WHAT THE GIRLS SAID WHEN THEY CAME HOME: What’s that burning smell?
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Look at the floor! Take off your boots!
WHAT SMELLED LIKE SOMETHING BURNING WHEN IT SHOULD HAVE SMELLED LIKE BREAD BAKING: The bread machine, whose paddles were not turning because the rubber belt had once again slipped.
WHAT THE RADIO SAID: Beep-de-dah-beep-de-dah-beep-beep-beep.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID TO THE GIRLS: I am getting a transmission.
WHAT I THOUGHT: My wife can save us all. She can save me. She can save our son. She can take us up in her spacecraft. Our son will awaken in the spacecraft and my wife will rub a window clear for him to see down below to our fields covered in frost. She will point out how places in the field hit with morning sun have already melted, and the dead grass showing through is as tawny as the hides of lions on African land.
Part Two
Winter
WHAT WE DO: Visit Sam whenever we can. I sit beside his bed. I bring magazines and newspapers as if I were going on a trip and knew I would need something to read. When I’m done reading them I leave them on the bed and when Jen sits down next to him she becomes angry, pulling out the newspapers and magazines from underneath her and around her, throwing them onto the floor, their pages spreading, catching air, coming down for a slow landing like the geese on Arthur’s pond. Can’t you put them away? she says. I gather them up and keep them in a stack beside his bed and tell the day nurse not to throw them away. Who knows, I say, if there is an article in one of them I missed. Sam is pale and Jen puts her hand on his cheek and rubs it and I wonder if she’s trying to give his face some color. When Sarah and Mia come they play beneath his bed, creating a fort with his blanket and his sheet, exposing him where he lies dressed in a hospital gown. Don’t, he’ll get cold, Jen says and tries dismantling the walls of their fort, but they protest. “It’s hot in here! I’m burning up!” they cry, and it’s true, the hospital is overheated. “Let them, it’s okay,” I say to Jen and she nods her head, letting Sarah and Mia play beneath his bed, every once in a while hitting a hanging blanket, making the blanket move, making it look like just maybe it’s Sam doing the moving himself.
THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: My hands are cracking again in this dry weather and I must rub them with Silvadene tonight and wear some gloves to keep them from cracking and bleeding further. I must order more vaccine because I am running low on vaccine. I must teach the children some German. We have not picked up our books in days. I must turn on the German language CD to listen to while driving in my car. The woman on the CD is named Gisela. I have listened to Gisela for months now in her dialogues. Gisela is my good Freundin. I wonder if I would be able to understand another woman so well as Gisela. Gisela, on the CD, has let Jürgen know her telephone number. I now know Gisela’s phone number, too.
WHAT GISELA SAYS WHILE I AM DRIVING HOME FROM A CALL: Where is an apothecary? I’d like to purchase some aspirin.
WHAT I PASS ON THE ROAD: A diner, a bowling alley, a car dealer, a tax-preparation office. Gisela doesn’t need these things. What Gisela needs is an apothecary. I must find one for Gisela. Gisela feels krank. Gisela would like to remove her Kopf from her shoulders and take a break from it. It is causing her so much pain.
WHAT I NEED TO DO: Order more vaccine. You would think West Nile virus runs rampant through these parts the way I need to vaccinate for it, and maybe it does. Little Egypt, the town, is only a few hours south of here.
WHAT GISELA SAYS: I also need to find the butcher’s. Do you know where one is?
CALL: An old horse that needs to be put down.
ACTION: Had owner walk horse over alongside the wide deep grave dug with a tractor. While the horse walked alongside his grave, one of his feet slipped. He almost fell in. I gave the shot. He did not go down. I had to give more. Finally he went down. He fell on his knees, his head in between them. His eyes not so glassy, his eyes looking like he still could see.
WHAT THE OWNER SAID: How do you get him in the hole?
RESULT: Watch, I told the owner. I tipped the horse. He flipped. He fell into the hole sitting up. His head facing forward, his head propped up by the wall of dirt.
WHAT THE OWNER SAID: Is it all right to bury him that way? Shouldn’t he be down flat? Isn’t his head, even after it’s covered with dirt, too close to the surface?
WHAT I DID: I shook my head. There was nothing going to dig up that horse’s grave. That horse, with his wise look, would frighten any other animal away.
THOUGHTS ON RIDE HOME: It might happen again. A fascist leader might rise to power here. It might even be a woman. How ironic. Everyone happy to see a woman finally in power, only it comes at a time when the country is broke and the woman is a fascist, her ideals appealing to an economically battered public. Who can say it won’t happen? Who will save our country? Who will fight for the good? Who will fight Hitlerina?
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Pulled pork on a bun.
WHAT I HEARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: A whinny. A horse lost down our road. At first it sounded like an owl or a coyote, or even, Jen said, the sound of Sam crying.
WHAT I TOLD HER: All the way from the hospital we would not be able to hear our son cry.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Maybe the horse is injured. Maybe it’s his levels. At least he knows when to see the doctor. Have you made your appointment yet?
WHAT I SAID: That’s not the whinny of an injured horse. He’s just calling to see if anyone’s around. He will find his way home at daybreak. A smart horse doesn’t travel at night when he might trip and break his leg when he can’t see.
WHAT I DID: I turned on the light in our bedroom for the horse.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: You’re leaving a light on for a horse?
WHAT I SAID: He’s just like us. He gets scared in the dark.
WHAT THE WIFE DID: She nodded. All right, leave the light on for him, she said. I hope they leave a light on for Sam in the middle of the night. I don’t want him waking up in the dark, she said.
WHAT I SAID: Don’t worry about the light in the hospital. That place is lit up like an airport. The lights stay on all night.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Yes, only too bad he’s not going anywhere, too bad he’s not getting on a plane. Too bad we are not going to some faraway place with a beach and a bar.
WHAT THE WIFE DID: Fell back to sleep. The flies buzzed. We have flies that winter over in our house. They swarm into the corners of the windows. They fly around the bulb in the lamp that is on. They are noisy. Some die every day, falling from the corners of the rafters and the windows and onto our bed. We shake out the top cover at night before we go to sleep so that they land on the floor instead. Sometimes, while we are sleeping, we are awakened by a dead one falling on our face. I fell back to sleep, too, by the sound, the buzzing lullaby.
HOW SAM WAS LYING DOWN: On his side. The day nurse moved him.
WHAT THE WIFE WANTED TO KNOW: Why she turned him so that he faced the door, and why didn’t she turn him so that he faced the window. “At least the trees beyond the parking lot are something to look at,” she said.