Stephen Dixon - All Gone

“How you doing, sir?” the doctor says. “You okay?” What do you want me to say?

Driven off. Though red lights. Truckmen. Busmen. Whole world round pausing in mourning for me. A king out there would have to stop. If I were a boy or that melancholic kid again I’d be enjoying the trip. But I’m hopelessly optimistic. Hoggishly opportunistic. They’ll never take my leg. I could never take my life. So what’s up, Doc? That’s what I want to say to your okay. Leg going to go? Will it be a good hospital my leg goes in? Clean? Maybe this is a dream? Wake me. Wake up. Time to get ready for school. Can Johnny come out and play? He’ll need all two legs. Johnny’s actually my name. But did I only leave my shoe behind? Somebody laugh. No, they would have mentioned that. But leg looks bad. Heard people say. And leg means foot. Foot touches floor. I want to get to the very bottom of this, Doc. Isn’t that a line from some movie or play? Radio show? All of those. Mysteries. Adventure yarns. Well I never liked mysteries or yarns of any kind. Whirrr, not that I can hear the siren and sudden stops.

“You’ll be all right,” person in white says. “What you do, jump?”

Me? You see it in my eyes? Let me reconstruct for you, lady doctor. Male nurse. Person who rides with people to hospitals holding their hands. Not that I’ve been to one as a patient myself. Never. Once. Glass in hand. Hand you’re holding, same hand. Different finger. Big one. Bad cut. Big deal. Right to the bone, the doctor said. Right to the bone, I later liked to say. And said not a while back. To whom? A woman? Woman I see or saw. Name begins with a D. De, Da. Da, De. Held my hand too. Was examining the palm. Telling me my life present, future and all my civil wars. Till she came to the ringer fing. Who? Not you. That woman. De, Da; Di, Do. Black hair, short body. Saying Short life, big finger. Long scar, what happened? Accident when I was twelve, I said. Glass cut right to the bone.

“Beep your horn if the siren doesn’t work.”

“That creep still won’t get out of the way.”

“Bump him.”

“Our fenders can get locked.”

“All the drivers do it for me.”

“They want to lose their jobs.”

“Not if you do it lightly.”

Black hair, lean body. Short break for fainting.

“Move it, goddamn you, you stupid driver. Can’t you see we’ve an emergency in here?”

In a room. People in white working on me. Scratching. Tickling. Cut it out. Can’t feel a thing. Other people working on other people on other tables in the room. Curtains. Some not. Some smells. Pillorying light. “Now, if you don’t mind?”

“Brief,” a doctor working over me says.

“Can you tell me what happened, John?” a policeman says.

I open my mouth.

Do I speak? He looks at me. Is very close. Now they’re scissoring. Injecting. His lips are implanted in my ear.

“I know this is a bad time, John. But no time like the present. It’s only we got to know. Records. This report here. Sooner the better. For you. Maybe for everyone. We have to know if we should pursue. Investigate. Did you jump? Were you pushed? And if so, by who?”

I open my mouth.

“What? Once more, John. Give it a try.”

I tell him. In my head, I tell him, I try. You see. I was standing on the platform. Newspaper in hand. Two in the bush. World’s crush. Plane crash. Those were the three stories I was between reading before. When the plane came. The rains came. That was from a song. I saw the movie. First the show. Saw the lights. First the whistle. Train coming from uptown to down. That’s when I jumped. No, I was pushed. Officer, I fell. Stumbled. Wain wumbled. Wind blew me onto the tracks. William Wind. Ye old bloke. I’m very light. Johnny Light Light Light. As a feather my father useta say.

“No sense out of him. His vocal cords touched too?”

“In shock.”

“Of course.”

All my clothes snibbled off.

I’m naked. I’m cold. Shock, who?

So there I was. Fifty Arabs on one side of me. Hundred cannibals on the other. Cliff with five-thousand-foot ravine in front. Pit of cannibal-eating alligators in my back. No place to go. No direction. Light as a feather my mother also used to say. If you were thrown off a building you’d float down instead of drop, my father would say. Way back. Don’t say things like that, my mother said. To me? You’re so skinny, my brother used to say, that when you stand sideways you can’t be seen. No, my sister used to say. Sister and brother in hospitals too. Mother and father eaten by cannibals there too. I stayed by their beds. Hands on my heads. Watered their brows. Cheeks all of bone. That when you drink tomato juice, my sister said, you look like a thermometer. Sister laughed. That when you wear a red tie, she said. Brother laughed at what sister had said. Mother laughed at what sister had said and brother and sister were laughing at. And father because they all laughed. Now I’m last. In a hospital too.

