Driving on the Rim

20

I WAS DRIVING EAST on the interstate in my cherished 88, skating over black ice at about seventy miles an hour. The days were getting short and I was headed to Big Timber, another dinner with Jocelyn at the Grand Hotel. I didn’t want to go that fast, but if you went slower, the big trucks would nearly mow you down and suspend you blind in a cloud of snow, ice chips, and diesel fumes. Radio reception was shitty to say the least, or else supplied fascist newscasts from the Nashville stations broadcasting overproduced studio music for brain-dead hillbillies. Looking down the unequal beams of my headlights, I saw that the windshield wipers wiped only in selected places, requiring me to raise and lower my head to find a clear view. Wildlife T-boned by unyielding traffic was pitched up on the roadside with twisted heads and limbs, strewn intestines. That we accepted gut piles along the motorway as a gift of the automobile struck me then as a grisly novelty. In other words, I hated the highway. I must have been in a dissociative state because even the word “automobile” seemed strange. I said it aloud. “Automobile, automobile, automobile!” It didn’t help. I had the feeling I wasn’t entirely sure what an automobile was.

The 88 was ruby red and the interior a red Naugahyde with white piping. The upholstery held the cold of night well into the day, even while the heater irradiated my shins. Still, I trusted it; and that is why, just past the Mission Creek exit, I was slow to respond when the driveshaft just fell out of it and the universal joint tried to beat through the floor under my feet. I thought the 88 could keep going. It could not.

I had no way to notify Jocelyn, or to call a wrecker. It was too cold to walk and the nearest sign of life, a minuscule light suspended in remote darkness, was too far. I had no choice but to wait for a highway patrolman to stumble onto me, which happened in about an hour. The patrolman called for assistance and a wrecker arrived an hour and a half after that. Wild lights of vehicles streamed by me all that time, flying on snow and ice. I could easily imagine being killed or mangled. I tried the philosophical exercise of imagining the world without me. It was easy. It was a little too easy.

I believed I could pass the time by embracing radio music. I hunted the dial until I found some rhythm and blues, where a phrase like “all night long” or “yes, it’s me” could last half a song. I didn’t usually listen to lyrics, but these tunes were really wrapped around the words and it was a pleasant exercise to listen and think. I was surprised to hear how many of the country crooners admitted sneaking out on their marriages. It came up so often that despite the disclaimers and professions of suffering a kind of exultation was implied. An equal number sought to “put a ring on your finger.” The cycling between hoped-for togetherness and feverish cheating was disconcerting. Even stranger, the glamorous barflies of the lyrics described the liquor of their choice as being wine if the song was about marrying or cheating on your spouse. If beer was the beverage, it signaled a rowdy call to arms for “country” values. There was a surprising number of quite threatening songs of patriotism, often with a semi-thudding march tempo, a gathering of violent warnings. Lots of biography on the part of the singer about other famous singers he knew or admired. Our deteriorated modern world was often deplored, from heaven, by “Hank.” God took a wider view, but Hank had a streak of sarcasm and disappointment over how sorry things had gotten. Another decried those who preferred sandals to “manly footwear.” I turned the radio off: I was sick of these people, all prison-bound, where they would be challenged to avoid sodomy by monsters from the inner city. It was easy to think like this when the driveshaft fell out of your car at seventy per.

The tow truck was driven by a nice young man named Lane who was happy to have the work. He had big work-hardened hands and wore green zip-up coveralls with a sky blue bandanna tied around his neck. His billed cap said ICE DOGS and displayed a flying hockey puck trailed by stars, and all around the edges of the cap his thick blond hair stuck out. He winched the 88 up with a cable drum, chocked the wheels, boomed it down with chains, and invited me into the cab. As we drove east, I enjoyed the elevation and the wide beam of lights that declared our progress and right-of-way a long distance ahead. The big meshing noise of the diesel seemed authoritative and reminded me of my father’s descriptions of the sound of Panzer tanks.

Lane said, “Let’s have some music for the occasion” and punched a button on the tape deck. A booming song emerged, “I’m in love with my car,” with extraordinary words—“When I’m holdin’ your wheel, all I hear is your gear”—all sung against screaming arena rock guitars and keyboards and end-of-the-world percussion. At last it was over and Lane turned it off.

“You like Queen?”

“Sure…”

“I’ve got news: that wasn’t Freddie Mercury.”

“Oh. Who was it?”

“That was the drummer, Roger Taylor. Freddie was backup and backup only on this one. But bottom line, great album. Triple platinum, to be exact. You like glam rock?”

I didn’t know what glam rock was, but I was so averse to having Lane explain it to me that I told him I liked it very much. That seemed to satisfy him and he sank into a steady concentration on the road ahead.

