Carry Me Home (113 page)

Shee-it, he said, thought. That does hurt. Get my things. Take my things. Take Bobby’s present. Come clean then clear out. Give em the whole story. What Sara goina think. She’ll hate me. She’ll ... she’ll grab up the children, pull em back like I’m dirt, like I ... I ...

Ty returned to the cabin. The soles of his feet felt dead, the tops stung. He sat, massaged them back to life. He replaced his socks, shoes. He pulled on rubber boots to protect his dress shoes, straightened his clothing, retied his tie, donned his new winter coat. Then he meandered through the small cabin grabbing his personal items, tossing them into his blanket, tossing in his gift for Bobby, his sales order forms, pens, a few knick-knacks he’d brought out, his small radio, nothing orderly, hit and miss, bouncing from wall to bed to the over-stuffed recliner to the table, here, there, without reason, until the blanket was heaped. Then he grabbed the four corners, twisted them together, threw the bundle across his back, left. His knife was still on the floor.

His mind was as scattered as his motion. In the cold, mist, just light, he stumbled, nudged trees, ricocheted like a steel ball in a pinball machine rolling to the bottom, bumpered here, there, always descending the narrow path to the pond.

In places the ice was still snow-covered. Elsewhere it was wet, smooth, impervious, holding broad, flat puddles. The water made it slippery and he trudged carefully, slowly, through the mist, unable to see his past footprints, which had melted, unable to see the far side, the rear edge too disappearing. Only the area immediately about him was visible. He paused. There was a brown leaf imbedded in the ice exactly how Bobby had once described the ice-leaf solar collector. He spied a second leaf, meandered to the right, spied a third, sloshed farther off course. For a few minutes he looked from leaf to leaf. He felt giddy. Then he could barely recall why he was on the ice, why he was dressed so early, carrying all his belongings in the mist. Under him the ice sagged. There was a low creaking—not the sharp cracking of frigid winter but a dull creak. He expected it. He took another step. The ice broke. That he did not expect. It broke in a very large piece, a slab, fracturing clean before him. He fell to his knees to distribute his weight but the ice continued dropping. At first it gave him a nauseous feeling. The cold wet of the surface soaked through his pants, felt cold on his knees. For a brief moment he felt silly, felt he’d overreacted to the sagging, felt glad the fog over the pond was thick and no one from the barn or the house could see him. But the ice continued down under his weight. The huge piece tilted like an immense trap door. He slid back toward the edge. His arms flailed. He released his bundle, the four corners opening, dumping his goods. Now he was prone on the ice though the slab had tilted almost to the vertical. He tried to climb, to dig his fingers in and hang on but he could not get a hold in the frozen surface. He grabbed for the blanket, for the box with the gift for Bobby. His legs sank in the water. Instantly the cold penetrated his pants, his skin, into his muscles. The water hit his scrotum, his penis, jolted him. When it reached his navel he began to panic. Then he purposely whipped his face into the water remembering it was the only way to close down the peripheral vascular system and retain body heat. He came up. The ice slab, like a bank vault door, dropped, slamming closed. His arms shot up to hold the ice off, his legs strove for support in the water, in the muck-bottom. Under the ice he searched for an opening. He looked up, it was lighter above and he knew that the ice was up. For a brief second he thought that they all would think he’d done it on purpose. He clenched his teeth as tightly as he could, closed his entire face down. His whole body stung. It was no longer cold. He tried slamming his fist into the ice but the only motion was his body sinking in the water. He was amazed at the hardness of the bottom of the ice. He searched for the slab edge. His body would not move, became numb. It no longer hurt.

He was frail yet he looked healthy, healthier than he’d looked in months. His face was different. Changed somehow. Altered from within as if they’d snatched his body, replaced his soul, or gotten to his mind.

Wednesday, 3 March 1982—Rifkin, Thorpe, Renneau, were there, celebrating more than Bobby’s homecoming, celebrating the very first High Meadow wine—a barrel tapped long before its time. Smith, Stutzmeyer, Denahee and Erik Schevard and family were there. So too Vu, Van Deusen, Mariano—almost every veteran who still lived at High Meadow, plus a dozen from downtown and half a dozen from afar. And families came, the Pellegrinos and Pisanos, the Tashkors, Rasmuellens and Hoellers. Andre Paulowski popped in. And Father Tom Niederkou. All talking at once, in twos, in threes, in fours. Bobby was back.

