The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (9 page)

CHAPTER 8

HEAVEN’S DOOR

At ten o’clock that night, Johnny was quiet behind his bedroom door. I tapped on the frame and whispered his name. I eased the door open and saw Johnny sleeping on the bed, his right cheek plastered flat against the Second Act of
King Lear
. As timeless as Shakespeare’s genius was, how many teenagers had he put to sleep? Perhaps someday the Bard would replace propofol as the anesthetic of choice for adolescents having surgery.

I turned off the light and made my way back to the living room. I wasn’t tired, and at this hour there were no more sporting events on TV. I didn’t feel like reading. I looked out the window at the pastoral winter setting. A full moon lit up the blanket of new snow that covered the yard, the driveway, and the top of my car. Nighttime seemed like day.

I wanted fresh air and some exercise. It was the perfect evening for both. I laced up my boots, put on my parka and gloves, and hit the street. I walked one block north to the storefront lights of Howard Street. The crunching of snow under my boots was an old sound from my youth. Every step sounded musical, the rhythmic backbeat to my North Country odyssey. I felt young, unfettered, and alive in Minnesota. There were no mirrors to fix me in time, and I felt like I was 18 years old again.

All commerce on Howard Street was shut down for the night, but the streetlights glowed amber, and I was drawn toward them. The Wells Fargo Bank sign sported the time and temperature—it was 10:12 p.m. and the temperature was a balmy 22 degrees Fahrenheit. A car or two passed by. I couldn’t imagine where they were going. Who bothered to cruise the main street of the tiny village at this hour?

A green neon sign shined like a beacon atop a twenty-foot-tall pole one block in the distance. The sign read “Heaven’s Door.” The parking lot was full. I’d heard of the place. It was a casual restaurant and bar that specialized in hamburgers and pizza, beers and whiskey sours. As I grew nearer, I heard amplified guitar music and the sound of a man’s baritone voice singing. A warm tingle glowed though me. The song was “Highway 61 Revisited,” a memory from this week’s journey north: “Well Abe says, ‘Where do you want this killin’ done?’ God says, ‘Out on Highway 61.’”

I looked in through the front window panels and saw a solo performer sitting on a stool. The man wore a black fedora, a black shirt, a matching vest, and a black string tie. He curled his lips against the microphone, and sneered the lyrics into the metal sphere while strumming an acoustic steel string guitar.

I was intrigued. Live music on a Tuesday night, three blocks from Dom’s house? I walked in, peeled off my winter garb, and sat down on an empty stool near the door. The room was crowded with patrons bobbing their heads to the infectious beat of the music. The décor was best described as a Hard Rock Café motif featuring Bob Zimmerman and Bob Dylan memorabilia. The wall next to me was dense with museum items: A copy of Zimmerman’s high school graduation picture with the caption “I want to be the next Little Richard,” a faded article from The
Hibbing Daily Tribune
reporting a scathing review of Dylan’s first album in 1961, a signed Fender guitar, and posters from Dylan concerts at Madison Square Garden and The Fillmore East.

The singer’s voice was rich and resonant, and the words filled up the room like a warm fire. I’d heard the real Bob Dylan perform more than once, and had listened to Dylan’s recordings thousands of times. The live voice I heard now was an uncanny mimicking of the youthful Bob Dylan’s intonations, inflections, pronunciations, and phrasing, but compared
to the original, this voice was… better. These vocals were reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s crooning on “
“
Lay, Lady, Lay
”
”
—less nasal, with reduced gravel and more vibrato than most of Dylan’s recordings. This singer had talent. I ordered a Bud Light on tap and settled back to be entertained.

The song ended, and the performer did something that Bob Dylan never did in concert—he talked to the audience. His voice was deep and fluid.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s the only Biblical song I’ll be singing tonight. I know you’re all spiritually bankrupt this evening, and lustin’ for some preachin’, but I’m just here for one thing.” A long pause. “I’m here to sing the religion of rock and roll. This here’s a song I know you’re all waiting for, so get on up off your chair and let’s do some harmonizin’. I’m Bobby Dylan. Thanks for coming out tonight.”

