Herb told him his Aunt Germaine had died. Vera told him that the money for the Pownal Community Hall had finally been raised and the building had commenced a month ago, as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Herb added that he had put in a bid, but he guessed honest work cost too dear for them to want to pay. “Oh, shush, you sore loser,” Vera said.
There was a little silence and then Vera spoke again. “I hope you realize that your recovery is a miracle of God, Johnny. The doctors despaired. In Matthew, chapter nine, we read…
“Vera,” Herb said warningly.
“Of course it was a miracle, Mom. I know that.”
“You… you do?”
“Yes. And I want to talk “about it with you… hear your ideas about what that means… just as soon as I get on my feet again.”
She was staring at him, open-mouthed. Johnny glanced past her at his father and their eyes met for a moment. Johnny saw great relief in his father's eyes. Herb nodded imperceptibly.
“A Conversion!” Vera ejaculated loudly. “My boy has had a Conversion! Oh, praise God!”
“Vera, hush,” Herb said. “Best to praise God in a lower voice when you're in the hospital.”
“I don't see how anybody could not call it a miracle, Mom. And we're going to talk about it a lot. Just as “soon as I'm out of here.”
“You're going to come home,” she said. “Back to the house where you were raised. I'll nurse you back to health and we'll pray for understanding.”
He was smiling at her, but holding the smile was an effort. “You bet. Mom, would you go down to the nurses” station and ask Marie if I can have some juice? Or maybe some ginger ale? I guess I'm not used to talking, and my throat…”
“Of course I will. “She kissed his cheek and stood up. “Oh, you're so thin. But I'll fix that when I get you home. “She left the room, casting a single victorious glance at Herb as she went. They heard her shoes tapping off down the hall.
“How long has she been that way?” Johnny asked quietly.
Herb shook his head. “It's come a little at a time since your accident. But it had its start long before that. You know. You remember.”
“Is she…,”
“I don't know. There are people down South that handle snakes. I'd call them crazy. She doesn't do that, How are you, Johnny? Really?”
“I don't know,” Johnny said. “Daddy, where's Sarah?”
Herb leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “I don't like to tell you this, John, but…”
“She's married? She got married?”
Herb didn't answer. Without looking directly at Johnny, he nodded his head.
“Oh, God,” Johnny said hollowly. “I was afraid of that.”
“She's been Mrs. Walter Hazlett for going on three years. He's a lawyer. They have a baby boy. John… no one really believed you were going to wake up. Except for your mother, of course. None of us had any reason to believe you would wake up. “His voice was trembling now, hoarse with guilt. “The doctors said… ah, never mind what they said. Even I gave you up. I hate like hell to admit it, but it's true: All I can ask you is try to understand about me… and Sarah.”
He tried to say that he did understand, but all that would come out was a sickly sort of croak. His body felt sick and old, and suddenly he was drowning in his sense of loss. The lost time was suddenly sitting on him like a load of bricks-a real thing, not just a vague concept.
“Johnny, don't take on. There are other things. Good things.”
“It's… going to take some getting used to,” he managed.
“Yeah. I know.”
“Do you ever see her?”
“We write back and forth once in a while. We got acquainted after your accident. She's a nice girl, real nice. She's still teaching at Cleaves, but I understand she is getting done this June. She's happy, John.”
“Good,” he said thickly. “I'm glad someone is.”
“Son…
“I hope you're not telling secrets,” Vera Smith said brightly, coming back into the room. She had an ice-clogged pitcher in one hand. “They said you weren't ready for fruit juice, Johnny, so I brought you the ginger ale.
“That's fine, Mom.”
She looked from Herb to Johnny and back to Herb again. “Have you been telling secrets? Why the long faces?”
“I was just telling Johnny he's going to have to work hard if he wants to get out of here,” said Herb. “Lots of therapy.”
“Now why would you want to talk about that now?” She poured ginger ale into Johnny's glass. “Everything's going to be fine now. You'll see.”
She popped a flexible straw into the glass and handed it to him.