We dropped my car in the parking lot of a repair shop. A cold wind blew. I paid Lane and walked to the Grand, where I got a room and tried to figure out how to get hold of Jocelyn. Nothing worked; it sounded as if she just had her cell phone turned off. I crawled into bed in a vague state of worry and managed to go to sleep. In the morning I went downstairs to check out. Womack and Jocelyn were sitting in the lobby reading the Big Timber Pioneer. I said, “My car broke down.”

She said, “Whatever.”

I chirped, “Good morning, Jocelyn!”

“Right.”

Without looking up from the paper, Womack said, “You needed to get rid of that piece of shit a long time ago. Don’t look to me like being a doctor is doing you no good.”

I stood in front of the hotel, furious, as I watched the two of them drive off. I think that describes it. I knew I was offended and belittled by my own jealousy. I disliked caring about Jocelyn so much, but there it was: her swagger, skills, and independence were so attractive. Our lovemaking was something of a clash, but it was powerful and showered sparks. She regarded the missionary position as an ironic exercise and threatened me if I closed my eyes. I felt vacuumed by orgasms and rarely regained full consciousness before finding myself admiring her naked body through the bathroom door as she concentrated on brushing her hair. She was very unconscious of her body until she needed it to make something happen; when she thought there was a chance we’d make love again, she would stand next to me as I lay on the bed, and brush her teeth in a mischievous way, blowing bubbles in the toothpaste. Then with a laugh she would whirl away, giving me time to think and knowing I’d be ready as soon as she had rinsed. She was never wrong. And if she thought that by luring me into this erotic cellar she could addict me to her with no other effort at being thoughtful, she was right. It was not good for my self-respect.

I resolved to discuss it with Jinx. The Olds was out of the shop and the hands of reluctant mechanics, who urged me to haul it to the wrecking yard. The weather had abated and I was heading for the Corral Motel in Harlowton, plying the heaving road across the northern half of Sweet Grass County, not a cloud in the sky. I was no longer a sitting duck in my house — though I felt the tug of possibly missed walk-ins, and the day-and-night worry over Jinx’s plan to move away. And that was just about how specific a plan it was: away, a yawning destination to say the least. I wanted to forbid it. Was this friendship?

The desk clerk — or I guess he was the owner — just said “five,” leaving me to work out that it was room 5. I left the Olds parked by the office and walked around the front of the building in a rising disorientation that made my feet on the gravel sound like someone was following me. And yet the smell of pavement and sagebrush, the cloudless sky and great distances visible all around, were almost pleasant intimations that I was in a story and it was my story.

I knocked on the door of room 5, which produced a scurrying noise from beyond. Finally, the door opened: Womack. He didn’t open it very far but we were face-to-face. As though he had never seen me before, he said, “What can I do for you?”

I held his gaze and said, “Jocelyn, may I speak to you, please?”

Womack said, “Who?”

I said, directly over the barely exposed left shoulder of Womack, “Jocelyn, may I speak to you?”

Womack said, “Pardner, I think you must have the wrong room. Go back and ask the desk clerk to get you a way safer room number. That’s today’s tip.” I was prey to sufficient self-doubt that I had a moment of thinking that I actually had the wrong room and this was not Womack. Somehow an idea penetrated my nausea: “5” was the only room number I was going to need.

Throckmorton said, “My God, are you okay? You look okay. Jesus Christ, I hope you’re okay. I don’t know if you realize this, Mr. I. B. Pickett, but everyone hates you.”

“No doubt. Where’ve you been?” I asked wanly. We were at the threshold of his office and his secretary was staring at me with the same gaze she would have bestowed upon Lazarus. I preceded Throckmorton just to get away from it. We flopped in our respective overstuffed leather chairs, Throckmorton scooting his around the side of his desk to better see me.

“Tahiti.”

“Seriously?”

“Always wanted to go. It was full of surprises. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was a billboard for Colonel Sanders chicken. Those Tahitian pricks tried to clean me out, but I’m home now, I’m okay.”

“I thought I’d see how we’re doing.”

“Well, it looks like it’s still going to be Judge Lauderdale. I made the mistake once of citing the jurist Benjamin Cardoza, which inspired Lauderdale, once he had me in chambers, to caution me against confusing things by ‘citing some obscure wop.’ ”

“How’s he going to feel about me?”

“Hard to say. We hope for ‘valuable citizen.’ But he might suspect immorality in your relationship with the deceased.”

“Tessa.”

“For our purposes, ‘the deceased.’ ”

“Whatever he’d want to call it, it was a long time ago.”

“For the Lauderdales of this world, immorality never dies. First, we try for a dismissal. You had an enemy on the hospital board, old moneybags—”

“Wilmot.”

