Awake
By UC Poika
Copyright 2012 Smashwords Edition
Preface
What Happens Next
Déjà vu a friend of mine says, is not the re- experience of a past life, as I have often thought, but something far more amazing. He believes that when we are still in the womb God tells us of some important events in our lives that are not subject to change. Later, long after we are born, we retain some of that prenatal information and experience certain events as for a second time; déjà vu. But whatever it is, it can become quite a problem should it occur too frequently. One begins to imagine all sorts of things, as did the man in the following story: Gabe first experienced a vague sense that some events in his life had happened before, but as time went on, the feeling grew to the point he was positive it had all happened before. He would be standing by the door to a restaurant, smoking a cigarette, when he would suddenly feel that he had seen the same cars go by, that he had seen the same people coming and going, and that even the snow that fell around him had fallen in precisely the same way at some time in the past, not at any discernible time in his past, but perhaps in some past life, if such things really do exist, and he was becoming more and more convinced that they did.
The problem escalated to include what should have been strange occurrences, but which seemed more and more familiar to him. For example, he was walking home one evening from his favorite restaurant when he noticed a man running down the street from behind. It was unusual but nothing to get upset over, and yet he found himself feeling alarmed. The man did not stop, but rather grabbed the purse of the woman just ahead of him and sped off with it. Another man, further ahead, heard the woman scream, assessed the situation, tripped the purse snatcher and recovered the purse though the purse snatcher got away. Gabe found it (a new experience to him) a thing that happened as if he were vividly recalling it rather than experiencing it for the first time. It was, he was sure, definitely not something one could explain away as simply a case of déjà vu.
“That was really something,” he said to the woman. “I felt like it had happened before.”
“I know what you mean,” the hero of the situation replied. “Déjà vu, I guess.” “No!” the woman replied.
“You felt it too,” David said, feeling sure he was right. “But there is only one thing that bothers me. What happens next?”
The hero and the woman looked at each other for what seemed an eternity to Gabe. Then they turned in silence and began upon their way again, leaving Gabe standing, mouth agape, in the snow that seemed to fall for a second time in the light of the street lamp where they had all been standing.
“What happens next?” Gabe yelled at them as they seemed about to disappear ahead of him. “What happens next?”
Gabe’s problem had reached a new level. He was not only sure that it had all happened before, but that others knew it. He was, to make it short; convinced him he was the only one in the world who did not know what happened next. But no matter who he asked about it, no one would tell him what he sensed they all knew. Perhaps it was too horrible to speak of, but perhaps it was because what happened next, happened to him and everyone felt it was best that he didn’t know that. It was very frustrating and he felt as if he were going mad.
The problem finally got so bad that Gabe took to raving in public. And, one time when he was particularly upset with a waitress, the police arrived and took him to the nearest mental hospital where he proceeded in questioning the psychiatrist on duty so vigorously that he found himself in a seclusion room.
“I remember now,” he shouted to no one there. “I remember what happened next.”
Chapter 1
Awake or Asleep
The boy awoke to the point he was both awake and asleep at the same time. In his dream world he saw He-fell, an alien that was on the run from alien authorities, but who had crashed on earth in his space bubble which held everything he needed for survival especially now that he had moved to the mind of the boy.
Meanwhile in the real world, it was cold in the boy's room. He was warm there under the blankets but the fire had gone nearly out and it was nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit in most, if not all, the house. Thus the boy's excitement over discovering He-fell was no match for the growing coolness felt on his face; head, arms and hands, and he awoke.
He slipped out of bed, naked from head to toe, and shivering, grabbed his trousers and put them on. Then he located his red and black checkered, flannel shirt in the dark, and blindly felt his way toward the barrel stove near the center of the house, which was what he called it but, which was actually a large shack with tar paper on the roof and sides and cold—not cool—linoleum on all the floors. He made his way to the stove by following the warmth, wondering why there was no moonlight, for it had been clear and cold when he arrived home for the night. When he made it to the stove, all things were forgotten as he stirred the coals with a long 3/8” bolt with only a few threads at one end and a large nut at the other. Soon the wood stove was alive with orange coals and sparks that were dying, none too quickly, as the boy fished small wood from the firebox inside the shack but, not right next to the stove. Then piling the smaller stuff in first, he added larger split logs of ash to the top. Then he stood and blew on the coals, partly to help them catch the drier smaller wood on fire, and partly because it was fun to see the light seem to reach out into the darkness only to retreat to the stove once again when he was out of breath. Suddenly, he felt slightly dizzy though he expected to, and had to quit, so he opened the draft all the way open and closed the door to the stove that looked more like a large barrel than anything else.
Then he sat there in the dark and tried to keep his mind on the fire, knowing full well that if he went back to bed, he would surely drift off to sleep whether the fire went out or went wild and burned the shack down. There in the dark he occupied his mind by pondering the fact that he was who he was whether in the world where He-fell, came down to earth or the cold main room of the shack. Both places it seemed to him were very different, but he was the same in either.
The boy looked out into the darkness of the room and thought how very much dreams were like to the real world, and he was for a moment of sleepiness unable to decide for himself which was real and which was the dream. He thought aloud in a mumble, “This is where everything really is, right here on the border.” then realizing he was about to go to sleep he started himself and woke up.
