The Dog Says How (8 page)

fear

Fear as a child
is absolute and immediate, it’s life and death, it’s black and white—not like fear as an adult, which is gray and goes on all the time. This is a story about fear as a child.

Recess. Mrs. Jensen’s fifth-grade class. I’m behind the brick pump house where my 35 cents of lunch money has just bought a viewing of Mary Gilligan’s appendix scar. All of a sudden my best friend, Earl, rounds the corner with the look of terror that only a kid with red hair and white eyebrows can get. He’s screaming, “We’re dead men!” Stomping on the end of his shadow, brandishing two baseball bats, is a girl named Katie. As I turned to run, I feel the impact of the bat against the back of my head. I feel a cold wave rush forward and a low hum in my ears, and a blue-black tunnel forms around my vision; the light at the end gets smaller and smaller and then I pass out.

The next day Mr. Felber, the principal, announced that bats were to remain off the playground for an indefinite period of time. The last indefinite period of time was six months when a kid named Mike got hit in the head with a bat while playing baseball. Everyone said Mike was never the same after that when, in fact, he was the same after that clear into adulthood. When I came to, the doctor told me I had a concussion but would be OK. When I got back to school Mr. Felber announced it was nice to have me back. But I looked around the room and I knew it was my fault that there were no more bats on the playground and it did not feel so nice to have me back.

First up for show-and-tell Katie did a slide show presentation of her brother in Vietnam. She also read a letter he sent that was full of words that were “off-color” according to Mrs. Jensen, but Katie was allowed to continue. In her brother’s letter he said it was so hot in Vietnam you could fry an egg on a rock, and sure enough in one of the slides Katie’s brother was with a buddy, frying an egg on a rock.

Just then Earl turned around his little robin egg–blue eyeballs, looking back at me, and I could tell he wanted to laugh. When your best friend wants to laugh you want to laugh—law of nature—but this was not a good time so I suppressed it. But the laugh went searching for a weak gasket and finally found it in my nose. “Hank.” The whole class turned around. “Hank.” Mrs. Jensen yelled “Boys!” and I looked up. Katie was staring at me, memorizing me for later.

After show-and-tell we’re in the hallway putting on our rubber shoes for gym class. I looked down the row of lockers and saw Katie’s open locker and inside were hanging two baseball bats. She looks at me and smiles. In gym class we play “Bombardment,” a game where you throw stinky rubber balls at other children as hard you can. It’s part of the Presidential Fitness Plan. Now in Bombardment Katie could have hit me a million times but instead she stops and throws at other kids, obviously saving me “for later.” After gym I was waiting my turn to use the boy’s room. I knew it was going to happen on the playground and I started to imagine the feeling of the baseball bat hitting the back of my head. I started to feel the cold wave and blue-black and humming and then I got a waft from the cafeteria and . . . fish sticks, it must be Friday. I threw up. In no time the janitor was there with the green sawdust. Swoop and he was gone. Earl said, “I’ll take Kevin to the nurse’s office” and on the way he said, “You can’t go home.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

You throw up. You go home. It’s automatic.

“You go home and I am a dead man,” Earl said.

So I talk the nurse out of sending me home.

She said, “Are you sure?”

Earl said, “Yes, he’s sure.”

We went back to the room. Katie couldn’t believe it either. She looked at me and smiled.

Recess. I’m hiding behind the pump house; Mary Gilligan can have her scar. Sure enough around the corner comes Earl with that look of terror and “we’re dead men!” I burst into the flat and split off, trying to confuse Katie. I look back and she’s following me. Then I remember Mutual of Omaha’s
Wild Kingdom:
the cheetah follows the weak and the sick. My only hope is the giant slide, and I gather up all my speed and approach from the slick part of the slide. 1234567. 677. 6. 7. I grab onto the top of the slide and pull myself up, and I’m safe. If Katie goes up the slick part I’ll climb down the ladder. If is she climbs up the ladder, I’ll slide down the slick part. It is a cycle that can go all recess long. I stand on top of the slide as Katie hovers below. And that’s when I see the Foshay Tower, the thirty-two-story building in downtown Minneapolis. Tallest building from Chicago to San Francisco. Tallest building there will ever be. If I live to the sixth grade I’ll go see it on a field trip.

I yell down, “Katie, I can see the Foshay Tower,” and she believes me and climbs up the ladder. I slide down the slick part and look up to watch her with two bats in her hands. She’s yelling, “I discovered the Foshay Tower.”

Later that night Earl and I are walking home. We know we’re safe because Katie is now Queen of the Playground.

YEARS LATER
I’m sitting on the roof of Earl’s house. We can see the Foshay Tower in the distance. We’re putting new shingles on his roof and Earl is yelling to his sister below: “Look out down there, we’re throwing shingles.” We’re talking tough because we’ve just been issued draft cards for Vietnam. This is a rite of passage that lets you talk tough to hide the fear. Suddenly Earl turns to me and says, “Do you still have a cabin up north?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Can you sneak me into Canada?”

And then I imagine Earl in Vietnam with his red hair and white eyebrows. I knew I’d never have to go. My body was not acceptable. I could afford to talk tough. Finally I said “Earl, it really would be frightening to go to Vietnam.”