“Whatever. I want to see if we can’t neutralize him. He is connected through common stupidity to a number of state legislators. So it might not be easy.”

I abruptly knew that it was not certain I would be absolved, and that it was possible I could no longer do the work at which I was most useful. Previously, I had dreaded loss of freedom. Now I was uninterested in freedom. I wanted to be useful and I wanted it more than anything — or almost anything, because I was also raring to be with Jocelyn.

I think it must have been late, at least eleven. I was still awake, in fact, not even sleepy. The neighbors were fighting and I helplessly listened in. “I don’t care what it smells like! I care what it looks like!” I hadn’t seen Jocelyn in several days and I was worried. While I felt she cared for me as much as ever, I did consider she had become somewhat perfunctory in our lovemaking, as would be appropriate for a preoccupied person, is what I believe I thought at the time. Or something. Whatever misgivings I might have had were canceled by a kind of gratitude — yes, somewhat stupid gratitude, but all of my thoughts were of Jocelyn, her grace and particular self-propulsion, which in my enforced idleness I possibly overvalued. So what, I loved her. And even so what if she didn’t love me. Of what final good was love if valued only when reciprocated? As I ran this rhetorical question around my thick skull, I recognized for the first time that Jocelyn did not love me. However obvious it was, I found this a disquieting discovery. Nevertheless, I figured I could go on loving her anyway, and her willingness to make love with me could be a stand-in for actual love until I could make her love me. But how? What if I learned to fly an airplane? There was something about all this that was arousing memories of a long submerged state of mind, that period of my college days when I slipped off to Florida with my host’s wife. That world of eroticism, subterfuge, guilt, and fear set against meaningless vistas of sea and tropical vegetation had produced a sort of disorientation that I felt for the first time in a very long while. Happily, my mind shifted effortlessly to Jocelyn and her marvelous limbs. But it wouldn’t stay there. I should have jacked off, slept, and gone to breakfast, but I wasn’t that smart. I was in that moronic oblivion that makes the world go round. To make things worse, my neighbors were still fighting and I could hear them all the way across the street. The man with the bass voice shouted, “There’s cat hair on my ChapStick!” And shortly after that, “For Christ’s sake, hold the snow peas!” And back came the woman’s tiny, shrill voice: “I won’t let you spoil one more Christmas!” This was just too troubling because we were nowhere near Christmas. I had to get out of there.

What I meant to do was drive over to Jinx’s house and get her out of bed, but by the time I got to her door she was up. “I heard that awful car of yours.” Of course, there were a lot of awful cars and it was interesting that she was so attuned to mine that she got up before I could get to her door. She motioned me in.

Jinx was in a bathrobe and barefoot. I noticed what pretty feet she had and was touched that she liked them well enough to paint her toenails, then had the ridiculously inappropriate thought that if I painted my toenails Jocelyn would never speak to me again. Jinx had tied her hair at the top of her head, and it made her face, which always revealed such a play of moods, seem even more expressive.

I sat at the table while she made a pot of tea with the electric kettle. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“I didn’t try. It wouldn’t have worked if I had. Did I wake you?”

“Uh-huh. You don’t want anything in this, do you?”

“No.” I only wanted to talk about myself. Once we sat across the small round table and smiled at each other over our tea, we were comfortable again. I felt at ease in pouring out my passion for the fair Jocelyn. I threw in various ironies including the uncertainty of Jocelyn’s feelings. I hinted at her lovemaking and described her great skills as a pilot. Jinx listened, smiling quietly, occasionally sipping her tea. At length, tears ran down her cheeks and I felt a wave of gratitude that our friendship was so strong she exulted in my happiness. Jinx had her own sort of beauty, which her tears brought out from where it resided in a deep nature. I admired Jinx and in my excited state could easily picture someone — someone I couldn’t quite imagine — falling in love her, in a different way than I loved Jocelyn but love is love is love.

Right?

* * *

I did see Throckmorton once that week. I stopped at the desk of his receptionist, Maida, who had a cake in front of her. She sat there, arms crossed, glowering at me. “He in?” I asked but got no reply. Then Niles emerged and said without emphasis, “It’s her birthday. She’s not speaking. Are you, Maida?” No reply. “See?”

He led me in and I slumped in the special chair that by forcing the client into a degraded slouch allowed Niles to lay down the conditions by which he would stream billable hours into the client’s mailbox.

Niles’s face crumpled in a look of worry and pain. I didn’t like the anxiety it produced in me. He laid his hand across his stomach and stared at me without a word. My anxiety rose in the eternity that transpired before he spoke. He said, “Ribeyes and bourbon don’t mix.”

“Right…?”

“Gotta slip off and pinch a loaf. It’s killing me. Keep talking—” He abruptly crossed his office, entered the bathroom, and closed the door. “Go ahead, I can hear you from here!”

