Afterward, Hunter and I stopped for a late lunch at the Half Moon café, the closest thing to a dive bar in Vail. He had to take a piss something fierce, so he stood up behind the open driver’s side door and let go right there in the parking lot. I attributed it to Hunter being Hunter. It was embarrassing, but I was used to being uncomfortable around Hunter in public. It was no stranger than sitting next to him while he discreetly snorted a bit of cocaine in a restaurant, or ordered whiskey and beer for breakfast. Now I know that this was because of his back and perhaps his alcoholism, that he was losing control of his bladder. If he hadn’t peed right there, he would have pissed his pants, and that would have been a terrible humiliation for him, even with me.
Hunter got an MRI of his back, and I went with him again a couple of weeks later for a second conference with his doctor, who explained the problem, spinal stenosis. This is a fancy medical term that means a plugged-up spinal cord channel, which put a lot of pressure on the spinal cord itself, causing great pain as well as other problems since the nerves were not able to relay their signals back and forth reliably. There was also a vertebra that had slipped out of position, putting yet more pressure on the delicate spinal cord. It was a simple operation, he said. Open up the back, clean out the scum with a brush, pull the vertebra back into position and fasten it there with some screws and bits of metal, then close him up. Wouldn’t take more than a few hours. He said Hunter’s age was the greatest risk, but that his chances of a completely successful operation were better than 50 percent, especially if he cut back on the booze and cigarettes to give his back a chance to heal. He was very matter-of-fact, confident, and patient as we asked many questions.
Like the doctor, Hunter talked about the operation in mechanical terms. He said it was simply fixing a machine whose parts were beginning to wear out. It was like taking a car in for a valve job—open up the engine, clean things up, replace a few worn parts, and put it back together. The key was in having a smart and experienced mechanic who knew what to do and what not to do.
I met Hunter in Vail a third time for a cardiac stress test. A heart doctor hooked him up to some machines and injected him with something that speeded his heart rate up to 140 or 150 beats per minute, while Hunter was lying perfectly still on the bed. After the test was complete, the doctor said his heart was in perfect shape for a guy his age, and that he had nothing to worry about.
Finally, the surgery itself was scheduled. Hunter was to show up the night before, spend the night in the hospital, and have the operation early the next morning. He would be out of the hospital in three to five days if all went well. “If all went well,” that terrifying caveat. I don’t think anything ever went according to a plan in Hunter’s life—that is, when he had a plan at all. This time wouldn’t be any different.
Jennifer, Will, and I met Hunter that night at the hospital. It was off-season in Vail and the place was practically empty. He had a room at the end of the hall where he could carry on without disrupting the handful of other patients on the floor. Deborah was already there. Hunter drank his usual whiskey and water up until midnight, which was the cutoff. The surgery was scheduled for seven a.m., and by noon he would be drinking again. Twelve hours without alcohol was well within his safety zone. We said good night and promised to be there as soon as he came out of surgery.
The four of us were staying at the Evergreen Lodge next door to the hospital. Over the next two weeks we wore our own path out the back door of the lodge, through the parking lot, and up the side stairs to the second floor of the hospital. When we arrived the next morning we went to the hospital. He was in surgery; it was going well. As soon as it was finished, he was wheeled into post-op, a mini-ward just off the operating theater. I went in to see him when he woke up and he already had a fifth of Chivas Regal cradled in his arm. I was very relieved to see he had already had a sip of whiskey.
I understood when I saw him that my strong, terrifying father was vulnerable. He had been on an operating table, deep in a sleep that he could not wake from, so deep that he could not feel the doctors cutting open his back, grabbing hold of his very spine, reaching in with tools and drills and bits of metal. He was completely at their mercy, completely and utterly vulnerable. I imagine him now like a doll or a mannequin, flopped on his stomach on the operating table, helpless. In that post-op room I saw that for all his power, he inhabited the body of an older man, and during that surgery his body could have given up on him.
