Chapter 27
n the summer between our junior and senior years, the county fair came to town for two weeks. That meant a windfall for Uncle Willee. He split his time shoeing horses for the wannabe cowboys who had come in for the rodeo, and mucking the stalls before and after the cattle auctions.
It also meant a windfall for me. Growing up on the outskirts of Brunswick, what some might call "the sticks," I didn't get out much. Excitement for me was the birth of a new cow. The fair spiked my curiosity and, in one particular case, satisfied it. Completely. Remember that scene in Charlotte's Web when Templeton goes to the fair at night and eats himself sick? Me, too, but it'd be good to forget it.
Friday night I waxed Vicky, and Tommye and I drove to the fair around dark. I didn't know it at the time, but Tommye was trying to drown her own demons, so we bought a five-dollar bottle of bootleg. Real rotgut stuff. We'd been listening to Don McLean's "American Pie" and thought it'd be neat to sing dirges in the dark and toast the world with whiskey or rye.
We rode the carousel, threw baseballs at the bowling pins, shot candles with squirt guns, and ate cotton candy, hot dogs, and nachos, and then stepped on the Ferris wheel. The guy working the wheel kept starting and stopping, letting people on and off and juggling with the contents of my stomach. I couldn't feel my lips or face, and judging by Tommye's speech, she couldn't either. We reached the pinnacle of the wheel, polished off the bottle, and the controller slammed the wheel to a halt.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
To Tommye's wide-eyed amusement, I grabbed the safety bar, braced myself, and vomited in a fantastic arc out over the front, splattering six or eight swinging buckets of fairgoers. Mind you, prior to that night, I'd never had a drink in my life. Tommye, a sympathetic vomiter, didn't have the good sense to grab the railing and keep it out of our bucket or off me. By the time the truth filtered down to the controller, people were screaming, which for some strange reason seemed really funny to Tommye and me. We laughed, vomited some more, and by the time we reached the bottom, our bucket and the ground below us was a mess in need of some diesel fuel and a match.
Somehow we stumbled back behind the tents and passed out. Just as the sun was driving an axe through the center of my head, somebody kicked my foot.
"You two 'bout finished?"
I cracked my eyes, but the sun had moved. It was sitting three inches from my face, burning a hole in my retina. I tried to nod my head, but the first wave of nausea told me I'd better not. I held up a stop-sign hand and whispered, "Please stop the world from spinning."
Unc wasn't having any of that. "You two want to live the high life, I can't do much to stop you. Probably wouldn't do any good anyway. You're old enough to make up your own minds." He looked around and shook his head at the rank smell of us. "But if you can stay up all night acting like a couple of idiots, you can work all day like honest folk. Now get up."
His tone of voice told us he was only going to say it once.
I stood up and dry-heaved from my toes. It sent me to my knees, my hands landing in horse manure. I looked at them and shook my head.
"I don't know what you're shaking your head at," Unc said. "You been sleeping in it all night. Even got it in your hair."
He took us to the stalls, handed us a pitchfork and wheelbarrow, and pointed. "Muck 'em. All of 'em. You can take a break when you finish."
I looked down the long row of stalls. There must have been a hundred of them. That's when I decided to quit being stupid.
Tommye was still too gone. Her face was crusted over and her hair was matted to her cheek. Unc walked off, she passed out, and I spent seven hours lifting manure out of fresh mulch clippings.
In my head, Don McLean kept asking for some happy news.
Late in the afternoon, I walked out of the barn to check in with my boss. He was shoeing a roping horse, the front foreleg pulled up between his knees while he filed off the tip of the hoof and scraped out the frog. With sweat pouring off his forehead, a cut on his forearm, and dirt smeared over most every square inch of his body, he looked up at me and then looked down again without so much as a word.
I was about to start reciting the apology I'd spent all day memorizing when two guys carrying brown-bagged beers walked by the stall. The first one, a dark-haired guy with a heavy gold watch, looked twice at Unc and then poked his buddy in the shoulder.
