by Chris Eaton
Of course the first irony was that, through this single act of integration – in the manufacture of writing implements, no less – James became everything that he had tried to escape in the first place. The second was that the widow weren’t so dry after all, the doctor scraping out a single son they named Carey, and the Heran curse of duplicating the previous generation continued without abate, each new brood forging a new path only to end up in exactly the same place, personally if not geographically. True to form, Carey O’Hara changed his own name back to Charles Heran and headed just south of Dallas to work for the Corsicana Oil Development Company under John Galey. An avid, self-taught, amateur geologist, Charles was convinced of two things. The first: salt and oil were inextricably tied; where you found one you would find the other (a view shared by other so-called lunatics of the period like Patillo Higgins and E. I. Stronach). And the second: salt, rather than oil, was the fuel of the future.
This assumption was not as far-fetched as it might seem today, or rather, no more far fetched than using oil, equally ridiculed at the time, as up to that point oil had only been used for lamps and lubrication. Until the Industrial Revolution and the internal combustion engine, ground salt had been hard to come by. It was one of the more dangerous and expensive substances to get out of the earth. In Rome, they used prisoners as slaves to extract it. So did the Nazis. Charles’s theories: once it could be removed more easily, the geothermal heat could be captured from the salt domes and used for fuel; or by over-salinating water one could extract the hydrogen from it and have it burn freely; molten salt reactors. But when the Spindeltop gusher began producing more than a hundred thousand barrels of oil per day, and the population grew from ten thousand to fifty thousand almost over night, everyone and their dog erected another derrick, and any ideas of extracting the salt from the dome over it had to be abandoned. Like his father he turned to gambling, coupled with drinking this time, and whoring.
Among the various progeny he likely sired, the one with his name continued west to Arizona, became a farmer and married an Evangelical Lutheran. Gradine Heran would become one of the initial founders of the state’s Anti-Saloon League, and thus one of the leading supporters of the eighteenth amendment for national prohibition in 1919. Most citizens assumed prohibition would decrease crime and violence while improving overall health and morality, but this was far from the case. Illegal stills popped up in every second basement and back lot. Contraband moonshine, which was far from regulated, often contained things like creosote, or embalming fluid, resulting in frequent blindness and paralysis. And perhaps strangest of all, the theft of bees, whose honey was needed to kickstart the fermentation process, became rampant. Without a large percentage of their pollinators, crops began to suffer. Charles lost almost everything he had. And while Gradine welcomed God’s test, Charles began to lobby for changes. When it came time to repeal, three quarters of Arizonians voted in favor of this amendment, too. Gradine never spoke directly to her husband again. Charles started drinking, and became one of the state’s most popular politicians.
Naturally, the greatest problem facing their son Patric in his earliest years, as well as those years in the middle, the twilight, and basically right up until the end, was whether he would be shaped to a larger degree by the prudish determination of his mother or his father’s clandestine addiction to everything bacchanalian. But rather than choose a side, he shunned decisions and emotions altogether, and earned the nickname Stoic for the rest of his life. Even after his tool-and-die company became so successful during the forties, affording him a much larger home, a membership at the most prestigious golf and country club, cars for all of his daughters on their sixteenth birthdays, Stoic Heran seemed to take little pleasure in it. Success, to him, was just another aspect of life, with no more celebration to be taken from it, or time taken to dwell on it, than from failure, or luck, or breakfast, or a daily bowel movement. Each moment of every day was just one tic closer to the end, when he might finally let everything loose and really enjoy himself in the afterlife, like one of his employees might count the seconds in front of his machine, longing for the weekend, rather than thinking about the other able-bodied Americans who were, at that very same second, perishing in a trench in France, or perhaps wishing they were. Life was the job; Heaven was the reward. And like a job, he felt no need to be good or pious or even particularly pleasant to people, drinking excessively and judging others for it. He merely had to put in the time until he could punch his card and relax, having his feet massaged all day by the hands of the sinners.
That was how Patric Heran saw Heaven: a place where the workers were finally able to reap the benefits of their labor, as he imagined his great-grandfather, the last truly great laborer in the family before himself, being waited on, foot and hand, by the politicians that had made his life hell to begin with. Chris Eaton’s idea of Heaven was a sort of nothingness, without weight or mass or appearance or idiocy. Chris Eaton’s father, who worked for Stoic Heran for nigh on thirty-five years, giving up most of his life along with his right index finger, his idea of Heaven was a cabin in the wilderness, with wood in the stove and an outhouse in the back, on a pond or a lake, or maybe just a mountain stream, but definitely with water, a lot like Thoreau’s heaven but without his mother stopping by to cut his hair or with the occasional pie, with enough distance between himself and the nearest neighbour that he could have his legs crushed beneath a fallen tree and never be able to scream for help. By the time Chris Eaton’s father got the idea for this perfect retirement in his head, perhaps coinciding with the third anniversary of his wife’s death and perhaps not, he had already spent more than half his life making machines for Heran, machines that made machines that, in his case, went on to make automobiles, blenders, computers, children’s toys, seltzer bottles, Frisbees, an entire assortment of doodads, gizmos, farkles and widgets, thingamabobs, thingamajiggers, and even a third generation of machines that were supposed to manufacture – unbeknownst to the elder Eaton, who could have cared less if the end product of his labour ended up bombing the living shit out of Afghanistan and Iraq – more efficient home HVAC systems that would have saved their owners (plus the government, tax payers, you name it) close to thirty-six percent off the day’s energy costs, had they not gotten caught up in a lot of union red tape. Worried that they might also last longer and thereby eventually reduce the need for future units, the systems ended up rusting at the back of one of the waterfront warehouses in Brooklyn that most locals assumed were actually just fronts for strategic defense missile silos, until several blocks of them were destroyed in a raging fire that sent plumes of acrid bromium biocide smoke into Manhattan.
