“I think he may have had a stroke,” I said. “He says he doesn’t have any feeling in his arm.”
She leaned forward, peering down at Rex. “So how you doing?” She spoke a little too loudly, as if she thought he might be deaf.
“Not too good.”
“Are you breathing okay?” His answer was too garbled to understand. “I’m sorry?”
“I need a doctor.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Well, sir, if you can just hold your horses a bit, we’ll see if we can get you one.” I saw that I’d been wrong; she wasn’t so much heartless as scared.
She looked over at me. “If you’ll stay with him, I’ll see if I can get someone up here.”
“That would be great,” I said.
The ranger unhitched her walkie-talkie from her belt, turned her back on us, and walked off a few paces. Schoeninger tugged at my hand. “What’s going on?”
“She’s making a call.”
“You think she knows what she’s doing?”
“She’s fine, Rex, she’s fine.” I could smell sumac out in the darkness.
“She seems like a bit of a blockhead to me.”
“She’s just young,” I told him. He said something so slurred I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of it. “What’s that?” He tried again, but it was no clearer. I could see that one side of his face was frozen, as if he’d just gotten out of the dentist’s. I went to one knee so I could hear. “I’m sorry, Rex . . .”
His eyes were full of tears. He took the words one at a time. “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . to . . . die . . . here.”
“No,” I said. “And you’re not going to.”
The ranger wandered to and fro, talking to the air, or that’s what it looked like. I was able to pick up bits and pieces of what she was saying. I took off my sweater and balled it up for Schoeninger to use as a pillow. As I wedged it under his head, I heard something in the woods below us. A moment later Ramona appeared, laboring up the trail, the camera strapped to her wrist.
When she saw us, she stopped in her tracks thirty yards away. The whole thing must have looked like a catastrophe—Rex on his back, bony knees raised, me crouched over him, the ranger on her walkie-talkie, the beam of the flashlight shining off the mesquite. It was impossible to see Ramona’s face clearly at that distance, but she gave a low cry. Rex lifted his head.
Starting to run, she stumbled for a step or two, the camera clattering along the stones. The ranger whirled at the sound. Ramona rushed to his side.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” she said, taking his hand. “Did you fall?”
His jaws worked as he tried to form the words. “I’m . . . not . . . well.”
“The ranger’s calling someone,” I said. Ramona stared across at me. She’d already made up her mind about whose fault this was.
“You . . . brought . . . the . . .” Schoeninger said.
“Yes,” she said. “I brought the camera.” Tender and woeful, she brushed a couple of twigs from the side of his face.
“I guess we wouldn’t want to get a picture of this, would we?” he said. It sounded as if his mouth were full of eggs.
“No, I guess we wouldn’t.”
The ranger came down the slope, stiff-legged in her sturdy boots, snapping off her walkie-talkie. “There should be a helicopter here in ten minutes,” she said.
“And will there be a doctor?” I asked.
“There should be a medic and a nurse,” the ranger said. She slipped the walkie-talkie back on her belt. “So what exactly were the three of you doing up here?” She did not seem happy with us.
“This is Rex Schoeninger,” Ramona said. “The writer.” The ranger stared blankly. It was just our luck; we’d apparently found the only person in the Western world who didn’t know who he was. “He’s researching a book.”
The ranger raised an eyebrow, but held her peace for four or five seconds. “It’s an awfully long way up here,” she said. “Especially for a man his age.”
She had said it would be ten minutes; it felt like an hour. The ranger went to the overlook to wait for the helicopter, and after a bit I joined her. The last traces of the sunset streaked the bellies of the clouds. The stillness was overwhelming. I found myself wondering how many millions of years old the mountains around us were and thought of asking Rex, but then I remembered that even if he knew, he wouldn’t be able to tell us, given the shape he was in.
I quizzed the ranger about what hospital they would be flying Schoeninger to, how long it would take to get there, and what kind of medical attention they might be able to give him here on the ground. She didn’t seem to know much.
