The Burn Journals

by Brent Runyon

  His dad comes to the meetings with him. Last time he came, he was completely bald, and now he's got a big fat toupee on his head. I want to say something to him about it, like, I like your hair, but I probably shouldn't.

  Michael Mager is starting up the meeting. He's so funny. He's always got a little grin on his face like he's laughing at a joke or he's about to play a big trick on everybody.

  “Thanks, everyone, for coming. I, uh, wish we had more patients here, but, um, I guess that's the way it goes. Okay, so, where shall we start? Runyons? Got anything you'd like to discuss here?”

  Fuck. Why does he always have to pick on us?

  Mom and Dad don't say anything. Neither does Craig. Thank God.

  Michael keeps talking. “Well, I was wondering if you'd thought at all about Brent going back to high school. How does it make you feel? Are you concerned?”

  Before anyone can say anything, I say, in the world's most sarcastic voice, “Well, I think it's the best thing since sliced bread.” Craig smirks.

  Michael looks at me. “You think it's a good thing, or are you being sarcastic?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You don't know?”

  “No.” Fuck you, don't put me on the spot.

  He says, “Well, Brent, you know, it's difficult to figure out what people mean when they're being sarcastic. I've noticed that your family communicates with sarcasm quite a bit.”

  “Oh really? I hadn't noticed.” How's that for sarcasm?

  I can tell Michael's getting annoyed. Good. “Let's change gears. Anyone ever read the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People?”

  No one has.

  “Well, the interesting thing about that book is that it outlines what happens when a family goes through a ter-rific trauma, like when a member of the family dies or almost dies.” He gestures at me.

  “I didn't almost die.” Now everyone's looking at me.

  Michael says, “Really.”

  “Yeah. I didn't almost die.”

  “Well, do you think you would have lived if, say, no one had called the ambulance and you'd never been taken to the hospital?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Well, you wouldn't have.”

  “Whatever.” He's so full of shit. Even if I did almost die, he doesn't have to say it.

  Dad came in a separate car from Mom and Craig because he came straight from work, so I go home with him.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we go to the sporting goods store?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I want to look at some stuff.”

  I know exactly what I'm looking for. Two sets of red lightweight Everlast boxing gloves. That is exactly what I want.

  At home, Dad and I strap on our new gloves and start bouncing around the room. These things are heavy. Jesus, they're heavy.

  Dad says, “No hitting on the head, okay, son?”

  “Okay. Round one.”

  Dad covers up his stomach, and I take a couple of cheap shots at his belly. He's making noises like I hurt him, but I don't think I really did.

  How about this? How about this? Did that hurt? Did that hurt?

  He's not punching me back. How come he's not punching me back? Come on. Hit me. Hit me. I'm not made of glass. Hit me.

  He's just covering up and letting me hit him in the stomach. Come on. Come on.

  Jab. Jab. Right cross. Left cross. Uppercut.

  Jab. Jab. Right cross. Right hook. Uppercut.

  He's still not hitting me back. Hit me back. Hit me back. I'm not made of glass. Hit me back.

  Right cross. Right hook. Uppercut. Uppercut. Right hook.

  Oh shit, I knocked him down.

  “Are you okay? Dad, I'm sorry, are you okay?”

  “I'm okay.”

  We're both breathing heavy, and I'm standing over him. I'm standing over him. And I can't help it, I raise my hands over my head. I'm the champ.

  Mom and Dad and I are going to the Falls Church Racquet Club to play Wallyball, which is exactly like volleyball except you play it indoors in a racquetball court, and the ball is blue and bouncy, and you can hit it off the walls.

  We're playing with a bunch of their friends, including my old den mother from Cub Scouts. I'm the only one under forty.

  I'm on the team with Mom and Dad. Bruce and Sandy and Chuck and Annette are on the other team. Mom gets so competitive at these games. Dad does too, but you don't expect it as much from Mom. Dad's wearing some shirt he got at a conference and an old pair of gym shorts, and Mom's wearing her fortieth birthday shirt tucked into her shorts.

