by Bill Ransom
“In dreams.”
Dr. Mark paused for a few moments and wrote, “Rafferty—imaginary playmate,” on a yellow pad on his lap.
“Tell me, Eddie, is this Rafferty a real person, or do you just see him in dreams?”
“He’s real.”
“Where else do you see him, besides dreams? Down at the river?”
Eddie nodded. “I saw him at the hospital. And when the street broke up.”
“You mean the earthquake? You saw him then?”
“Under the street.”
“Under the street? You mean, where it broke up?”
“Yeah. I looked down and he was down there.”
“What was he doing?”
“He waved.”
“And you saw him at the hospital, too?”
Eddie nodded.
“What were you doing at the hospital?”
Eddie pulled the Kleenex box closer, then pushed it out to his knees and balanced it there.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
Eddie shook his head.
“Ok, you don’t have to tell me. Let’s see, do you have a pet? Is there a pet in your life that you can tell me about?”
“My rabbits. I have twelve . . . eleven rabbits.”
“Is there a favorite one?”
“Yes,” Eddie sighed, “but he got away.”
“Did he have a name?”
“Rafferty.”
“Rafferty,” Dr. Mark said. “That’s an unusual name. Did you name him after your friend?”
Eddie nodded.
“How did the rabbit Rafferty get away?”
“I dropped him and he ran into the flower bushes behind the hospital.”
“Were you visiting someone at the hospital?”
Eddie teetered the Kleenex box off his knees and scrambled to the floor to pick it up. He sat back on the couch and didn’t say anything.
“You live with your grandparents, is that right?”
Eddie nodded.
“Where is your father?”
“He died in the war.”
“If he died in the war, then you probably never got to see him, is that right?”
“I saw pictures. My mother. . . .” He stopped, then bounced the box on his knees some more.
“Your mother has some pictures?”
“She has one picture. He’s beside a bomber with his friends.”
“And what about your mother? Where is she?”
Eddie peeled little bits of cardboard from the opening where the tissues come out of the box. He didn’t know where to put them so he kept them in his hand. This time, Dr. Mark didn’t ask him another question, he just waited. Eddie scanned the office and took in the desk and chair, the wall of books, the magazines. He really wanted to look out the window but the window was behind the couch. People’s shadows stood outside Dr. Mark’s door; he could see them through the funny glass. They looked like Rafferty the times that Eddie glimpsed him by the hospital.
“In the hospital.”
“Is your mom sick? Is that why she’s been in the hospital?”
“She got hurt. They wouldn’t let me see her.”
“But you found a way to see her, is that right?”
He stopped peeling the cardboard and piled the pieces on the couch between them.
“Eddie, if I got some colors in here and some paper, would you like to draw some pictures?”
Eddie didn’t answer. He knew he wasn’t in Dr. Mark’s office to draw pictures, that they wanted something from him. He didn’t want to get in trouble and he didn’t want his mother to get in trouble, so he gripped his box of Kleenex and kept quiet.
Dr. Mark took the Kleenex box and handed him a pad of white paper and a box of crayons.
“Can I have that back?” Eddie asked.
“Sure,” Dr. Mark said, and he set the box of tissues next to Eddie on the couch. Then he crossed the room to his desk and shuffled through some papers.
“Draw a picture of your family,” he told Eddie. “Put everybody in it so that I can see who they are. Then, what I’d really like to see is a picture of your mom. Draw me a picture of her the way you saw her the last time, when you visited the hospital. When you’re done with those, let me know. We’ll take a pop break.”
Eddie drew a picture of himself helping his mom run the mangle at work. She wore her favorite red blouse with the blue scarf around the neck, and behind them his grandparents watched from the window. His cousin played on the sidewalk outside the laundry, drawing on the pavement, and his uncle sat in his pickup at the stoplight, smoking. Eddie used mostly red crayon for that picture because the bricks were red, the light was red and so was his mom’s blouse.
He didn’t like the white crayon, so when it came time to draw his mother in the hospital he just outlined everything in black. He colored in the black rabbit, and his mom’s little bit of hair way back on her head. He drew the window open, and the water pitcher on the stand, and the other bed behind the curtain. The rabbit was in his mom’s lap. He made a round O for her mouth.
Even though her eyepatch was white he colored it in black with its string around her head so that it would show up better. He didn’t know how to draw her hands with the bandages so he just scribbled some black at the ends of her arms and hid one of them behind the rabbit.
He tried to draw the bottle of pills but it came out just a kind of a lump on the bed beside the rabbit. He drew the scars on her face with the pink crayon, but he didn’t like that one either. It didn’t show up the same and he wished he’d drawn them in black like her hands.
When he was finished, Dr. Mark took the drawings with them and they went to the cafeteria for a soda, where Eddie explained the pictures to him. Eddie found it easy to talk about the pictures, and he told him everything that happened from the earthquake until he lost his rabbit.
“Eddie, your grandparents want you to feel better, but they feel bad, too. When someone dies, everyone who was close to them feels bad. I didn’t know your mother, but I’d like to hear more about her. How do you feel about that?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
“What happened yesterday at the hospital downtown?”