“Jesus, Niles!” A fart and a booming laugh were the only reply. “You want me to come back?”

“Oh, hell no. You’re here, let’s get some work done. Plus, I’ve got news. I went to see Wilmot and the board. What a mausoleum! I think Wilmot has been behind this all along. He’s got a sympathetic audience with a few of the doctors who are not operating on the facts of the case but on a visceral loathing of you and your calamitous lifestyle. Excepting of course Jinx Mayhall, who thinks you’re cuter than a speckled pup.” I didn’t reply but went on looking at the bathroom door as though it were doing the talking. “One thing I bore in mind is that the way you get on hospital boards is by demonstrating a capacity to create and maintain a substantial bank account. This is where I trained my jeweler’s eye for persuasion. Pretending sympathy for these deviant swindlers, I commiserated over the loss of value to the clinic once this malpractice case hit the papers. I suggested that in such a scenario if turkeys were going for ten cents a pound they wouldn’t be able to buy a raffle ticket on a jaybird’s ass. No, I didn’t really say that, but I hinted as much. Thus I began to pave a trail leading to fabulously ignorant and corrupt Judge Lauderdale’s chambers, where a pagan reverence for lucre also obtains. Hey, you don’t have to hang around here, Berl, that’s all I’ve got for today. And no sense sharing the details of my current physical discomfort. But if you need help interpreting the legal niceties with which I’ve showered you, let me say this about that: the news is good.”

“All right, well, I’ll wait to hear.”

“Sorry about this. I may have to turn to the Lamaze method.”

Odd how you adapt to things: I waved good-bye to the door, walked through the reception area where Maida stared past the birthday cake into the middle distance, out into the street, the sunshine, and the welcome faces of a few pedestrians, picturing freedom with Jocelyn. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned that Niles had been having a heart attack. A remarkable number of hard-driving Type A men die on the toilet. It’s almost traditional. Some seem to see it coming, as witness Elvis Presley clutching his Bible. Niles didn’t die, but he was never the same again, and I no longer had a lawyer. But while he was in the hospital, he insisted on having me as his physician, so by this peculiarity, I was employed.

I’m reluctant to admit this level of self-absorption, but standing next to Niles’s bed I was giddy to be back to work, almost hysterical. Alan Hirsch, an actual cardiologist, had briefed me about Niles’s condition, somewhat stablized with the current onboard levels of Coumadin. He grimaced when I told him all the vitamin K things he would need to limit or avoid — beef and alcohol being particularly painful subjects.

“Broccoli.”

“I hate broccoli.”

“Spinach.”

“Hate that too. “Parsley.”

“I throw it on the floor. If I avoid all of those, can I have the booze and beef back?”

“In moderation. This is warfarin. It’s like rat poison.”

“Why do doctors hate lawyers?”

“It’s one of nature’s laws. Now, if you have any sort of unusual bleeding, I want to know about it. I mean like when you’re flossing your teeth. Niles, I want you take this seriously so you can avoid surgery.”

“Berl, let me tell you how seriously I’m taking this: I’m retiring. And not just to avoid seeing Maida’s face or hearing her baleful screeches when a bit of work is required of her. The record shows that I took my job seriously but I never took myself seriously. That’s why I am not a judge like that ignoramus Lauderdale. A lawyer wishing to become a federal judge like slime king Lauderdale does not turn his own home into a notorious fornicatorium. I’m going to get off this rat poison if it’s the last thing I do. I’m going fishing. You and me, we started out as fishing boys, but we strayed. I’m going back. I may have sex occasionally, but I assure you it will be with a girl who if she moves at all moves very little.”

I acted as a go-between for Alan, whose patient Niles really was. It preserved the relationship Niles insisted on having with me and allowed him to conceal his terror of death with the familiar jocularities that had always marked our relationship. He would have felt emotionally naked with anyone else, a state Niles could hardly face. I never gave Niles bad medical advice, I gave him Alan Hirsch advice, which was meticulous, cutting-edge cardiological guidance, guidance which Niles declined to follow. The last time I ever saw him was the middle of the day; he was in his pajamas, mildly drunk; he held up a large can to my view, said, “With this I can glue anything.” He was dead in less than three months, enduring his last myocardial infarction at over eighty miles per hour in the big Audi, Gladys Knight on the sound system and a bottle of champagne on the passenger seat. The woman he must have been on his way to see never, as they say in the papers, came forward. Alan did not take this as a failure on his part, offering the opinion that Niles died not of heart disease but of priapism. Parenthetically, when I next saw Judge Lauderdale he seemed quite saddened by the death of Niles Throckmorton. “We always had such fun,” said Judge Lauderdale. “He’d say terrible things about me to my face and I’d try to do the same back. But I was never in Niles’s league. He was very creative. I bet he’s making them sweat up there.”

