Chapter 7

“A brief life burns brightly.”
—Stephen Baxter, Exultant

I LOOKED FOR FRANCIE to show up every day but, of course, that was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to stop by on the weekend to jack me off. I missed her. And I missed Molly. Even all the pain she put me through. Em didn’t stop by my room Friday night after her date. Or Saturday.

I didn’t sleep well. Every time I closed my eyes, the pressure started to weigh on me. I was trapped. Enclosed. Pressed. Suffocating. I couldn’t wait to get these casts off. Another week at least. I struggled up out of sleep and nightmares in the middle of the night to feel my sister’s hand on my shoulder, gently rocking me.

“It’s okay, J. It was just a dream. You’re okay now. You’re safe at home,” Pey said. What? My baby sister? How did she even know? Had I managed to ring my bell?

“Sorry to wake you up,” I croaked.

“Want a drink of water?” she asked. I nodded. She held my water bottle to my lips so I could sip through the straw. “I just woke up and Em was snoring. I think she got stoned last night. I just thought I’d come check on you.”

“What do you know about being stoned?”

“Puh-leeze, J. I’m eight years old. I’m not a baby. Third grade is a hell-hole. The no-smoking rules only apply to tobacco. Once we get outside for recess, kids bring out the hidden stashes.”

“They smoke dope at school?”

“Mostly they eat cupcakes. That’s why the teacher reads to us after lunch for an hour. I really get into the stories when I’m tripping.”

“Pey, that stuff is bad for you. Don’t get into it. It leads to harder drugs. And it’s illegal.”

“You really hit your head hard, didn’t you? Ganja was proven to be safe in 1999 and legalized in 2002. It is not a gateway drug. I’ve seen you stoned half out of your mind.”

“Maybe that’s what I need to help me sleep,” I sighed. Shit. Legal weed. In my timeline, V1, you needed a prescription from a doctor to keep the cops away and then you were a pariah for using it even though it had been proven to help cancer patients. I couldn’t get it in the home because the staff would steal it. It really made me wonder what else had changed in this timeline. I needed to walk carefully and watch what I said.

“Em said it didn’t help you but I’ll ask. I need to go back to bed. I’m sleepy. ‘Night, J.”

“‘Night, Pey. Thanks for visiting.”

That was nice. V1 never really connected with his little sister. Now, I regretted it.

Sunday was an ‘adventure.’ That’s how Dad referred to anything that was likely to be a disaster but we were going to do anyway. It was the first time since I got out of the hospital that I left the house. Mom slit the right leg of a pair of jeans and managed to get me into them. Of course, the leg just flapped open. Dad duct taped it to the cast.

“If it moves and shouldn’t, duct tape it.”

“If it doesn’t move and should, WD40,” I answered. Well, some things don’t change. Mom fed my casts through the sleeves of a triple-x-large dress shirt. It was still tight, getting the sleeve holes to reach my fingers, but they were determined. And it was cool. For the first time in weeks, I felt dressed. The special clothes that we ordered always looked extra weird. I was glad Mom got creative. Em even got a sock on my left foot and laced my Keds over it. I had a boot sock over the toes on my right foot so they wouldn’t get cold. Dad got me in my chair and rolled me out the front door and down to his van.

We went to church.

Church was different than I remembered. V1 went to a small conservative church near South Bend. Not, thank God, a radical fundamentalist church, but one that still believed in salvation and public commitment. The church V3 went to in Fort Wayne was a big, mainstream United Methodist church. There were probably 500 people in the congregation, thirty in the choir, and three or four preachers who all took part in the service, one handling announcements and music, one just for children who left with her before the real service began. One was the liturgist and led all the prayers and readings. Then there was one older preacher who just stood up and delivered the message.

I could see why right away. V1 thought of him as a young guy in his late fifties. V2 thought he was ancient, much older than his parents. V3 just sat back and enjoyed the preparation and presentation of the sermon. The guy was a fantastic speaker. He combined motivation and inspiration. Somewhere in there, I suppose there was a hook back to the scripture that had been read from some modern translation of the Bible. It didn’t matter. He just made you feel like you wanted to be a better person.