“That’s not why,” he said. “I’m not afraid. Do you remember Katie’s brother?”

“I don’t think he ever came back,” I said.

“I don’t think he did either,” he said. “Do you remember what that did to her? Remember what that did to Katie? I’m not doing that to my sister.”

So I snuck Earl into Canada. We were standing on a Canadian highway. His thumb was out, mine was not.

I said, “Earl, I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

He said, “Yes you do. I can’t go through with it.”

So I snuck Earl back into Minnesota.

I don’t know what was said between him and the government but they decided he would go to Idaho and, with a team of seven mules, mark trails in the mountains.

It was supposedly a horrible job, but Earl loved it. I haven’t seen him since and last I heard it’s what he does to this day. But I think of him a lot, and the time I watched his fear shift from black and white to gray.

“dick”

Part of everyday life
when you’re disabled is frustration. Sometimes living with a disability becomes more than I can handle. The best advice I can give is find an advocate, someone who can think clearly and speak for you in your time of need. Remember: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You need to be relentless and persistent, especially when dealing with the medical industry. I have a buddy who is a lawyer and he used to represent people in lawsuits against the big health care companies. Now he’s working for renewable energy. He fights oil companies because he feels it’s a battle he can actually win.

If you don’t have a person develop a persona. An alter ego. I found mine in a classic character from literature.

When I was a kid my mom read me the fairy tale about the ugly duckling. It’s where this huge, geeky duck can’t fit in with the other ducks. He steps on them and breaks everything until finally he finds out he’s really a beautiful swan. I liked it better when he thought he was a duck. A huge über duck that was large and superior to the other ducks. But it turns out he’s a swan like all the other swans, not a duck. What does that do for me, a disabled kid? Hope a ship of aliens lands who all look like me and say, “Hey, you’re really one of us”? Meanwhile, I’m stuck living with the ducks.

Fairy tales usually end up bad for the disabled guy. Snow White trades in seven perfectly good small guys for one big handsome one. Rumpelstiltskin actually grabs one leg at the end of his story and rips himself asunder. (Alright, I kind of like that one.)

In the seventies there were cop shows. Every demographic had a cop.

Inner city had Shaft.

Trailer parks had Rockford.

Tropical paradise had Steve McGarrett.

Teenagers had the Mod Squad.

Bald Greeks had Kojak.

Everyone had Angie Dickinson.

We had Ironside. Dang. Ironside was named after a battleship. Now I always liked Raymond Burr—he was like a poor man’s Lee J. Cobb. But I wanted my cop in a Lamborghini, not a van. I wanted chicks to swoon for him. And those other shows had the same soundtrack: “Waka waka waka.” It was designed for running and shooting, not rolling and delegating.

But then I saw Ian McKellen play Shakespeare’s King Richard the Third and I thought, there’s my man. Granted he was played by an able-bodied actor, which to me was like watching a white guy play Othello. And then he did a bit where he put on a glove with one hand that sent the audience into hysterics. I thought, man, if this place saw me put on my socks there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the house. But I thought he did a good job for an able-bodied guy.

His ruthlessness was fun to watch. It was easy to cheer for him. He killed the handsome guy then took his girl.

I loved Richard. I knew others feared and despised him, but it’s a matter of perspective. Look: the only difference between an annoying dripping faucet and a peaceful Japanese fountain is perspective.

Still leaking water.

So this was my man. My alter ego. But I wanted my Richard from Minnesota, up near the Iron Range where they grow ’em tough, so I called him “Dick da Tird.” My main trouble with Richard is that he never felt love. The whole reason Richard the Third gives for his revenge is that no one will love him.

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks, 


Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; 


I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty 


To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;


I that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, 


Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, 


Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time 


Into this breathing world, scarce half made up . . .

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, 


To entertain these fair well-spoken days, 


I am determined to prove a villain . . .

He says it right off the bat—since he can’t find love, it’s better to be a villain than be ignored. It’s true. Disliked is better than to disappear.

In Mary Shelley’s tale, Frankenstein’s creature tries to get a mate the conventional way, but he keeps accidentally killing people. Like Lenny in
Of Mice and Men
, he simply pets too hard. So the monster asks his creator Dr. Frankenstein to make a creature like himself, someone to love. Now Dr. Frankenstein learns the dilemma of creation. When you’ve created a monster how do you stop? Shelley wrote this book when she was nineteen. How did she know so much about guys? That’s what’s scary.

But I understand it. People want to fit in to be loved. Except for Richard.

My favorite ending to a tale is in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. It starts with the description of the cemetery and goes like this.

By the end of the fifteenth century, this formidable gibbet . . . had fallen upon evil days. The beams were worm-eaten, the chains corroded with rust, the pillars green with mould, the blocks of hewn stone gaped away from one another, and grass was growing on that platform on which no human foot ever trod now. The structure showed a ghastly silhouette against the sky—especially at night, when the moonlight gleamed on whitened skulls, and the evening breeze, sweeping through the chains and skeletons, set them all rattling in the gloom. . . . To that deep charnel-house, where so many human remains and the memory of so many crimes have rotted and mingled together, many a great one of the earth, and many an innocent victim have contributed their bones. . . (Victor Marie Hugo,
Notre Dame of Paris
, 1917).