  Jesus, I hope I don't look that stupid.

  Dad serves overhand and Bruce bumps it to Sandy. She gives him a set and he floats it over the net, right to me. Shit. I can do this. I get my arms above my head and send it back to their side. They can't get to it. It drops. Yes.

  Everybody is clapping and hollering for me, like I just won the Olympics.

  After the game, we go out to Sign of the Whale and get burgers. The meat is nice and juicy and drips down my hand into my Jobst glove. Good thing we can wash these. Nothing like a burger. Nothing like it.

  I'm feeling pretty good. I didn't think I'd do so well at Wallyball. I mean, I know they took it easy on me and everything, but still, I was good, I think. I wonder if Wallyball will be an Olympic sport one day. Isn't Ping-Pong an Olympic sport?

  I start playing the drums on the table. Pounding out a hip-hop beat. I'm pounding out a little beat.

  Okay, so I can use my hands, arms, and legs. I can think. I can walk. I can talk. I'm fifteen. I'm alive.

  Life's pretty good. It's pretty good.

  Dad and I drive home together because he came straight from work. His car has seat warmers. I love seat warmers.

  “Oh, Dad, on the way home can we stop at the bookstore?”

  “Sure, sonner.”

  We go in together and I go right for the fiction section. Oh yeah, here it is, The Godfather. That's such a cool design on the cover, the guy holding the strings. Cool.

  I go over and find Dad. He's browsing in the magazines. There's the new Playboy with LaToya Jackson on the cover. God, she's got a snake wrapped around her body. I heard about this on the news. She's so hot.

  “Hey, Dad. Look, LaToya Jackson is in Playboy.”

  “Hmm. She's got a nice personality.” I laugh.

  “We should get it.” I'm just kidding, I just want to see what he'll say.

  “Okay, give me your book and wait in the car.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He slips me the keys and I go straight out to the car. I try not to look at the girl behind the counter as I walk by. Is he really going to do it?

  I watch him through the window as he pulls it from the top shelf of magazines and brings it over to the girl. He's saying something to her. I don't even think he's embarrassed. He's got it. Here he comes.

  He opens his car door and throws the magazine onto my lap. It's in a plain brown paper bag.

  He says, “Don't tell your mother.” We laugh.

  It's almost Christmas. It's a week away. During breakfast, Mom and Dad ask me what I want and I tell them. I want a brand-new bathrobe. A black one, but this time with a hood, like the boxers wear. That's what I want. This year, I want a new black bathrobe with a hood. Last year, I asked for a black bathrobe for Christmas. A long, warm one that I could wear in and out of the shower. I guess it's kind of obvious what happened to that bathrobe.

  When I think about it, it was after Christmas last year that everything really went downhill. We went to Florida to spend Christmas with Nanny and Grandpa, and I was feeling so good down there. So warm and so good. I remember I went out every day and sat on the beach with my cousins and worked on building that sand horse.

  But I remember that I knew it couldn't last. It couldn't last, and it didn't. I knew it was going to get cold when I came home. I knew I was going to get in trouble somehow. I knew I wasn'
t going to make it through the winter because the winter is so long. I knew when I got to February that I wouldn't make it. February is the longest month.

  Suzanne, the nurse, and I are sitting at the table, making Christmas cards. Nick was released from the hospital, and now I'm the only one here. It's kind of lonely, but it's also nice. It really is. It's so annoying when other people are here, always talking about their problems and their addictions.

  I'm not very good at making cards. I do the same thing every time. I fold the green paper in two and put some glue and some sparkles on the front and write Merry Christmas. They're not beautiful. But who cares? I mean, who's going to care in a hundred years if I made beautiful Christmas cards or not?

