Made to Break (19 page)

The triage windows were jammed. Before one sat a father with his teenage son, his ankle in a cast of rags. Around the other, an entire family had clustered, all of them jabbering one atop the other in a blur of non-Mexican Spanish. The place stunk of armpits, blood, carpet cleaner, dust. Everywhere people were roiling in fits, and those who weren't looked on the verge. When finally the kid with the ankle got up, I slid into the seat before some bleeding woman and told her it was life and death.

“But you can't do that,” she said. She dropped her rotten tissue on the counter and tapped at the window to the nurse behind it. “Tell him he can't do that,” she said.

“You can't do that,” said the nurse. She was young and appallingly thin, with close-set eyes and enormous specs.

“I'm a hemophiliac,” said the woman. “You just can't do that.”

I leaned into the speaker and told the nurse, “My friend is dead.”

“This is very important, miss,” the hemophiliac said. “Would you please tell him he just can't do that?”

“Where is this friend?” said the nurse, whose name by her tag was “Wendy.”

“In the back of our truck.”

“And you're sure he's deceased.”

“Listen, miss,” Basil said, “no disrespect intended, but we're
in no mood for snazzy gags. You got a stretcher or something we can haul him in on?”

Wendy shot Basil a smile meant to wither.

“He's got problems, too,” I said.

“What's wrong with him.”

“His feet.” I pointed at Basil's feet. “What's your procedure for taking in, you know, for taking in corpses?”

Wendy saw that we weren't joking. She slid her pen into the board with the sign-in list. The hemophiliac had started harping again, but Wendy stifled her with a hand. “We'll have some nurses come out with a gurney,” she told me, her voice gone mellow. “They'll have to admit the body through the ambulance bay.”

“Here's my number,” I said, “and this is his license. How long you think they'll be?”

“I'll be right back,” she said.

Rockets would sigh that night, high over this somber town. They'd explode in the clouds and mingle the rain of that outcry with the rain that had been and would be, and though that show might gesture toward elegance, even toward a grotesque munificence, it would never quite make the grade. How is it we think that to achieve ourselves we must stand on the backs of notions? Let's bring the stars down to earth. Let's cut down a tree to hang the stars on. Let's maim our blunders with time, and with whispers and gifts and cheap perfume. In the crowd we'll savor the taste of false vitality and pretend we're not ourselves, not even people, but only an image of the sights around. Orgy of the whir, orgy of the hum, in these we'll search for the things we'd been told we could hope to be. Behind the smile on that man, the gaze of that girl—there's but an effigy, the shimmer of so many days pushed through—ching-a-ling-ching, rattle-bang-boom: shriek, laugh, cry, groan. There on the streets, in
the swarming casinos, we'd watch the past slide off and wait for the bells to toll a new year. Who knows what it means to police their days? This night we'd need to shrink the field, lower the boom, raise high the lanterns, red and green and gold. And the meager light we'd thought we made for ourselves would be little more than the twilight we thought we knew. The rockets would care for the rest. They'd explode, and we would sigh, and the faces around us, whatever they might be, would give comfort, if only by their numbers. Because tomorrow would be new, a brand new month and year. Let the night take our money and our pain. Yes, and yes. Calendar on…

Later, smiling at Basil and Lucille as they danced among the crowds, the old man would say, “It's survival of the slickest, boy, and that's something even the blind can see.” And then he'd turn away, his face a puzzle, mumbling about maltworms and knaves, and vanish in the people, Fortinbras at his heel. I thought of Joubert's notion of the nest in the mind of the bird. All over the world, this very moment even, creatures were busy building homes—nests and hives and caves and dens and tunnels and lairs and dams, and hobo jungles and tenement slums, and birdhouses, and dovecotes, and dumps—everywhere, everywhere, a place for each and all. That's why we could play tonight, and that's why we could pray tomorrow. You want your moments, you need a place to make them, the way you need that place to remember and regret. We'd need roofs over our heads when it was said and done, and pillows beneath them, else how could we trick ourselves for even a moment with the platitudes that help to make us real? I'm as good as gold, and you're an angel in disguise, and the devil may care, though not, perhaps, until tomorrow, so hey, run with the money while you can, baby, run, you're a nine days' wonder… God is not just one. Our clichés tell us so every minute.

Wendy never returned. How could I hope to know what would be? I took Avey's hand, and we turned to face the crowd. A series of watercolors lined the walls, made by kids. Most scenes were happy families, father on the left, the tallest, followed by mom and the children by height, with a dog at the end: Daddy, Mommy, Stephanie, Abbie, Socks. There was a drawing too of a gold-haired woman with a jagged smile and flat blue eyes. That was it—no father, no children, no dog. Beneath her, in lopsided scrawl, was the single word, MOM. And mom was crying, and her tears were blood. Barry Manilow muzak piped through the speakers, just below the general din, “Copacabana,” it seemed, though I didn't know for sure. Next to a TV running a soap sat a hundred gallon aquarium, filled, like the room its people, with all manner of fish. I watched them bump through a maze of shipwrecks and logs, endlessly gaping, until an old coot hobbled by, stinking of baby food and bad cologne, and a little girl maybe four years old let out a howl only children can make, packed with the world's own pain and sin. At that, her mother jerked her wrist and quick as light snatched the slipper from her foot and rapped the child's head. And then a woman was at my ear, with braces on her teeth and Mary Hartman braids.

“He's outside,” Avey told her.

“In the parking lot?” said the woman's colleague. Stocky like a miner, she had a mullet with gelled spikes on top and a stringy mane down her back—the kind of do middle-aged lesbians have been rocking for a decade or so.

“In our truck,” said Basil. He'd limped over once he realized the women had come for us. “You guys're going to take him?”

