Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

Nobody did.

“Well, what do I have to do? There some kind of fee I’m supposed to pay?”

“There’s no charge for people in wheelchairs,” Jerry said.

“What’s the regular charge? I don’t want any special treatment. I’ll pay the same as everybody else.”

“There’s no charge for anybody,” Gary said.

“Well, why didn’t he say that in the first place? Why say there’s no charge for wheelchairs?”

“I was just being a prick,” Jerry said disarmingly. “Look, we’ve been doing about twenty-five miles a day, sometimes a little more than that if we’re making good time and everybody feels like moving. I have no idea if that’s a lot or a little for a man in a wheelchair. Intuitive being that I am, I somehow sense that you’d rather propel yourself with your arms than have anyone assist you. That’s great, but if it turns out to be hard on your arms, just say the word and somebody’ll help out.”

“I don’t need anybody’s help,” Al said. “My arms can do anything your legs can do.”

“That’s great,” Jerry murmured to Gary. “Let’s strike up some music and Mr. Warmth here can show us some of the old soft glove.”

He wound up with Mame for a companion. He groused and bitched about one thing after another, and she simply strode along beside him and responded to his words as if they were delivered in perfectly polite fashion.

“You walk like you win medals for it,” he snapped at one point. “You don’t have the slightest goddam idea what it’s like to be crippled, do you?”

“I sure don’t,” Mame said. “How did you happen to lose your legs?”

“Are you blind or just stupid? I haven’t lost my legs. What do you think I’ve got in my pants, rolled newspaper? I’ve got my legs. I just can’t do anything with them.”

“How did it happen?”

“Vietnam,” he said. “Maybe you heard of it.”

“Oh, yes.”

“‘Oh, yes.’ As far as how it happened, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right.”

“We were on patrol, I was right behind the point man, he stepped on a mine, he caught most of it, I got a little. Enough, as it turned out. He went home in a body bag. I went home in a wheelchair. You want to know the worst part?”

“What?”

“Idiots telling me how lucky I was. I can’t feel anything in my legs, can’t move them. Can’t wiggle my toes. Can’t remember what it was like to wiggle my toes.”

“It must be difficult.”

“No, it’s a bed of roses. I’m continent, in case you were worried about that. I have full control over my bowels and bladder. And I can generally lift myself on and off a toilet if there’s space to maneuver the chair. Otherwise I need someone’s help.”

“How badly do you have to go before you’ll ask for it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” she said sweetly.

“I don’t ask for help if I don’t have to,” he said. “I don’t believe in it.”

“You know,” she told him, “I know you don’t want to be told how lucky you are, but there’s one respect in which you’re very fortunate.”

“What’s that?”

“A lot of men in your position suffer terribly from self-pity. You’re sure lucky that’s not a problem for you.”

For three days he griped and snapped and snarled and whined and rolled his wheelchair across Montana. A couple of the men would help him on and off the chair when he was ready to go to sleep, or when he wanted to attend to a bodily function. But it was always Mame who walked alongside him and listened to his bitching, and she was generally alone with him, because no one else much wanted his company.

“I know he’ll be terrific when he gets off this cripple shit,” Lissa said, summing up the majority opinion, “but until then I really don’t want to know the man.”

“You don’t have to put up with him every day,” Mame was told. “Get somebody to spell you. You listen to that garbage all day long and it does funny things to your head.”

“Oh, it’s good for me,” Mame said. “Every time he opens his mouth I hear things I never let myself think when I had the arthritis. Let alone say them. I don’t mind listening to him. You know, he never does know when a body’s teasing him. It just sails right past him.”

“That’s great,” Jerry said. “The best thing you can say about the son of a bitch is he has no sense of humor.”

On the fourth day, just after they’d crossed into Rosebud County, immediately putting Guthrie in mind of Citizen Kane , Al felt something in his feet. He stopped propelling the wheelchair forward. “My toes!” he said.

“What about them?”

“I can feel them. Can’t be, the nerves are all gone. Must be like an amputee feeling ghost pain in a missing limb. Damn!”

“What’s wrong?”

“That hurts! My God, I’m in pain. I’m getting shooting pains all through my legs. Christ, I’m on fire . The base of my spine feels like it’s being stabbed with a flaming sword. God, I can’t take it!”

“You have to,” Mame said evenly.

He fought the pain in silence, then gave up the battle and screamed. “I can’t do it,” he cried. “I can’t go through this, it’s too much. God, I can’t stand any more!”

“Yes you can,” she told him.

They had been quite a few yards away from the nearest of the others — no one was too anxious to be too close to Al — but now they were drawing a crowd. Jody pushed through the circle, willing power into his hands, but before he could extend them to cover Al’s legs, Mame thrust herself into his path.

“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t you dare take away his pain.”

“But he’s hurting, Mame.”

“I know, and thank God for it. It’s all the pain he never had a chance to feel. He’s got to feel it now. He came here to feel this pain, Jody. Don’t ruin his chance.”

Jody considered, then nodded shortly. “I guess Mame knows what’s happening,” he told the others. “Let’s give them some room.”

The others drew away, and Mame rested her hands on the back rail of Al’s wheelchair and rolled him slowly forward. He was crying out in agony, rocking a little on the base of his spine to fight the pain. “Just let yourself feel it,” she crooned to him. “It can’t kill you. All the pain in the world can’t kill you. It’s been in your body all this time, you poor man. You’re feeling it now because it’s on the way out.”

“Oh, Christ, it hurts,” he said. “Nothing ever hurt so bad.”

“It hurt even worse holding it in. But you just didn’t know it, that’s all.”

“There are these waves of pain, like waves in the ocean, like sheet lightning. Oh, God, I can’t stand it.”

“Yes you can.”

“I can’t.”

“You are standing it.”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m afraid.”

“Of course you are.”

“I’m so scared! I don’t want to die. I’ll be torn apart, I’ll disappear. God, dear God, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right to be afraid.”

“No it’s not. It’s soft.”

“You can be soft.”

“I can’t! I have to hold it together, don’t you see that? If I let go for a moment I’ll fall apart.”

“And what would happen if you fell apart?”

“I’d… I’d be nothing.”

“You think you’re Humpty Dumpty? You think we couldn’t put you back together again? You think you couldn’t put yourself back together again?”

“I just want it to stop,” he moaned.

“No! You can’t make it stop. I won’t let you. Why do you think I put up with your whining and your nasty mouth and a pool of self-pity deep enough to drown a stork? Because you are going to go through this, mister. You’re going to suffer your pain and shiver through your fear, and worst of all you’re going to look in the mirror and see a fearful man looking back at you. What’s so bad about getting scared?”