  I wonder what my skull will look like in a hundred years. I feel around my eyes. I feel the bones around my eyes and my eye sockets. There's the soft tissue inside them. That's where the holes would be if I was dead and someone was holding my skull. In a hundred years, someone's going to dig up my body and hold my skull in his hand, like Hamlet, and say that line that everyone always says.

  Suzanne notices that I'm not working anymore. She says, “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, seriously, what are you doing?”

  “Feeling my skull.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. I just am.”

  “What do you mean?” God, here we go.

  “Uh, I'm just feeling my skull bones, just kind of, you know, imagining my skull.” I know what she's thinking. She's thinking I'm depressed, but I'm not depressed. I'm not depressed at all.

  “Why do you think you're so interested in feeling your skull all of a sudden?”

  “Oh Jesus. Give me a break.”

  She says, “What?”

  “You know.”

  “What?”

  “You know what you were thinking.”

  “What was I thinking?”

  “Well, I'm not going to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Please.” I get up and go to the bathroom. This is such bullshit. I can't wait to get out of this place.

  Michael Mager and I are in the classroom. I've got this new card trick I'm going to show him. I say, “Have you heard the story of the four thieves?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I'll tell you. Once upon a time, there were four thieves that worked together to rob houses.” I hold up the four jacks and put them on top of the deck. “The four thieves always entered the house from the roof. The first one went down to the first floor and stole all of the gold.”

  Half of this trick is just keeping the person interested in what you're saying so they don't notice all the sneaky things you're doing with the cards.

  I put the first jack into the bottom part of the deck. “The second one went to the second floor and stole all of the diamonds.” I put the second guy in the middle of the deck.

  “The third thief went to the third floor and stole all the silver.” I put him in the upper part of the deck. “And the last thief stayed on the roof to watch for the police.

  “Now, normally, all the thieves were very good at their jobs, but this time, one of them tripped an alarm.” I look at Michael's face. He's smiling at me.

  “Over at the police station, the cops got into their cars and raced toward the scene of the crime.

  “And the thief on the roof saw the flashing lights and sounded the signal that the police were coming.” I knock on the deck three times. “And the four thieves came to the roof. And escaped down the fire escape.” I turn over the top four cards one by one. Jack of spades. Jack of diamonds. Jack of clubs. Jack of hearts. I smile and give Michael a little wink.

  He says, “Now, that was a good trick.”

  Yes.

  Mom and I are on our way to the annual Burn Unit Christmas party at Children's. All those kids that have to spend Christmas in the Burn Unit and all of us that used to be patients come back to say hi. Mom parks the car in the underground garage and we go up the escalators to the main level.

  I've been coming back here for physical therapy two times a week for months, but I haven't seen very many of the old Burn Unit nurses. This place feels so different now. It's just like, a whole different place.

  There's a lot of people here I've never seen before. And lots of little kids with their hands all wrapped up in bandages. They probably have to spend Christmas here.

  There're a few older kids. One guy looks familiar, kind of. Who is that guy? He's older, maybe sixteen, and he's wearing a hat. He's got scars on his arms, but he doesn't have to wear Jobst garments, and his scars are faded to flesh color. Mine are still all red.

  Donna, one of the nurses, comes over and gives me a hug. She says, “Hey, hon! So good to see you!” I forgot she had a Southern accent. She says she wants to introduce me to some people.

  She leads me over to the guy I was just looking at. She says, “Joey? Hey, honey. How are you? I want to introduce you to Brent. Brent was just here this last year.”

  He says, “Hey.”

  “Hi. How are you?”

  “Good.”

  Donna says, “Brent, look at how his scars healed.” She pulls up the sleeve of his shirt so I can see the scars better. “See how the redness faded? That's what yours are going to look like too, pretty soon.” Donna's wearing sunglasses inside. I wonder why she's always wearing sunglasses.

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  “Come on, I want to introduce you to some other people.” She leads me over to a black kid in a wheelchair. “Brent, this is Douglas. Douglas, this is Brent.” He's got one leg.