"Hey, if it isn't the murdering thief of Glynn County."
Unc looked up but didn't skip a beat. They walked closer and their voices grew, drawing attention.
"Lookee here. If it ain't the whipping post of Fulton County Penitentiary. Hey everybody, come quick! It's the cold-blooded clown of Brunswick."
The fog of last night hung on, rattling inside my head.
"Come on up, folks, step right up." They knocked his hat off, kicked it between them, and then flattened it atop a rather massive pile of horse droppings. While one fellow ground it into the dirt with his heel, the other played the role of circus announcer. Within a few seconds, a crowd had gathered.
"Step right up, folks. One free punch. No admission. If you lost your shirt, family heirlooms, or last penny in the Zuta First National Robbery, then here is your chance to feel better."
With that, the guy turned and poured beer across the face of the horse. The alcohol must have stung its eyes, because it spooked. The horse jumped, broke the reigns that had tied it to Unc's trailer, and kicked. Both feet caught Unc squarely in the chest. Think of a cannon shot. Flying backwards, he crossed the stall and landed hard against the wall on the other side. When I got to him, blood was coming out the corner of his mouth, at least one rib was poking through his shirt, and he was having trouble breathing.
People were screaming for a doctor-who would later tell us he'd broken seven ribs-but that didn't stop the guy who hit him. He walked up and jabbed me in the chest.
"Be glad you ain't his boy. Last one he had got taken, burnt to a crisp, and dumped on the courthouse steps. You don't want to be blood kin to him." After he spit in Unc's face, he walked off in the direction of the cotton candy machine.
With my head pounding, cotton filling every corner of my mouth, and no desire for another drink the rest of my life, I saw for the first time just how much and to what degree the folks around town blamed and hated Unc for every bad thing that had ever happened in Glynn County. Somehow, somewhere, somebody had twisted the truth to the extent that they couldn't see the forest for the trees.
I've often wondered-if Unc really had made off like a bandit, then what in the world was he doing shoeing horses at a county fair? Not to mention the fact that the robbery cost him his career, inheritance, wife, and son. Is it just me, or does none of that make sense? I wanted to ask the guy at the fair that, but I never got the chance, because the helicopter came and airlifted Unc to the hospital, where he spent a couple hours in surgery. It'd be two months before he could walk to the greenhouse and another before he could even think about getting back to work. To make up the difference, I filled in after school taking care of his horses, and Aunt Lorna began working doubles at the truck stop whenever she could get them.
But maybe the thing that has caused me more thought through the years, the thing I can't seem to reconcile, is that I've never seen Unc mad. It's like all the bad stuff that happened to him poured into one side of his heart and fell out the other, flowing through the hole left by the death of his wife and son.
I'm no expert, but I know one thing about anger-it's like alcohol. At some point, if you pour enough in there, it's coming back up. You may think you've built up a tolerance, but the truth is this-no man, not even Unc, can bury it so deep that it doesn't erupt at some point like Vesuvius and splatter your soul across the earth. There was a time when I wanted to be around to see the eruption, but now I'm not so sure. 'Cause I'm not sure what that would do to Unc.
Chapter 28
'IV and AIDS had never spent much time on my radar screen. .Most of my knowledge involv
ed pictures of gaunt-eyed, bald men suffering painful, hallucinogenic deaths in sterile hospital rooms. It was a disease passed among gay men, not little girls from South Georgia who liked to fish, ride the carousel, and watch baseball.
My mistake.
I got to my office early, googled HIV, and spent the morning educating myself. Finally I placed a call to a doctor in California who'd published several articles on the progression of the disease. Unlike the other countless specialists, his articles were written in language that an ignoramus like me could understand. The receptionist paged him, and I played the role of journalist.
"Hello, Dr. Myers, this is Chase Walker. I'm a journalist for the Brunswick Daily in Georgia. Our community has been affected by HIV as of late, and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions."
