Stotan! (13 page)

 

After a short night in a one-horse motel in a one-horse town I never got the name of, we hit the road early and roll into Havre about 1:30 in the afternoon. That gives us two and a half hours before the meet, so we wander around town awhile, wondering if this is really the Yukon. We check into the Roundup, stretch out on the beds for fifteen or twenty minutes, then head over to the pool. We find we're going to be swimming against the college swim team too and they have two guys trying to qualify for small-college Nationals. That gives us something more to shoot for. You couldn't mix college and high-school athletes in most sports, but some of the fastest swimmers in the world have yet to see their first shaving razor, and even though we weren't notified ahead of time, Max thinks it's a great idea. Since neither the high-school nor the college team has a real good middle-distance man, I'll have to do it on my own, but I swim well against the clock anyway. Max enters me in the 1,000—strictly a college distance—to get a good long warmup, and says to swim it about three-quarters speed. My 500 split in that is within four seconds of State qualifying time, so I know I'm hot. I feel strong as a bull. My
500 time is three seconds under what I need and Nortie jumps into the water, hugging me and splashing water on my face and yelling “Awright!” almost before I touch, and when I catch my breath I have to hold him underwater to calm him down. Max is right there with his stopwatch and a handshake.

Lion is two tenths closer in the 100 'fly and we figure he's got it made by next week, but the thing that makes it all academic is that Jeff collapses on the last lap of the 100 backstroke.

He goes out ahead for the first fifty yards, ready to blow it open after the second turn, then just runs out of gas. Near the end of the third lap everyone has passed him, and shortly after the turn into the fourth he gets caught up in the rope and can't get out. We watch in disbelief for a split second before Lion dives in and hauls him out. Jeff can't get it back; he's breathing short and looks pale and
real
disoriented. He lies on the deck awhile and we dry him off. Nortie's panicked, running around, trying to cover him with towels. Even the college trainer takes a look at him. Finally, to be safe, they call a local ambulance.

 

Boy, now that was scary. Jeff is the toughest guy I know, and watching him lying there on the deck with
no control over anything wasn't my idea of a good time. We stuffed our clothes in our swimming bags and wore our warmups out of there. There was only the medley relay left, which we weren't swimming, and I don't think any of us could have swum anymore anyway, though I don't think anyone believed anything was seriously wrong. Max gave me the keys to the van and told me to go back to the Roundup; that he'd go with the ambulance and call us in my room as soon as he knew anything. By then Jeff had come to, though he looked real tired, and he said he was fine; he wanted to go back to the motel with us. Max said no deal and we split.

Back at the Roundup, we holed up in Nortie's and my room, eating chips and dip we got from the store across the street, watching the CBS Evening News on TV and waiting for Max to call. One of the lead stories was about more of those so-called neo-Nazis being arrested and connected to previously unsolved felonies all over the country, like bank robberies and armored-car holdups. It's kind of strange to see these guys on TV getting all this coverage. Even before the Aryan papers showed up at school—in fact, years before—we knew they were over at Falls Lake, but everyone I knew just thought they were a bunch of bozos whose IQs matched the number of letters in their middle initial, and who
had nothing better to do than to sit over there figuring out who they hate. Now they're on national television and look legitimate. This world is not without its strangeness.

Nortie wondered out loud if his dad had ever knocked over a bank or a Brinks truck. “Shoot,” he said, “when he was driving truck, he was gone all the time. Who knows what he was up to?” Nortie's getting a
little
bit of a sense of humor about his dad. He was also bouncing in and out of the news to questions about Jeff, and was driving us nuts. “Do you think he's okay? What do you think made him do that? Think he needs vitamins?” then back to the news. Boy, he was uneasy.

Finally, Max called and ended it. He said they were going to keep Jeff overnight for observation and he would be back to the Roundup in a half-hour; for us to go ahead down and order dinner, and to get him the biggest, juiciest rib-eye in the place and he'd be here by the time it was on his plate. That settled us down; if Max was being funny, Jeff was probably okay. But, boy, he'd sure looked bad back there on the deck.

Max was right on the button; he sat down about two minutes before dinner came. “Looks like he might be just exhausted,” he said. “They're going to do some tests tonight and tomorrow and they say he should be
ready to go home after that.”

“That mean we're going to be here a day or two?” I asked.

Max nodded. “Looks like it. I can't see leaving Jeff in Havre, Montana. He didn't swim
that
bad. You guys call home first thing tomorrow and let your parents know.”

