Carry Me Home (110 page)

EES closed.

Many of the High Meadow staff—Van Deusen, Mariano, Wagner, Gallagher, me—picked up part-time employment in town, then quickly pirated portions of EES’s equipment, moved it to my yard and garage, and to other locales about Mill Creek Falls. That enabled the vets to regroup, reopen—not at High Meadow but soon in a vacant mill by the Loyalsock, and not as EES but as ETS (a pun on Estimated Termination of Service), the new letterhead reading Environmental Thermal Systems.

Stronger legal efforts ensued. Hoeller, Tashkor and Rasmuellen took it upon themselves to force a reversal of the IRS ruling. They first obtained limited relief; the farm being allowed to operate within limited parameters—specifically disallowing any capital expenditures. The IRS (via court alteration of the initial ruling) allowed Sara and the children to remain in the house. The judge further acquiesced: Although he closed High Meadow as a community and as a corporation, he allowed it temporarily to be run as a family farm with “no more than twelve nonfamily employees.” That allowed needed latitude. Rifkin stayed on, as did Thorpe, Renneau, Denahee and others. Sherrick split, went back to Indiana or maybe to Illinois or Iowa. Said he had old business to straighten out. Erik Schevard took over farm sales. Vu Van Hieu still handled the books. Ty stayed, not in the bunkhouse with the others but in Pewel and Brigita’s original cabin in the woods on the far side of the pond. I don’t believe his depression could have been deeper but with all that was coming down, and all the scurrying to regroup, none of us noticed.

Bobby had no gumption left for legal battles. Instead he found himself battling for his life. “We don’t want to make any conclusions from one test,” he was told. “There’s a chance something else caused these results.” Then, “We won’t know for sure until we take a biopsy and analyze it. We don’t want to jump to conclusions until we can verify the findings.”

In short order his symptoms spiked—fever, fatigue. He lost sight in his left eye. He moved, temporarily, bitterly, hoping they’d find it was bacterial or amoebic, maybe melioidosis or liver or lung flukes, not to the provincial RRVMC but to the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Haven, Connecticut, where the hematologists were among the top blood experts in the world.

On Wednesday, 16 December 1981, Robert Wapinski was diagnosed as suffering from aplastic anemia.

S
ATURDAY, 9 JANUARY 1982
, Mill Creek Falls—How much time? he thought. How much time left? He didn’t want to talk to anyone. His eyes were bloodshot, his arms ached, his stomach felt hollow, bloated yet empty, nauseated. Eating did not fill the void. Drinking did not take the pain away. How had they explained it? The low platelet count had caused a spontaneous bleed behind the left retina which caused the loss of sight in the center of the eye. A blind patch. He lifted the glass, sipped, swallowed. The beer was tepid. The last glass from a pitcher he’d killed alone.

“You think you’re dying,” she had said to him earlier. He hadn’t answered, had shaken his head but he’d thought, I know I’m dying. It’s just a matter of time. Again he sipped from the warm glass. He’d eaten, cleaned the plate, mopped up the last of the tomato sauce with a piece of buttered bread, eaten braciola, Grandma Pisano’s old recipe which Linda had given to Aaron Holtz, which had become a favorite at the White Pines Inn.

There were few patrons. It was cold, Endless Mountains January icy, windy cold. And early, midafternoon, too early for the vets to come, to start the Saturday night shots and beer ritual which used to anger Bobby who did not understand their need for release but saw instead their drunken carcasses on his porch the next morning, saw too their flimsy bank accounts on review days, felt he wasn’t paying them enough, sure they were blowing too much on eat-drink-and-be-merry, sure for so long that tomorrow you will not die.

“You’re not dying,” she had said.

He’d looked into those eyes, into those beautiful hazel eyes, and he’d thought about detaching retina, about blind spots, about personal, cultural, governmental blind spots. “I know, Babe,” he’d said. “I ... It’s just ...”

“You have a cold,” Linda had said.

“I just feel for him,” Tony had answered. “I feel ... I feel ambushed. I feel ... And I was in those same areas. This Agent Orange shit ...”

“Babe, I have to go.”

“I know. Good luck with the birth.”

“We’ll talk when I get home. There’s chicken in the fridge. And noodles. Slice up some apples for the veggie.”

