My mother and father did what they could to change this. My mother took in stray cats, just as she learned Mrs. Calloway had done. My father continued to trim the frontage azaleas into the shapes of the alphabet, something Amos was locally famous for. All for nothing. On weekends my mother and father worked out in the yard, just as their neighbors did, but it was as if they were invisible. And in a way, they were. In order to bear the absence of Amos Calloway and his family, the neighborhood had chosen to disregard the Blooms’ presence.
Until there came a day when the neighborhood was invaded by a pack of wild dogs. Who knows where they came from. Six, eight, some say ten—they tore through the trash cans at night, and dug deep holes in the gardens. The velvety canvas of sleep was torn by their terrible howls and vicious snarls. Other dogs who dared to face them were found dead the next morning, or never found at all. Children were not allowed outside past dusk, and some of the men took to carrying guns with them everywhere they went. Finally, the town called in officials from the State Bureau of Animal Control, and on one bloody night all the wild dogs were either killed or captured.
All but one, that is. And he was the fiercest, most terrible dog of all. Pitch black, he blended with the night. It was said he was so stealthy you wouldn’t know he was even near you—until he showed you his bright shining teeth. And this dog was not merely wild: he was a crazed, lunatic dog, with a seeming human capacity for rage and retribution. One family paid dearly when they installed an electric fence around their property. Watching out the window one night they saw the dog walk into it. He was shocked and thrown back into the street, but essentially unharmed. After that the dog toured the edge of this family’s property almost exclusively, with the effect that, through the night at least, no one came in and no went out. It was as though, instead of protection, the family had built a prison for themselves.
At any time in his life, my father could have tamed the dog and led him back into the hills from whence he came; such was his way with animals. And yet he didn’t. Why? Because for once, he couldn’t. The rigors of his new life had weakened him. It wasn’t a reluctance to use the strengths and powers he was born with; he simply didn’t seem to possess them anymore.
And the marauding would have continued if Fate hadn’t nudged my father in the small of his back, urging him to leave the house one night and take a walk. The streets of Edgewood were empty, of course: who dared brave these streets after the sun had gone down, knowing, as they did, that the Helldog (as he’d come to be known) was out there, somewhere? My father thought little of the dog, however; he wasn’t the kind of man who structured his life around a canine peril. Or perhaps my father was the agent of some greater power. All we know for certain is this: he went for a walk one night and saved a child’s life.
The child—three-year-old Jennifer Morgan, who lived just two doors down from the old Calloway place, as it was still called—had wandered out the kitchen door while her parents were working to unclog a toilet in the master bedroom. She’d heard so much about the dog outside that she could no longer resist: she had to go out and pet him. When my father saw her, she was walking toward the feral black presence with a piece of bread in her hand, calling, “Here doggy. Doggy, come here.”
The Helldog was coming at a leisurely gait, unable to believe his luck. He had never eaten a little girl before, but he’d heard they were tasty. Better than little boys, anyway, and almost as good as chickens.
The culinary ecstasy of the moment was interrupted, however, by Edward Bloom. He scooped the girl up in his arms and tossed the bread to the dog, who ignored it and kept coming. At any other time his fabled power with the animals would have beguiled the dog into docility. However, the big black Helldog was aggravated. Edward had rudely come between him and a meal.
The dog came at them in a fury and jumped. Holding the girl in one arm, Bloom reached out with the other and grabbed the dog by his neck, then slammed him to the ground. The dog yelped, but got back on all fours and growled with a frightful seriousness. His head swung from side to side with a dizzying speed; for a moment he looked as if he had two heads, growling and baring two sets of teeth and pink-white gums.
