by Pamela Morsi
Neither scenario was what happened.
As soon as it became known that Paul had not just allowed the subject of building a safer feller buncher to drop, that he had, in fact, enlisted the help of Union Representative Sonny Leland, rumors were everywhere.
Although Sonny tried to make it very clear that his interest in Safer Logging Equipment Corporation was personal and had nothing whatsoever to do with his official position in the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, the national office called him.
“Really, it’s nothing to do with BTW,” he assured them. “I just think this is a great safety innovation and I’m working on my own time to help get it out there to logging sites.”
The union was satisfied with his answer, but they were the only ones. All over the region, logging companies were convinced that Sonny was planning to utilize this opportunity, this spotlight, to lure workers into union membership.
All his protestations to the contrary only served to solidify the falsehood that people wanted to believe.
“I can’t figure out if I’m hurting or helping,” Sonny admitted to Dawn. “If I’m an impediment to this going forward, then I should just drop out of it. Paul knows he can come to me for advice anytime. I don’t have to be a part of this for it to work.”
“You’ll know when it’s time to get out,” Dawn assured him. “Just continue to do what you think you should be doing.”
Ultimately, that turned out to be the best advice.
A coalition of logging firms wanted to make a deal. If the prototype showed potential to be safer, they would be willing to agree to phase in the new equipment at work sites. But they wanted something in return—Sonny would have to break all ties with the Brotherhood of Timber Workers.
The four of them, Sonny, Dawn, Tonya and Paul discussed the deal across the dining table.
“It’s not as if safety isn’t an issue for logging firms,” Paul said. “They want it safe out there, they just don’t want it to cost too much and they want to rack up whatever side benefits they can.”
“I’m not sure that I understand all this,” Dawn said. “You thought they’d want you to give up your interest in the company, but what they want is for you to give up your job?”
Sonny nodded.
“Apparently,” Paul said, “Sonny’s made more inroads into unionizing than he thought.”
“I’ve made almost no progress at all,” Sonny insisted. “I guess any success is too much.”
“So the gentleman’s agreement is that Sonny gives up the union and heads our little company,” Paul said.
“Are you going to do that?” Dawn asked.
Sonny shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “The truth is, I’m tired of my job. I feel frustrated and I’m ready for a new challenge. But I’ve been in an adversarial position with the logging industry for years now. Bowing to pressure from them to give it up makes me feel like I’m losing.”
“But you wouldn’t be losing,” Tonya said. “You’d be moving on. And it’s not as if that’s the end of BTW in Tennessee. The union will hire somebody else. And you’ll be free to promote safer equipment. That’s what it’s always been about for you. Safety.”
Sonny nodded.
“It seems like a win-win,” Dawn said. “I know that’s not as satisfying as an I win-you lose. But what you’re going to get if you don’t agree is a lose-lose. And the industry will be less safe because of it.”
She was right and in the end, he agreed to terminate his relationship with the union. They hired a fiery, young environmental radical just out of college. He wasn’t as effective as Sonny in signing up members. Nor was he as approachable among the local loggers. But he was technically brilliant. He knew every law and even the most obscure regulations by heart. He kept the companies running scared, safe and legal, every minute.
Sonny focused his full-time effort on their little start-up company. And with the enthusiasm of the manufacturer and the support of the industry, Safer Logging Equipment Corporation flourished.
Within a year, Paul had given up his day job to devote full-time effort to a newly hired creative team of bright young engineers.
He and Sonny remained cochairmen of the company, but it was Sonny who handled the operations. SLEC quickly became lucrative for both of them.
The increased financial security made some immediate and positive changes in the Leland lifestyle. Dawn, who’d finally managed to get her B.S. degree, was able to quit her job and go to graduate school full-time. They were able to do some careful renovation of the old house they loved. They took some lovely vacations and put money aside for the girls’ college education. And when Sierra suddenly got the notion that she wanted to attend the Arts Academy, a private high school downtown, they had the money to pay her tuition.
It was early that year, Sierra’s last in middle school, that Dawn got what seemed to her a brilliant idea.
“Let’s have another baby,” she said one cold winter evening.
“What?”
“I’m not going to be working for the next two years,” she said. “If there was ever going to be time for us to have another child, this is it.”
“Our girls are going to be fifteen and thirteen,” Sonny pointed out.
Dawn shrugged. “Our girls are wonderful,” she said. “But don’t you want a boy, as well?”
“A boy would be nice,” he said. “But he’s going to be a lot younger than his sisters.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re still young, that’s what counts. I’m thirty-four. You’re thirty-seven. A lot of people are just having their first child about then.”
He knew she was right about that. It seemed that there were two groups of parents. Those who had children in their late teens and those who waited until their midthirties. They decided to do both.
Trying to have a baby was something that they’d never done. But neither would have claimed the experience a hardship. Having frequent sex, they discovered that they had, like many other couples, allowed the everyday bustle and stress of life to keep them at a distance in the bedroom. Close and loving, they were enjoying intimacy together as they hadn’t in years.
