I think a lot of noises were just in my mind, only I couldn’t separate the real from the imagined. The ringing in my ears, that was familiar, those screaming ants. They always seemed to be in a panic, a billion of them running around, screaming their bloody heads off like you’d imagine they would if some kid set off a firecracker in their big anthill. I’m not saying I ever did that, but I’m not saying I didn’t either. I just don’t remember. I could have. I did. Quite a few times actually, until I ran out of firecrackers. I should not have done that.
I lay there motionless a long while under those stiff white sheets. Nobody talked to me, or visited, people I thought should be visiting if I were in a hospital. My mind went a little catty-wampus and I struggled with the thought I might be someplace other than in a hospital. Yeah, that place.
My grandfather had a brother that worked in the Insane Asylum in Salem, Oregon when he was young. He told me and my sister stories about what his brother told him about the crazy people in there. About people carrying on an entire conversation with someone but there was nobody there, sometimes screaming at their invisible antagonists. When one of the nuts kicked the bucket, it was his brother’s job to put them in the back of a buckboard and take the cadavers over to the school that trains doctors. The students dissected them. That hospital still exists only it isn’t called an Insane Asylum anymore. It’s a hospital but the kids call it the Nut House.
It crossed my mind that just maybe I was in the Nut House in Salem.
Anyway, in what seemed to be real conversation, I was telling someone about Bella. I don’t have a clue who I was talking to. Maybe they were obscured by the foggy side of the sunglasses. Anywho, it sure seemed like the real deal.
Here’s the gist of what I said:
When Bella was three, she fell into the ice-caked Raccoon River and died. I was watching her at the time. I saw as she climbed on the sparkling mound of snow, lean over the iron railing to look at the ice-flow, lose her footing, and tumble into the river. “Papa …hep you,” she said in her little voice as I felt her fingertips touch mine and watched her eyes disappear from sight. I looked over the side and saw her clinging to a floating branch. Something caught my eye and I looked down. Sitting on the bleach white snow like someone placed him there to take his photo was Lonesome, the fuzzy brown stuffed puppy she gave me for my birthday. She named him Lonesome. She couldn’t pronounce her “Ls,” so she said Yonesome. She was working on “Ls” by practicing saying “yong yegs.” She would say, “Long, long, long, then, yong yegs.
That’s how it went. Stupid. I don’t know why I was discussing how she said her “Ls” when I was describing how she was bobbing down the river, clinging to a branch. Or why I thought of the way she said “hep you,” instead of “help me.” It was pretty-much a one-sided conversation because whoever it was I was talking to didn’t responded or consoled me. It was like I was talking to them through a closed bathroom door. They didn’t say diddly-squat.
I’d always try to anticipate what Bella might want and I’d say “Do you want me to help you?” and she picked up on that. It is some of the first things she said. Except she didn’t get the concept of me and you and when she wanted help, she would say “hep you,” and hold her arms up to me.
The longer I lay there thinking of things, I came to the conclusion that all that was a dream. The fact is, it didn’t happen like that at all, I don’t think. I was in a fuzzy condition so I’m not entirely sure on the facts. She did fall in the river. That did happen, I’m almost pretty sure of that.
It’s late summer, we’re almost into fall, and there’s no snow. At least there wasn’t when Bella fell into the river. I’m not so sure now. Seems like I saw snow on a rooftop out of my hospital room window. Who knows, I see dead people too.
I take care of Bella a lot. Her mom works at a hospital and sometimes she is scheduled late at night. It was on one of these scheduled late nights that Bella and I were taking an evening walk along the river on the trail near where the homeless people live in tents. We like walking together and talking about things that happen at her preschool. She tells me about her friends. It was on one of these walks that she told me that she wished I were her daddy. It may have upset her mom; maybe made her a little jealous and maybe made her think that Bella loved me more than she did her.
We always hoped we’d see that old hobo lady that we met by the library. She gave Bella a cookie once. Sometimes we thought we saw her in the distance and we’d holler “Hi,” but she never looked our direction. Maybe she is hard of hearing, but I don’t think so. I think she was ignoring us. She seemed a little schizoid about people, especially authorities.
