My Hand Mitten

by Austin Thacker

  Useless, he thought to himself while in taking a large mouthful of spice-less meatloaf, thinking about how pointless his actions were that followed on that night in 1982. Aaron ran over to his drunken, skinny father of thirty in the cluttered backyard and slapped him across the face. He yelled like a Spartan entering the Hot Gates in the Battle of Thermopylae and banged Bailey Hudson’s left cheek like a ceremonial Asian gong, staining an ember-red imprint of an adolescent hand as the effect. Useless, Aaron thought again as he remembered his father’s cold stare and devilish, intoxicated grin as he rose onto his feet. Then he remembered the arguments he had with Mark about Mary and her beautiful, straight chocolate-brown hair. At the time, Aaron was so in love with her, so compelled to the thought of their future that he remembered those involving daydreams. Their children, barbecues in the summer and fireplaces in the winter. He thought of cruises every fiscal year and how they would run to somewhere in California together and gain wisdom through every risk they took and hardship they faced. Aaron didn’t care much for Las Vegas and their career in magic. He cared more for her, and whom she was with.

  However, like in 1982, despite everything Aaron did, he was no closer to the goal he desired. In fact, every new attempt he made to alter the events he thought he could control would soon build a tumor of fright in his gut. Aaron slowly began to realize the events he knew would happen would, the dominoes that would tumble did, and all he ever did was yell at a brick wall in New York City while the wrecking ball demolished a building in Los Angeles. The Passenger Effect, Aaron thought, the damn Passenger Effect still controls me. Even if it seems that I made a difference, it is only an illusion. Mark is still destined for what I know will come. He is still idly drifting to that green door at his house, drifting back to her. Then once he walks in there, he will surely die right before my eyes. He continued to eat for eight more minutes, gulping down the food like icy water after changing an unexpected flat tire in July. Aaron, the chief of police, convinced the deputy chief that Mark was prepared for the call. He convinced everyone that this was the only chance to distinguish the constant dead ends on the local drug smuggling case, while secretly wishing for Mark to head home with accomplishment, to brighten up the bitterness he felt for his dying wife. His idea backfired, turning into another domino, leading to the end. The passengers and the drivers, Aaron began to think once more. No matter how much I fight, I scrape and kick at the walls of my placement in society. I will always be useless, heading in the direction the driver desires. Unless, unless I somehow convince these drivers to make the difference in the world, to help me accomplish my needs as a third party, I can narrow the gap. Those people who seem to always achieve what they strive for in life, always heading toward their passions, passing through obstacles like a current of electricity through a copper rod. Yet now the distance from hope is lengthening. What was once a condo turned into a house, and what was a house has turned into a ballroom, to the point where even the drivers will become passengers, and soon we will all just sit and watch like powerless trees to a forest fire, like a window to a fast approaching baseball, and we will all bow down to the damn Passenger Effect, preparing for impact.

  Kenny lay on the bed that was neatly made, like a stiff rock onto a cushion. He felt a boulder of grief in his heart, while thinking about what Aaron had stated before exiting. Yes, it was true; Mark had not changed. He was still delusional, in deep grief because of his wife’s deadly illness, and would not change unless a miraculous work of God was placed onto the town of Tucson. Kenny had lost hope in Mark’s recovery, his weakness bitterly and shamefully resting on his shoulder like the sinking feeling in Aaron, almost identical to the shame that plagued Kennedy. Yet something in Mark returned when he smashed his face into the off-white airbag and the Bearcat was thrown through the window, smashing on the black concrete of First Avenue. Something must have clicked inside the inefficient parts of his mind and rebooted all its functions for an extension of memory he had so desperately blocked from his mind. Hope, Kenny thought, there’s hope again. A spark has fired off in me that I lost so long ago, a spark of hope for us all. Then, maybe, when our final mark on the world is on a gravestone, we can actually die with peace. Yet even though it may not last, he may wake up tomorrow and the connections could be lost, there was a step in the right direction, a step closer to dreams that have died long ago. It is possible to change Mark’s fate and save his life. With this hope there are possibilities, there are opportunities.

