The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  WHAT I SAID: What about your mother?

  WHAT HE SAID: She should learn how to cry sitting on the toilet seat without the lid down. At least that way she could pee and cry at the same time and be more efficient.

  WHAT I SAID: What about the name of the man who shot you. Do we want to know that?

  WHAT SAM SAID: I don’t want to know. I don’t care. You make mistakes while hunting. It happens all the time. Did you know there was a kid who shot an old man sitting on a tractor because he thought he was a deer? What are you going to do anyway, shoot the guy? I’d rather say my dad saved a life than took one away.

  WHAT I WANTED TO DO: I wanted to take Sam everywhere with me, I wanted to put my hand on him the way Arthur put his hand on the horses and had them talk through him. I wanted everything I said to be what Sam said because he said it so well, no matter his speech was slightly slurred.

  WHAT SAM SAID WHEN I HUGGED HIM: I bet now is a good time to ask for the new computer I want.

  WHAT THE HOUSE SAID AT NIGHT: Give the spaceman a kidney.

  WHAT SARAH SAID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: Poppy! Poppy! Did you hear that?

  I thought that she too had heard the house telling me to give the spaceman a kidney. Hear what? I said. The house, it’s falling apart again, she said.

  WHAT I SAID: No, it’s not. This house will never fall apart. Go back to sleep now. In the morning you can come with me to see the lambs.

  RESULT: The bat was dead in the morning.

  WHAT SAM SAID AS HE LOOKED AT THE FLATTENED BAT IN THE PLASTIC CONTAINER THAT ONCE HELD FANCY GREENS: He looks like a wilted lettuce leaf.

  WHAT I SAID: Really, I thought he looked like a kidney, curled the way he was.

  WHAT THE RABBIT SAID WHILE I LAY ON THE FLOOR AND SHE WAS SNIFFING MY HAIR, SNIFFING MY EARS: Give the spaceman your kidney.

  CALL: Yes, there were sheep I had to go see. Their lambs were there, too. Over sixty of them hopping in the fenced-in pasture. Sarah and Mia walked into the field with them and ran with them, sending them this way and that way like a school of fish, only there was no body of water, just the new grass on the ground, a strange bright green that would not last. It was only this unusual color now from the snow it had been buried under for so long and that had suddenly been exposed to warmer currents, the displaced air from flapping tips of newly arrived robins’ wings. The next week it would be a greener green, already older and closer to the dull, tough grass blade summer green it would soon become. The girls’ rubber boots looked so big on them, gaping around their thin legs as they ran with the flock that moved like a school.

  ACTION: The sheep’s mothers needed shots and I looked into their eyes and told them hush, to keep their bleating down, while I injected them.

  RESULT: Mia and Sarah came out of the pasture with the lambs following behind them, asking me if we could take one home. Just one. How about the littlest one, Mia said, and pointed to what was surely the littlest one, who was so little even the short new blades of grass reached high above his dainty hooves.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: With the melting of the snow appeared beer cans that had been tossed onto the side of the road during winter and now protruded from roadside mud. If deposits for cans were raised to twenty-five cents, the problem might disappear. Who would throw away twenty-five cents so easily? And if they did, there would be more people out looking to collect the cans and make money.

  CALL: The spaceman saying on the phone how he hadn’t much time now. He had wanted to come back and visit me again, but there were problems with the battery of his electric car, so he had let weeks pass, and now, he said, he was flat on his back in the hospital with the doctors and nurses hovering. I pictured his spacecraft parked in a space at the indoor garage of the hospital, its lights not blinking and not moving at all. I could hear, in the background, the sound of ambulances and fire trucks. I could hear the wheeling of a cart and the closing of a door. I thought he might also remember to tell me the name of the man who shot my son, but he never did. Of course he’s not going to tell me now, he’s worried about his own health, I told myself, and so I told him, Here’s the good news—that horse never had rabies, it was just moldy hay, I said. Oh, yes, I remember that horse now, the one with the moon on his head. That is good news, the spaceman said. The spaceman coughed. It did not sound like a cough from a respiratory infection. It sounded dry and I thought of fallen leaves when I heard him cough and I thought of Ed, the town cop, and how he said the fallen leaves were as flammable as paper and I pictured the spaceman, my son, up in flames on his hospital bed, the pillows puffy behind him, the white bedsheets taut around the mattress burning, leaving shattered-looking holes from the scorch. I’ll give you my kidney, I thought. I can live with just one.

