|
“Language
is very poor for experience.” Second Man: “Yes
it is, but it is all we have to tell
our story.” First Man: “Well,
then, let’s begin. It
can still be a noble effort.” --
third edition, Intensive Coronary
Care for Nurses, 1978 ONE It
is Saturday. An early summer
morning in the latter part of the fifth decade of the twentieth century. Sun is beginning to filter in through a side
window in the small upstairs bedroom of an older home; a gray, two-story,
wood structure with dirty white trim on a quiet street in a medium-sized
rural city about one hundred miles inland on the northwest part of
the American continent. The
town is clean and green and slow.
Even during the week, even downtown. Kiran
is asleep, lying on his right side facing the window, his right hand
extending straight out to the edge of the bed so that his thin wrist
just curves down over the edge of the bed.
Kiran will always sleep like this, just as places that are
clean and green and slow will always feel good to him. He
will not wake till the sun touches his bed and climbs to his face. He has lived twelve years and has grown to
five feet. He will grow another
eight and one half inches and will live thirty-eight more years. He will die in a hospital on a rainy Wednesday
in early November with a sense of surprise and fear, a great painful
tearing and finally a feeling of indescribable, perfect love. His
life will be an unusual blend of innocence and knowledge; he will
see and feel and know and yet remain amazed.
He will see clearly into the heart of the mystery and yet remain
confused. His most complete joy and secret delight will be passing encounters
with stray dogs on random streets. But
now he is asleep. The sun
reaches his wrist and continues on to merge -- and emerges in his
dream as a sudden shaft of light and heat on an overcast African plain
where he is running from a zebra who is being ridden by the school
bully. He would never remember
to know that next the school bully became a rocket and soared straight
up into a marble blue space full of pink and yellow stars, and in
that strange alchemy of dreams he would be aware and yet not question
that the zebra changed into his small dog and they walked together
through an enclosed, green forest path that was drenched in yellow
light. And there, at that moment in his life, in his dream, he knew
an unconditional and peculiarly rich love that he would never know
again or surpass until he lay dying at fifty years of age. The
sun now reaches his face. He
begins to turn, still lingering on the forest path, reluctant to leave
but unable to avoid it. Slowly
but instantaneously his eyes open.
For several long minutes he lay there breathing in the glad
knowledge of Saturday. The
clock on the dresser told him it was only seven thirty. He jumped from his bed and eagerly began dressing
in the clothes he had hurriedly shed on the floor in the dark of the
preceding night. Silence filled
his house. No movement or sound came from downstairs. His mother was
still asleep. Swiftly he went to the window.
Nothing stirred outside. A
surge of excitement rose at the thought of exploring his kingdom unobserved,
free of instruction. Quietly but quickly, he descended the stairs
to the kitchen in three abbreviated jumps.
Pausing to listen, he confirmed his safety and hastily prepared
for later pleasure--a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a baloney
with mayonnaise. He placed
the sandwiches quietly in a brown paper bag. He
made his way through the small gray living room and in one swift silent
gesture opened the front door and stepped through it, pulling it closed
behind him, escaping the feared pursuit of his mother’s voice. He
hesitated a moment on the front porch, his eyes gazing into the morning
on Market Street, letting the sense of freedom intoxicate him. The cool air still lingered, a legacy from
the cold black night. The
porch was five feet above the ground, which in turn led to a seven-foot
sloping embankment, and from that height, viewing parts of the neighborhood
that stretched out before him, he saw the sun as it diagonally pushed
back the shade to warm and invite movement .Across the street, adjacent
to an old five-story red brick apartment house was a vacant lot that
occupied a quarter of the block.
It was mostly overgrown with knee-high grass and dandelions
and the remainder was gravel. The sun now covered most of it and sent an
aroma of grass and warmed dirt that filtered up to him and beckoned.
The
days came to him now fresh and unused, like wrapped gifts carrying
with them that sharp passion that newness brings. A soft gladness
filtered through him as he quickly moved down the steps and rushed
into the sunlight, where he abruptly stopped to bathe in the bright,
silent warmth. Then movement: two-four-six steps, and he broke
into a slow run, than halted suddenly, hesitated a moment, turned
swiftly around, ran back to the side of the house and in a commanding
voice, called, “Dog.” Dog
was neither small nor large, young nor old, had neither short hair
nor long, but with his fair coat of yellow, gold and white, hinted
at each. It matters here that we know something of him,
not simply because he was different from other dogs but because he
was there, and thus he contributed importance to this usual and extraordinary
day. What
was immediately apparent about him was his total sense of comfort
with being a dog. There was
about him not the slightest trace of misgiving.
