Knowing that the decision had been made, that Da, when he was somewhat recovered from this second attack, would be taken from the hospital, not to his own home or even to our house, but to a strange place where he would be "attended," disturbed me so that all thought of sleep, or even desire for it, left me.
I was quiet during the ride back home. I sat between my mother and father in the front seat of the car, felt overlooked and was glad of it.
My mother held a handkerchief to her mouth as though to trap any sobs that might break from it, but her eyes were dry as she stared out at the passing houses on the way home.
My father spoke in bits and pieces, mere comments on matters already accomplished, decisions made. As though the repetition of them would make them seem less terrible. There was a bitter sound of fear and helplessness in his voice as he insisted softly, more to himself than to anyone else, that a convalescent home was the best thing for Da. The only practical thing. The only sensible choice among many unhappy choices.
When we arrived home, my mother made a pot of coffee for them both and poured a glass of milk for me but, in the end, nobody touched their cups or glass. My father's eyes looked bruised in the yellow glow of the overhead light, my mother's deeply shadowed like someone's after a long mourning. They sent me off to bed.
I lay awake and shortly heard them making ready for their own bed, brushing their teeth and running the water in the bathroom sink. All the commonplace sounds of a household settling in for the night, somehow made hollow and echoing because of the knowledge that an old man wasn't at home, wasn't preparing for his own bed.
They retired. The springs stirred restlessly, and I knew they were as wakeful as I. Then, very thinly, I heard someone crying and, with a shock, realized that it was not my mother but my father. A moment later the door to their room was softly closed. Thinking back to that night I should imagine that my mother and father made love as proof against the sorrow that ravaged him.
I lay on my back staring at the patterns made by the moon upon the ceiling. There was nothing amusing or comforting I could imagine there as I'd done so often before. There were the calls of night creatures from outside the window. They seemed hushed and muted.
The clock in the living room below struck the hours. I heard them all, small vibrations through the hallway and stairwell. When it struck four, I got up with extra care. My bed made no sound when I took my weight from it, the chair made none as I sat on it to put on my socks and shoes. I dressed myself more quietly than I'd ever done before. There'd be no risk of awakening my father or mother behind their closed door.
I put on coat and cap and tiptoed down the hallway to the stairs. I went down along the side close to the wall so that the steps wouldn't creak. I let myself out into the first glow of false dawn that lit the eastern sky. It would go out before I reached my grandfather's house where my red wagon was kept.
Perhaps at that moment Dickens roused himself at sight of the pale finger of light that presented itself at the chink in the garage planking. He made his way back into the air, half dizzy, still exhausted but more determined than ever to fly to home.
He rose up in the air as the false dawn left the sky and plunged the world back into darkness. Crying softly against the pain, he gained the heights and waited, soaring there, for that bell like whisper in his soul to guide him.
I walked along the silent streets of the town dragging the wagon behind me. One wheel made rhythmic little noises like the pipings of young birds. I went toward the hospital, fearing that someone would see me, a ten year old out on the dark early morning streets, stop me, and take me home. A policeman, a milkman, some commuter up early for the journey to his job. But I met no one. It was as though only two people were awake in all the city. Myself and my grandfather waiting for me, sleepless, in a strange bed.
I approached the hospital by way of the park. I left the red wagon under the branches of a maple tree and walked across the silent street. I stood on the sidewalk outside my grandfather's room. The curtains were closed but I knew that he was inside, lying facing the window, trying to see through them. I looked both ways along the walk. There was nobody around. I stepped across the flowerbed between the sidewalk and the building and tried to test the window to see if it could be raised. It was locked tight. I tapped on the window with my fingernails in the way that a chick taps upon the inside of its egg, alerting Da to my coming.
Down along the way, about twenty feet, was a side entrance to the hospital. I knew it entered on to the waiting room and the corridor that led to my grandfather's room.
It was locked as well. I went across the street and returned with the wagon, its slender squeaking arousing the birds for a moment before they settled themselves again. Their chattering lifted my spirits. I left the wagon among some bushes growing beside the door.