Apples, he thought. That’s where the other vets are. At Treetop and Cannello’s Apple Fritter. Or at the new McDonald’s at the mall. Working. Washing floors. Swabbing tables. The country was going to hell in a hand basket. Some government economists said the recession was ending. Blind spots! Or maybe just blind. They’d dropped the federal discount rate from 14 to 12 percent to stimulate the economy and it had stimulated only the service sector. American steel was dying. Forty-seven percent steelworker unemployment. The ripple effect from the Monongahela Valley rust belt led Kinnard/Chassion to close all but one of their toilet paper–making Yankee Rollers, to lay off two-thirds of their workers. Recession or not, don’t people still shit?! Were they using leaves? It was times like this when the lure of the old Harley surged and Tony wanted to say, “Fuck it. Fuck it all! Don’t mean nothin. Tomorrow it could be me.”

Aaron Holtz had put a large sign over the bar, above the bottles. “Hungry? Out of work? Eat your Sony.”

Maybe ... Tony thought. Maybe if it were only Linda and the girls ... they really might be better off without me ...

Aaron brought a fresh pitcher. Tony shook his head. “On me,” Aaron said. “I’ll join ya for one in a minute.”

... especially if ... I got it on my knees. My shoulders. Chlor-fuckin-acne. We were in the same area, drank the same water, slept in the same mud. If I’d known I’d never of gotten her pregnant again. Teratogenic. Monster making!

“Hey, paesan!” Aaron returned, sat, filled Tony’s glass, his own. “How ya doin?”

“Agh.
Mezza-mezz
. Just trying to get some space. Trying to close myself off to deal with it.”

“He’s goina be all right, isn’t he?”

“This is serious shit, Man. You know, maybe if he hadn’t been so ambitious ... You know, not for himself. Altruistically ambitious?”

“Yeah, Tone. That’s a good phrase. He was like that.”

“Fuck!” Tony shot from limp gloom to anger. “Don’t talk of him like he’s dead.”

“Naw. Naw, Tone. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Damn it, Aaron.” Tony slowly banged a fist on the table. “I want to scream. I just want to scream. I’m on overload. On tilt. We got ourselves overextended again. And ... shit! I’m thirty-four, Man. I can start again but I’m feeling awful old to start again.”

“What about your classes?”

“Augh ... they’re ... you know, I’m doing pretty well. I ... I keep wondering though, how much time? How much time do I got left? Am I next?”

“Maybe ... you know what Bobby’d say? He’d say, ‘What are you going to do with the time you’ve got left?’”

“Yeah. He would, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. And what have I done with the time God gave me that he didn’t give Jimmy or Manny or all them Magnificent Bastards? Why did I get the extra years? I don’t deserve—”

“Unt-uh.” Aaron interrupted. “What am I going to do to deserve them?”

Monday, 11 January 1982—Sara climbed onto the bed with Noah and Paul. Am sat at the foot. The upstairs was cool. Bobby had never finished the roof work over the boys’ room, had never fully insulated the attic. The boys, Noah almost seven now, and Paulie a preschooler, slept in one double bed beneath a country red-and-blue gingham quilt. Am, a month over two, had toddled in at first light and Sara had followed, singing softly. “Hello, everyone. Today, we’re going to have some fun ...” It was a song she used with the first- and second-grade classes she substitute-taught.

She sat, her back to the wall, her legs under the quilt, the boys snuggled close to her. At the foot of the bed, Am stood, her chubby, little legs wide, bounced, giggled. “We start the day with exercise ...”

Paulie sat up, kicked his feet under the quilt attempting to topple his sister, then moved back in close but not touching. Noah was still, quiet. The moment Sara had come in he’d clung to her thigh, nuzzled his head on her lap. She stroked his hair. Cuddle time. A new ritual. Morning and night.

Without moving, barely audible, Noah said, “When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Hmm?”

“Is Pop gonna come home today?”

“No,” Sara said. “Not today. But on Friday we can go back up to West Haven.”

“I don’t want to,” Noah said. His voice was still shallow.

“I thought you liked the motel ...”

“That’s cause it was Christmas,” Noah said.

“Um,” Sara acknowledged. She’d gone up with Bobby, without the children, on the 16th of December, had stayed three days. At that time they’d expected only a three- or four-day stay. Alone Sara had returned to High Meadow on the 19th, brought the kids to West Haven for Christmas, a motel Christmas, a tiny-hospital-room Christmas with little to do except peer out the window, over the town, down the leafless tree-lined roads to the sound, with no way to use the new sled, with too many candy canes and chocolate Santas attempting to compensate for childhood expectations. They’d returned to High Meadow on the 26th. On the 31st Sara had again driven back, again alone, forcefully separated from either her husband or her children, forced to make the choice.