"Sure, but forgive me if I'm terse. I'm between patients, and chances are good they have less time than you."
"Let me skip the small talk. Can the disease be defeated?"
"In the short run, sort of. Long run, not yet. Least not that we know of. With drug therapy, we can eliminate any trace of the disease in someone's blood system, making old age a very real possibility. Some of my patients have had the disease fifteen years and yet are medically healthier than I."
"So it's not a death sentence?"
"Not like it was in the eighties. It used to be that the only treatment we had was AZT. We administered high doses, extended a patient's life by a few years, and the side effects were many and not pleasant. Research has since taught us that the virus enters a cell and attacks the DNA, enabling it to make more of itself. To do this, it must come out of the membrane of that cell, destroying that cell which, in effect, destroys the immune system. This occurs exponentially, not sequentially. You remember the brainteaser where someone asks you if you would rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day of the longest month of the year? Well, take the penny. This research led to the development of protease inhibitors. In short, they block the reproduction of the cell within itself, thereby placing the virus in a holding pattern."
"Making it dormant?"
"That's one way to look at it. If we start early enough, we can virtually eliminate any trace of the virus within a person's bloodstream."
"What's early enough?"
"Well, that depends on the person. Some people succumb much faster. Some can hold their own for quite a while before they ever see the effects. It depends on their immune system prior to infection."
"What about when combined with other diseases of the blood?"
"Good question, but let's back up a minute. HIV today is not simply one virus. There are now several strands with differing characteristics. By attacking one, we can enable another. Add to that any type of hepatitis, and we've got trouble."
"How's that?"
He paused. "It's the perfect storm. Treat one, and you encourage the other. Leave it alone, and they combat one another, growing stronger and ravaging the host, or patient. Either way, it's the worst possible scenario."
"How long would that patient have?"
"If we diagnosed early enough, we could give them a couple years. Maybe even a decade. Assuming compliance."
"Compliance?"
"To get better, the patient has to want to. Which means they have to willingly take medication, daily, for the rest of their life."
"Can they start anytime?"
"Well, yes, but again, there is no morning-after pill. Each patient reaches a point of no return where the body has been so ravaged that no medication on earth can reverse the damage. At that point, it's a matter of time."
"How much?"
"Again, look at the patient. It can be a week, month, year. After reaching critical mass, time-or one's expected lifespan-is a function of the level of infection, multiplied by some sort of coefficient of their immune system, divided by exposure to germs-or something like that. And we're still trying to figure out that coefficient. I've had patients who've died while on their first visit to my office. Obviously, they waited too long. Others came ten years ago, we patched them up, and they're hanging in there."
"How's it end? I mean, physically?"
"It's not pretty. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The human body can handle a fever up to about 104. Much above that, and the proteins in your body start to unravel and break down. At 105, delirium often sets in, the patients convulse, step in and out of consciousness, lose control of their internal organs." He paused. "Have you ever seen those TV shows that depict people with hemorrhagic fever?"
"That bad, huh?"
"Worse. It's called Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation."
"Say that one more time."
"D.I.C. for short. The patient's blood system begins to clot, and not just in one place. But your body only has so much ability to clot. Once you've used up that ability, exhausted those antigens, the reverse happens. From there it's a snowball. They bleed from every organ, pore, and orifice. If they're lucky, they'll suffer a clot in either the brain or lungs, which will end the misery."
"I thought research was gaining on this thing."
"It is and we are, but this disease is always one step ahead of us. About the time we think we've caught up with it, it cloaks itself and changes." He paused. "Side effects aside, it's a remarkable thing."
"You sound like you admire it."
"I respect it, I feel for those who have it, empathize with the loved ones affected by it, and I wish I could eradicate it from the planet. It's an evil unlike any I've ever studied. But there's no magic wand. In twenty years of treating this disease, I've witnessed some horrific scenes of human experience. But while it can and does kill the body, maybe the worst damage occurs in one's psyche."
