The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery

by Paul Flower

  “Hello?” Her voice jerked Elvis from past to present. “Hello? Jess Icabone, you talk to me. You don’t dare leave me hanging here like that—ever. You understand?”

  “Jess… Icabone?” he said.

  “Well, that’s your God-given name ain’t it? Or are you going back to that, back to how you’re so hoity-toity Jesse Tieter’s in your blood forever now and oh don’t call me nothing different? I gave you that name to call you Jess, not Jesse and the Icabone’s unfortunate-as-can-toodley-be but it’s there, too, on your birth certificate. I don’t care no never-which-way who raised you. I named you for the King’s dead twin brother—my idea. I told your daddy that. We got us Elvis and we got us his dead twin brother, Jesse, I said to him only I wanted to call you Jess, and I still will, ‘cuz I can.”

  It was her. Alive? Gripping tightly to the cordless phone, Elvis walked to the couch and sat. “I ... a ... there was... a pot boiling over on the stove. I had to run and get it.”

  “Well, you could have said something. You could have said the pot was boiling.” Her voice made Elvis choke. “You didn’t have to just leave me here, hanging in the wind. You ever think to bring that wife and that kid of yours when you come to that big spanking new house? She’d take care of your boiling pot. She sure would, if she was half the wife she should be, she would.”

  Elvis was still trying to wake up, to understand, trying to catch up to her.

  “You still there or you got another pot?”

  “Yeah. I’m um... here.”

  “Speak up boy. Speak.”

  “I said, I’m here. I’m here. I think.”

  “You getting addle-brained now? Only knew one addle-brained boy in my whole dang life, and it wasn’t you.” The words rammed him. He squeezed the phone and held his other hand to his chest. “You know the addle-brained boy, now don’t you? We talked about him just last night, didn’t we? Leastwise, I think we did. My brain’s half gone these days and I got thoughts running like runny eggs all together now. Where was I off to? Oh, yes, your brother. Addle-brained boys is trouble. They stumble around and bumble around until one day, boop!, they got something in their brain from a long time ago, something all bad that they shouldn’t never even remember, and then alls the sudden they’s causing me grief. Know anyone like that, do you?”

  She hated him. She always had. It was all there in her voice. Every word was a dart, he was the bull’s-eye, and she was hitting home. She was like a drunk at a party who’s nailing the middle of the board and everybody’s laughing because they can’t believe it. Bull’s-eye. Geeze, how’d she do that? Elvis felt his confidence ebbing again, the past creeping across his misty mental field.

  “My money’s almost up here. You got me talking on a dang pay phone. You know that? ‘Course I got no fancy phone like you got. Got your poor mother down here on the bus—couldn’t get in any of those fancy cars of yours and drive up and get her—got me drove down on the dang bus. Now you forgot me at the bus station. Couldn’t even call me a cab or nothing. Nice young man here offered. Said he’d call me a cab, but no, not my boy, not my uptown brain doctor boy.”

  “You’re here… in… in town?”

  “‘Course I am. You asked me last night to come on down. You made the dang arrangements. You sure you ain’t that other boy of mine?”

  Think. Think. How? How? Oh Lord, help. Help me. “Ummm. Um, you say there’s a guy there that can call a cab?” Elvis felt like his heart had slid up into his mouth. “Um, why don’t you have him, um, do that and, um, send you here?”

  “You can’t come and get me? You too lazy for that? What’s a matter, too many pots?” She cackled.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s it, M…” he couldn’t say the word “mom”; it wouldn’t come out. “Yeah, too many pots.”

  “So I’m s’pose to get my own dang cab and get myself hauled out there?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind. I mean, if that’s okay. I mean, I’ll pay the dude, the fare I mean, when you get here.”

  “What am I s’pose to say to him? Take me to the brain doctor’s house? That what you want?”

  “No, um, just have him bring you out here.”

  “I don’t know where dang ‘here’ is. Where is ‘here?’”

  Elvis closed his eyes and pictured the directions on the paper. He recited them to her.

