The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery

by Paul Flower

  In the blackened corners of his memory, the event that marked his life, that defined who he was, flickered like a mostly forgotten black and white home movie. Up until a few months ago, he’d only considered it rarely and half-consciously, seeing it as bluish-white slivers of light streaming between the fingers clamped over his eyes. It scared him as a nightmare might, but then was gone.

  Late one night about three months ago, sitting in his recliner sipping a drink and listening to John Lennon, Jesse had been contemplating his life at its middle point. For that night, and several thereafter, he had rooted among the long-guarded memories. As fate would have it, his mom—his real mom—had called. It wasn’t unusual that she’d contact him; he’d grown used to the unplanned nocturnal conversations. But this time, they’d veered into the forbidden terrain. She or he had brought up the thing; had spoken the unspeakable for the first time in decades.

  Mom, tired and aging, had grown worried. Worried they’d be discovered. Worried that all the years of careful covering-up would be wasted.

  Her worry had infected him. Over the days that followed, the confident air of a top-notch doc was replaced by something far less certain. He became indecisive. He began to let tough cases eat at his psyche. An oncologist in South Bend had referred to him a teenager with a stage four Glioblastoma multiforme—a viciously fast-growing cancer. Andrea Sparks had been 19 and beautiful. Despite the fact that there was no hope for her, she had looked to Jesse with shining, gracious optimism. His typical reaction would’ve been to dismiss the case with a clinical analysis confirming the oncologist’s worst fears; the way he saw it, the small-town doc just needed someone else to be the bad guy. Instead, Jesse had worked like a demon to help her. For three weeks, he’d pored over text after text, working into the night, e-mailing and calling clinics around the globe. When Andrea had died, he’d gone to his office and wept.

  Jesse had hated the feeling of helplessness, the weakness in it.

  ****

  He fought the urge to go to the bathroom and wash his hands. Gritting his teeth, he shifted in his seat and ran a skinny, long-fingered hand though his hair. He thought again about a haircut. He rubbed the back of one hand with the fingertips of another, trying not to use his nails. Nails sometimes made his skin bleed. He glanced around the truck stop at the flannel-shirt-and-blue-jeans crowd and wondered if his Mercedes was safe in the parking lot. He hoped nobody recognized him or, worse yet, mistook him for his twin.

  He just couldn’t believe he was here, back home after all these years. He, the great brain surgeon from Chicago, had just finished rendezvousing in the night with a couple of slow-moving, backwoods Michigan morons, hoping they’d handle something he should have handled thirty years ago.

  They were gone now. The meeting had been mercifully short.

  A fly hopped down from the stainless steel napkin holder and bumbled across the paper placemat, pausing to fidget with its legs in the ring of water left by a glass. Jesse swiped at the fly, clenched his fist and smiled as he felt it tickling his palm. He scratched his reddened knuckles and tightened his fist, squeezing against the tickle until it stopped, then opened his hand and stared at the fly stuck to his skin.

  “Stupid, simple-minded insect,” he hissed. The waitress slid the coffee he’d ordered onto the table in front of him. Jesse looked up and nodded, held his palm out so she could get a good look at the mess, and gave her a silly little smirk. She shot him a nervous grin and moved on to the next table.

  Maybe he’d gone to elementary school with the waitress. Maybe she was one of the buck-toothed morons that had turned his stomach back in second grade. He snorted a laugh, picked the fly off by one bent wing, flicked it on the floor, and rubbed at the gunk on his palm with a napkin. The bathroom and the soap dispenser beckoned again. He swallowed hard and threw the napkin at the little juke box on the table, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath. “Man, that’s a lot of blood,” he heard his voice say, and he could see it. The blood was spreading out in a crooked circle around his dead dad in the yard, and Mom was slowly stepping around it, her mouth open. The blood was so dark and red and there was so darn much of it. The boy Jesse dropped the gun and stepped back a step, then another. As he fought the urge to run, his tears came harder. He didn’t understand this crying. He knew Mom wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t hold it back. The tears, the sobs, just came and came and came, pulsing, throbbing out of him.