Lauderdale did not mention my case. Was it possible he’d forgotten that I was on his docket? Was he too polite? Did he think I was innocent? Did he not care? Did he think a nice guy like me was guilty as hell and it was all just too bad? It hardly mattered: Niles had handed me on to a smart young guy just out of Northwestern Law who “blew away the Montana Bar exam” and who Niles thought was his brand-new best friend. But the young lawyer, Donald Sanchez, looked at my situation and dryly remarked, “Throckmorton must have enjoyed your company,” adding, “Oh, well, this is where you should have been headed in the first place. I hope he didn’t charge you.”

I was about to send Counselor Sanchez on his way. “There wasn’t time for him to charge me. He died. And he was my friend. And he sent me to you with his highest recommendation.”

“I’m sorry, but if he was a friend he should have told you more about his relationship with the victim.”

I was stunned. “Was there one?” I asked.

“Two night owls in a small town? You need to get your head in the game.”

Sanchez prepared for the dismissal hearing with a fistful of affidavits, the gist of which was that my colleagues found me gifted but erratic, someone who, despite the quality of his work, created an atmosphere of possible malpractice. Sanchez said that Wilmot had gotten to every one of them except Alan Hirsch and Jinx Mayhall.

I spent a very long evening in my basement going through old papers and documents until I found what I was looking for, a large, yellowing envelope that I carried on my visit to Judge Lauderdale, who saw me in his office with a look of skeptical surprise. I sat down after handing him the envelope. Judge Lauderdale put on a pair of glasses and emptied the contents of the envelope onto his desk. “What is this?” he said after a short time. “A bunch of receipts for paint and supplies?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For painting your cabin in Harlowton.”

Judge Lauderdale removed his glasses and placed them on the desk in front of him. “Was that you?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“My God.” He laughed. “You were just a green kid. Now look at you!”

“Time flies.”

“I have to admit, you didn’t do much of a job. Lots of overruns.”

“You never paid me.”

“Like I said, it wasn’t like Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Your secretary thought it was a big improvement.”

“Oh?”

Whatever change I may have induced in Judge Lauderdale was unclear to me until Sanchez called me in with his helplessly imperious manner. I didn’t know whether he had learned this at Northwestern or it was just his nature, but his no-nonsense style took some getting used to. His first words were, “Sit down.” His office had none of the upholstered quality of my late friend Niles Throckmorton’s ordered lair. In fact, it appeared that the vertical stacks of paper on the floor and against the wall were ongoing cases or some sort of filing system. I’d have bet that he scared the daylights out of blustering Judge Lauderdale.

He said, glancing at his watch with a look of suppressed fury, “Let me give you the boiled-down finding on the frivolity to which you have been subjected, which at this point, we hope, is little more than toxic residue. Judge Lauderdale is now apprised of the following: misleading representation by previous counsel resulting from said counsel’s undisclosed relationship with the deceased, Tessa Larionov. Complicity of clinic staff with the intentions of board chairman Wilmot, placing one and all in the line of culpability for a defamation of character suit. Putting the crosshairs on their wallets, I found the good doctors’ views softening abruptly. This won’t go away — and should you feel vindictive and wish to get rich, call me. Credit to you for softening up Lauderdale in your unauthorized private meeting. Not interested in the details. Long story short, all momentum from your adversaries has dissipated. I have nothing more for you. I’ve got to be in Helena in two hours. Should you wish to stay here and collect your thoughts, the coffee machine is in the john. Pull the door shut when you leave, it locks itself and I have a key. Congratulations, you’re innocent.”

I didn’t think so. Sanchez threw all his papers into a satchel and, running his fingers through his thick black Mexican hair, turned and went on his way.

I had to do something about my real crime. My so-called innocence had no more than isolated the problem. I arranged to meet Cody’s mother, Deanne. I am not exaggerating when I say that I suffered over this one. When I finally went to see her, I thought, Here goes nothing, just more whistling in the dark. I was well aware that I might not have the nerve to tell her how I had encouraged Cody on his way, but I had to do this or I would never be free. And was that it? Freedom? The cemetery was the safest place to meet, as she believed that we would start rumors if we were seen together. “People will think we’re getting it on.” This inappropriate tone made me understand with a sinking feeling how little she suspected what I really had in mind. Nor could she know how much I was my mother’s son in the quest for forgiveness and the desire to be shriven.

Where the walkways separated, a pleasant bower of green ash encircled three wrought-iron benches, virtual hemorrhoid machines in any season but summer. Here I awaited Deanne, pronounced “Dee Anne,” who arrived on time, rather dressed up and wearing the emphatic eyeliner I had always associated with availability. But the long, hard years shone through the makeup and gave me the sense that I was speaking to two people, one just behind the other.

