Nefarious Muse

Jack Woolcott was in a stainless steel tub with his legs stretched
out, and his head rested upon a web work of gauze. Molly sat in a
folding chair beside the tub. She lathered Jack’s face with shaving
soap. Molly shaved him well, and cleanly. Jack lay with his head back
in the gauze webbing. He enjoyed the shaving.

‘Listen, Molly who do you want to play in the game?’
‘Kansas City and San Francisco.’

Molly was a fan of the Montana and Young rivalry. All of the sports
stations’ talking heads talked about the two quarterbacks, and the
possibility of a clash between them.

‘Did you play?’
‘Sure,’ Jack said. ‘When I was a kid. I played tight-end.’
‘Tight-end,’ Molly said.
‘Don’t laugh too hard, or you’ll steam your visor all up.’

There was a road to the left that led to a city beside a canal. The
road to the right led into very high mountains with precipices
streaked with red and black veins of rock. Still there was snow in the
mountains. The melting snow formed a stream that ran black with the
dark rock behind. The stream ran down the Cliffside and ran bright
blue over the slate and down into the gorge. The water fell first on a
high rock, then formed a river. White poplars grew in the river valley.

In the corridor there were reproductions of famous impressionist
paintings, framed behind glass, and mounted to the wall. Kate Woolcott
stood under the neon tubes that lined where the wall and ceiling met.
She stood in her winter coat with her back to the wall, and a book bag
slung over her shoulder. She wore a trilby cap. Kate took the cap off
and ran her fingers through her black hair. She held her cap by the
brim, and touched it against her thigh.

There was a room along that hall with chairs, tables, and donated
periodicals, and two women, and a man. There were always two women and
a man, and they left the room with their overcoats over their arms.
The old man glanced at Kate. The three went on down the hall to the
security door. The old man worked the intercom, and spoke their family
name. They all three shared the same name. The door buzzed and the old
man swung it open, and escorted the two women through.

Kate walked across the hall, and studied a print. She moved along the
hall from one picture to another, and waited for Molly.
Molly will come and say; ‘Go on in, you can go on in now.’’
Kate touched the lapel of her coat.

‘I want to kiss your wounds,’ Kate said, ‘and watch them heal. I want
to watch you grow stronger each time you look at them.’
‘I don’t remember any of it.’
‘The medicos gave you something so you wouldn’t. You fought them the
whole time, and they tied you down. You tried to take out all your
tubes.’
‘I’ll be a better patient.’
‘All your friends were here. You don’t remember?’
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t remember any of it.’
‘They were lined up out the hall.’
‘I wish I could remember.’

Kate read to Jack. He lay in the bed propped up on some pillows and
listened to her voice. Kate held the book open, balanced in the long
fingers of one hand, and ran the other through her hair. Jack listened
to her timberline voice read him the adventures of Peter, Katarina,
and August. The orderly came down the hall, and warned the visitors
that is was past time to leave. Jack walked Kate down the hall.

Kate said; ‘I think of you often,’
‘I love your guts, kid.’ Jack said.
‘They told me you had a rough time earlier. You’re past the hardest
part now.’
‘It could be anything,’ Jack said. ‘It could be a high mountain pass
or a nurse come to check your blood pressure. They give me trouble.’
‘You are past the hardest part.’
“Sure.’

Jack remembered a moment of wishing when the smoke blinded him. The
flaming curtains lay on top of him, and he rolled off the couch in the
flames. The smoke blinded him, and he wished.

‘It’s funny,’ he thought. ‘You’re only afraid of it now.’

It was winter in the high mountain pass. There were pillars of ice in
the precipices. Snow hung on the branches of the poplars. The river
receded and there was ice along the banks.

On Thursday the ward was full and the rooms were doubled up. The nurse
brought Henry. Henry’s wife, and her mother and father followed the
wheelchair. The nurse and wife helped Henry from the chair to the bed.
Henry was wounded while working under a diesel engine truck. The fuel
line leaked and dripped down onto his lamp. The bulb exploded and the
fuel conflagarated.

Henry’s father-in-law said: ‘It should not have exploded like that.’
‘They must have cut that diesel with something,’ Henry said.

Henry’s right arm was bandaged from his fingertips to his shoulder. He
maneuvered himself onto the bed into a sitting position by way of his
elbows. Henry winced whenever his burned hand touched the bed. Henry’s
wife and mother-in-law kissed him, and his father-in-law shook his
good hand. Henry blotted at what seeped out of his bandages with a
towel.

In the night Henry slept and snored, and woke himself with the snoring.
‘You asleep Jack?’
‘No.’
‘Was it the snoring? I am damned sorry if it was.’
‘No, I was thinking.’
‘Listen Jack, you want an orange?’ Henry peeled an orange one-handed.
‘They’re good oranges, my wife brought them for me.’
‘It’s winter.’
‘She gets them from relatives in the Dominican Republic.’
‘I don’t want any god damned orange.’
‘Listen Jack, I’ll peel this one for you and we’ll eat some oranges.’

Henry and Jack sat up in their beds, and wheeled a table between them
and ate slices of oranges.