There was no one about the front of the building. Bright lights flooded the reception area and I could see a woman in a white uniform sitting behind the counter. She looked bored and tired, the way people do who are awake when everyone else is asleep. She was making some sort of entries in a book, glancing up at the clock on the wall above the door to her left. She shifted restlessly, put down her pen and got up to stretch. She seemed to be making up her mind about something, then picked up her purse and disappeared through a door at the back.
I slipped through the front door and ran across the linoleum to the corridor. My rubber soled Keds made little squeaking noises that I hoped couldn't be heard very far. I looked into the hallway through the little square of glass set in the door and, seeing that it was empty, opened it noiselessly and was inside. The antiseptic smell of the place scared me. I walked town the hall, being careful now to make no sound at all. A door swung open on one side of the corridor up ahead of me, and I ducked into a little alcove that housed a drinking fountain. There was space enough to hide me.
I saw a nurse, her attention on a chart in her hands, walk down a side turning. I crept along until I was opposite the joining and saw her sitting at a desk, reading the chart in the glow of a desk lamp that did little to brighten the gloom. I was across the juncture in a wink. I passed the foyer to the side door to my right, the waiting room to my left. I was at Da's door.
Just as I'd expected, his back was turned to me as be lay in bed, his head toward the window. I went around that side between the bed and window. He was lying there, his eyes wide, looking very pale but charged with determination. He moved his right hand out from beneath the covers and reached out to me. I took his hand and lie smiled or tried to.
I took the blanket and sheet from him, uncovering his big boned body now seeming much diminished even to a child's eyes. He'd lost considerable weight. He made scrabbling attempts to move, wanting to straighten, to roll over upon the bed in such a way that his feet would fall to the floor and he'd be sitting up on his own. But he failed. I put his arm about my shoulder, kneeling beside the bed, squirmed until my body was under his, my head against his chest, and straightened up. He tottered and nearly fell the other way but threw out his right arm, stiffly, with sudden strength, and we posed there for a moment. We'd come that far, but I was already lost for any way to go further. I'd have to bring the wagon inside.
"Can you sit here for a minute, Da?" I asked.
He nodded, and I saw a muscle arch along his jaw, a trick of his when he prepared himself for any effort, large or small.
I placed his other arm at his side, his hand on the bed, and left him there supported by the tripod of his arms and spine, motionless.
I hurried out into the hallway, after first peeking out to make certain the nurse wasn't roaming about, and went through the small foyer to the side door. It opened easily from within and I propped it open with the kickstop at the bottom. I got the wagon from the bush and started into the hospital. The shrill whine of the wheel, which sounded like no more than a bird's call in the out of doors, was sharp and loud within the echoing walls of the hospital.
I lifted the wagon in my arms, settled it so that the handle wouldn't swing around and make a crash, and crept back with it to my grandfather's room.
He was still seated on the edge of the bed, steady as a rock. I set the wagon down on the floor near his feet.
It was a struggle to get his arms in the sleeves of his bathrobe, but it was done at last. I tied it around his waist with the tassled cord, then I bent and put on his socks and slippers. I straightened up and looked at him, smiling to let him know that things were moving along famously. His eyes twinkled and be made a movement with his mouth. I looked to the bedside table for a glass and his teeth, but they weren't there. His hand moved on the sheet, a finger pointing to the cabinet within the table. I found his teeth there and placed them in his mouth. He managed a broad grin and I had to laugh softly for the curious adventure we were off upon.
Now came the part of greatest difficulty. I helped him slide forward on the high bed until his feet were on the floor. I draped his arms over my shoulders one after the other. Looking up into his face, I saw a sudden spurt of fear in his eyes, not of pain or injury but that we might fail. I took a deep breath, my hands behind his back, and urged his weight to fall forward on me. We danced in each other's embrace for a terrible moment, his slippers shuffling on the tile, and then I turned him around and had him poised above the wagon bed.
"Bend your knees, Da," I whispered. He did so. He became heavier as his weight fell away from me. I staggered and nearly lost my hold. He fell, more than sat, into the wagon.