By this time, the Morgans had noticed their little girl was missing and had come running in the direction of the dog’s terrible howl. They arrived in time to see the dog lunge once more, this time barely missing my father’s neck, his warm moist breath spraying past. This was the dog’s fatal mistake: leaving his bare underside exposed as he jumped so high into the air, Edward Bloom was able to thrust his hand through the dog’s hair and skin and into the body proper, clutching and finally ripping out his massive beating heart. My father held the girl so close, nestled into his wide shoulder, that she was spared this last gory scene. As the dog fell heavy to the ground my father dropped the heart there also, and handed the girl to her parents, and continued his walk into the night.
Thus ended the three labors of Edward Bloom.
He Goes to War
He wasn’t a general, or a captain, or an officer of any kind. He wasn’t the medic, he wasn’t the poet, he wasn’t the cynic, he wasn’t the lover, and he wasn’t the radio operator. He was, of course, a sailor. Across the foamy sea he rolled with hundreds of others, aboard an invulnerable vessel called the Neried. This was a ship as big as his hometown—bigger, even. Certainly, there were more people aboard the Neried than lived within the city limits of Ashland, though he had put a great distance between himself and that town. Since leaving, he had accomplished many great things, and now he was accomplishing the greatest of all: defending the free world. He felt, in an odd way, that the world rested on his shoulders. That, even though he was merely a sailor, without even a medal, without decoration of any kind, somehow the entire effort hinged on his ability to see it through. It was good to be a part of this crew, then, on this invulnerable ship, slipping through the wine-dark sea. Being surrounded by water, by horizons everywhere he looked, made him consider the greater world lying beyond, and the possibility that the world held out to him. Being surrounded by water made him feel secure and at peace.
This is how he was feeling when a torpedo ripped into the hull. The ship felt like it had run aground, and Edward was thrown four feet across the deck. The ship began to list.
“All hands on deck!” the loudspeaker boomed. “Blow up your life belts!”
My father, a part of him in shock, thinking This isn’t supposed to happen, found his life belt and tied one of the cords around his neck and the other around his waist. He looked around him, annoyed, This isn’t supposed to happen, but far from panic. No one around him panicked, either. Everyone was amazingly cool, as if this were a drill. But the Neried was listing to port.
The captain’s voice came through then on the loudspeaker.
“All hands on deck. Prepare to abandon ship.”
Still there was no alarm, no hurry. Those on the flag deck moved toward a companionway leading to the quarterdeck. There was no pushing. Edward smiled at his friends, and they smiled back, even though the ship they were on was going down.
On deck he saw the extent of his new reality. Men were tossing rafts overboard as well as pieces of wood, life belts, benches, anything that would float. Then they jumped into sea after them. But the ship was like a series of ledges. Many misjudged the distance, hit the side of the ship, and slid into the sea. Everywhere men were flinging themselves into the water. Hundreds of heads, like human buoys, were bobbing in the water. The propeller was still turning, and some of the men were sucked into its turning blades. Edward sat down on the edge of the ship and removed the last letter he had received from his wife. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. I even pray—just started. Feels good. Hope it helps some.” He smiled, refolded the letter, and placed it back in his pocket. He took off his shoes and his socks, and he rolled each sock up in a ball and placed them in the toes of his shoes. He watched as a man near him jumped off the ship and onto another man, and both disappeared. I don
’t want to jump on anybody, he thought, and looked for an open spot. But down below the sea was covered in a sheet of oil, and he didn’t want to jump into that, either. So he looked until he found a clear circle of water, a place the oil had yet to saturate, and he pretended to believe he could jump from the side of the ship straight into it.
Miraculously, he did. He jumped the twenty feet from the side of the ship directly into that spot of sea, where he sank fast, and didn’t rise. He remained suspended thirty, maybe even forty feet below the surface, like a fly in amber. He could see the ship sinking to one side, and above him hundreds and hundreds of legs of his fellow sailors, like a great giant centipede swimming in the sea. He felt as though he should be drowning by then, but he wasn’t. In fact, he seemed to be breathing. Not through his mouth but through his own body. He didn’t understand it but he was breathing, and he thought this meant he was dead.
