Chapter 18. Lee's Seventh Day

In bed the sixth night of Lee's fast she and Arthur talked softly, their voices low in part because Stoner was only twenty feet away on the living room floor.

"You shouldn't let Rusty stay down south too long," said Arthur.

"I know. I sent him a letter today telling him to come back soon."

"That's good, Lee, that's good. Oh, sometimes it sucks too much, but others it's, well, exhilarating; there's freedom in feeling so alone; it's different thinking with just my mind instead of with ours." His eyes overflowed. Her back was to him as they talked, her nakedness pressing against his.

When Arthur slept he dreamed that he, Lee, and Lucia were on a plane. The flight was nearly over and he was leaning forward talking to Lucia, who was in tears reading a story scheduled to appear in the next day's New York Times that revealed in its second paragraph that her duties as a healer had required her to be a member of a Laotian assassination squad. She was not specifically upset at having become an assassin or at the fact's being printed; she simply felt overwhelmed by her multiple responsibilities. Arthur held her in his arms trying, with some success, to comfort her. He was usually afraid of heights and of flying, and he almost always avoided looking down from airplane windows; this flight he had been unafraid and now looked at the ground. The plane was descending over a traffic-dotted highway, not an airport, and its destination appeared to be the top of a hill in the center of a town that reminded him of Wurts Farm.

On the ground he, Lee, and Lucia were met by Olga Worral, who escorted them into a big church; they went to the front and sat facing the congregation, Arthur in his wheelchair, and joined in singing hymns.

Arthur was kneeling on a ramp that led into the church trying to tie his shoes. As he tightened the right its lace snapped; he gave up on it and tried to tie the left's but it snapped too. Both the shoes and the laces were brown; he had a pair of white sneakers with white laces with him and thought about using the sneaker laces in his shoes; he decided against it, removed the right shoe's broken lace, moistened its longer length's broken end in his mouth, and, skipping all but three pairs of holes so it would be long enough, laced the shoe.

He also dreamed that he, Lee, and his uncle were at the top of the long steep driveway of the house in Godwin where his uncle had lived when Arthur was a child. Directly across the road at the bottom of the driveway was another equally steep driveway that ended a few feet away from a 30-foot-wide stream; his uncle's driveway and the stream existed in the waking world, the second driveway only in his dream. Arthur's wheelchair began to free-wheel down the first driveway, picked up speed, and at the bottom continued straight across the road and into the second driveway. It seemed miraculous the out-of-control chair had not already tipped over and inevitable that it soon would, if not on the second driveway then in the river; Arthur didn’t panic and at the bottom of the second driveway the chair drifted to a stop, short of the water and still upright.

Lee dreamed that she was living with her brother Andy in a house on a hill in New England. Rusty was supposed to be in Mexico, but when Lee looked out the window she could see his truck at the bottom of the hill and knew that he was in it. It was afternoon. She packed a bottle of champagne on ice and put it in a wicker picnic basket with a chunk of cheese. She went into the bathroom and got her diaphragm, but it had a hole in it; she looked for and found an old one but it too had a hole in it so she asked Andy if he had condoms and, when he said yes, borrowed several. At nightfall she walked down the hill and peeked through a window. Rusty was in bed masturbating under the covers and Lee wanted to join him immediately but didn't want to interrupt his orgasm. He arched his back, coming. Soon she waked and when she fell back to sleep she was still smiling, snuggled against Arthur.

In the morning Arthur and Lee stayed in bed late. She felt good and was filled with a sense of accomplishment at being in her fast's final day. She had been weak at times, but not alarmingly so, and except for the afternoon and night of her fourth day and the morning of her fifth, when she had felt sick, she’d felt fine. She leaned toward Arthur and hugged him.

By the time he was up, Arthur was moody. After he and Lee had gotten him into his chair, he pushed up with his left hand and right elbow as she bent down and pushed his left knee so as to move him back and center him in the chair.

She groaned. "No wonder I have a sore back," she said.

"You don't have to do all these things," he said, meaning, specifically, that he could reposition himself in the chair by himself as easily as with her help. He was wrong; he could minimally shift his weight, but to reposition himself effectively he needed help. She had not meant to complain and his tone hurt her feelings.

"I don't have to wash you?" she asked.

"It helps," he said.

"Or massage you?"

"I guess your beliefs do make massaging me important from your point of view," he said.

You're a petty, ungrateful, self-righteous, lugubrious ass, he said to himself; he was acting like one, and had he said so aloud Lee would not have contradicted him. She sliced an apple, a pear, and a banana and mixed them with yogurt for his breakfast; she heated water for his tea; she got him his supplements. He sat in the open kitchen door in the sun. The sky was bright blue, almost cloudless; the sun was hot and the temperature in the upper fifties. It was going to be a beautiful day. He's hoping he doesn't get healed, she thought, so he can throw it in our faces.