I remember Priscilla talking to her at a distance once when we brought some sandwiches to the homeless in those tents. She warned us to stay away from the homeless tents because the cops had cameras and they’d arrest us for encouraging the homeless people to stay by bringing them food.
The grass was really wet from the rain earlier in the day. Bella was wearing the warm mittens I bought for her to replace the loose knit ones that her mom bought for her. The mittens looked nice but they were not practical for keeping little hands warm. Her mom didn’t seem to have much common sense when it came to warm mittens, among other things. She was wearing the ones I gave her just for the heck of it, not because it was all that cold but because they were new. The mittens had Velcro straps that tightened around her wrists so they wouldn’t fall off. Bella was holding Lonesome in one hand and I had her other hand when she spotted something on the ground and before I knew it, her little hand had slipped out of the mitten and she ran to pick it up. That Velcro strap is for shit.
She was always picking stuff up off the ground. I saw her moving toward the bank and said “stop.” I’m a person who always tries to think ahead so we practiced that quite often. It was something I thought would be a safety measure to keep her from running into traffic or something like that. When I hollered, she hit the binders and that is when her feet flipped out from under her and she slid down the muddy bank and stopped just short of the water. She gained her footing and sat on a large boulder with Lonesome hugged to her chest. She wasn’t hurt, just frightened and was crying for Papa.
I slid down the bank and that is when she stood and tried to walk toward me on the wet rocks. Her feet slipped and she tumbled back into the water and she was swept away. She had not gone ten feet before she got hung up on a branch floating with its butt end stuck in the rocks on the bank. She clung to the branch and still had Lonesome in one hand. She tried to clamber toward shore but the branch became dislodged and swung loose in an arch into the river. The river was not flowing very fast but her distance from me increased too fast for my taste. I hollered “Bella ... Bella ... Bella, a bunch of times and she kept screaming Papa, Papa ... her crying interspersed with coughing from the water.
I tried running along the river and the rocks were too big and so I jumped in and swam as fast as I could toward her. The water was cold. I kept hollering “Bella, Bella, I’m coming.” She was able to keep afloat with her dog paddling.
Every time I think of her in the water, I start crying. I lost her. She was only three and a half and she was in the cold Raccoon River.
She had been taking swim lessons at the Y so at least she didn’t sink. I think the air in her jacket helped to keep her afloat and I think Lonesome also acted as a float.
When I caught up to her, we were both nearly at the end of our endurance and I caught her sleeve and pulled her close and tried to swim toward the bank. She wouldn’t let loose of the branch or of Lonesome.
We had almost made it to the bank and I heard a woman screaming. She was hollering, “Gracie, Gracie.” I saw a woman in a black coat, standing nearly to her chest in the water. I thought there was another little girl in the water too and looked around for someone else in the water. She was leaning on a long stick to gauge the depth and kept looking back over her shoulder as if the land would disappear. When Bella and I were within
a few feet, the woman bent and stretched her arm to full length and held the stick out to me. I grabbed it.
“I got you Gracie, I got you.”
Anyway, I think that is the way it happened. Maybe I’m getting reality and my dreams all backwards-assward. What I’m terrified of, I think I lost Bella.
I remember looking down and seeing two wires and a hose sticking out of my stomach. It was a thick black hose, like a soaker hose Priscilla uses in her flowerbeds. It had a sort of spongy feeling. There was a catheter sticking out of that special private opening. There was no spongy feel to it. It was fairly stiff, similar to a hose you’d use to siphon gas, and damn near as large and its surface had the texture of an emery board.
My left arm was totally black and hurt like a bastard. Even my fingernails were bruised blue. There were needles attached to clear tubes stuck in the back of both hands and a metal clamp on the middle finger of my right hand. Once I touched my forehead with my good arm and felt a huge lump there. I must have hit my head on something in the river. I was covered with a sheet and a hanky-thin blanket. I was colder than the brain freeze, like after from taking a huge gulp of a Mocha Frappuccino, I shit you not. Roy used to say that; now I say it all the time, it comes in handy, I shit you not.