We ate our dinner, which was great, but not as great as it would have been if Jeff had been there. Pigging out at the Roundup is his favorite event of the year. Max said if he got out of the hospital the next day, we'd do a repeat performance that night.

Sunday we mostly farted around, watching basketball on TV and ordering things from room service. We visited Jeff once in the morning and then again after the Sixers-Celtics game. He seemed okay; just really beat. Twice while we were there a nurse came in and took blood. Jeff told the second one that was all they were getting. She was a tough old bag and she squinted at him and said, “Listen up, carrot-top. When I want blood, I take blood.” We all agreed that was probably true.

Sunday night Max came into our room and let us know we were going to be there one more day, probably, then head for Spokane Tuesday. He'd contacted the
Northern Montana coach and got us some pool time so we wouldn't lose that day of workout. The trade-off was that Max had to let him give us his recruiting spiel. I can't imagine the scholarship they'd have to come up with for me to stay four winters in Havre, Montana. Maybe tuition and books and half-interest in the John Deere dealership.

 

On Monday we get a morning workout, then it's over to the Arctic Circle drive-in for burgers and fries and special sauce. It's below zero outside and our wet hair lies on our heads like hard hats. After lunch Max takes us over to a local store called the Mercantile and buys a round of stocking caps. Lion picks one for Jeff; it's orange with a blue ball on top. Jeff will love it.

At the hospital Jeff doesn't look so hot. I mean, he's not looking any better. We talk awhile and Max leaves us in the room for a minute. I walk out to hunt down the bathroom, and though it's a small hospital, I get lost and don't find the can. I end up retracing my steps and bumping into Max talking with a doctor two or three doors down from Jeff's room. They don't see me coming.

“…little early to be saying this, but I think your boy might be in trouble.”

Max says, “How do you mean?”

The doctor doesn't have to look long and hard at Max to know Max doesn't want to be bullshitted. “Well, like I say, it's early to say this, but this looks exactly like one we just lost—a nineteen-year-old girl over at the college.”

Max catches sight of me out of the corner of his eye and puts up his hand to stop the conversation. The doctor sees me, smiles and says, “How you doing?”

I'm numb. “Something bad wrong with Jeff?”

Max shakes his head. “He didn't say that. My guess is it's too early to say what's going on, is that right, Doctor?”

The doctor backpedals like a disoriented Olympic cyclist, but it's too late. “It could be a lot of things. I was just saying it reminds me of…I didn't mean…” He stops and catches himself. He's a young guy, probably hasn't been in the business a long time. He puts his hands on my shoulders. “I spoke way too soon,” he says, shaking his head, then looks down. “I had a pretty hard time with the other case, that's all. We all did. I'm sorry. I jumped the gun. You shouldn't have heard me say that.”

I turn to walk away and Max grabs my arm. He says, “It's not at all necessarily what you think, Walker. Don't jump to conclusions, and don't say anything to
Lion or Nortie. They don't need to hear that. It's way, way premature.” I say they won't hear it from me. Then, in a fog, I ask the doctor where the bathroom is, and he points me down the only hall I haven't tried. I go into a stall and sit, wondering how the first thing I could have thought when I heard the doctor's words was that we wouldn't have a relay. Jesus. I sit and try to process what just happened, what it sounded like to me, but I can't. I feel my head shutting down: Closed Until Further Notice. The feeling I have from looking at the doctor's face is that something is really, really wrong. God, what if Jeff is dying?

 

Somehow I pulled it together and went back to Jeff's room. We visited another half-hour or so and I felt myself pulling way away from Jeff, joking a little sometimes, then finding myself way outside the conversation. When I look back, it seems as if I was insulating myself from the wild places my imagination took me. Then Jeff started to drift off, so we headed back to the Roundup.

I'm a disbeliever by trade. I think if you refuse to believe bad news hard enough, it won't be true, so I tried to will what I had been thinking away, but it kept sneaking up on me. Max took us out to a place called the Ski Bowl a couple hours later, rented us some cross-
country skis and we whipped around their trails for a few hours while he went back to the hospital to see if they had any better idea when we'd be able to take Jeff out. We skied in silence, mostly—and hard. Either Lion and Nortie picked something up from me or they sensed something on their own, but it was definitely a Stotan ski trek, staying together, picking up speed with each stride.

When Max came back to get us, he said we'd head out in the morning—that Jeff seemed stronger and it would do him good to get back home.