City life had never been her father’s bag. The air was bad. It was too loud. He was also an idealist, which was sort of a fancy word he used in place of anti-social. So as soon as he had managed to save five thousand dollars, he bought several acres up north, near the town of Pine, built a fence out of stones around the entire perimetre (an undertaking of approximately two-and-a-half years, in and of itself), and started building his dream cabin.
He built the whole thing with his own bare hands, too, even drew up the plans and, for a small cash fee, convinced a certified architect who had fallen on hard times to claim he had legally authored them, cleared the site of trees and large rocks and purchased a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle and a length of chain to drag them to the nearby escarpment. The soil was highly acidic from decades, if not centuries, of human neglect. The tree canopy created so much shade that, even in Arizona, annual rainfalls nearly always exceeded their own evapotranspiration, depleting the natural calcium, magnesium and potassium deposits and replacing them with iron and aluminum, which was great for blueberries and strawberries, maybe potatoes, but it also meant he had to make sure to grade the land to guide water away from the house instead of into his foundation. The night he finished laying the roof, he slept under it.
His daughters couldn’t understand why he’d spend so much time work
ing on something like this when, at this point, due to powerful union lobbying of the tool-and-die industry, he could easily afford to hire professional contractors to complete it in a month. Then he could just enjoy it, retire and move up there for good, just like he’d always wanted. But that, for him, would have been cheating. He had set out to do it himself, and that was how he was going to finish it. Anything else just wouldn’t be as satisfying. And two years later, he dug the well, and the hole for the sewage tank, just like they would have done it in the old days, with a pick, shovel and occasional dynamite.
And he looked at what he had done and smiled.
***
Then Chris Eaton’s father took ill. He came back from the bar one night with his breath crackling like playing cards in his bike spokes. Nothing major; in the morning, it was gone. But a few days later, he collapsed climbing the stairs to the observation floor at the machinery. He had severe chest pain that was initially thought to be a mild arrhythmia but then was rediagnosed by a doctor independent from the company as a mild pneumonia due to an additional mild fever. Patric Heran called Chris Eaton directly and she grabbed the first flight she could find, told Julian she’d be back soon, that her father just needed someone to look after him until the fever broke, and they agreed to consummate their relationship on her return. Her sister had said she’d pick her up at the airport but then cancelled at the last moment, saying she couldn’t get away from New York right now, so she grabbed a cab directly to the hospital and spent at least a half hour being reassured by the attending physician – they weren’t sure, to be honest, the chest x-rays looked completely normal – then sat with her father until he fell asleep again. She went to the lobby and bought a cola, waited another hour or more while watching television, then called her sister, said everything seemed fine, everything was looking up, and when there was a pause at the other end, added that there probably wasn’t any need for her to be there after all. Thank God, she said.
She returned to her childhood home, telephoned St. Hecarion, said many of the same things but with more technical details, and assured them she’d only be gone for a few days, the rest of the week at the max, and they told her to take her time, to make sure her father was doing alright, that in the interim some of the nurses could bring toys to the children’s rooms instead. The important thing was her father’s health.
Then she called Julian, said many of the same things but with fewer lies, then told him that she missed him, that she hadn’t realized how much strength she got from him, that she wasn’t a whole person without him. She wanted him to touch her, to lie down beneath him and have him enter her slowly, so she could savour every second, and while she told him, she reached down to touch herself for the first time, and if she wasn’t already wet, she was pretty close, so she told him that, too. She wanted to grab his cock, she said, then felt silly, but she could hear his breathing getting heavier on the other end so she kept going, with more clichés and more inner humiliation, more stuffing and filling and hardness and good, until she couldn’t really touch herself any more. Then she told him she was tired, hung up, and for several hours tried to fall asleep.
***
By the end of the week, her father was definitely not okay. His breathing was getting marginally better, but increased head pain and dizziness seemed to indicate some sort of tumor. X-rays provided the doctors with clear evidence of brain swelling, but no one could tell them why. To be safe, they placed him on a program of Mannitol and Dexamethasone, and hooked him up to a ventilator to increase his breathing rate and capacity. If the swelling continued, they said, they’d want to explore the option of stereotactic radiosurgery, resisting the third option as long as possible to remove one of the occipital lobes. She called her sister again. Another week, she said. No problem, St. Hecarion said. That sounds about right, Julian said. Seems like you’re in good hands, Julian said.