But there he was, groggy, with his bottle of whiskey, now being wheeled into one of the acute care rooms that I got to know very well over the next couple of weeks. Hunter’s spirit was dragging his tired and worn body along the trail, saying, “Come on, just a bit farther, just around that next bend. Come on,” and it acquiesced, yes, a bit farther, okay. Let’s see what’s there.
It was a good room. A large window overlooked the creek that runs through Vail. It was early summer and everything was green, the grass, the trees, the fields, and the mountain hillside across the stream. The weather was cool and the sun was bright in the deep blue Colorado sky. The nurses hooked him up to the various monitors and he slept. That night he was awake and was strangely calm. He laughed, he was gentle. That fierce edge had abated. The doctor had told us that unlike the hip surgery, back surgery provided almost instant relief. We were all excited and relieved. No withdrawal this time, thank god. Hunter ate a bit, and drank a bit, and slept again. A few more days and he could go home.
But the next day things began to go wrong. He was delirious and angry. He wouldn’t eat. He went in and out of sleep. His doctor told us he had begun withdrawal. He had had some whiskey, yes, but not enough, and now it was too late. Just like last time, once the process started, he wouldn’t drink any alcohol. Hunter’s life was full of irony and paradox, and this was one of them—he wouldn’t drink even a sip of whiskey. Just as in Glenwood, his doctor decided to put him into a drug-induced coma to minimize the impact of the withdrawal. They loaded him up with lorazepam and put him to sleep. The doctor gave him alcohol intravenously, but it wasn’t enough. Could they increase the alcohol dose, we asked? Apparently not. The highest concentration available for IV use would not be enough for Hunter.
The days began to blur together. Just like last time, there were complications because of the length of time he was lying in bed; he was getting water in his lungs; he needed machines to keep the blood and lymph moving in his legs. Though unconscious, he would cough up thick, yellowish green mucus, so we all took turns vacuuming his mouth with a little tube. Meanwhile the doctor was very, very slowly reducing his lorazepam, trying to balance the withdrawal against the dangers of having him asleep and immobile. The doctor also started him on Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic drug used to treat delirium, along with acute psychosis, severe behavioral disorders, and borderline personality disorder.
After a week or so he started to wake. At first, he was too weak and groggy to be irritable, but as he became gradually more aware of his surroundings and the nature of his captivity, he became angry and demanding. He wanted to go home. This time we told him no, he was not going home yet. He got angry and accused me of abandoning him. He got mean. One day we were taking him for a walk along the creek in a wheelchair. Sheriff Braudis had come down for the afternoon and was pushing the chair, and I was walking alongside. Hunter wanted something and he couldn’t have it. I remember his eyes got small in his face; they reminded me of pig eyes, they became hard and small and his face kind of puckered up so that there was nothing but hatred and cruelty there. He said something to me, I can’t remember exactly what, but that was it.
I walked away, not caring what happened to him. I was furious and hurt. To hell with him. I had known it wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t expect this viciousness, this foulness, this deliberate hurt.
After that, I avoided him. I still talked to his doctor to understand how he was doing, but I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to hit him hard, I wanted to hurt him. Here I was in a replay o
f childhood, trapped with this savage bastard, unable to leave, unable to change him, enduring it until he was well enough to be sent home and out of my life for a while.
Over the years, I would occasionally have dreams about Hunter and myself. For a long time they were terrifying dreams in which he was a giant mad with rage, so angry at me that I thought he would kill me, and in my terror, and then later my fury, I would beat on him with my fists, crying and screaming, but with no effect. His rage was volcanic. I could not escape him, nor could I hurt him. He was unstoppable and he wanted to kill me.
Then I would wake up, shaken, frightened, and reflect on the marvelous nature of the unconscious, how such powerful and primitive feelings can remain hidden from our own consciousness. I was amazed at how frightening he was to me still.
Starting several years before his death, I began to have, in addition to these dreams of the murderous giant, dreams in which I learned that Hunter was dead. Though my dreams usually evaporate during the transition to full wakefulness, I can still remember my feeling of utter despair, as if the whole world was ending and there was no way I could go on. I would have these dreams a few times a year. I would wake from these dreams sad, frightened at the power my father had over me, marveling again at what was so deeply hidden inside myself so that it took a dream to show me how much my father meant to me.
