“I do.”
“Skeet, you will never again use illegal drugs. You will have no desire to use them. The only drugs you will use are those that may be prescribed for you by physicians in time of illness.”
“I understand.”
“Skeet, from this moment forward, you will understand that you are basically a good man, no more or less flawed than other people. The negative things your father has said about you over all these years, the judgments your mother has passed on you, the criticisms that Derek Lampton has leveled against you — none of those things will affect you, hurt you, or limit you ever again.”
“I understand.”
Across the table, tears shone in Martie’s eyes.
Dusty had to pause and take a deep breath before continuing. “Skeet, you will look back into your childhood and find that time when you believed in the future, when you were full of dreams and hopes. You will believe in the future again. You will believe in yourself. You will have hope, Skeet, and you will never, never again lose hope.”
“I understand.”
Skeet staring into infinity. Fig riveted. Good Valet watching somberly. Martie blotting her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse.
Dusty put thumb to middle finger.
Hesitated. Thinking of all the things that might go wrong, and wondering about the unintended consequences of good intentions.
Skeet’s eyes slipped shut, and he slumped in his chair, sound asleep. His chin came to rest on his chest.
Overwhelmed by the responsibility that he’d just assumed, Dusty got up from the table, stood indecisively for a moment, and then went into the kitchen. At the sink, he twisted the COLD faucet, cupped his hands under the flow, and repeatedly splashed his face with water.
Martie came to him. “It’ll be all right, baby.”
The water might have concealed his tears, but he couldn’t hide the emotion that wrenched his voice. “What if somehow I’ve screwed him up worse than he was?”
“You haven’t,” she said with conviction.
He shook his head. “You can’t know. The mind is so delicate. One of the big things wrong with this world is…so many people want to screw with other people’s minds, and they cause so much
“I can know,” she insisted gently, putting one hand to his damp face. “Because what you just did in there was done out of pure love, pure perfect love for your brother, and nothing bad can ever come of that.”
“Yeah. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
“So is the road to Heaven, don’t you think?”
Shuddering, swallowing a hard lump in his throat, he put an even deeper fear into words: “I’m afraid of what might happen if it works…but even more afraid that it won’t work. How crazy is that? What if I snap my fingers, and who wakes up is the old Skeet, still full of self-loathing, still confused, still the poor sweet feeb? This is his last chance, and I want so much to believe it’s going to work, but what if I snap my fingers, and it turns out his last chance was no chance at all? What then, Martie?”
The strength in her voice lifted him, as always she lifted him: “Then at least you tried.”
Dusty looked toward the dining area, at the back of Skeet’s head, his hair rumpled and uncombed. The scrawny neck, the frail shoulders.
“Come on,” Martie said softly. “Give him a new life.”
Dusty turned off the running water.
He tore a few paper towels from a roll and blotted his face.
He wadded the towels and dropped them in the trash can.
He rubbed his hands together, as if he might be able to massage the tremors out of them.
Finally he followed Martie back to the dinette table, and they sat once more with Fig and Skeet.
Thumb to middle finger again.
Come the magic now, good or bad, hope or despair, joy or misery, meaning or emptiness, life or death:
Skeet opened his eyes, raised his head, sat up straighter in his chair, looked around at those assembled, and said, “Well, when do we start?”
He had no memory of the session.
“Typical,” Fig pronounced, nodding his head vigorously.
“Skeet?” Dusty said.
The kid turned to him.
Taking a deep breath, then speaking the name as an exhalation, Dusty said, “Dr. Yen Lo.”
Skeet cocked his head. “Huh?”
“Dr. Yen Lo.”
Martie gave it a try: “Dr. Yen Lo.”
And then Fig: “Dr. Yen Lo.”
Skeet surveyed the expectant faces around him, including that of the dog, who had stood up with his forepaws on the table. “What is this, a riddle, a quiz or something? Was this Lo some guy in history? I was never any good at history.”
“Well,” said Fig.
“Clear cascades,” Dusty said.
Baffled, Skeet said, “Sounds like a dish-washing soap.”
At least the first part of the plan had worked. Skeet was no longer programmed, no longer controllable.
Only the passage of time would prove, however, whether or not Dusty’s second goal had also been achieved: Skeet’s liberation from his tortured past.
Dusty pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. To Skeet, he said, “Get up.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, bro, get up.”
Letting the clinic blanket slip off his shoulders, the kid rose from the chair. He looked like a stick-and-straw scarecrow wearing a fat man’s pajamas.
Dusty put his arms around his brother and held him very tight, very tight, and when at last he could speak, he said, “Before we go, I’ll give you some money for vanilla Yoo-hoo, okay?”
62
The wheel of luck was turning. Two seats on United, out of John Wayne International Airport, to Santa Fe by way of Denver, were available on an early-morning flight. Using a credit card, Dusty secured the tickets from the phone in Fig Newton’s kitchen.
“Gun?” Fig asked, a few minutes later, as Dusty and Martie were at the front door, preparing to leave brother and dog in his care.
“What about it?” Dusty asked.
“Need one?”
“No.”
“Think you will,” Fig disagreed.
“Please tell me you don’t have an arsenal big enough to start a war,” Martie said, clearly wondering if Foster Newton was something more troubling than a mere eccentric.
“Don’t,” Fig assured her.