That night we sat around watching TV and pretending to do a little homework. Nortie found Lion to be the perfect match for him in Gin Rummy; Lion doesn't pay attention either. Several times they went clear through the deck before someone threw down the cards, yelling, “Read 'em and weep” or something of the like. Most of the time I lay on the bed with my Government book open on my stomach, feeling the intermittent rush of unreality wash over me as I saw the doctor's face.

What if Jeff is dying?

 

Jeff could have walked to the van, he was feeling lots better; but hospitals like to make you think you're sick right up to the instant you set foot off their grounds, so he rode in a wheelchair. I was tremendously
relieved at how good he looked and tried to assure myself that I'd known all the time he was really okay; that the doctor had only indulged his own fears.

By 8:00 we were well on our way and I was hoping that leaving Havre would be like leaving a really ugly dream. I forgot I'd qualified, forgot Lion was close. Nothing about swimming was important; it was only important to get Jeff back to someplace familiar so he could be his old self again. I couldn't shake the feeling I'd had right when Lion pulled him out of the water and he was so lost, so helpless. What I didn't know as we started back was that he was headed right back into the hospital when we got to Spokane; that they'd wanted to transport him themselves but he and Max had talked them out of it.

I was unaware of what Jeff probably already feared: that he'd never swim another stroke.

February 17

Boy, the last couple of weeks have been a horror show. Something's really wrong with Jeff. He won't tell us what it is and he asked his parents not to discuss it with anyone, but it's serious. Max knows, but he's not talking, either; says he has to respect Jeff's right to keep it to himself. It's for sure he won't be swimming anymore this year; he may not even be back in school, and he's no longer part of the Marine Reserves. Jeff's pretty sick.

We know it, but we don't know how to talk about it. When we got back from Montana, he went straight into the hospital and asked that we didn't come up for a while. Within a week he was out, and he called Lion to come to his place. Lion warned us it was grim, and
two days later we all went over and found out he wasn't exaggerating. Jeff's losing his hair and I swear he's lost at least fifteen or twenty pounds. He was lying in bed and refused to talk about anything but how we were doing in the water. When Nortie and I got home after that, Nortie went into his room and locked the door. An hour later I could hear him sobbing in there, but when he finally came out to dinner he had nothing to say; and neither did I.

The next time we went over—this time Elaine went too—he seemed in better spirits, but he didn't look better physically. He kidded around some about premature balding—said it was caused by far too much brilliant thinking—but that was the extent of his acknowledgment that anything was out of the ordinary. I got there early and, before everyone else came, told him we'd been thinking of calling it a season; that maybe we didn't want to finish up without him. He was quiet—just looked at me a few seconds, then off to the side somewhere. God, what must he be thinking? The horrible part, or at least one of the horrible parts, is that I want to be strong so I can help, but I don't feel strong and I don't think he wants my help.

I went back to Max to get some advice, but he didn't have much. He said to trust my instincts.
Unfortunately, all my instincts say is I want someone to pay for this.

 

And life goes on. While we were in Montana, the proverbial poop hit the fan for Mr. Wilson, the student teacher in Government. He was called into the office with Mrs. Stevens and his supervisor from out at Eastern Washington U. and told that taking a student to the Christmas dance must have resulted from a severe interruption in his good judgment, and if he slipped up again, he'd be back out in Cheney before lunch period. I guess Mr. Wilson took it in stride, but Elaine came unglued. She whipped into the office about ninety miles an hour and proceeded to tell Mrs. Stevens and the secretaries and three guys from Building Maintenance just what she thought of people who had no business prying into her life. “He's barely twenty-two years old! I'm eighteen and that means I'm old enough to vote and make the rest of my own decisions! I'll take this to court!”

The Building Maintenance guys cleared out and the secretaries buried their noses in their IBMs and Mrs. Stevens took Elaine right into the inner sanctum without breaking stride. She told Elaine this decision wasn't made about Elaine, that it was made about Mr. Wilson.
It simply wasn't acceptable for a student to date a teacher.

“He's not a teacher,” Elaine said. “He's a student teacher. A college kid. I can show you ten girls in school right now who are going out with guys older than he is.”

Mrs. Stevens let her rant and rave till she got herself down to hurricane force and then she said, “Elaine, I know you don't like this, but it's final. Anyone who student-teaches here is in the role of a teacher; I don't care if they're fourteen years old. School policy does not permit romantic involvement between students and teachers, even if it is ‘legal.' Experience tells us it's harmful. Now, if your relationship with Peter Wilson is serious, what you need to do is wait until the end of the term when he's finished.
Then
he'll be a college kid, and you can move in with him, for all I care.”

