“It’s working?” the reporter asked. There was surprise in his voice.
“Seems to be,” Bobby answered. For six days he had not spiked a temp. His platelet count and hematocrit were up. Other elements of his blood seemed to be responding. The fact that he had not had a fever all week indicated the new antibiotic regime was controlling his infections. He was up, out of bed, the July swelling in his legs gone. He walked the halls morning, noon, night, cautiously, afraid of bumping or being bumped, afraid of causing a new hematoma, yet anxious to be in motion.
The reporter sat in Bobby’s room, making notes in a small cardboard-bound pad. Additionally he recorded the interview on a Panasonic microcassette. “Hmm. I thought you were much ...”
“... closer to dying?” Bobby finished the question.
“More seriously ill,” the reporter countered.
“It’s serious.” Bobby smiled. He liked the man, liked his direct yet relatively sensitive approach. “You want me to be dying, huh?”
“No Bobby, I don—”
“But it’s a better story if I am.”
“Unfortunately. Newspapers do want you to be dramatic.”
“Well, I am.” For half an hour Bobby explained his leukemia to the man, made certain the reporter understood the process, the short-of-a-miracle irreversibility, the temporary positive signs, responses to the chemo.
“You don’t seem bitter,” the reporter said.
“That comes and goes.”
“If you had it to do all over again, would you go to Canada?”
“You mean ... Hell, no! I’d go again right now if I could.”
“You would?!”
“I certainly would. I’d go back to Viet Nam in a minute. Shit ... I don’t think I’d like the person I’d be if I hadn’t gone. And if living with this pain ... is the price, then I’ll take it. I’ve seen the best. And the worst. But seeing the best, the very best, seeing it just once inspires one forever. That makes it worth it.”
“Worth dying for?”
“Yes. It was worth it then. The cause. It sucks now ... being sick ... having these constant reminders that your body’s self-destructing. But that doesn’t change the value of the cause. Still, I won’t let a Dow product in my house.”
“What about your sons? You have boys, don’t you?”
“I ...” Bobby paused, his mind raced, his face reflected anguish.
“If they were to be drafted ...” the reporter began.
“They won’t be.” Bobby turned hard, surface hard, voice hard, but inside, flashing on Noah, on Paul, juxtaposing them to Hamburger Hill, to the A Shau, to the mud and violence in a way he had never imagined, inside he turned sour, clammy. “No way,” Bobby said. “The government’s gotten enough Wapinskis.”
Saturday, 27 August 1983, High Meadow—“Bobby’s home.”
“He’s been waiting for ya, Man,” Rodney said. “Every day. Every mornin, ya know? I let him out an he disappears. Then I find him by the road. Just sittin. Waitin for ya. He makes me call im a hun’red times. I don’t think he hears anymore. He’s gettin awful old.”
Bobby slid his hands over Josh’s head, kneaded the base of the dog’s ears. “Aw, good ol’ Josh. Good boy.” Josh groaned, stood, leaned in, then shook his head. Bobby rocked back. “Don’t bump me, Boy. There.” Josh stopped, looked up. Bobby sighed. “Ah ... let me just scratch your ears.”
“Hey Man. Good you’re back. You made the front page of the paper.”
“I did?”
“Yeah. Look at this
DYING VET BACKS
CHEMICAL COMPANIES
______
Says He’d Go Again
“Says I backed who?”
“Hey, you’re a celeb. UPI. That’s carried all over the country. Calls you a ‘self-made man.’ Talks about you as a ‘manufacturer of environmental products.’ Let’s see, ‘entrepreneurial spirit upon which America was founded ...’ I liked this part. ‘Wapinski claims that the causes over which America went to war were noble and just and that Agent Orange was a legitimate weapon in the fight against communism.’”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It says here you hope your corporation will become as large and as powerful as Dow Chemical. That you hope someday to be in the same manufacturing association.”
“No, that’s not what I said at all.”