The fire was roaring now with the drafts wide open so he closed the draft in the door of the stove and regulated the blaze in a moment making use of a damper in the stovepipe that led straight up. He tapped the damper handle lightly and finding it too hot of course, he spat on his finger and tried it again, and again it was too hot, so he slid his arm up into the shoulder of his shirt sleeve a bit, and used the flannel of his cuff for a holder and finally in that way managed the fire quite effectively before he retreated to his bed which was now cold.
He realized there in darkness, broken only by the flicker of light coming out the drafts in the door of the stove, as it flashed upon the wall, that reality is not all things or even water, air, earth and fire. It was all things, but also it was time, darkness and light, and was therefore emotions love and hate, visible and invisible things like anger and hope or courage and cowardice, and he realized it was not his body, nor his action, nor his feelings and not even his thoughts. Reality was, like him, what it and everything else was, and must be, either something to come upon or something to be given out.
As the room grew warm and the bed grew bearable, he thanked Reality for being there and as he slipped off into sleep and forgot for the moment, he was the only real thing and that the dream was not, nor was the world. He forgot that however, for years afterward as he learned under a barrage of foreign ideas, and ideals, that piled, itself upon his soul like a blizzard forcing him to retreat under the resultant blanket of snow to a warm abode insulated from the weight of it, yes, but also the coldness of the air also. Thus he dreamed about what it meant.
In that dream he laid beneath the balsam boughs that fell with the last heavy snow. Atop the balsam boughs was a foot and a half of fresh snow. Then atop the fresh snow was a hare, eyes alive with danger, but which had fled his home where the boy now lay, asleep and warm in the cold night, and safe from the strong freezing winds.
The clouds broke, the moon appeared full, and spilled its light upon the forest. The hare ambled away to its backup hole in the snow. The owl watched him carefully, but having no desire to brave the cold, merely fluffed his feathers, turning his head, almost all the way around before, saying nothing, blinked his eyes twice before closing them more permanently.
Then the wind suddenly died, a little at first, then more, then one last rebellious gust and it was still for the snow fell straight down only to imperceptibly slow until at last it was completely imperceptible in the moonlight and ultimately, after a rebellious downfall or two, it also had ceased.
The owl now flew to a more open perch; the wolf roused by the deafening roar of silence rose, shook snow from her back and began a cautious prowl, hoping to pick up the scent of prey. The panther on the other hand stuck his head out to see what the silence was about but waited awhile before settling down to wait for sunlight. Meanwhile the hare huddled in a den of fallen brush also safe from all eyes, and soon not even frightened of the prospect of another rude alien. The boy was warm here under the snow and the boughs. Too warm! So he reached for his coat to loosen it a bit but finding none, not even a shirt!
Stirred by the fact he was indeed naked the boy fought his way toward wakefulness, wishing the sleep away with diligence until at least he was awake in his bedroom in the shack, and it was very warm. Because of that the boy kicked off his covers hoping to cool off only to find it was hotter outside his bed than under the covers.
Rising then, wearily putting on his trousers though he didn't need them and his favorite shirt though he needed that even less, the boy rose and went to the main room where the stove gave off plenty of light. Seeing the stove was hot, he quickly unbuttoned the first two top buttons of his shirt, made sure he had at least two thicknesses of cuff to use for insulation, and shut the stove down almost entirely. Then and only then did he close the drafts in the door entirely and yet the fire roared on. He was about to rethink his strategy when his dad flung open the stove door and proceeded to scoop in a large amount of snow in the stove and on top the wood.
Swearing at the faulty damper he managed to tie a thin wire across the opening and close the flap in the damper as the fire finally settled down. Then turning on the boy he yelled that he had told him to go out in the night and get the wood because the stuff in the firebox was too dry to burn safely all night through. Dejected and tired the boy retreated to his bed lying there with his clothes on just in case he might be needed to help allay the crisis, which was never needed.
“What are you doing up?” his dad yelled as he headed for bed himself later. “Go to bed and get some sleep! They keep complaining you are always falling asleep in class. Do you really want to wind up like your old man?”
Chapter 2
Am I Awake Now
Morning came clear among the pines and the black tar papered shack was strangely quiet except for the white smoke rising out of the partial length of stovepipe sticking up through the snow covered roof. There was no car. There were no machines of any kind and not even a horse. The door burst open and out ambled a light colored lab however, with a calico cat, the former wagging her tail, asking, more begging, for the slightest bit of attention and not to mention any scrap of food.
In a moment the boy came out of the door; no coat, no mittens, just a flannel shirt and blue denim trousers and work boots. He poured out the leftovers from the breakfast table with a couple of large boiled potatoes for good measure on an old iron skittle he had shaken the snow out of for the animals. The calico cat eyed the dish while the dog, eying the cat, ate every scrap she could manage. But, when the lab was gone, the calico moved in and licked the skillet to the rust beneath the grease. Then the man yelled at the boy to get ready for school and the boy, eager to be out of the cold, went back through the door of the shack catching his shirt on the spring that held the plywood door shut, tearing it enough so that it made noise.
