Blaze. Part 24

A face bent over him and a voice began cooing. It was the wrong face, and he began to cry louder.

The face pursed its mouth and blew on the birds. The birds began to fly. Joe stopped crying. He watched the birds. The birds made him laugh. He forgot about wrong faces, and he forgot the pain of his new tooth. He watched the birds fly.

(1973).

Memory

Stephen King's short story 'Memory' appeared in Volume 7, Number 4 of Tin House, Tin House, the Summer 2006 issue. It is the seed from which has grown a much longer tale, the Summer 2006 issue. It is the seed from which has grown a much longer tale, Duma Key, Duma Key, which Scribner will publish in early 2008. which Scribner will publish in early 2008.

Memory

by Stephen King

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.

Maybe, but that doesn't matter, either. That's what Kamen says.

My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in building and construction. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I was a genuine American-boy success in that life, worked my way up like a motherf.u.c.ker, and for me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis-St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to force things. But I played my hunches, and most of them played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth about forty million dollars. And what we had together still worked. I looked at other women from time to time but never strayed. At the end of our particular Golden Age, one of our girls was at Brown and the other was teaching in a foreign exchange program. Just before things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her.

I had an accident at a job site. That's what happened. I was in my pickup truck. The right side of my skull was crushed. My ribs were broken. My right hip was shattered. And although I retained sixty per cent of the sight in my right eye (more, on a good day), I lost almost all of my right arm.

I was supposed to lose my life, but I didn't. Then I was supposed to become one of the Vegetable Simpsons, a Coma Homer, but that didn't happen, either. I was one confused American when I came around, but the worst of that pa.s.sed. By the time it did, my wife had pa.s.sed, too. She's remarried to a fellow who owns bowling alleys. My older daughter likes him. My younger daughter thinks he's a yank-off. My wife says she'll come around.

Maybe si, si, maybe maybe no no. That's what Kamen says.

When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn't know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain. I can't remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but it's all pretty academic. Like a picture of a mountain in National Geographic National Geographic magazine. It wasn't academic at the time. At the time it was more like climbing a mountain. magazine. It wasn't academic at the time. At the time it was more like climbing a mountain.

Maybe the headache was the worst. It wouldn't stop. Behind my forehead it was always midnight in the world's biggest clock-shop. Because my right eye was f.u.c.ked up, I was seeing the world through a film of blood, and I still hardly knew what the world was. Few things had names. I remember one day when Pam was in the room - I was still in the hospital, this was before the convalescent home - and she was standing by my bed. I knew who she was, but I was extremely p.i.s.sed that she should be standing when there was the thing you sit in right over in the cornhole.

'Bring the friend,' I said. 'Sit in the friend.'

'What do you mean, Edgar?' she asked.

'The friend, friend, the the buddy buddy!' I shouted. 'Bring over the f.u.c.king pal, pal, you dump b.i.t.c.h!' My head was killing me and she was starting to cry. I hated her for starting to cry. She had no business crying, because she wasn't the one in the cage, looking at everything through a red blur. She wasn't the monkey in the cage. And then it came to me. 'Bring over the chum and for Christ's sake sick you dump b.i.t.c.h!' My head was killing me and she was starting to cry. I hated her for starting to cry. She had no business crying, because she wasn't the one in the cage, looking at everything through a red blur. She wasn't the monkey in the cage. And then it came to me. 'Bring over the chum and for Christ's sake sick down down!' It was the closest my rattled-up, f.u.c.ked-up brain could come to chair chair.

I was angry all the time. There were two older nurses that I called Dry f.u.c.k One and Dry f.u.c.k Two, as if they were characters in a dirty Dr. Seuss story. There was a candystriper I called Pilch Lozenge - I have no idea why, but that nickname also had some sort of s.e.xual connotation. To me, at least. As I grew stronger, I tried to hit people. Twice I tried to stab Pam, and on the first of those two occasions I succeeded, although only with a plastic knife. She still needed st.i.tches in her forearm. I had to be tied down that day.