Later that afternoon Bobby took Josh into the barn. They climbed aboard the creaky old homemade elevator constructed for Pewel a decade earlier. Slowly it raised the old dog and the frail man up to the loft. They entered Grandpa’s office, opened the thermal curtains letting the room flood with light. For nearly an hour Bobby sat, scratching Josh’s ears, both just sitting, Bobby covering one eye, looking out at the farm, the pond, the woods, thinking of the gap, wondering if he could ever again attempt that hike or walk through the cathedral of eastern hemlock or sit at the fire circle.
After a time Bobby removed the file of ideas and notes, of half-written thoughts and collected articles, that he had labeled “The High Meadow Code.” The file was thick. Indeed it was not a single file but three files: one with articles on environmental policies and plans; one with the best thoughts and plans for housing, energy, and a sustainable future; and one, the main file, containing Bobby’s own writings. Slowly, purposefully, he spread the sheets, sorted them into beginning and end, into myriad central elements. By the time the work was spread and organized it was eight o’clock, dark. Josh had slept through Bobby’s labor. Now, happily, he rose, nuzzled Bobby’s legs, descended with him to the main floor, returned to the house.
Sara was hurt. Angry. Bobby apologetic. Sara, her back to Bobby as she washed the dinner dishes, “Can’t you spend some time with us?”
“I’m sorry. I lost track of the time.”
“Noah’s really upset about that ‘Dying Vet’ story. He spent all evening decoding it.”
“I’ll talk to him. I ... You remember Granpa’s code?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want to finish that. That story, you know, ‘the self-made man’ stuff. It set me thinking about all ... like Granpa used to say, ‘Civilization is a gift.’ We think we’re so independent yet really everyone of us is heir to this incredible complex structure that passes on language and light, everything from when to cut your toenails to advanced chemical treatments which can reverse aging and disease processes. It passes to us an education system which bathes us in inducer factors which cause us to differentiate into functionally different individuals which civilization requires to remain healthy.”
“Bobby—” Sara turned from the sink, “what are you talking about?”
“About the inducers of greed and the inducers of altruism.”
“Maybe you should talk to Noah.”
Then, with Noah, halfway up the stairs, seated like two buddies plotting a caper, “You get more publicity,” Bobby said softly, “if the newspapers ... They want you to be dying.”
Noah’s eyes opened wide. “Can they do that?”
“No. They have no effect on my health. What I mean is, in their story, if I sound like I’m dying, it makes for a more dramatic story.”
“Oh.”
“It gets more sympathy and they sell more papers that way,” Bobby said.
“And the chemical company,” Noah asked, “do you really back it?”
“No. He misquoted me. I was explaining to him that we had a small company. That all companies aren’t bad. That lately it seemed to me the media, you know ...”
“Uh-huh.”
“... has tried to paint them all, ah ... to describe them all as if they were all poisoning the environment. I said to him, What does that do to our civilization? To our children? If we eliminate the production-inducer from the bathing solutions of our culture ...” Bobby paused, simplified his explanation. “What attitudes will children have, when they’re grown, toward producing, toward working with materials, with their hands? Will they know how to work? Will they un
derstand the benefits of manufacturing?”
“I know how to work.”
“I know you do. You’re an excellent worker. I’m very proud of you when you tinker out in the shop. But the papers, and especially TV, give us the impression all manufacturing is bad for—”
Noah broke in, “If you went back to Viet Nam, you’d leave us.”
“I ... but ...”
“It says you said you’d go back.”
“Hmm. That’s ... Noah, I can’t explain that to you. That’s the nature of guys who were airborne. Why we agreed to go in the first place. But I wouldn’t leave you to go there. I love you guys too much, and Mama, to go now.”
On Sunday morning Bobby and Sara took the children to Mass at St. Ignatius. Then, back home, Bobby again retreated with Josh to Grandpa’s office.
PREAMBLE—DRAFT
Before I am a living being I am an element of the earth ...
All afternoon Bobby wrote, rewrote, conceptualized, diagrammed the Ascending Line of Life, and the Great Flowing Circle of Nourishment. When it was again near dark he returned to the house.