“Be careful!” the man yelled. “Shirts don't grow on trees, you know.” then he patted the boy on the head, undid that snag and swatted the boy on the butt as he headed for his bedroom.
The boy soon walked along the logging trail toward the township road that would lead him to a county road which would be where he would meet a bus, and on to school should he be unfortunate enough to make it on time, which he always did, for though school was boring, sitting around the shack by himself was worse. The pines quickly gave way then to small poplars, too small to log off, and too thick for a grown man to walk through easily. The boy spied fresh hare tracks in the snow and thought how skillful they were at deceiving man and dog concerning their trails. Just then the thought of the old white lab sniffing the hare's tracks and heading the way the hare had come instead of the way it was going, and he laughed aloud, enjoying its echo off the distant balsams to both sides of the trail. “Old-Cold-Nose!” He said to Nobody-There whom he actually thought might be somebody just as Reality was. Then nearly stumbling on the high center of the road he chose to walk in the rut on the right, since this was America, and in America it is customary to take to the right side in all of one's travels so he thought.
What was this? He couldn't believe it! There were coyote tracks right in the middle of the road! It was little wonder there were few, if any, rabbit tracks among the hare tracks since they were smaller and easier for the coyotes to catch. Why the coyotes must nearly outnumber the little varmints at least in these parts,' he thought, hearing a western accent, he wished he could manage it out loud the same as he had heard it in his thoughts. Then he heard one snap and then another as if something almost lost its footing in the brush nearby.
The boy now stood attentively and listened. Then he took two steps and suddenly stopped, and experienced the same sounds in the brush. “Damned brush wolves!” he complained to the government whom he knew was either hard of hearing or out of earshot at all times.
As he walked out onto the township road later he caught a glimpse of a whitetail deer disappearing into the jack pines up ahead. High above in the frozen air there were no eagles, not even an owl, nothing but blue sky in all directions and the sun, not so low in the sky, brought out the glare of the snow until he had to shield his eyes, albeit uselessly. However, the walking was easier here and he made much better time for the truck tracks in the snow—the same ones every time—did not go as deep and were wider than the snow filled ruts that led to the shack.
However when he reached the county road, he was amazed to find it had been plowed. He had hoped it would be too deep for city people to drive in and the school would declare a Snow Day, but no such luck, since there in the distance, the snowplow topped a hill well ahead of the school bus which was yet to come.
The boy was tired because he had to tend the stove so the man could get his rest. Piece cutting for the county was hard work but it paid better than most logging concerns around. They were lucky to have this job. All the boy had to do was go to school and put up firewood when he got home even though it was always dark when he got there. The boy wished the school bus took him home first at night instead of picking him up first in the morning.
Standing still in the cold he did not look at the Fredrick's field, nor the distant sight of the Johnsens’ barn on the far hill where the snowplow had disappeared now. His trousers were so cold they felt like ice wherever and whenever they touched him. His shirt and coat had a lesser affect but quickly let the cold in, and his boots were filled with an ache that felt like the loneliness he felt sometimes for reasons he didn't understand whenever he thought of his mother. Thus he stood very still, not wanting to touch his pants, but the bus was not there yet.
He walked one side of the road a ways, then the other, and back again when he became so warm he could not stand still for shivering any longer. He started to worry when his feet began to really hurt, but he knew well that so long as there was pain there, there was no frostbite yet. Finally he gave up and stared at his mysteriously dry boots which he moved only to kick first one heel and then the other immediately thereafter.
Then at long last he heard it. The governor to the big engine of the empty bus kicked in as it topped the hill in the opposite direction that the plow had disappeared in. There it was, a little yellow school bus on a hill far away where stood no rugged cross, he thought beginning not to make much sense he was so cold. Why was it that the last few minutes it took that bus to reach him way out there where he was sure to freeze to death if it hadn't—why was it that, was more unbearable than all the waiting time before, and why was it that, made no sense at all and yet always was the case?
The bus suddenly appeared in front of the boy but raced right on by to the corner and for a moment he thought it might leave him standing there. Then the driver slammed on the brakes turned onto the township road, stopped, then backing into the county road so that it faced the direction of the city when it pulled to the side, and the doors flopped open. Why did she always do that every morning? Didn't she know he was so cold that every single moment was precious to him?
“Come on, Boy!” the driver yelled. “I ain't got all damned day, you know.”
The boy thought about going back but realizing he probably couldn't make it, he said nothing, but stepping slowly and carefully, managed to get on the bus and sit down in the front seat behind the driver.
“When the hell's that old man of yours going to get a real job and move to town?” she asked.
The boy didn't know so he didn't say anything. “Didn't you hear me, Boy?” she yelled. He had no more intention of talking to her than wrestling a mother bear for her cubs, so he still said nothing.
“Damned shack brat!” she said under her breath, looking at him in the mirror, and shook her head in disgust.
“I've got kids too you know,” she yelled but the sound was muffled by his cold ears and his winter cap
“When I ask them a question, they at least have sense enough to answer me.”