But then, in the distance away from the ship, he saw a young girl waving to him. The same girl, he remembered, from a long time ago, he knew that in a minute. She was waving him toward her, smiling, as though she’d been waiting on him there for some time. He began to swim toward her. Same girl all right. A little older now, as he was. But the same girl. As he got closer she swam out farther, and kept waving. He didn’t know how long he was under water like that, swimming toward her, but it was longer than it should have been. He swam until a shaft of sunlight broke through the oil-shrouded sea and he looked up to see there was no oil there, just pure blue. And then he looked for the girl—young lady, he corrected himself—but she was gone, too. And all of a sudden he was in need of a breath of fresh air. So he moved toward the surface sunlight, suddenly as light and fast as a bubble himself, and when he popped into the bright world saw how far away he was from everyone. They were treading water, moving slowly through the oil. But they saw Edward waving to them as the girl had waved to him, and it gave them a sense of purpose, even hope, and those who saw him began to swim toward my father as fast as they possibly could. Hundreds of men moved sluggishly through the oil toward him. Some didn’t, though. Even some who saw him didn’t move. And these were the men who were sucked back under when the Neried finally went down. Even as far out as Edward was, he felt the futile tug of the ship on his body, pulling him back. But he wasn’t going back. He was going home.
My Father’s Death: Take 3
It happens like this. Old Dr. Bennett, our family doctor, comes out of the guest room and gently shuts the door behind him. Older than old, Dr. Bennett has been part of our lives forever, he was even there when I was born, at which time he had been asked by the local medical board to please retire, soon—that’s how old he is. Dr. Bennett is now too old for almost anything. He doesn’t walk so much as shuffle, doesn’t breathe so much as gasp. And he seems unable to deal with the consequences of his patient’s terminal condition. As he comes out of the guest room, where my father’s been staying the last few weeks, Dr. Bennett breaks down in a storm of tears, and for some time can’t speak he’s crying so much, shoulders heaving, his crumpled old hands cupped over his eyes.
Finally, he’s able to look up and gasp for breath. He looks like a lost child, and he says to my mother and me, we who are now prepared for the very worst, “I don’t . . . I don’t really know what’s going on. I can’t tell anymore. He seems pretty bad off, though. Best go see for yourself.”
My mother looks at me, and it is that look of final resignation I see in her eyes, that look that says she is ready for whatever awaits her beyond the door, however sad or horrible. She is ready. She takes my hand and holds it tight before standing and going in. Dr. Bennett falls into my father’s chair and slumps there as if emptied of the will to go on. For a moment I think he’s dead. For a moment I think Death has come and passed my father over, and decided to take this one instead. But no. Death has come for my father. Dr. Bennett opens his eyes and stares into the wild, distant empty space before him, and I can guess what he’s thinking. Edward Bloom! Who would have thought! Man of the world! Importer/exporter! We all thought you’d live forever. Though the rest of us fall like leaves from a tree, if there was one to withstand the harsh winter ahead and hang on for dear life we thought it would be you. As though he were a god. This is how we have come to think of my father. Although we have seen him early in the morning in his boxer shorts, and late at night asleep in front of the television after everything on it has gone off the air, mouth open, blue light like a shroud over his dreaming face, we believe he is somehow divine, a god, the god of laughter, the god who cannot speak but to say, There was this man . . . Or perhaps part god, the product of a mortal woman and some glorious entity descended here to make the world the kind of place where more people laughed, and, inspired by their laughter, bought things from my father to make their lives better, and his life better, and in that way, all lives were made better. He is funny and he makes money and what could be better than that? He even laughs at death, he laughs at my tears. I hear him laughing now, as my mother leaves the room shaking her head.
“Incorrigible,” she says. “Completely and totally incorrigible.”