Roy was one smooth talking sonofabitch. Once back in college at Monmouth, he talked his way out of a DUI ticket. He and I were soused. We’d been guzzling Buds (You could buy a six-pack of Bud for a buck at the pizza parlor in Independence. They put six bottles, loose, in a paper bag. Monmouth was dry. Right.) with him all night, but we made it all the way home. When he pulled into the parking area of the apartment complex where he lived, he jumped the curb, missing his drive completely. Damn near broke my neck hitting the ceiling when he jumped the curb.
A cop happened to be sitting in his cruiser watching the show and he threw on his flashers and pulled in behind Roy’s Corvette. “Cut that corner a bit short, didn’t you?” he said after examining Roy’s license.
Roy, with a straight face, calmer than shit, said: “I always take that corner like that.”
The cop laughed his butt off at that and let Roy off with a verbal warning. What’s the chances of getting a cop with a sense of humor. Probably two, zero and none.
I think Roy’s luck is a direct result of him being confirmed in the Lutheran Church back in high school. It’s a mystery to me why I was the only kid in my class that I know of that didn’t get invited to that confirmation bullshit, the only one that wasn’t Catholic or Mormon, that is.
I definitely could have used it more than those other do-gooders in my class, especially after that vamp, Janis, transferred in from Virginia during our senior year and blatantly set out to exploit my susceptible, ignorant ass. If anybody needed guidance in avoiding sin, it was me. But, what happened, my church’s flock left me to play with the vamp. Janis led me down a sinful path of lust and grab-ass in the pine needles – literally. I’ve mostly forgiven them. I’ve forgiven Janis too but it’s taken fifty years.
Roy was an original thinker too. He played on a town league basketball team. They were sponsored by a steak house called the Lakeside Grill. He came up with the team name.
“Jake, I have the perfect name for our team, the ‘Lakeside Steaks’.”
I lay there thinking of all that weird shit, about Roy, and even about the stupid Frap, and, weirdest of all, the Lutheran Church. I hadn’t truly come to the realization I was in a hospital. I was positive I was dead and the Lutherans had come to get their due, me. It was probably all the drugs that were being siphoned through those tubes and needles in the back of my hands. I was nearly convinced it was formaldehyde.
Being dead didn’t cure me of always trying to think of original similes.
Nor of often thinking of opposites too. I wondered if that would continue too, if I were dead (alive). Like (hate) I (you) always (never) think of what is (isn’t) the opposite (same) of something (nothing). Sometimes I wish I were dead (alive) to stop (start) that little (big) mind game of mine (yours). It can waste an unbelievable amount of time if you don’t catch yourself doing it, I (you) shit you (me) not. What (?) really (?) wastes (conserves) the (?) time (?) is (isn’t) if (?) I (you) can’t (can) think (?) of what (?) the (?) opposite (same) is (isn’t). To top that off, if I couldn’t think of an opposite, I’d visualize a question-mark. I wonder if there is a medical term for the condition, like when people have a fear of going out of their own home. If there were, I’d probably spend my time trying to think of its opposite. I fear getting into an infinite loop over this where there is no opposite to the opposite and I can’t think of anything else and end up thinking of only question-marks. Maybe the term is “A Bubble Off Plumb.”
Another thing, and you’re not going to believe this, I figured out what I’d agonized all these years over, since I worked in the woods with good old Uncle Wendell back in high school. It was about time and tide. I figured out how to make a perpetual motion machine using a float attached to a ratchet mechanism that would propel a flywheel which, in turn, is connected to a generator. When a wave came in, the float would rise, propelling the flywheel in one direction. When the wave passed and the float sank, a transmission gear would reverse and the weight of the float would propel the flywheel in the same direction. Each wave that passed, the motion would keep the flywheel going which in turn would drive the generator. The tide and waves never stop so, voilà, a perpetual motion machine. A lot of good that’s going to do a dead guy.