  Kenny closed his eyes and lay in the plastic bed, feeling his age more than ever. At the age of seventy-two, he was two years from retirement from the hospital and, once a good decade or two passed, planned to die there as well. Yet the newly arisen tension and excitement of the day reminded him of the aches and pains in his body, the arthritis in his left knee, which, on that humid day, made the pain even worse. His periodic migraines were caused by his hypersensitivity to dehydration, and high blood pressure kept him from fast food and hot tubs. He felt more aware of his age more than ever but knew he could still replace an alcoholic’s failing kidney like a grandmother sewing together a hole in a blanket. He could widen arteries in the brain to prevent strokes like a fourth-generation plumber removing a ball of hair from a drain. He had saved the lives of thousands; certain he could save one more. I could change everything, Kenny thought, it is not too late. Kenny reached for his hospital pager in the right pocket of his black satin pants and told his floor nurse that he would be on break for an hour. She immediately agreed, as it was not her place to argue with Dr. Kenny; in fact, no one did. Dr. Kenny was the most experienced doctor in both the trauma center and the emergency room. In the medical world, his hands were magic, his opinions were never questioned, and to observe him in the operating room was like observing Moses descend from Mount Sinai. While performing surgery, he was as steady as a rock and as calm as a vacant pond.

  Yet a call came in thirty minutes later that needed Dr. Kenny urgently: a car slipped from the rain and crashed with another. Men from both sides stormed out, yelling and screaming because of the wreckage but not noticing their own scars. The storm consumed them, made them mad. Their sense of reality was gone. The past was more important than the present, or the future, until an on-the-scene medic yelled them out of their insanity and exposed their eyes to their shredded bodies. Reality hurts; one fainted upon realization, the other laid himself down on a stretcher and asked for help, praying quietly to himself. Mark passed the two men and bumped into the nurse who exposed their scars when he ran out in blind fury from the sixth floor. The man who fainted woke up without knowledge of the bloodshed, only the accident, but the one who asked for help remembered both.

  After thirty-five minutes of Aaron sinking in sadness and a secret meeting with Tyler’s father, which was a failure, he walked back to find Mark had taken his police car. But before that, Mark sat on a chair next to Tyler, talking, joking, and laughing. They talked for almost thirty minutes. Kennedy came in after the magic trick to take Mark, checking the hallways like before to see if anyone had taken notice, but when she saw Tyler smiling, it was more important to preserve that joy. Kennedy checked the blood infusion and left. The danger of Mark didn’t matter; being distraught while unimaginably ill was more dangerous. At the end of their talk, Tyler lost his strength and began to slowly fade from their conversation. His body also began to hurt from the laughter. Mark hadn’t seen his mouth sores until that moment. They were sores cancer patients got from the chemotherapy, which began in the throat, and if severe—which they always were—they would travel through your entire GI tract, following down toward your bottom. Which made pooping an excruciating experience. Talking was almost as bad; every word was a burning, blistered feeling in the back of the throat. Although not as bad as drinking or eating, most patients quit eating because of the pain and loss of taste, which led to nutrition from a disposable bag. At that point, everything tasted like dirt, since taste buds are reproducing cells killed from chemoth
erapy along with red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, hair cells, and skin cells (but not nail cells, if those are a thing). On the other hand, there’s no acne, since zits require skin cell reproduction. Go tell a cancer patient that they’re lucky they’re not you because they don’t get acne, quick.