  “I’m supposed to remember that? You expect me to…”

  “Listen, um, let me, let me come and get you.”

  “‘Bout time. ‘Bout time you did something for me instead of expecting me to take care of everything all the time.”

  “Just hold on,” Elvis clenched his eyes again. Stay. With. It. He let out a sigh. “I’ll be there. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Darn straight you will. For darn sure straight. If it’s the only thing you ever took care of. Never could take care of this or that. Always having to have me clean up the mess. Listen to me babble on like an old woman. You getting over here soon? I’m about to catch my death here in this drafty place.”

  “I’ll be there.” Elvis’ voice sound like a boy’s.

  “What?”

  “I said I’ll be there, M…Mom.”

  ****

  Elvis ended the call and then wandered upstairs to Jesse’s bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed. The circuit breaker in his brain was humming. Too much was happening here. Way too much.

  He thought maybe he should leave. Get out. Get some time. Think things through.

  The local cops said don’t leave.

  Monahan, that guy, he’d said go back to the beginning.

  Mom was here to see him. She was dead.

  Then there was this other deal. With him. Who? Jess. Jesse.

  Jesse.

  His brother? Had invited his dead mom? To his brother’s house?

  It was too much.

  Something moved behind him, in the doorway. Elvis turned. No. Not this. Not this too. Couldn’t be. It was. No. Yes. It was. Hey buddy, we got to talk, man.

  Donnel, big as life, tears on his face.

  Elvis could see Donnel’s mouth making words, but the words were hard to hear; the electrical hum rose in Elvis’ head. This was too much, too, too much. Donnel, cheeks shining, a fat porky hand reaching out to him. Elvis sucked his chin to his chest as the hum became a voice.

  “Get out of the way,” the voice inside his skull screamed. “GET OUT OF THE WAY. DON’T LET HIM TOUCH YOU!”

  The voice was Donnel’s. Elvis shook his head, trying to clear his brain, trying to take in the fact that Donnel was here now and alive. But shaking his head only made things worse. Again, he was falling, falling, getting sucked back to the black hole of when he was a kid. No. Please. Please. Don’t.

  “GET OUT OF THE WAY. DON’T LET HIM TOUCH YOU!” The memory roared in, overtaking the hum and the adult Donnel that stood in front of him.

  They were boys, two buddies, standing in the woods; Donnel daring him to poke his head into the burrow—to see what kind of wild animal had dug it. Elvis laughed and stuck his face down in the cool darkness of that hole, then fell back in alarm. A fox came up fast, cutting a swath into the heat and the blinding gold-white of the day.

  Elvis screamed then scrambled backwards like a crab, hands palms-down in the dust. He fell, righted himself momentarily, then fell again.

  The animal danced, yipped, snarled around him, over him, its slobber flicking on his face, its breath hot and smelly. Elvis was crying and rolling, crying and rolling as the animal danced and lunged.

  “GET OUT OF THE WAY. DON’T LET HIM TOUCH YOU!” Donnel screamed.

  The fox lunged at Elvis’ sweating kid-hand in the dust. Elvis tried to pull it back, doing his best to avoid the teeth. But his best wasn’t enough. “Ahhhhhaggggghhhhhh!” The fox clamped on the hand—his right one—grrrring as it did. Like a dog clamped on an old sock, it jerke
d its head, sending red-hot forks of pain up into his arm, his shoulder—his heart.

  “Ahhhhhaggggghhhhhh!” Elvis remembered it all. The pain, the heat, were from the place where the devil lived, from hell. The animal’s eyes were fire.

  Donnel. Help. Please. Help.

  The fox wouldn’t let go.

  Donnel, tears running down his fat expressive cheeks, reached out with that big porky hand. Elvis could see the rock in it. It was a huge rock for a kid, but not for a Donnel-sized kid. Donnel swung it up through the white-gold sunlight and screamed, “NOOOOOOOO”––Elvis thought, just for a flash, that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. He thought maybe the fox didn’t understand “no”––but Donnel cracked the rock up under the jaw of the fox. And the fox let go.