Bobby Dylan? I almost choked on my beer. I leaned forward to get a closer look at the singer. Beneath the shade of the fedora, the wisp of his beard and the broom of his bushy hair were unmistakable. It was him, the same nurse too inept to anesthetize the car crash victim in the operating room at Hibbing General this morning. The guy was not only a faux anesthesiologist, now he was a counterfeit Hibbing rock icon as well.

He strummed a familiar three-
chord riff, then launched the Dylan masterpiece “
“
Knockin’
On Heaven’s Door.”
”
His music worked magic on the room. As Bobby moved into the chorus, everyone in the tavern sang the title at the top of their lungs.

As agitated as I’d been when I learned the vocalist’s identity, I found listening to a hundred inebriated voices shouting out the lyrics to the Dylan classic was a striking experience.
“Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.” Goose bumps chased down my forearms, and I warmed to the energy around me. The sing-a-long linked the strangers into a congregation, and Bobby Dylan was their minister. On this wintry Tuesday night in this mining town on the edge of nowhere, they were alone no more.

I took another swig of my beer, felt the alcohol numb my brain, and tapped my fingers on the mug in time to the music. Mr. Dylan folded his body around his guitar, and closed his eyes as he led the patrons through the last lines of the chorus. When the final chord settled, he set down his instrument and said, “I’m gonna take a short break now. Don’t go away.”

He switched off the microphone and left the stage. Boisterous rounds of back-slapping and hand-shaking anointed him, as the crowd celebrated the performance of their Zimmerman clone.

Mr. Dylan exited the building through the front door, and perched himself on the brick ledge just outside my window. He lit up a cigarette and blew a trail of smoke into the dancing snowflakes descending on Howard Street. His face sported deep creases, with eyes that were slits against the nighttime breeze. I preferred listening to Mr. Dylan over looking at him, so I returned my attention back to the inside of the bar. The crowd was 80% men. Most of the women were wide-bodies—I didn’t see any I’d care to chat up. The men weren’t petite, either. The Mesabi Iron Range was home to real men—guys who drove trucks, repaired mining machinery, and were at ease with a shotgun.

Laughter filled the room. People were having a good time, and the booze was flowing. I wasn’t accustomed to hanging around a bar by myself, but tonight it felt good. In one week I’d quit my job, traveled halfway across the country, and planted Johnny into my boyhood high school. For me, Heaven’s Door was a reward and a celebration. I’d pulled off the Big Move with aplomb. “Great job, Nico,” I said to myself, at once awash with pride.

I looked out the window as the snowfall thickened. Mr. Dylan took a deep drag off his smoke, flicked the butt onto the street, and reached into an inner coat pocket to fish out another. This second cigarette was different: thicker and home-rolled. He fired it up, drew in a deep inhale, and held his breath. I watched with fascination as Dylan exhaled twenty seconds later. He sucked in again, the joint glowing bright orange in the nighttime air as Mr. Dylan held a second lungful of smoke captive from the Minnesota night.

He blew out a thick cloud and started to giggle to himself. The giggle brought out a broad, shit-eating grin that morphed into a deep belly laugh. I chuckled to myself. What a piece of work this guy was. There was little doubt—Mr. Dylan was smoking marijuana right there on the main street of town, three blocks from the hospital where he knocked people unconscious every day. He held the joint cupped in his right hand, shielded from the world. Cars drove by, and individuals entered and left the club. No one looked twice, and no one seemed to care.

I had one more reason not to like the guy. On our first meeting, he was an arrogant prick. On our second meeting, Dylan was an underskilled health care provider. Now he’d revealed himself as a public pothead. Dylan swiveled his head and for the first time noticed I was watching him. His thick eyebrows descended into a dark V, and he locked eyes with me. He toked up with a mighty effort, rounded his eyes into a psycho-killer glare, and blew the smoke straight at the pane of glass that separated us. Then he leaned back and roared with laughter, impressed with the hilarity of the deed.