It was this very quality of absolute and effortless acceptance
of his life that graced all his movements and generated among all
within range of his influence a not totally conscious feeling of calm
well-being. Indeed, people whom chance had put in his path, even for
the briefest part of their day, would, at the end of their evening,
lying in bed, pause to recall or comment to one another what an unusually
perfect or strangely fine day it had been, and when trying to account
for it, they would find themselves at a loss, for though they had
been under his influence, he had not been in need of their attention. This
was characteristic of him, for it was true that in most matters he
was quite contained and attended well to his own needs, which often
left a vague impression of aloofness when one first met him. However, it soon became apparent to those who took the effort to
see further that this very abundance in which he resided allowed him
to attend to the scarcity other lives often inhabited.
This quality was not unrelated to a calmness of curiosity in
him toward the scented aromas of this world which so frantically captivate
the majority of animals. It
was as if, through some mysterious route, he had already been informed
and would pause to smell merely to confirm.
It was knowledge! Yes, it was finally that. It was simply that he knew something that set
him apart from other dogs. “Dog”
heard his name and knew it was time to go. They
bounded down the street, and Kiran’s feet felt the sidewalk, the sudden
hard joy of pavement that rose up through the soft rubber soles of
his tennis shoes, up his legs and into his chest.
The endless stretch of cement squares had always been there,
his first path into the world as far back as he could remember, clear
back to the ones with the oil stains and pink paint in front of the
house on Mission Street. Kiran
walked west up Market. Dog
followed and then bounded ahead to Fourteenth, where he paused, then
sensing Kiran’s desire, turned south up the block, leisurely exulting
in his satisfaction with the moment, the inexhaustible news of odors. Light
had taken over the day now, spreading over everything in a perfect
gold-white, covering the morning in a soft brilliance.
Kiran was twelve, and his joy was the joy of twelve, endless
and full of possibilities. The
sidewalk promised it, the streets lined with oak and elm and chestnut
trees, and the weathered porches and decaying wood houses promised
it, the stray cats and overgrown alleys and the hidden paths of nearby
hills and the wild cherry trees in abandoned orchards promised it.
But most of all, something inside him that he was never able
to name promised it. Dog
glanced back at Kiran to confirm the correctness of his instinct as
he continued across Clay Street toward the near hills, up where the
white castle was. Dog knew
about the castle. They went there often, and he knew it was special
to Kiran. It was empty and
silent and very old and oddly friendly.
It seemed strong and protective, as though watching over all
the lives in the neighborhood below.
It went back to Kiran’s earliest memories on Mission Street,
where it had been the mysterious white eye always looking down on
him like a father. Dog knew they would not go there today.
They were going to Goose Hollow, down the long streets that
were thin and green and slow. They
turned at old Mr. Bear’s corner grocery, and Dog stopped at the open
door. Kiran smelled the rich smell of vegetables, red radishes and
parsley and tomato and carrot and the pungent dill pickles from the
wood barrel that mixed with the strong pull of salami and baloney.
But Dog smelled the floor where the odors were trapped like
secret treasures. He knew
the old man with one leg who lived up the street had been there earlier,
and that he had brought the cruelty of his pain with him; he knew
the small Jensen girls had been there with their incessant puppy,
and he knew Mr. Bear was angry and not to be gone near today. He continued
on leading the way toward Goose Hollow. They walked on slowly. They
would walk all morning and all afternoon and well into the evening. TWO Amid the soft heavy sound of a church organ’s
funeral hymn Esther moved slowly but deliberately through a sun warmed
brisk October day that would be preserved years later in her memory
by the littered separation of shiny brown chestnuts from their green,
finely horned shells which were scattered on the narrow wood walkway
leading up to the small church. Esther was five-foot three and a half inches
and just under a hundred and forty pounds. She did not appear overweight
but small and softly round and walked close to the earth with a weary
grace that hinted at her thirty nine years of exposure. Her plain
brown hair went straight down to the middle of her back and scattered
unevenly in clumps that seemed to oddly match the calluses on the
back of her small masculine hands. “Childlike” was the impression
one had on first seeing her. Her face was oval shaped with quiet features
and penetrating brown eyes
that told you she was without insulation; things could still happen
to her. She wore a black cotton dress with pink blossoms on it that
made her appear more present than she was. She was intentionally one of the last arrivals.
Through life-long design and the persistence of habit she always arrived
late, feeling uncomfortable with the preliminary small talk and random
minglings that preceded social events. “Put on’s” she’d call them,
“people always putting on what ain’t on” she’d say. That, and the
insistent weight of trying to push back Kiran’s death, caused her
to seek out a small wooden high-back bench that lay several feet off
the walkway, partially hidden behind a tall clump of dying shrubs.
