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Christopher went.
He pulled up behind the fire truck, that had been parked behind ambulance, that had been parked behind the three cruisers. One of the officers was directing traffic through the remaining lane on the well-maintained road winding through a nicer part of town. For a time, Tom was given the other lane, twelve feet wide and however long it took to be contained. He was a wounded animal, frantic in a ditch, clambering up onto the shoulder.
The tumor that was to put the old dog down was showing the citizens who had strolled up their long driveway and past their manicured grounds to see what the commotion was all about what it meant to be impressionable. As in, how a person can change if you apply certain pressure, not from the outside, but from within. If you push on the Werneke’s area, smash the prefrontal cortex against the cranium, watch what you can make a man do. Incarnate fear. Give it arms to swing at this thing in his way, his son to those assembled but shapes and a sound to Tom anymore. Give it legs to heave the counterweight of a deputy who has hitched himself to Tom’s belt.
Forgetfulness is the least of his worries now. Words and concepts pale. The brute still feels. The brainstem is yet to be compressed. So, move limbs. Take us away from here. There is pain. There is fright. Danger. Flee. Tom will.
And Karen stands in the verdant lawn recapping diagnoses with a paramedic while Christopher comes upon the scene and says let him go. Let’s get him to the car. As those first responders would point to the glass in the road and Chris would note his father has lost his shoes as well as his mind, he could rationally observe it doesn’t matter. Tom is a dead man walking. Let’s not fret about cut feet. He needs to get home. He’s supposed to die at home, the home he designed and had built, not be restrained on a stretcher and transported to an ER, where he can be sedated, readmitted to a hospital, where he can be neglected. He’s a lost cause. It’s okay. Just let him go. Let me take him home again, to lie him down so that he can rise again with his broken brain atop that heavy brow and spend another night, one of his last, restless, mindlessly searching for relief like an ant skittering across the pavement in search of food.
In that moment, Chris feels possessive. Tom is his. He’s not yours, officer or otherwise. Any other interests in him have been mooted. You don’t need anything from him. He doesn’t need anything from you. He only needs to die. That’s all that’s left for him to do. Chris will deliver him to that final state if you would simply get out of their way. Which the police will do since this has not proved to be the kind of trouble for which they itch.
Like cowboys, they herded the stubborn steer towards its transport. When Tom becomes agitated and starts to unbuckle his belt and the police say No, no, Chris says let it go. Let him drop his pants. Maybe he needs to go pee. Can we please create a screen so the neighbors can't see? The assembled make clear they don’t take orders from civilians and Tom makes clear that undressing is a form of protest.
Chris grabs the discarded khakis and throws them in the car. Tom is near. One of the officers directs Chris to engage the child safety locks as though this is not his first rodeo, which makes a lot of sense. The locks can keep more than children safe.
Then it becomes: Get in the back seat, dad. The backseat, dad. Sir, get in the backseat with your son. The back seat, dad. Please! Please get in. We need to go. There you go. Thank you. Easy. Keep going, dad. Scootch! No no! In the car. I have your pants. Come on. In the car. There you go. We’ve got to go. There you go. Come on. That’s it. Lift your leg. The other leg. Life! Okay. Almost there. Okay. Good. I’m going to shut the door now. Watch your leg. Scoot back. Dad! Tom!
All this means something to Tom, but he doesn’t know why. Something is happening, but he doesn’t know what. He is hot and scared and stuck and cannot get out. He can’t stand up and this wall won’t move and where is he and he can’t and he can’t and he can’t.
As Chris starts the engine and yells out the passenger window he’s leaving and please make sure Karen drives his car to her house so he isn’t stranded at their house tonight, Tom starts hitting the door. He pries at the handle. He fumbles with the buttons. He bangs on the window. It’s as though Chris has invited the struck beast into the car instead of leaving it on the side of the road to twitch and die. As he searches for the window lock and considers running red lights and yells the most soothing lies imaginable over his shoulder--that it’s going to be okay, that Tom’s safe, that he’s going to get some sleep soon--and as Chris conjures fantasies--that the door is broken, that they’re going to the mechanic, that Tom’s childhood friend is going to meet them at the mechanic, that his childhood friend is telling Tom to sit down please--Chris senses this is it. The end is near. The end of the shared torment that is Tom’s life. Chris is in here, locked up with his terminal father, the entrapped bear. And he won’t quit. He won’t leave. He won’t win. But this is what it is to lose graciously. This is how love loses, death wins, yet somehow hope remains. Because, whether these endings are final is an open question.