Every now and then I took a peek over my shoulder. Ramona knelt, her head bowed, stroking Rex’s hair. I was nervous about what he was telling her, or at least trying to tell her. I was to blame; what was new about that? I suppose I could have argued that the hike up the mountain had been more than his system could handle or that with an old guy, you never knew, the arteries can pop anytime. But I knew better. What the hell had I been thinking? It’s never a good idea to level with anybody, but especially not with somebody Schoeninger’s age. Truth is a killer.
At the first sound of the helicopter, the ranger moved to the edge of the overlook and I followed her. The whirring grew to a roar. Lights shooting everywhere, the helicopter rose out of the canyon like a monster in a Japanese horror movie. The ranger motioned me away, and then began waving her hands above her head. Looking back, I saw Rex craning his neck and Ramona trying to restrain him.
The helicopter hung above us as its searchlight swept across the bouldered slope and the scrubby trees, and then began its descent. I had no idea what a racket those things could make. Dust blew hard as a windstorm, tattering the bushes. I covered my face with an elbow, protecting my eyes.
The helicopter settled on the scarred expanse at the cliff’s edge. A medic and a nurse climbed out, both in jumpsuits and helmets, lugging gear. They spoke briefly with the ranger—I couldn’t hear what they were saying with all the noise—and then we all trooped down the slope.
Ramona, the ranger, and I stood back as the medic and the nurse bent over Schoeninger, asking him questions. Where was he hurting? Could he lift his arm at all? Did he have allergic reactions to anything? What kinds of medications was he on? When Rex had trouble making himself understood, Ramona answered for him. The medic was making wisecracks like he thought he was Alan Alda. They checked Schoeninger’s pulse, put an oxygen mask on him, and started him on an IV drip. Ramona stood mutely by, watching with fingertips pressed to her lips. I stared at Rex’s shiny white tennis shoes with the Velcro straps, splayed out in the dust.
The pilot was still in the helicopter, the searchlight shining on us as if we were at some movie premiere. Rex was being very good, very still, but I could see his eyes darting this way and that above the oxygen mask. Ramona spoke with the nurse, filling her in on Schoeninger’s medical history while the medic and the ranger trotted back up the slope. I squatted at Rex’s side, watching his chest rise and fall. It had gotten cold, and without my sweater I was starting to shiver in my thin blue cotton shirt.
As I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, I spied Rex’s little red notebook under a cactus, just a few feet from his head. I retrieved it and flipped through the first few pages. His writing was such a mess, all I could make out were a few words—ocotillo, catclaw mimosa, peregrine falcon nest, redberry juniper.
“So what’s that?” he asked.
“It’s your notebook,” I said. “I’ll keep it for you.”
“I knew it couldn’t be for real,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That award. I knew it all along . . .”
The ranger and the medic returned with a stretcher. They moved Schoeninger onto it one leg at a time, and then lay the IV bag on his stomach. Ramona reached into her pocket, found the keys to the van, and handed them to me.
“I’m going to go with
them,” she said.
“I’d like to go too,” I said.
“There’s only room for one.”
“Mmm.” From her tone, it didn’t seem like a good idea to argue. I watched the medic pull a strap across Schoeninger’s chest. “So is it a stroke?” I asked.
“Probably. They won’t say.” Crickets yakked it up out in the piñons.
“Where are they flying him?”
“To Austin. We’ll call his doctors on the way.”
It took all of us to carry him back to the helicopter, two on each end of the stretcher and Ramona walking alongside with the portable oxygen tank. The distant peaks loomed in the darkness.
As soon as Schoeninger was on board, the medic went to work, tearing open his shirt, shaving his chest, getting him hooked up to a heart monitor. The pilot gave Ramona a hand up.