“Man, this is bitchin.”

“Sooo bitchin, Man ...”

“Yeah. Bummer, that shit up there. Glad you’re home.”

“Yeah. Hey, they say anything up there about these rashes?”

“They talk about numbness in like hands and feet?”

“You hear about this guy, Reutershan, who died of liver cancer. Said it was caused by bioaccumulation of dioxin. We’ve been collecting lots of shit, Man. Establishing a whole new section in the library ...”

“Hey. You hear that Ty cleared out?”

“Naw.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe he left. I can’t believe he left without saying good-bye. He didn’t even leave an address?!”

“We didn’t expect him to go yet. We thought he was going to be here.”

“He’s a neat man, but Man, he had a heavy dose of the flakies. Sometimes he had his sh ... stuff, rolled in a tight little ball. But then it would all spill out ...”

“This wine sucks.”

“Anybody see the kids?”

“I’m switchin back to cider, Man. This stuff’s hurtin my head. Shee-it. I can’t drink no more. One beer knocks me on my ass. Gives me a three-day headache. I used to be able to drink a case.”

“You read those documents Mariano and Wagner got ... on this Agent Orange shit and alcohol and headaches. Talkin about people not being able to metabolize alcohol and about abnormal EEGs. Right into people’s brains ...”

“Anybody seen Noah?”

“... into people’s dicks.”

“Keep it down, Man. Father Tom’s right behind you.”

“What! He doesn’t have a dick?”

“Yeah. But I was reading where it cleaves the DNA chains in your cum so if you knock up your old lady, that’s what causes these multiple birth defects.”

“Yeah. I read that too. I read that the chemical companies knew it too. A long time ago ...”

“Anybody seen Bobby?”

In the barn office, alone, just the three of them, Bobby, Noah and Josh. “Papa?”

“Um-hmm.” Noah didn’t ask his question. Bobby waited, then said, “What do you want for your birthday?”

Shyly Noah smiled. Then more broadly. Then he blurted, “A puppy.”

Bobby pulled back, then nodded, managed a smile. Then he knit his brow, cocked his head, scratched Josh behind the ears, said, “What about ol’ Josh, here?”

“He’s—” Noah clammed up.

Gently Bobby asked, “He’s what?” Noah, eyes to the floor, mumbled something. “Hmm?”

“I ... said ... I want a dog that’s just for me. Josh is too old. And he stinks.”

“Oh—” Bobby moaned sympathetically, “poor Josh.”

“He’s your dog,” Noah said. “And I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

Monday, 8 March 1982—“You need a good lawyer. You need a lawyer who’s like an alley cat. One nasty focused son of a bitch. The nastiest son of a bitch you can find.”

“Mark, you handle it. Just submit the claim.”

“You’re a hell of a lot more forgiving than I am.”

“I’m not forgiving. I ... Look, it’s open and shut. Here’s the proof that I was exposed.” Bobby flipped through the file on his lap. “Here’s the letter from Wilcoxson—on VA letterhead. Nice, huh? Listen to this. ‘In view of the history of exposure to AGENT ORANGE, we feel the probability of this exposure as an etiologic agent is a distinct and serious consideration.’”

Bobby produced more pages from his file. “Here’s copies of the studies I told you about—‘Impairment of the Blood-forming System by Exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin’; and, um, ‘Chromosomal Aberrations Associated with Phenoxy Herbicides’; and ‘Cytogenetic ...’”

“Okay.” Mark Tashkor held up his hand. “Look, I’ll file the claim but a one hundred percent disability isn’t just compensation for what you’ve gone through. And anything more is beyond my scope. If we don’t—”

“Thanks, Mark. We’ll get it. This one’s from Dr. Lilly Dachik. ‘Various courses of androgens have had short duration effects. Robert Wapinski is now totally transfusion dependent and with but a few exceptions requires four units of blood every two-to-four weeks to stay alive.’ I ... Mark, I can’t pay ... yet ... When the IRS releases ...”

“Don’t worry about it, Bob. We’re in this as one.”

