The Book of Harold

by Owen Egerton

  And I did. Each one new, pushing in, and before it even had a chance to fall completely away another wave pushing over.

  “But it’s all the same water,” Harold said. “The wave is just a wave. It’s the ocean that shapes the sand, not the wave.” Then he turned to me. “Never think the wave you ride is more or less than the thousands before or the thousands after.”

  I watched the muddy water and said nothing. I was afraid if I spoke Harold would see that I didn’t understand. Harold pressed the heels of his palms against his temples.

  “Headache again?”

  “Migraine. Adds light to things,” he said. “Starts in the corner of my eyesight, a mirrored hole. After an hour it covers everything I see. Right now, I can’t make out half your face.”

  “Harold, you should see someone about that.”

  He shook his head. “It’s the crack that lets the colors in.”

  We sat still for a few minutes, the waves pulsing against the sand.

  “I want you to quit your job,” he said after a few minutes.

  I laughed.

  “It’s not your vocation, Blake.”

  I asked what my vocation was.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He sounded surprised I would even ask.

  “You don’t know? What kind of messiah are you?”

  “One who doesn’t know,” he said with a dry laugh.

  Something was so sad about that day. Something in those pointless waves he wanted me to watch. All the same water. Clawing at sand. Like he said, thousands. Doing nothing but moving sand. Shaping and scraping and gone again.

  “What are you going to do, Harold?” I asked.

  “I think I’ll walk to Austin.”

  “That’s two hundred miles away. You’re going to walk there?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Strange thing to do.”

  Surprise

  That night, at the dinner table, I told Jennifer and Tammy that I had written a letter of resignation.

  “You’re quitting?” Tammy asked through a mouthful of food.

  “Is this because of Harold?”

  “This is a good thing,” I said. I tried to explain about vocation and waves, but it came out mumbled and unconvincing. “I want us to be more alive. Happier.”

  “Are you going to get another job?” Tammy asked.

  “Sure, I guess. Eventually.”

  “So, how do we eat until then, Blake?” Jennifer was rubbing her knuckles red. “How does Tammy go to college?”

  “We have some savings and if we sell the house and move—”

  “Sell the house!” My wife stood up. “This house? I decorated this house. Where else would we live?”

  “We could get an apartment or something. You know, Harold gave—”

  “Tammy,” my wife said. “Please excuse us, will you?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tammy said. My wife gripped the table’s edge and stared down. Tammy sighed, pushed back her chair with a screech, and stomped upstairs.

  Jennifer waited until Tammy was out of earshot then addressed me with a sternness that I’d never known from her. “Blake, if you’re going to have a midlife crisis, just buy a convertible for God’s sake.”

  “This is not just a phase. I want to rethink things.”

  “Harold is sick. He is dangerous and needs psychiatric help.”

  “But he makes some good points,” I said.

  “Have you given him any money? Have you?”

  “No.”

  She folded her arms and stared at me. She nodded her head. A decision had been made. She left the room.

  I sat at the table and watched our leftover food grow cold. I sat there for an hour. The food didn’t move. I tried to see if the rotting had begun. I knew it must have, but I couldn’t tell.

  Then I went to bed.

  The lights were out. I undressed and crawled under the sheets. She was still, but I knew she was awake. I thought to touch her, but something in her quietness told me to keep a distance. So I lay and watched the back of her head. I wasn’t close enough to smell her hair, but I could remember the scent. The color had faded, but not the smell. A clean, alive, snapped branch smell. I remembered years before deciding it was my favorite smell in the world.

  “I’m leaving you, Blake,” she said in a whisper so gentle that she never lost her stillness. “It’s not for me. I can take it. It’s for Tammy. Tomorrow, okay. I want you to be gone tomorrow.”

  Want a shock? I was surprised.

  Want another? I was heartbroken.

  But I did not argue. Instead I went downstairs for a drink. No shock there.

