terminal lung cancer. Sorry about the gunshot wound, Mr. Lincoln; take the weekend off, stay off your feet, and youâll be right as rain on Monday.
âMarty?â
âYeah?â
âWhaddyou think?â
âI said yeah, goddammit.â
And the dying man hung up without saying goodbye.
Â
11.
A young man cradles a listless infant of about nine months to his shoulder. The childâs head lolls from side to side. The man looks at his young wife, so pretty, but genuine worry puts creases in her brow. She is free diving into the blackest fear. So is he. He is performing the dread calculus of the rest of his days if this infant dies. He does the math. There is no coming back from this. If the boy dies, all of life dies. Days will be simulacra of days. He will never make love to his wife again. He will laugh, but it will be hollow. He holds the boy out in front of him. He looks into the boyâs eyes and detaches. He doesnât mean to. But he might have to. If the boy dies, life must go on. He canât follow the boy into death. Shouldnât. That is not the way.
But wait. This is just the first cold. Maybe they are overreacting. First child, first-time parents, first cold. He looks back into the boyâs eyes and reattaches. Intends to. He inhales. It feels good. But itâs not like before. Itâs not like just a couple of minutes before. Something fundamental and heavy has shifted. Something tectonic. The infant senses it, and it makes him weaker, fills his tiny heart with a lifetime of loneliness and a sense of impermanence. The boy looks at his father. Like heâs accusing him. Like he knows his father was momentarily inhabiting a world without him and now, that imagined world, once imagined, will never quite go away, that even if the boy lived, the two worlds will always coexist side by side for both of themâthe world with the boy in it and the world without the boy. And they will have to travel between those two worlds forever. There could be no solid ground anymore. Always half the world is lit by sun and half is night. Something like that. But that canât be, the father thinks. A baby canât think like that, canât see, canât perceive, canât know. But what was it Wordsworth said? Trailing âclouds of immortalityâ? Or was it âgloryâ? âThe child is father to the manâ?
The baby coughs. Thereâs something in his chest. A virus. Like a demon or a devil. The father has not wanted to take the boy to the doctor. He doesnât want to be one of those parents who rush to the doctor every time his son gets a scrape. He doesnât want his son to be weak and dependent. To start learning so young that itâs okay not to be self-reliant. A world war just ended, millions of men died without complaint. Death still stalks the earth today, probably bored, unemployed, not working full-time anyway, just doing side projects. Like killing babies. This is fruitless imagining. There is only science.
So the father waited a couple of days with the boy like this, demanding that he beat this thing on his own. Itâs just a cold, a first cold, itâs got to be nothing. A test. Odds are itâs nothing. The boy coughs. The demon announcing itself proudly. Death being proud. The boy coughs hard, fighting to bring the darkness forth, but the demon only comes halfway up, and then settles back down deep within him, his devil claws like rappelling hooks digging into and holding to the soft feathery insides of the little lungs. In between coughs the boy is motionless now. The baby hasnât smiled in a couple of days. The father doesnât know. He hasnât read books on it. He figured he would just naturally know, and what he didnât know, his wife would. Fill in gaps for each other. Thatâs a marriage. She had the mother knowledge. Donât they all?
The man involuntarily does that calculus again, molds a
âMarty?â
âYeah?â
âWhaddyou think?â
âI said yeah, goddammit.â
And the dying man hung up without saying goodbye.
Â
11.
A young man cradles a listless infant of about nine months to his shoulder. The childâs head lolls from side to side. The man looks at his young wife, so pretty, but genuine worry puts creases in her brow. She is free diving into the blackest fear. So is he. He is performing the dread calculus of the rest of his days if this infant dies. He does the math. There is no coming back from this. If the boy dies, all of life dies. Days will be simulacra of days. He will never make love to his wife again. He will laugh, but it will be hollow. He holds the boy out in front of him. He looks into the boyâs eyes and detaches. He doesnât mean to. But he might have to. If the boy dies, life must go on. He canât follow the boy into death. Shouldnât. That is not the way.
But wait. This is just the first cold. Maybe they are overreacting. First child, first-time parents, first cold. He looks back into the boyâs eyes and reattaches. Intends to. He inhales. It feels good. But itâs not like before. Itâs not like just a couple of minutes before. Something fundamental and heavy has shifted. Something tectonic. The infant senses it, and it makes him weaker, fills his tiny heart with a lifetime of loneliness and a sense of impermanence. The boy looks at his father. Like heâs accusing him. Like he knows his father was momentarily inhabiting a world without him and now, that imagined world, once imagined, will never quite go away, that even if the boy lived, the two worlds will always coexist side by side for both of themâthe world with the boy in it and the world without the boy. And they will have to travel between those two worlds forever. There could be no solid ground anymore. Always half the world is lit by sun and half is night. Something like that. But that canât be, the father thinks. A baby canât think like that, canât see, canât perceive, canât know. But what was it Wordsworth said? Trailing âclouds of immortalityâ? Or was it âgloryâ? âThe child is father to the manâ?
The baby coughs. Thereâs something in his chest. A virus. Like a demon or a devil. The father has not wanted to take the boy to the doctor. He doesnât want to be one of those parents who rush to the doctor every time his son gets a scrape. He doesnât want his son to be weak and dependent. To start learning so young that itâs okay not to be self-reliant. A world war just ended, millions of men died without complaint. Death still stalks the earth today, probably bored, unemployed, not working full-time anyway, just doing side projects. Like killing babies. This is fruitless imagining. There is only science.
So the father waited a couple of days with the boy like this, demanding that he beat this thing on his own. Itâs just a cold, a first cold, itâs got to be nothing. A test. Odds are itâs nothing. The boy coughs. The demon announcing itself proudly. Death being proud. The boy coughs hard, fighting to bring the darkness forth, but the demon only comes halfway up, and then settles back down deep within him, his devil claws like rappelling hooks digging into and holding to the soft feathery insides of the little lungs. In between coughs the boy is motionless now. The baby hasnât smiled in a couple of days. The father doesnât know. He hasnât read books on it. He figured he would just naturally know, and what he didnât know, his wife would. Fill in gaps for each other. Thatâs a marriage. She had the mother knowledge. Donât they all?
The man involuntarily does that calculus again, molds a
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