MaineCourse

Tunnels

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Yes, it did snow, and no, it hasn't stopped, and, you got that right, I want to move to North Carolina. I’m betting schools will be closed tomorrow.

Another comment on blogonyms.

Diane. “Who’s ‘in good company’?”
Me. “What did they write?”
Diane.” Nothing like a few unabashed kith & kin! I delight in your resilience of ego...”
Me. “Adam. Can’t you tell by the language”?
The tone might have conveyed a tiny bit of how stupid are you?
Diane. “Not always..........................nor can you.”

She’s right, because I was convinced that stickler (but not a Stickler) was Susan. Using doofus in the email address, was, in a word, dastardly.

---

Here is my last story. A week’s worth of work, arguably not done and arguably worth more work, but it won’t get it. I’m moving on.


Tunnels

John married his high school sweetheart a month after he returned from Vietnam. They had one daughter, Melanie, and one cat Molokai, named after the Hawaiian island on which they honeymooned. His wife, Toni, exuded New York. Sharp, witty, but with no margins. You liked her or you didn’t and she didn’t care. She was shorter than John, her dark brown hair contrasting to his sandy brown, her slender figure, lost next to his bulk. John worked harder to please, and laughed more than Toni.

The sun was hot and the inside of the second floor walkup hotter when I helped John move downstairs. His neighbor, Frank, joined us, until he limped home after I lost my grip on the refrigerator we were carrying.

Almost done, we sat on the floor amidst the clutter in his new apartment, sipping ice cold Absolute Vodka.

“I love the Pat-a-cake.”

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man...?”

“That’s the one, John. You and Melanie, how old is she, three now? It’s great to watch you two... I don’t know who laughs more, you or your daughter.”

“Toni taught her.”

“She should have taught you. Melanie’s hitting her knee while you’re clapping, and guess who has it right?”

“She does, but speaking of right, what was that with the fridge? You dropped it on purpose.”

“How did you know?”

“It was the look on your face after Frank yelled.”

“It wasn’t right that you let him pick on you. He’s not hurt, and what the hell, a dent or two in the fridge. Didn’t teach him a thing, but it made me feel better. Besides, why did you let him push you around like that?”

“Like what?”

“Shoving you into the stair rail, making fun of you. He kept pushing and you kept taking. How come, mo’ ? “ Mo’ as in mo’ fo’ . We were relaxed, feeling accomplished, and with John, you could always play in the margins.

“Didn’t bother me.”

“It bothered me.”

“You don’t know about bother.” John pulled another sip from the clear bottle, passed it to me, and leaned back on his elbows.

“Huh?” I responded, my defensiveness mellowed by the spirits.

“Bother is when you see friends picked off by snipers. Bother is when they die in front of you. My best friend had the top of his head shot off and I was the only medic. I acted like he wasn’t dead, when he was. I gave him morphine, I sopped up the blood, I did what I was trained to do.”

Funny, that John was telling me this. He, mostly, kept his war hidden. Except from our friend Peggy, who relayed John’s stories. She gave me the distance I needed to hear them and she gave him the refuge in which to tell them. Peggy had those winsome, huge brown eyes of a Margaret Keane painting. All the time, not just when John was telling her about the pencil.

“But we got him, the sniper.”

I thought how poor a substitute vodka was for Peggy, and I tried to stop him. I really wanted to go back to Pat-a-cake. “John, Peggy told me. She already told me about the pencil.”

“About how I put it in the gook’s ear and kicked it through his head. While he was on his knees, begging for his life.”

I didn’t want to hear it from him and I didn’t know what to say, so I rambled, “Reminded me of a ride I got hitchhiking four summers ago. About the time you were discharged, right? The guy who picked me up was a vet too. He told me about picking off a Viet Cong with his grenade rifle. Told me, ‘All that was left was his legs.’ Laughed as he said it.

***************

John told me about cradling his friend on a Sunday and the accident occurred a week, to the day , later. Panting, as I always do when I run, I finished my second lap around the neighborhood when I saw the blue flashing lights a block beyond my apartment. Those lights enticed me past my front door, to the car oddly stopped, in the wrong lane.

There had been an accident, that was now obvious and from a distance I saw a flame decal. The kind as a child, I would glue on my model cars. It began as a depression in the car’s roof, right above the driver side window, yellow, the color of the car, but quickly, streaks of red. It was where his head hit, the motorcyclist running from the town cops, when Martha Felton pulled out from the supermarket parking lot. The colors on the roof of the car mirrored by the reflection in the windshield of the neon supermarket sign.