I laid there for an agonizingly long time. Days. Nobody familiar came into that room. I kept waiting for Priscilla. What I did see were angels floating by the door. None of them ever looked in the wide-open door or at me like a normal, curious person would. Obviously they were angels.
I don’t remember ever passing an open door on a patient’s room without looking in to see what retched old sick person was trapped in there.
It didn’t occur to me that the angels floating by were just tired, overworked nurses, too exhausted for casual conversation with someone in a cold, skinny hospital bed.
I thought there was an angel sitting with his back to me hunched over a computer. I stared at him for hours and never once saw him lift his head from the screen. Not even when that good-looking nurse with the big rack walked past him. Must have been a heavy day for dead people. I assumed he was working on the admittance log and that I was obviously on the list and I was just waiting to be notified of my future.
I kept passing out. I guessed that when you are dead, you can still pass out and have dreams and have pain.
One time, I saw my Mom (I assumed she was an angel too. She died twenty years ago.) stick her head around the door and say, “Ye Gods, Jake, what are you doing here. Where’s your sister?” She is the only one that had talked to me. My sister is older and I suppose my mom thought my sister would be the one to die first. That pretty-much confirmed that I had drowned and never made it out of the river alive. My brain didn’t seem to be working too good.
I kept wondering where Priscilla was and why she hadn’t been here visiting my body in the hospital or where ever I was. It occurred to me that maybe dead people can only see other dead people and that is why I didn’t see Priscilla looking at me. Then, I thought Bella had died too and I would see her toddling past my door and I’d start to cry. Apparently dead people cry because I was doing my share of it. It didn’t feel like I was dead when I cried. It hit me then, maybe I didn’t see Bella because she wasn’t dead. But, I didn’t know for sure, it seems like it was bloody unlikely she made it out of that river, especially since I hadn’t and I had a pretty firm grip on her.
I thought nobody cared. Maybe they were too mad at me to visit my body because I didn’t keep Bella safe. I kept passing out. I was glad to pass out when I cried, crying hurt more than dying.
Several times, buzzers would go off and then another beeper would sound and I would see an angel float silently in and flip a switch or two and the alarms would cease. Sometimes an angel wo
uld come in and lift the cover up and look at the catheter. Weird. The angels never talked or looked me in the eye. I have to admit I have no clue what color the eyes are of that angel with the big rack, I never looked in her eyes either.
When I looked out of the window, I could see several feet of snow on the roof of the building in the other part of eternity. I guess I wasn’t in Hell unless it had frozen over, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Wherever I was, it was sure painful, my heart hurt, my head hurt, and feelings sure hurt. And that catheter felt as though it had been dipped in Bella’s sandbox before the doctor or mortician inserted it or maybe it was that nurse getting even for not looking her in the eye.
I looked at my chest and saw where someone used industrial size wire to stitch what looked like a nasty wound created by a mad Viking who took a swing with a battle axe at my chest. The stitching looked as though it was done by his brother using baling wire. Below that, the soaker hose protruded from my abdomen. Next to the hose were two wires sticking out of two cuts nearly an inch long each. It occurred to me the hose was draining out the stuff inside of me before they buried me. I couldn’t figure out the wires, maybe it was the a/c current to work the pump draining the inside of me. I couldn’t come up with a reason for the catheter. Maybe I was in Hell and the buff guy with piercing black eyes in the smoldering red suit inserted it for shits and grins. LOL.
Crazy things go through your mind when you are dead. Illogical stuff shows up right alongside the normal crap. Go figure.
On the second or third night after I drowned (There’s a prime example right there.) Anyway, I was visited by my sister, Karen. She didn’t even pretend to be an angel. She tromped into my holding-room in purgatory, looks left, then right and, when she spots me on the only bed in the room, she saunters real slow up the foot of my bed. Without a word of greeting, she immediately starts giving me a bunch of guff. All of a sudden, I’m not in a bed and she’s not at the foot of it and she is no longer talking to me.
The Trouble Way Page 34