I still can’t make it, her sister said. People are coming to see the house on Tuesday.
***
He started coughing things up. Dark things. He couldn’t eat. Or didn’t want to. The top respiratory specialist in Los Angeles was not answering their calls so they sent samples along with vials of his blood and urine to Dallas. She said she knew someone in Houston, but they still sent it to Dallas. Her sister wanted to know if they were doing everything they could. Her sister wanted to know if the doctors seemed competent. To her, they did not seem competent. Chris Eaton wanted to hang up. At St. Hecarion, they were now getting concerned, not that they couldn’t hold the job for her but that, if it continued much longer, she might have to take unpaid compassionate leave. She said she understood. The specialist who was not in Houston said he had performed an immunoassay and a polymerase chain reaction on her father’s blood and discovered several antigens that concerned him. He was concerned. So he was testing the phlegm for traces of spores. The results ended up inconclusive, but indicative enough to warrant, he felt, a partial lung biopsy. She started to call her sister, then called Julian instead. He said he wanted to hold her. He said he wanted to help her. He said he felt powerless. She told him she loved him and he told her to hurry home.
***
Her sister wanted to know why she wasn’t consulted on the biopsy option. Her sister wanted to know why this was the first she was hearing about blasted psychosis. Blastomycosis, Chris Eaton corrected her. Whatever, she said, what are we going to do? The case was severe, and could take weeks or months to properly fight, a fungal infection that he had likely contracted when disturbing the soil to dig his well – the final step to his retirement – and while it had stayed fairly dormant throughout the cold, dry winter, the damp spring had caused the infestation to multiply and spread through his blood and lymphatics to his brain. The specialist who was not from Houston said it was common in AIDS patients, then waited for her to respond. The doctor who was from Phoenix nodded. She said, Are you saying my father has AIDS? And they both said no together, no, they just wanted her to realize the severity of the situation. So they said AIDS. She said she understood, to get them to stop talking. They wanted to place him immediately on an oral treatment of Itraconazole, but the pills were huge and difficult to swallow, and several hours after the first dose, her father couldn’t stop vomiting. His urine had grown dark and pungent, and the doctors grew even more concerned over his dehydration than the original fungus. So they switched him to the more controversial Ketoconazole, which seemed to fair much better. By the fifth dose, it already seemed clear he was getting better. He was laughing and joking and able to make light of the fact that he was basically eating the same stuff they put in anti-dandruff shampoo. But the doctors warned that the increased joviality might actually just be a side effect of the medication, which was also occasionally used to fight depression, and that the full treatment could take months. Julian tried to distract her with stories of life in Houston. He’d gone to a party at Carol’s and everyone was asking about her. The party was a lot of fun, he said. Carol made some spectacular hors d’oeuvres and they played a game all night where everyone had to guess the identity of everyone else just by looking at them, “murdering” or “lynching” someone by turns, and he and Carol were always killed early so spent most of their time talking to each other in the kitchen. It went way too late, too. Before they knew it, it was four in the morning, but poor thing, he stayed and helped her do the dishes before heading home, unlike all those other ingrates.
The connection was bad and made Julian sound far away, or like he was buried beneath Chris Eaton’s house, trapped there and muffledly calling for help.
***
She hadn’t been working for two months. She called her sister. Dad was doing better, how was the East Coast, had she managed to sell the house yet? No, her sister replied, and the stress of it was really starting to get to her. There weren’t enough hours in a day. Chris Eaton felt uncomfortable asking her about money.
Stoic Heran called and asked if there was anything he could do, buy her groceries, take some
more shifts sitting with her dad at the hospital. He’d been dropping in on her father more and more often, and every few days they would pass each other in the hallway. And then she would see a woman she thought was his wife looking at magazines in the gift shop, or waiting outside in the car, as if she were afraid of sick people.
And then she called the elementary school where her mother used to teach before the cancer, spoke to the principal, who had always liked her mother, it was so sad to lose her as part of the team. To be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do, they had a long list of dependable supply teachers, but if she didn’t mind overseeing gym…
***
Her father started vomiting again. Another bad reaction to the Ketoconazole. The dehydration was so severe he could barely lift himself up to talk to her, just lay there in bed with his mouth hanging open, trying to swallow. They switched him to an intravenous treatment of Amphotericin B, which made him delusional, to the point that he didn’t even recognize her and once, when she was the only one in the room, he told her it was so long since he’d been with a woman and would she be a dear nurse and help him out manually. She cried on the phone with Julian but couldn’t tell him about it. I’m sorry, I have to go, he said. There’s someone at the door.
***
Stoic dropped by with another meal and stayed to eat it with her. She asked him why his wife was afraid to go into the hospital, and he said he wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
She called Julian and the connection was bad again. Where are you, she said. Just out.
