Thumbsucker (22 page)

It was time to stop and put my thoughts together. I shrugged off my pack and leaned it against a rock, then turned in a slow circle to get my bearings. I was standing at the bottom of a gravel field, below an icy, teakettle-shaped peak. I called out Mike’s name but my voice seemed weak and small.

I considered turning back but I didn’t feel up to it. I didn’t feel up to going forward, either. It hit me then that the hikers had been right: a person could die this way. From indecision. From not being able to do anything but stand there feeling his heart beat and his mouth dry up.

I had to eat. I dug through my pack and came up with a package of freeze-dried Stroganoff. I bit off a chunk that melted to salty broth and looked around for wood to build a fire. I was too high, though—well above the tree line. I started pulling up hunks of dry brown grass, then I tore up my field guide, added it to the pile, and struck a paraffin match. A flame burst up. Even once it was going strong, though, it gave off no real warmth. It seemed to need all its heat just to keep burning.

I called out again. No response. Again. Again.

Finally, an answer. “I’m over here.”

“Where are you?”

“Hurry up, I’m freezing.
Hurry
.”

It was dark by then. I followed Mike’s voice across
the gravel field, stepping with care but slipping and tripping anyway. Ahead, I saw water shining. Reflected stars. The moon was an egg, just short of full, and orange. A rodent stood up on a rock in silhouette and shrilly chuckled, then skittered out of sight.

“I’m coming. Stay still. Are you hurt?”

A wavering groan. Too unsteady and strangled to be an act.

The footing was swampy. The suction slowed me down. One leg sunk down to the thigh in muck and when I pulled it free my boot came off. That’s when I spotted him, lying on a rock slab. His T-shirt was stained dark around the bottom and one of his legs lay extended in the pond as if it had been burned and he was cooling it.

“I cut myself. It’s deep. It isn’t clotting.”

There is the normal brain and the first-aid brain. I switched on my first-aid brain. The leg in the pond was surrounded by a haze visible as a distortion of the star-shine. The water was bleeding Mike, leeching out his blood. I crouched, got hold of the leg, and lifted it, but couldn’t locate the cut for all the dripping.

“Where is it?”

“Kneecap. Put it down again.”

“It needs to be elevated. Christ,” I said.

I saw the wound: a pair of ragged flaps around a shredded lump of oozing meat. The blood welled up and warmed my numbing fingers as I managed to cradle the leg with one hand and unbutton my shirt with the
other. I bit down hard on my collar, tore it free, then started bandaging.

“You must be thinking I wasn’t serious. I would have cut my wrist if I’d been serious. That’s what you always hear about: the wrist. Isn’t that what you always hear about?”

The trauma had soured Mike’s breath; I turned my face away. “Lie still,” I said.

“You followed me.”

“I had to.”

Mike clutched my arm and pulled himself half upright. “I want to kiss you. You followed me. You came.”

The kiss was all beard, all scratch. It scoured my cheek.

“I’m better now. I feel better now,” Mike said. “Lighter or something. Clearer.”

My stomach gurgled and turned over. “Oh God.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” I gave Mike my shoulder. He held on tight.

“I faked the whole thing. I was fine after the surgery. All the knee needed was a little exercise. Woody knew. I could see it in his face. Your mother knew, too. She just pretended she didn’t. She had her reasons, I guess. I had mine, too. Sometimes I wish they’d sawed the whole damn leg off.”

It was an interesting speech, enlightening, but I was in no shape to take it in. The parasites had come to life inside me. Millions of them, nibbling their way out.

A breeze blew across the pond and shattered the moon.

We started down the mountain in the dark. I made Mike wear long pants to cover the bandage and I broke off a tent pole for him as a cane. And though the limp he’d given himself was real, it seemed like he was hamming this up, too, teasing out the dramatic possibilities. He hobbled, he hopped, he slumped, he stiffened. I told him that if he didn’t cut it out I’d take away the cane.

He cut it out.

I was suffering, too. The cramps came on gradually, with mounting force. The first ones struck a minute or two apart; I handled them by clenching my stomach muscles. Then they accelerated and spread out. I couldn’t hold back. Hot pliers wrenched my gut. The liquid drained down my leg into my boot and the stench hit me hard and cleared my sinuses. The next gush, full of gas and bubbles, was blisteringly hot, all steam and acid.

“Don’t stop,” I said. Mike was slowing.

“It hurts.”

“Don’t whine.”

Time flattened out. The woods were quiet, birdless. Every few minutes Mike would start explaining himself. Audrey’s love had drained him of his drive, making a pro career seem grim and miserable. But football had spoiled
him for a normal life, pumping him full of juice that made his heart pound, even in his sleep. He’d sold his mind and education short by coming on as he-man to sell hunting knives. I asked him to save it; to speak to a professional. I told him my job was to get him down the hill and his job was to look normal when we got there.

The sky was lightening when we saw the glow of Joel and Audrey’s campfire. Either they hadn’t gone to sleep or they’d just woken up. The couple was with them. Loring sat next to the fire holding a skillet; he flipped a pancake and the others clapped. Their camp smelled of coffee and bacon and burning sap and they seemed to be having a high old time together. Audrey hummed a bar of an old cowboy song and everyone joined in, Joel keeping time with a saucepan and a spoon. The others rocked side to side and waved their cups.

Mike let go of my shoulder and sat down. He rested his cane on his lap and bowed his head.

“You coming?” I said. “I need liquid. I have a parasite.”

“I can’t.”