The ranger and I retreated, the beating of the rotors pulsing in my ears. I knew everyone was just trying to help, but seeing the medic and the nurse working furiously over him really got to me; it looked as if they were trying to rip him apart. But just before the door closed, I saw, through the tangle of bodies, tubes, and wires, Schoeninger raise two fingers in a V, as if he were Churchill, rallying the nation.
Chapter Eighteen
It took me nine hours to drive back to Austin, rolling into all-night truck stops every so often to stoke myself on coffee. I was pretty much flipping out. I would have given anything to have been able to blame someone else for what had happened, but it was hard. Stainforth was a snake, but in the end what it came down to was, if I’d been able to keep my mouth shut, Rex would have been sleeping like a baby in that motel up on that mountain.
The landscape rose and fell, like pages turning in a book. It was a hundred miles between towns and I flipped from radio station to radio station, trying to find something to keep me awake. I had to pull over once for one of those immigration roadblocks. Fierce lights made me shield my eyes as one of the agents strolled to my car, but after a word or two he waved me through.
As it got later, there was almost no one else on the road. At one in the morning I passed two semis loaded with cattle heading off to slaughter. Edging alongside, I could see the wet noses pressed to the perforated metal, the eyes glowing in my headlights.
Now was the perfect time to bolt. What was I going back for? To defend my honor? It didn’t make any sense. I was a man who’d run out on a wife and child, run out on my best buddy as he lay murdered on the floor of a hotel room. Why not go for the trifecta?
I got in about four a.m. and went directly to the hospital. All the little old lady behind the desk would tell me was that Schoeninger was in the intensive care unit and that no one was allowed to see him until official visiting hours. I drove back to my place and fell into bed. As exhausted as I was, it took forever to go to sleep, the white lines of the highway scrolling down the insides of my eyelids.
It was after eleven by the time I got up. My head was stuffed. I didn’t know if I was coming down with a cold or if one of those famous Austin allergies had just blown in. I jammed a handkerchief in my pocket, ate a stale English muffin and a glass of juice at a diner, and headed back to the hospital.
Riding up in the visitors’ elevator, I braced myself for the worst, expecting to run into Ramona, but when I got to the room, the only other person there, besides Schoeninger, was Maria, the new cook, reading the funnies. Asleep, Rex was surrounded by a forest of poles, tubes coming out of him everywhere. Maria folded her paper and stared up at me, seriously frightened. I wondered how much she’d been told.
“How’s he doing?” I said.
“No one will say,” she said. “They’ve been giving him lots of drugs. He’s been sleeping the whole time.” She was a small round bird of a woman with gentle eyes and a shawl pulled tight around her shoulders.
“So what have they . . .”
“Tests. All night. All kinds of tests.”
“Uh-huh. And where’s Ramona?”
“She went home for a couple of hours to get some rest.”
I glanced at the tube in his nose, at the shiny plastic bag of liquid hanging from one of the poles. It was two-thirds empty. Schoeninger’s arms looked so thin, his skin hanging in folds.
“If you want to take a break, I could watch him for a while.”
Big panic came up in her eyes. “No, no, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” I said. “But I’ll bet a cup of coffee would do you a lot of good, wouldn’t it?” The woman was in a state of total confusion. “If there’s a problem, I’ll ring for the nurse. So where’s the button?”
“Right there on the wall.”
“Great, now you go on. And take your time. It sounds like you’ve had a rough night.”
Compared to Dranka, the woman was a pushover. She struggled out of the recliner and approached the bed. She leaned over and patted his hand. As she left the room, she gave me one last glance, big-eyed as a rabbit.
I took her chair and sat there looking at the old guy. I’d been too squeamish to ask exactly what they’d done to him, but it looked as if there had been a lot of poking and prodding. I wondered if they’d snaked one of those little tubes in through the thigh, worked it all the way up to the heart. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed as if one side of his face was off-kilter, like something you’d see in a second-rate wax museum. Rex moaned.
I took the red notebook from my shirt pocket and laid it on the side table. My eye lit on the briefcase on the windowsill. It had Schoeninger’s initials on it—rls—same as Robert Louis Stevenson’s.
