Gargoyles by Bill Gaston

folks stuffed into sterile caverns, waiting for death. His father, so aware of his environment, claiming how environment
is
one’s mood. He would find a hospital hellish for that alone.
    At the nurse’s station he gets pointed directions, is told a nurse is in with his father now. Richard finds the door and meets this nurse on her way out. He introduces himself to the short, young woman with a kind smile and tired but patient eyes. She is dressed mostly in what appears to be green disposable paper. She rustles when she moves.
    â€œI had to dress his thumb again. It keeps bleeding because he won’t stop wiggling it.” She could be speaking about a child — isn’t he naughty. “We might need to put in a stitch.”
    Richard needs her to back up into bigger things.
    â€œHe’s had a stroke?”
    â€œWell, now, the tests show nothing so far, but he’s uncommunicative.”
    â€œAlways was.” Richard smiles to tell her it’s a joke.
    â€œHe had a blow to the head. So we don’t know if it’s that, or it might be the shock, from the attack. He’s, how old is he? Seventy-five?”
    â€œSeventy-nine. He was definitely attacked? The doctor I spoke to says he may have fallen.”
    â€œWell, we don’t know. The police report was very, was not very clear. A neighbour found him just as he was regaining —”
    â€œMy father won’t say what happened?”
    The nurse eyes him anew. Her manner softens.
    â€œI think you have to see him yourself. He won’t stop moving. He’s hallucinating.” The nurse has Richard by the arm, stopping him from going in quite yet. “I should warn you. There’s lots of swelling.”
    His father is curtained off at the far end of the room. Sunlight enters such that Richard can see his father’s shadow projected onto the curtain. He is sitting on the edge of his bed, and his hands are busy.
    Richard doesn’t pull the curtain aside but more quietly lifts and steps under. His father’s face is badly swollen on one side and an eye socket is puffed and blackened. His nose might be broken. Other than that, it’s his father, who has always looked old to him.
    â€œHi, Dad.”
    It’s curious, his father’s response to this. His hands keep working away in front of him. He turns his head to Richard’s voice but his eyes stay down, keep staring at whatever it is hishands are working on. Turning in the sunlight, his face is cut hard with shadows.
    â€œYou feel okay?”
    His father looks content enough. Nothing in his eyes suggests pain or suffering of any kind. He looks freshly cleaned, his hair combed. On his bedside table, an empty Dixie cup is torn into many pieces. A drinking straw with an accordion bend has been pulled straight and taut.
    â€œMom sends her love.”
    He realizes he does feel repelled. Not by his appearance so much. It’s that his father still isn’t talking to him, still isn’t looking at him. His father who, sitting there, patiently working his hands, looks like a contented summary of himself.
    Watching his father push whatever it is away, watching him nimbly combat the very air, Richard sees a perfect picture of futility. And he feels close to his father, as close as he ever has. He sees his father and knows himself: he lets no one in either.
    Richard watches the hands. They are deft, and more articulate than his words ever were. They move, still, with delicacy and precision. Minutely pinching, pulling, sweeping. On second thought, he’s not fighting the air. He’s trying to clear it away. Not clear away — take apart.

THE KITE TRICK
    This Tofino,” pronounced Uncle Phil, from his bed, first cigarette of the day bouncing unlit in his lips, “is a freakish place.”
    It was warm and lovely out and the cause of his declaration, yesterday having been stormy and cold. “Hilariously cold,” he had said, not