Here is what I remember most clearly about that part of my other life: a hot afternoon toward the end of my stay in the expensive convalescent home, the air conditioning broken, tied down in my bed, a soap opera on the television, a thousand bells ringing in my head, pain burning my right side like a poker, my missing right arm itching, my missing right fingers twitching, the morphine pump beside the bed making the hollow BONG that meant you couldn't get any more for awhile, and a nurse swims out of the red, a creature coming to look at the monkey in the cage, and the nurse says: 'Are you ready to visit with your wife?' And I say: 'Only if she brought a gun to shoot me with.'

You don't think that kind of pain will pa.s.s, but it does. They s.h.i.+pped me home, the red began to drain from my vision, and Kamen showed up. Kamen's a psychologist who specializes in hypnotherapy. He showed me some neat tricks for managing phantom aches and itches in my missing arm. And he brought me Reba.

'This is not approved psychological therapy for anger management,' Dr. Kamen said, although I suppose he might have been lying about that to make Reba more attractive. He told me I had to give her a hateful name, so I named her after an aunt who used to pinch my fingers when I was small if I didn't eat all of my vegetables. Then, less than two days after getting her, I forgot her name. I could only think of boy names, each one making me angrier: Randall, Russell, Rudolph, even River-f.u.c.king-Phoenix.

Pam came in with my lunch and I could see her steeling herself for an outburst. But even though I'd forgotten the name of the fluffy blond rage-doll, I remembered how I was supposed to use it in this situation.

'Pam,' I said, 'I need five minutes to get myself under control. I can do this.'

'Are you sure -'

'Yes, just get that hamhock out of here and stick it up your face-powder. I can do this.'

I didn't know if I could or not, but that was what I was supposed to say - I can do this I can do this. I couldn't remember the f.u.c.king doll's name, but I could remember I can do this I can do this. That is clear about the convalescent part of my other life, how I kept saying I can do this I can do this even when I knew I was f.u.c.ked, double-f.u.c.ked, I was dead-a.s.s-f.u.c.ked in the pouring rain. even when I knew I was f.u.c.ked, double-f.u.c.ked, I was dead-a.s.s-f.u.c.ked in the pouring rain.

'I can do this,' I said, and she backed out without a word, the tray still in her hands and the cup chattering against the plate.

When she was gone, I held the doll up in front of my face, staring into its stupid blue eyes as my thumbs disappeared into its stupid yielding body. 'What's your name, you bat-faced b.i.t.c.h?' I shouted at it. It never once occurred to me that Pam was listening on the kitchen intercom, her and the day-nurse both. But if the intercom had been broken they could have heard me through the door. I was in good voice that day.

I shook the doll back and forth. Its head flopped and its dumb hair flew. Its blue cartoon eyes seemed to be saying Oouuu, you nasty man! Oouuu, you nasty man!

'What's your name, b.i.t.c.h? What's your name, you c.u.n.t? What's your name, you cheap plastic toe-rag? Tell me your name or I'll kill you! Tell me your name or I'll kill you! Tell me your name or I'll cut out your eyes and chop off your nose and rip off your - Tell me your name or I'll cut out your eyes and chop off your nose and rip off your -'

My mind cross-connected then, a thing that still happens now, four years later, although far less often. For a moment I was in my pickup truck, clipboard rattling against my old steel lunchbucket in the pa.s.senger footwell (I doubt if I was the only working millionaire in America to carry a lunchbucket, but you probably could have counted us in the dozens), my PowerBook beside me on the seat. And from the radio a woman's voice cried 'It was RED!' with evangelical fervor. Only three words, but three was enough. It was the song about the poor woman who turns out her pretty daughter as a prost.i.tute. It was 'Fancy,' by Reba McIntire.

I hugged the doll against me. 'You're Reba. Reba-Reba-Reba. I'll never forget again.' I did, but I didn't get angry next time. No. I held her against me like a little love, closed my eyes, and visualized the pickup that had been demolished in the accident. I visualized my steel lunchbucket rattling against the steel clip on my clipboard, and the woman's voice came from the radio once more, exulting with that same evangelical fervor: 'It was RED!'

Dr. Kamen called it a breakthrough. My wife seemed a good deal less excited, and the kiss she put on my cheek was of the dutiful variety. It was about two months later that she told me she wanted a divorce.

By then the pain had either lessened considerably or my mind had made certain crucial adjustments when it came to dealing with it. The headaches still came, but less often and rarely with the same violence. I was always more than ready for Vicodin at five and OxyContin at eight - could hardly hobble on my bright red Canadian crutch until I'd had them - but my rebuilt hip was starting to mend.

