Are You Experienced? (24 page)

All sorts of medical people came in and ran tests on me. There were blood tests, urine tests, brain wave tests, heart wave tests, breathing tests—it went on and on.

Right before bedtime, my parents left my room. Apparently, they had been taking turns sleeping in a family room on the pediatrics floor, and it was Mom's turn to go home for the night. After they left, one last doctor came by to check on me. I asked him whether he had ever had another patient who had passed out for a bunch of days after an electric shock. He said, “You didn't pass out, Richard. You flatlined. Your higher brain functions stopped. I don't mind telling you, it's a miracle we're having this conversation. So no, I've never had a patient like you before.”

“Um, has anyone? I mean, I can't be the only person this has ever happened to. Can I?”

“Strangely enough, I have an old friend from medical school who once told me about a case like yours. I didn't believe him at the time. This case also involved an old guitar amplifier and a teenage boy. Supposedly, the kid found an ancient amp in a warehouse somewhere, plugged a guitar into it, and got a shock like the one that hit you. When he woke up in the hospital several days later, he insisted he had traveled back in time and met the Beatles. Crazy, huh?”

I forced myself to laugh.

He added, “You didn't happen to meet John, Paul, George, and Ringo while you were out, did you, son?”

I managed to eke out another chuckle and said, “No, but I might have hung out with Jimi Hendrix a bit.”

“That's a good one,” he said. “Sleep tight now.”

When he left, I stared at the cracks in the mint-green paint on the ceiling over my bed for the longest time, but even though my body was dog-tired, my mind wouldn't let me sleep. I felt like Jimi and my uncle Mike wouldn't want me to rest until I had told Dad why Uncle Mike had bought and used the heroin. There was a little buzzer on a cord next to my bed for calling the nurse. I pressed it, and when a nurse came in, I asked her to go get my father. I knew he might be mad, because it had to be after midnight, but I also knew he needed to hear what I had to say.

It couldn't have been more than two minutes before my father came barging into the room in a pair of flannel old-man pajamas. My first thought was,
You're wearing those in public?
My second thought was,
Are you going to kill me?
My third thought was,
Showtime!

“What's wrong?” Dad asked. “Is your head all right? Do I need to call a doctor? Or your mother?”

“No, Dad. I just needed to see you. It's about Uncle Mike. I promised him I'd tell you something.”

My father sat down in the chair next to the bed, hard. His hair was matted in seven different directions, his glasses were visibly smudged in the odd fluorescent light, and his face held several days' stubble. It's funny, but you never notice how old and gray your parents look on a day-to-day basis. If you could just spend a weekend with your father's fifteen-year-old self, and then suddenly see him again in his present-day form, believe me, your knees would buckle.

I knew my father was old, but damn.

“This was a secret he couldn't tell you. He told me your parents always took it out on you if you knew he was doing something against their will and didn't tell them about it. Do you remember the time he took twenty dollars out of your father's wallet and came home chewing a piece of bubble gum?”

Dad was staring past me into a shadowed corner of the room.

“Dad?”

“Michael told you about that?”

I nodded. He grimaced.

“I remember. I've never told anybody about that day, but I remember. Our father made me chew that piece of gum all day. I can still
taste
it.” Dad's voice sounded like he was gargling rocks.

“Yeah, well … so Uncle Mike said if you knew about this one, your father might have really hurt you. He made me swear that if something bad happened to him, then I would tell you the secret. I wanted to tell Uncle Mike it would be a really long time before I would see you again, but there was just no way. Besides, he said this secret would have to wait until either your father was dead, or he was.”

Dad sucked air through his clenched teeth and winced as though I had hit him. He was always pretty tense, but I felt like my father might actually crack at any moment. But I had to keep telling him what I knew.

“So I promised—actually, Jimi Hendrix made me promise—that one day I would tell you the truth about this. I don't know why Michael couldn't just trust Willow with it, but it was almost like he thought Willow might not be around anymore, either.”

