Carry Me Home (118 page)

“Man, you all right?”

“I’m just kinda hot, Tone.”

“Open your jacket, Bobby. You’re all flushed.”

“Shit! I can barely move my arm.”

Tony pushed his hand through the open passenger window, laid the back of his fingers against Bobby’s forehead. “Man! You’re burning up!”

“No. I can’t be. It’ll be ...”

“Sara?” Tony kept the alarm from his voice. Sara and he were changing places so he could drive with Bobby, Sara with Linda, the girls, and Johnny. “Sara?”

“It’s nothin, Tone.” Bobby leaned forward, smiled weakly. “I musta been leaning on it, put it to sleep.” He raised his arm, began to unzip, leaned forward gasping. Tears welled to his eyes. Beneath his breath he muttered, “This is
our
vacation!” Then he leaned back, tightened his abdominal wall. More loudly to Tony he said, “Get in. We’re goina have this time.”

Bobby held out for three days. He built sand castles with Am, waded in the surf with Paul, let Noah bury his legs, winked at some bikinied beauties with Tony, and spent hours watching Sara. Then he could hold out no longer. His legs swelled, he could barely walk, had to ask Noah to help him, Noah so serious, only eight years old, had to ask him to be strong for his father.

On Wednesday 27 July 1983 Bobby returned not to the cottage at the Jersey Shore, not to High Meadow, but to the VA hospital in West Haven. His temperature had risen to 104. They started him on IV antibiotics and IM steroids. Doctors Dachik and Rosenwald prodded, poked, identified a grossly infected hematoma in his right arm. They stuck him, slit him open, sucked pus from his arm—not once, not twice, but over five days seven times. The direct pain and the throbbing pain were tremendous, yet were askew of the deep hematoma site and the first time they’d found only a small pocket, and the second too, and nothing the third and fourth until the ultrasound technician suggested Bobby tell the surgeon to do the next cut down right there in the lab so that the technician could show him the exact location. The fifth and sixth times the surgeons ignored the offer until so frustrated they did the seventh under ultrasound, stuck in the needle, dead center, and withdrew 70 ccs of blood.

“Did you hit it on something?”

“No,” Bobby answered. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe?” the doctor asked.

“So what if I did?”

“If you didn’t,” Dachik said, “it’s possible that it was spontaneous. Spontaneous bleeds are significant.”

“My condition’s deteriorating, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. It may be the low platelet count. We’ve some responses to that.”

More tests. New fever spikes. More blood drawn. Another bone marrow biopsy, another Wednesday at the transfusion clinic. “You’re platelet count is low. And ...”

“And?”

“The tests show an increase in leukemic—”

“Leukemia!”

“There are a number—”

“Leukemia.”

“... chemotherapy ...”

Bobby was barely hearing.

“... treatment has come a long way in the last several years ...” the voice empathetic, matter-of-fact, professional, personal.

“I’m a goner. Holy shit!”

“... you’re very early in the leukemic process ... a six-week course of cytotoxic ... and cytosine arabinoside ...”

Then, later, on the phone with Tony, afraid to tell Sara over the phone, “Leukemia.”

“Bummer, Man.”

“Yeah. Ambushed again.”

Meditation: Mid-August—See them, he tells himself. Feel them. The august stem cells of the marrow produce immature or precursor clones that differentiate into specialized cells as they mature. Differentiation and maturation are controlled by specific inducer proteins produced by the stem cells or by other cells in the surrounding support tissues. Immature myeloid (marrow) stem cell clones become macrophages or granulocytes, erythrocytes, megakaryocytes, eosinophils or mast cells, depending on the inducer that binds to the immature cells’ DNA. Picture this, he urges. See this. See the pool, the mixed-inducer ocean, with millions of immature floating rings. When these cells differentiate and mature, growth inhibitors, produced by the mature cells, block these cells from further multiplication. But leukemic cells—immature, undifferentiated—produce their own growth inducer independently of the stem or support tissue and this allows them to steadily, though nondifferentially, multiply immature clones. These immature clones do not produce differentiation inducers that would cause them to mature and stop reproducing. Picture it. See them. How can I turn on the differentiation-factor producers that might stop the uncontrolled growth of leukemic cells? How can I keep the leukemic cells from asynchronously producing their own differentiation factors?