  ACTION: I wrote the wife a note. I told her where I was going, just to visit my son. I got in my truck and drove and I took it as a good sign that throughout the whole way, my CHECK ENGINE light never came on. When I got to the hospital, I saw that he looked like he had lost weight. The cleft in his chin I thought looked shallower somehow, as if once it could fit a whole green pea but now could only fit the half of one, a split one. There were many forms to fill out. I filled them out in the waiting room, using a magazine for support. The front of the magazine had a picture of a covered bridge that was not far from my home, that was not far, in fact, from the imprisoned zebra.

  RESULT: It was no use, leaving my wife a note like that. She was onto me fast. I had her speak to the doctor I was assigned. I had him reassure her I would be all right. My wife, while crying, wanted to know about the calls, how she should handle them. I told her over the phone that there was not much to do, considering the small number of calls I had been having, but that there was one thing I’d like her to do and that would be to drive Dorothy and Alice to the doctor’s on Thursday. Who are Dorothy and Alice? my wife asked, and why do I have to drive them to the doctor’s? Just as a favor, I said. You’ll like them, they’re both very nice old ladies, I said. There were antigen tests and the spaceman was right. He and I were a perfect match. It didn’t seem to matter about my levels being high if I donated a kidney. They weren’t a concern to my doctor in this hospital. He pooh-poohed my levels. He shrugged. He said tests like that these days for levels caused the patient more worry than did the patient good. I liked this doctor. He wore a white lab coat, but he did not wear the breast cancer pins. He also wore a fishing cap, with a feathery fishing fly attached to it, but the metal hook had been removed. He wanted to know what I caught up where I lived. Was it brookies? Was it bass? I liked this doctor because he let me know he knew about other things than being a doctor. He knew about fish, about walleye. His answers were made from a broad spectrum of information he had gleaned from doing so many different things and having so many different interests over the years. I asked him if he’d recently read what I had read, that maybe the dinosaurs never disappeared, but they’re still here. They’re just chickens and other birds now. They’ve just evolved. The doctor thought that sounded reasonable to him. He considered the wrinkled wattle on the turkey. He considered the scaly appearance of chicken feet. I wished he were my doctor at home. I looked out the hospital window at the people walking in the streets and realized that looking out the window I saw more people in one minute than I would see in an entire day at home.

  WHAT THE FATHER WHO WAS MARRIED TO HIS MOTHER SAID WHEN HE SAW ME: Thank you. His eyes were filled with tears even before he reached my bedside. He grabbed my hand, he was so thankful I was going to give his son a kidney. I could tell by his handshake that he was not a good match for my son. His was not a strong hand that could stay cupped, pushing water aside in order to swim fast. There was no close blood match or antigen match here.

  WHAT THE MOTHER SAID WHEN SHE SAW ME: I told Mark years ago not to contact you. I told him that we should protect your privacy, but now I’m glad he didn’t listen. Is that what you’re like, too, do you not listen to what your mother or your wife tells you to do? That’s not some
thing you wrote down on your application when I considered you for your DNA, she said with a smile. I also smiled, thinking how she was right. I don’t listen. I didn’t listen to the wife when she told me not to come here, told me not to give up one of my organs.

  WHAT THE HOSPITAL COOKED FOR DINNER: Meat loaf with tan-colored gravy.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN COULDN’T EAT: The meat loaf or the tan-colored gravy. He had to eat a low-sodium, low-protein diet before the surgery.

  WHAT MIA SAID TO ME ON THE PHONE WHEN I CALLED HOME: Poppy, I have lost another tooth and now there is an L in my mouth, see, she said. But I could not see, I could imagine her tilting her head sideways, while still holding the phone, to show me how the spaces in her mouth formed the L.