“I told you. It was my birthday. I visited my mom.”
“You must have loved your mother very much.”
“They wouldn’t let me see her. . . .”
Eddie started to cry again even though his throat hurt.
“You know, it’s normal for people to cry when their parents die. Adults do it, too. You can go ahead and cry here.”
Dr. Mark sat quietly across the table from him, his hands folded, and Eddie didn’t feel like crying anymore. He only felt like crying when he tried to talk and he wished he could explain that.
“Your grandparents are worried about you because they tell me you can’t stop crying at home. They say you don’t eat or walk or anything, you just cry. That’s why they brought you to see me. They’re worried about you; they didn’t bring you here to punish you. Do you understand that?”
He nodded.
“They wouldn’t let you see her, but you found a way to see her anyway, is that right?”
Eddie nodded again.
“How did you do it?”
“The ladder outside.”
Eddie’s voice sounded strange to his own ears, and made him cry even more. He remembered how strange his mother’s voice sounded when she tried to talk.
“You mean, the fire escape?”
Eddie nodded.
“What happened when you got to her room?”
“She was all bandaged. She couldn’t talk very well. I showed her my rabbit.”
“You brought the rabbit from home just to show her?”
Eddie nodded.
“Did she like that?”
“Yes, she liked it. My mom likes animals. Especially ones she can hold.”
“Did you bring anything else from home for your mother?”
He told Dr. Mark about sneaking her back med
icine out of the cabinet at home and taking it to her at the hospital. Dr. Mark told him that his mother must be proud to have a boy who could help her like that when she couldn’t help herself. Dr. Mark had to clear his voice a few times, and he adjusted his tie a lot, and he took a deep breath before he went on.
“So,” Dr. Mark concluded, “the last time you saw your mom, she had taken her back medicine and she was feeling better?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Her back used to hurt her a lot. Sometimes she had to stay home from work. But always when she took her medicine, she was all better. When she had her medicine. Sometimes she didn’t have it.”
“Did Dr. Jacobs tell you what happened to your mom after you left her?”
Eddie shuffled his feet and nearly spilled his glass of ice making it roll on the edge of its bottom. The doctor didn’t seem to care.
“He said she went away.”
“Do you know where ‘away” is?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “That’s where Rafferty is. It’s a very big place, bigger than the whole valley. And that’s where my mom went.”
“When you dream, and you see Rafferty, do you see your mom, too?”
Eddie shook his head. “No,” he said. “It feels different when Rafferty’s there. She’s in a different place, I guess.”
“Well, Eddie, I’m going to talk with your grandparents for a few minutes. We’ll go back to the office and set up another appointment for a couple of days from now. I’d like to talk with you again, ok?”
Eddie nodded.
Dr. Mark took their tray and slid it into a big rack full of trays, and they walked the long hallway back to the elevator, and then rode the elevator up from “B” to “1” where they got off for the office. It was a slow elevator that clanked, not one of the fast kind that tickled his stomach. Eddie’s grandparents waited on a bench in the hallway, and stood up to talk to the doctor.
“Ok, Eddie, you can wait inside and I’ll be in to talk with you in a minute. I’ll just be a minute with your grandparents, here, then you can go home. You can keep that box of Kleenex, if you want.”
“Thanks.”
Eddie sat on the couch with the Kleenex, and closed his eyes. He could hear Dr. Mark talking with his grandparents through the glass behind him.
“He’s doing better,” Dr. Mark said, “but he hasn’t realized that his mother is dead, nor what his part was in it. I would like to see him again after the funeral, but between now and then there are some things that need to be done. Can I count on you to help Eddie out?”
“That’s why we’re here,” his grandfather said. “This is no picnic for us, you know. But we want to do the best thing for the boy.”
“Good, that’s good. I would like for you to tell him again that his mother is dead, and that she’s gone away. You said that Dr. Jacobs also told him this, and I’d like you to take him back to Dr. Jacobs so that he can repeat it. Then Eddie has to see his mother before she’s buried. . . .”
“No!” his grandmother interrupted, “no, we can’t do that to the boy. She’s so terribly . . . burned and. . . .”
“And he’s already seen her,” Dr. Mark said. “He remembers her as being alive, as taking the medicine that always helped her before. To realize that she is dead, as best a boy his age can realize it, he has to see her. He should participate in whatever your family custom is. If you don’t have one, adopt one. And he should see her laid to rest. . . .”
“She’s being cremated,” his grandfather said. “This isn’t an open-casket situation, I hope you know. . . .”
“I realize that, sir. But for Eddie’s sake, he has to see her as a dead person. I’m sure that the funeral home would help you with this, and he should be in the company of someone who will let him touch her, talk to her, see that she’s not breathing and not like a living person. Is someone close to him who would do that?”
An uncomfortable silence grew behind the door.
“If neither of you feels comfortable, perhaps Dr. Jacobs . . . ?”
“I . . . I’ll take the boy,” his grandmother said. “I’ll take him.”
“Good. Then call me the day after the funeral to set up an appointment. I’ll want to see him as soon as possible after that. He’s had some hard times in his young life, but he’s an exceptional boy and I’m sure he can come out of this all right.”