Elaine may be hot stuff, but she's no match for Mrs. Stevens, so she got out. As she was leaving, Mrs. Stevens said, “Elaine, I'm sorry it took us so long to come to this decision. The reason for that was your maturity. It almost seemed okay to us too.”

When Elaine told us about it later, I was secretly glad someone squashed their budding little romance, but I feigned outrage. Under normal circumstances,
given Lion's natural temperament, we might have had a cause there to rally 'round, but it seemed to die in the shadow of Jeff's situation. Elaine did take it to Max later, just to see what he thought, but he said pretty much the same thing. He didn't actually say he'd forbid it if it were his choice, but he said that a student teacher is practicing to be a teacher and that classroom dynamics just don't allow him to be involved with a student. Sooner or later someone would say Elaine got her A some way other than by doing a great term paper and the teacher's credibility and integrity would automatically come on the line. “It doesn't have anything to do with your ability to handle it emotionally, Elaine,” Max said, “it has to do with what works.”

And all that helped throw another bugaboo into my plans to clean up my act all the way around as a lover and a friend. On the long trip back from Montana, while I alternated from thinking that everything was okay with Jeff to thinking he had three days to live, one of the conclusions I reached for myself was that you should live every day as if you're on borrowed time, and you should be straight with everyone who's close to you. No one in your life should be in the dark about your intentions. So I was going to by God set the record straight for all concerned very close to the instant I
stepped onto Spokane soil: tell Devnee right where things were, and the same with Elaine.

Great plan, but when I related the full story of our weekend to Devnee, she held me and rubbed my back and made me hot chocolate and was so caring and wonderful to me that I fell into the trap of accepting it because it felt so good; and that ended that. Then when I thought more about how hot Elaine was over the school's forbidding her relationship with Mr. Wilson, I realized she was in no mood to hear that one of her best friends wanted her body and soul. So everything is as it was and I'm in a holding pattern in my rise to grace and integrity.

 

Last night Jeff called us over to his place, and though he sounded pretty good on the phone, I got the feeling something big was up. He asked us to come alone—bring some pizza or something, but not girlfriends. Nortie and I picked up Elaine, and Lion showed in the Jeepster about a half-hour after we got there, around 5:30, with the pizza. Jeff sat on the couch, dressed for the first time I'd seen since he got back; and Colleen was there beside him, running her fingers absently up and down the inside of his forearm. He wore the orange stocking cap with the blue ball that
Lion got him in Montana. He was something like the old Jeff, giving a running commentary on Dan Rather's every word and taking jabs at what he calls the Royalty in the White House. We went along with him and for a while it was like old times. He was still sarcastic and funny, and as an audience, we were his. Even Colleen laughed occasionally, though most of the time she seemed off somewhere, and I guess that was my clue to why we were there.

When we'd finished the pizza, Jeff asked Nortie to shut off the TV, then he said, “Guys, I've got this blood disease; I won't give it the respect of calling it by name. Some people live a long time with it and some people don't; it's hard to predict. What they've done with me so far hasn't worked very well. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'm going to be around long.”

Lion said, “Shoot, man. It'll take pretty soon. You're gonna be okay….”

Jeff raised his hand, palm out, and shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said. “It feels like nothing's going to work; anyway, that's how I'm playing it.”

Tears ran freely down Colleen's cheeks and she clung tighter to Jeff's arm; her nose ran. Nortie jumped up to get her some Kleenex, and for a moment ran around in panicky circles before he figured out where
the bathroom was. He came back with a roll of toilet paper and handed it to her, then went back to the ottoman.

“First of all, Walk, you said the other day you guys were thinking of calling it a season.” He sighed a long sigh and choked back tears. “Please don't do that. That's the last thing I have any part in, and I want to see it go big. I want to feel like I'm a part of every butt you guys kick at State.”

I nodded my head and said, “We'll be there, Jeff.”

He looked down at himself and smiled. “Sometimes I can't believe this: watching my body wither away to nothing.” He held up his arm and you could see loose skin where his triceps used to bulge. “Look at this.” He looked back to us. “There are going to be times, probably soon, when I won't want to see anybody. Sometimes I'm in a lot of pain and sometimes I just feel so shitty I don't want to face anyone. Please remember that you guys are the most important people in my life after Colleen and I love you so much it aches. But if I ask you to stay away, please do it.”

