the audience coughs. Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.
Julian looks up. There is a screen behind him on which his image is projected, blowing up his face by a power of fifteen. His eyes are a swirl of blue and green and gold, like the surface of the ocean on a sunny day, and behind the flatness, the practiced calm, I think I see something flashing there—an expression that is gone before I can find a name for it.
“I’ve had three operations since the first one,” he says. “They have removed the tumor four times, and three times it has regrown, as sicknesses will, unless they are removed swiftly and completely.” He pauses to let the significance of the statement sink in. “I have now been cancer free for two years.” There is a smattering of applause. Julian holds up a hand and the room once again goes silent.
Julian smiles, and the enormous Julian behind him smiles also: a pixelated version, a blur. “The doctors have told me that further surgeries may endanger my life. Too much tissue has been removed already, too many excisions performed; if I am cured, I might lose the ability to regulate my emotions at all. I might lose the ability to speak, to see, to move.” He shifts at the podium. “It is possible that my brain will shut down entirely.”
I can’t help it; I am holding my breath too, along with everybody else. Only Thomas Fineman looks relaxed; I wonder how often he has heard this speech.
Julian leans forward another inch toward the microphone, and suddenly it is like he is addressing each and every one of us individually: His voice is low and urgent, a secret whispered in our ears.
“They have refused to cure me for this reason. For more than a year we have been fighting for a procedure date, and finally we have arranged one. On March twenty-third, the day of our rally, I will be cured.”
Another smattering of applause, but Julian pushes through it. He is not done yet.
“It will be a historic day, even though it may prove to be my last. Don’t think I don’t understand the risks, because I do.” He straightens up, and his voice becomes louder, thunderous. The eyes on the screen are flashing now, dazzling, full of light. “But there is no choice, just as there wasn’t when I was nine. We must excise the sickness. We must cut it out, no matter what the risks. Otherwise it will only grow. It will spread like the very worst cancer and put all of us—every single person born into this vast and wonderful country—at risk. So I say to you: We will—we must—cut away the sickness, wherever it is. Thank you.”
There; that’s it. He has done it. He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. Lena claps along with everybody else until her palms burn; she keeps clapping until they go numb. Half the audience stands, cheering. Someone starts a chant of “DFA! DFA!” and soon we are all chanting: It is earsplitting, a deafening roar. At a certain point Thomas joins his son onstage again and they stand solemnly, side by side—one fair, one dark, like the two sides of the moon—watching over us as we keep clapping, keep chanting, keep roaring our approval. They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.
then
S omeone is always sick in the Wilds. As soon as I am strong enough to move out of the sickroom and onto a mattress on the floor, Squirrel has to move in; and after Squirrel’s turn, it is Grandpa’s. At night, the homestead echoes with the sounds of coughing, heaving, feverish chatter: noises of disease, which run through the walls and fill us all with dread. The problem is the space and the closeness. We live on top of one another, breathe and sneeze on one
Julian looks up. There is a screen behind him on which his image is projected, blowing up his face by a power of fifteen. His eyes are a swirl of blue and green and gold, like the surface of the ocean on a sunny day, and behind the flatness, the practiced calm, I think I see something flashing there—an expression that is gone before I can find a name for it.
“I’ve had three operations since the first one,” he says. “They have removed the tumor four times, and three times it has regrown, as sicknesses will, unless they are removed swiftly and completely.” He pauses to let the significance of the statement sink in. “I have now been cancer free for two years.” There is a smattering of applause. Julian holds up a hand and the room once again goes silent.
Julian smiles, and the enormous Julian behind him smiles also: a pixelated version, a blur. “The doctors have told me that further surgeries may endanger my life. Too much tissue has been removed already, too many excisions performed; if I am cured, I might lose the ability to regulate my emotions at all. I might lose the ability to speak, to see, to move.” He shifts at the podium. “It is possible that my brain will shut down entirely.”
I can’t help it; I am holding my breath too, along with everybody else. Only Thomas Fineman looks relaxed; I wonder how often he has heard this speech.
Julian leans forward another inch toward the microphone, and suddenly it is like he is addressing each and every one of us individually: His voice is low and urgent, a secret whispered in our ears.
“They have refused to cure me for this reason. For more than a year we have been fighting for a procedure date, and finally we have arranged one. On March twenty-third, the day of our rally, I will be cured.”
Another smattering of applause, but Julian pushes through it. He is not done yet.
“It will be a historic day, even though it may prove to be my last. Don’t think I don’t understand the risks, because I do.” He straightens up, and his voice becomes louder, thunderous. The eyes on the screen are flashing now, dazzling, full of light. “But there is no choice, just as there wasn’t when I was nine. We must excise the sickness. We must cut it out, no matter what the risks. Otherwise it will only grow. It will spread like the very worst cancer and put all of us—every single person born into this vast and wonderful country—at risk. So I say to you: We will—we must—cut away the sickness, wherever it is. Thank you.”
There; that’s it. He has done it. He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. Lena claps along with everybody else until her palms burn; she keeps clapping until they go numb. Half the audience stands, cheering. Someone starts a chant of “DFA! DFA!” and soon we are all chanting: It is earsplitting, a deafening roar. At a certain point Thomas joins his son onstage again and they stand solemnly, side by side—one fair, one dark, like the two sides of the moon—watching over us as we keep clapping, keep chanting, keep roaring our approval. They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.
then
S omeone is always sick in the Wilds. As soon as I am strong enough to move out of the sickroom and onto a mattress on the floor, Squirrel has to move in; and after Squirrel’s turn, it is Grandpa’s. At night, the homestead echoes with the sounds of coughing, heaving, feverish chatter: noises of disease, which run through the walls and fill us all with dread. The problem is the space and the closeness. We live on top of one another, breathe and sneeze on one
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