Dead Men Tell No Tales
Author's Note: this story may push some difficult emotional buttons for readers who have dealt with (or who fear dealing with) parents in the end stage of life. No death occurs, but one is imminent. Another story in the "Conversations" series, with some brief references to earlier stories, particularly "Unspoken" and "The Power of the Sun."
ooOoo
June 1962
I become aware that I'm floating again; the difference is that now I know that I'm floating rather than just doing it mindlessly. A sign I'm coming down from the narcotic. I'm vaguely aware of the presence of pain again, but it seems distant and doesn't matter too much. I'm grateful for the relief the drug brings, although it works by taking me out of myself, erasing my own sense of being. The problem is that I don't have much longer to be myself, here at least. Awareness versus pain makes a hard choice.
For right now I float along, aware of the noises around me, which mix in with the strange visions that well up from deep inside my head. It's a curious feeling, especially since parts of my life that had nothing to do with each other have a disconcerting tendency to collide with each other in these near-dreams. The effects are sometimes comic, sometimes alarming, mostly just odd.
I'm cognizant that the world around me has grown more real when I hear a faint scrape, so I open my eyes. But I must not be as far down from the drug as I thought, since now I'm apparently hallucinating Rob standing just inside the doorway of my hospital room, in uniform no less. But the clear part of my mind—the part that's not completely muddled by the drug's influence—knows that he's over in France, not here in Bridgeport. Still, it's a nice figment that my imagination has thrown up this time, and I smile.
He comes across the room to me, takes my hand, leans over and kisses my forehead. The light glances off the four stars across the shoulder straps of his uniform as he bends down. At his touch, I realize that he's not a hallucination, that he's really here.
"Rob," I rasp, hating the weakness of my voice. "You're real?"
"Yeah, Dad, I'm real," he replies, with a sigh in his voice. He starts to pull back, but I hold onto his hand with what strength I have—not much, but he can tell I don't want him to leave, even to go as far as the bedside chair. He adjusts the rails on my hospital bed, and I feel his weight settle down beside me on it, reassuringly tangible.
"What are you doing here?" I inquire, more awake now.
"Visiting you," he says simply.
"But who's going to command U.S. forces for NATO while you're gone," I ask, half teasing, half serious.
"A three-star general," he answers in kind.
"Better watch out. He wants your job and you're handing it over to him." That's a lot to get out, and I have to rest for a moment, closing my eyes.
Rob squeezes my hand. "He needs the experience. It'll be fine."
We sit quietly for a moment. I try to swallow; it's hard, my mouth is so dry. Rob notices, brings the glass that's sitting over on the side table up to my mouth, so I can drink through the straw, a good long drink that chases away the dryness in my mouth and throat. He does it so naturally that you'd think he'd done it before, given water to a dying man. Well, with his background he quite possibly has, and under worse circumstances.
"Better?" he asks, and I nod. My throat and mouth finally aren't so dry, and I think I can talk a bit now.
He regards me assessingly. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "Do you need to sleep?"
"No," I answer shortly. "I just woke up—just before you got here," I manage to add, realizing he'll think I meant he woke me. This tires me again a bit. I'm tired of being tired.
I add defiantly, "I'll have plenty of time to sleep quite soon—all eternity, in fact." I'm not going to beat around the bush on this. If he's flown all the way across the Atlantic, he already knows that I'm dying. I want it out in the open, not something we pussyfoot around. We have to deal with this honestly. I look straight at him, so he knows that.
He studies me back, then nods his acceptance slowly. I smile just slightly. At least he understands; his sister Sophie can't seem to. She keeps talking about "when I get better," as though that's going to happen. But she's probably the one who sent for him, so maybe she's at least admitting it to herself, if not to me. I decide to check.
"Sophie telegrammed?"
"Yeah. I came as soon as I could shake loose."
I grasp his hand a little harder. One of the things that has eaten at me most since we found out I'm far gone with terminal cancer has been the idea that I probably wouldn't see him again. Since I've been in the hospital, I've had good visits with all my children who live close: my two older sons and my daughter. I love them all dearly, and my grandchildren too. But Rob has spent so much of his adult life away from here, on Army air bases out west and down south before the war, and in England and Germany and now France during and after the war. His visits have been rarer than we'd like and thus always precious. His mother and I did finally manage a trip to see him in Europe for several weeks a few years ago. Best money I ever spent.
