Yannick Murphy - The Call

WHAT HIS BUTTERFLY WAS:Really good. When he came up for a breath, he moved his head to the side, and I thought how Misty Hyman wouldn’t have done it that way. Misty Hyman would have gotten her breath from directly in front of her. But the spaceman’s way seemed to me like an efficient way to breathe. He did not always have to be searching for that hidden pocket of air. The way he lifted his head from side to side, the air for him was easy to find. The air was all his.

WHO WE SAW AT THE POOL GETTING IN A SWIM:Coach. He brought Ted and Ted sat in the wheelchair waiting for coach to get in his swim. The spaceman got out of the pool before I did. I could see him talking to Ted in the wheelchair on the deck of the pool. The spaceman knelt down in front of Ted and Ted put his hand on the spaceman’s shoulder. What were they talking about? Were they trading religious insight? Was the spaceman being ordained? Later, in the locker room, I told the spaceman I could never understand Ted, and so I didn’t try to talk to Ted too much. The spaceman said he could understand Ted. He once worked with others like Ted and had learned to understand their speech. He said that all Ted was telling him was that his foot hurt, and that his sneaker was on too tight, and so the spaceman had reached down and loosened Ted’s laces for him. The spaceman handed me back my bathing suit that he had borrowed, and when I took it he covered my hand with his own. I wondered if this was how the boys, the bad boys, the gang boys, shook hands at the school he worked in. We’re going to find the fucker who did that to your son, the spaceman said, and when he said it I could feel my heart race. It almost hurt. I remembered the alpaca who had died from the sound of the clap of thunder. It was like fear, him saying it. Yes, I thought, maybe this spaceman is right. Maybe this spaceman with the beautiful fly is someone I’ve been waiting for all along. Someone who can help me. Let’s find him, I said, and for a moment I let myself feel the anger all over again that I felt right after my son had been shot.

WHAT WE SAW ON THE WAY HOME:The children’s school. I pointed it out to him. I showed him the apple tree where in the fall, during recess, the children’s teacher would let one child climb into the tree and let the child shake all the apples to the ground, then the teacher would let all the other children run under the tree and collect the apples. The children would put the apples on the ends of long sticks and then throw the apples off the ends of the sticks, far out into the field toward the base of the mountain, just for fun. Oh, in Philadelphia, the spaceman said, there would be lawyers around to stop that kind of play. But then again, in Philadelphia we don’t have people shooting each other out of trees.

CALL:Dorothy says her sheep Alice has a bad leg.

RESULT:Spaceman and I drove to Dorothy’s, past a field where for-sythia bushes grew, their buds about to bloom. I told the spaceman that when I was little I thought forsythia was really “forcynthia” and that it was named after a woman, the kind one would want to give flowers to. Outside Dorothy’s, the spaceman wanted to know where the barn was. No barn, I said. The sheep lives inside the house. Inside the house, Alice walked up to the spaceman and sniffed his knee, then she walked under the kitchen table and peered out at us from under the tabletop with her wide, kind eyes. Dorothy shook her head. It’s something with her leg, Doc, she said. I looked at Dorothy. She looked more tired than the last time I had seen her. I noticed the hem of her dress had come undone in places, and the cloth that had been turned under for years was much more colorful than the rest of the cloth on the dress. Come over here, Dorothy said to Alice, and she said it as if she were talking to another person and so the spaceman thought she was saying it to him because he went forward a step. But Dorothy was looking at Alice when she said it and Alice came out from under the tabletop and put her head in Dorothy’s lap. Dorothy rubbed Alice’s neck. This sheep has gone to church and met the local pastor, I said to the spaceman. The spaceman nodded. She’s a pretty sheep, he said. Both Dorothy and I nodded because Alice really was a pretty sheep and Dorothy kept good care of her and kept her wool clean. I knelt down and palpated the leg that Dorothy said hurt Alice, but I could find neither heat nor swelling. I did notice, however, that Dorothy seemed to be shifting her weight often while she sat in the chair with Alice’s head in her lap. How about you, Dorothy? How is your leg? I asked. Dorothy shook her head. Well, it so happens, I’ve been having trouble with my leg, too. It hurts me all day and it hurts me all night. I guess, and now Dorothy laughed, I guess that means it hurts me all the time, she said. Dorothy, I said, it sounds like you should make the appointment to see the doctor. Have you got the doctor’s telephone number? the spaceman asked, stepping closer to Dorothy now. Dorothy shrugged, I suppose it’s on the fridge, but if I go to the doctor for my leg, he will probably find something wrong with my arm. Maybe not, maybe he will just fix the problem with your leg, the spaceman said. You think so? Dorothy said and Dorothy looked up at me and the way she looked up at me she looked just like Alice when Alice looked up at me from underneath the tabletop.

RESULT:I was getting ready to leave, but the spaceman wanted to stay and help Dorothy find her doctor’s telephone number on her refrigerator. There were a lot of cards on her refrigerator door hanging there by the use of magnets and we looked through all of them. There were magnets so old they were cracked in half and some of the magnets had words on them advertising stores that had once been in the area, but had long since gone out of business. When we found the right card, the spaceman called the doctor for Dorothy and made the appointment. You’d think that Dorothy would be able to go to a doctor’s appointment any day, but the only day she wanted to go to the appointment was on a Thursday, so the appointment was made for a Thursday weeks from then. Before we left, Dorothy asked if I wouldn’t mind driving her to the appointment because her leg hurt her and she didn’t think she could push down on the gas pedal. Oh, and, Alice, too, she’s coming with me to the appointment in the back of the truck, Dorothy said. Okay, both you and Alice to the doctor’s, I said, and then the spaceman made sure that I wrote it down in my book.

One last thing, the spaceman said to Dorothy. Did you know about the doctor’s son? No, don’t answer that. Of course you knew. This is a small town, everyone knew. Dorothy lowered her eyes to her linoleum floor. Yes, the poor boy, Dorothy said. Isn’t that right, Alice, she said and she reached out for Alice so she could rub Alice’s head. Well, said the spaceman, the police have said they’re getting closer to finding out who that man was. They’re very close. He doesn’t stand a chance now. No one can help him now. It’s almost water under the bridge, the spaceman said. Dorothy kept rubbing Alice’s head. Who was that man anyway? He couldn’t have been a churchgoer like you. You probably never saw the likes of him across the pew, did you? the spaceman said. Dorothy looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. Your son’s all right now, isn’t he? Tell us he’s all right? Dorothy said, and I knew that when she said “us,” she meant Alice and herself. I nodded my head. My son is fine. He’s perfectly fine now, I said. It’s time for us to go, I said to the spaceman, all of my excitement about finding the hunter who had shot my son gone now.

WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID WHEN WE WERE BACK IN THE CAR:I think she knew. Everyone in this town knows, your Arlo with the ghost cows knows, this Dorothy knows. Hell, the sheep probably knows. It’s pretty sickening, what they’re doing to you, he said. You may not be from here originally, but still, you should be treated fairly. You live here and work here. You’re nice to these people. You’re probably not even going to charge her for that call, are you?