“How old would Cody be?” I asked. I thought to go to my subject straightaway. She gave me an inquiring look.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not quite sure why I asked.”

“I’m not either. Can we sit over there?”

“Oh sure, of course, I didn’t even see it.” A plank bench put us a little more face-to-face than I wished. We sat down. I looked at my shoelaces and Deanne looked at the treetops. I knew she would soon say something and she did.

“Before I married Jerry I was running around pretty hard. I had a bad reputation and, who can say, I probably deserved it. When it hit bottom I got to be pretty good friends with your old flame Tessa—”

“—well, she wasn’t exactly—”

“—a very special person, a very spiritual person.”

I listened closely. I felt panic: I didn’t come here to talk about Tessa. I hardly thought of Tessa as a spiritual individual, whatever in God’s name that was, though it was a concept much in currency, with little sign of going away. I knew from experience that “spirituality” was producing some ghastly scenes around the dinner tables of North America, and here it was, in the air again.

She went on. “Tessa told me she had done everything in her power to have your baby, but it was just not to be.”

“No, no. Oh, no.”

“So there was very strong feeling from that end.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“And maybe, who knows, from your end too.”

“Well—”

“Well what?”

“Well, I was pretty young.”

“Are you trying to wriggle out of this?”

“Not at all!”

“What I’m leading up to is, is there anything to all this stuff I’m hearing? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here?”

“I’m not sure what you’ve been hearing, Deanne.”

“That you did away with Tessa on your operating table.”

“They’re looking into that.”

“For Christ’s sake, don’t you have an opinion?”

“I do but — yes, I do.”

“Want to share it?” she asked. Clearly she could make no sense of me at all.

“No, Deanne, I do not,” I said but thought, Maybe afterwards.

“Well, I have no clue why you wanted to talk to me, then. I thought you knew Tessa and I were friends. I thought you might come clean. In fact, I told somebody, ‘I’ll bet that quack is gonna spill the beans to the only friend Tessa had in this town.’ ”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“You got a light?”

She had a cigarette in her mouth. I slapped my pockets futilely. She was plainly agitated; looking right and left, she said, “If you come on to me I’m going to scream my lungs out.” I’d seen two men strolling down the diagonal toward the First World War monument and I ran them down, two startled older men, and got a match for Deanne. She bent over my cupped hands to light the cigarette but kept wary eyes on me.

“Look, Deanne, Clarice was my patient. I took care of her after a lot of bad beatings—” She blew the smoke off to one side, then seemed to look where it went. “I could have just treated her, left it at that, but it kept on and I got involved.”

“What d’you mean, you got involved?”

“I got caught up in what I thought was heading for tragedy.”

“Oh.”

“So, there at the end I was in that house, and she was, well, she was — I couldn’t really do anything for her.”

“I know the story.”

“I’m afraid you don’t, Deanne.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, I’m afraid you don’t know the story. Not all of it. Not about Cody.”

“I wonder if I need to hear any more of your story,” she said levelly. “I live with a man who said ‘good riddance’ when my son died. I don’t have a knack for a lot more of this.”

I was afraid she’d jump up and leave, but I had to finish. “Just one more thing, Deanne. You see, Cody wasn’t really going to do away with himself.”

It was time for me to take a stand. I just wasn’t sure I could.

“Oh?”

“No, I really don’t think so.”

“So what happened?” I was, in a way, frightened by the quiet way she asked because I knew it was the end of the line. “Are you going to tell me something?”

“He was there with, uh, with the gun, and I could see that the whole thing had dawned on him—”

That was true. Cody had been in a rage for a long time and now it was gone and he couldn’t get it back. He was alone, kind of weightless. There was in his face a bleak sort of amazement. He was mine and I knew it. I was his god. In the long years I’d had to think about it, that was what I had come up with: that I was the cold unblinking god of Cody.

“I felt very strongly that I knew what had to happen and that Cody didn’t and that Cody was waiting to hear it from me.”

“And what?”

I made myself look straight in her eyes. “I told him to kill himself.”

“You did.”

“I thought that was right.”

“And so he did.”

“Yes.”

She froze for a moment, then screamed and tried to put the cigarette out in my eye. I felt her claw down both sides of my face as she cried and screamed at once. She was not very strong, and I was able to get my arms around her and subdue her until she gasped that she would stop, she would calm down, and she would stop. I released her carefully. Her makeup was smeared crazily across her face, and in her expression I beheld such forlornness, such despair, that I felt as vacant as Cody had looked when he saw what he had done.