Swimming in meditation, floundering: If all myeloid leukemic clones have abnormal chromosome arrays—that is, the deletion or malarrangement of a chromosome segment—how can that segment be restored or replaced? See it. See it happening. Expect it. What value knowledge if not ... See it being fulfilled.

Bobby remained in the hospital through July and the first twenty-six days of August. On the twentieth he was interviewed by reporters from the
New Haven Register
, the
Hartford Courant
; on the twenty-first by a man from UPI. In them, in the media, Bobby found a strange bedfellow—truly interested, sympathetic investigative reporters delving into Agent Orange illnesses and death, exposing personal tragedies in America, Australia, Southeast Asia. They seemed delighted with the new mace, the new battleax with which to bash both the government and corporate America. Yet Bobby found in their seemingly sensational revelations, little ungrounded sensationalism.

“It’s working?” the reporter asked. There was surprise in his voice.

“Seems to be,” Bobby answered. For six days he had not spiked a temp. His platelet count and hematocrit were up. Other elements of his blood seemed to be responding. The fact that he had not had a fever all week indicated the new antibiotic regime was controlling his infections. He was up, out of bed, the July swelling in his legs gone. He walked the halls morning, noon, night, cautiously, afraid of bumping or being bumped, afraid of causing a new hematoma, yet anxious to be in motion.

The reporter sat in Bobby’s room, making notes in a small cardboard-bound pad. Additionally he recorded the interview on a Panasonic microcassette. “Hmm. I thought you were much ...”

“... closer to dying?” Bobby finished the question.

“More seriously ill,” the reporter countered.

“It’s serious.” Bobby smiled. He liked the man, liked his direct yet relatively sensitive approach. “You want me to be dying, huh?”

“No Bobby, I don—”

“But it’s a better story if I am.”

“Unfortunately. Newspapers do want you to be dramatic.”

“Well, I am.” For half an hour Bobby explained his leukemia to the man, made certain the reporter understood the process, the short-of-a-miracle irreversibility, the temporary positive signs, responses to the chemo.

“You don’t seem bitter,” the reporter said.

“That comes and goes.”

“If you had it to do all over again, would you go to Canada?”

“You mean ... Hell, no! I’d go again right now if I could.”

“You would?!”

“I certainly would. I’d go back to Viet Nam in a minute. Shit ... I don’t think I’d like the person I’d be if I hadn’t gone. And if living with this pain ... is the price, then I’ll take it. I’ve seen the best. And the worst. But seeing the best, the very best, seeing it just once inspires one forever. That makes it worth it.”

“Worth dying for?”

“Yes. It was worth it then. The cause. It sucks now ... being sick ... having these constant reminders that your body’s self-destructing. But that doesn’t change the value of the cause. Still, I won’t let a Dow product in my house.”

“What about your sons? You have boys, don’t you?”

“I ...” Bobby paused, his mind raced, his face reflected anguish.

“If they were to be drafted ...” the reporter began.

“They won’t be.” Bobby turned hard, surface hard, voice hard, but inside, flashing on Noah, on Paul, juxtaposing them to Hamburger Hill, to the A Shau, to the mud and violence in a way he had never imagined, inside he turned sour, clammy. “No way,” Bobby said. “The government’s gotten enough Wapinskis.”

Saturday, 27 August 1983, High Meadow—“Bobby’s home.”

“He’s been waiting for ya, Man,” Rodney said. “Every day. Every mornin, ya know? I let him out an he disappears. Then I find him by the road. Just sittin. Waitin for ya. He makes me call im a hun’red times. I don’t think he hears anymore. He’s gettin awful old.”

Bobby slid his hands over Josh’s head, kneaded the base of the dog’s ears. “Aw, good ol’ Josh. Good boy.” Josh groaned, stood, leaned in, then shook his head. Bobby rocked back. “Don’t bump me, Boy. There.” Josh stopped, looked up. Bobby sighed. “Ah ... let me just scratch your ears.”

“Hey Man. Good you’re back. You made the front page of the paper.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. Look at this

DYING VET BACKS

CHEMICAL COMPANIES

______

Says He’d Go Again

“Says I backed who?”

