"We can definitely identify the stroke as a
carotid thrombosis," Dr. Sand had said. His voice had been
pitched professionally low and his back, as he faced my mother
and father in the far corner of the hospital room, was turned
toward Da who lay in bed, apparently asleep, unaware of the sun
on his face or of me standing by his bedside.
My father
cleared his throat nervously as though embarrassed to admit
ignorance of the technical expressions used. Dr. Sand touched his
arm and smiled apologetically.
"I'm
sorry. That doesn't mean a thing to you. There are several
kinds of physical insults all grouped under the general
layman's term 'stroke.' In your father's case he
showed indications of two types, but now we've pinned it
down."
He half turned
toward the bed as though checking to make certain Da wasn't
listening in on the conversation that was about him. It was an
automatic gesture, the sort a doctor makes who's busy, on the
run, doing service for relatives, as well as patients, fitting
things in.
"His
paralysis isn't limited to only one side of the body.
That's unusual but can be explained by a half dozen
factors."
"But he can
raise his right hand," my father said.
Dr. Sand smiled
as though commending him on finding the hopeful sign.
"The
dominant side of his brain has been damaged more than the other.
That's why there's a disruption in the reception and
expression of speech."
My mother
sighed deeply. "Will he be all right?" she said and
then ducked her head in recognition of the simplicity and
inadequacy of the remark, the foolishness of it.
"Not
'all right', but we can hope for improvement since
he's survived these first hours," Dr. Sand assured her.
"There is, of course, the possibility of another
incident."
The three of
them seemed to contemplate that terrible threat.
"What's
to be done?" she asked.
"He'll
stay here, of course, until his condition is reasonably stable.
We'll have to consult a rehabilitation team."
"Oh?"
she said.
"That would
be a physical therapist, occupational therapist "
"Da keeps
himself busy. Nobody has to find things for him to do," my
mother said.
Dr. Sand smiled
briefly and went on. "Speech therapist "
"Oh,
yes."
"Psychologist "
My father
shuffled his feet. A small frown appeared between his brows. Get
on with it, he seemed to say.
"Social
worker," Dr. Sand went on, lost in the pattern of his own
speech, unable to let it go. "Vocational counselor," he
finished, running down like an old clock.
"He
doesn't need a social worker," my father said.
"He's got a family."
"You both
work, don't you?" Dr. Sand said.
They nodded.
"Well,
then, you'll be needing help of one sort or
another."
"He can
stay here until we work things out?" my father asked.
"Yes. We'll handle things to make it as easy as we can
all around. For now. But you understand the hospital isn't
set up to take care of chronic patients."
My parents
nodded again, taking things with apparent calm, listening to the
doctor order the disruption of their lives, fearing the burden of
an invalid not because they didn't love my grandfather who
suffered, but because they recognized the human weakness in
themselves and feared they'd come to begrudge the care they
gave to Da when their own spirits were diminished.
Sitting by my
grandfather and overhearing most of the murmured conversation, I
told myself, and would have told everyone who cared to listen,
that I'd take care of my grandfather. I'd stay up all day
and all night if need be, holding my grandfather's hand so he
wouldn't slip away. Feeding him. Bathing his strong old limbs
now stricken weak and useless, cooling the fever that lay upon
his skin. Just as Da had done for me when I was small and
ill.
I'd
contracted measles. In the night, just before the rash appeared,
my temperature rose to 105 degrees. I awakened with the weight of
the fever on my eyelids and saw Da sitting beside my bed in the
yellow glow of the bedlamp. He was wringing out a cloth in a pan
of water, the sound reminding me of the bustle of water over the
stones of the brooks that led to the Genesee River. Da turned
toward the bed and saw me looking at him.
"How is it,
sonny?" he whispered.
"I'm
thirsty."
"Well, sure
you are."
Da gave me a sip
of cool water, holding my head up from the pillow.
He placed the
damp cloth on my forehead.
"Men of the
Foreign Legion put wet cloths around their heads when marching
from one oasis to another," Da said. "Keeps their
brains from cooking.
"No,"
I laughed.
"Would I
pull your leg?"
"No, but
you might tickle my fancy," I said.
We laughed
together softly in the room with the night outside the window. An
owl spoke.
"That's
not a hunter, is it, Da?" I asked, a bit concerned about the
pigeons.
"Just a
little hooter looking for nothing bigger than a grasshopper.
Besides, our birds are all to bed."
"More
water, please," I said.
I drank again
and made a small sound of discomfort.
"Feeling
poorly, aren't you?" Da said.
"Will I get
better soon?"
I imagine Da
wondered how a child feeling badly could be told the sickness he
suffered was a comparatively small matter. How long was
"soon" to a boy? Was it shorter than a day? Shorter
even than an hour?
"How long
is "soon'?" he asked, scarcely knowing that he
'd spoken aloud.