  I turned off every light and fixed myself a gin and tonic in the dark. Besides the hum of the refrigerator and the tapping of ice in my glass, the house was silent. It was so quiet I could hear the wind outside. Jennifer wanted me to leave. I had things to think about, but I had no intention of thinking. Another drink. This time with a little less tonic and a little more gin.

  In the dark, the house was unfamiliar and full of shadows. A car passed and all the shadows did a dance across the living room. I wanted them to dance more, so I had another drink, and another. I ran out of tonic but that was all right with me. Another drink. Soon the shadows were dancing whenever I moved my head.

  Now, all these years later, the same shadows are still with me. Around me and in me. No longer dancing. Crawling. Patches of dark and patches of darker dark asking me why I didn’t love her more. Asking why I didn’t go upstairs and promise to be a better man, or at least let her know I didn’t want to go. Shadows telling me that there is something essential I’m not seeing. Something deep below my marriage, my child, my Harold, my life. Below words. Something that I hunger for with all my desires and mistakes. A buried thing I need, which promises only that it will never be found. Now, as then, as always.

  This night in the basement, I watch those shadows. Eyes open.

  That night in my living room, I closed my eyes. All the shadows slinked into my head and slid down into my stomach. They spun around inside me, dancing too quickly. On instinct, I got up, stumbled into the bathroom, and knelt with my hands pressed against the commode. The shadows were trying to climb out of my stomach, up my throat, and out of my mouth. That familiar acidic spit paving the way. But I wasn’t going to let them out this time. The shadows were staying. I swallowed and clenched my teeth.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I said and passed out on the toilet seat.

  Moving Out

  I woke up in the bathroom with my brain a water balloon two sizes too large for my skull. Jennifer and Tammy had left for the day. A note from Jennifer explained that I should be gone by evening. I wrote a reply on the back of the note saying that she was the one leaving me, why should I move? And, hey, who sold half-a-fucking-million computers to buy this house that I’m now being told to leave? Then I shoved the note down the disposal.

  The house felt empty. Everything was still there but it was empty. I went through each room looking, touching things, wondering why they didn’t anchor me down. I found myself sitting in Tammy’s room, on her bed, staring at posters of rock bands and polar bears. Clothes were everywhere and magazines scattered the floor. Tammy’s plastic gumball machine sat on her dresser. It only had three gumballs left. Soon they’d be gone. What then? What would she do?

  I drove to the Autumn Winds nursing home where Harold had moved. I parked the car and sat. I was sweating. Click goes the key. Quiet goes the engine. All the world is a window away.

  Terry Williamson was walking out of Autumn Winds. I had not talked to him since the night Pickles died and Harold ruined our dinner party. He didn’t see me. He put on his designer sunglasses and brushed back his red curls. He climbed into a forest green SUV and drove away. I waited till he was gone and headed for the building.

  I hated the place as soon as I stepped inside. It was relatively new, but so cheaply built that after two decades it was already decrepit. Plastered lobby walls growing yellow and
ceilings stained with brown water. The lower half of the lobby walls were covered with childish drawings. I looked around for Harold but saw nothing but brittle, ashy men and women pointing out their paintings while their middle-aged children stood beside them nodding. “That’s a very nice painting, Mom. It’s very pretty.”

  A tall desk stood in the center of the room, and a woman in a nurse’s uniform was sitting behind it.

  “Are you here for the residents’ art show?” she asked.

  “No, I’m looking for Harold Peeks.”

  She told me she’d get him and handed me a plastic badge which read “VISITOR.” I was glad to have it. Glad to have a label that told everyone and myself that I did not belong here. I randomly stared at the paintings while waiting. Most were done with watercolors. Watercolors depress me. So thin, so pale, so weak, so faded, as if maybe it had once been real paint, once had real colors, but not anymore. Too similar to the gray-skinned residents.

  “How do you like it?” said a small voice beside me. The voice belonged to a short, wrinkled woman with a big smile.