The stocky woman clasped her hands at her waist and wore a face reminiscent of certain preschool teachers, deceptively bemused, falsely sympathetic. “Do you know what happened?” she said.

“We had an accident,” I said.

“An accident,” said the tall gal. Now she was the sweet one. No crappy faces or half-baked pity. She was for real.

“We had a wreck last night.”

“Up on the mountain,” Basil said.

“And then what,” said the stocky one, crossing her arms.

“They went out for some ice,” Avey said, “and got into a wreck. When we woke up this morning he'd… you know.” She started for the door. “You'll probably want to see for yourselves.”

“You got something to carry him in on?” Basil said.

The stocky woman twirled the tail at her shoulder. “I'm going to pack it over my shoulder,” she said.

“Pardon?” Basil said.

“I'm exceptionally well conditioned,” the woman said.

“Come on, Karen,” said the tall one with a big metal smile. She was a peach, this gal, for real. I guessed she had a houseful of animals, not cats, but dogs. “Eden,” said her tag.

Basil had already made it to the first set of sliding doors. “When you're finished, maybe you could take care of him, too,” I said. “I know you're busy and all.”

“What's your name?”

It occurred to me that in my polka dot shirt and muddy boots I was still dressed like a clown. “He's in pretty bad shape, you know.”

“Maybe we should have a look at you first,” Eden said.

With her gurney on wheels, Nurse Karen marched out and fell in beside us. Super had enfolded Lucille with an arm to mumble his wisdom as she cried, and she had let him do it. The tailgate was open still, Dinky exposed to all who cared. Once again it began to rain.

“What're you doing?” Lucille said, her face wide with horror. Nurse Karen had hopped up and crouched near Dinky's head.

“Now, now,” said the old man.

“Mind if we take it with the blanket?”

“
It?
” Lucille said.

Super peeled off from Lucille to face Nurse Karen. “You'll excuse our saying so, misses, but we'll have to ask you to disembark the wheels till we've given the boy his due.”

“Looks like a three-phase operation,” Nurse Karen said to Eden. “Slide it down—”

“Step off the wheels, misses,” Super said, “if you please.”

Nurse Karen's face hardened. “As you can see, sir, we're much too busy for formalities. Just take up the feet,” she said to Eden, “and slide it down far enough for us to make the turn.”

“That's it?” Lucille said. “You're just going to haul him away?”

“Maybe you could give us a minute?” I said to Eden.

“Karen?” she said.

Nurse Karen bounced from the truck and began to pace.

“It's raining,” Eden said to me. “So…”

“Thanks,” said Avey.

Super drew off the blanket… Birds were in the trees… I smelled ice cream, I smelled rain… In the distance I heard laughter, but knew it wouldn't count—no one counts laughter, because laughter disappears… I was just an animal, words on the lake… Then a bird flew, and the rest flew after, and Basil limped up and took Dinky's feet and pulled his shoulders to the gate, where Super spun him even to it—our old pal Dinky, he was dead.

I hadn't seen the geeze take his nickels from Dinky's eyes, but somehow he had, only to lay them down again and step back cap in hand.

“It is clear, friends,” he said, his voice grown solemn, “that before us lies a perturbed spirit without a finger on his lips to smother grief. It's our job to send him off with nary a whisper
at his ears, though he be alone. Blood or no blood, you were his brothers and sisters. And so you loved the boy as we did. You don't have to croak for us to see how forty thousand brigands couldn't add to our sum, not with all their stolen love. For ourselves, we'd eat a crocodile if it meant he'd be delivered, ready to bend and give and move through the world with a smile. And we know you'd do it, too. Give this boy his due, friends, then cut the line with hearts full of thanks and cheer.”

Some gawkers had massed about twenty feet off. Lucille was shuddering, she was crying so hard. She took Dinky's hand and kissed and pressed it to her cheek. Then she lurched into the truck.

“What the fuck're you staring at?” Basil said to the gawkers. It wasn't until he'd started toward them that they began to part. A woman walked by, shielding her daughter's eyes.

“But what is it, Mommy?” the child said.

“That's right,” Basil said. “Scram!”

“Finished?” said Nurse Karen.

I touched Dinky's hand. A crust of blood had grown along the top of one of his nails. Avey held me. Her face was swollen.

“Take him,” she said.

“Wait,” Basil said. He brought out a guitar pick—Paul Stanley's, I knew—and tucked it into Dinky's shirt. “Rock and roll, buddy,” he said. “We'll catch you on the rebound.”

And that was it. No police, no questions, no forms. Nurse Karen and Eden just put our pal on the gurney and whisked him through the doors. Poof! He was there, and then he wasn't. Disgusting. Tremendous. Done.

Super's dolls covered the bed of his truck, plastic eyes rolling, plastic hair clinging to horrible plastic heads. No sign of sun, no sign of shit but
mucho
rain and
mucho
mud. A wind rose up and drove the trees…

Times like this the whole blasted planet creaks on its hinges, waiting for you to give, the way it knows you will, if you're ordinary… Your life's just residue. You're the sloughing-offs of so many sloughing-offs you couldn't say which was which or what went where and when. You can't see between the main or remains anymore, the remains or the remainder's residue. All you know is flux and everflux, the monstrous process—in the big sense, the really big sense—of eating and shitting and eating and shitting and eating… For a single hideous moment, there in the slippery rain, surrounded by the only people I'd ever truly known and who for that reason were strangers, I saw the ruin of distinctions. The weight of Dinky's absence became the weight of Dinky's presence. His death had become his life, his laughter my memory of it, my memory the laughing world's. Beauty and terror, the sacred and the feared—these had lost their color…

“You want me to get in the back a while?” Basil said, his eyes gone crooked the way they did when he grew tired.

“Might as well take care of your feet while we're here,” I said.