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to Casa Freemantle on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I was allowed an extra Vicodin before our sessions, and still my screams filled the house by the time we finished the leg-bends that were our grand finale. Our bas.e.m.e.nt rec room had been converted into a therapy suite, complete with a hot tub I could get in and out of on my own. After two months of physical therapy - this would have been almost six months after the accident - I started to go down there on my own in the evenings. Kathi said working out a couple of hours before bed would release endorphins and I'd sleep better. I don't know about the endorphins, but I did start getting a little more sleep.

It was during one of these evening workouts that my wife of a quarter-century came downstairs and told me she wanted a divorce.

I stopped what I was doing - crunches - and looked at her. I was sitting on a floor-pad. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, prudently across the room. I could have asked her if she was serious, but the light down there was very good - those racked fluorescents - and I didn't have to. I don't think it's the sort of thing women joke about six months after their husbands have almost died in accidents, anyway. I could have asked her why, but I knew. I could see the small white scar on her arm where I had stabbed her with the plastic knife from my hospital tray, and that was really the least of it. I thought of telling her, not so long ago, to get the hamhock out of here and stick it up her face-powder. I thought of asking her to think about it, but the anger came back. In those days what Dr. Kamen called the inappropriate anger inappropriate anger often did. And what I was feeling right then did not seem all that inappropriate. often did. And what I was feeling right then did not seem all that inappropriate.

My s.h.i.+rt was off. My right arm ended three and a half inches below the shoulder. I twitched it at her - a twitch was the best I could do with the muscle that was left. 'This is me,' I said, 'giving you the finger. Get out of here if that's how you feel. Get out, you quitting birch.'

The first tears had started rolling down her face, but she tried to smile. 'b.i.t.c.h, Edgar,' she said. 'You mean b.i.t.c.h.'

'The word is what I say it is,' I said, and began to do crunches again. It's harder than h.e.l.l to do them with an arm gone; your body wants to pull and corkscrew to that side. 'I wouldn't have left you, you, that's the point. I wouldn't have left that's the point. I wouldn't have left you you. I would have gone on through the mud and the blood and the p.i.s.s and the spilled beer.'

'It's different,' she said. She made no effort to wipe her face. 'It's different and you know it. I couldn't break you in two if I got into a rage.'

'I'd have a h.e.l.l of a job breaking you in two with only one amp,' I said, doing crunches faster.

'You stuck me with a knife.' As if that were the point.

'A plastic fife is all it was, I was half out of my mind, and it'll be your last words on your f.u.c.king beth-dead, Eddie staffed me with a plastic fife, goodbye cruel world.''

'You choked me,' she said in a voice I could barely hear.

I stopped doing crunches and gaped at her. 'I choked you? I never choked you!'

'I know you don't remember, but you did.'

'Shut up,' I said. 'You want a divorce, you can have a divorce. Only go do the alligator somewhere else. Get out of here.'

She went up the stairs and closed the door without looking back. And it wasn't until she was gone that I realized what I'd meant to say: crocodile tears. Go cry your crocodile tears somewhere else.

Oh, well. Close enough for rock and roll. That's what Kamen says. And I was the one who ended up getting out.

Except for the former Pamela Gustafson, I never had a partner in my other life. I did have an accountant I trusted, however, and it was Tom Riley who helped me move the few things I needed from the house in Mendota Heights to the smaller place we kept on Lake Phalen, twenty miles away. Tom, who had been divorced twice, worried at me all the way out. 'You don't give up the house in a situation like this,' he said. 'Not unless the judge kicks you out. It's like giving up home field advantage in a playoff game.'

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen only had one divorce under her belt, but she and Tom were on the same wavelength. She thought I was crazy to move out. She sat cross-legged on the lakeporch in her leotard, holding my feet and looking at me with grim outrage.

'What, because you poked her with a plastic hospital knife when you could barely remember your own name? Mood-swings and short-term memory loss following accident trauma are common common. You suffered three subdural hematomas, for G.o.d's sake!'

'Are you sure that's not hematomae?' I asked her.

'Blow me,' she said. 'And if you've got a good lawyer, you can make her pay for being such a wimp.' Some hair had escaped from her Rehab Gestapo ponytail and she blew it back from her forehead. 'She ought ought to pay for it. Read my lips, Edgar, to pay for it. Read my lips, Edgar, none of this is your fault none of this is your fault.'