A food tray rattled past the door. I stretched out, hands behind my head, crossing my feet in front of me. I waited another minute to be sure Rex was thoroughly asleep. One long step and a lean, and I had it. Back in my chair, I undid the zipper, tooth by tooth, glancing up every couple of seconds. Rex had started to snore.
I opened the briefcase. There was no will, no sheath of legal documents. It was mostly junk: a bottle of Zantac, a tattered Texas road map, a New York hotel bill, the annual report of some Boston mutual fund, a million pens, some yellow legal pads, a box of dental floss. It wasn’t until I started digging down in the side pockets that I finally found something worth paying attention to.
His checkbook had his initials embossed in gold on the cover, same as the briefcase. There were six checks left. I flipped to the back. Schoeninger was one of those people who really keep records. It was all down there—the eighty dollars paid to the plumber, the hundred and ninety to the dentist, sixty-five for the phone bill, five hundred each week to Dranka. He’d even entered every ATM withdrawal.
The balance was a little over fourteen thousand dollars. I sat there staring at it for a good long time. You can’t go much lower than stealing a dying man’s checkbook, but could it really be considered stealing? After all I’d done for the guy?
I was slipping the checkbook into my trousers when I heard Schoeninger start to sputter and cough. I glanced up. Rex blinked at me, heavy-lidded as a turtle.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he croaked.
“I’m glad to see you too,” I said.
“I’m sorry . . . just so sorry . . .”
“I don’t know what you’ve got to feel sorry for,” I said.
“Did they treat you all right?” His voice was slurry with drugs.
“Who’s that?”
“Those people.”
He seemed to fall asleep for a moment. The blare of a doctor being paged over the PA system jerked him awake again. “I brought something for you,” I said. His eyes were crusted slits. I took his red notebook from my shirt pocket and held it up so he could see. He had no clue what it was. I set it on the side table. “I’ll just leave it here for you.”
“You cried so much,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sometimes you would cry all night. We would have to get up three or four times. I just didn’t know . . .”
“Didn’
t know what?”
“Didn’t know how to be a father . . .” His voice trailed off and after a few seconds he was snoring again.
I stared at him. What was he trying to pull? Did he think I was a total sap? People think they can get away with anything, once they’re on their deathbeds. Checkbook in my trousers pocket, I eased out of the room.
A mother in a wheelchair waited at the elevator, holding her newborn baby in her lap, wrapped in a pink blanket. She was letting her two other brats have a peek at their monkey-faced little sister. The ponytailed father held the strings to three helium-filled balloons shaped like chubby hearts. He looked goofy from lack of sleep. I gave him a congratulatory nod and he grinned in return.
The elevator doors opened. Standing at the rear, wedged in behind a red-nosed man on crutches and his doughy wife, was Ramona, shooting me daggers. For a second I thought about running, but how stupid would that have been? I needed to tough this one out. I held the door for the man on crutches and his wife, then grabbed Ramona by the elbow as she tried to slip by me.
“God, I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
She brushed my hand away. If she’d had a nap, it hadn’t been a long one. She looked mean as a rattler. “So no one’s gotten around to locking you up yet?” she said.
“Locking me up? Stainforth’s the one they should be locking up. Do you have any idea what that guy’s been trying to pull off?”
“Rex told me. In the helicopter.”
“It’s incredible. The guy turns out to be a total scam artist.”
She closed her eyes for a second, as if it was physically painful to listen to me. She wore a splotchy SMU sweatshirt and a pair of hip-huggers that looked as if their hugging days were over.
“I talked to him on the phone last night,” she said.
“You talked to him? When?”
“After we got to the hospital and they took Rex into intensive care. I called him in New York.”
“So what did he say?”
“He was stunned. He said he couldn’t believe Rex and I would take the word of some embittered graduate student.”
Famous Writers I Have Known Page 24