Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (27 page)

I awoke in the back of an ambulance, I supposed, and passed out again when I saw that VanBuren, the Nevada Kidnapper, was driving.

The next view I had was white. Then three photos of Eldon’s sister, Evelyn. I awoke the final time at three in the morning; well, it was dark and the clock by the bed said three. I sat up and was not as confused as humiliated by the twisted gown I seemed to have on backwards. As I set my own two feet on the cold tile floor I contemplated escaping from what was clearly another institution, the places I seemed to be leaving. I strolled down to the night station, where the nurse was cleaning out her purse. She had her personal knick-knackery out on the desk.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” she said, handing me a picture of a boy dressed as Peter Pan. “Mickey, my oldest. He’ll be six this week.”

“Great costume. I was always Robin Hood.”

She looked at me.

“On Halloween.”

She kept looking.

“I always went as Robin Hood. Once I went as Gary Cooper.”

She finally nodded.

“Where are the guards?” I asked.

She looked at me again, saying nothing.

I backed away. “That Mickey’s a fine-looking boy. You’re lucky.”

She watched me, so I turned and sauntered back to bed where I discovered sleep, heavy as earth.

Toward morning I had a dream of escaping from the orphanage. Eldon dumped his porridge on Miss Cranley’s head and I broke the windows and then we jumped the fence and filled our pockets with apples. The horizon was a vast unending ribbon of light.

The next morning when I awoke the ward was quiet. The only other person moving was mopping the floor at the other end. I found my clothes, laundered and in a nearby locker, so I dressed and walked out into the lobby. There were no policemen, no teachers, no ex-convicts. I read a copy of the
Colorado Democrat
from cover to cover, including Eldon’s article on the oldest democrat in the Rocky Mountains, and every time an idea seeped into my head, I fought it down with big sticks. Nurses and doctors came and went, ignoring me, which I took as a sign that something dire was about to happen.

It didn’t.

I felt the pieces of my past and future all over the floor of my mind like eggshells, and I didn’t want to think their correct reassembly was impossible. I wanted not to touch them with a single thought, until some competent, perfect soul would explain them into their proper places one by one.

At eleven, Evelyn and Zeke picked me up and I signed some papers for the nurse on duty.

“Where’s Eldon?” My eyes moved in a dizzy focus and I had to shut them from time to time to stop things. It was like old times when I was up all night two or three nights at the power plant. The October light listed this late in the month, and the sides of everything were white.

“Salt Lake. He had a checkup and he’s all right. He sent us.”

“Checkup?” As I walked the blood seemed to be draining out of my head. I went to one knee on the lawn and put my head down.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure.” I stood up again, but the blood stayed down and I went lax, doll’s eyelids, into her arms.

“Larry!” I heard Evelyn say my name, and I smelled the sun in her hair, and then we had lying on the lawn for a while. Zeke ran around kicking things I could not see, coming over every so often.

“He’s a white one, Mom, isn’t he,” he’d say.

“Should I get a doctor?” Evelyn asked.

“No, you stay. I’ll get up occasionally and you catch me. I’ll be all right.” She sat beside me, her legs crossed. I watched her roll up the sleeves of her green plaid shirt. “What is this checkup?”

“He was bumped when you crashed.”

“Bumped?”

“It’s nothing. He’ll tell you that you tried to run over him. One bruise, or something. He’s fine,” Evelyn said. Zeke appeared.

“You’re white, Larry,” he said. “Want an apple?”

He went away and came back with some red apples. Evelyn and I ate the apples while Zeke went back over to the front of the hospital and had a conversation with a cab driver. When he returned I felt better, and stood up easily. Evelyn took my arm, and Zeke walked before us explaining that a lot of women were having babies in that building.

When we reached the parking lot, Evelyn stopped. “I thought you might want to see this.” She pointed at my green truck.

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

“I remember this,” I said finally placing my hand on the fender. It was warm from the sun. “I remember this.” I slid in the driver’s seat and every gauge came back. But the soft friction in my head continued, and when Evelyn said she’d drive, I let her.

Zeke wanted to ride in the back, but Evelyn said no, and so I offered to ride in back with him. “Air,” I said. She smiled again. Zeke and I climbed into the back and he climbed onto my lap.

“We shined the truck, right Larry?” he said.

“Right,” I answered. Evelyn drove the truck westward while Zeke and I counted ducks moving in the transparent sky.

Outside of Heber, she stopped at a roadside fruit and vegetable stand and allowed Zeke to select the pumpkin of his choice. We picked out several large squash and some apples, and I watched Evelyn drink a large glass of cider. When she saw me watching, she laughed and said, “Well, it’s
good!
” We bought the cider and hoisted Zeke’s pumpkin into the truck. He had chosen an asymmetrical monster, larger than a bushel basket. “Some pumpkin,” he kept saying. Then he wanted to ride in back with it, but we decided instead to ride in the cab. Evelyn began explaining what had happened. Zeke kept leaning on my shoulder, turning back to check his pumpkin and then turning back to look in my ear.

I was right about the race, Evelyn told me. It was no climax. It wasn’t even an anticlimax. It was a dirty demo-derby spectacular in which undistinguished gentlemen in abused machines chased each other in elliptical circles always returning the way they had come. No one was killed. There were some fair concussions, including my own, however, and Lila had spilled the beans to the officials. Those beans led to an appointment I had in the Metropolitan Hall of Justice to sign six papers and exonerate myself. So in a vague way, I was cleared, though the air still seemed full of dust.

Nicky and his friends had been filed, as I was, in hospital beds and then asked to leave the county. None of
them
had even mentioned my name. No one had asked them. They had risen, at intervals, from infirmary beds and walked as American citizens to futures, like my own, not a lot different from their pasts. History teaches us that it does not teach us.

Nighthorse had claimed the ashes of Eldon’s Valiant and paid the seventy-five dollars damage incurred when the axe that had been in 88’s trunk had severed the grill of a Highway Patrol car. His son, Junior, due to Nicky’s moving, would be unemployed for a while, which was all the time Senior Nighthorse thought he needed to get him an honest career. My eternal friend Eldon, after being bumped by his own car and his own friend, had proceeded to Salt Lake to see about his knee and to free my truck.

As Evelyn told me all this, the explanations seemed as distant and strange as if reported by a butler three days after a shooting. It was like reading about other people’s woes in the papers.

So time had passed, regardless of anything I had done, regardless of anything Eldon had done, and I was as guilty or innocent as ever. I just didn’t involve the police anymore. I can believe it.

I thought about that for a long time: innocence. No, there is no going back to that one, no matter how many circles one races in. I felt, as Evelyn drove over the last hill of Parley’s Canyon and we stared at the urban grid of Salt Lake City, that I should move to a small community in Upstate New York and never be heard from again. I felt as though I should return to the safety of the Midwest where I had never been. I felt as if I had gone to great lengths to recover from my education. I felt as if I had just turned thirty. Actually, I felt that April was over, pretty much. I was just glad to have tasted that fish.

Yesterday we went to the Veteran’s Hospital to visit Eldon, who is not hurt but is staying there for two weeks “recuperating” from a badly bruised knee and writing his next piece for
The Guide to Fishing in Eastern Utah
. We found him on the fourth-floor sun deck, wearing his helmet and sunglasses, and my old grey sportcoat over his pajamas. Zeke always greets him with: “Glad to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.” Evelyn always holds his hand, standing by him, and he always shakes his head at me and says, “Junior wants to talk to me, eh?”