“Now you drink all of it,” she said, smiling. “It's good for you.”
Johnny did drink all of it. It tasted bitter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Close your eyes,” Dr. Weizak said.
He was a small, roly-poly man with an incredible styled head of hair and spade sideburns. Johnny couldn't get over all that hair. A man with a haircut like that in 1970 would have had to fight his way out of every bar in eastern Maine, and a man Weizak's age would have been considered ripe for committal.
All that hair. Man.
He closed his eyes. His head was covered with electrical contact points. The contacts went to wires that fed into a wall-console EEG. Dr. Brown and a nurse stood by the console, which was calmly extruding a wide sheet of graph paper. Johnny wished the nurse could have been Marie Michaud. He was a little scared.
Dr. Weizak touched his eyelids and Johnny jerked.
“Nuh… hold still, Johnny. These are the last two. Just… there.”
“All right, Doctor',” the nurse said.
A low hum.
“All right, Johnny. Are you comfortable?”
“Feels like there are pennies on my eyelids.”
“Yes? You'll get used to that in no time. Now let me explain to you this procedure. I am going to ask you to visualize a number of things. You will have about ten seconds on each, and there are twenty things to visualize in all. You understand?”
“Yes.
“Very fine. We begin. Dr. Brown?”
“All ready.”
“Excellent. Johnny, I ask you to see a table. On this table there is an orange.”
Johnny thought about it. He saw a small card-table with folding steel legs. Resting on it, a little off-center, was a large orange with the word SUNKIST stamped on its pocky skin.
“Good,” Weizak said.
“Can that gadget see my orange?”
“Nuh… well, yes; in a symbolic way it can. The machine is tracing your brainwaves. We are searching for blocks, Johnny. Areas of impairment. Possible indications of continuing intercranial pressure. Now I ask you to shush with the questions.”
“All right.”
“Now I ask you to see a television. It is on, but not receiving a station.”
Johnny saw the TV that was in his apartment-had been in his apartment. The screen was bright gray with snow. The tips of the rabbit ears were wrapped with tinfoil for better reception.
“Good.”
The series went on. For the eleventh item Weizak said, “Now I ask you to see a picnic table on the left side of a green lawn.”
Johnny thought about it, and in his mind he saw a lawn chair. He frowned.
“Something wrong?” Weizak asked.
“No, not at all,” Johnny said. He thought harder. Picnics. Weiners, a charcoal brazier… associate, dammit, associate. How hard can it be to see a picnic table in your mind, you've only seen a thousand of them in your life; associate your way to it. Plastic spoons and forks, paper plates, his father in a chef's hat, holding a long fork in one hand and wearing an apron with a motto printed across it in tipsy letters, THE COOK NEEDS A DRINK. His father making burgers and then they would all go sit at the -Ah, here it came! Johnny smiled, and then the smile faded. This time the image in his mind was of a hammock. “Shit!”
“No picnic table?”
“It's the weirdest thing. I can't quite… seem to think of it. I mean, I know what it is, but I can't see it in my mind. Is that weird, or is that weird?”
“Never mind. Try this one: a globe of the world, sitting on the hood of a pickup truck.”
That one was easy.
On the nineteenth item, a rowboat lying at the foot of a street sign (who thinks these things up? Johnny wondered), it happened again. It was frustrating. He saw a beachball lying beside a gravestone. He concentrated harder and saw a turnpike overpass. Weizak soothed him, and a few moments later the wires were removed from his head and eyelids.
“Why couldn't I see those things?” he asked, his eyes moving from Weizak to Brown. “What's the problem?”
“Hard to say with any real certainty,” Brown said. “It may be a kind of spot amnesia. Or it may be that the accident destroyed a small portion of your brain-and I mean a really microscopic bit. We don't really know what the problem is, but it's pretty obvious that you've lost a number of trace memories. We happened to strike two. You'll probably come across more.”
Weizak said abruptly, “You sustained a head injury when you were a child, yes?”