"Till
morning comes, " I said. Being practical in my request for
miracles.
"Ah,"
Da smiled, "then you count the times the owl calls. When he
speaks seven times the sun will be topping Wager's hill.
Morning'll be on the way and you'll be feeling
better."
The owl spoke
again and I counted "one."
I was asleep
again before seven calls were heard. That was when I was eight or
nine. Now I was ten and Da was ill.
I leaned close
to my grandfather's pillow and whispered into his ear.
"Listen for
the owl, Da. Morning's on the way."
Dickens was
beating his way through the sky with powerful strokes of his
wings, pushing aside the sunny air. There was no weariness in
him. Not the least breath. He wasn't aware of it didn't
care but he was far ahead of every other bird in the race, even
so early on. At the rate he was going he'd surely be the
winner, the champion and a record setter. His urge to reach the
nest blinded him somewhat to the dangerous shape hovering above
him; the pointed wings and serpent's head.
But the
peregrine saw him.
Dickens's
entire spirit was on his mate and the young she was caring for.
An engine of desire drove him. One of hunger drove the falcon.
Her sharp eyes weighed and measured him.
The look of her
high among the clouds was one of great and tranquil beauty. A
ripple of pure white dotted with umber from below. A silken
ribbon of flight opening and closing as she angled across the
sky, wings curling in the sun.
Now, she
gathered herself, folded her wings tight against her body,
collected herself for the stoop, and came plummeting out of the
sun which helped to blind Dickens to her deadly approach.
When she struck,
the air would be filled with his feathers, the wreckage of his
defeat. She'd ride him down for a distance, then let him go
to fall, stunned, to the boscage and brier below. Then she would
alight upon him, instinctively mantling him with spread wings in
order to conceal her kill from any other predators. She would
break his neck with a powerful wrench and, finally, feed upon
him.
Her body,
hurtling down, obscured an infinitesimal spot of the sun,
shadowed Dickens's back for a split moment, cooled it an
imperceptible fraction of a degree but warned him
nonetheless.
The falcon's
eyes were placed well forward for the benefit such vision gave to
attacking creatures of prey, his well to the side for the virtue
that extended peripheral vision gave to those who depended upon
alertness and flight to preserve their lives. He saw the shape of
her bringing death. Her talons were outstretched and hooked to
destroy. He paused in mid flight, fell away from the direct line
of his flight, turned aside.
The falcon shot
by, striking him a glancing blow with her compact body.
Dicken's chattered across the sky, momentarily out of
control. But he wasn't wounded, not even stunned. Only
terrified and running for his life.
She hurtled on,
nearly bombing into the ground, curling back her powerful flight
feathers with a turn of her wrists, warping and bellying her
wings at the last moment. She seemed to collide with a wall of
air and bounced back into the sky, having stopped mere inches
from the killing earth.
Dickens raced
away in stark terror and confusion, employing no tactics, simply
flying on in the vain hope that the peregrine, having struck,
would strike no more.
The peregrine
flamed away from the brown earth, the rocks greened with moss and
lichen that lay in the swampy bogs along the banks of the Wabash,
the patches of new grass, bright green, unstained. She thrust
herself toward the sun that had somehow betrayed her to her prey.
She beat against the pull of the earth and climbed the columns of
the sky, tier upon tier, until she was at a thousand feet again,
turning about on planing wings, effortlessly gliding upon the
updrafts as she searched the altitudes below.
There was her
quarry there was Dickens beating his way furiously, but stupidly,
on a straight line, away from the shelter of the stands of trees
dotted here and there upon the landscape, heading out into the
most open of the ground.
She leaned back
onto the air and set herself to stoop once more. She hurtled
down. Her speed increased. She became a living stone, a feathered
projectile as deadly as any made of lead or steel.
Dickens gathered
his sense and his wiles. He took hold of himself and surveyed the
dimensions of the danger he was in. He saw a stand of willows
cradled in a small bend of the river. He half turned on his back,
slowing himself so severely that he began to fall at once. He
fluttered briefly to right himself, went left, then right.
The peregrine
saw what he meant to do but was committed to her attack. She was
able to alter her trajectory only enough so that she would still
transect the new direction of the pigeon's flight. She would
have him this time.
Dickens stopped
again, zigged and zagged as before, then seemed to leap forward
and up into the air, throwing all the peregrine's
calculations awry. Still she struck him. He felt a terrible
wrenching of the muscles of his left wing where they were
sheathed to his breast bone and ribs. Feathers exploded into the
sky. Was he pierced?
He flew on. He
felt nothing broken. There was no wetness of blood, no pink spray
upon the air. He felt no veil of dark vertigo before his eyes. He
gained heart and strength as the stand of willow grew near.
The falcon
approached the earth again, braked and pulled away, screaming and
chattering her anger at the second loss of her victim.