By the end of the second week he was well enough, and mean enough, to demand to leave the hospital. He threatened to sue the doctor and the hospital for keeping him against his will, while the doctor threatened to eject him if he didn’t calm down and stop verbally abusing the nurses. At one point he tried to get into a wheelchair so he could leave the hospital by himself in a cab, but he couldn’t even get out of bed.
Finally there came the day when Hunter was determined to go home. It had been two weeks, and it was clear that he would find a way to get home that day, with or without the help of his caretakers. I was no longer talking to him at this point, I wouldn’t even go in his room, but I arranged for a taxi van to come and take him home. When the van arrived, a few hospital staff members loaded him into the car, and off he went.
Jennifer, Will, and I went home. I was still angry at him. After about a week, I sent him a fax demanding an apology for his rotten, stinking behavior, and that until he did so I had no intention of seeing him.
A couple of nights later he called, very late as usual, and left a message on our answering machine saying he was sorry, and thanks for all my help. To get an apology, however brief, was a very big deal indeed. It was the first time in my whole life that he apologized to me.
He and I talked about it a couple of months later and he said he didn’t remember a thing during that two weeks. He remembered going into the hospital the night before, and then he remembered being home. He didn’t remember what he had said to me or threatened to do (though Deborah reminded him) but he had apologized anyway.
I was that important to him, the murderous giant who tried to kill me in my nightmares and the father whose death I would grieve deeply. I had to forgive him because I loved him and I needed him.
—
ONE OF THE WAYS we built the bridge between us during this time of reconciliation was through swimming together. Hunter loved to swim. He mentioned it in his letters from the ’50s and ’60s, secretly slipping into someone’s pool in the middle of the night, swimming silently, in no hurry, then slipping out again, his presence unknown to the pool’s owner. He didn’t swim for sport, he didn’t don the goggles and cap and do fifty or a hundred laps. He swam for fun, for the peace, the darkness, and the easy, graceful movement in the water.
He never had a pool at Owl Farm. He did have his neighbor’s pool, though. He had an understanding with Stranahan, who many years ago added a lap pool to his house a few miles up the road. Hunter was free to use the pool between midnight and dawn, or until the family began to stir, whichever came first.
In the ’90s, when we were well into our reconciliation period, I went to that pool with him many times. As it had been in his youth, swimming was not about sport or fitness, it was a kind of meditation. He often went alone or with a woman, and very rarely, if ever, with another man. It was a privilege for me to join him in this late-night ritual.
We never left before midnight. First, we’d undress and put on thick, long bathrobes, no swimsuits, and then assemble the kit bag. This was a big black gym bag that carried all the swimming necessities, such as tequila, dark chocolate, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, a few waterproof flashlights, cigarettes, a few lighters, towels, a sharp knife, and a couple of grapefruits. It would be at least forty-five minutes from the time we first began to prepare to the time we backed the Jeep out of the garage. It’s hard to say why it took so long. Sometimes Hunter would have some very specific item—a particular floating flashlight—that he had to have, or a particular lighter. Sometimes he would sit at the counter in the kitchen and search for something that he might realize he needed once he saw it, like a rubber rat, or fake vomit, or a bloody hand, something that he could leave as an unexpected gift for George’s family in the pool room.
Eventually, we’d step into our Sorels, the heavy winter boots lined with felt, and get in the Jeep. Sometimes I would drive and sometimes he would. He was very particular about driving and nervous when he was not behind the wheel, so I took it as a sign of his confidence in me that he would sometimes ask me to drive. It seems like it was always winter when I went swimming with him. The Stranahans’ house was up the valley, at the end of the paved road. The road continues beyond, but it is a narrow dirt road that becomes perilous as it approaches Lenado, the old lumber mill town a good ten miles further on.