I was drenched with sweat. I would have laughed at Da if we'd been playing because be looked foolish sitting in a child's wagon. But we weren't playing and be looked, instead, quite brave and proud of what we'd accomplished so far.
I went behind him and tried to pull him back farther on the bed of the wagon, but it rolled back on my toes. I threw a pillow under the wheels to block them and, taking him under the arms, managed it a second time. Then I lifted his legs so that he was completely settled in it, his knees raised almost to his chin. I placed each hand on a side of the wagon. He held on, his jaw flexing with the effort.
I pulled the wagon with great effort to the door, peeked out, saw no one, and somehow managed to get my grandfather in the wagon out of his room. I hauled it to the open door and out into the night air. His weight had stilled the squeaky wheel. I shivered when the chill struck me. In a moment the door was closed and locked again behind us.
Placing my hands behind my back, I lifted the handle of the wagon and, facing forward, pulled for home toward Da's house a good mile away. I trudged along the dark streets. The sky began to lighten. The trees and bushes were no longer dark, featureless shapes; there was a tinge of color here and there against the gray of the dawning. An automobile, headlamps glowing, passed along the streets from time to time, but no one stopped to ask what a boy was doing pulling an old man, dressed in robe and slippers, in a child's wagon, along the empty streets.
It seemed to take forever; the sun was rising above the low hills to the east, long morning shadows slanting across the road in front of me, the grass of lawns still wet with dew. Some householders came out on their porches to get the milk or morning paper. I knew a few of them and raised my head to say hello, good morning, or something to deflect their questions, but no one asked me anything or tried to stop me in any way. Perhaps they sensed, somehow, what I was doing.
I trudged along, dragging Da in the wagon behind me, the wheel singing a monotonous little song, smelling the new morning, hearing the birds waking to the day. We reached the saltbox by the rushing stream that fed the Genesee. I dragged the wagon around the back and dropped the handle. I'd never been so weary in my life.
Da was looking at me, a kind of pity for my pain mixed with pride for my courage in his eyes. I found the key to the back door in the flowerpot upon the outside windowsill and opened the door. I pulled the wagon into the mud room, into the kitchen, through the living room to the foot of the stairs. Tears piled up behind my eyes. How would I ever lift him up the many steps?
Da spoke. I understood the terrible gibberish. It was the familiar bed, not so much the room, he sought. I went upstairs and took the mattress from the bed, dragged it down the stairs and out back to the screened summer porch. I returned for sheets and blankets, pillows and cases. When the bed was made up as well as I knew how, I pulled the wagon up beside it.
Da sort of let go then. I realized, all at once, the terrible effort it must have taken to have him sit up in the jouncing little wagon all that way. He tumbled out of the wagon onto the bed. I pushed and pulled him as gently as I could. He helped with crablike motions of legs and arms until I had him settled on the mattress on the floor of the summer porch. I placed his head on the pillows and brushed the thin hair from his eyes. He made uncomfortable sounds with his mouth. I went to get a glass of water, gave him a little to drink, then took his teeth and placed them in what was left. He smiled with his lips closed tight. He held out his hand in gratitude. I took it and he squeezed mine. Not very hard. He had so little strength left.
The tears dammed up in me wouldn't wait anymore. Before I turned away, I saw his own eyes close in deep content. I ran out to the pigeon lofts. The tears poured out of me. I wailed like a baby, leaning up against the house filled with beautiful birds. After a time I dried my eyes and was about to start the chores, to let the pigeons fly.
I looked off to the house that was my grandfather's. He was safe in it for as long as he yet should live. The sun topped the chimney and sent a blaze of glory into my eyes. I turned them away and sought the western sky.
There was a moving dot far away. As I watched, it grew larger, moving erratically across the blue. I felt my heart squeeze small and then expand till it filled my chest.
"Oh, Da," I heard myself cry. "Look! Look! Look there in the reaches of the sky!"
The dot grew larger and larger. It was white and grizzle blue. Larger and larger. I cried out again and again.
"Dickens! Dickens!"
Dickens had come home, his race lost but flown faithfully to its end.