He was excited! This was what a mother was! How glad he was then not to ever have known his own! He had been meaning to ask the man about her, but if she was anything like this mother, he did not want to know. Then the driver became quiet as the bus eventually topped that big hill towards town, slowed halfway down the other side hoping the Olson's kid would be waiting which she always was. “Why can't you be like the Olson kid? She's never late. I keep picturing you freezing to death on the trip back to your place after I leave and you're not there. That's the only reason I wait too. You ought to be grateful enough to at least say thanks once in a while,” she rambled on as she pulled up to pick up the Olson kid.
“What the hell stinks, Lena?” she asked the kid.
“Cow shit! The cows have all got the diarrhea. They smell like that there then.”
“Yeah?” the driver seemed to ask. “What the hell did you do, bring a cow or two with you!”
The Olson kid laughed, her large pudgy body shaking in more places than a kid her age should have. “I should be a comedienne” the driver said sarcastically.
Stop after stop took place and soon the bus was full of screaming girls and boisterous boys as the boy slept. Then pulling up to the school in town the bus quickly emptied out while the boy still slept, “Hey! Hey you!” the driver yelled at the boy. “You going to get off the bus!”
The boy woke to the smell of exhaust fumes and coughed as he inhaled them unwisely being half asleep yet. Then, clearly distressed, he rose from his seat and climbed down the steps to the sidewalk in front of the school. Then watching the lines of the shovels in the snow he made his way to the school doors where a large blond kid grabbed him and slammed him into the wooden school doors.
“What did you do that for?” the boy asked.
“The hell of it!” the kid said as the boy turned and walked through the door.
“What's with you?” Tommy Blackstone asked him. “Didn't that hurt?”
“Not much,” the boy said and went on to class, where sitting down he soon drifted off to sleep again.
“Robin!” the teacher yelled, his face inches from the boy's own face. “Robin! Wake up!”
The sounds startled the boy awake.
“Are you awake, Rob?” the teacher asked.
“Tweet! Tweet! Tweet little Robin,” the kid who slammed him into the schoolhouse door said.
It made no difference to the boy who never knew until he started school that he had such a name. Nobody had ever called him anything but Boy before. What a stupid name Robin was, so he thought at first. The man had told him his mother named him that which was another reason he thought he might not to want to know her.
“You have a visitor, Robin,” the teacher said. “Where?” the boy asked, looking around, giving rise to the general laughter of the other kids.
“In the office of course, Robby!” the teacher said. “Oh!” he said without meaning to sound like he didn't care.
“Don't you care that your mother is just down the hall in the office?” He-fell asked so he thought.
“Mr. Peterson! Can we expect that you will be joining us for lunch?” the voice of his teacher could be heard shouting at the boy who thought he again awoke with a start. “I say, Mr. Peterson, I really don't understand what good it does you to come to school at all. Will you be having lunch with the other students or would you rather sleep?”
The boy groaned and began to put his head down. “”Not here, Mr. Peterson!” the teacher yelled. “If you are just going to sleep the day away, go down to the nurse's office. She has a bed there and you can sleep as long as you want. Mr. Peterson!” The boy raised his head again; “the nurse's office; now!”
The boy rose and walked to the nurse's office which he was not sure he had ever seen a nurse in before. This time was different for a petite blond in about her late twenties was standing there waiting for him.
“Hello,” she said compassionately. “Are you Robin Peterson?”
The boy looked around him before he realized she had of course used his school name. “Just call me, Boy,” he said. “I like that better.”
“Boy, it is then,” she said and motioned to the white bed the boy was used to sleeping on.
“Are you my mother?” the boy asked.
“Aw!” she said. “You don't even know who your own mother is.!”
“Does that mean you are not?” he asked.
“No, Robby... I mean, Boy... I am not your mother.”
“Am I awake now, or what?” he said.
Chapter 3
I Am Real
The boy laid on the hard bed in the nurse's office and listened to the nearly inaudible voice of the nurse and someone's voice he didn't recognize.
“What do you mean, Anna?” the male voice asked. “The boy is clearly suffering,” she said.
“Suffering!” he said. “Suffering from what? He's just sleepy, Anna. That's all!”
“That's all!” Anna said outraged. “He isn't physically ill yet, but he will be if something isn't done and soon! Besides there is a reason he sleeps all the time. And, I want to find out what that is.”
“Okay, Anna. Do what you have to? I'll give you two a few more days. But, you have to admit there is no sense in him continuing to come to school at all if he is just going to sleep here.”
“Make it a couple of weeks and you have a deal,” Anna said.
“We'll see, Anna. We'll see!”
“Mr. Birdholder!” she almost yelled as if calling after someone. Then the boy didn't hear anything else.
The boy laid there in the calm, clean, rough, white bed and looked at the cream colored wall and ceiling marveling how bright it seemed though the lighting was soft white light completely unlike the bare bulbs at home. The off white tile wall beside the bed was cold with a fake granite pattern, complete with black jagged grain, the floor tile was nearly the same but a bit more creamy colored and grayer grain. Mysterious round conduit ran up the far wall looking like they might be tubes with black round wires coming out the end that had obviously once been painted the same color as the conduit on the walls and ceiling were now. Mysteriously also even the fixtures that held the quietly buzzing fluorescent lights were the same color but the boy was fascinated by the long white bolts that fastened the fixtures to the ceiling. What wonderful pokers they would make once the paint burned off! Finally his eyes came to rest on an odd thing in the floor which he could not quite comprehend.