"What do you mean?"
"When was the last time you thought about dying?"
I was quiet a minute.
"See what I mean? For most patients with HIV, it's a daily thought. They might not dwell on it, it might not even depress them, but for most, every time they swallow their meds, it crosses their mind. That has an effect on a person's soul."
"How do you treat that?"
A chuckle. "I'm a medical doctor. Not Dr. Phil."
I liked him. Given better circumstances, I'd buy him a beer and ask him where he went to medical school and how he got started in this area. I decided to ask anyway.
"How'd you get started treating HIV?"
He paused. "Following a routine surgery, my wife received a blood transfusion. This was before we knew about the virus. After watching what it did to her ... well, you can probably write the rest of that story."
"Thank you, Doctor."
"Anytime."
I found Tommye sitting beneath an orange tree behind the house. In the four weeks she'd been home, she'd lost more weight. She had begun to look like the gaunt, hollow-eyed pictures in my head.
I picked a twig of grass, broke it, and stuck it between my teeth. "I had an interesting conversation this morning."
She lay down and placed her head in my lap. "Yeah?"
"Uh-huh, with a doctor in California named Myers."
"And what's he do?"
"He's a leading HIV specialist."
She closed her eyes, and I ran my fingers through her hair.
"And what'd he say?"
"He said a lot."
She looked at me. "Don't you get cross with me. I'm still one week older than you."
"Uh-huh, and you look it, too."
She smiled. "When I get to heaven, I'm gonna talk to God about you not respecting your elders. Besides, I've put more mileage on my chassis than you have."
"I'm not sure how to take that."
She laughed. "Oh, come on, one of the things you and Uncle Willee have always done is laugh at yourselves. I'm just trying to remember how."
We let the breeze push through the grass and spread the summer sun around us.
"So?"
"You want the long version or short?"
She shrugged. "I probably know the lon
g version."
"He said he had medications that, depending upon a few factors, could give you a few more decades to-" I glanced at the house where Uncle Willee was teaching the kid how to whittle with his new pocketknife. "To watch the orchids bloom."
She smiled. "I'd like that."
"So, why aren't we at the doctor's office right now?"
She took a deep breath. "I contracted about four years ago. The business is pretty good about testing, but it's not foolproof. Which would explain the end of my acting career." Another deep breath. "After a few years of weeklong parties, all of which included multiple needles and people, I woke up on the floor of a room I'd never seen in a house I'd never been in with people I didn't know. I walked out, checked into a treatment center, and started thinking more about tomorrow than yesterday." She opened her eyes and looked at me.
"When I got there, my immune system was pretty much gone. I was one sniffle away from no return. So we started a megadose aggressive treatment of protease inhibitors that we thought was workingbut by attacking one, we strengthened the others. Sort of a sick and twisted catch-22." She closed her eyes again. "Now the medications I take just help with the pain." She sat up, wrapped her arms around me, and pressed her ear to my chest.
"How long had you been in the hospital when you called Uncle Willee?"
"Couple of weeks. They had to bring me back once. Jump-start me. You know, with those white air-hockey-looking paddles, like you see on TV? Well, don't try that at home. Take my word for it-it hurts."
We sat quietly, listening to each other hurt. Finally she lay back down, rubbed her chest where the memory must have made her itch, and placed her head on my thigh, speaking to the underside of the orangeless tree limbs above us.
"I had this dream." She chuckled. "I was standing on a stairwell inside a huge lighthouse. The stairwell spiraled around the inside of the walls of the lighthouse, and it was packed with people like me. Each stood in line, looking up toward the front where people were getting ready to meet whoever was up there. While they waited, they fussed over the pages in a book. Some looked like huge scrapbooks, while others looked like spiral notebooks. Everyone was working furiously, like kids trying to finish their homework before class. But I didn't have one.
Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery Page 19