A month passed. Then another. To Bobby each sunrise seemed a blessing, each day brought new trials, new trepidations. Three times he returned to West Haven, three times nearly scared to death to accept the transfusion, the blood, fearful of another reaction, yet knowing his blood values had declined into the critical zone. One week they made it a family outing, driving up Tuesday, finding a motel with a pool where Noah and Paul could swim and Am could hang on to Sara and be swished through the water; then all taking Papa to the Wednesday “filler-up” clinic; Sara staying with the children, downstairs, praying, concealing her fears; then release, and up to Mystic to the whaling village before the long drive home.

During this time Bobby “went public” with his disease. He called his brother, tried to make peace, found Brian unaware of, or unwilling to confront, their schism. He talked to the vets, to attorneys, to doctors, to students. He was invited to address distant veterans groups and small classes of school children, and he responded to the degree his strength allowed. He talked to Father Tom and to Johnnie Jackson, to Aaron Holtz and Albert Morris. The latter responded by asking him to be Grand Marshal of the 1982 Memorial Day Parade.

It was a strange time. Bobby became almost proud of
his
illness; wore
his
illness like a badge of courage, like a Congressional Medal of Honor, like a shield or maybe like a mask.

“It’s a reading from Paul to the Romans,” he told Sara, told Tony, told Dennis and Mark, Juan and Joe.

Now that we have been justified by faith we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have gained access by faith to the grace in which we now stand, and we boast of our hope for the glory of God. But not only that—we even boast of our afflictions—we know that afflictions make for endurance, and endurance for tested virtue, and tested virtue for hope. This hope will not leave us disappointed.

Juan listened rapt. Sara squeezed him. Others seemed embarrassed. Tony stared into his eyes, unconvinced, until Bobby said, “Just accept the part on affliction, endurance, virtue and hope.”

On Memorial Day he stood on a makeshift stage before the 1883 obelisk in River Front Park. A throng of three thousand citizens had gathered, had cheered him earlier along the parade route, had actually frightened him with their mood, their attitude transformation from seemingly anti-American a decade earlier to seemingly militant patriotism now. Bobby stood, shy, frail, glancing up from the podium, seeing the crowd, attempting to concentrate on a short patch of cleaned and raked gravel between the crowd and the stage, attempting too, to concentrate on his speech, his breathing, hoping his words had meaning but not hearing his own voice, in midspeech not recalling if he’d delivered the beginning.

We recall the names, faces, shared laughs and hardships of our friends yet what we truly honor on Memorial Day is not just their deaths or their lives but it is their spirit. We honor their belief, their moral heroism. From the distant past to the future it is essential we understand “we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract ... It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here thus far so nobly advanced.” These words, of course, are from Abraham Lincoln’s
Speech at Gettysburg
one hundred and nineteen years ago.

We remember, we honor, by continuing to advance that unfinished noble work. Theirs is a legacy and a promise. Ours must be a covenant....

The covenant of Memorial Day includes the passing of the torch of the values—even if at times those values have been tarnished or corrupted—for which they made the sacrifice.

Ahhhhhoooooommmm. From faith and covenants Bobby moved on to meditation—bouncing like an ultradense polymer ball; place to place, house, barn, fields, going to pot, to seed; and topic to topic, always shifting, never finishing, never reaching ultimate satisfaction; straw to straw.

He lay on his back in the barn in Grandpa’s office, alone, without even Josh there by his side, perfectly still, an old OD army jungle sweater folded and placed over his eyes. He saw High Meadow as it was when he was a boy. He saw his grandfather and grandmother. He saw Josh when he was a puppy running in the fields, loping effortlessly after butterflies on sunny spring days with soft breezes. He looked inside himself, saw his arterial system, saw his blood, each cell, saw it flowing, saw it fighting for life, battling the hill, the mud, friendly fire, searching for the enemy to find, fix, fight, finish. He saw the marrow chambers, the little factories squeezing out new cells, beautiful smooth, firm, healthy cells. He sent memos to the chambers. “Good job. Quality counts. I love what you do for me. Keep up the good work. I love you.” He sent light beams, cobalt blue beams, high intensity beams, energy beams, reinforcements. “I’m behind you guys. I’m with you all the way. The supply convoy’s ready, packed with all the beans, bullets, and batteries you’ll ever need. And here’s a new weapon, a new treatment, new chemical. Use it in good health. Use it against the bad guys. Get some, good guys. Waste that scourge. Grease em. Knock em out.