We’d drive to the turnoff and head up a small valley, up the mile-long driveway, past the barn and guesthouse where Hunter, Sandy, and I had lived when we first moved to Woody Creek back in 1966, until we reached the main house. In back there was a narrow extension to the house that contained the lap pool. We’d pull up close to the house, but not so close as to wake the family, and turn off the engine. We’d turn on our flashlights, gather up the towels and kit bag, and step carefully through the deep snow to the sliding glass doors, which were never locked, a remnant of the rural ethic that dictated that you never locked your car at night and usually left the keys under the front seat. When I was a child we never locked the doors at night either. It was only after Hunter became well known enough to draw a steady trickle of uninvited visitors that he began to lock the doors of the house.
The pool room was dark, humid, and warm, like a greenhouse. There were windows along the full length of each long wall and skylights in the roof. We’d drop the kit bag by the steps into the pool and Hunter would press the button that would quietly roll up the pool cover. He’d throw a couple of floating, waterproof flashlights into the water to provide the only faint illumination—we never turned on the lights, that would have spoiled it completely—and then we’d shed the robes and get in the warm water.
If it was a clear night, we could see the stars through the skylights. There were thousands of them, with more appearing every minute as our eyes adjusted to the darkness. With the lights off in the pool room, at three a.m., at the top of a valley in Woody Creek, far from any city, the Milky Way stood out clearly and immediately. There were so many stars that it was difficult to pick out the familiar constellations among the myriad dots of light.
When I started swimming with him, he was suffering from first hip pain, then back pain. I realize now that this was one reason we parked so close to the pool—it was painful and risky for him to walk on an uneven, slippery surface. The pool gave him, in addition to the almost womblike warmth and darkness, the physical relief of removing the weight of his body from his legs and lower back. He would swim from one end to the other slowly and gracefully, sometimes using a backstroke, sometimes a breaststroke, maybe a bit of the crawl now and then. I never saw him calmer than at the pool. He said little, and when he did, he talked in almost a whisper, as if
he was in a church, his own kind of church.
After a half hour or so, he would climb out of the pool and root around in the kit bag for a treat, maybe a bar of good dark chocolate, and we would share it. He would usually sit on the edge of the pool and I would stay in. Though he brought cigarettes and booze, he didn’t smoke in the pool room. If he had anything to drink at all, it was just a shot of tequila. Afterward he would return to his slow and quiet swimming.
I tried to talk to him sometimes, thinking that this was our opportunity to have a meaningful father-son dialogue, the kind that I craved and thought we needed, but it never turned out that way. I would ask him questions—about Owl Farm, about his old friends—and he would answer briefly and go silent. Later I understood that the most important thing was spending this time together, whether we talked or not. After an hour or more Hunter would say it was time to go. We’d put our robes on, pack up the kit bag, making sure we had left nothing behind, and then grab the rope on the pool cover and slowly pull it back into place. It was understood that we were to leave it as we found it, as if we had never been there. Then we’d put on our Sorels again and walk back to the Jeep.
We talked very little, if at all, on the way back home. Speech would have been an intrusion. About halfway down the Stranahans’ driveway there was a tiny graveyard where the original settlers of that valley were buried, just a couple of headstones surrounded by an old wrought-iron fence, and Hunter would always stop next to it, roll down the window, throw a couple of quarters over the top of the car into the graveyard, and then roll up the window and drive on. It was a part of the ritual.
My father had a superstitious temperament. He found comfort in ritual, as I do. He wasn’t religious in a conventional sense, but he believed very strongly in an inherent moral order and in the concept of righteousness, and he believed in unseen forces that enforced that order. When he tossed the coins into the graveyard, he did it because he believed it was important to express his gratitude to those spirits who had made those late-night swims possible. He also knocked on wood to avoid jinxing a favorable outcome, and wore jewelry as talismans, not decoration. He wore an emerald pendant around his neck that was endowed with powers of protection. Exactly what those powers were, I didn’t know, but he needed that pendant. He once considered giving it to me, and chose not to, because he felt he still needed it. His most powerful talisman, however, the one I believe is imbued with some of his power and essence, was the medallion.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 17