  I say, “Hey.”

  “What's up.” I remember this kid, he's the one that got his leg cut off by a freight train.

  Donna says, “How are you, Douglas? You look good.”

  “I'm all right.”

  “Great.”

  I see some other nurses I know. But I don't see Tina. I don't see Barbara. I don't see Lisa. I thought they were all going to be here, but it's just a bunch of people I only kind of knew.

  Suddenly I feel like I don't belong.

  They're giving out presents now. They've got presents for all the kids, they picked them out special. I'll just sit here and wait my turn, and then I'll get my present and go. I don't even really want anything. I just want to go home.

  They're calling my name from the podium. They've got a present for me. Eileen, one of the nurses, comes over and hands me a box and says, “We didn't know what to get you.”

  I say, “That's okay.”

  I sit at the table and open it with my mom. It's a set of Magic Markers, the kind that smell like different kinds of fruit.

  Donna comes over. “How do you like your present?”

  “It's great.”

  “You like it? Great.”

  “Yeah, it's really great. Thank you.”

  “We didn't know what to get you.”

  “I know, but it's really great. Thanks, I'll use them all the time.” I'm lying, but that's okay. Now can we go?

  On the drive home Mom's quiet. I don't know if she's not saying anything because of that party or if it's because she's thinking about something else.

  I turn on the radio. It's “King of Pain” by the Police.

  I say, “Hey, Mom, what do you think he's singing?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  I have stood here before inside the pouring rain

  With the world turning circles running 'round my brain.

  “Um, I don't know. ‘I food store before, besides, it's pouring rain. The world is a circus, rumbling round my brain.'”

  I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign,

  But it's my destiny to be the king of pain.

  “‘I guessed I'm always hoping that you'll end the rain. But it's my destiny to be the king of Spain.'”

  I'm laughing. King of Spain, that's good. “That's good, Mom.”

  “Did I get it?”

  “
Yeah. You got it. Try another one.”

  The next song comes on. I think it's by Bob Dylan.

  Early one mornin' the sun was shinin'

  “‘Early one morning the sun was shining'?”

  And I was layin' in bed

  “‘And I was laying in bed'?”

  Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all,

  if her hair was still red.

  “‘Wondering if I'd change at all, if my hair was still red'?”

  I say, “Hey, Mom, that's pretty good.”

  Tangled up in blue.

  “‘Tangle nothing blues'?”

  I say, “Yeah, that's not very close.” I change the station.

  La la la la la la la la la la.

  “‘La la la la la la la la la la.' I'm good at this one.”

  There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.

  “‘There is a rose in Spanish Harlem' or ‘There is a road in Spanish Harlem,' I'm not sure which.”

  I'm laughing so hard I can hardly stand it. I don't remember the last time I laughed this hard.

  Dad is going to read our traditional Christmas Eve book, it's called Cajun Night Before Christmas. He got it on some business trip about twenty years ago, and now we read it every year. He's so funny because he gets really into it and reads it in this terrible Cajun accent. Craig sits on one side and I sit on the other.

  'Twas the night before Christmas an' all t'ru de house.

  Dey don't a t'ing pass not even a mouse.

  De chirren been nezzle good snug on de flo'

  An' Mamma pass de pepper t'ru de crack on de do'.

  I don't know what half of this stuff means. Pass the pepper? It must be some weird Cajun thing. I scoot a little closer on the couch so I can see the pictures. Instead of reindeer, Santa has alligators pulling his sleigh.

  Mo' fas'er an' fas'er de 'gator dey came

  He whistle an' holler an' call dem by name:

  “Ha, Gaston! Ha, Tiboy! Ha, Pierre an' Alceé!

  Gee, Ninette! Gee Suzette! Celeste and Reneé!”

  Dad is having a little trouble with all the names right in a row. I help him pronounce Celeste.

  His eyes how dey shine his dimple how merry!

  Maybe he been drink de wine from blackberry.