“Boy!” Anna said as she walked back in the room. “Are you asleep yet?”
The boy rolled over a little in the bed to look at her more closely. She stood very near and as he looked at her he wanted to hug her and hold her close to him and... He was unsure what should happen next after that. “What is that thing there?” he asked changing his attentions to the odd thing in the floor.
“What? She said and looked down.
“That,” he said as she put her toe very near to it and made a face while the boy nodded. “It's just a floor drain.”
What in the world did that mean? The boy had no idea. But, it was clear he was really quite curious.
“When they mop, or if something spills it can run down the drain that way,” Anna explained unable to believe the boy had never seen a floor drain before.
The boy's curiosity satisfied, he lay back on the large fluffy pillow and sighing a long and large sigh he closed his eyes and a moment later he heard Ana say that when He-fell awoke they were going to have a long talk. The boy was confused for why would such a pretty, little, young thing want to talk to He-fell, an elderly looking fat alien who had no interest in such things as women. Could she indeed harbor a secret that might help He-fell to produce enough fuel to resume his flight from the alien authorities? Besides the alien didn't even look sleepy in the slightest; he never did. “What does she mean by that?” he asked He-fell.
“What?” the alien asked.
“Anna! What does she mean by saying when you wake up she wants to have a talk with you?”
“Anna!” the alien said. “You must be hearing things! There is no Anna here, my Friend.”
“I know,” the boy said. “She's in the real world.” “This is the real world. That world is just a material world,” He-fell said.
“A what?” the boy asked unfamiliar with the word he used for that world.
“A material world, a place with things in it some god or other sends to the minds of, in this case humanity, that they cannot help but believe in, during their wakeful times when they are not what they call dreaming and sometimes even when they are dreaming in order to keep them from becoming irrational beings.”
“You mean like crazy people!”
“More like Buddhists,” the alien said. “So that's how she did it!” the boy marveled. “Did what, Boy?” the alien queried.
“She spoke in both worlds at once,” the boy insisted but He-fell looked to be a skeptic. “She did! I heard her!” the boy insisted.
He-fell shook his head and went to work on some machine type thing that was of no particular consequence to the boy. The boy looked about at the space bubble and took in its clear, glowing surface. 'I wonder whether he will ever let me go in it?' the boy thought. 'It is too warm here in the Sahara. The sun is too hot. And, there is nothing to see but miles and miles of sand in all directions,' he broke off paying attention to his dream and began just to pass the time but while deep in thought he realized He-fell had crashed to earth and destroyed a large portion of the earth's vegetation when the space bubble fell. The boy tried to picture the large comet—which was really He-fell's space bubble burning in our atmosphere lighting up the sky even at midday as He-fell had said it. He marveled to think of all the mighty creatures, the tyrannosaurus, the brontosaurus, the pterodactyl and many others dying because of climate changes occurring much too rapidly for them to adapt and to think He-fell was to blame.
“Glad to see that you are among the living,” a nurse he thought to be Anna joked as he too realized he was back in her world again.
“Am I awake now?” he asked.
“What do you mean, Boy?” the nurse asked.
“The boy,” he said, speaking of himself in third person for the first time in his life and feeling strangely odd as he did so. “He doesn't think the world of dreams and the so-called real world are really as real as he is.”
“But will the boy want to talk about it?” the nurse asked.
“Are you asking me?”
“Yes, I suppose I am, Robby. What do you think? Would the boy like to talk to me?”
“Why don't you ask him?”
“I wasn't sure you would allow it, Robby.”
“What do I have to do with it? He can speak for his self .”
“Would you like to talk about anything, Robby? You can tell me anything you need to. I am here for you to help you.”
“Why did he do it, Anna?”
“You are not talking about the boy now are you, Robby?” the nurse said ignoring any reference to Anna.
“No, he needed to sleep too, you know.”
“Yes,” the nurse said. “That was too bad but he must have thought he had a good reason.”
“His dad is like that. He never thinks about the boy until it's too late. Now the boy is gone and I don't know whether he'll ever be able to come back.”
The nurse, Marlena, seemed suddenly to produce a syringe and was rolling up the boy's, or do I mean Robby's, shirt sleeve to the shoulder. “There will only be a little sting and then it won't hurt at all. Is that all right?”
“Why are you doing that?” I mean, I know you are going to give me a shot. I just never understood why they did it to him either. He wasn't sick and I am not either. Why do it, Anna?” he asked out of confusion.
“It'll help you sleep,” Marlena said.
“Why? I don't need sleep. The boy did, but now it's too late. He'll probably never be the same now. Why he'll be out of...”
'That's powerful stuff!' Marlena thought having never used it before.
Later the boy, rousing a little said, “Was that fun or what?” then he repeated the question to the nurse who said that it was and concluded her remarks with strict orders for him to sleep. In a moment the boy was indeed asleep, the alien was gone, Anna was gone and he wasn't even aware he... (?)
