Carry Me Home (90 page)

Tuesday was a repeat. And Wednesday. Leave early, get fried, return, get sick, do nothing, feel better, sleep. Except the “get sick” part got worse. By Thursday he was nearly broken. He had no idea how he could continue. He wandered about the cell, begged a guard to get him a book, some music, something to distract him. He lay down on the floor, piled blankets atop himself, focused on the ceiling for hours. Friday morning he felt better. Then they blasted his guts, took blood, returned him, and he was sick all night.

The next week was a repeat.
Bbzzzzzzzzttt
. Blood. Sick. Radiation is cumulative.
Pzzzzaaa-oopp
. Blood. Sick. Sicker. Intestines, liver, bone marrow, the last of his reproductive equipment, and suddenly he was no longer bitter but only depressed and he wanted to see Jessica, his daughter, his baby, what had Wapinski written, he hadn’t paid attention—the letter coming when it had, Wapinski referring to Luwan, Luwan dumb ignorant so desperate to have a baby she’d of had anyone’s ... Needs my mothafuckin help, huh? Oh God, just to see my baby once before I die. What I do with that letter?

The third week was worse. He could not think about Wapinski’s letter. In the can he had seen the lining, like sausage casing, the lining of his intestines, his stomach. Take my other fuckin nut, he’d prayed. Just stop this. He couldn’t even drink water without pain. Take my johnso—No! Not that. Just let me see my Jessica.

Then came the two-week break and he felt fine. The radiation was something he could weather. Hell, he’d been through half of it. It couldn’t get worse.

But it did. Trippan visited him in the infirmary. It hurt to talk. Knutsen came. Other guys from the unit. “How ya doin, Man?”

“Whatda you care?”

“We care, Brother. We always cared. We didn’t leave that on the outside.”

Ty stared at them.

“Hey, I got this cool book, Man. Bippo said you was askin for a book. My old lady sent it to me. You take it.”

“Yeah. Me too. I got a cassette player from my brother. En some bad tunes, Bro. You listen to em. Tell me what ya think.”

Ty shook his head. A sheepish smile cracked his lips.

“Funny, huh, Bro?”

“Yeah,” Ty said.

“What’s funny?” a second inmate said.

“You,” Ty answered. He gestured with his chin at each. “I must mean more to you than I do to me.”

His unit-mates laughed. “Yeah,” one said. “We all do.”

“Eh.” Ty looked away, looked back. “I was thinkin about friends I lost. In Nam. Things we went through. We were one body. Suffered together.”

“You in that bad mothafucka?!”

“Yeah. I don’t know why I made it back.”

“Me too! One Seventy-Third.”

“I got a little girl,” Ty said.

The last week of the high zapping, of his lungs, heart, esophagus, brought a new level of pain and discomfort. It was Thursday, the twenty-second of September 1977. Today, he thought, today, tomorrow and Monday, and I’m home free. Just three more little blips. Just one foot in front of the other, Sir, Airborne, All the Way, Sir, Can Do! There’s an end to this. There’s an end to it.

“Hurts, huh, Man?”

Ty looked at Stiler. Stiler had killed his own father. Had shot him three times in the stomach. Stiler had been on shit, on dust, bad shit, stoned crazy. He hadn’t even known he’d killed his father for three days. Ty did not speak, only nodded. His throat was so sore it hurt to breathe. His nose was running, he had a fever, the shakes.

“Ya know, in some countries, they do that to people, you know, political prisoners, as torture.”

Ty nodded slightly. Burn the lining outta their throats, he thought.

“I never thought”—Stiler squirmed on the stool next to TV’s bed—“like nothin bout it when I read it. Now I see you bein fried. Microwaved from the inside out. Now I understand.”

Ty nodded again, thought, Monday. That’s it. And 95 percent chance ... Shee-it. Jus so there an end to it.

But at the radiation center they did not zap him. His blood count was too low, or too high—how could he concentrate? Only three to go. “Come back tomorrow.” Postponed. Not canceled. Postponed. There would be no end. He was a prisoner. A political prisoner. Incarcerated because he was black. Because ... he’d ... sure, he’d committed fraud. But that was because he was black. Not being black caused it, but being black, way back in the army, even earlier, caused him to be stigmatized, caused the undesirable discharge, caused his drug problem. They done it to him because he was black. He’d given his left nut to their cause, to their bureaucratic disenfranchisement machine. It was the same as being politically prosecuted!

Friday, the twenty-third: “Ah, Mr. Mohammed, would you like me to put this lead shield over your Adam’s apple?”