  “It’s very nice,” I said, realizing I had been staring at a painting of what I can only assume was supposed to be a horse. That or a large dog wearing a saddle.

  “I’m the artist,” she said, beaming.

  “You obviously have a lot of talent.” I looked around for an escape.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Would you like to see my papier-mâché egg?”

  “No, no. I don’t like eggs.” Just then I saw Harold waving at me from down the hall.

  “Oh,” said the woman. “You’re one of his.”

  “No,” I said. “I am not.” And I walked down the hall.

  I passed room after room with open doors. Each had a narrow bed with a yellow or blue blanket and a small television. Each smelled of vinegar and damp air. Some rooms were occupied with thin bodies lying down or sitting in straight-backed chairs. I caught snippets of sitcoms and game shows as I walked by. Halfway down the hall on the right side was a large open area filled with a dozen slow moving figures in bathrobes and pajamas. Another television blared commercials.

  When I was a boy, my father, the good doctor, used to take me with him as he did his rounds at a local nursing home. He told me a young face would cheer them up. So we’d go and I’d stick by his side, avoiding their reaching hands. But then he’d disappear into a room and leave me for them. They’d grab me, turning me towards them and staring with watery eyes. Back then I thought they were trying to steal my youth, trying to suck life out of me with their eyes. As I grew up I realized what a silly idea that is, but now that I’m old I think I was right the first time. I fear old people. I fear old. Old, mold, moldy . . . skin that doesn’t fit anymore, purple bruises, leaking memories and mucus and urine.

  Harold was wearing pale blue scrubs—the cheap kind, like the girl who cleans your teeth. They were too small for him. In his hand he had a large sugar cookie with the word ART spelled out in pink icing

  “Was Terry Williamson here to see you?” I asked Harold once I got inside.

  “ Yes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “That’s none of your concern, Blake,” he said. “Want a cookie?”

  I sat down on the room’s one chair. “My wife is leaving me.”

  He sat on the bed and bit his cookie, right through the A.

  “Because of me?” he asked.

  “Partially.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and rubbed his eyes. “I wish I could give you some peace.”

  I nodded.

  “But I’ve come to shatter things.” He took another bite. “Have you quit your job yet?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Is it worth the hours?”

  “What would I do otherwise?”

  “That’s not the question.”

  I drove to Promit Computers and turned in my letter of resignation. Then I went back to Autumn Winds and fell asleep on Harold’s floor.

  Dreaming of Now

  That night, sleeping on a nursing home floor, I dreamt of now. Of an old man sitting in a basement, in front of a Van Gogh painting. Cypresses. Inky black and green over blue. Of course, it’s just a print. You can’t touch the texture of the paint strokes. The print is a hint. The room is a tomb.

  I’m as restless today as I was then. Like there’s something to do, but I can’t quite get it done. Deeper down, if I let all that restlessness blow away, I see the real joke: nothing ever gets done. Nothing real. You think it does, but it’s all just bill paying and pleasure having and time killing. Nothing really happens.

  Nothing happens and time is running out. I know I’m dying. It feels lonely. I think it’s what’s made me lonely my whole life. Not death as an end, but death as an always. It’s like dancing on an iced pond, that cold water always just an inch below you. You keep your feet moving so you won’t crack through. But the cold still makes you shiver. Always there. And if you stop dancing, just for a second, that cold air creeps up your legs, soaks in. Cold just below. Death right there. Trying to tell me it’s already in my veins.

  God, you hear this? You hear what the cold is telling me? What nature keeps whispering? How much this all hurts? Do you hear this, you mute? I put my ear to your chest and listen for a heartbeat. I can’t hear a heartbeat.

  Please don’t leave me like this. I’m undone.

  Questions

  Question I asked Harold:“Is there an afterlife?”

  Harold’s answer:“If there is, I bet you’ll spend it the same way you’re spending this moment.”

