Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [116]
It was harder with Joe: “When you going Dad?” he would shout on occasion. “How long? What you gonna do? Hiking? Can I go?” And then when Charlie explained that he couldn’t, he would shrug. “Oh my.” And make a little face. “See you when you back Dad.”
It was heartbreaking.
On the morning of Charlie’s departure, Joe patted him on the arm. “Bye Da. Be careful,” saying it just like Charlie always said it, as a half-exasperated reminder, just as Charlie’s father had always said it to him, as if the default plan were to do something reckless, so that one had to be reminded.
Anna clutched him to her. “Be careful. Have fun.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you too. Be careful.”
Charlie and Frank flew from Dulles to Ontario together, making a plane change in Dallas.
Frank had had his operation eighteen days before. “So what was it like?” Charlie asked him.
“Oh, you know. They put you out.”
“For how long?”
“A few hours I think.”
“And after that?”
“Felt fine.”
Although, Charlie saw, he seemed to have even less to say than before. So on the second leg of the trip, with Frank sitting beside him looking out the window of the plane, and every page of that day’s Post read, Charlie fell asleep.
It was too bad about the operation. Charlie was in an agony of apprehension about it, but as Joe lay there on the hospital bed he looked up at his father and tried to reassure him. “It be all right Da.” They had attached wires to his skull, connecting him to a bulky machine by the bed, but most of his hair was still unshaved, and under the mesh cap his expression was resolute. He squeezed Charlie’s hand, then let go and clenched his fists by his sides, preparing himself, mouth pursed. The doctor on the far side of the bed nodded; time for delivery of the treatment. Joe saw this, and to give himself courage began to sing one of his wordless marching tunes, “Da, da da da, da!” The doctor flicked a switch on the machine and instantaneously Joe sizzled to a small black crisp on the bed.
Charlie jerked upright with a gasp.
“You okay?” Frank said.
Charlie shuddered, fought to dispel the image. He was clutching the seat arms hard.
“Bad dream,” he got out. He hauled himself up in his seat and took some deep breaths. “Just a little nightmare. I’m fine.”
But the image stuck with him, like the taste of poison. Very obvious symbolism, of course, in the crass way dreams sometimes had—image of a fear he had in him, expressed visually, sure—but so brutal, so ugly! He felt betrayed by his own mind. He could hardly believe himself capable of imagining such a thing. Where did such monsters come from?
He recalled a friend who had once mentioned he was taking St. John’s wort in order to combat nightmares. At the time Charlie had thought it a bit silly; the moment you woke up from dreams you knew they were not real, so how bad could a nightmare be?
Now he knew, and finally he felt for his old friend Gene.
So when his old friends and roommates Dave and Vince picked them up at the Ontario airport and they drove north in Dave’s van, Charlie and Frank were both a bit subdued. They sat in the middle seats of the van and let Dave and Vince do most of the talking up front. These two were more than willing to fill the hours of the drive with tales of the previous year’s work in criminal defense and urology. Occasionally Vince would turn around in the passenger seat and demand some words from Charlie, and Charlie would reply, working to shake off the trauma of the dream and get into the good mood that he knew he should be experiencing. They were off to the mountains—the southern end of the Sierra Nevada was appearing ahead to their left already, the weird desert ranges above Death Valley were off to their right. They were entering Owens Valley, one of the greatest of mountain valleys! It was typically one of the high points of their trips, but this time he wasn’t quite into it yet.
In Independence they met the van bringing down the two northern members of