Nortie was sitting on the ottoman with his elbows on his knees, dripping tears like a leaky faucet, straight to the floor.

“Knock it off, Wheeler,” Jeff said. “You're messing
up my mother's rug.”

Nortie laughed and shook his head and the tears came faster.

Then Jeff clouded over. “I don't like to put you guys through this,” he said. “I was going to be strong—be a Stotan—but I just can't pull it off. I can't put this together.” He shook his head and kind of leaned into Colleen. With it right before my eyes, I couldn't believe how frail he looked. You know, What's wrong with this picture?

“When we shipwrecked last year,” he said, “I thought I'd had it. I was the only one on the boat who could really swim, and we were two miles out in the dead of night and that piece of crap was going down like a rock. I knew I couldn't just swim off and leave those guys, even if it were physically possible.

“So we're up there on the sinking deck, roping everything together that floats. The seas get rougher and rougher, and no one speaks a word. Everyone knows this is it. I'm looking into that black water, thinking, ‘I'm eighteen and I'm dead; and I
hate
it.”' '

He looked up at Colleen, still holding him tight, and said, “Now I'm
nineteen
and I'm dead; and I hate it. But I got a year.”

Looking back, I'm amazed at how fast Jeff went
through the denial and rage that's supposed to go with death—either someone else's or your own. But he was right there that night accepting it, and trying to get us to accept it too.

“I won't be like this all the time,” he said. “It just seems really important to share some of this with you guys—what it's like and everything.” He stood up shakily and kind of stretched. “Now, if it's all right with everyone, I'm tired and I want to spend a little time with my lady here, okay? Get your butts out of here, you have a curfew. We still got the State meet to lose.”

We hung in there with him and said, “Right!” but it'll take a few days to get that down—that we have to do it for Jeff, without Jeff. Right now all any of us feels is this awful helplessness.

No one wanted to go home with that, so we headed over to Dolly's for a Coke. Elaine took my coat as extra warmth and rode with Lion, I think in the interest of making sure none of us was alone; though riding with Nortie was like being alone for me. He couldn't talk, just stared out the window.

“Nortie,” I said, “Jeff doesn't know that he's dying. It's just that we tend to expect the worst in hard times, that's all. When he starts feeling better, things will look different.”

Nortie shook his head and kept staring out the window. “He knows,” he said finally. There was no point in discussing it further.

In Dolly's we picked a booth toward the back and ordered Cokes and fries. Lion propped his back against the wall with his pad on his knees, got out his trusty Rapidograph and started drawing. I remember hoping some magical answer would come out on the paper if he drew long enough.

Finally, Elaine said, “Damn it, Jeff's not a doctor. He can't predict this. He could get better. Some people live a long time with leukemia, or whatever he has. He has no right to give up like that.”

I said what I'd said to Nortie in the car, that I just didn't believe it was that hopeless and that Jeff would see it differently when he felt a little better.

Lion nodded, but didn't say anything; he hoped I was right, but wasn't confident at all. Lion knows Jeff better than any of us; there is a part of them that is the same.

Nortie said, “He knows. Jeff knows. If he says it, it's true.”

I said, “God damn it, Nortie, this isn't Gin Rummy. Jeff can be wrong.”

Nortie shook his head. “He's not. Jeff's gonna die.”
He looked up. “Listen, you guys, the bad stuff is real. It doesn't do any good to not believe it. Remember when I said I didn't open the letter my brother left me for a long time? You know why? Because I secretly hoped it would say it was all a trick, that he wasn't really dead; that I could meet him down by the old river bridge and we could laugh our butts off at this great trick. But all the note said was ‘Sorry.' The bad stuff is real. All of it.”

Elaine put her hand on Nortie's arm. “Hey, you guys, let's talk about something else for a while, okay?”

Lion's Rapidograph was flying over the paper; he looked to be in that place where he can see everything—soft eyes, he calls it. He was approaching the Stotanland of artistry. “World's just here,” he said, sketching a world that doesn't give a damn. “It doesn't give a damn. We're clinging to this round ball in space by an accident of suction.” He flipped the page and shook his head. “Any one of us could be gone in a flash. Doesn't matter whether we've been good guys or bad guys. Right set of circumstances comes up:
zap.
Out of the game. Boy, the next time I hold back from doing something because of what someone might think…”