'She says I tried to choke her.'

'And if so, being choked by a one-armed invalid must have been very upsetting. Come on, Eddie, make her pay. I'm sure I'm stepping way out of my place, but I don't care. She should not be doing what she's doing. Make her pay.'

Not long after I relocated to the place on Lake Phalen, the girls came to see me - the young women. They brought a picnic hamper and we sat on the piney-smelling lakeporch and looked out at the water and nibbled at the sandwiches. It was past Labor Day by then, most of the floating toys put away for another year. There was also a bottle of wine in the hamper, but I only drank a little. On top of the pain medication, alcohol hit me hard; a single gla.s.s could turn me into a slurring drunk. The girls - the young women young women - finished the rest between them, and it loosened them up. Melissa, back from France for the second time since my unfortunate argument with the crane and not happy about it, asked me if all adults in their fifties had these unpleasant regressive interludes, did she have that to look forward to. Ilse, the younger, began to cry, leaned against me, and asked why it couldn't be like it was, why couldn't we - meaning her mother and me - be like - finished the rest between them, and it loosened them up. Melissa, back from France for the second time since my unfortunate argument with the crane and not happy about it, asked me if all adults in their fifties had these unpleasant regressive interludes, did she have that to look forward to. Ilse, the younger, began to cry, leaned against me, and asked why it couldn't be like it was, why couldn't we - meaning her mother and me - be like we we were. were.

Lissa's temper and Ilse's tears weren't exactly pleasant, but at least they were honest, and I recognized both reactions from all the years the girls had spent growing up in the house where I lived with them; those responses were as familiar to me as the mole on Ilse's chin or the faint vertical frown-line, which in time would deepen into a groove like her mother's, between Lissa's eyes.

Lissa wanted to know what I was going to do. I told her I didn't know, and in a way that was true. I'd come a long distance toward deciding to end my own life, but I knew that if I did it, it must absolutely look like an accident. I would not leave these two, just starting out in their lives with nothing but fresh tickets on their belts, carrying the residual guilt of their father's suicide. Nor would I leave a load of guilt behind for the woman with whom I had once shared a milkshake in bed, both of us naked and laughing and listening to the Plastic Ono Band on the stereo.

After they'd had a chance to vent - after a full and complete exchange of feelings, full and complete exchange of feelings, in Kamen-speak - things calmed down, and my memory is that we actually had a pleasant afternoon, looking at old photo alb.u.ms Ilse found in a drawer and reminiscing about the past. I think we even laughed a time or two, but not all memories of my other life are to be trusted. Kamen says when it comes to the past, we all stack the deck. in Kamen-speak - things calmed down, and my memory is that we actually had a pleasant afternoon, looking at old photo alb.u.ms Ilse found in a drawer and reminiscing about the past. I think we even laughed a time or two, but not all memories of my other life are to be trusted. Kamen says when it comes to the past, we all stack the deck.

Maybe si, si, maybe maybe no no.

Speaking of Kamen, he was my next visitor at Casa Phalen. Three days later, this would have been. Or maybe six. Like many other aspects of my memory during those post-accident months, my time-sense was pretty much hors de f.u.c.ky hors de f.u.c.ky. I didn't invite him; I had my rehabilitation dominatrix to thank for that.

Although surely no more than forty, Xander Kamen walked like a much older man and wheezed even when he sat, peering at the world through thick gla.s.ses and over an enormous pear of a belly. He was very tall and very Afro-American, with features carved so large they seemed unreal. Those great staring eyeb.a.l.l.s, that s.h.i.+p's figurehead of a nose, and those totemic lips were awe-inspiring. Kamen looked like a minor G.o.d in a suit from Men's Wearhouse. He also looked like a prime candidate for a fatal heart attack or stroke before his fiftieth birthday.

He refused my offer of coffee or a c.o.ke, said he couldn't stay, then put his briefcase aside on the couch as if to contradict that. He sat sunk full fathom five beside the couch's armrest (and going deeper all the time - I feared for the thing's springs), looking at me and wheezing benignly.

'What brings you out this way?' I asked him.