Chapter 4
No You Are Not
It was dark and silent in the nurse's office and strangely cool, almost cold. He could barely make out that the entire room was white of one shade or another. The sliver of light that entered the room through the nearly closed door was bright enough to give the entire room an eerie appearance the boy loved, for it meant he missed the bus and would need a ride home, though he never remembered having ridden in anything but the bus in his entire life. And, as he closed his eyes and laid back on his back, glad he was back—somewhat silly but he had returned—and someone he thought to be Anna took hold of his right wrist and with two fingers in just the right place, stared at his wrist as if she had seldom seen such a thing before, then smiled as he opened his eyes.
“Good evening! How are you?” she said.
He was not sure he was okay but he lied perhaps and said he was. His throat was so dry it hurt. His head felt like it was full of cotton. And his limbs seemed to be unusually heavy.
“Weird feeling isn't it?” she asked.
He coughed and nodded the affirmative.
“Your father is in the waiting room. He would really like to see you. Do you mind if I allow him to come here, or would you prefer to go out there just this one time and visit?”
“What is my alternative?” he asked.
“You don’t have to see him, if you don’t think you're ready yet?” she said.
“It's all the same to me,” he said, and in a minute a man that looked more like the alien than the man they called his dad walked in as the light came on.
“You can sit here, Jonathan,” the psychiatric nurse said.
“Hello, Boy,” Jonathan said.
The boy tried to say something but found it was not as easy as he had expected and coughed uncontrollably for quite some time. Finally a compromisingly smaller gulp allowed him to stop coughing and to take a large breath. He looked at his father and shook his head, being understood as a comment on the ordeal and nothing personal.
“Damn!” his father said. “Damned sorry, son. I feel like it's all my fault.”
“I think it is, Dad,” he managed.
His dad was taken aback as silence ensued longer than was comfortable for anyone of the three.
“Yes, it is your father. That is quite right, Robby,” the nurse said, pretending he had meant the statement as merely an affirmation of the fact that it was indeed his dad. Jonathan reacted with near joy, restrained by his knowledge of his son, how his mind worked when he was normal, how he was always direct like that and how the nurse had graciously allowed him an out that Robby might, even, accept.
“Glad to see you're back to yourself, Son,” Jonathan said in hope. “It's been a very long time.”
“For whom?” the boy said.
“That's enough, Robby!” the nurse commanded. The boy looked at her with a scowl. “Were you there?” he asked her.
“No,” she said and patted his hand. “I was not. I guess we might have expected some bitterness. I am most sorry, Robby. Forgive me, please!”
The boy rolled over on his left side facing the white wall, prompting Jonathan to arise, cough and excuse himself. After it was clear his father was gone, the boy cast an eager eye at the nurse. She was still there.
“When you feel better, come join us. We are gathering around the Christmas tree in a few minutes. There will be presents and a late, turkey sandwich and eggnog. Would you like that, Robby?”
When the nurse left, the boy was alone and he thought how pathetic reality really was. He had burned out as a kid and wound up fighting for his sanity over a decade later. As he looked at the flat, tan colored conduit on the walls now that had replaced the round white tubes from years ago, he remembered the amazing insights he gained shortly before his, “breakdown,” he believed they called it, had come for him. Amazing he thought, rose from bed and heading out to join the group in front of the imitation tree, he wondered what part of that he experienced was real.
However, when he came to the day room I was sitting on the couch and he joined me without any permission or even affirmation I existed or not. I in turn, looked him over, up and down. He looked like one of us, but it was clear he would not be here long. Being amazed to see it again I found myself staring at him which made him nervous.
“This is Robby, people,” said a large bald man with ruddy complexion and numerous red freckles on his arms, face and even the fronts of his massive hands. “Say, 'Howdy.' to Robby.”
They all said, “Hi, Rob!” some seriously, most merely to pacify the technician.
“You know,” I said. “It seems I know you,” but no one understood yet.
Chapter 5
Touched or Crazy
The boy's dad laid in bed sick with a fever due to an infection of a recurring nature. He was too sick to do any real lifting and yet capable of moving around quite effectively on the bed and with lesser capabilities to ever bathe, shave and eat without much assistance. Miles away from a library he could not read and with everyone else either busy working, at school, or too young to play with to the extent he needed to divert his attention from his pain, which was really quite severe, he taught the baby to strike at his face with a pipe through the bars of the baby's crib, which he pulled close to the bed so that he need not get up to play with the child.
As the baby struck at the wide-eyed face of his dad its mother laughed, grateful for the assistance that allowed her to work about the house with greater ease. However, the baby's dad was not quite quick enough as the baby learned to swing the ceramic pipe bowl with ever greater expertise and eventually hit his mark, breaking his father's nose.
Though he had been named for an angelic figure, St. Nicholas, the baby now a boy was called little Nick for his expertise in breaking is father's nose at such a tender age! Growing up, his mother often referred to him as a little imp which he came to understand was a demon more the size of a gremlin than a devil, and though mischievous it was not as much given to premeditated evil, the nature of small boys being closely related albeit by accident more than by design. However, the thought he might have special powers came not of his own imagination but by default because of his repudiated propensity for extraordinary, even delightful impish behavior.