It was an early Wednesday morning in March when Dawn was getting out of the shower. Sonny was standing in front of the mirror, shaving. She grabbed him from behind in a big hug.
“Hey, you should be careful of a guy with a razor in his hand,” he said, laughing.
“Careful has never been my part of my nature,” she answered. “That’s what you’ve always loved about me.”
He turned, pulling her naked body into his arms.
“How’s a guy supposed to go to work when he has this luscious siren luring him to stay home?” he said.
Dawn laughed.
He was running his hands over her body when he suddenly hesitated.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Dawn shrugged and shook her head. “It’s some kind of weird pimple or something,” she said.
Sonny checked it out. “Do you think you ought to have a doctor look at it?”
She nodded. “I’m going to. I thought I’d wait until… Well, I’ve been feeling sort of…different, you know,” she said, grinning. “The sticks aren’t turning blue yet, but I think I may be pregnant.”
Sonny laughed, delighted. He lifted her off the floor and twirled her around.
When she got her period the next week, they were both a little disappointed.
“I shouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t for certain.”
Sonny shook his head. “We’ll just have to keep trying. That doesn’t seem like a bad deal.”
By the next week, she was questioning the home pregnancy tests.
“I’m pregnant,” she told him. “Period or not, that’s all it can be. I crave chocolate like a fiend. I’m eating a half-dozen candy bars a day and I could eat more if I let myself. And do you know what’s happened, I’ve lost five pounds! If you lose weight on an all-candy diet you’ve got to be PG
. Next stop, morning sickness.”
The next stop was actually the doctor’s office.
“The urine test still says you’re not pregnant,” he told her. “But let’s have a look anyway.”
She was already lying on the examination table wearing a blue paper gown, her feet in the stirrups. The doctor flipped on the miner’s light on his head and inserted the speculum in her vagina.
“Everything looks pretty normal here,” he said. “Normal as in not pregnant.”
Dawn hardly had opportunity for disappointment as a sharp stabbing pain took her breath away.
“What’s this?”
“It’s some kind of sore in my groin,” Dawn told him. “It’s been there for a month or more. I keep thinking it will go away.”
There was a strange expression on the doctor’s face.
“He wants to biopsy this thing at the top of my leg,” she told Sonny later that night. “They must know we’ve got good insurance and they’re going to get whatever they can out of it.”
Sonny couldn’t manage such cynicism.
“The doctor is just trying to be thorough,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a case of better safe than sorry.”
“Well,” Dawn admitted, “the good news is that they’re cutting this awful knot out. It getting so bad it actually hurts just trying to walk upstairs.”
Good news was something they didn’t get.
The two of them sat across the desk from the doctor as he gave them the results.
“The mass was malignant,” he said. “You have a disease called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s a cancer of the lymphatic system. There are treatments. Chemotherapy, radiation. I’m going to transfer your case to an oncologist. She’ll be better able to help you understand what is happening and what your options are.”
“Chemotherapy?” Dawn said. “I can’t have chemotherapy. I’m trying to have a baby. That couldn’t be good for it.”
“No,” the doctor said. “I think you’ll have to…to put off any plans of more children.”
“For how long?” Dawn asked him. “I’m thirty-four, I can’t wait forever.”
The doctor looked at Sonny. The expression on his face sent an icy fear through his body. It was the same cold he’d felt as a rough tree sent a broken limb crashing in his direction.
“You’ll have to wait,” the doctor said. “Your disease, high-grade, large-cell lymphoma—it’s very aggressive, very fast.”
“It’s fast,” she said. “You mean it doesn’t take long to get over it?”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean at all.” The doctor folded his hands as if he were praying and set them on the desk. He leaned forward slightly as if shortening the distance between them would somehow make the words easier to say.
“This is a very aggressive cancer. Prognosis for survival is not very good,” he said. “About seventy percent live only six months to twelve months beyond diagnosis.”
“What?” Sonny’s fear solidified into near terror.
“I’m not an oncologist,” he continued quickly. “But I think your chances may be better than that. We have caught it early. There are treatments, more treatments, better treatments every day.”
Dawn didn’t say another word. Sonny thanked the doctor, made arrangements with the receptionist for the appointment with the oncologist. Took the handful of pamphlets the nurse brought out to him. Dawn was completely silent until they got to the car.
“What about my girls?” she asked. “If I die, what will happen with my girls?”
“Don’t worry about the girls,” Sonny said. “I will take care of the girls. We’ve got to worry about you. We’ve got to take care of you.”
She broke into tears then. He did, too. They sat in the cold, gray anonymity of the doctor’s parking lot and grieved and cried and moaned with fear and anger and disbelief.
“Let’s just drive, Sonny.”
“Right, right,” he said, gathering his composure. “We’ll go home.”