This small postponement felt good and she
allowed herself to collapse into it letting a worn brown leather purse
slide off her shoulder as she sat down. She leaned back and sighed
feeling a small sense of release flow through her and then escape,
followed by a sharp, swelling, ache like fullness toward the back
of her throat on the roof of her mouth as she again recalled her last
night in the hospital with him. “Esther,” he’d said and then, following
a short pause, “No more messages.” It occurred to her now with a small shock
that it was the last thing he had said to her. At
the time she had thought he was delirious. It was near the middle
of the night and the hospital room was mostly dark except for the
dim light that filtered in from the hallway through the half open
door. She had been reclining back in a large fold out chair next to
his bed trying to sleep but her exhaustion had been unable to overcome
the alternating tides of terror and anxiety that had crept into her
mind and body and left her with a sense of hollow fatigue. The unnatural strangeness of the hallway
light allowed her to see the dimly outlined shape of his small body.
He was lying partially on his left side facing away from her with
his legs drawn up halfway as they always were. His long dark stringy
hair lay in thick strands down to where his legs began to curve upward
and she could see the rapid shallow movements of his narrow back as
his diaphragm rose and fell making swift raspy sounds which she clung
to as though to an anchor that held her from drifting into a dark
fear. The steady rhythm of his breathing reassured her and she had
started to drift off into a light semi-sleep when she was startled
by the sharp urgent sound of her name. “Esther!” She came quickly out of her chair to his
bedside and leaned over him close to his face. To her relief Kiran settled back into silence,
and she cautiously tried to resume her uneasy sleep but was unable
to keep her mind from drifting back to what he had said. There
had been something in the sheer force of his urgency that she could
not dismiss and could not accept. She had continued to reassure herself
that it was delirium, something coded for a later revelation that
he would reveal to her when they got home. This image
calmed and relaxed her. Slowly she found sleep. She awoke early and restless to the gray
light coming in through the large window. She had been dreaming; she
was at home with Kiran and they were in front of their large fish
tank. He was laying on the sofa in his purple jogging suit with the
ever-present pencil stuck uselessly between his index and forefinger
and she was sitting on the floor next to him. They were putting new
names on old fish. She heard Kiran stir suddenly and the sharp
weight of event flooded back into her sending her stomach into a swift
knot followed by a sudden surge of despair and then a curious anger. She rose from her chair and moved quietly through
the half open door into the hall.She found the nurse and told her
she was going to the cafeteria for coffee. The cafeteria was too busy. There were always
too many people everywhere. ‘Where is it all going to end,’ she thought.
She got her coffee and found a small round table just large enough
for one, where she could be alone. She wanted to smoke but didn’t
have the energy to go outside in the rain so she started going through
her purse for something to do till her coffee cooled. She didn’t want
to think anymore. She just wanted to stop thinking. She was just starting to sip her coffee
when she heard her name announced loudly from the ceiling. It startled
her. It was the public address system. She felt suddenly exposed and
unsafe like a rabbit found hiding in his bush. “Esther Lear, please
call three south, 797, Esther Lear, please call three south, 797.”
She saw a wall phone twenty feet away and walked up to it and dialed
the number. Kiran’s nurse answered, “This is Esther, what is it?”
“We think you’d better come. His breathing is slowing,” she said.
Esther sensed there was something more in her voice, something not
said that she was supposed to know. Her chest froze and her breathing
quickened. She dropped the phone and walked in a rapid , business
like stride out of the cafeteria. She found the stairs leading up
to the hallway to three-south. A fear larger than she had ever known
pushed her down the long hall where she turned the corner and passed
through the swinging doors. The doctor was coming out of his room and
he walked up to where she had suddenly stopped. He was a small, kind
man with short kinky curls of gray hair that looked like he’d had
a permanent. “I’m sorry,” he said in a strained mature voice, “He’s
gone.” The nurse came up beside her and put her arms supportingly
under Esther’s elbows and forearms. “It
was quick,” she said softly. “There’s a couple in there now who just
stopped by. Friends from work they said.” She let go of her. “I’m
sorry,” she added. Esther walked past them both, they did not
exist. She walked into the room.
A couple who
did not exist stood awkwardly on the other side of the bed. Kiran
was lying with his head raised halfway. He was still. Esther sat down
on the bed slowly and stared at him and then collapsed over him across
his stomach. The tears tasted of salt and the heavings in her chest
built quietly, becoming bigger and bigger till they took her over. The couple remained standing a few minutes, then walked silently around the bed and left. She stayed on the bed with him for three hours, then the nurse came in and said they had to get him ready. Esther got up quietly and walked out of the room. She walked down the hallway, through the swinging doors, and out of the hospital. |