On the twenty-ninth of August he spiked a temp of 101.
All the way up Bobby was nauseated, freezing. He lay, in the stifling car, the windows opened but a slit, wrapped in a blanket, one end over his head, covering his eyes. His head hurt. He lay rigid, seemingly holding on for dear life even though Tony drove more smoothly than he’d ever driven in his life.
The pain was different than all other pains Bobby had experienced. Other pains—mental, emotional, physical—had always, after the initial onset, given him strength, given him insight, stirred him to action. But this pain robbed him of focus, of his disciplined nonfocus, forced him to concentrate vaguely on himself. His body seemed to react to its self-destruction with a physical terror he could not control.
“This is not me ...” Tony heard him mumbling under the blanket. “Grant me the strength and courage to try hard ...” Fragmented thoughts or fragments escaping, seeping outward, reaching Tony’s ears, making Tony want to accelerate, to get there faster, yet afraid of bumps, of jars, of causing a bruise that might start an uncontrollable bleed. “I could run the Dipsea ... I’ve climbed the Indian ladder carrying Josh ... I could play full-court for hours ...”
“Hey Bobby, you hear the one about the bulimic party?”
Bobby only groaned.
“You know the difference between a rubber tire and three hundred and sixty-five used condoms?”
“What?”
Tony sighed inwardly. He’d broken through, gotten Bobby off himself. “One’s a Goodyear. One’s a really good year.”
A laugh, a groan. Silence. Tony’s mind scanning for new jokes. He heard more mutterings.
“... and to never give up.”
Labor Day, 1983, was September 5th—Sara was required to be in her classroom on Friday the 2d and again Tuesday the 6th. Students returned on the 7th. Sara did not come to West Haven on the 30th but came instead, for two days, on Saturday the 3d, her 36th birthday.
At this time, Josephine Pisano moved into the farmhouse at High Meadow, nearly full-time. Through September John Pisano Sr. went up daily. He brought up Johnny, who was now eighteen months, and who liked being with Am and Paul. Noah, assumed the roles of teacher, babysitter, supervisor, director. Jo cooked, cleaned, did the laundry. Linda helped. Annalisa assisted. John Sr. puttered in the gardens, fixed the wobbly front porch railing. Sara taught full-time, worked when she came home, still hosted rap-group meetings—the women’s group, the couples’ group—in the living room on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and let the old staff run, covertly, new barn sessions. Sara was responsible, too, for the farm—planning, with Tony, ordering, overseeing, with Tony, paying bills, alone, paying percentages to Miriam, Joanne and Brian, and, alone, by arrangement, virtually everything else to the IRS. Every night she called; every Friday she packed up the kids, headed to West Haven. Every Sunday night she returned. Everything she did, work, chores, time with the children, with the groups, was scheduled around Bobby—getting to see him, talk to him, help him. And every week, almost every day, there was something new: a new infection, new fever, new bleed. Every day throughout September Bobby was scheduled for a possible surgery the next day. Every day, at High Meadow or in West Haven, Sara attempted to find, to convince, matching platelet donors. The fear of another transfusion reaction was constant. The fear of bleeds was continuous, of infections, of not having the money to make the trip, of paying everyday bills, the old Chevy giving out ... The list was endless.
And every day, something new.
“That’s how paranoid I am,” Bobby told Tony. “It’s the steroids. The doc thinks they’re responsible for my rib. I’m afraid ... I could stand up and my ankle might crumble. Or I could blow my nose and bleed to death.”
To Tony it wasn’t real, wasn’t fully tangible. Bobby looked frail but not so frail. Back on IV antibiotics and transfused he sounded healthy. Whatever unacknowledged fatalism his body held, his conscious actions did not betray. Then his crit would fall. Then a new infection or an unfound infection would erupt, re-erupt. Then Bobby’s mind would sag, cave in upon itself, and he would have to fight to rise to zero, to overlook positive; and his doctors would grasp at new treatments, attempting to find the specific yet elusive magic bullet for his changing condition.
