WHAT I SAID: He got over yesterday.
WHAT HELGA SAID: I guess you’re right. Yesterday is behind him.
WHAT THE DOG DID: Fetched a stuffed-up toy, a green fuzzy spaceship from one of the children’s rooms in Helga’s home. The dog held it in his mouth and cocked his head while looking at me. He thinks that’s his spaceship, Helga said. It’s really my son’s, she said. He’s a fine dog, Helga, I said, and for a moment I thought the dog was trying to tell me he’d seen the same spacecraft I’d seen, the object with bright lights flying back and forth in the sky. I know, she said. Yesterday was his time, but today is not. I’ll call you again, when yesterday comes-when it will be his time again, she says. Good, I said. Call me when yesterday comes again.
WHAT I TELL SAM WHEN I SEE HIM AGAIN AT THE HOSPITAL: I tell him about Helga and her dog. I tell him things that are not about anything. I recite for him the foodstuffs I see down the three aisles at Phil’s. The marshmallows, the soup cans, the replacement arrow tips, the Day-Glo fletchings, and the Whisker Biscuit rests. I whistle for him Appalachian Spring and still there is no response, the only change in the room being the light that goes from weak sunlight to dusk to darkness.
CALL: A woman says she found her horse on the barn floor rolling his eyes and paddling his legs. It’s a seizure, she said.
ACTION: Drove to farm. I knelt down next to the horse. I felt his pulse. He stood up abruptly.
RESULT: The horse was awake now. He was just sleeping, I told the woman. Sleeping! she said. Yes, I said. He must have some kind of sleep disorder. It happens to horses as well as to humans. He may not be able to sleep well at night because of a predator in the area, or too much light, a full moon maybe, and so he is so exhausted and the next day he falls asleep suddenly, and falls to the barn floor instead of kneeling to lie down. Once he’s down, he falls into a deep REM state. He rolls his eyes in a dream, and the leg paddling, that too is from galloping in his dreams. It’s not really a seizure, just a deep sleep, I said.
The woman shook her head. Hard to believe, she said. She invited me into her house while she wrote me a check. It was a nice house, unusually large. There were so many knickknacks and ceramic figurines on the shelves that I was sure if Bruce or Nelly were inside the house, with one swipe of their bushy black tails the woman’s entire collection would have been smashed. I told the woman it was a nice house. She raised her forefinger. Upstairs there’s a bowling alley, she said. Really? I said. She nodded, saying she had bought the house a year ago and she never used to bowl, but now, after dinner, she takes her drink and her cigarette upstairs, and she bowls. The part she likes best is the sound the pins make when they fall, and she swears that on bone-chill cold nights, when the sound carries farthest, the entire town can hear her strikes. I think how the man who shot my son can hear the strikes. While cleaning his shotgun, he could smell the gunpowder that smoked after he took the shot that injured my son, and down the road he heard this woman’s pins falling down. That’s not so strange, I say to the woman. I think there are stranger people around here than that, don’t you? I say to the woman. The woman nods her head. Oh, no doubt there are stranger people around here. What about that man with those cows, she says. The cows who live in the man’s basement? How’s he ever going to get those cows out in the springtime when they’ve grown so big they won’t fit up the stairs?
WHAT I SAY: The man with the cows?
WHAT SHE SAYS: Yes, you know, old Greg Springer, wears overalls all the time with the straps down and his gut pouring out.
WHAT I SAY: Ah, yes, old Greg Springer.
WHAT SHE SAYS: Now there’s some guy I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw him. And what he’s done to those cows, letting them stand up to their necks in their own shit every day. I think that’s criminal. He’s a criminal, she says.
WHAT I DO ON DRIVE HOME: Realize that in order to spell “Springer” out of grated orange peel I need an s, but that maybe the recipe I was given for scones was really asking for “grated orange peels.”
WHAT I NOTICE WHEN I DRIVE HOME: That I have not seen the spacecraft in days and that I will never know now who shot my son if I cannot ask the pilot in the spacecraft if he saw anything.
WHAT I DIG THROUGH THE JUNK DRAWER FOR IN THE KITCHEN: The scone recipe, to check and see if it really asks for “grated orange peels.” I find the rabies tags for Nelly and Bruce, I find a magnifying glass (which I think might come in handy and slip it into my pocket even though it’s a kid’s cheapo magnifying glass, the quality no better than a cereal box trinket). I find wildflower seeds whose envelope is torn and the seeds litter the bottom of the drawer, I find a dried-up glue stick and a turkey call and an owl call, I find receipts for dental work done years ago, but I do not find the scone recipe.
WHAT I AM BEGINNING TO THINK: That my son will never awaken, even though his score on his Glasgow coma scale was a 14, even though his SPECT scan showed normal cerebral blood flow, even though his foot, according to the day nurse, has moved now and then, approximately a millimeter to the right, and another millimeter to the left. I look up while driving home on our driveway at night. I’m looking up the whole time, seeing if I can see it, and then because I’m not paying attention, I drive off the driveway and partly down the side of the road.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS IN THE MORNING: Some drunk kids from town must have driven down our driveway last night and gone off the road.
WHAT SARAH SAYS: Oh, those must be the same kids who changed the sign to COME TO THE FALL BOOB FEST.
CALL: A cow with milk fever, down and doesn’t want to get up.
ACTION: Drove to farm past huge old maples that lined the road. Met farmer and his son out behind the barn, where the cow was lying on a mixture of frozen mud and ice. In the barn, on some hay, was her newborn mooing for her, and the farmer’s wife was trying to feed the calf colostrum from a bottle. Clipped to the side of the stall was a heat lamp, shining down on the calf. Outside, though, the mother would not get up. I had brought my bottle of calcium with me and stuck a needle in the vein in her neck to inject her with some. This might take a few minutes, I said to the farmer and his son. But the farmer could not hear me, and he yelled, What’s that? and held the top of his ear, red from the cold, and pushed it out toward me so that I would know he could not hear so well. I leaned up close to him. I could see where the yarn from his sweater collar was coming undone and hung in a loop of scalloped waves. It will take a while for the calcium to take effect. She may not get up for a while, I said, loudly. The farmer nodded. In the meantime, I asked the farmer’s son if there was a flat board around. I wanted to drag the cow onto it so that when she did try to stand up, she wouldn’t slip on the ice. He brought me a sheet of composite board, and then the three of us, the farmer and his son and I, all tried to push the cow onto the board. She was a heavy cow, and I was pushing from her rear, which was all bloody from birthing her calf and expelling her placenta, so that if I pushed too hard, my hands would slip. I had to find the right strength to push her with, not too hard so that my hands would slip off her hind, and not too easy so that she wouldn’t budge. The farmer, though old, was strong and his son even stronger, so the three of us were able to get her onto the board. Once she was on it, she seemed appreciative to be off the cold frozen mud, and she lifted her head and looked around, taking in the sight of me and the farmer and his son, but her interest didn’t last long, and maybe the dry surface beneath her was too much of a comfort, because she suddenly lay down and sprawled across it and closed her eyes. Doesn’t look like she wants to get up now at all, said the farmer, loudly. His wife, who was still in the stall in the barn with the newborn calf, thought he was talking to her, and I could hear her yell from the stall, What’s that, Michael? But the farmer didn’t answer her.