by Noah Hawley
I would watch as they strapped him down, knowing that never again after I witnessed his death would I ever smile with real joy or laugh with true humor. I would watch as they asked if he had any last words and see him shake his head. There had been too many words already. He had said all he wanted. His eyes would be clear, his body relaxed. I would want to break through the glass and fight them all, to pull the needle from his arm, but I wouldn’t. We had come to this place, he and I, and there was nothing we could do about it. It was the last stop on the journey.
Once he had been a newborn boy who drank from his mother’s breast. He had learned to speak, to say Dada and Mama. They were the first words he spoke every morning, calling to us from his crib. He was a child who could not wait to see what the new day would bring, what new wonders. A boy who smiled with pure and unmitigated happiness every time he saw my face, who charged me, hands outstretched, diving into my arms. He was the reason I had been born, my mission. But soon he would be lying on a table surrounded by men in uniforms. And I, his father, would be watching from the next room as they stepped away, as they manned their machines, as they tilted the table back to flat.
There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness.
They would tilt the table back and press a button, and the chemicals would begin to flow, death in liquid form. I had seen it as a doctor a thousand times, the way the breathing slows and the color disappears from the skin. You start to count. Each breath is farther apart, each pause that much longer than the last. The body becomes still. That person you knew, his expressions, his gestures, the sound of his voice, that person whose identity was imbedded in every cell and follicle, dissipates. He takes a breath and you wait, but this time the pause is eternal. Life vanishes.
After he died we would bury him here, in a tiny graveyard in the last place on earth he had ever been happy. We would fly his body to Iowa, and stand around it on a dapper winter day. There would be no songs, no psalms, no sermons. The sun would hide its face behind the clouds.
I stood beside a cemetery in Iowa. In my bones was the ache of unrelenting burden. A wind kicked up, blowing through the willow tree with a shimmer that sounded like rain on the water. It was time to stop fighting. There would be no appeal, no last-minute stay. I would finally do what my son had asked, what he had been asking me to do all along.
I would let him go.
Acknowledgments
For their faith, passion, and guidance I would like to thank my agent, Susan Golomb, and my editor, Alison Callahan. To my father, Thomas Hawley, who taught me what it means to be a good father, all I can say is you are missed every day. And to my bonus father and mother, Mike and Trudy, I want to say thank you for taking me in and showing me that we are stronger with families than we are without. To Kyle, my wife, who supports me and gives my life meaning, thank you. You have made me a better man.
And to Guinevere, my Guinevere, for whom anything that happened in the past happened “last weekend,” and who insists on growing up no matter how hard we try to stop her—thanks for letting me be your dad.
You make me want to live forever.
About the Author
Noah Hawley is the author of three previous novels, including The Punch and A Conspiracy of Tall Men. He created and ran the ABC television shows The Unusuals and My Generation and wrote the film Lies & Alibis. Hawley’s short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, where he lives with his wife and daughter.