—Another bone marrow. “To see how fast the leukemia is spreading, growing,” Doctor Dachik told him. “If it’s the slow-growing kind, a very slow-growing leukemia ... well, the chances of you surviving a slow-growing leukemia are greater than of you surviving chemotherapy.”
“Huh!”
“If it’s the fast-growing variety ... chemo will be ...”
“A last ditch effort?”
—“Ahhh! No change from the last biopsy. No chemo.”
—“Sorry. Low-level chemo. A continuation of the August treatment but changing the mixture ...”
—“Sorry. Another bleed. We need a chest X-ray. Need a gallium scan. Need a CAT scan.”
—“You’re still popping fevers.”
“I know. One oh one, eight. That’s the highest ...”
—“Seems to be a hairline fracture.... Can’t find it.... Could be a pleural effusion.... Could be ...”
—“The multiple transfusions and the ensuing bilirubin have caused gall stones which may be the source of the infection ... gall bladder ... removal ...”
“Forget it! It took you guys seven times to do my arm. We’re talking periphery there. You’re talking deep inside ...”
—Tony: 20 September: “What the hell you doin here, Man? Are you ready to die? What are you stayin in the VA system for? You got leukemia. That’s curable, Man. You don’t have to die from leukemia. Hey! Look! What the fuck do you think the VA’s goina do for ya? The VA wants you to die! It cost them money to have you in here. You’re not payin. They’re not makin a profit on you. You cost them money! It is in their best interest if you die quickly. They’re not trying to cure you. Get your fuckin act together, Man. Get the fuck out of this hospital. Get your ... Aah, stop feelin sorry for yourself and get your ass up to Boston General or to that Jewish hospital out on Long Island that specializes in leukemia. Man, they’ll have you in remission in five, six weeks.”
Bobby chuckled. “And who’s going to pay ...”
“I will. I’ll sell my house.”
“No you won’t.”
“I’m serious, Bobby. It’s not you. It’s not part of you. Why do you need it? You don’t need to be sick for me. We’re all sick of you being sick.”
“Me too.”
“Man,” angrily, “you’re letting it do to you whatever it wants. And you’re saying, ‘Look what it’s doing to me.’”
Joking. “Makes a good media show.”
“Fuck it! Fuck them hangers-on. Those bastards hooked on tragedy. Don’t mean nothin, Bobby. What means somethin is what you’re going to do about it. Your words.”
“My words?”
“Uh-huh.”
—On Friday the 23d Sara and the children arrived to celebrate Paulie’s sixth birthday with Bobby. Aside, while Bobby blew on a noisemaker, Noah explained to Tony, “I’m eight and a half. Pop’s going to buy me a bicycle when I’m nine.” And a little later Am said, “Pawpee, know what? For my birthday I want you to get big and strong again.”
—On the 26th: “Don’t tell Sara.”
“What?”
“Do you remember Stacy Carter?”
“Oh yeah! Great—”
“She sent me a card.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know, nothin much. Just a blank card. An Ansel Adams photo of Half Dome in Yosemite. And a ‘Get Well Soon’ written inside.”
“Who’s the cute doctor down there with the nice legs?”
“Her? I don’t like cute doctors. She makes me nervous. She always wants to see my butt. I hate that. Leave me alone. I’m sweaty. I stink ...”
—Tuesday the 27th—Tony on the phone to Linda. “They just aspirated 300 cc of blood from a pleural effusion which was causing his lung to collapse. They want to reenter the cavity with a larger needle but they’re afraid that might create even more bleeding. They want to try but his bleeding time, you know, in you or me it’s maybe two minutes, they can’t do surgery if it’s over nine minutes, and even after infusing ten units of platelets and rushing him to the OR his bleeding time was twenty-five and a half minutes!!! It’s driving him crazy. Sara too. It seems, you know, because of potential liability ... Good God! Like how much more liable and how much greater remuneration ... Shit ... Seems every night they ask him to sign a permission and liability release agreement okaying the next day’s procedure. And he knows full well that he’s approving a procedure that could cause him to bleed to death....”
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