She’s crying, too, but these are not tears of grief or sadness, those tears have already been shed. These are tears of frustration, of being alive and alone while my father lies in the guest room dying and not dying right. I look at her and with my eyes ask, Should I? And she shrugs her shoulders as if to say, It’s up to you, go in if you’d like, and seems to be on the verge of a kind of laughter herself, if she weren’t already crying, which is a confusing sort of expression for a face to have to bear.
Dr. Bennett seems to have fallen asleep in my father’s chair.
I stand and go to the half-closed door and peer beyond it. My father is sitting up, braced by a load of pillows, still and staring at nothing as though he were on Pause, waiting for someone or something to activate him. Which is what my presence does. When he sees me, he smiles.
“Come in, William,” he says.
“Well, you seem to be feeling better,” I say, sitting down in the chair beside his bed, the chair I’ve been sitting in every day for the last few weeks. In my father’s journey to the end of his life, this chair is the place I watch from.
“I am feeling better,” he says, nodding, taking a deep breath as if to prove it. “I think I am.”
But only today, for this moment on this day. There is no turning back now for my father. To get better now would take more than a miracle; it would take a written excuse from Zeus himself, signed in triplicate and sent to every other deity who might lay claim to my father’s withered body and soul.
He is already a little bit dead, I think, if such a thing were possible; the metamorphosis that has occurred would be too much to believe if I hadn’t seen it myself. At first, small lesions appeared on his arms and legs. They were treated, but to no real effect. Then they appeared to heal on their own eventually—not, however, in a way we might have hoped for or expected. Instead of his soft, white skin with the long black hairs growing out of it like corn silk, his skin has become hard and shiny—indeed, almost scaly, like a second skin. Looking at him isn’t hard until you leave the room and see the photo sitting on the fireplace mantel. It was taken six or seven years ago on a beach in California, and when you look at it you can see—a man. He’s not a man in the same way now. He’s something else altogether.
“Not good, really,” he says, revising himself. “I wouldn’t say good. But better.”
“I just wondered what bothered Dr. Bennett,” I say. “He seemed really concerned when he came out of here.”
My father nods.
“Honestly,” he says, in a confidential tone, “I think it was my jokes.”
“Your jokes?”
“My doctor jokes. I think he’d heard one too many,” and my father begins to recite his litany of tired old jokes:
Doctor, doctor! I’ve only got 59 seconds to live. Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.
Doctor, doctor! I keep thinking
I’m a pair of curtains. Come on, pull yourself together.
Doctor, doctor! My sister thinks she’s in a lift. Tell her to come in. I can’t. She doesn’t stop at this floor.
Doctor, doctor! I feel like a goat. Stop acting like a little kid.
Doctor, doctor! I think I’m shrinking. You’ll just have to be a little patient.
“I know a million of ’em,” he says proudly.
“I bet you do.”
“I give him a couple every time he comes in here. But . . . I guess he heard one too many. I don’t think he has a very good sense of humor anyway,” he says. “Most doctors don’t.”
“Or maybe he just wanted you to be straight with him,” I say.
“Straight?”
“Straightforward,” I say. “Just be your normal average guy and tell him what is bothering you, where it hurts.”
“Ah,” my father says. “As in, ‘Doctor, doctor! I’m dying, please cure me.’ Like that?”
“Like that,” I say. “Sort of, but—”
“But we both know there is no cure for what I’ve got,” he says, the smile diminishing, his body falling deeper into the bed, the old fragility returning. “Reminds me of the Great Plague of ’33. No one knew what it was, or where it came from. One day everything seemed fine and the next—the strongest man in Ashland: dead. Died while eating his breakfast. Rigor mortis set in so quick his body froze right there at the kitchen table, spoon lifted halfway to his mouth. After him, a dozen died in an hour. Somehow, I was immune. I watched my neighbors fall to the ground as though their bodies had become suddenly and irrevocably vacant, as if—”
“Dad,” I say a couple of times, and when he finally stops I take his thin and brittle hand in my own. “No more stories, okay? No more stupid jokes.”
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