"Bless you for your thing," I said.
I cut back around the dining hall, hacked through some poison sumac to the road. Now I'd have rashes in my wounds. Well, sure, why not? What kind of hellishness stinted on rashes? I stood out past the gate, looked back towards the compound, the blunted cone of Mount Redemption rising up behind it. I'd never found out if it was the cure or the disease that would cure me of my disease. Fat chance I ever would. I watched Old Gold punch the gate post for a while. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight.
He saw me, waved.
Pangburn Falls was a ghost of itself, a dead old barge town. I walked the main drag, boulevard of broken riverine hope, decrepit colonials, clapboard rot. Ancient porches slid down to junkyard lawns. Bent bicycles, rusted barbells, bladeless fans. All my father's owner's manual agon ended in this place. Here rested the gadget dead. I heard a whinny, a snort. Down the street a palomino drank from an inflatable kiddie pool.
There was a gas station up ahead, warm window neon, a lit sign spinning in the mist. They were advertising something called half-serve at the pumps. Some men stood near a tow rig with hot coffee and crullers.
"Hey, look," said one in coveralls. "It's a bust-out."
I readied for flight. I wondered if I had it in me for sustained fleeing. There was a shopping mall on the other side of the river. Parking lot, pink stucco, brick. What would I do if I got there? Hide behind a rack of sport coats? Beg the grill cooks for a fry boy hat?
One of the men by the tow rig made a hard fart.
"Dragon tail," he said, darted into the repair bay.
"How's the freak life, freak?" said a kid with long hair and T-shirt that read: I Skull-Fucked Your Dead Mother Today, What'd You Do?
Must share a mail-order club with Parish, I thought.
"I'm tired of the freak life, tell you the truth," I said.
I tried to coo it country.
"Where you from?" said the man in coveralls.
"South of here."
"South you mean the city?"
"Yeah."
"I got a daughter there."
"Doubt I know her."
"What, you think I'm some kind of moron?"
"No."
"I'm just letting you know that I sympathize."
"Sympathize?"
"Fish out of water," he said.
"Fish a-floppin'," said the kid with the T-shirt. "Ready for the blade de filet."
"Blade de what?" said the first man. "Don't mind Donald. He's stifled. My name's Steve."
"They call me that, too," I said.
Steve led me back through the repair bay.
"Take a load off. I'll get some coffee. Cream?"
"Thanks."
I fell asleep in the chair. Later someone was shaking me awake. Steve handed me a mug of coffee, leaned back on a gunmetal desk littered with invoice slips. I checked the cup for advertising slogans. Ancient reflex, I guess. Steve's Auto Repair, it said, Fixin' Since Nixon.
Rookies.
"We got one of you guys a few years ago," said Steve. "Looked like hell. Told us some crazy shit about how he'd failed to be a good mother, something like that. What's that about? It sounded somehow faggot-related. Like from the urban gay subculture."
"I'm not sure what it's about," I said.
"I'm not a homophobic, you know."
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Got a brother in the bi-lifestyle."
"Look," I said. "I'm not sure what it's all about. All I know is I've got to get back to the city."
"Reminds me of before. When old Heinrich had the prison camp. Better than a real prison, far as business around here went. Too bad he got all artsy fartsy. Though it looks like he's still getting his licks in. Boy, are you a sight. You know, my pops was on the march to Bataan."
"Can I use your phone?" I said.
"You know about Bataan?"
"I saw a movie."
"The movie captured about one percent of the horror, my friend."
"I got the idea, though."
"And about three percent of the idea."
"I'm sorry about Bataan. Tell your father I'm sorry about it."
"I will. That's kind of you. Guess I'll go over to the cemetery this afternoon and inform him of your concern. Want to come, asshole? Phone's right there."
I called Fiona.
"Daddy, where are you?"
"I'm in hell, baby," I said.
"Is there a bus?" said Fiona.
"Is there a bus?" I asked Steve.
"Of course there's a bus," he said.
Fiona put fifty-three dollars' worth of motor oil she would never need on her mother's credit card. Steve counted out the cash.
"If you'd been more knowledgeable about Jap atrocities," he said, "I just might have given you the dough for the ticket straight up. But you see my predicament."
The bus didn't leave for a few hours. I hitched a ride with Donald to the hospital.
"I'm going that way, anyway," he said. "You might want to get some stitches or something. Or a body cast."
"I like your T-shirt," I said.
"It's meant to be provocative," he said. "I'm not really such a bad guy. I'm just stifled."
Local needlepoint adorned the walls of the Pangburn Falls Medical Clinic like cheery exhortations to liver failure. Everything stank of Lysol and meaningless neighborly death. An enormous woman in stretch pants approached me with a wooden clipboard and a pencil with a fluffy feather on it.
"Name, insurance company, complaint," she said.
Then she looked up from her clipboard.
"Oh my fucking word," she said.
The needlepoint sampler on the far wall read "God's on Duty." I studied it for days, maybe more than days, that pale stitchwork, those fleeces of cloudbank at the corners. When I felt up to moving my eyes a bit I commenced analysis of the fiberboard panels in the ceiling-like snowflakes, no two chemical flecks were alike-and the tulips going to dead rot on the windowsill.
My head was halo'd, stilled with welds. The rest of me was set in traction, some kind of high-tech mold.
A woman walked into my room, laid her hand on my mold.
"A man's home is his cast," she said.
I said nothing.
"Don't say anything," said the woman. "My name is Dr. Cornwallis. You've been severely injured. You're lucky the shock got you here. Now did you understand that the first thing I said to you was a pun? Do you like puns?"
My eyes went tulipward.
"Don't shake your head," said Dr. Cornwallis. "Nobody really likes puns. Even the good ones grate. There's a theory that chronic punning is a neurological disorder. Blink if you find that hypothesis remotely intriguing. Blink if you wish me to speak in less mannered style."
I was mute for another month.
Then I said something, a word.
The night nurse said the word was Steve. She said this the next night. Steve was her dead son's name, and she wanted to know if he'd given me any kind of message to deliver before Jesus released me on my own recognizance, as he sometimes did, when someone dies but still has a job to do, like deliver a message.
"Steve said to say he loves you," I said.
"That's it?"
"He's sorry he didn't listen to you more. About drugs and stuff. You know, how you shouldn't do them until you fall in love."
I felt suddenly groggy.
"I feel suddenly groggy," I said.
"How did he look?" said the night nurse.
"Who?" I said.
"My boy."
"The light was too bright. All I saw was this bright light."
I noticed now I was out of the mold, could use my hands. I used them to shape the idea of light.
"How did he sound?" said the night nurse.
"Like heavenly-like."
"What else?"
"Wings," I said.
"Wings?"
"Wings," I said.
The night nurse wiped my halo with a fold of gauze.
"Golly," she said. "Your holes look infected."