WHAT SAM SAID: I don’t want to know. I don’t care. You make mistakes while hunting. It happens all the time. Did you know there was a kid who shot an old man sitting on a tractor because he thought he was a deer? What are you going to do anyway, shoot the guy? I’d rather say my dad saved a life than took one away.
WHAT I WANTED TO DO: I wanted to take Sam everywhere with me, I wanted to put my hand on him the way Arthur put his hand on the horses and had them talk through him. I wanted everything I said to be what Sam said because he said it so well, no matter his speech was slightly slurred.
WHAT SAM SAID WHEN I HUGGED HIM: I bet now is a good time to ask for the new computer I want.
WHAT THE HOUSE SAID AT NIGHT: Give the spaceman a kidney.
WHAT SARAH SAID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: Poppy! Poppy! Did you hear that?
I thought that she too had heard the house telling me to give the spaceman a kidney. Hear what? I said. The house, it’s falling apart again, she said.
WHAT I SAID: No, it’s not. This house will never fall apart. Go back to sleep now. In the morning you can come with me to see the lambs.
RESULT: The bat was dead in the morning.
WHAT SAM SAID AS HE LOOKED AT THE FLATTENED BAT IN THE PLASTIC CONTAINER THAT ONCE HELD FANCY GREENS: He looks like a wilted lettuce leaf.
WHAT I SAID: Really, I thought he looked like a kidney, curled the way he was.
WHAT THE RABBIT SAID WHILE I LAY ON THE FLOOR AND SHE WAS SNIFFING MY HAIR, SNIFFING MY EARS: Give the spaceman your kidney.
CALL: Yes, there were sheep I had to go see. Their lambs were there, too. Over sixty of them hopping in the fenced-in pasture. Sarah and Mia walked into the field with them and ran with them, sending them this way and that way like a school of fish, only there was no body of water, just the new grass on the ground, a strange bright green that would not last. It was only this unusual color now from the snow it had been buried under for so long and that had suddenly been exposed to warmer currents, the displaced air from flapping tips of newly arrived robins’ wings. The next week it would be a greener green, already older and closer to the dull, tough grass blade summer green it would soon become. The girls’ rubber boots looked so big on them, gaping around their thin legs as they ran with the flock that moved like a school.
ACTION: The sheep’s mothers needed shots and I looked into their eyes and told them hush, to keep their bleating down, while I injected them.
RESULT: Mia and Sarah came out of the pasture with the lambs following behind them, asking me if we could take one home. Just one. How about the littlest one, Mia said, and pointed to what was surely the littlest one, who was so little even the short new blades of grass reached high above his dainty hooves.
THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: With the melting of the snow appeared beer cans that had been tossed onto the side of the road during winter and now protruded from roadside mud. If deposits for cans were raised to twenty-five cents, the problem might disappear. Who would throw away twenty-five cents so easily? And if they did, there would be more people out looking to collect the cans and make money.
CALL: The spaceman saying on the phone how he hadn’t much time now. He had wanted to come back and visit me again, but there were problems with the battery of his electric car, so he had let weeks pass, and now, he said, he was flat on his back in the hospital with the doctors and nurses hovering. I pictured his spacecraft parked in a space at the indoor garage of the hospital, its lights not blinking and not moving at all. I could hear, in the background, the sound of ambulances and fire trucks. I could hear the wheeling of a cart and the closing of a door. I thought he might also remember to tell me the name of the man who shot my son, but he never did. Of course he’s not going to tell me now, he’s worried about his own health, I told myself, and so I told him, Here’s the good news-that horse never had rabies, it was just moldy hay, I said. Oh, yes, I remember that horse now, the one with the moon on his head. That is good news, the spaceman said. The spaceman coughed. It did not sound like a cough from a respiratory infection. It sounded dry and I thought of fallen leaves when I heard him cough and I thought of Ed, the town cop, and how he said the fallen leaves were as flammable as paper and I pictured the spaceman, my son, up in flames on his hospital bed, the pillows puffy behind him, the white bedsheets taut around the mattress burning, leaving shattered-looking holes from the scorch. I’ll give you my kidney, I thought. I can live with just one.
ACTION: I wrote the wife a note. I told her where I was going, just to visit my son. I got in my truck and drove and I took it as a good sign that throughout the whole way, my CHECK ENGINE light never came on. When I got to the hospital, I saw that he looked like he had lost weight. The cleft in his chin I thought looked shallower somehow, as if once it could fit a whole green pea but now could only fit the half of one, a split one. There were many forms to fill out. I filled them out in the waiting room, using a magazine for support. The front of the magazine had a picture of a covered bridge that was not far from my home, that was not far, in fact, from the imprisoned zebra.
RESULT: It was no use, leaving my wife a note like that. She was onto me fast. I had her speak to the doctor I was assigned. I had him reassure her I would be all right. My wife, while crying, wanted to know about the calls, how she should handle them. I told her over the phone that there was not much to do, considering the small number of calls I had been having, but that there was one thing I’d like her to do and that would be to drive Dorothy and Alice to the doctor’s on Thursday. Who are Dorothy and Alice? my wife asked, and why do I have to drive them to the doctor’s? Just as a favor, I said. You’ll like them, they’re both very nice old ladies, I said. There were antigen tests and the spaceman was right. He and I were a perfect match. It didn’t seem to matter about my levels being high if I donated a kidney. They weren’t a concern to my doctor in this hospital. He pooh-poohed my levels. He shrugged. He said tests like that these days for levels caused the patient more worry than did the patient good. I liked this doctor. He wore a white lab coat, but he did not wear the breast cancer pins. He also wore a fishing cap, with a feathery fishing fly attached to it, but the metal hook had been removed. He wanted to know what I caught up where I lived. Was it brookies? Was it bass? I liked this doctor because he let me know he knew about other things than being a doctor. He knew about fish, about walleye. His answers were made from a broad spectrum of information he had gleaned from doing so many different things and having so many different interests over the years. I asked him if he’d recently read what I had read, that maybe the dinosaurs never disappeared, but they’re still here. They’re just chickens and other birds now. They’ve just evolved. The doctor thought that sounded reasonable to him. He considered the wrinkled wattle on the turkey. He considered the scaly appearance of chicken feet. I wished he were my doctor at home. I looked out the hospital window at the people walking in the streets and realized that looking out the window I saw more people in one minute than I would see in an entire day at home.
WHAT THE FATHER WHO WAS MARRIED TO HIS MOTHER SAID WHEN HE SAW ME: Thank you. His eyes were filled with tears even before he reached my bedside. He grabbed my hand, he was so thankful I was going to give his son a kidney. I could tell by his handshake that he was not a good match for my son. His was not a strong hand that could stay cupped, pushing water aside in order to swim fast. There was no close blood match or antigen match here.