“No.” His voice was thin, raspy. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.”
Bbzzzzzz-it
. “You know, you’re doing very well. Usually by the eighth or ninth treatment we have to put that block on.”

Ty stared. “You usually put—” He did not finish, but thought, Fuck it. Give me the whole thing. Two to go. I got this far. Don’t you go ruinin my chances.

On Monday, the twenty-sixth, the machine broke down and there was a back up in the waiting room: a young white girl, maybe eight, in a wheelchair; four senior citizens, all white; plus an assortment of parents and spouses; and Ty and his guard. All the patients, victims, were weak, quiet. It was so obvious who was who. But except for Ty, the sufferers were all frail. Old or young. There was no one in their twenties or thirties; no one who’d been strong, healthy, in the prime of life. Drug addict or not, Ty had begun treatment much stronger than these people. And they were being zapped just like him. They were suffering just like him. And they weren’t quitting. He glanced at the little girl. Her mother was reading a story to her.
Heidi
. His eyes shot to an old man with a curved spine and sunken chest. He seemed to be praying. His wife was doing a crossword puzzle. To Ty they all seemed alike, seemed weak, doomed. He was weak. The guard helped him to the changing cubicle, helped him remove his clothes, helped him to the deep-fry chamber. But he did not feel doomed. There was an end. Two more treatments.

“Get that little guy out of the way ...”

Ty grabbed his privates. Most of the nurses and technicians had been nice, sympathetic, or cool and efficient. This one was bitchy. How many zapped people, people
you’ve
zapped into anguish, into pain, can one handle? He laughed. She gave him a dirty look. “Mr. Shrively,” he hoarsed out.

Pzzzaaa-oopp
. Needle. Blood. Ty rolled, pushed himself up, slid to the floor.

“Um.” Not quite so bitchy. “You’re the first person we haven’t had to help up from the table today.”

Ty forced a smile. “I ...” The pain in his throat was intense but he wanted to joke with her. “Wife and I ...” He looked at the nurse. What did he give a shit if his story was bullshit, was off the top of his head, just something to say. “... want to start a family ... but Mr. Shriv—”

“Oh!” The technician was truly surprised. “Why don’t you wait a little ...”

“Mr. Shrively ...” Ty smiled.

“You’ll get it back,” the technician said quickly. “But hold off on the family for about three years.”

“Deformities?” Ty asked.

“Ah ...” She turned cold again. “No. No sense saddling your wife with kids if you don’t make it.”

She was not there the next day, the last day, his last day of treatment! If he were not so sick he would have been overjoyed. His blood count was marginal. “Please ...” He wanted to beg. He couldn’t speak the words. Please. Just end it.

Pzzbzzz-aatt-ooppt
. Never exactly the same noise twice.

“I’m impressed, Mr. Mohammed.” This technician was one of the nice ones. Gentle. Empathetic. “We didn’t think you’d make it this far.”

“I ... I had to. Didn’t I?”

“Oh, not really. We take you to your limit but you could have stopped last week. We had a lottery going to see which day you’d quit. No one picked today.”

Friday, October 7—Ty was back in the unit, back to his cot, back among the eyes and the ears. At lights-out they teased him about glowing in the dark. And the next day Knutsen told him to make sure the Classification Team had a full report because they would be more apt to transfer him to a minimum security facility because of his suffering. “Maybe even move up your parole date,” Knutsen said.

“Yeah,” Ty said. Yeah, he thought. But if I hadn’t been in the house there’d a been no operation. I’d be dead. I’d be ... Where’s the Captain’s letter? He said he needed my motherfuckin help. Didn’t understand! Mill, huh? My chance. My piece a the pie. Golden Rule: He who got the gold, make the rule. Enough for a hundred operations.

B
Y THE FALL OF
1977 High Meadow had reached its first critical mass point. Bobby could be away. I could be away. Things ran. George Kamp was a responsible worker/leader; so too Jim Thorpe. They got along well. Tom Van Deusen seemed to change overnight, a result of the great sandbag party. His intensity and focus changed. He became a savior of the pond. He wanted to run jobs, to help design projects, lay out schedules. And Bobby was only too happy to expose him to the resources and let Van Deusen take off.

Gallagher never developed that drive but he was now more self-assured. It was his idea to install an alarm system that could alert all High Meadow to crises. We installed an old air-raid siren that Bobby had scavenged from Johnnie Jackson’s Salvage Yard, that had once stood atop the old elementary school in the Lutzburgh section of town. When activated that old siren could be heard over in Creek’s Bend, Old New Town, and probably halfway to Rock Ridge. Along with the siren we ran army surplus ground-line telephone lines to links in all the buildings.