“No, I mean let’s drive away,” Dawn said. “We’ll pick up the girls at school and then we’ll just go. We’ll head down the road wherever it takes us. We’ll get away. Let’s just get away, Sonny.”
“Get away? Get away from what?”
“From this?”
“Dawn,” he said. “We can’t run from this. This comes with us. It’s now part of us.”
“I don’t want to lose my girls, Sonny,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either, baby. But we can’t run, there is no where to run. We’ve got to stand here. We’ve got to fight.”
“Fight?”
“We’ve got to fight for our lives,” he said.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Dawn asked him. “Seventy percent have a year or less.”
“That means thirty percent have more,” he told her. “Look, the doctor can give all the statistics in the world. But we are not statistics, Dawn, we’re people, people with bodies that aren’t carbon copies of anyone else’s. Minds and experience that are uniquely ours. And life goals that we may not even be aware of. The doctor can give us a prognosis, Dawn, but he can’t give us our destiny. It’s not up to him or to us. We’ve just got to play it out. And if we do that together, well that’s what life is, isn’t it? Living the days we are given.”
REAL LIFE
36
Vern did his best to reassure us on the way to the hospital.
“It’s not some new or terrible thing that’s happened,” he said. “And it’s not something that the doctor’s didn’t expect. Her white count, the white blood cells in her body, got too low and the medicine she takes to boost it wasn’t able to do enough.”
“She passed out at the bus stop,” Sierra said. “People thought she was a drunk or stoned. Nobody tried to help her. If some passerby hadn’t decided to call 911 on her cell phone, I don’t know what would have happened to her.”
I glanced over at Vern. He was worried, but he seemed equally determined.
“We can’t focus on how afraid we are, girls,” he told us. “Fear is contagious and it’s dangerous. Dawn is in the hospital now and she’s doing fine. That’s what we have to hang on to, the good that’s around us, the successes, the triumphs. If you don’t, it will drag you down. It will completely drag you down.”
“That’s what you told Grandma,” I said.
“What?”
“When we first came here last spring,” I said. “You told Grandma that she had to hold on to the good things about Sonny’s life. And that Sierra and I are some of those good things.”
Vern looked at me curiously.
“I don’t remember saying that, but it’s true,” he said. “You girls are the best of Sonny’s life. We are so lucky to have you here. To remind us every day of our wonderful son and to learn as much about you as we knew about him. And your mother is the one we have to thank for that. She brought you to Knoxville because even after everything that was said and done, she loves you more than she hated us.”
“I don’t think she hates you anymore,” I said.
Vern nodded. “I don’t think she does, either.”
The inpatient floor of the hospital was new territory for us. We wove our way around corners and through corridors until we got to her room. It was all boring beige and mauve, wallpaper with stripes, but the sight of Mom’s smile brightened it considerably.
Grandma had been sitting in the chair beside her, but she moved out of the way as soon as we walked in. Mom hugged us both.
“Can you believe this place?” she said to Sierra. “We’ve stayed in flea bag motels that had more style.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t have this equipment,” Sierra said.
She checked Mom’s lines, like she knew what she was doing. And asked questions about the blood and the medicines she was getting.
“Vern told you that I’m all right?”
That question was directed at me.
I nodded. “He sa
id that it was just a low white count and that it’s not that unusual.”
“Right,” Mom reassured me. “This last round of chemo has knocked me back a bit. Look, I’m losing my growth of peach fuzz.”
She rubbed her head and a little shower of quarter-inch-long hairs flew around her like a tiny hailstorm.
“My hair, my eyebrows, my toenails, it’s bad enough to lose them all once,” she said. “To lose them all over again, nobody told me about that. I don’t think that part was in the rule book.”
“I guess you’re just making up your own rules,” I said.
Mom laughed. “If I was making up my own, I’d insist on no more cancer, now or ever.”
We sat and talked to her for quite a while. She was weak and it showed, but the blood would help and she was trying to act like it already had.
Sierra went with Vern and Phrona to get something to eat in the cafeteria. I stayed with Mom, but I felt more like I was guarding her. Allowing her to not talk, just rest. Not pretend to be well, just try to get that way.
I didn’t think to bring a book with me, so I was forced to read one of Sierra’s magazines with all the trials and tears of the rich and famous. Why don’t we leave them alone, I thought. They’re just trying to live their lives. Lives that, except for money and fame, are pretty much as ordinary and happy and uncertain as our own.
“Has your sister converted you? Next time I open my eyes you’ll be watching soaps.”
I glanced over at Mom.
“I wanted you to rest.”
“At the risk of scaring my children, I’d have to say, ‘I’ll rest when I’m dead.’”
I reached over and took her hand.
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“That’s what you always say. You’ve got to come up with something more than that.”
I smiled.
“Guess who I met today?”
“Who?”
“A man named Lonnie Beale.”
“Ah…Lonnie,” she said. “He was a nice guy.”
“He still is,” I told her. “He came by to see you. His daughter works at the courthouse and she told him you were back in town.”