The boy however was introverted, staying out of the way of the other ten children at home at any given time that seemed to delight in teasing him, laughing at him or otherwise causing some measure of unpleasantness. The result was that the boy played by his self, often standing alone while the others played, his foot on the teeth of the garden rake and the handle, striking his shoulder at a steady but slow rate.
He was not just playing with the rake, however. He was telling stories. Who too? That's a good question. Who do children tell their tales to when no one else is around?
One of these times he spoke to God and told Him he wanted to die and come back to life so that he could tell everyone what it really was like to die and come back to life. During the course of that event someone overheard him and explained that Christ had died for his sins and that all he need do was choose to accept that as the truth and he would be saved from damnation, or paying for his own sins. But the Christian plan of salvation to him, he said to God was not believable since he did not believe that any man could be the Son of God, and that he wouldn't have anything to do with Jesus seemingly out of jealousy and not because he was aligned with the Muslim doctrine which is really quite similar.
“”What? Look at that!” his brother Samuel said. “What did you do, you little imp? Look at that weather!”
Feeling guilty the boy said, “I didn't do anything! I was just talking to God!”
“Well, you must have hurt His feelings then,” Samuel said. “Look! He's crying!”
With that the boy looked at the large wet flakes falling on the green lawn and they did look like huge wet tears falling from heaven itself. The boy, Nicky, was impressed and ran for the safety of the house and his mother who when he told her what went down simply stopped her work long enough to say, “Be careful with that kind of thought sometimes it's not true.”
“I am not lying!” he insisted.
“I know you don't think you are, but just because you think it's like that doesn't make it so. If it's true, God spoke to you. But if it's not, that's called delusion.”
“Mama!” he jumped ahead of her thought. “Do you think I'm gifted?”
“You're an amazing little boy but you are not all that gifted. And, you don't want to be, trust me. Just go ahead and be a little boy. Grow and have fun. Now go and play. I'm busy!”
The boy, Nicky, knew he believed God had spoken to him and that he was therefore gifted. However, even his own mother didn't believe he was. Therefore in the child's mind he was delusional, and the only time he ever heard that word, was when he asked what was wrong with the weird woman he had seen standing and sounding silly while visiting a neighbor. “She's quite delusional right now,” his mother had said of the lady. Later he learned from someone else in the family she was crazy. “Am I crazy, or gifted?” he asked when alone and not daring to think he was talking to God, who he knew demanded that He be believed and that, not to believe Him was to strike God in the face, so to speak.
Nicky's problems were not all religious but often times he asked God to help him accomplish things that he thought a grand idea. For example, he had a problem with his trigonometry class. He had an A average going and he knew it but as he prepared for his a test he came down with a mild case of the flu, and had to stay home the day of the test. Afraid he would forget what he had studied he asked God as he went to bed that night to help him study by giving him the problems he would have to work the next day in the makeup test while he slept. What happened was amazing for the next day the teacher made up several problems for him to deal with on the spot, and he was gone only a very short time to an empty room to take his test for he had already solved them in his sleep the night before with God's help. Everyone including Nick was amazed!
Chapter 6
Between God and the Devil
Time went by and he could not keep a job and thus found himself cutting firewood for a source of income. Nicholas chose to cut the tops other loggers left in the woods having no money to invest buying stumpage. One time in particular he was carrying a short four foot log to his pickup truck to take home and saw up into 16” logs for burning in older wood stoves, when he stepped into a hole with his left foot, lost his balance and the log which was about 10” through fell against his neck and it hurt so badly he almost passed out. Nicholas managed to get home but soon could do nothing but lie on the couch and watch TV.
Time passed and he began to pray partly out of boredom and partly because he wanted to be an active participant in the world around him. One day as he lay on his sofa he conceived of the idea he could be used by God now that he had regained some of his mobility only to have no job to make use of it. Thus he suddenly had a feeling he should get up off the couch and go downtown.
Rising, he walked down the alley, feeling pressured to move faster and faster. Then hurrying toward downtown he found himself standing at an intersection behind a woman who was quite a bit older than he was. She began to step out into the street to see whether the cars were starting to come when he noticed a large, candy truck suddenly reach the same intersection in a rush to get through on yellow. It was about to hit the lady when he grabbed her from behind, snatching her from the jaws of death.
“What the hell are you doing?” She shouted standing straight in front of him.
Just then the truck went by with a loud noise frightening both of them.
“My God!” She exclaimed, “I would have been killed! Thank you so much!”
“Don't thank me. Thank God,” he said and she marveled.
Out in public now but severely introverted with his thoughts having turned inward on him while he laid around waiting for his injuries to heal, he marveled that God not only could, but would use a crazed man like himself and it became irrelevant whether he was
Touched, for even he knew he was at least starting to go crazy. Especially since he had read that turning the mind inward upon itself was to go insane, he believed he was in fact insane, he thought though most would not have been able to track it...
As time went by however, he began to become completely introverted and mowed the lawn nearly in the dark by the light of the streetlights on the corner, when a neighbor gave him hell for doing it.
“I am only mowing my lawn,” he replied.
“Not in the dark when I'm trying to watch the big game you don't! Are you completely crazy?”