“Hey, you’re a celeb. UPI. That’s carried all over the country. Calls you a ‘self-made man.’ Talks about you as a ‘manufacturer of environmental products.’ Let’s see, ‘entrepreneurial spirit upon which America was founded ...’ I liked this part. ‘Wapinski claims that the causes over which America went to war were noble and just and that Agent Orange was a legitimate weapon in the fight against communism.’”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It says here you hope your corporation will become as large and as powerful as Dow Chemical. That you hope someday to be in the same manufacturing association.”

“No, that’s not what I said at all.”

Later that afternoon Bobby took Josh into the barn. They climbed aboard the creaky old homemade elevator constructed for Pewel a decade earlier. Slowly it raised the old dog and the frail man up to the loft. They entered Grandpa’s office, opened the thermal curtains letting the room flood with light. For nearly an hour Bobby sat, scratching Josh’s ears, both just sitting, Bobby covering one eye, looking out at the farm, the pond, the woods, thinking of the gap, wondering if he could ever again attempt that hike or walk through the cathedral of eastern hemlock or sit at the fire circle.

After a time Bobby removed the file of ideas and notes, of half-written thoughts and collected articles, that he had labeled “The High Meadow Code.” The file was thick. Indeed it was not a single file but three files: one with articles on environmental policies and plans; one with the best thoughts and plans for housing, energy, and a sustainable future; and one, the main file, containing Bobby’s own writings. Slowly, purposefully, he spread the sheets, sorted them into beginning and end, into myriad central elements. By the time the work was spread and organized it was eight o’clock, dark. Josh had slept through Bobby’s labor. Now, happily, he rose, nuzzled Bobby’s legs, descended with him to the main floor, returned to the house.

Sara was hurt. Angry. Bobby apologetic. Sara, her back to Bobby as she washed the dinner dishes, “Can’t you spend some time with us?”

“I’m sorry. I lost track of the time.”

“Noah’s really upset about that ‘Dying Vet’ story. He spent all evening decoding it.”

“I’ll talk to him. I ... You remember Granpa’s code?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want to finish that. That story, you know, ‘the self-made man’ stuff. It set me thinking about all ... like Granpa used to say, ‘Civilization is a gift.’ We think we’re so independent yet really everyone of us is heir to this incredible complex structure that passes on language and light, everything from when to cut your toenails to advanced chemical treatments which can reverse aging and disease processes. It passes to us an education system which bathes us in inducer factors which cause us to differentiate into functionally different individuals which civilization requires to remain healthy.”

“Bobby—” Sara turned from the sink, “what are you talking about?”

“About the inducers of greed and the inducers of altruism.”

“Maybe you should talk to Noah.”

Then, with Noah, halfway up the stairs, seated like two buddies plotting a caper, “You get more publicity,” Bobby said softly, “if the newspapers ... They want you to be dying.”

Noah’s eyes opened wide. “Can they do that?”

“No. They have no effect on my health. What I mean is, in their story, if I sound like I’m dying, it makes for a more dramatic story.”

“Oh.”

“It gets more sympathy and they sell more papers that way,” Bobby said.

“And the chemical company,” Noah asked, “do you really back it?”

“No. He misquoted me. I was explaining to him that we had a small company. That all companies aren’t bad. That lately it seemed to me the media, you know ...”

“Uh-huh.”

“... has tried to paint them all, ah ... to describe them all as if they were all poisoning the environment. I said to him, What does that do to our civilization? To our children? If we eliminate the production-inducer from the bathing solutions of our culture ...” Bobby paused, simplified his explanation. “What attitudes will children have, when they’re grown, toward producing, toward working with materials, with their hands? Will they know how to work? Will they understand the benefits of manufacturing?”

“I know how to work.”

“I know you do. You’re an excellent worker. I’m very proud of you when you tinker out in the shop. But the papers, and especially TV, give us the impression all manufacturing is bad for—”

Noah broke in, “If you went back to Viet Nam, you’d leave us.”

“I ... but ...”

“It says you said you’d go back.”

“Hmm. That’s ... Noah, I can’t explain that to you. That’s the nature of guys who were airborne. Why we agreed to go in the first place. But I wouldn’t leave you to go there. I love you guys too much, and Mama, to go now.”

On Sunday morning Bobby and Sara took the children to Mass at St. Ignatius. Then, back home, Bobby again retreated with Josh to Grandpa’s office.