  Get a grip, Jesse told himself. Stop it. Stop it. He clenched his eyes, forced down a swallow and bit his lip hard. You have no time for this, he thought. It’s just blood. And he’s dead. It’s over. It’s over.

  When he opened his eyes, the waitress was looking at him from the cash register, open-mouthed. Behind her, a busboy was also paralyzed and staring. What had he done? Jesse wiped the tears from his face and nervously glanced around the place. No one else seemed to have heard or seen anything. He shot the waitress and the pimply faced busboy a scowl and shifted in his seat to look out the window.

  You’re a good man, Jesse told himself. You’ve made a decent life for yourself. You’ve helped people. You’ve saved lives. That counts for something. It has to count for something.

  He missed his wife. By now, she and Robbie would be cleaning up after dinner, preparing for the evening ritual of homework and a shower and TV. He would call them later, but he would keep the conversation light.

  In the murky glass darkened by the nighttime backdrop and steam from the food and coffee, his reflected face was puffy, the hair mussed and tangled. Jesse turned away to sip the coffee.

  The flashbacks from his childhood were coming daily. The grainy mental newsreel was playing over and over in his head like a song. He couldn’t get enough of it and he couldn’t get away from it. He saw it at night in his dreams, over breakfast with his family, some days even at work during surgery. It rattled him, making him weak, empty and unclean. He’d look into a mirror, a shiny surface, a cup of coffee, and Mom would be there, talking about it. She would be staring into his eyes, reaching in as far as she could go, getting into his brain like she was a surgeon, peeling back his skull so she could see his bad thoughts. She was reminding, reminding, reminding him about what he’d always known—about what he’d done. She was screaming for him to remember the worst part. That Elvis had been there. Elvis had seen everything.

  In the truck stop’s window, Mom’s puffy face was angry and frowning. A cigarette dangled from her mouth. “You’re going to let him get away.” Her voice was high and nervous. She took the Kool from her twitching lips and sent a shaft of smoke out the right side of her mouth. He could feel her foot tapping the ground in front of him. “You gonna stand there and cry and let him get away?”

  “But I shot him, Mom,” he heard his boyhood voice say, the boyhood voice coming out jagged and wiggly like a crybaby’s. Jesse coughed and tried to smooth it. “I k... killed him. No... nobody’s getting away. I nailed the sucker to the ground. You saw.” Smack. The back of a bony hand stung his cheek. Mom gestured with the Kool toward the woods.

  “Him. Your brother. He saw the whole damn thing. Didn’t you see him watching from the woods? Didn’t you? And now you’re standing here crying like a baby while he’s getting away—maybe gonna tell someone what he saw.”

  Jesse swallowed, trying to resist the hot rush of the returning tears. Mom brought her hand up again and he cringed. Softly, she touched his burning cheek with her palm. “Sorry, honey,” she said in a whisper, her voice cracking as she talked around the cigarette. “I just forgot myself there in all the excitement.” The hand fell away. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and shot another shaft of smoke sideways. “Hurry now and go get your brother. Hurry baby, go.” She put a little heat back in her words. “Hurry, you stupid…” Her voice was drowned by the humming of the angels, by the sound of the doves’ wings banging around inside his skull. He could kill her. He knew it. He could do it and just walk aw
ay; no one would ever know. He looked down at the gun then at his scaly, pink hands. They were shaking as he reached for the coffee cup. Jesse pressed the palms together firmly and squinted, fighting back the tremor. “What good’s a brain surgeon with shaking hands?” he growled at himself.

  ****

  Jesse Icabone, the boy man-killer, searched for the witness, his brother, all alone. Mom helped a little, screaming Elvis’ name from the backyard, but she was careful not to follow Jesse. Jesse was glad she didn’t, because it wouldn’t have been a good idea to leave Dad dead in the yard.

  Jesse covered the woods and fields behind the house, crossing the hiking and motorbike trails, rolling under overhangs and poking into thickets. He kept thinking he’d run into somebody—a lot of other kids were usually screwing around in the woods, playing hide-and-seek or war or something; sometimes you’d find older kids in their cars, kissing and necking and stuff. That day, that hot hot hot day after he’d killed his father, the smothering humid air had forced everyone to the beach or the air-conditioned movie theater downtown—somewhere. Through noon and after, Jesse, alone, looked frantically for his jerk brother.