At two-thirty in the afternoon Arthur, less moody but still mildly depressed, decided to go out. His ramp descent was uneventful and at the bottom he paused for several moments before bouncing across the yard and into the street; he turned right toward the corner, stopped at the intersection, did a three sixty, went forward another few feet, and turned left to go south on Tyndall. He was undecided where to go but Peg's, Sandra's, and Lloyd's on Ninth Street, Jan and Fawn’s at Third Avenue on Eighth Street, and The Unicorn, a coffeehouse at Helen and Sixth Avenue he'd visited several times recently, were all less than a mile away; as he crossed Helen without turning he deduced he wasn't going to The Unicorn. He stopped a line of cars on Speedway as he made his slow-motion dash across (the chair’s top speed was 3 miles an hour), then proceeded up the center of Tyndall. The Tyndall sidewalk--like most Tucson sidewalks--was impractical because of its unevenness and its unramped corner curbs, and the avenue's traffic lanes were impractical because the chair drifted downhill towards the gutter unless he drove on the pavement's crown.

The sky was cloudless, the sun bright, and Arthur felt his glumness falling from him in chunks as though he were a calving glacier. He sang, then spoke: "Well Cricket, am I going to lighten up?" The sun beat on his belly--he was wearing only a fedora and a 10-by-14-inch blue apron embroidered with a rainbow, a sun, two mountain peaks, and the words, “Toto we’re not in Kansas anymore”--as he buzzed down Tyndall. He didn't know how naked he looked. Two towels, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a notebook were piled on the sheepskin-covered foam that supported his bare legs. His feet stretched in front of him, his bare toes, which would be sunburned tonight, sticking above the edge of his cut-out foot-pillow. Cricket rode between his feet, one hand around each big toe, pretending to be driving. On Ninth Street, he turned right.

Cricket, correcting as necessary, steered down Ninth, pleased that although Arthur was no longer in the center of the street he was taking his full lane in the light traffic. Only four cars passed them, politely and carefully slowing because the drivers knew it would ruin their day to run them over. Two drivers took long looks as they passed, two didn't. None saw Cricket, whom Arthur assumed was imaginary.

As Arthur waited for the light to change at Euclid Avenue and Ninth Street he looked south down Euclid (Euclid was the Avenue immediately west of Tyndall and was followed by First and the rest of the numbered Avenues); he saw Rachel approaching. Arthur had never met Rachel but he had seen her several times, most recently at the holistic-healers convention he had been forced to leave. She was emaciated, much thinner even than he. She walked slowly, one step, another, another, her speed half Arthur's. Rachel had arthritis and was a patient of Dalton's; she had also consulted with Gentility's spirits about her health and life. Arthur assumed she knew as much about him as he did about her and considered crossing Ninth Street to strike up a conversation, but the light changed and he continued on his way across Euclid.

Who would be home at Peg’s, Lloyd’s, and Sandra’s? Anyone? If no one were, he decided to continue on Ninth Street to Fourth Avenue and maybe turn south there and go the few remaining blocks to Café Olé, where he thought there was free jazz this afternoon (not to mention excellent coffee for sale, always). His venturing forth unaccompanied was still new and the only time he'd come this far alone was the day he'd miserably visited the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, but Olé was in range.

Lloyd was sitting yogi fashion in a chair in the front yard reading Carlos Castaneda's latest. Arthur stopped on the sidewalk and watched him read until he looked up, then proceeded to where the wall that separated the sidewalk from the yard ended at the driveway, turned in, and bumped across the yard. They chatted and Sandra and Peg came out, Peg eating a salad. There was no jazz at Olé today, she said, and they decided to go to The Shanty tonight. Buildings around the café were being demolished and they talked about how the downtown was growing up into the sky as the city’s edges were marching outward into the foothills. The inadequately replenished water table was dropping alarmingly as the water-use rate accelerated, but the weather continued to draw more and more people to the desert--just as it had drawn the four of them.

It was almost four and the trip home would take about forty-five minutes, so Arthur had to start soon if he was not to be caught by the sharp temperature drop at sunset. His forehead was slightly damp and, partly to dry it, he smoked a joint with Peg. So far in January he had smoked every other day, the first, third, fifth, and now today, the seventh. He and Peg crossed the yard to the sidewalk.

"So we're going to have fun tonight," she said, a fake serious school marm.

"Yes we are. Fun," he said.

"Are you going to be able to make it home okay?"

Arthur's friends were no more used to his trucking alone than he was; they knew that he had a low opinion of his chair’s capabilities.

"I think so," he said. "The battery's a bit low, but I think it'll make it, and if it doesn't, someone'll help."

