And the doorknob was missing.
His infinite wisdom.
All birds circling overhead the same bird.
Actually, his ankle was killing him.
XIII
for the record: it wasn’t that Parsifal hadn’t felt really bad for all those children whose lives had been destroyed, or at least substantially altered, by the fire at the Happy Bunny. He had, but he hadn’t started the fire as part of some master plan to destroy every preschooler in sight. It wasn’t as if he had some secret agenda that involved burning down preschools, at least not one that anyone had discovered (just joking!). After the court released him, Parsifal wasn’t going to go straight to the nearest toddler farm and burn it down. Contrary to Joe’s crafty intimations, he wasn’t angry in the least. It was only that he had been cold, and wanted to get warm — a basic human desire, right?
“What good,” Walter had asked the judge, “would it do to punish this pathetic specimen of parental neglect further?” True or not, it was enough to convince the court. Nor, for the record, had Parsifal so much as tossed a candy wrapper into the play yard of any preschool he had walked by (and there had been a lot of them) since then.
Parsifal unfastened the laces on his boot in order to examine his ankle. Actually, his whole foot was a yellow-blue-black color, and the throbbing had moved to his knee. There was no question of continuing his search; this was serious. Parsifal had to exit the forest, for sure. The only trouble was that he didn’t know exactly how. All he could think was to abandon that whole zigzag strategy and just continue walking in a straight line. It didn’t really matter what direction he chose; sooner or later (sooner, if he was lucky) he had to emerge onto that backyard barbecue scene he’d imagined earlier: the dad in an apron, the mom and the kids holding out their plates. “Hey,” they would say, “you don’t look so good. Why don’t you take a minute to have a burger and then we’ll give you a ride to the ER? Rare or medium? How about it? What do you say?”
But it hurt to walk — a lot — and every small tuft of grass, every pebble was excruciating. Parsifal didn’t know what Cody had done to his watch, but it had stopped working, so he couldn’t tell how long he’d actually lain there, and now it was starting to grow dark. One more night, Parsifal told himself, hang on, and after a little stop at the emergency room to have your ankle looked at and your fluid balance restored, should that be necessary, you will be back home with your friends and your writing implements.
What friends?
Not far ahead he spotted another small cliff — a ledge, really — no more than three feet high, but it had been dug out in such a way that created a sort of break from the wind. It wasn’t perfect, but there wasn’t a cave around, and he wasn’t going to hobble about in search of one. Also, the cliff was near a good supply of wood to use for a fire. The wood was oak, dry, and the pieces were large enough to burn all night. He pulled together a stack of leaves to make a mattress for his sleeping bag, fixing it so the end with his hurt leg would be slightly higher than its companion. He fished around in his pocket for some matches to start a fire, but to his surprise, they were gone. Parsifal checked again, and went through all his pockets. Had they fallen out somewhere? They must have, or Cody had taken them. The only thing at all that he could find was the stone Black Dog had left behind, and he didn’t even know why he was still carrying it with him.
The sound of owl wings.
The next morning Parsifal’s whole leg felt like a solid piece of wood — not just the ankle but his entire leg — but wood that could somehow feel pain, and wood that had swollen up during the night despite its having been elevated. The only way he could move was by digging his cane into the soft earth and then pulling his bad leg after it. After an hour of this, he could still look back and see the place where he had spent the night.
He needed to get lucky, and fast.
Joe’s was the first memorial service Parsifal had ever attended, and why he had chosen to go was hard for him to say. Maybe it was to see if any of Joe’s former stockbroker colleagues might be there — people who might have known Conrad, whom Parsifal couldn’t help but think Joe had known, but hadn’t wanted to tell him about, because to do so would have compromised Joe’s stringent code of professional ethics. Certainly, Joe had a strange look on his face when he’d told Parsifal he hadn’t known his father. Or maybe Parsifal came to the memorial only because Joe had been the receptacle for more information about his former life than anyone had ever been, including those librarians, and now all of that had been packed into Joe’s grave (actually, Parsifal wasn’t sure if he’d been buried or cremated) along with him.
The memorial service was held in Community Room Number Three of the County Mental Health Service Center, a place done up in soothing pastels, with a blue-grayish plastic folding screen that could be pulled across the center of the room to make the space more intimate if the crowd gathered there was too small, as was the case that morning. Parsifal sat on one of the folding chairs that had been set up ahead of time and sipped from a paper cup of hazelnut-flavored coffee that he had squeezed from a coffee urn on one of the side tables. At the front of the room, a lectern had been placed to give Joe’s guests a chance to say a few words about him.
Among the twelve to fifteen people present, somewhat to his surprise, Parsifal appeared to have been Joe’s only actual patient at the time of his death. The rest of the group was made up of two ex-wives, a fully grown son, a few colleagues, and one or two others, maybe neighbors. Joe’s fellow therapists, distinguished by sport jackets and sweaters atop the men, and by scarves and large rings adorning the women, seemed mostly to be enjoying themselves, criticizing not only the room and the refreshments (sugar cookies with red sprinkles) but also everyone in attendance, taking advantage of Joe’s passing as a brief holiday from empathy.
According to the other therapists, Joe had been a maverick in a profession that seemed to attract mavericks. They whispered loudly that if it weren’t for the court-appointed cases sent his way by a friendly judge or two, Joe would have had no cases at all. It made Parsifal feel good to know he had been of some use.
The first person to the lectern was a man who introduced himself as Buster. His thin black hair was pulled over his scalp, and he said he’d cut himself shaving that morning, which was why there were pieces of toilet paper stuck to his face. “Bear with me,” Buster said. Buster said that he lived in the apartment next door to Joe, and told the group how Joe used to sit up late into the night listening to jazz. Joe favored swing and be-bop, Buster said, and didn’t much care for the so-called “progressive” style, but Joe had once admitted to Buster that people had a right to do it, if it meant actual progress.
“That’s what I told him,” Buster said. “That’s exactly what it means.”
Buster sat down and was followed by a blond woman in dark glasses whose name Parsifal didn’t catch. She’d obviously been crying, and managed only to sob out, “He was so kind and a great tipper,” before she sat down again.