After Mike Morton ( I remember his name, because it’s like mine) hit the roof of the car, he made one faceless flip, and landed on his back in the middle of the street. He was dead on impact, essentially so, after all, he didn’t have a face, and his brains were right there. The ambulance arrived five minutes later and while, they , surely everyone, assumed this would be a drive to the morgue, Larry the EMT, noticed blood pumping. Not oozing.

Larry and the ambulance driver quickly, not carefully, rolled Mike onto their stretcher, looking away from where his face should have been. The wheels popped out, and up Mike went, leather jacket opened to his waist, into the ambulance. Larry stared at his head and thought, The guy has no face. Mother of God what do I do?” So he did nothing. He sat frozen in the back of the ambulance with Mike.

When they finally got Mike to the hospital, with the heart beat of a sparrow, people rushed around to help. The breathing tube was inserted in what was left of Mike’s throat, and John the respiratory therapist hunkered down. He had been here before.

*************

The following day, I walked up the hill to the hospital that looked like many built in towns that grow: stately red bricks but with glass and steel additions. I wanted to commiserate with John about the night before, and I headed for the cafeteria. Without vodka, I didn’t know what I ‘d get out of him but it didn’t matter.

“I heard about last night. That guy ran into a car in front of my apartment. I can’t believe they brought him in. I’m so glad I wasn’t on, but I’m sorry that you were, John.”

“No face, man. Still, a heart beat. We worked on him, hard, even though, he wasn’t coming back. But you know the worst part? The cops who were chasing him, standing outside the room, laughing.”

************

The halls in the basement of the hospital were well lit, but at two in the morning, empty. John softly padded along the scrubbed and waxed tile floor, silently clapping his hands, reaching down to tap his knee, laughing to himself, an audience of one. He passed the door that read PHARMACY, then turned right, down a narrower corridor, where the finished plaster ceiling changed to the pitted, white rectangles of a dropped ceiling. Panels that could be pushed back, exposing wires and pipes above, but so too, the clean white wall on the other side. Where the Pharmacist’s diploma hung.

Fentanyl was John’s opiate of choice. Not as good as heroin in Vietnam but the dosage safer, more predictable. He had stolen from the locked-up cabinets on the floors, when busy nurses in white turned their backs, but this, he thought, was less risky. He had been here before so his movements were clipped, economical. He had never crawled those tunnels in ‘Nam but he liked the thought. Light, dark, light, and then peace. The kill? The memories that plagued him.

Placing a gray folding metal chair against the white painted wall, he stepped up, pushed a single ceiling tile back, grabbed the top of the wall and smoothly lifted himself. He then grabbed the rusty steam heating pipe so he could balance, and move from above, the single ceiling tile in his white sanctuary. He hung from the pipe, briefly, then dropped silently to the floor. He was in again and all was good.

The Pharmacy night light was all he needed. Full banks of fluorescents turned on at once, is what he got. The hospital administrator, Mr. Rembrandt, had laid his trap. He knew about John’s addiction and he knew how to catch him. And when he flipped on the light switch, he laughed.

I did not know that doofus was a registered trademark, and I intended no more than the usual playful obscurity when I used it. 'Twas more of a reference to Mike's unvoiced "Shutup" in the last class more than anything else, with doofus there just to fill out the "email address".

Nor was I aware that Sticklers were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Canning Clan, though I meant to distance myself from any misinterpretation of impersonation with my parenthetical "handle" -- I failed.

Surely there's some good in this playful anonymity (not that I detect censure in Mike's comments). It's another facet, though I'll desist if by common agreement it becomes too cumbersome.

Posted by ex-stickler.

And Susan thought "stickler" was Dufus just misspelling her name in the email address to put people (her sister) off her scent and that she had simply had another thought when she turned into "stickler'ssister" a few minutes later. Trying to figure it makes my brain numb.

Posted by insensate.

It's all over my head

Posted by sticker's littlest sister.

There are times when it's better not to save a victim of an accident. Mike Morton, had he survived, would no doubt tried to do what others have done when terribly disfigured. Author Alexander Kent, in "With All Dispatch" describes a sea battle like the ones in Master & Commander, in which a man's face was torn off by a cannonball. Against all odds he survived. As soon as he was ambulant, he threw himself into the sea.
On the other hand, there was Nancy, an old friend of mine in Colorado, whose face was seriously disfigured when she was a child. But somehow, as an adult, despite her disfigurement, she was vibrant and flirty, and a joy to be with!

The general rule is, there is no general rule.

Posted by rakkity.

Posted by Michael at December 7, 2003 08:13 AM