  Then it clamped again, harder, and Elvis screamed again. The scream sent Donnel back on his butt. Elvis could see him through the haze of the dust, bawling on his butt. The fox was shaking Elvis’ hand and snarling. Grrrrr. Grrrrrrr. The pain—oh man, the pain—it was suffocating. The scene was a horror movie in his head. The fox’s eyes were blazing and Elvis’ blood was flecking on its red hair, dying it redder. A blue-hot ache gripped the bones of his hand.

  BWAAM.

  Elvis remembered the explosion as more of a smell than a sound. It was gun, dust and wild animal. And it was none of those things. Elvis couldn’t tell exactly what happened. Someone just sneaked up and, BWAAM, turned everything into that smell. But when the BWAAM was gone, well, the fox was twitching in the dust. Most of its hind-end was gone, and it looked like half the fox it had been before. It made Elvis sick just looking at it. His hand made him sicker: it was all mangled and bloody at the end of his arm. The blood was everywhere.

  The BWAAM had stolen his hearing. Elvis, crying and bleeding, turned to Donnel. Chubby, dirty, baby-faced and husky-sized Donnel was still on his butt, and he was crying. But Elvis couldn’t hear him. And despite everything, despite the dying animal, the mangled hand and the heat and dust and tears, that’s what bothered him right then: the silence. So deep and empty that the nothing became something—a ringing hum in his ears.

  Later, he’d spent the hot evening on the couch in the living room, his hand wrapped and throbbing and his mom kept throwing him ugly glances, mad at him for the cost of the doctor bill and for the tantrum he’d thrown over the possibility of rabies shots in his stomach, if the fox turned out to have had rabies. Elvis, he kept worrying over that ringing and how it kept him from hearing, from understanding what was going on around him.

  “I said we got to talk, bud,” Donnel was saying.

  “Huh?”

  “We got to talk.” The voice, Donnel’s, thank God, finally was breaking through the hum.

  “What?”

  “Talk. You and me.” Donnel’s voice was clear now.

  “I ain’t your bud. You’re dead,” Elvis said without tasting the words. “You’re dead,” he said again, getting a little taste this time.

  Donnel eased himself down on the mattress and moved in close, like he had something private to say. “Man, I know this has been a real tough couple of days for you.”

  Elvis let out a slow breath through his teeth.

  “Lookie hear, first off, I’m alive. See?” Donnel pushed back the cuff of the sleeve of his flannel shirt and rolled the arm over to expose the coffee-with-cream-colored underbelly of his wrist. He pinched himself and winced. “See? Now and ’nother thing, see, I talked to this cop dude, see, he’s been like, working on this thing.”

  “Thing.”

  “This thing with, like, you and… your mom and your… your brother.”

  Elvis swiveled his head slowly to Donnel. His heart started pounding funny, like it was missing every other beat.

  “I’ve knowed about your brother for a good while, see.” Donnel said. “He’s your twin brother, you know. Not like identical. Fraternal, they call it. See, you don’t look exactly alike. Close, though.”

  Elvis couldn’t breathe.

  “And… and she knows. She knows him, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Him, your brother. She knows your brother.”

  “Lavern knows?”

  “Yeah, bud.”

  “She knows… she’s alive?” In a corner of his brain, Elvis thought he heard the fox panting.

  “Yeah. She is, bud,” Donnel said softly, like oh—oops—he’d forgotten to mention that. Donnel’s face contorted. “She’s alive, buddy. We both are. And we’ve knowed, knew, about this brother of yours for a little while now. I don’t know if you remember him or what. But you got this brother, see, this patern… fraternal twin.”

  “I know.” Elvis said it without meaning to.

  “Seriously? You? You remember?”

  “Sort of,” Elvis sighed. “Yeah. I guess. It’s. It’s weird.”

  “We tricked you with that accident, bud; she was hoping you’d remember. They got this special neurogonist... this brain study program thing that pays big-time docs to come to small towns like this and study and teach and, you know, do their stuff on patients. He built this house here. He was going to have her move in eventually; way I see it, he was. I… I hate to say it but, well, seems like they maybe had somethin’ cookin’ between ‘em. Least that’s what I told the cop.”