“New rule. It’s simple.” Mike raised his eyes to me. “Whatever you can’t do, you have to do. You got it? The worse it hurts, the more you smile. Get up. And no sad stories. You got lost. I found you. An everyday adventure in the woods.”

Mike took his time, but eventually he stood. I told him to leave the cane behind. He dropped it.

“Good. Now walk. Chin up. No limping. Good.”

“You’re stronger than I am. I’ve sold you short,” Mike said.

I’d been waiting a long time for him to say this, but somehow it didn’t please me the way it should have. I’d hoped we’d be strong together, not just one of us. I hadn’t planned on being strong alone.

When the doorbell rang and I rose to answer it, putting down a book from the school library on jobs in the communications industry, how was I to know a new religion was waiting on our porch?

They were no more than boys, just a few years older than me. They looked like college athletes dressed for a banquet in suits and ties and name tags. Black vinyl briefcases hung from their right hands and I could smell talcum powder on their skin. One boy was blond, with a smallish, turned-up nose and pebbly cheeks the texture
of elbow skin. The other was dark and handsome and wore glasses whose lenses were thickly smudged with fingerprints. A scar from a cleft palate operation knotted his upper lip. He lisped a little.

“My name is Elder Jessup,” he said, “and this is my partner, Elder Knowles. We’d like to speak with you, if possible, about God’s plan for the American family.”

I waited for him to say more. He’d startled me.

“It’s Elder Knowles and my privilege to represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”

“The Mormons,” Elder Knowles said. “Ever heard of us?”

I had, in fact. I’d seen their ads. Beautifully shot and cast with flawless models, the inspirational television spots, stuck between commercials for cars and wine, had always jarred me a little, but in a good way. Their style was corny but professional, their messages mysterious yet reassuring. They seemed to promise a life of health and peace, of cheerful board games played in front of fireplaces and nourishing suppers shared in cozy kitchens. What’s more, I remembered meeting a Mormon boy at Camp Overcome—a bed wetter named Tyson from Salt Lake City who’d covered his ears when the campers told dirty jokes and had the blondest hair I’d ever seen.

I smiled at the elders and let them make their pitch. They couldn’t have come at a better time, as far as I was concerned. Woody Wolff had finally passed away that
month and things were dire at home. And though later on, when I’d won the elders’ trust, they would reveal to me the sneaky trick behind their perfect timing, their sudden appearance struck me as miraculous. They were the sort of help that I’d been praying for, although I didn’t call my wishes prayers yet.

“Is the head of the house in?” Elder Jessup asked. For a moment I didn’t know whom he was talking about.

“He is,” I said.

“Is he available?”

“He should be.”

Because it was ten in the morning on a Wednesday, this was an embarrassing admission. Mike had been stopped for drunk driving that weekend while coming home from an ice-fishing trip and he hadn’t been to his store for three days. And though I should have been in school myself that morning, I had a valid excuse. Because of a foul-up at the pharmacy (they’d switched my five-milligram tablets for tens) I’d taken too much Ritalin that morning and gone back to bed with a racing heart.

“Tell him we have good news,” said Elder Knowles. “Also, a book your family can read and keep.”

Just then, from the TV room off the entrance hall, Mike’s voice rose in a dreamy, tuneless song that had been bubbling out of him for days:
Nobody knows me. My life is halfway through. Mike Cobb is a pair of footprints. The footprint man
 …

Elder Knowles bit his lip and turned to face the side-walk.
Our dog sauntered up and licked his fingertips. Elder Jessup set down his black briefcase on the threshold.

“I think we’d better come inside,” he said.

It could happen anywhere, at any time—Mike making crazy music of his thoughts. The sporting goods store, a Saturday afternoon. Mike and I are restocking the thermal underwear. I misplace the price list from the wholesaler and Mike pipes up with a droning, distant jingle that sounds like an ad from the radio, but isn’t:
Time’s running out. Don’t shout. Don’t run about. Everybody knows time’s running out
. Or maybe we’re in the high school gym at the district speech meet and I’ve just concluded an impromptu talk on “Polluted Rivers, Polluted Dreams.” As the judges and coaches shake my hand, a voice warbles up from the middle of the audience:
My son is proud. He thinks he’s made his stand. So did Michael Cobb, the footprint man
. And though everyone pretends that they don’t hear this and goes right on congratulating me, I hear the song loud and clear. It’s all I hear.

The nights at home were even harder on me. Audrey had left Maple Glen and had found new job at the hospital, working the late shift again, and after she left the house I’d lie awake trying to drown out the singing I knew was coming by listening to
Night Hearts
on the radio. The program’s host, Joe Sloane, a former baseball
player and certified social worker, counseled anonymous callers nationwide, advising Jim D. to throw away his diet pills and start a regular exercise program, encouraging Catherine L. to leave her boyfriend and finish her law degree.
Night Hearts’
signal came in sharp and clear from its Omaha home station, and listening to it in the dark while Mike yodeled softly and spookily in his bedroom helped me to view our family’s hurts and troubles as part of some vast American misery that it was no disgrace to be a part of.

In the daytime my big concern was visitors. If Mike was at home and a car drove in our driveway, I’d leap into action, shutting all the doors between whichever room he happened to be in and the entrance hall. I’d turn up the TV or blast the stereo while Audrey, zonked out in her bedroom wearing earplugs, slept through the whole crisis. And whatever it took to get rid of people, I’d do it: sign for packages, order Girl Scout cookies, sponsor some fifth grader’s diabetes walkathon. No one got past me, no one heard Mike’s singing. The Mormon missionaries were the first.