'Oh, Kathi tells me you're planning to off yourself,' he said. It was the tone he might have used to say Kathi tells me you're having a lawn party and there are fresh Krispy Kremes on offer Kathi tells me you're having a lawn party and there are fresh Krispy Kremes on offer. 'Any truth to that?'

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Once, when I was ten and growing up in Eau Claire, I took a comic book from a drugstore spin-around, put it down the front of my jeans, then dropped my tee-s.h.i.+rt over it. As I was strolling out the door, feeling clever, a clerk grabbed me by the arm. She lifted my s.h.i.+rt with her other hand and exposed my ill-gotten treasure. 'How did that that get there?' she asked me. Not in the forty years since had I been so completely stuck for an answer to a simple question. get there?' she asked me. Not in the forty years since had I been so completely stuck for an answer to a simple question.

Finally - long after such a response could have any weight - I said, 'That's ridiculous. I don't know where she could have gotten such an idea.'

'No?'

'No. Sure you don't want a c.o.ke?'

'Thanks, but I'll pa.s.s.'

I got up and got a c.o.ke from the kitchen fridge. I tucked the bottle firmly between my stump and my chest-wall - possible but painful, I don't know what you may have seen in the movies, but broken ribs hurt for a long time - and spun off the cap with my left hand. I'm a southpaw. Caught a break there, muchacho, muchacho, as Kamen says. as Kamen says.

'I'm surprised you'd take her seriously in any case,' I said as I came back in. 'Kathi's a h.e.l.l of a physical therapist, but a headshrinker she's not.' I paused before sitting down. 'Neither are you, actually. In the technical sense.'

Kamen cupped one hand behind an ear that looked roughly the size of a desk drawer. 'Do I heara ratcheting noise? I believe I do!'

'What are you talking about?'

'It's the charmingly medieval sound a person's defenses make when they go up.' He tried an ironic wink, but the size of the man's face made irony impossible; he could only manage burlesque. Still, I took the point. 'As for Kathi Green, you're right, what does she know? All she does is work with paraplegics, quadriplegics, accident-related amps like you, and people recovering from traumatic head injuries - again, like you. For fifteen years Kathi Green's done this work, she's had the opportunity to watch a thousand maimed patients reflect on how not even a single second of time can ever be called back, so how could she possibly possibly recognize the signs of pre-suicidal depression?' recognize the signs of pre-suicidal depression?'

I sat down in the lumpy easy chair across from the couch, listing to the left as I did it to favor my bad hip, and stared at him sullenly. Here was trouble. No matter how carefully I crafted my suicide, here was trouble. And Kathi Green was more.

He leaned forwardbut, given his girth, a few inches was all he could manage. 'You have to wait,' he said.

I gaped at him. It was the last thing I had expected.

He nodded. 'You're surprised. Yes. But I'm not a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and on the subject of suicide my mind is quite open. Yet I'm a believer in responsibilities, and I tell you this: if you kill yourself nowor even six months from nowyour wife and daughters will know. No matter how cleverly you do it, they'll know.'

'I don't -'

'And the company that insures your life - for a very large sum, I have no doubt - they'll know, too. They may not be able to prove itbut they will try very, very hard. The rumors they start will hurt your children, no matter how well-armored against such things you may think they are.'

Melissa was well-armored. Ilse, however, was a different story.

'And in the end, they may prove it.' He shrugged his enormous shoulders. 'How much of a death-duty that would mean I wouldn't venture to guess, but I know it might erase a great deal of your life's treasure.'

I wasn't even thinking about the money. I was thinking about a team of insurance investigators sniffing around whatever I set up, trying to overturn it. And all at once I began to laugh.

Kamen sat with his huge dark hands on his doorstop knees, looking at me with his little I've-seen-everything I've-seen-everything smile. Except on his face nothing was little. He let my laughter run its course and when it had, he asked me what was so funny. smile. Except on his face nothing was little. He let my laughter run its course and when it had, he asked me what was so funny.

'You're telling me I'm too rich to kill myself,' I said.

'I'm telling you to give it time. I have a very strong intuition in your case - the same sort of intuition that caused me to give you the doll you namedwhat did you name her?'

For a second I couldn't remember. Then I thought, It was RED!, It was RED!, and told him what I had named my fluffy blond anger-doll. and told him what I had named my fluffy blond anger-doll.