Oh, my God,
I thought.
Willow!

“Dad, what happened to Willow? Did she—” I gulped. “Did she die, too?”

My father sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I don't know. When your uncle passed away, my parents blamed her. She came by the house once, and they had a huge, screaming argument. She left, and I never saw her again. I mean, she completely disappeared—just blew out of town, with no forwarding address. It was a lot easier to do that in those days. I rode my bike over to her parents' house, but they slammed the door in my face, and that was the end of that. I've thought so many times over the years about tracking her down, but…”

He let that thought fade, and we sat until I couldn't stand the quiet.

“Dad, remember how Uncle Mike said he was going to take Willow to Woodstock, but then he suddenly changed his mind and got another ticket for you?”

“Yes, of course I do. I've wondered a million times why he changed his mind.”

“Well, on Saturday night at Woodstock, Michael and Willow took me for a walk, and he explained the whole thing to me. Dad, your brother got drafted.”

“What?”

“For Vietnam. He got drafted, and he didn't want to go. He couldn't stand the thought of hurting anybody. Did you know that about him? There was this turtle.”

I had thought Dad looked pale and sickly before, but he was positively green now as he whispered, “Starkey's turtle. With the firecracker.”

“That's the one. But he thought you hadn't seen what happened.”

“I hadn't, not really. But…”

Dad started crying. He wasn't wailing and gnashing his teeth or anything, but tears were definitely making tracks through the stubble.

“But,” he continued, “Starkey showed up at the house in an army uniform maybe a week after Mikey died, and told me the whole story. It's so funny how things turn out. Starkey became a medic in the hundred and first airborne division—said it was because of that day with the turtle. He said that your uncle was the gentlest and bravest kid he had ever met, and that that one day by the pond had turned his whole life around. I remember being scared of Starkey when I was really small, and then after a while, thinking he was all right, but I never knew why he'd changed. How's that for bitter irony? So, if my brother got drafted, why did that make him start using heroin and kill himself? Why didn't he just become a medic like Starkey?”

“Dad, this next part is just going to upset you more. Are you sure you're ready to hear it?”

Dad exhaled sharply. I suddenly realized he had been alternately holding his breath and releasing it throughout this entire conversation. “Richard,
nothing
could upset me more. Go ahead.”

“Michael's first thought was to become a conscientious objector, so he said something to your dad, like ‘What would you do if I got drafted and became a conscientious objector?' Your dad said, ‘I'd rather be the father of a dead soldier than a live coward.'”

Dad looked like he was going to spit on the floor as he said, “Sounds about right.”

“So then Willow tried to get Michael to run away with her to Canada, but he wouldn't go because he was afraid of what your parents would do to you if he couldn't come back and protect you. And that was when he came up with his plan. He said he was going to shoot up heroin several times in the weeks leading up to his final induction physical, and when the army saw the track marks in his arm and his general pathetic physical condition, they would reject him. Then he would kick the heroin habit, and get away free without anyone in the family knowing anything about anything.

“I tried to tell Michael and Willow how dangerous the plan was. They snorted heroin on Saturday night, and I could tell it scared Willow. Remember when Michael wouldn't wake up on Sunday morning? But I guess Michael was just so desperate that nothing I said made any difference in the end.”

“You know,” my father said, “I've wondered every day for the past forty-five years—why that night? Why not sooner? Why not later? I've gone over every second I can remember of my time with my brother, trying to understand whether I did something wrong. Did I hurt his feelings? Should I have noticed some hint? Was he trying to tell me something? Were there clues? Was I a bad brother?”

“Dad, you didn't do anything wrong. Your brother just couldn't see a way out. No matter what he did, he was going to have to disappoint his father, or leave you alone with your parents, or desert Willow. I think he just ran out of options. And I know why he chose that night.”

Dad practically lunged at me, his eyes bulging. “Why?”