The office door squeaked when it opened, something Eddie hadn’t noticed before.
“Eddie, your grandparents are taking you home, now. I’ll see you again in a couple of days, ok?”
Eddie nodded. When he opened his eyes he saw that tears had dropped into the Kleenex box and dotted the tissues. Eddie’s tight throat strangled with his cryless sobs. He stared into the box of blue Kleenex and the hole reminded him of the hole in the world that the earthquake made. He remembered Rafferty, haloed in blue on the other side. The hole opened up like a butterfly. Eddie wanted to run away with Rafferty. Then he could find the part of “away” that his mother went to.
Eddie felt his fingers and toes tingle, and he concentrated on the Kleenex box when he tried to catch his breath. His ears rang too loud to hear, and he felt Dr. Mark’s hand on his shoulder just as a fast-fluttering hole opened up in the box of Kleenex and he fell right in.
Every god that is dead can be conjured to life again.
—Joseph Campbell, The Way of the Animal Powers
The Jaguar felt the hot blades of waking work at his flesh and suppressed a groan.
It’s worse every time, he thought.
With that came a whiff of fear, a sour scent associated with his minions. His last awakening had nearly killed him. The subsequent debriefing had kept him on the cusp of death for weeks, a testimony to the skills of Max and the agency that paid him.
This waking would bring the agency down on him again with their never-ending studies and the ubiquitous Max to probe his mind. Agency methods were physical and chemical and particularly persuasive. Max enjoyed experimenting with a few tricks of his own. The Jaguar had beaten them before, but the Lee intrusion from the other side had cost him dearly.
The particle annihilation that crisped Zachary Lee had backflashed. The momentary rent in the curtain of the universe unleashed the Jaguar’s genetic experiment prematurely and burned a little of his own brain, to boot. Certain access lines were cauterized, data frozen beyond reach. Genetics had never been his strong suit.
Goddam bugs, he thought. It took me ten years to find one that dreamed.
If he could alter a bug to specification, he could alter a human.
And then move in.
If they brought him as close to death this time as they did last time, the Jaguar was going to have to risk the move to another body, suitable or not. Like any good businessman, any good politician, he would simply have to minimize his losses. The waking-blades were at him again, hot-knifing his nerve endings. A band began its slow crank around his skull.
Relax, he commanded himself, just relax.
Someone from the other side had worked his locks once; he would have to be more cautious. He’d felt the scratchings, the tinkerings at his secret door. He knew from experiments on his cattle that that door could be the entry to his most secret self—deeper, to the lace garment of his being, his replicable core, his DNA. Lee had been the first to try it; the Jaguar was not foolish enough to believe that he would be the last.
The Jaguar had learned to round up his otherworld cattle by proxy. His loyal priests served as foremen and wielded his personal brand.
Branding was sheer terror—it created a psyche as indelibly scarred as the hide. The pain and terror of branding imprinted his cattle with the infinity image, the blue gate that he passed through to mount the dreamways. Imprinting an image in the mind strengthened a dendrite, installed a password in the psyche. Such an image gave a dream-burglar free passage to the brain and all of its regulatory mechanisms: neurons, chemistry, the brain structure itself were at his command.
Zachary Lee was the o
nly one to discover that the image was more than an image, and Zachary Lee was no longer a problem.
On this side, they had his body all wrapped and packaged. They watched over it day and night. Indeed, he had delivered himself into their hands, into this perfect place, for safekeeping, though none of them suspected as much. Waking to their studies and interrogations had never been a pleasure. He arranged to wake as seldom as possible. Lately they put the pressure on; they were getting serious. At any time waking could be fatal.
Once again pain, an excruciating, skull-crushing pain welcomed him back to the world. The Jaguar was unwilling to tinker with his own brain, choosing instead to suffer during his search for another. Now he began his cycle of slow, deep breaths to cut the pain, and he hoped that he would not vomit.
Sometimes he fooled them if he kept from throwing up. He would pass through pain and play comatose until he regained hold on his precious sleep. The EEG betrayed him, as did the hardware taped to his eyelids. But staffing at the Soldiers’ Home was sparse these days, and occasionally he carried off the sham. Waking was always a horror.
The Jaguar kept a file of tidbits for the agency, though, so they’d stopped being hard on him right off the bat. Hardball came later, when they made sure he was wrung dry.
They called it “debriefing,” but he knew better. He kept high-ranking cattle in his personal corral—Belitnikoff, a lanky KGB Colonel; Wu Li, a troubled physicist; Mitsui, of the Tokyo
Exchange and Livingston on the Federal Reserve. They were always up to something that Operations found tantalizing. Of course, his pryings caused disturbances in themselves that developed some interesting product.
The Jaguar hated the pettiness of government meddling in other governments. After his first breach of the fabric of being he lost interest in the trivial politics of a measly little world. He had universes to conquer and he knew, in time, he could have them all.
He was a tinkerer inside a great machine. He had not yet met another tinkerer on equal ground on the dreamways. Zachary Lee had blundered and the Jaguar had been lucky. His life depended on keeping his body alive and the dreamways secure. Right now, his body was his foremost concern.