to comprehend it all. The cold cream was a dripping mess and the tears shone in her eyes against it so that for a moment she looked like she was melting right in front of him. Then she looked at her son. The two of them stood mere feet apart. Claire reached out one hand toward him and Aiden still would not take his eyes off Golec. Her hand shook, the fingers aching for contact, and Golec could see the miles and miles of separation that was happening invisibly between mother and son. As he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and eased him toward the door he saw the lightdim in her eyes like the sweep of a lighthouse beacon turning outward and away across the solemn, empty sea. It saddened him. It always did.
book two
t he light breaking through the window and the feeling in his head seemed one and the same. Both were diffuse, and there was a sense of timelessness about it so that staring across the slope of his chest and down the line of his body to the cast on his leg and the small tent of sheet that was his other foot gave Joe Willie the feeling of emerging into a dream, the usual benchmarks of time passing lost in the cottony numbness of the drug. He was alone. He was glad of that. There was a cup of water on the table beside him and he turned his head to look at it. The morphine dried him out and he felt parched and flattened as if everything vital had been drained out of him. The water was on the swing-out table to his left and as he stared at it now he knew he’d have to reach across his body with his right arm to get it. He tried, and he almost screamed with the sudden flare of pain in his left shoulder. The water sat there and he could taste its sweetness and he gritted his teeth and made the same move again. There was a searing flamewhere the fullness of his shoulder used to be and the weight of him felt like something would snap like kindling, and he rocked back to the flat of his back before throwing his right arm across his chest. He knocked the cup off the table and it clattered across the floor and he almost screamed with rage. He settled on his back and stared at the light easing higher into a soft yellowish sheen against the far wall of his room. He couldn’t even get himself a drink of water, and the hard fact of that made him angrier and he could feel the heat of it burning in the hollow of his chest so that when the nurse appeared he could only stare at her balefully while she retrieved the cup and filled it and held it to his lips so he could sip at it until he was satisfied. She mopped his brow with a cold, wet cloth and he closed his eyes and tried to immerse himself in the relief that brought. But when he opened them again he could see her look of concern and it enraged him again. She asked if he needed anything and he only shook his head vacantly, and she moved the table over to his right side and left the room. He felt trapped, pinioned to the bed, and his eye drifted over to the crutches they’d left him the day before.
They wanted him to move. They wanted him to make small excursions down the hallway. He almost laughed. All his life he’d been able to envision his body doing the things he asked it for beforehand, like a dream, a vision, a prophetic glimpse, so that when he swung into the motion it looked like second nature to those watching. They called him a natural, and he supposed there was some truth to that. But in the bed, staring at the crutches and being incapable of seeing himself perform the feat of humping down the hallway, however slowly, he felt nothing natural about his body at all. The crutches were symbols of how far he’d fallen, and he wanted nothing to do with them.
The sun climbed higher on the wall and he watched it, remembering how he’d loved the light of morning on the ranch. It never failed to give him a sense of melancholy so deep in the bones that he could swear purple was a feeling. He’d loved sitting on the porch in the early morning, enjoying a coffee and
book two
t he light breaking through the window and the feeling in his head seemed one and the same. Both were diffuse, and there was a sense of timelessness about it so that staring across the slope of his chest and down the line of his body to the cast on his leg and the small tent of sheet that was his other foot gave Joe Willie the feeling of emerging into a dream, the usual benchmarks of time passing lost in the cottony numbness of the drug. He was alone. He was glad of that. There was a cup of water on the table beside him and he turned his head to look at it. The morphine dried him out and he felt parched and flattened as if everything vital had been drained out of him. The water was on the swing-out table to his left and as he stared at it now he knew he’d have to reach across his body with his right arm to get it. He tried, and he almost screamed with the sudden flare of pain in his left shoulder. The water sat there and he could taste its sweetness and he gritted his teeth and made the same move again. There was a searing flamewhere the fullness of his shoulder used to be and the weight of him felt like something would snap like kindling, and he rocked back to the flat of his back before throwing his right arm across his chest. He knocked the cup off the table and it clattered across the floor and he almost screamed with rage. He settled on his back and stared at the light easing higher into a soft yellowish sheen against the far wall of his room. He couldn’t even get himself a drink of water, and the hard fact of that made him angrier and he could feel the heat of it burning in the hollow of his chest so that when the nurse appeared he could only stare at her balefully while she retrieved the cup and filled it and held it to his lips so he could sip at it until he was satisfied. She mopped his brow with a cold, wet cloth and he closed his eyes and tried to immerse himself in the relief that brought. But when he opened them again he could see her look of concern and it enraged him again. She asked if he needed anything and he only shook his head vacantly, and she moved the table over to his right side and left the room. He felt trapped, pinioned to the bed, and his eye drifted over to the crutches they’d left him the day before.
They wanted him to move. They wanted him to make small excursions down the hallway. He almost laughed. All his life he’d been able to envision his body doing the things he asked it for beforehand, like a dream, a vision, a prophetic glimpse, so that when he swung into the motion it looked like second nature to those watching. They called him a natural, and he supposed there was some truth to that. But in the bed, staring at the crutches and being incapable of seeing himself perform the feat of humping down the hallway, however slowly, he felt nothing natural about his body at all. The crutches were symbols of how far he’d fallen, and he wanted nothing to do with them.
The sun climbed higher on the wall and he watched it, remembering how he’d loved the light of morning on the ranch. It never failed to give him a sense of melancholy so deep in the bones that he could swear purple was a feeling. He’d loved sitting on the porch in the early morning, enjoying a coffee and
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