There was no altar call to come and accept Jesus as your savior. I thought back through the service to see if I could remember Jesus having been mentioned.

“Jacob, we’re glad to see you back with us today,” the younger minister who was liturgist greeted me as we were getting ready to leave. There was a whole row of special ‘seats’ in the front of the church where wheelchairs could park with a single seat beside each one for a caretaker. Em sat next to me. Pey had joined the children who left before the liturgy.

“Thank you, uh...” Pastor Bob, a memory whispered in the back of my brain. “Thank you, Pastor Bob. It’s good to be out, I guess.”

“Jacob, I know you’ve had a rough time lately. I can’t promise it’s going to get better soon. Recovery is a long road. I just want you to know that if you need to talk to someone, I’m available. I’m serious when I say we’ve missed you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I muttered. He seemed really nice, but I’d have to wait and see before I committed any time to counseling.

The crowd cleared out enough so we could maneuver my chair out the side door where Dad was waiting with the van. Then we went on an adventure I could have done without.

We went out for Sunday dinner.

The Pagoda, a Chinese restaurant, wasn’t really equipped to handle oversized wheelchairs. Two waiters and the host combined to move a table so that I could get in a corner where my foot sticking out wouldn’t trip anyone. Then they pushed the table back into place and Em and Pey sat on either side of me to ‘help me eat.’ Mom and Dad ordered a family meal for five without consulting any of the rest of us. Apparently, they knew what everyone liked and wanted.

The food was good. The delivery was difficult. We were at a round table with a lazy susan in the middle. The servers put all the food dishes on the turntable and a plate in front of each of us. I think this table was usually reserved for eight or more but I took up the space of three. Em and Pey were champs at grabbing stuff right off the trays with their chopsticks and shoving it in my mouth. Except that the chair took up so much room that on my right Pey had to stand up and walk around my leg to get every bite to my mouth. Em was operating her sticks right-handed and I was facing slightly away from her so she had to practically bend her arm backward at the elbow to reach my mouth.

All told, I got enough tasty food in my mouth to satisfy my hunger. I kind of thought the new shirt I was wearing might be ruined, though. Em got a wet dishcloth from the server so she could wipe all the spills from my front.

When we finally got home, Dad helped me out of my shirt and jeans, into the bathroom, and through my clean-up. Then it was time for Sunday afternoon football.

That was a men’s activity and as soon as we were in the living room with the TV turned on and afternoon snacks at hand—Dad’s hand—Mom and the girls went to the Mall.

V1 played football back in the fifties. At least I was on the team. There were five hundred in my high school and we were allowed forty plus on the team, so pretty much any guy who wanted to play could be on the team. We didn’t take sports seriously like they do now. There were no professional teams playing on television. No multimillion-dollar three-year contracts being handed out to athletes. College sports were big but you went to see the games, not watch them on TV. I couldn’t remember even having a TV when I was a kid but I did remember Peyton watching Captain Kangaroo in the morning when she was four or five so we must have gotten one about then.

In V3’s life, there was no Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers still on TV. I think Pey’s television influences in this timeline were mostly anime cartoons.

Oh. Playing football. I guess I get as distracted and derailed as any old man.

Being on the team didn’t mean that you played in every game. Or even in some of them. Our coach was Mr ... I don’t remember his name. He taught biology, physics, and chemistry. Real science whiz, but got the job of coaching by virtue of the fact that the only other male teacher in our high school taught music and art and wouldn’t be caught dead on a football field unless he was leading the Marching Spartans Band.

So, Coach What-’is-name knew enough to create a playbook of a dozen plays he copied from a college course and to divide the team up into offense and defense. But mostly, he was skilled at identifying the most aggressive and the most talented among us and letting them control everything else. The rest of us sat on the bench until the last quarter when we were already behind by forty points and were then sent onto the field for the last two or three plays.