  Sorry, I’m rambling on too much, just forget everything I said. Anyway, Mark found out in that moment that he wasn’t benefiting Tyler or helping him feel better. It was quite the opposite. Tyler did everything for Mark. Every word he said was a burning pain, a reminder of mortality. His yell for a cure was equivalent to a scorching fire burning and bleeding in his throat, a devilish spirit wanting him to mute his words, wanting him to never be heard again. That’s what cancer is—a demonic spirit, yet superior to the other demons that may be lurking in your soul, an incomparable difference. Mark, realizing the pain he had caused, pushed off the mattress while lightly smiling, adjusted his gown and gloves, and gave a short but sweet farewell. Tyler mumbled a response from the bed, tumbled on the pillow, and delicately fell asleep. Mark watched from afar for minutes, the sunken eyes covered by black bags and pale, deeply fair skin around the face. Eyebrows were wearing thin, and all the hair on his head was gone…and the weight. His thin arms lay still under light, white blankets. Everything was mocking him. The casts were small and white, like the scrubs, fitting as a robe. The stitches were white and deep, around the entire face, whispering to Mark. The conversation was not only physically but also mentally draining in Tyler’s condition. The amount of antibiotics, narcotics, and injuries was tiring; to spend that amount of time communicating and interacting was quite a feat. The drugs dulled the pain but also the mind and drive to communicate; most patients blew off visitors for rest.

  Mark scanned the furniture and felt dim-witted. There were no oral medications, so Tyler accessed everything through IV. Murderer! the IV pole yelled. Murderer! Mark covered his ears and closed his eyes.

  “No, please no.” Mark ran for the cold, thick door. The voices were surrounding and closing in. His thoughts crowded and took control. While Tyler spoke to Mark in the rain the night before, his throat was already coated with blisters, the voices cried. Murderer! He reached for the door, but the door opened by itself before he ever touched the knob. It was Tyler’s mother. The door swung from the opposite direction. He stood a yard away but felt closer. When their eyes met, the voices fell silent, the crazy ran out, and her gentle smile made mystery flood through the air. When they met, the clouds outside began to sprinkle, wiping off the dew from trees and wetting cement spots once dry by the sunlight, which was almost gone. It wasn’t long until darkness spread from mountain to mountain, animals hid in fear, people gathered around dusty board games, and the sky cried, with rage shortly behind. He was being watched by Tyler’s mother, the one who gave birth, nurtured, and raised him, with a sense of certainty like Mark’s own mother, Isabell Wegman. The one who spent sixteen years sharpening the boy only to watch him whittle away in the white plastic mattress and thin hospital sheets. She was staring into Mark’s eyes. Mark, the middle-aged man whose car’s tread slid as he braked, hydroplaning down into the back of Tyler’s Camry from the dirt-brown slush of gathered rain water. Mark, the man who had made rash judgments and accusations of her son and would soon walk out with only minor whiplash and a sprained arm from the grace of a God he didn’t even believe in. But as her emerald-green eyes gazed bitterly into his own, she smiled. The motherly grin was weak, but it was there. Mark would have told her about the deep guilt he would feel for the rest of his life. He would have pulled out one of the few loose blank checks in his wallet and written $2,000, telling her that there would be more for the safety of her son. He would have even bought Tyler a refurbished car from the Auto Mall. The guilt was haunting Mark, another demon forming to soon join the legion in his worn soul. Yet the earlier epiphany was a reminder of haunting memories all separate on their own, in the years where things began to fall apart, melt, and bend like a gingerbread house under a furnace. Their sweet life slowly turning to mush, liquefying. Soon he couldn’t even see the woman staring into his eyes, a foot away and with dreadful curiosity for his presence in her child’s hospital room. He could only smell the bleach in the room, the aftertaste of injected saline in his mouth, and the colorful walls of the children’s hospital rooms getting closer, closer.