As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all that we have been able to discover.

About a year and a half or two years after the concluding events of this story . . . there were found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, the one clasped in the arms of the other. One of these skeletons . . . was that of a woman. . . . The other skeleton, which held this so close a clasp, was that of a man. It was observed that the spine was crooked, the skull compressed between the shoulder-blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. There was no rupture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, from which it was evident that the man had not been hanged. He must, therefore, have come of himself and died there. When they attemped to detach this skeleton from the one it was embracing, it fell to dust.

There we are, the grotesque grabbing onto beauty, beauty embraced by the grotesque, the light surrounded by the shadow. Our lives rounded by a little sleep.

perception

I’ve been in a lot
of hospital waiting rooms over the last years, waiting for x-rays, waiting for tests. The usual emergency room wait is about three to four hours. Every time an ambulance shows up add on another hour because they tend to go to the head of the line. Sometimes whatever I was in there for quits doing what it was doing before I can see a doctor, so I just go home.

Waiting rooms are very different, depending on what part of the country you’re in. Up north they’re really quiet. Northerners are very private about their pain. They disapprove of being a “show-off,” of that unappealing quality associated with attention-drawing sound or movement, even when it’s from pain. When I was down south in a Virginia waiting room, people were telling everyone else their whole life stories. On and on they went. One woman talked about her foot and her gall bladder and that they are still finding shards in her head, and she wasn’t even there to see a doctor—she’d brought her friend in.

As I watched her I completely forgot I was in pain. It’s amazing how distraction can relieve pain. I went to a website that talks about chronic pain and one constant in all of pain management is the use of distraction.

It’s true. I’m in a theater company called Interact and most of our actors are disabled, but whenever we’re on stage our disjointed twists and turns ease out a bit. I’ve never been in pain while I’ve been performing; I wish I could say the same for the audience.

According to one Greek story, when the god Hephaestus was born his mother Hera didn’t like what she saw so she threw him off Mount Olympus. Hephaestus dragged his broken form to Hades and started to work, forging metal into beautiful objects: Eros’s bow and arrows, Helios’s chariot, and Hermes’ winged helmet and sandals.

From what I can tell Hephaestus, the disabled god, was the only god that actually held down a job. I think that’s why Aphrodite, the most beautiful goddess of all, married him. He had a job. She knew what she was doing. But Hephaestus’s work went beyond usefulness. He had used his craft to take him out of hell. A job will do that.

Perception.

There’s a folktale about a man who goes to town for supplies and finds a mirror. He has never seen a mirror before. He looks in it and thinks he sees a picture of his father. He brings the mirror home and later his wife finds it hidden under the bed. She looks in it and sees a woman. Obviously, the woman thinks her husband is having an affair with another woman in town. This woman looks just like the kind of hussy her husband would fall for, too. A huge fight breaks out and a frying pan is involved and finally the husband and wife discover the mirror is a looking glass. Ahhh, now they’re in love again and she gets a bag of ice for his head.

Mirrors are deceiving. When it comes right down to it, we don’t believe what we see; rather, we see what we
believe
. Just like the couple in the folktale, we see what we want to see. Sometimes you look in the mirror and think, “Oh no! I look like that?” But when you look in a mirror and your love looks over and says, “You’re hot,” you’re hot. And it’s true . . . you
are
hot. Same mirror.

One time I was in New York. I walked out onto the street and saw a bike messenger run into a woman. He was going pretty fast and she was screaming, “Get away, get away!” I saw the whole thing and, even though she was hit hard, I thought she took the blow pretty well and would be OK. I calmly approached her and she stopped screaming. I said I’d seen the whole thing and she’d be fine. “Lay still and the ambulance will be here,” I told her. She said thank you and calmly waited. People were looking at me with appreciation. And I was thinking just approach a situation calmly and everything will be fine. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I looked down and noticed I was wearing a blue hospital shirt, a top scrub like doctors wear that I’d bought at a thrift store. That poor woman thought I was a doctor. Oh well. It worked.

AT MY BROTHER’S
wedding there was a waltz playing and I knew that my grandmother wanted to dance. “Grandmother, would you like to dance?” I asked.

We got up and we started to move and I’m doing a terrible job. But then I remembered something my Uncle Johnny taught me. Uncle Johnny, the best dancer in our family, used to say, “Cinch ’em in, Kev. Just cinch ’em in.” So I cinched Grandmother in and we got smoother and smoother and pretty soon we were moving pretty good. I was dancing for the first time in my life. With my grandmother! I wanted to see that look in her eye, you know, that look that says, “We’re really cutting up the rug.” So I glanced over to get that look but her eyes were closed and she was smiling. I don’t know who she was dancing with, but it sure wasn’t me.

PERCEPTION,
deception, refraction, distraction.

We see it when we believe it.

We are all so worried about being deceived. Take a day off. Stand in front of a mirror and have your loved one tell you how great you look. Believe me, you look hot.