  “You called a cop?”

  “Yeah, like I said, I been working with him. Called him right after your brother showed up. Only Lavern don’t know it. I guess I sort of don’t, like, trust her right now; like I said, he built the house for her I think.”

  “Who?”

  “Your brother.”

  “For who?”

  “Lavern, bud. Lavern.”

  “You don’t trust her?”

  “Not right now.”

  Elvis squinted against a sharp pain in his head. He peered up at the picture on the wall. He heard the fox snarling, felt the breath from it on his hand.

  “Elvis, I don’t know that I’m right,” Donnel said. “I don’t know diddly squat about what’s going on for sure. Alls I know is I couldn’t take not coming here and talking to you about it. I was s’pose to wait and see how things went. This police dude I hooked up with, see, I talked to him again last night on my cell, right after Lavern got me doing that fake accident. We got banged up a little more than I ‘spected, but we was okay. Afterwards, see, Lavern was telling the deal to the guys that drive the ambulance and I got a second to call the cop and he told me to just, you know, sit tight like I have been ever since I first called the cops a few months ago. But I can’t sit tight, not no more. That’s why I borrowed a car off Shaqua.”

  “Shaqua.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shaqua your sister? Or Shaqua your aunt?”

  “Sister. Called her and asked her to, you know, pick me up. Anyways, she and Darnella Cole, her friend that works with her? They come and brought me a car, at the hospital. That’s how come I could kind of follow you.”

  “You tricked me.”

  “Lavern’s idea, dude. She worked it all out, see, with the ambulance guys—one was Jaz Tomkin. And with this chick that works with your brother at the hospital; she helped Lavern on this. But once we got to the hospital I, like, just checked right out on their plan. Once you got there and, you know, just left? I got in Shaqua’s car and I followed you. Man, like I say, I’m sorry. See, Lavern, she says we had to wait for you to figure this all out. She’s saying she did it for your own good, man, but I’m not sure no more. This cop I was telling you about, I think he’s on the same kind of track, wanting to…”

  “Harvey Monahan.”

  “Huh?”

  “The cop.”

  “Yeah, that’s the dude. He’s the one. He’s, I think anyways, that he’s like Lavern, wanting you to kind of figure this thing out and maybe lead the rest of us to whatever happened—to the truth of, like, whate
ver happened with your…” Donnel caught himself. “He caught up with you, didn’t he? Monahan? He talked to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good. That’s real good. What was it he said to you? I’d just like to know. I mean, we don’t have to hold back nothing, far as I’m concerned. It’s all up to you. I can definitely tell you what’s up. I can fill you in. If you want. I don’t have to. But I can. That’s why I’m here.”

  Elvis flopped back on the bed. He shut his eyes and saw the membrane again: the wall between crazy and not crazy. He wanted to go to the other side, where it was safe. He opened his eyes. The fox growled nearby, maybe from under the bed. The ceiling was turning slowly, like a huge ceiling fan.

  “Hear about Jubal Brown?” Elvis muttered. “Shinola kicked right out of him.” He smiled. The ceiling still didn’t respond, but the fox growled softly. Elvis thought he could hear it scratching at the floor.

  “Never mind that right now,” Donnel said. “Look bud, I got a lot of things planned here to help you. You know, we got to straighten all this out, but first you got to pull yourself together. You’re not going to do me or nobody no good acting spaced out like this.”

  Elvis lay there, a day’s worth of anger and worry and frustration melting, mixing with a lifetime of, of what? Of, of, of swallowing his thoughts and hurts and questions. Of thinking but never saying. Of wondering but knowing not to ask. All of this, all of it, long-simmering inside him, began to boil—the whole mess rising, steam releasing, becoming red mist in his head. When he spoke, Elvis’ voice seemed to come from some place dark and far away. “Tell me this, my black-ass friend,” he said. “Tell me. How long do you think I’m gonna lie around and take this from you?”