  Love Filled Lies

  Mark was twenty-two. Mary was twenty-one—three years of marriage had gone by in a flash. During this spent time, Mark joined the Marine Corps. He learned respect, teamwork, morals, family values, discipline, and pain. Mary never approved of his enrollment (“What if you get hurt?”), but ever since the introduction to the Marines in high school, Mark had wanted to join. She rolled her eyes the first few times he walked in with his camouflage and Velcro badges, but as the months passed, she began to find him quite adorable in his suit. The cold bus to his training ground and the harsh treatment during the first few weeks made him cry, but he felt wanted like never before. He didn’t feel like a part of civilization, but a part of the Marines, and learned the motto, “For God, Corps, and Country.” After twelve weeks of kissing the mud in the rain, fighting the tears, and learning brotherhood, Mark finally joined a unified platoon and moved his wife to a military base on the coast of California. They lived on the base for years, attending church services as a couple, getting ice cream afterward, and watching cars roll by. Because of his new arrival to the base, they lived near an artillery practice range, every morning, waking up at 5:30 a.m. by the fire from the heavy arms until 9:00 a.m. rolled around the corner. Almost every person was from out of state, deployed in California for a short time. Mark continued to work up branches while Mary learned the basic rules of living on government land. Commissaries—government grocery stores on the military base—were cheaper than the regular stores. Mary loved it. She ran in on Monday mornings and bought groceries by the cartful, steaming up stromboli, baking pecan pies, mac-and-cheese-stuffed potatoes, buttery Texas bread, and other countless dishes. The little kitchen would always be filled with complex, pleasant scents of baked goods from the yard-wide off-white oven, or boiled and fried meals from the charcoal-black cooktops, spotted with permanent stains the color of brown bears or the hairs of a coconut. Mark, although exhausted with dry sweat and blisters on his shoulders and hands, would trot over to their house with excitement to see his wife and the new creation she would craft in the kitchen.

  Mary also noticed the differences in police enforcement between the town of Tucson and the California base. For instance, the police were less lenient with the five-mile gap over the speed limit, which most practiced in the seemingly empty roads in Arizona. Yet at the same time, neighboring families welcomed the Wegmans with open arms and gave them a warm sense of security. Mark continued to rank higher while at the base, jumping from private first class to lance corporal, and eight months later, with twelve months of training in total, a corporal. The sheer skill learned early in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) at high school promoted him fast and swiftly. His bulked, strong, tall, youthful body also took a heavy role in the Marines; most had very heavy, lean muscle structures, but nothing compared to Mark. He was like his father Henry in construction, an icon. Mark was quick thinking, muscular, broad, and tall. He grew to be six foot seven, like his father before him, and developed fantastic marksmanship, excelling beyond the others of equal rank. However, with his constant kindness and certainty, like the main and suspender cables to the Golden Gate Bridge, he wasn’t openly accepted as their rank’s leader—but it was common knowledge that their main support came from him.

  After a total of two years, Mark became a sergeant. With countless weeks of training on the ground, he became a well-known leader on the base, catching the attention from captains, colonels, and even a general on one warm Thursday afternoon during a drill on infiltrating a terrorist base, using team spirit and team flow as the two key areas of focus. He knew how to lead s
mall squads into horrific war, how to perform simple on-hand medical tactics, and how to carry out a mission with the squad clean and stainless. The promotion wasn’t on accident. Mark was on the top of the list and became an excellent leader. His understanding of politics, tactics, artillery, and battlefront made teachers proud, and many—in humility—saluted him upon graduation. They knew that Mark was born for greatness, that he would be one of the future leaders for the Marines. That month, Mark, instead of being serviced in the Active Federal Service for the primary zone, became enrolled in the secondary zone. A promotion program where commanders chose highly qualified people to have the chance in expediting promotions.

  Mark taught his team loyalty, discipline, and brotherhood and warned them of the dangers of war. Although Mark has never truly been in a war, his experience in the classroom, reenactments, and lessons on the base were more than the others had. His favorite comrade, if that’s what you call it, was Tom Freeman. His name was old-fashioned. After the Civil War, the millions of freed African Americans were given the last name Freeman. Which might seem now like a simple last name, but to the many who were newly freed, it meant the world, and American citizenship. To this day, Tom never talked about his ancestors or the origin of the last name but did explain his family tree all joining the military, fighting major wars in the late twentieth century, beginning with their freedom by the Civil War to the day Tom spoke about it in the 1990s.