  WHAT THE SURGERY WAS: A laparoscopic nephrectomy.

  WHAT I DIDN’T WANT TO THINK OF WHEN I WAS GOING UNDER: If I would ever come up.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF WHEN I WAS GOING UNDER: The yellow junko I had seen in my birch tree in the front yard before I drove down to the hospital. Spring is almost here, I thought. I thought if the ground was still frozen and what the temperature of the soil was, as I wanted to get my seeds in early, my fingerlings started, our growing season is so short. I wondered if I could use my rectal thermometer that I used on my horses to insert into the soil to take the temperature. I figured I could.

  WHAT I WAS SURPRISED TO SEE WHEN I WOKE UP: That the spaceman wasn’t next to me in the room. Wasn’t my side just split open and didn’t I just give him a part of me, and shouldn’t we be close to one another, wouldn’t that make the acceptance of my kidney into his body that much easier? Weren’t we like Siamese twins now, and separation would be traumatic? Maybe my body needed to be close to my kidney, and close to the new body it now lived in. Then I realized it was just the spaceman I wanted to be close to. I wanted to know if my son was all right.

  WHERE THE SPACEMAN WAS: Down the hall. They wanted us walking up and about as soon as possible. They figured we would be more likely to do so if we had to walk a ways to visit each other.

  WHAT I SWEAR BY: Morphine.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID HE SWORE BY WHEN I TRUNDLED DOWN THE HALL WITH A WALKER TO VISIT HIM: Morphine.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN WAS HOLDING UP: A bag of urine my new kidney in his body had produced. He was very happy, as he had not produced his own urine for a while now. Through his bag of yellow urine I could see out the hospital window. I could see trees in a small park and the trees looked anemic and looked as though the branches could barely carry the weight of the fat squirrels who were fed peanuts by the lonely old men on park benches and did not look like our svelte squirrels who had to gather their food. I thought of Arlo, who said he never left his home because he didn’t want to see other places’ trees, and now I knew what he meant and I longed for my own trees, and the view of the trees I had on the hillside beyond the pond.

  HOW MANY DAYS I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL BEFORE MY WIFE TOOK THE TRAIN DOWN TO DRIVE ME HOME: Four.

  WHAT I SAID TO THE SPACEMAN BEFORE I LEFT: Good luck, take good care of my kidney. I will, said the spaceman. Come visit us if you can, if we are still living where we are living and haven’t moved off the grid to a small house in the thick of the woods to avoid paying high taxes, I said.

  Don’t move, he said. I like your house.

  You don’t really have to visit if you don’t want to, I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want him to have to think that he should have to visit me. I did tell him though that turkey season was coming on and that we didn’t have a blind, just camo clothing he could borrow and a shotgun that was once my father’s that we could wrap in camo masking tape. I said, Come visit in the fall, not in the spring. I’m not keen to hunt in spring turkey season as I believe the turkeys don’t taste good then, after a long winter with little to feed on. Come visit in the fall, when the turkeys would have had time to fatten up, I said.

  You’re not really much of a hunter, are you? You’re always concerned about the animals, he said. Yes, I said. I wouldn’t feel right about shooting a dinosaur anyway, not when we thought they’d all gone extinct for so long. Listen, I said, don’t bother visiting. Just send me postcards from exotic places, from the tops of the tallest mountains, from the pyramids and glaciers. I want to know my kidney is going places. Write to me you are in the finest health, I said.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’m sorry we never found out the name of the man who shot your son. We can still do that, you know, when I’m out of here. I can still help you, he said. It’s the least I can do.

  WHAT I SAID: I thought you already know. I thought that boy … I thought you paid him, I said.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Yes. I did give him money. I don’t know what for. For the windows, for the horse that was so skinny. Don’t you think that if I had known the name of the man I would have told you?

  WHAT I SAID: It doesn’t matter. I’ve already given that man a name. I call him Danglars. I don’t ever want to learn his real name.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Are you sure? The man should pay for his crime, he said, looking again at his bag of yellow urine hanging on its hook.