The protection
promised by the trees was still about a mile away, a minute or
less for a racing pigeon in the fullness of its strength. But
Dickens was hurt and slowed down considerably. He pumped his
wings against the pain in his side and careened toward the
trees.
The peregrine
climbed again, not quite so high. If she was to take this pigeon
before it gained the safety of the willows she'd have to
shorten the distance of her dive. She turned and sought him out.
He was lost down below amid the undergrowth and rocks for a long
moment. Her own eagerness for the kill affected her usually pin
sharp sight. She had nestlings to feed.
Then she saw
Dickens flying very low to the ground. Sending his shadow among
the other shadows on the earth. He was gathering speed even in so
short a run, apparently recovered from the glancing blow
she'd dealt him. She chose a line of attack, set herself, and
stooped. She pierced the sky like an arrow, her every sense
centered on the moment of impact.
Dickens had no
tactics or strategies left. He didn't dare to waste a moment
in any diversionary movements. Straight ahead lay salvation and
he needed every ounce of speed and strength to reach it. The
trunks of the trees loomed closer. The texture of the bark and
the details of leaves became clear. He sensed the peregrine
hurtling toward him, sensed death at his back.
Then he was
among the shadows cast by the trees. A last heroic effort placed
him beneath their boughs. He was safe.
The falcon
crashed through the foliage. She leapt away on curled wings. She
flew off shouting curses at the pigeon. Dickens flew deeper into
the grove where the peregrine couldn't follow. He perched on
a limb and examined his sanctuary. It was a random stand,
isolated in the little curve of the river, unconnected by any
heavy growth or stretch of bush to the thick woods that grew back
in a long line from the river edge, a windbreak planted once long
ago by men who'd set out to farm the land. That was a half
mile away across a space bare except for sedge and soft grasses.
He'd be safer if he could make his way across that distance
and wrap the weight of the greater forest around him.
The falcon
seemed to have given him up as a potential meal for herself and
her family, but, if she was unsuccessful upon the hunt as the day
wore on, she might decide to make incursions into the small wood
even if it were not her natural hunting ground. Dickens eyed the
distance to the forest and saw no easy way across it. He flew to
a tree on the farthest rim and perched again. He cocked his head,
keeping an eye on the deadly shape quartering the sky above.
As he kept his
vigil, waiting for the peregrine to make a kill or go farther
afield, Dickens saw a pheasant burst from cover, flushed out by
some danger greater, more immediate, than the falcon coursing the
sky above. Dickens saw the slender, sinuous shape of a weasel
slithering through the brush, head lifted to watch the
pheasant's flight, showing its teeth in anger at the loss of
its quarry.
The pheasant
rose in the air, all gold, black, and russet. The falcon fell
from the sky, a thunderbolt. She collided with the pheasant. Its
feathers exploded in a cloud. There was a burst of crimson spray.
The peregrine rode the pheasant to earth, never letting go. She
broke its neck, her talons sunk deep in its breast. She mantled
it with her wings.
Dickens burst
from the protection of the willows, crossed the open space, and
entered the wood beyond. The shadows were cool. He perched again
behind a veil of pine needles and waited to regain his
strength.
He was alive,
the pheasant dead. He rested gratefully.
I don't
believe there was any good rest for my grandfather that second
terrible day. We left him at last life's chores had to be
attended alone to the white room and the fading sun lying heavy
on the windowsill. It seemed to have weight to me as it spilled
over the edge onto the floor. I wondered if Da thought it so.
Or did he think,
instead, of the terrible weight of the stroke that gripped him.
Or perhaps, the last lingering illness that took my grandmother
from him.
I remember now
being told of how hard he'd fought to hold her to life. My
mother said once to me that Da had woven a garment out of
willpower, so often patched and mended that it was no more than a
beggar's rag, and with it wrapped his Jenny safe as long as
he could.
She told me of
my grandmother lying in the little bedroom within sight of the
river and sound of the pigeons cooing in the dusk. It was only
then the shades were raised, the curtains opened, for the light
of day hurt her eyes. Or perhaps she knew that it illuminated the
ravages of her flesh too harshly for her Henri's eyes to
bear.
But for a
little while in the violet shadows of twilight they could look
out upon the familiar landscape and, in the lovely light of
waning day, it was not so apparent that her body was thinned to a
pity or that her hands had seemed to grow large and ungainly as
she became diminished.
It was then that
my Da would hold her and whisper into her hair, his dry lips
softly stirring grandmother's hair, fine now, gossamer, no
longer thick and heavy as she lay against his breast.
So my mother
came upon them more than once and, upon one occasion, heard Da
softly putting iron in Grandma's spirit with promises that he
would hold her in the last moments of her life and a while longer
after.
The gloaming is
falling on the land.