He was almost done so he finished up and went back into the house. Later that night he snuck out to go sit on a bench by the lake alone, completely beside himself with loneliness but unable to connect even with his mother with whom he was living at the time. “My God!” he said to the Lord. “You are all that I have left. Are You real though? Are You even there? And,” he looked at his feet saddened by his pathetic condition, “Do You even give a shit? Do you give a shit that I need a hug so bad that if I had any money I'd give it all to an ugly fat prostitute if she would but wrap her arms about me just once. Everybody thinks I'm crazy. Am I really nuts? Will I always be crazy, I mean? I know my mind has turned inward on itself! I will, won't I? I know that I will. It hurt so bad when me and Joy broke up. I was supposed to marry her. What happened? Is it my fault I can't keep a job? I know that it is, but what can I do about it? It seems you have to be able to take shit to have a job and the more shit you take the more they hand it out. That one guy hired me for minimum wage even though he hated poor people. Was that my fault too? He would have killed me; he was working me so hard, the crazy fucking grizzly! God, I just don't know some things. I don't know what I don't know, and what I don't know is that I don't know! God what the hell is wrong with me?”
Then he went home and read the part in the Bible he had read before in his religious readings and at that time had fallen on his face and had his first seizure! Surprise! Surprise! When he read again those words, “If I do what I do not want to do it is no longer I that do it but sin, living in me that does it,” he fell on the floor and having a seizure he broke his glasses with no money to replace them.
Another time, his mother had walked to town to get the two of them some food and he asked God to show him who was gay among the celebrities. He saw star after star and he was amazed and begged God to take them home and when he learned later they had all died of AIDS he fell on the floor and cried with great remorse. But as if he had not learned his lesson he turned his efforts to San Francisco and asked God to repeat the earthquake from back at the turn of the century in an effort to show first that God existed and that He hated queers too. But when nothing happened he fled to the backyard because his sister-in-law had suddenly come to visit and though he kind of liked her, he was still deep within a shell, so he didn't really want anything to do with her.
“Nicholas!” his mother yelled a short while later. “Come here! Look at this!”
“What?” he said reluctant to go around the visitor?
“On TV! There’s a gigantic earthquake in San Francisco!” she said seeming more than just upset, “My God! It's terrible! Thousands are dead, they're saying, and billions if not trillions of dollars in damage! Even a freeway overpass collapsed!”
“Really!” he said aloud. “There is a God!” He added softly as he walked across the lawn to the house. He couldn't believe the destruction and devastation. Was it really his fault? But it wasn't all homosexuals who died or who were affected by it. There were children, families and heterosexuals as well, so it took some time to realize God does not approve of those who tolerate homosexuals either. To this day he is touched by scenes of that bridge that collapsed on so many cars.
Then days later he took a job with an out of town newspaper delivering papers. As the result of his own resourcefulness he was delivering papers at a reduced rate to the local university campus. One morning he stopped in front of the largest dormitory in town when he was greeted by a man walking backwards down the street.
“God! Do something!” he said. “That guy is crazier than I am!” Then he feared God might kill the guy so he pleaded with Him beneath his breath not to harm the poor bastard though he had no way of knowing whether the man was a Christian or not. Years later he found out that the man did it as a stunt for the record books and that he was neither a danger nor crazy. Still he feared the man might have been killed by God or the Devil, whoever was doing it all back then when quite some time later the man died in a house fire alone.
Later that same day he went into that dorm and though the lobby was full of students he found himself in the elevator with a beautiful young coed. “How is everything in your world,” he asked and smiled.
“Great!” she replied really quite thrilled apparently. “Isn't it wonderful about the fall of the wall?”
“You mean in Berlin?” he asked her.
Isn't it great! They are all saying peace now!”
“Yeah, I know. But do you know what God says?” “No. What are you talking about?” she said.
“It says to beware when they are saying, Peace!
Peace! For then is the end come!”
“Really?” she said. “Where does it say that, in the Bible?”
“I don't know. God never told me that!”
She looked at him strangely and her eyes became alive with, so he judged, a fear of him. Then she reached for the buttons by the door of the elevator and moments later as she exited she said a cordial good-bye and was gone from his sight forever perhaps. “He also set himself up as judge as to whether the Space Shuttle Challenger was something God approved of or a waste of valuable resources that could have gone to the poor. He set himself up as a false prophet and encouraged the whole project until at last he knew he could never convince God not to “ Let her blow” as he had said when he first prophesied against it.
But, I am sorry I have bored you. The point is he was on a spiritual high getting everything he wanted from God if that was who was doing it, he wondered that himself from, time to time.
Then one night after he gave up the paper route it snowed and he and his favorite dog went out to shovel he white stuff, having simply asked for it that he might have had something to do. As he shoveled his voices began to talk and pointed out that just as it snowed when he asked, so both God and the Devil had been working for him. He was proud of his position which he had learned from a Clint Eastwood movie that standing between both opposing strong forces he stood to get anything he wanted for he alone had what they wanted. And, in a sense his life had become a battle between good and evil, God and the Devil. Why not? What could the Devil do to him? He was one of the poorest people in the world and crazy to boot.