  Mid-afternoon he plopped down on a rotting log along a muddy creek bank. His clothes were pasted to him with sweat and his legs were cut and bleeding from the underbrush. He scratched wearily at the mosquito bites on his arms and face and the backs of his calves. It was still hot and muggy but the wind was building and gusty, pushing heavy dark clouds across the sun, turning the day gloomy. In the distance, thunder rolled. The storms that had been brewing earlier were getting their act together and coming this way. Jesse stared at the mud.

  “You killed him. I didn’t see a thing,” the tiny Mom said from inside his brain. “They’ll think you did the whole thing on your own; heck, ‘cuz you did. I was in the house the whole time.”

  She was right again. He was a killer, Elvis had seen him be a killer, and Mom, she couldn’t help him—couldn’t lie for him or anything. That’s what she’d said, and she was right.

  He wanted to go home and clean up the mess then talk to Mom quietly, maybe over an Oreo. He wasn’t really mad at her anymore. Mom was moody and sometimes did things that were mean. All they needed to do was talk things over and everything would be okay. After he dealt with Elvis, they’d do that. Then Mom would act a little nicer.

  Jesse frowned. The more he thought it through, Mom was right about a lot of stuff. She’d called Dad and Elvis “two peas in a pod,” and that was totally true. Dad was so dumb and lazy he’d dropped out of school in tenth grade. Elvis probably wouldn’t even make it that far. Elvis and the old man were wimps, too. If a bunch of kids started making fun of him, Elvis laughed right along with them or just hung his head like a dumb dog and walked away. Dad, well, he was always just going to work and coming home and drinking with his buddies and, when he felt guilty, doing what Mom said. It made Jesse sick sometimes to watch.

  Jesse stopped himself. He’d been thinking of Dad as being alive. His throat felt thick. He closed his eyes and saw the face—it’d been more like a mask, really, than a face. Where was the man’s soul? Was it still there, inside the body in the yard, or had it flown out of him already? Jesse had read about souls and thinking about them now made him sad, sadder than he’d been all day, sadder than maybe ever.

  Jesse heard sobbing. At first, he thought maybe he’d started crying again and was so tired that he didn’t realize it. He got to his feet slowly, listened, and heard it again; someone else was crying. Jesse jumped the creek, pushed into the woods on the other side and stopped. Above the wind, he heard it once more. Jesse followed the sound, holding his breath and stepping carefully like he was an Indian sneaking up on a settler to scalp him, something he and Elvis had done a zillion times back when they were just little stupid kids, before Mom helped him realize how dumb Elvis was.

  He broke through the tree line. Just ahead, above the top of a grassy knoll, rows of pines waved mockingly at him. Mentally, Jesse kicked himself. The pine grove was a hiding place he’d forgotten.

  He trudged up the knoll, and stopped to listen at the edge of the grove. The sobbing floated in the air, the breeze snatching it away then bringing it back, teasing him.

  Jesse scratched a mosquito bite on his left elbow, then one on his neck. He pulled up the hem of his shirt to wipe away the sweat that was stinging his eyes. The breeze felt good on his exposed, sweaty belly.

  The thunder rumbled, louder now, as Jesse ducked into the grove. Planted in perfect, even rows, the trees stretched out in front of him, up over a rise, then angled down and away to the right. The floor of the grove was a thick padding of brown needles. It was a cool and dark place and, because of the needles and the wall of trees, it was quiet. Jesse had always thought it would be a really cool place to read in or maybe even to live in. There was order here; everything was in its place, just the way things should be. The only noise, except for the whistling of the wind through the limbs overhead and the occasional creak of a trunk, was the sobbing; it seemed softer now, too, like you were only allowed to cry quietly in a place like this.

  Ahead of him, at the top of the rise, there was a flicker of color sticking out from behind one of the gray-brown trunks. Jesse took a deep breath and tried to calm his thudding heart.