‘That girl that comes to visit you,’ Henry said. ‘She your wife?’
‘Kate.’ Jack said. ‘Yes.”
‘What book she read to you yesterday?’
‘Borderliners.’
‘Every time they had a smoke in that book, I wanted one. The wife
always get on me about smoking. Know what I tell her?’
‘No.’
‘I tell her not to get hysterical.’

The red and white lights whirled, and reflected off the snow, and the
mens’ breath hung in plumes in the air. Blood, and soot, and black
streaks stained the snow. Bill and Jack saw the red and white lights
break around the bend in the road, and reflect off the snow that hung
in the pine branches. The volunteer fire department ambulance rounded
the alley. Snow gathered on the roof and in the gutters, and melted
with the heat of the fire. The new water ran dark down the soot black
wall, and ran through a trough along the ground into the clear bright
snow.
Bill said: ‘It wont be long Jack.’
The two sat in the snow. Bill held Jack.
‘I can’t see. I’m blinded.’
Jack shivered.
‘Blinded.’
Bill said; ‘Just stay awake and you’ll be fine.’
‘Christ,’ Jack said.
In the ambulance Jack quieted with the medic’s assurances.
‘Don’t cut off my hands,’ Jack said. ‘Wait for the Doctors.’
The fireman swung the rear door shut, and knocked twice. The driver
worked the clutch, and pressed the throttle. The tires spun in the
snow. The sky was gray and blue, and a helicopter came over the trees,
and dropped to a concrete slab that was marked by a white cross
outlined in a red circle. The rotors beat slowly. An orange windsock
stood sideways, and medics’ winter breath went in that direction.

Henry said; ‘I’ll bet you’re happy.’
Jack pulled the shirt slowly over his head.
‘You’ll be out soon.’
‘They told me maybe tomorrow.’
‘We’ll have a drink sometime.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll send you some oranges.’
Jack fastened the buttons of his shirt with a tool that resembled a
needle threader. And he buttoned his shirt slowly. So many buttons, he
thought.
‘How long were you in, anyway?’
‘About a month and a week.’

On the best days, which were few, the physical therapy was easy for
Jack to take. He was grateful for the knowledge, and only wished the
acquisition had not nearly killed him. Jack wished he learned it out
of a book. The hour hand on the ancient clock that sat upon the table
pointed to a quarter past the hour. All Jack’s dressings were sterile
that morning. It was with the therapist bending his fingers that they
bloodied. The chair was black metal with gray pads on the back and
arms. The Schwayder Brothers manufactured the chair in Detroit,
Michigan, and at the time of purchase the chair was valued at eight
dollars and ninety-five cents. The physical therapist sat across the
table and held Jack’s hand in her own. She manipulated the stiff
joints. There was a framed picture on the wall of a hand in cross
section. The picture depicted all the bones, ligaments, muscles, and
tendons that made up a hand, and Jack studied this picture. At the
worst, jack closed his eyes, and breathed deep. He breathed through
his dry mouth, and his mouth dried with the deep, deep breathing, and
breathing in rhythm to the therapist’s manipulations of the joints
until he was up upon the pain, and the exhale began before the
manipulating pain. Jack felt the sharpness on him. The sharpness came
quickly no matter how you breathed and what kind of rhythm you were
in, and Jack felt the pain come, and felt it come upon him, and he
drew a deep breath against the pain. The pain topped him up and he let
it go, and let it wash over him. There was a slip in his head like an
engine that threw a rod.

The therapist said; ‘We’ll take a break for a few minutes.’
Jack said, ‘all right,’ and leaned back in the chair, and let all his
breath go out, and drank water.
‘I would never be a spy,’ Jack said. ‘As soon as they started this
stuff I would give up all the government secrets.’

Jack said; ‘It must disgust you.’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘Once I wanted to kiss your wounds.’
Jack drank a whiskey.

Jack went around the room. He gathered a washcloth, handkerchief, and
paper towel.
‘Close your eyes.’
Jack placed the washcloth over the back of Kate’s hand. He traced with
a fingertip and varying pressure alphas, deltas, and gammas upon her
hand through the cloth.
‘Can you say what it is?’
‘No.’
‘Now?’
‘No.’
Jack traced with more pressure.
‘Triangle.’
‘The washcloth is after waking up. That thick, hardly any feeling, then
after using my hands for a while the paper towel. Give me your legs.’
Kate stretched her legs across Jack’s lap. He wrapped the handkerchief
around her thigh.
‘This,’ Jack said as he traced upon her thigh. ‘Always. No change
throughout the night or day.’
Jack folded the handkerchief into squares and placed it upon Kate’s
thigh.
‘This is where the lighter exploded,’ Jack said. ‘This too, always.’

Jack lay on his back, propped up by some pillows with his legs
straight out. He felt the scars on his hands and legs, and the columns
of smoke came off him, and ran parallel to the ceiling. The smoke
gathered there, and thickened. Then, there was only Bill’s voice; ‘Let
go!’
‘Let go! Let go of the goddamned banister!’
Jack felt his head bounce off the staircase, then he was dead weight.
Bill rolled him in the snow. The blood and soot stained the snow, and
a thin stream of water went along a trough along the flame-blackened
wall.

Kate said; ‘And the one along your back?’
‘I feel it only sometimes.’
Kate traced the scar with her finger.
‘It’s like a snake.’