He spoke confidently; he would loathe asking a stranger for help but he knew he'd do it if necessary. Peg put her hand on his shoulder. He was so funny and brave.

"We'll pick you up about eight-thirty," she said. "And we'll be on time." She laughed. "Really," she said, "we will."

"Okay," said Arthur, "I'll see you then."

He headed for the First Avenue corner, keeping to the sidewalk. He soon saw there was no curb cut at the corner but that there was one about thirty feet to its right. No sidewalk led to it but he had no difficulty reaching it and skidded onto First Avenue.

Out of his friends' sight he stopped in the road to pull on his t-shirt and swing into his long-sleeved shirt. He donned pullovers relatively easily but putting on button-up long-sleeved shirts was a newly acquired skill that would always be difficult. He put his right arm in its armhole first, then, with the shirt still in front of him and on his right, put his left hand into the left armhole, leaned far to his right, and as best he could swung his left arm back and above his head and to his left. If the maneuver worked, he would have pulled enough of the shirt around him to enable him to wriggle his left arm, still above his head, into the sleeve. It had and he did. The back of the shirt remained bunched behind him on the left side even after he leaned forward and shimmied, and he couldn’t button the front, but the shirt was on. He should have had Peg help him before he left but, because he wasn’t cold yet and the bunched shirt would work its way down with time, the oversight didn’t matter--and if he got cold he could still get into his sweater, which was a pullover.

He gained the crown of the road and drove toward Tucson High, which was bounded to the east and west by Euclid and Third Avenues and north and south by Sixth and Eighth Streets. First and Second Avenues and Seventh Street ran up to but did not penetrate the school grounds. As Arthur approached the High School tennis courts at First Avenue and Eighth Street a boy in his late teens who was talking to three girls in a car turned from them to speak to him.

"Have you seen a lost dog? He's one quarter German shepherd, three quarters wolf, and four months old."

"I haven't seen him," Arthur answered, and asked where the dog lived, in case he did. Good looking dogs were frequently stolen; all dogs were, and Arthur was glad he hadn't said anything to the boy about thieves or, worse, vivisectionists.

He intended to swing west at the tennis courts and hit Third Avenue so that he would pass Fawn and Jan's house. He hadn't seen Jan in two weeks, since she'd discovered the Guru Maharaj Ji; discovered she was pregnant; decided to have and raise the baby; decided to marry Stitch, the baby's father, who had the knowledge (which meant he had access to the bliss); decided to seek the knowledge; and, Arthur thought but wasn’t sure, received it. Besides a quick visit, he could pick up his blue and white woolen ski cap. Jan had taken it after Christmas to be mended by her grandmother, who had made it for him, and had gotten word to him through Lucia that it was done.

At the tennis courts, however, he saw he could probably cut through the high school grounds to Sixth Street, a more direct route home than via Jan's, so after a short stretch of Eighth he used an apron to reach the sidewalk and rolled back the way he had come. The sun still felt hot and good as he turned onto the walk that led onto the school grounds and he stopped and watched a twenty-something bearded man serve to a twenty-something woman. She was pretty but she was concentrating, not posing, and it pleased Arthur to watch her trying hard to do something well. After she won two points and lost one he moved on. He didn't stop but said hi to a player on the next court who was retrieving a ball near the fence. Arthur thought he looked clumsy but as though he might be very steady; once a good tennis player, he wondered just how tough he was.

Past the courts, a man who had been standing on the sidewalk sauntered across the grass and leaned against a sculpture, a 4-foot-high black ball in a silver niche about six feet high. He was wearing a green sweater and a green wool cap and Arthur remembered that three weeks ago he had seen him bum a quarter from Sandra on the sidewalk in front of her house. As Arthur neared, the man moved away from the sculpture and walked toward him. He was about forty, his weathered face crisscrossed with the lines of too much alcohol, too much wind and sun, and too much sleeping out and being run in.

"I write in books," the man said.

He motioned for Arthur to follow him and crossed to sit on a low wall immediately behind the high-school building. Arthur joined him. Like himself and Rachel, Arthur thought, this man was a healer.

"Where is this city?" the man asked.

"All around us," Arthur said, but realized as they talked that he'd misinterpreted the question; it had not been where is Tucson but where is Tucson's downtown?

The man said his name was James McGovern. He had come to town on a freight train, stashed his tools, and been wandering since. He talked about his day at the university, a few blocks east, calling it "those red buildings;" the University buildings were mostly red brick. Now he was looking for his tools, which he had left in a bar near "the tall buildings." Arthur named a few downtown bars that were near not only the tall buildings but also the bus station, the blood donor station, and the railroad tracks, and while James didn’t seem to recognize any as the one he sought, he seemed satisfied that they were in its vicinity.