  Following

  On my second night at Autumn Winds, I met Shael. Young, late twenties, maybe thirty. Dark eyes, dark hair. Her cheeks curving in on her face like shallow valleys. Her mouth, somber and small. She walked into Harold’s tiny room smelling of cigarette smoke. She seemed surprised, disappointed surprised, to see Harold was not alone. She had brought him a rose with a broken stem, which she handed over with no smile, as if it were something she had just picked up from the floor. He grinned and pinned the rose to his blue scrubs.

  I offered to leave but Harold stopped me. He made a few calls and a little makeshift party started to form. Irma came, scrunching her face at me, but cordial enough. Gilbert Forncrammer, bald-headed and frantic, pushed through the door.

  “Well, goddamn it, Texas is humid,” he grunted and sat down on the bed next to Shael. “How can you live here, Harold? Goddamn old people stinking up the place.”

  “You’re not so fresh out of the box yourself, Gilbert,” Harold said from his seat on the floor.

  “I’m seventy-eight. That’s not synonymous with old.”

  The next hour was an exchange of stories. I sat in the corner while the others talked. Shael described her childhood summers in Colorado.

  “It was cold at night and hot during the day. And everything smelled of pine,” she said. She described the stream she and her brother would swim in. “The kind of cold that hurts, but we kept swimming, every day of the summer.”

  Irma told us about falling in a frozen creek when she was a child. Gilbert stood up and showed us how he used to run in place to keep warm when he worked as a night watchman. Within the laughing and talking was a strange excitement. It was as if each one of them had carried in an armful of energy and piled it in the center of the room. Even from my spot on the edge of the group, against the wall and close to the door, I could feel that energy spiraling.

  Sometime after eleven a nurse knocked on the door and asked if we’d quiet down. “And you,” she looked directly at Gilbert. “You should be in your bed.”

  “I don’t live here,” he protested, but she had already gone. “Well, hell.”

  Harold jumped up and announced that we were going out and headed for the door. No time for discussion. It was follow or not follow.

  After the stale air of the small room, the outside breeze was a welcome breath.
The street was quiet and we went stomping into the silence, the puddles splashing beneath us. And me, smiling and following in spite of myself. “Oh, my, my,” Irma kept saying. Harold talked to us over his shoulder. “Once you find life, give it away. Give it in large and small portions to whoever’s around. You’ll find more.”

  The only bar in sight, maybe the only bar in Figwood, was a few blocks distance, sharing a strip mall with a video store and a hot wings delivery.

  Shael lit a cigarette as we tumbled in. Harold leaned into me. “Finding life and being found. That’s it. You okay?”

  I nodded. He patted my back. The bar was tacky and empty of other customers. An abundance of blue neon bounced off the walls. Near the back, a jukebox belted out an old Bon Jovi song.

  Shael and Harold danced, making clumsy circles and laughing. I wondered what Jennifer was doing, wondered if I should call home. I took a seat next to Irma. She tapped her toes and swayed in her seat, careful to keep her back to me. Gilbert had stationed himself at the bar, and I got up and joined him.

  “You shouldn’t eat peanuts at bars,” he said as I sat down. “Fecal matter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Men go take a crap, come back to the bar, shove a hand into the dish. Fecal matter.” He lifted a fist-full of peanuts and poured it in his mouth.

  “So why are you eating them?”

  He shrugged. “I like salty things.”

  I nodded and ordered a drink.

  “I think Harold is a crazy bastard,” he said. “You?”

  I looked over to Harold dancing, sweating dark patches though his scrubs. They were starting to tear under the arms.

  “Yeah. He’s crazy.”

  “Good.”

  We nodded.

  “Then why are you here?” I asked.

  He put his drink down. “Vegas,” he said, letting the word slide out slowly. “I can tell you, if you want.”

  “Okay.”

  “But it’s a little left of day-to-day, alright?”