“Why can’t Pop come home?” Noah asked.

“Hmm?” Sara hadn’t heard him.

“Why can’t Pop come home?”

“Do you remember what we discussed?”

“How come they haven’t fixed his blood?”

“Well ... I guess it takes time. He has to grow some new cells.”

“They could just give him some.”

“Um-hmm. And they have. That’s what the transfusions were.”

“Then why can’t he come home?”

“He will,” Sara said. “But first they have to be sure he can make more blood on his own.”

“Because it leaks out of him?”

“No.” She kept her tone even.

“It leaks out of you sometimes. Sometimes you use a bandage in the bathroom. Why don’t you have to get more?”

Sara was startled. “I ... In a woman ... Everyone is always making new blood. Just like you make new skin. Do you know what a cell is?”

“Like those pictures ...”

“Um-hmm. But they’re teeny-tiny teeny-tiny. And some, when they get old ... They’re like cars and trucks, really. Blood cells especially. Because they carry passengers and supplies to all the other cells, food and oxygen passengers. And like old cars they get used up and they have to be junked. But your body always builds new ones. Daddy’s body isn’t building new ones right now so it’s not just a matter of giving him new ones but of fixing his factory where he’s supposed to build them.”

Noah, gloomily, “Oh.”

“Come on now. Everybody up. You two’ve got school and I have to see if I can get our records back from Mr. Gilmore. And Mr. Mohammed needs to be checked on. And Mister Vu—”

“He let’s us call him Hieu.”

“And Hieu needs my signature to order—”

“Pop’s supposed to sign, isn’t he?”

“While he’s not here, I sign for him.”

Noah sat up. His countenance changed. He beamed, got to his knees. “Blue Dog said he’d take me skating after school.”

Friday, 15 January, 1982—He sat on the table, cold, nervous, shivering, naked except for the green hospital gown which, sitting, split open in back, rode up in front exposing him if he did not constantly hold the cloth down. His arms, legs, were exposed, were chalk white, bony, ugly, ugly to him, especially his knees which looked like bulbous knobs and his ankles and feet which seemed oversized, cartoon feet dangling from skinny cartoon legs except there was no humor in the sight because he did not feel like a cartoon, did not want to see himself as a cartoon. He had now been a patient for thirty days, one month at the VA, one month of proddings and pokings, bone scans under a massive machine that was like being overrun by a T-54 tank, a month of needles, enemas, questionnaires—What insecticides and herbicides do you use on your farm? When was the last time the well water was tested? Do you smoke? And bone marrow biopsies. They’d be back in a minute to do his fourth bone marrow biopsy and his hands, arms, his skinny legs, up his back and his neck, everyplace, was shaking, quivering uncontrollably because of the cold, the anticipation of the needle, the damn syringe, aspirator, the size of a turkey baster, the needle itself as thick as a car’s radio antenna. They were with him now, on him, controlling him, laying him down, restraining him, tying his right arm, painting his back and hip with Xylocaine, injecting the local anesthetic—for nothing, he thought, for no damn good. He hadn’t slept the night before knowing it was coming, the needle, a car’s antenna with a drill, no not a drill, more like the twist-punch on a Swiss Army knife, puncturing the hard outer layer of the ilium, right through the crest to get to the sponge cake inside, to suck out the marrow, then out and back in with a corer, just like a tree to find its age except he was sure he felt it more than the maples felt their taps. His body trembled from felt pain and anticipated pain, future pain even when it was no longer in him, when they would slice the coring, scope it out, count the cells. “It’s not leukemia,” they’d told him the first time. Or the second. “Oh, thank God.” “It’s primary refractory anemia or aplastic anemia.” “Oh, thank you, Lord. Fantastic!
No problemo
. When can I get the hell out of here? What’s aplastic—” “Bob, you’ve got no blood.” “Huh?” “Well, it’s atypical aplastic anemia. You’ve got some. Just not very much. You are in a disease process called aplastic anemia. Tell me about your farm chemicals? ...”

Bobby shuddered. They were aspirating the marrow now. He tried to tune out, drop out, replay the conversations, escape the pain. “Is this because of Agent Orange? I was exposed. I ... I just confirmed that.” “We can’t prove it, Bob, but too many young guys are in here ... too young to be this ill. And the missing chromosome ...” “Was I born with that? Was this inevitable? A rendezvous with medical destiny because ...” “No. You could not have been born missing the seventh. You would have been spontaneously aborted. This is an acquired syndrome. The missing chromosome is highly significant. Agent Orange is a causitive factor.”