“Okay,” she said, “okay. Let me just get a grip here—” She pulled back on the bench and took a heavy breath. Then she fished underneath for her purse, which she put in her lap. “Let me just pull myself together here—” She started to get something from her purse, then covered her face and sobbed, the tears running out between her fingers. I could only think what a terrible price I was exacting for my own cheap absolution. She uncovered her eyes and said, “Okay, okay,” and got a Kleenex from the purse and dabbed and wiped her face carefully. She folded the Kleenex and tucked it back into the purse, pulling it open to look inside.

I didn’t realize what she was doing until she had stabbed me. I moaned and fell off the bench grasping the knife handle at my chest with both hands. Deanne stood over me and said she hoped I didn’t make it. I honestly didn’t know how much time I might have; whatever it might have been, I used it to tell her that I was innocent. She said that I had picked a bad time to lie, and walked away.

There must not have been time for my diagnostic skills to offer perspective on my plight except to say that a very comprehensive debility was creeping over me almost as if a heavy rug were being pulled onto my body from several directions at once, everything going soft or limp with weight, except the astonishing rigidity of the knife. I recall thinking that this generalized enfeeblement and draining of life must be death with the peculiarity of the mind imagining even to the last minute that it was somehow exempt from this process. That was either adaptive protection to avert suffering and struggle or the very fragile thing that supported convictions about the imperishability of the spirit. I had always thought religious assertions as to the latter were a form of hysteria, but for the moment I was prepared to keep an open mind. I had often observed in my work, especially in those days in the ER, that there is an unreliable floor to American life and if you find yourself going through it, life is quite dangerous. What I hadn’t learned was that it could apply to me.

But in that immortal phrase, I lived “to tell the tale.” A man on a bicycle came by (I was not entirely conscious) and found me squirting blood onto the walkway, and called for help. I had such a riveting view of my savior, whom I’ve never seen, that the picture stays with me still: one foot extended to hold himself up on the bicycle, he flips open his cell phone and looks at the sky as he calls for help; there is a pause, after which he cranes around urgently looking for ways to describe our location. He is a Good Samaritan, etc. I have no idea who he is. He has not chosen to “come forward either.” We would be together forever, my phantom and I.

I learned later on that Alan had been called in to Emergency for some arterial repair and that quite a lot of blood replacement had been necessary as a result of, I guess, near-fatal hemorrhaging and hypovolemic shock. I later saw Alan’s vital signs documentation and was moved by its obsessive notations. I had benefited from spontaneous closure of a small breach of the left ventricle, and was surprised by the irrational if faint horror occasioned by a description of one’s own injuries. I was relieved to learn there was negligible fluid retention in the pericardium, wherein pumping volume might have been reduced to the point of my returning to my life with a greatly impaired brain. There was a relatively small transfer of kinetic energy in a stab wound, as compared to say, a gunshot wound. So any emergency treatment provider was spared from having to worry too much about collateral injury. In other words, I was grateful that Deanne hadn’t shot me. Sweet!

I had a small incision in my chest, not far from the wound, and Alan later explained, “The way you presented, dude, I had to look around.”

By the first evening, lying in my hospital bed, I was not much worse than sore. I was even visitable. Instead of watching the television hanging from the wall above and to one side of the utilitarian sink, I looked out the door as doctors and nurses came and went. I watched them for nearly an hour before I began to cry. I cried hard but without making a sound. It wasn’t because of what had happened to me. It was because I wanted to go to work. I asked God to let me go back to work. I don’t think I had experienced such anguish before.

About then, Jinx arrived and closed my door. She stood there and looked at me for a long time. I was too miserable to speak or to dry my face, and my body shook with suppressed sobs. Jinx locked the door, got in bed beside me, and held me in her arms. I recall a moment of incomprehension, and then gratitude for the heat of her body. After her embrace had stilled my various shudderings, quite long after, Jinx got out of bed, fussed a bit with my covers, unlocked the door, and left. The next day she dropped off some bird books with the floor nurse, who delivered them. They only rekindled my astonishment.

Several of the staff stopped in to see me, and the aversion I had expected was nowhere in evidence. They were even friendly. Haack, Hirsch, Wong, even McAllister paid their respects. Bets were really off when you got stabbed. I was strangely fascinated by the telephone beside my bed, which seemed to be beckoning me to communicate, a challenge I was not entirely up to, not because of my injury but because of my all-consuming bafflement. I thought almost continuously of Jocelyn and wondered if she knew what had befallen me. I had no reasonable explanation of the facts and was using my reduced energy to make up some sort of harmless story. I fought the drag of time by picturing her and imagining how she felt; I was plunged into mild despair when I re-imagined sex with Jocelyn or tried to get my mind around her peculiarly abstract ferocity. These were lavish erotic fancies which kept me from turning on the television.