“I saw the draft letter. His physical was scheduled for Wednesday, October fifteenth, and if he passed, he was due to report for duty on Monday, October twentieth. He must have passed the physical. His time was up.”

My father put his head in his hands.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I know you didn't want to talk about any of this, but I promised Uncle Mike I would tell you everything. I can't imagine how much it must have hurt to hear it, but at least now you know the whole truth, right? So now, after all this time, you know your brother's death had nothing to do with you. It wasn't your fault, Dad.”

Dad looked up at me through his interlaced fingers. “Oh, but it was, Rich. Now I know the whole truth. But you don't.”

 

SOUL SACRIFICE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014

 

It was past two in the morning, forty-five years and four days after his brother's death, when my father finally told a family member the truth about what had happened that night.

“Your mother told you I was on a marching band trip, right?”

I nodded.

“Because that's what I told her. That's what I told my parents at the time, too. It's what I always told them when I wanted to get away on a weekend. But really, I was out with the other guys in our rock band. I figured it all out afterward.… Michael sent me away. We used to rehearse in the rhythm guitarist's basement. We always left my drums set up there and everything. On that night, the rhythm guitar player's parents were out of town, so Mike told me we were all going to meet at his house and rehearse some new songs. Then we were supposed to party all night and sleep over.

“At the last minute, Michael backed out. He said he had a special date with Willow. He told me he would drive me over to rehearsal on the way to pick her up, but that I'd have to walk back home in the morning. He gave me ten bucks and told me to take the guys out to the diner for breakfast, relax, give my parents time to wake up before I came home. I didn't even stop to think that was strange. I've wanted to punch myself over and over and over—why wouldn't he have offered to pick me up in the morning? Why didn't that strike me as odd? Why didn't I make a big deal out of it? But truthfully, I was just a little bit excited to be hanging out with the rest of the band without the shadow of my older brother lurking over me.

“So when the time came, I grabbed my drumsticks and my overnight bag—the same mud-stained backpack I had at Woodstock—and jumped in the shotgun seat of Dad's Caddy. Mom and Dad were glued to the television in the living room, beers in hand, so nobody even asked us where we were going.

“I don't remember getting out of the car. It's awful. I don't remember the last time I saw my brother alive. I can recall snatches of the rehearsal, and then somebody brought out the marijuana. When I was really flying, Willow suddenly appeared. She was frantically looking for Michael. She had shown up at our house, and our parents had told her he wasn't around. The bass player kept saying, ‘Calm down, baby, he's with you,' and she just kept saying, ‘No, his parents said he was with you!' After the fact, I pieced it together that Michael had pulled a fast one on everybody. He'd left the house and told our parents and Willow he was going to be with the band, but he'd told us he was going on a date with Willow. Meanwhile, he had somehow managed to sneak back into his room, as alone as he would ever be.

“Anyway, Willow tried to get me to come looking for my brother, but I was too high. I thought the whole situation was hilarious.”

My father stopped talking, got up, paced around the room, got himself a drink of water, took a few sips, paced some more, and continued.

“I'm sorry, Richie. This is hard for me to tell anyone after so long. Willow begged me to come with her. She knew something was wrong. I'm pretty sure she was crying, and she might even have slapped me, but I had to look cool in front of the boys in the band, right? So I just laughed and laughed. Eventually, I blinked a few times, and she was just … gone. Then I laughed myself to sleep. In the morning, I woke up with a sick feeling in my stomach, so I forgot all about taking the guys out for breakfast. Instead, I hurried straight home, let myself in, and tripped over my dead brother. If I had listened to Willow, if I had gone along—who knows? Maybe our first stop would have been my house. Maybe Michael wasn't dead yet at that point. Maybe—”

I felt every muscle in my body clench up. It hurt. I tried as hard as I could to sit up in bed, but all I managed to do was strain my neck forward a bit and make my voice sound more plaintive.