  WHAT I SAID: I’m sure.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Maybe there’s hope for us yet, I mean humans. Maybe if the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, then we won’t. We’ll just evolve, the spaceman said.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID WHEN SHE SAW MY SCAR: So the spaceman really did abduct you. And then my Jen punched my shoulder and said, That was for making me drive a sheep to the doctor’s.

  WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE: Tell me, do I look like our librarian now? The one with the scar? The one who swims in the pool but never looks like he goes anywhere?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: No, you look good. The scar is small.

  WHAT I NOTICED ON THE TREES AS WE DROVE CLOSER TO HOME: Buds on the tips of branches looking like the flames of torches that, instead of burning with flame, glowed with the pale warmth of new green.

  WHAT I DID: Opened the window wide to smell the melting snow and the roadside’s fresh mud which was veined with narrow streams whose water was from the melting snow of nearby hilltops and mountain peaks.

  WHAT SARAH SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Where were you?

  WHAT MIA SAID: Mommy got a transmission to give the spaceman a kidney and Poppy gave him one so the spaceman wouldn’t die.

  WHAT SARAH SAID: Good, then the spaceman will live.

  WHAT SAM SAID: Maybe we shouldn’t turn on the radio anymore.

  WHAT BRUCE SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: He kept barking at me, maybe he was trying to tell me all the things that had gone on while I was away. I sat down on the hearth and let him stand in my lap and I hugged him and told him he was a good old dog, the best.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken quarters on the grill.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID WAS FOR DINNER: Barbecued dinosaur, aka “Dino on the barbie.” The day was unusually warm, even though we still had patches of dirty snow on the property. I sat by the pond wearing shorts and I wore a straw hat my wife said made me look like a Floridian. I saw how my white legs looked like death. I rested and watched the children paddle around in inner tubes on the pond and try to push each other out. The water was still as cold as snow, but the sun burnt their arms and gave them red cheeks.

  CALL: Another goat in labor can’t deliver.

  ACTION: Drove to farm on a windless, sunny day. The owner walked me through the barn. Along the way we passed long rows of tables and on the tables were hamsters and rabbits and rats in cages. The owner said they raised them for sale. The primary customers of course being pet shops. I stopped to look at a rat and the owner told me how affectionate rats were and how they would never bite you unless they had a litter of rats and they were trying to protect their young. You can understand that, can’t you? the owner said and I said that I could. When I saw the goat I was disappointed. I was hoping she’d be big and helping deliver her baby wouldn’t be too difficult. I was hoping this delivery wouldn’t turn out like the last one, but the goat was very small.
The owner said, I hadn’t planned on breeding her, because she was so small, but one day the farmhand let the male goat out with the nannies by mistake. I put my hand inside the goat. I could feel how the legs were presented first. I pushed one leg back to turn the goat around, headfirst. I explained to the owner while I was doing it how my children wanted a pet rat, but that my wife was against it. Jen thought that rats smelled. It was not so easy. There was not much room inside the goat. At one point I felt something hard, and realized I was feeling the baby goat’s teeth and then I was able to pull the baby goat’s head down, where it ought to be. This delivery would not be like the last one. The mother goat was able to push on her own now. I would not need my .38 today.

  RESULT: The baby goat was born and the afterbirth delivered and I washed my hands with cold water from a hose while the mother goat licked her baby. The owner, on the way out as we walked through the barn, tried to give me a rat as payment. She picked up a cage and tried to make my hand hold the metal handle on the top of the cage. Oh no, I said. My wife would kill me.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: They shouldn’t have lowered the gasoline prices. They should have kept them the way they were, and all the extra money could have been put toward a slush fund for the development of alternative energy sources.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Poppy’s home! They ran to me. Sarah jumped on my back. Sam gave me a hug. Mia grabbed on to my leg.

  WHAT I SAID TO THE CHILDREN: I almost got you a pet rat, but I knew your mother wouldn’t have liked it.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Rats stink.

  WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: A pet rat! We want a pet rat! Can we have a pet rat please?

  WHAT I SAID: If you keep a rat’s cage clean, then it won’t stink.