“Uh-huh.”
Now I smiled at him. He smiled back.
“I used to want to be Maverick,” I said. “When I was a kid and that movie came out. I thought: I want to fly fighter planes when I grow up, that’s just what I want to do. Forget this doctor, lawyer, businessman garbage, give me an airplane and a sky to fly it in.”
His smile grew. I’d touched a nerve.
“I used to fantasize about it,” I said. True—I actually had fantasized about being the Tom Cruise character from Top Gun. “Flying, being up there in the clouds. A multi-million dollar fighter jet strapped to my back, loaded with enough firepower to destroy a small navy. Two miles above the world. And everything in it.”
His head bobbed. “In the sky,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “In the sky.”
I swallowed.
Reality is overrated, Bobby echoed in my head. Don’t pick at the edges.
“But the thing about flying is,” I went on, “you have to land your plane at some point. You can fly around all you want, but the world is still down there. You know what I’m saying?”
His smile faltered. He did know what I was saying.
“There’s something down there on the ground, at sea level, and it’s called truth. It doesn’t go away. No matter how high you fly, no matter how fast you fly—it’s still down there. Waiting for you. And it might feel good up there in that plane of yours. But as long as you stay up there, all you’re really doing is running from it.”
Now the smile fell away completely.
“I have a truth of my own,” I said. I wasn’t smiling, either. “I don’t know what it is, and so it’s scary. I’ve been attacked by six different men in the past year, and none of them seem to have an identity. I’d like to stop asking questions, chalk it up to coincidence and go on about my merry way, but that’s not a good thing for me to do, you know?”
He blinked at me. My words sailed over his head and splattered all over the motivational poster on the other wall.
“Because the truth is the truth. In my case, I think someone is after me. And he’s going to continue coming after me whether I recognize his existence or not—and so I ask questions when I see things that don’t make sense. I investigate, I dig, I search for that truth so that I can protect myself from it.”
Blink. Blink.
“You’re hiding from something, Brandon. You can pretend you’re somebody else, but you’re not.”
Blink. Blink.
“You’re not a fighter pilot. You’re an abused kid with cognitive deficiencies. Think about it, man; if this is just a nightmare, why are you spending so much time in it?”
He blinked some more. He opened his mouth, and for a moment, nothing came out. He closed it, looked up at the ceiling and then said, “I’m in the hospital.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes you are, but…”
He shook his head rapidly. “No. There. In the hospital there.”
“In your… other world?”
“In reality.” Weeawity.
Now came my turn to blink in complete lack of understanding. Despite his cognitive deficiencies, Brandon must have recognized this, because he continued without prompt. “Tailhook broke. Plane went off the flight deck. I got saved. In the hospital now.”
“So you’re more or less knocked out right now. And this is all a bad dream going on in your head.”
He nodded.
“And I’m a figment of your imagination. I don’t actually exist, because you’re dreaming me. I didn’t eat breakfast this morning and I didn’t burn my tongue on my coffee on the way to work. I, like everything else you’re seeing right now, am malarkey.”
He shrugged. Yes, said the gesture. You are indeed malarkey.
“And at some point you’re going to wake up more or less for good, and you’re going to be out of here but I will remain. Because I’m part of your nightmare.”
A single nod of the head. Exactly.
“Brandon?”
“Uh-huh?”
I leaned forward.
“That is not true. You’re making all this up.”
Suddenly, his narrow face lit up with the brightest of smiles. “I can prove it!”
“Can you, now.”
Bobbing head. “Uh-huh. Been going home here and there. Mostly at night. Kenny knows.”
“Who’s Kenny?” I asked.
“He’s Kenny.”
I thought for a moment, and the image of the hopelessly retarded young man who shared a room with Brandon popped into my head. “Your roommate?”
An enthusiastic nod.
“Kenny knows I go! Come on!”
He stood and motioned for me to follow him. I picked up my briefcase—I had nothing particularly valuable in there, but the inmates of Magnolia Plantation would have probably loved to get their hands on some pens and paper—and trailed him to his room, where he marched over to the television and cut it off. His roommate continued to stare through him.
“Kenny,” he said, grabbing the man’s tiny head and tilting it up to force eye contact. “Tell Kevin I go away. At night.”
Kenny turned his head to look at me, his face a round collection of features smashed together in a very small space. Although his age was impossible to determine, I pegged him at about forty. If Brandon’s mental retardation qualified as moderate, this guy’s hit severe.
Kenny opened his mouth, revealing an oversized tongue. At first, I wondered if maybe he couldn’t talk, but then he said, “Him go away at night.”
“Tell him I disappear.” Dissapeew.
“Him disappear.”
Brandon smiled, satisfied that he had just nailed his case with the direct examination of this particular witness. He turned the TV back on and stepped out of the way. Kenny’s eyes locked back on Dr. Oz and remained there.
“See?” Said Brandon. “He knows!”
For my cross-examination, I stood up and walked over to Kenny’s bed. I moved Brandon out of the way, turned off the TV, and bent my knees to face Kenny eye-to-eye.
“Kenny,” I asked, “Tell Brandon that cows can fly.”
“Cows can fly.”
I turned the TV back on and returned to the chair beside Brandon’s bed. “I wouldn’t count on what this guy says if I were you,” I said. “He’s not exactly the world’s most reliable witness.”
Lips pursed, Brandon groaned in frustration just like Allie groaned when Abby copped an attitude about her math homework and pretended she didn’t understand it. He came over and sat on the edge of his bed, head held in both hands. He groaned again. “Sucks,” he said. “Being retarded sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Can’t talk right. Can’t…” He straightened his spine and looked up at the ceiling as if asking God to give him the right word.
“Explain,” he said at last.
I laced my hands across my stomach.
“This my nightmare,” he said. “Not real.”
“That’s interesting, Brandon, because it’s my reality and I feel very, very real right now. I believe if you really examine this logically, you’re going to see a fundamental impossibility…”
“You real,” Brandon said, stabbing at me with his right index finger. “Nightmare for you, too.”
I closed my mouth and took a ki breath through my nose.
“I help you,” he said. “Help you get out.”
“Okay, enlighten me. Tell me how to get out of this nightmare.”
“Picture where you want be,” he said, tapping his oblong skull. “And go there.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “I just imagine it and I can punch out of here?”