James reached inside his coat and pulled out a half-consumed bottle of Thunderbird. He offered the sweet wine and Arthur took a long, horrible pull that immediately made him a little drunk. He had recently read that Thomas Wolfe caught the cold that led directly to his death a month later from sharing a stranger's bottle on a ferry. James asked Arthur why he was in a wheelchair and Arthur told him. He was sometimes asked several times in a week and usually answered with some short version of the truth. There was a butterfly-shaped speck of dried blood on James’ dark brown face; Arthur caught himself as he was about to ask how he’d been hurt.

"Hey man," said Arthur, "do you really write?"

"I got stories," James said, "but I don't write 'em down. I got no place to write, anyway."

They were each silent.

"I'm a narrator," said James.

"A noble calling, that," Arthur exclaimed. "I do a bit of narrating myself."

James began to tell a story to which Arthur listened attentively. It was a fiction and Arthur wanted to remember every word, but already he was forgetting. When James ended each man was silent for several seconds.

"I gotta split," said Arthur. "I want to get home before the shadows get too long and it starts getting cold."

"Wait. James McGovern wants you to help him with this bottle."

Arthur wondered if James McGovern hung around the schoolyard much and what the kids thought of him. Did some fear him? Had any beaten him? Arthur took another, shorter swallow of the Thunderbird. His first had hurt him more but he had straight-faced it; this one twisted his features. McGovern downed what remained in the bottle and laid it, empty, next to him on the dirt.

"Down that way?" he asked Arthur, pointing toward the blood donor station, the tracks, and, if they were neither stolen nor imaginary, his tools.

"You got it," Arthur said, extending his left hand to be slapped, its fingers curled in upon the palm. James McGovern didn't slap it. "Later," Arthur said. "It's been a pleasure."

He spun four hundred fifty degrees, waved a parting salutation, and headed toward the sidewalk that, he hoped, would lead him off the school grounds; he was relieved when he saw an open gate ahead. He crossed Sixth Street onto First Avenue after a perilous 40-foot run against traffic in the slow lane, Sixth much busier than the roads had been earlier. On First only a few cars passed him, all driven by middle-aged and older men with conventional-job haircuts. The street felt so 1950s Arthur had Twilight Zone rushes.

Three brothers, whose ages Arthur guessed were 3, 4, and 6, were playing tag; the two not it tried to elude the youngest’s tag by sidestepping and ducking rather than running, thus giving him a chance to be competitive. Arthur had almost passed them when they stopped their game and stared; when the oldest stepped off the curb the others joined him in the street and Arthur slowed.

"Is it fun?" the oldest asked. Certain kids knew right away.

"It's fun," said Arthur, and the boys came into the middle of the street to join him. He had sped up but they had no trouble keeping pace with him and, as they walked, the two older barraged Arthur with questions about his machine.

"Can I have a ride?" the oldest asked.

He spoke with odd spaces between his words. Arthur wanted to give him a ride and started to say yes but said no. To say yes would require him to explain to the boy exactly where and where not to put his feet, and the easiness (and reasonableness) of saying no seduced the man. The boy gave him a look meant to ask him to reconsider, but he refused again.

"Can it go faster?" the middle boy asked, coming up beside Arthur again.

His brothers were dancing and galloping around the chair, slowed to a crawl by the road’s slight incline.

"Only downhill," said Arthur.

"It does go faster?" asked the boy.

He was hopping up and down with excitement as he moved sideways beside Arthur, facing him and talking to him.

"Sometimes," said Arthur.

"Make it go faster," the boy said.

"I can't now, only going downhill," said Arthur.

"Make it go fast," he said, excitedly clapping his hands.

"I wish I could, I wish I could," said Arthur, wondering if the child would ask again for more speed. He seemed not only to want more speed, but also to be unable to hear, unwilling to accept, that he couldn’t have it now. America 1978, thought Arthur.

"Make it go fast!" the boy repeated.

An adult voice called from down the street where the boys had been playing. It was male and authoritative. There was an element of concern in it too, Arthur thought. To the boys he was a man hardly taller than themselves riding a toy past their house. To the man who called after them he was someone not to be bothered or, perhaps, not to be bothered with; a dangerous stranger? The boys hesitated in their dance.

"Come away," their father called, and they retreated.

"Who's it?" the oldest said as soon as they had reached the curb.

The youngest reached out and hit his big brother on the waist, despite the bigger boy's feint.

"You are!" said the youngster, and the laughing, tagging, feinting trio moved away from Arthur and toward the house where their father was waiting.

Arthur regretted he hadn't let the kid ride behind him. He looked ahead. To his surprise, he saw a steep hill in front of him, not steep by San Francisco standards but steep for the university area of Tucson. He knew if the chair would make the hill, it would make it home. It made the hill going slower than Rachel's walking pace. The sun was still above the horizon when Lee greeted him at the door with a kiss.
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