This was a time of building. Five more vets arrived. Howie Bechtel, Ron Hull, Steve Hacken, Mark Renneau, and our first non-European American, number fourteen, Art Brown—an African-American vet from Wilkes-Barre sent to us by Ty’s brother Phillip.

Our labor was cheap. In the late fall we drew down the pond, widened and deepened the spillway—it took hours of jackhammering to bust up Pewel’s work so we could rebuild it in a way that boards could be more easily removed in case of flooding. We refrained the roof of the farmhouse to change the angle, and the EES crew embedded the solar collectors between the rafters and installed the glazing—but before they finished the shingles Bobby pulled them from the job to work elsewhere. We added a “messhall” adjacent to the bunkhouse (some of the guys became outstanding cooks), redivided the bunkhouse into four single rooms and a two-bay dormitory. Across the pond in the woods, Bobby let Wagner and Mariano clean and repair Pewel and Brigita’s first cabin. That was very emotional for him. Before he decided, if I recall correctly, he wandered half a dozen times—usually only with Josh but maybe once or twice with Noah—up to the cemetery. I imagine he needed to ask permission, but we never talked about it.

We were going, always going, it seemed. I had to schedule meetings with Bobby. Grapes, that year, was our biggest farm topic. Through it all Bobby sniffled. His nose was always running and he was constantly popping over-the-counter antihistamines.

Nineteen seventy-seven was the year of the Great Energy Debate in Congress and in the Carter White House. Bobby followed it closely. EES made its first collector arrays to be sold wholesale, sold to a father-son plumbing outfit in Binghamton, New York. They liked our prices, the quality of the product, the design, the service. In ’78 they purchased more than one hundred collectors. EES needed three more trucks to keep up with our crews. On the farming side we purchased a trailer/combine, a new tractor, and a used six-by farm truck.

Nineteen seventy-seven was the year Willie Joe Namath went to the LA Rams; the year of Son of Sam; the Ali-Shavers fifteen-round decision; the Nixon-Frost interviews. It was the year Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley killed himself because he was stuck and no one showed him the solvent to become unstuck. That left me all shook up, feelin like I was down at the end of Lonely Street.

By mid-’77 I was no longer stuck. I moved back in with Linda; told her about my dream the night Gina and Michelle were born; about so many of the things that had happened. Pop was talking to me again, too.

Linda received her midwifery certification. On September 23, 1977, she delivered her first baby. (She tells me
delivery
is not the right word. She says, “It’s not like, ‘Hey Lady, you the one who ordered an extra large with double cheese and pepperoni?’” How I laughed over that. “Maybe catcher is the right word,” she’d continued. Catchers: catcher in the rye, in the alfalfa, in the birthing rooms—me and my Linda.)

On the twenty-third Linda caught Paul Anthony Wapinski, with Sara and Bobby and Dr. Simon Denham in the new birthing room at St. Luke’s Hospital in Rock Ridge. The joy! I baby-sat for Noah at High Meadow. Most of the vets were at the house, waiting, expecting, playing with Noah—I wasn’t the only one who’d missed these good years of his children’s lives. When the call came we let loose with the air-raid siren and the cheers didn’t stop until Ernest Hartley, Jr., the mayor’s son, and three officers—Mill Creek Falls’ finest—came screaming up in three squad cars demanding quiet and an explanation, and cited us for disturbing the peace. That triggered flashes of anger so deep I think had we not been so happy, we might have engaged those bozos in hand-to-hand. We blasted it the next day, too, Saturday, when we heard that Carol Simpson, Phillip’s wife, Ty’s sister-in-law, gave birth to Theodore Jonathan Simpson—blasted the siren but only after we locked the driveway gate and when ol’ fat-butt Hartley came screaming in we just hooted at him, unseen, from the orchard, the strawberry patch and down in the culverts. I don’t think we could have had more fun.

Linda came up that night—Gina and Michelle were at Grandma’s. It was the weekend of our eighth wedding anniversary. Bobby was inside with Noah. The guys were either on the basketball court or on our new soccer field, or in town. I took her to my old cubicle, then behind the false wall, into the tunnel, down to the deep bunker. I explained to her my fears about a coming nuclear war; my thoughts about joining Mill Creek’s nuke freeze movement, my trepidations about that movement’s “fringe” director, Joanne Wapinski, about not being able to tell Bobby because of Joanne. I was surprised, perhaps, jolted, that Linda didn’t see what I’d done as paranoia. “Even Bobby doesn’t know,” I said. “Don’t say anything.”