I could hear his guffawing through the glass. This wafer of a man emitted a laugh so coarse and guttural, so inconsistent with his reedy constitution, that it tickled neural pathways in my brain that had long been dormant. My reaction surprised me—I started laughing in concert with him. The scene was so absurd: a surrogate Dylan getting high on main street in a snowstorm in Hibbing, Minnesota. I hadn’t laughed out loud for a long, long time.

Mr. Dylan extinguished the joint, and thirty seconds later materialized on the stool next to me. He still wore the same ludicrous smile, and I still found it infectious as hell.

“Good to see you at Heaven’s Door, Doctor,” he said.

“Good to be seen. Buy you a beer?”

“Don’t drink.”

I was surprised. “You stick to doobies, eh?”

“No doobies. Just roll-your-own tobackie.”

“I doubt that.” I hadn’t stood outside with him, and I couldn’t smell the smoke, but the combination of a musician smoking a hand-rolled joint and that same musician laughing with uproarious glee pointed to Mary Jane, not Marlboro. I pushed it a little further. “Aren’t you a bit bold, smoking a joint right on Howard Street?”

The corners of Dylan’s mouth curled up further. “It’s not pot. Bobby D just likes to roll his own tobacco, that’s all.”

“And if I don’t believe that?”

Dylan showed two rows of uneven teeth. “Then you are teeming with wisdom.”

“You can call it wisdom. I’d call it an evolved skill at bullshit detection. How are you doing after that episode in the operating room today?”

“What episode?”

“The guy with the mashed up face. The guy from the car accident.”

“Oh, him. He did fine.” Dylan’s face was proud, his chin held high.

“That could have ended bad.”

“It would have worked out. I would’ve gotten a tube into him somehow.”

I was aghast. The man had no insight into how close he’d come to an operating room death. “It looked to me like you had no clue what to do,” I said, blunt as hell.

Dylan laughed and said, “You believe what you want to believe, Doctor. I’ve been in worse predicaments, and no one’s died on me yet.”

It was no use pushing the topic any further. The man had the humility of a peacock. I switched the conversation to music. “You play anything other than Dylan songs?”

“Bobby Dylan just plays Dylan. It can’t be no other way.” All the world was a stage, and this guy was staying in character. He wasn’t going to be Joe Smith, Certified Nurse Anesthetist, or whatever his real name had been. He was determined to stay Bobby Dylan.

“Cynthia,” Dylan called out toward the waitress, a plump blonde fifty-something who was collecting empty glasses from the next booth. “Bring my buddy here another beer.”

“No. One’s enough,” I protested. “I’ve got to work early tomorrow.”

“No earlier than I do. Loosen up, Doctor. You’re on the Range now. Maybe you should come up on stage with me. Play tambourine or something.”

“I play bass, when I’m not home reading anesthesia journals.”

“I’m impressed you’re not home reading one right now. There’s hope for you yet.” He reached over with the fingers of his right hand and pinched my cheek hard. “You’re a funny guy, Doctor. What’s a dude like you looking for, drinking by yourself in a saloon?”

“I’m not looking for anything.”

“You a happy man, Doctor?”

“I suppose so. As happy as most people.”

“What is happiness to you?”

I shrugged. “Family. Friends. A good job.”

Dylan huffed.“Keep chasing that stuff, Doctor, and let me know if you ever get what you’re looking for.”

“What do you chase?”

“Me? Free will. To me, a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”

“I’ve heard that before. That’s a Bob Dylan quote.”

He looked at me as if I’d just claimed snow was black. “I know. I just said it.”

“I mean, it’s a quote from the real Bob Dylan. The rock singer.”

“That’s me. I’m here. Bobby Dylan.”

It was no use. The man was out of touch with reality. Was he psychotic? The way he looked, acted, and talked reminded me of interactions I’d had with patients locked inside psychiatric wards. Patients who babbled about spiders from another planet or nocturnal visits from Jesus Christ.