Alan thoughtfully held off the cops until I was feeling better and was less affected by the various medications, which had produced not just pain relief but a two-day erection, a various maypole around which visions of Jocelyn’s private parts danced. But then Officer Weiland, Terry Weiland, came to see me in order to file a more complete police report than the one produced when I was admitted and not conscious. Terry was in early middle age, a compact, purposeful man in the local cowboy style, very mannerly, very direct. He said, “Feeling any better?”

“Yes, I am, thank you.”

“Dr. Hirsch said he’ll have you out of here soon.”

I took this wrong at first, and then understood he meant only that I would soon be released. I had feared it meant I couldn’t work here.

“Was this a personal disagreement?”

“Not at all. You mean the guy who stabbed me?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know who he was. He might have mistaken me for someone else. Unless I was robbed. I don’t know that we’ve checked that, have we? Where’s my wallet?”

“We’re struggling with this and just hoping you might have learned something that would help. Isn’t this your wallet?”

“Yes, oh good.”

“Was there time — I mean, did you get much of a look at him?”

“Absolutely.”

“And he just stepped up and assaulted you?”

“He seemed to recognize me. He told me to stay away from her, that she was his and his alone. He must have confused me with someone else.”

“The old triangle.”

“Except there was no triangle.” I was trying to keep this straight. I could no longer imagine why I took this tack. I suppose I was improvising and it got away from me. I began to labor mentally over a description of the assailant, which I knew I’d have to provide. I was a little bit panicked. I didn’t really wake up until I was required to supply “Caucasian” to Officer Weiland, who had drawn a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and was balancing a clipboard on his knee.

“Age?”

“I’m guessing late thirties.” I did notice that I was beginning to picture the assailant. I had no answers for scars, tattoos, etc., but I was able to describe the assailant in sufficient detail to satisfy Officer Weiland: dark brown hair combed straight back, a lean and narrow face with prominent teeth, ice blue eyes; he was wearing straight-cut black jeans, work boots, a snap-button western shirt with a barbed-wire motif, and a baseball hat advertising an Oklahoma fuel company.

At the end of our interview, Office Weiland told me to make a “victim personal statement” describing the impact of the crime upon me. “These are used by the judge to help him decide on an appropriate sentence.”

I said, “I learned what anyone in that situation would learn — that life can end at any time and that whatever it is you want to do with your life you should do right away. I feel that things early in your life that were unresolved can suddenly crop up later on and try to do away with you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, I’ll just write it down. Maybe it will mean something to the judge.”

I don’t know what possessed me to describe Womack so exactly. Honestly, it was unintentional. By nightfall, he was featured in a composite sketch in our newspaper and, I suppose, a few thousand people were poring over it. I saw the paper myself and was startled to see what a fine job the sketch artist had done.

Deanne was carrying the paper when she visited me, my first real visitor. She was also carrying the same purse! I stared at it and asked if she was here to finish the job. If she tried again, I’d have to accept it. Her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head and pitched forward, her face against the side of my bed. I was turbulent with emotions, as I had been interrupted in the midst of a rich fantasy of Jocelyn. But this astonishing development was pushing even Jocelyn from my mind. For the moment, I had lost interest in everything. I was also overwhelmed by the sensation that I didn’t know what I would do next. Unexpectedly, I pitied Deanne and was on the verge of bursting into tears all over again. She said, “I’m worthless, aren’t I?”

“Not in the least.”

“Don’t be nice. I’m nobody.” She looked miserable, and I was aghast at what I had just done. As though parsing some term or concept for the local philological society, I tried to persuade Deanne that it was I who was worthless, not she, but I really didn’t get anywhere. Worthless seemed to apply as a general condition in Deanne’s life, and she was determined to hang on to it.

I had another wave of terror as she retrieved a Kleenex from her purse, this time to blow her nose, and having done so, she raised the newspaper as evidence and asked why I had protected her. I had to give this long thought before telling her that I believed that she was entitled to her action. “Oh, no!” she cried. I had known Deanne only as a worthily combative force, and I was desperate to absolve myself of having reduced her to this abject state. I had to believe that I was free of cruelty. Without that, in the words of Deanne, I would be Nobody. I would be Worthless.

So I poured myself into confessing my sins against her all over again. She had only one child and I’d seen to his demise. I left so little doubt that without my interference Cody might have lived that I half expected she would again try to kill me, but she seemed to absorb the long, slow death of Clarice. I really relived those scenes, and suffered them all over again. Never mind the knife, I was finally at her mercy, but she said, “I understand.” She didn’t say it quickly — she weighed my fate in her eyes for several long moments — but she said it. She said it with such gravity that I must have glimpsed what she was giving up.