“Got to clean the lesions first.”

Sutures does someone say? Scalpel? I see the scalpel. I saw the movie. See how they run.

Thermometer, and they all laughed. Their heads off.

“That’s no rattle. Let’s get the machines on him.”

“Wheel them in?”

“Wheel him too.”

“Double e-ing. Calling a clear.”

Bells. Bings. Blood transfusion. That’s the sting going into my arm.

I jumped. Hey, copper, still around to hear? Nah, I fell. Gad’s honest treut.

I was pushed, the dirty rat. There’s your plate of beans. And when I get out of this joint. For I’m going to beat this rap. As you see, I’m hopelessly attitudinistic. Hopelostly antivivisectionistic.

No, I was so thin. So light. Johnny L. L. Light. That’s what I was thinking of before. That when I got on the scale the needle didn’t move. My father. That’s how you can get a weigh. My brother. My sister saying Wag drags with your raggity gags and my mother a bony-beaked comedian of ninety, brown bear burned to white. I don’t want to go and so I’m not going, she said, no matter what my age. Here the shiny sonshine her only survivor. Vitamin E. Dose of those once a day what’ll save me, she said. Vitamin C. There’s what I should do about my falling hair other than stepping out of the way. Vitamin D. Holding my short-lived hand. I was fibbing before, she said. Trying to catch how you react. You don’t. Or I didn’t. But I know nothing about palmistry except this line and it means long life. And here’s where your lines of affection would be and your wrist as asthenic rascettes.

Actually, I was blown on the tracks. Like that newspaper. Single sheet. Carving our way through corridors now, blood stringing along. Yesterday’s headlines making waves. Wind wound down the subway entrance from two flights above. Same steps I was later carried up on one of those rolling ambulance carts. Steered along sidewalk and street. Doors slammed. Siren turned on. Ambulance driven away. Hey, wait for me, I screamed. There’s something you forgot. Pigeons settled on my chest. Invalid-eating dogs licked my paws. What are you doing lying on a stretcher in the street? a woman said. Ambulance rode off without me, I said. Oh, I saw that funny movie too. Harry? Cary? Darnit, sir, who were those two stars again?

Another pillorying room. Semiprivate. Patient beside me with a football helmet clamped to his head. Dots and dashes. Blots of flashes. Lights, camera, action. I’m strapped on my back to an analyzer. Scanner. Transponder. Spectrometer. Tape recorders. Television sets. Doctor, Doctor, I want to confess. I jumped. Lost the faith. Depression. Born out of rejection. Objection. Sustained. Next witness. Take the stand. No thanks, I’ll take it when I leave. Order in the court. My dentist. Dentist will be identified. There’s the chiseler. Took me to the cleaners. So I took him to small claims. Said Malfeasance and practice. That when I walked downstairs from his office my new fillings popped out. That’s what the dentist my poppa said his patients never said. Later my mother said they did. Pass me the V.E. Good prosthodontics your dentist but couldn’t diagnose or heal. So it was my father who uprooted me from the plat. Said Join us, you ole rumbum. Order in the snort. No. My sis said Join me, come, come. That was my lover. Sunday palmist. Once a week divining my hand. No life, short feeling, she found. No, it was I. Wild pram on the loose. Baby cawing and kicking inside when it was saved. Crowd gathered. Camera men came. They’re shooting pictures of me below. First thing out of my groin’s my foot. A transsexual breakthrough. Balls, the king said, if I had them I’d be queen. No. She said. We did. As kids. You’re still a kid. That’s what Vitamin D said. Had a bellyful of my changes. But this isn’t her flat. No sunlight. No yellowing fern or smell of mint tea. I’m where? They’re scissoring. Shearing. Shaving. Sweating. Swearing. Hemming. Mending. Hacking. Yakking. Everything. All the ings. The bings. The dings. The drops. I was dropped to the tracks. Train coming. Conductor screaming. His first fall? I was called to the tracks, I said to him as I fell. He said No or Oh but Stop. Boy and girl at front-car window standing watch. No, I flew onto the tracks. My fly flew. That was it. I had a strange calling. I wanted to unzip. Your fly can be better zippered when you stand than sit, my father used to say. When you sit and try and zip you are just about sitting on your zipper, he said. Yes, Dad, I said, when the zipper tag flew off and I lost my footing and fell on the tracks.