. Is that okay?”
Daws nods, but resists any forward movement, bending his knees as if he wants to sit down. He cranes his neck backwards towards the vacuum station.
“We’ll get your cans,” says Cait, reading his mind. “Let’s go this way.”
“Bless you, Sissy,” says Daws.
We take him to the back of the van. Cait holds him up as I open the doors. Ben is wide-eyed on the gurney.
“Ben,” I bark at him as though he has done something wrong. “Get up there in the front. Hurry up. Sit in my seat.”
“But David…”
“Just move Ben! We need to give this man the bed.”
Ben does as he is told, squeezing himself between the seats into the front. He cranes his head around, eyes as wide as his special face will allow, watching as we load Daws into the bed and strap him in. The stench is sickening.
Cait opens a compartment above the gurney and pulls out a bottle of water and a bag of saltines.
“Dave, you drive. I’m going to ride back here with Daws. Head for Broad Street, between 3rd and 4th. It’s farther out, but they’ll find a space for him. Don’t race. We need a smooth ride.”
I listen to them as I drive. She asks him things. Sometime he answers, sometimes he doesn’t. I learn bits of history. Alice is dead of a hit and run. Daws blames himself because he failed to shout out. She wanted to cross the street to see her friend and he didn’t want to go. His last words were in anger. He keeps drinking even though he knows it’s bad for him. It’s what he deserves. He used to have a tent, but it was stolen. He likes bridges now. It’s been a long time since he’s even seen a pool table.
Every now and then, when Daws falls silent, Cait says something for my benefit.
“I first met Daws back when I was working the CSP beat. Bumped into him three or four times since then on my own time. He’s a vet. Aren’t you Daws?”
Ben keeps twisting around in his seat, trying to see what is happening behind him. He is captivated by the sudden change in events. All he can see is Cait, who is sitting on the floor, bracing herself up against the cabinets behind the driver’s seat and the wall of the van, her boots stretching out towards Daws in the gurney, crossed at the ankles.
I steal sideways glances. Ben’s eyes are fixed and slow. His mouth hangs open loosely, his oversized tongue pressing up against his undersized teeth. What others might mistake as simply shameless gawking I know to be more about the enlarged adenoids and macroglossia that require him to keep his mouth unhinged so that he can breathe.
But it is also shameless gawking. He has no sense of himself when he is processing his environment, or at least no sense of himself that is confining. He is freer than most.
Daws mutters something I cannot understand.
“I said you worked on those helicopters in Viet Nam, didn’t you? Yes sir, you did. Kept those whirly-birds in the air. You kept a lot of boys alive Irving. We are a grateful nation. We are. We just have a funny way of showing it. You still know some of your songs, Daws?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Daws always had a song in his mind whenever I picked him up,” she says. “Didn’t you Daws? Remember? Songs you used to sing in Da Nang, when you were missing your mom and dad and wanting to come home? First time I ever picked you up you were sitting on the corner singing. And remember we sat in the back of the rig and you sang to me? Remember?”
Daws says he doesn’t remember the words. But he remembers singing.
“My daddy used to take us camping when I was little and he loved to sing around a fire. Just me and my mom and my dad laying on our backs singing songs and lookin’ up at the stars on a dark June night like we were just floatin’ in the ocean. We were all made to float, Daws. You know that, right? You know that if we just think to let go of what weighs us down, we pop right back up to the surface. Remember how we talked about that? You haven’t forgotten have you?”
I hear nothing from the old man.
“Daddy sure did,” she says and I remember, suddenly, how her parents left the world. “You ever heard If I Lose My Way?”
In the mirror I can see Daws summon enough strength to role over on his side, facing Cait. He eats another saltine. “Sissy,” he says, but I cannot hear the rest.
She sings in a voice that is shockingly sweet and clear, rising above the drone of the van. The words come slowly, as if each is its own song.
If… I… lose …my… way
If I fall … one… day
Ben looks at me in wonder and then back at Cait. She stops.
“C’mere Benny.” She pats the floor of the van. “Come keep me company, while I remember dear ol’ dad.”
Ben looks at me. I shrug. He unstraps himself and squeezes between the seats, sitting down next to Cait Indian style. She throws one arm around him, pulling him into her body. She starts again.
If I lose …my… way
If I fall … one… day
Would you take… my… hand
Will you help… me… stand
Would you ease… my… pain
In the fall…ing rain
And then…
Will you take…
Me home?
If I break… my… heart
If I fall …a…part
Would you smile… for… me
Would you help… me… see
Will you dry… my… eyes
As my spir…it… dies
And then…
Make your love…
My home?
If I came …to …you
And I said …I’m… through
Would you sing …for… me
Will you set… me… free
Would you say… my …name
‘Til the an-gels… came
And then…
Send the an-gels…
Home?
It is dark when we roll up to the shelter. I park and hop out and walk around back to open the doors of the van. Cait and I help Daws off the gurney and out of the van. He seems a little better. A little more stable. But it still takes us both, one on each side, and we begin a slow walk to the front door.
“Stay there, Ben,” I call out over my shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back for his bag.”
I hear him moving behind me. He has misunderstood. He has misheard. That extra twenty-first chromosome in his DNA, the one responsible for his congenital heart defect, the one that has fucked up his intestinal tract, enlarged his thyroid, and amped up the odds for pulmonary hypertension, cataracts, and leukemia, has also muffled his hearing. He thinks I have called him. He thinks I need his help. He thinks I want the bag. He has climbed down out of the van and is coming up behind me.
“No, Ben. I need you to just stay in the…”
But I am wrong. He has not misheard anything.
Ben circles around in front of us, seizing Daws around his midsection and pulling against him as if trying to list
en for the heart inside this wreck of a man. Daws looks in surprise at Cait and then frees up an arm to pat my brother on the back.
They release. Ben sets the white Safari Hut bag at our feet and returns silently to the back of the van. As Daws stoops to look in the bag, Cait and I trade glances over his head.
There is nothing defective about my brother’s heart.
CHAPTER 65 – Susan
“Gayle.”
“…”
“Gayle. You asleep?”
“Mmm? Uh. Yeah. I mean … no.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep. Sorry.”
“Susan.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Yeah?”
“This is big.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“No. I mean yes, it’s big for that reason. But I meant it’s big for me.”
“Nervous?”
“Terrified.”
“You’re going to do great.”
“What… oh…”
“Slide over.”
“Gayle…”
“Relax. Shhhhh. I’m too fucking tired to make a move. Okay? Just … listen to me. You’re going to be great, Susan. I know you will. It’s going to be like … like breathing fresh air. It’s going to feel good.”
“…”
“Susan?”
“That’s what terrifies me.”
CHAPTER 66 – Tilly
Some of my memory is dark rock; a moonscape, pock-marked with impact craters. One of those craters belongs to Zel Wippo. Black fissures and jagged scar-trails radiate outward from that starless, songless hole in time reaching into my future. Even now, after so many decades have nourished a lush ground cover of new experience, softening my recall, I can easily find my way back to those dark days. I can still trace the serrated seams that lead back to Crater Zel.
It is nothing like Crater Hollis, of course; a veritable ocean bed ringed by ranges of volcanic mountains. But still.