He returns my grip with a slightly stronger pressure of his own, and a small twitch of his lips.
"I've been wishing that I could go out quick. But right now I'm glad it's taking some time," I tell him.
That gets to him, his eyes misting over, and he turns to look out the window, swallowing hard.
"I think it was easier for your mom, with that dicky heart of hers," I continue, remembering last year. "She went between one breath and another."
Rob turns back to me. "You've always had a good heart," he manages to get out, moving our joined hands up to lie over my heart, and I know he's not talking about my health. Or at least, not just about it.
"Well, so did she, right up till last year," I sigh.
I've missed her so much the last few months. I'm looking forward to seeing her again—the one good thing out of all this.
"Some folks say lawyers have no hearts," I grumble jokingly.
Rob squeezes my hand again. "I always knew that wasn't true," he says, teasing but serious, "because I always knew you."
I smile a little at the compliment. I know he means it. I'm at the point where I've been taking stock of my life over the last few weeks. I've had a good life, for nearly eighty-seven years. Nothing to complain about with a good long run like that. And while I know I made plenty of mistakes over the years—who hasn't?—at least I don't have much to feel ashamed about, professionally or personally.
I hope Rob can feel the same way about his life. I wonder how much he's thought about it. He cheated death so often in his younger years that it's amazing he reached his forties, though his life has been a lot less dangerous in the years since then. I still wonder about his secret years, the two-and-a-half years in the German prisoner-of-war camp when he was doing more than just waiting for the war to end. He's never broken the top-secret classification of his operation; the only hints I've ever had were the newspaper article I found during the war (which never should have been written), his own silent reaction when he found that news clipping in my desk, and a couple of vague comments the day the first A-bomb was dropped. I've always wondered about what he did during that time, in that place. Now I wonder if I'll go to my grave not knowing.
Well, dead men are silent as the grave, they say, and I'll soon be joining them. I wonder if Rob would tell me now, with eternity staring us both in the face. But I don't want to pressure him, don't want to ask him to tell and put him on the spot if he can't. I have to do this right, so that he can bow out if he feels it has to remain secret.
"Can't talk a lot without getting tired," I tell him, "but I'm real good at listening." Rob smiles and starts to answer but I go on before he gets anything out. "These days I like hearing stories from people. I'll bet you could tell me a real good story, son. Maybe one set during the war. Kind of a tall tale." His eyes narrow just slightly, and I can see he's getting my drift. I give him a small grin. "Nobody pays any attention to tall tales told to entertain an old man on his deathbed," I breathe out. It's as near as I can get to asking him, but still give him a space to say no—or come up with something else, more likely, since he probably won't say no outright.
For a long moment Rob studies me, then I see his eyebrows and mouth quirk up together. He's figured it out, not just what I mean but how to do it. Yes, I know that gleam in his eye, all too well. It used to spell trouble when he was younger. But now . . . just a small conspiracy between the two of us. It won't hurt anyone, here in the privacy of my hospital room.
He moves our joined hands down a bit, so we're both positioned comfortably, keeping a firm clasp on me.
"I'll tell you a story," Rob starts, his face alight from his smile, which has a fair amount of mischief in it; he looks younger and more free than I've seen him in a long time as he begins to speak. "A kind of a fairy tale. About a man called Papa Bear. . . ."
ooOoo
Rob's gone now, kicked out by the nurse who came to give me my shot. I held on longer than I thought I could, mesmerized enough by the spell of his story to ignore the gradually growing pain.
And the story he spun . . . a tall tale indeed! Five good guys, with lots of good helpers, surrounded by dunces and bad guys, pulling off capers to fight the good fight, right under the enemy's nose. I know I got "the good parts" version of what really happened, with all the laughs and not much of the danger, fear, worry, toil, and blood, but it's good to know at least part of the long-buried truth, to see just how my madcap boy was finally able to put his unorthodox talents to their best use as a man fighting in service of the right values.
I begin to float once more, the drug pushing back the aching pressure of pain that's beginning to grip me tightly in its claws. I let myself go, giving in, wondering where the dreams will take me this time. I don't mind the float because I know that Rob will be back with more stories for me tomorrow, when we have time alone between the visits of the rest of the family. We have some time together still, and we'll use it well.