The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [101]
It’s February now. I’ve taken my dog out to that field, out into the snow. Bradley and I walk over the field, crusted with winter. In February the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to your psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely. I stand in the middle of the field, right about where I imagine Oscar ran out for that pass, and then, I mean now, with Bradley running after a winter squirrel, I imagine Oscar leaping up, out of the range of everyone else, and I can see him, even at this moment, in the middle of winter, catching the football the way he did in November, and then falling, still holding it, to the ground, and lying still.
I can see them all bending over him. Even Bradley the dog has come over to examine him. Oscar’s friends are talking to him, or what’s left of him. I can see Chloé running out to the field. Someone — it’s his friend Scooter — nudges him. They say someone must have hit him and knocked him out cold.
What hit him?
I dunno. He got the wind knocked out of him. That’s all. Or, hey, maybe not. Maybe it’s something else. Oscar? Hey, man, Oscaaaaaar. Jeez.
Maybe we gotta get him down to the hospital.
Naw. He’s okay. I’m pretty sure he’s okay.
Somebody take his pulse? He doesn’t look like he’s breathing.
They bend down. They listen. Diana takes his pulse. Chloé pushes her aside and starts shouting that they have to get him to the emergency medical thing. Come on, come on, come on, come on, she says. Pick him up, you guys. Pick him up!
So they load him into the nearest car, which happens to be David’s, and David and Diana and Chloé prepare to take Oscar — Oscar’s body — to the University Hospital, where Margaret has just, as it happens, finished work and is headed in the opposite direction, back to me.
But they have all forgotten about the football traffic after the game. Every street in Ann Arbor is snarled with cars. This is a small city, and it takes a long time to empty of traffic. The stadium holds over one hundred thousand human souls. When David honks and waves his arms frantically, the drivers ahead of him and to the side honk happily in return and wave their arms and make the V-for-victory sign, or, using the same gestures that David has used, hold their fists in the air, unless they’re Ohio State fans, in which case they sit and glance around sullenly, hands clutching the wheel. No matter how much he honks, no one moves aside, no one lets him proceed with the body of Oscar to the hospital. There is no space to move. In both directions the traffic has halted, like blood in a blocked artery. He cannot shout. What good would shouting do, in this crowd of happy shouters? They’re all shouting. He’s one of many. He can’t get out of the car because that would accomplish nothing: the cars in front of him are stuck as well. His sedan with its occupants moves by slow increments toward the hospital.
What’s worse is that the cars to the right and left of him have stopped in the same traffic jam he’s in, and their happy inebriated passengers witness Chloé bending over on the seat and breathing into Oscar’s mouth. They misunderstand what they are observing. They think it’s passion. They think it’s the