  Moving carefully, running from tree to tree, pausing to catch his breath between sprints, he made his way toward his brother’s hiding spot. When he was just a few steps away, Jesse stopped, leaned back against a trunk and closed his eyes. He was tired, so stinking tired, and thirsty and hot. He saw his father’s face and a knife sliced his heart. He choked back a sob. No. No, the voice in his head said. You don’t have time for that. He saw his mom’s eyes, smelled the cigarette and heard her say, “No alibi.”

  Jesse tried to focus his busy, tired brain on Elvis. Elvis was easy to hate. Jesse hated him and all the stupid, simple people like him that he had to deal with every day. Geeze, they were everywhere: kids with bad teeth and dirty clothes who thought lighting farts was the most fun thing in the world, waitresses who cracked their gum and talked to him like he was a stupid moron, teachers who always smiled when they gave him a question they thought he couldn’t answer.

  Jesse wished he had a gun. If he did, he could just shoot his brother and every other idiot he came across.

  A gun. The gun. The thought took him back again. His legs were suddenly rubber. BWAAM. The blood. The boots digging. His father’s face. All of it bumped through his head like pool balls.

  Jesse Icabone bit his lip and snarled at the memories. The voice in his head was firm. “No crying. Get on with it. You can do this. You CAN do THIS!”

  Thunder rolled again. The wind followed on its heels, sighing through the grove. Trees swayed and groaned like they were scaredy cats that wanted to tear themselves free and run for cover.

  Jesse looked around at the dancing pines, closed one eye and mentally aimed a gun at one. BWAAM, Jesse thought. BWAAM. BWAAM. BWAAM. He mouthed the word as he moved the gun from tree to tree, victim to victim. When he was done, he stared at the sky, his jaw suddenly set, his lips pressed tightly together. Through the swaying green of the pines, he could see blotches of steely gray clouds.

  “Hey Elvis, what’cha doing here?” he yelled.

  The crying stopped, the thunder rumbled and Jesse felt the cool touch of a raindrop on his face. He stepped around the tree.

  Elvis sat on the ground, his back to a pine, his legs pulled up against his chest. His hands were cupped together against his knees like he was holding something made of glass. The knees and legs below his cut-off jeans were scratched and bleeding. Welts on his arms and legs were scratched open and seeping blood too, and his PF Flyers were so muddy, Jesse figured Mom would throw a fit. But his face was the worst. Streaked with dirt, scratches and mosquito bites, Elvis’ face was red and blotchy from crying and his expression was something deeper than sad; it looked like someone
had come along and kicked his heart right out of him.

  “What’s wrong, bud?” Jesse asked, squatting and looking into the face that looked like his own: blue-gray eyes, oversized nose, the fuzz of brown hair on his head. Jesse tried to ignore the moron’s runny nose and tear-streaked cheeks. “We been looking for you all afternoon. Storm’s coming. You look like you lost your best friend.”

  A clap of thunder rolled under his last sentence, and Elvis shuddered like he’d been slapped. He turned to stare at Jesse and opened his mouth to speak, his hands still cupping something against his knees.

  “What’cha got there, bud?” Jesse asked, reaching for the thing.

  Elvis gagged on a sob and pulled away.

  “Come on bud, we need to get going. You been gone most of the day and Mom will be wondering where we’re at. ‘You boys don’t know enough to come in out of the rain,’ she’ll be saying.” He yammered on like they’d been out for a nice walk together. “She’ll be all over us for sure, Elvis.”

  Jesse reached down and grabbed his brother’s dirty arm and jerked him roughly to his feet then let go. Elvis, hands still together, stumbled a few steps and tripped over a log. He fell to his knees, and the thing he’d been holding flopped to the ground.

  It was a baby robin.

  The bird began to chirp wildly as it tried to hop away. One tiny, weak wing dragged uselessly in the pine needles, slowing it down. Lightning flashed. The sad, broken bird froze. Thunder cracked, and the thing started moving again.

  Control your brother, Jesse thought. You can’t kill him, because you have no alibi. But you can control him. With two quick strides, Jesse was on the bird. He stomped once, twice, then ground the thing into the soft needles of the pine grove. He felt the soft cartilage breaking under the sole of his tennis shoe. Jesse’s stomach rolled and twisted, but he swallowed hard. He set his jaw and turned to his brother.