not listen to what your mother or your wife tells you to do? That’s not something you wrote down on your application when I considered you for your DNA, she said with a smile. I also smiled, thinking how she was right. I don’t listen. I didn’t listen to the wife when she told me not to come here, told me not to give up one of my organs.
WHAT THE HOSPITAL COOKED FOR DINNER: Meat loaf with tan-colored gravy.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN COULDN’T EAT: The meat loaf or the tan-colored gravy. He had to eat a low-sodium, low-protein diet before the surgery.
WHAT MIA SAID TO ME ON THE PHONE WHEN I CALLED HOME: Poppy, I have lost another tooth and now there is an
WHAT THE SURGERY WAS: A laparoscopic nephrectomy.
WHAT I DIDN’T WANT TO THINK OF WHEN I WAS GOING UNDER: If I would ever come up.
WHAT I THOUGHT OF WHEN I WAS GOING UNDER: The yellow junko I had seen in my birch tree in the front yard before I drove down to the hospital. Spring is almost here, I thought. I thought if the ground was still frozen and what the temperature of the soil was, as I wanted to get my seeds in early, my fingerlings started, our growing season is so short. I wondered if I could use my rectal thermometer that I used on my horses to insert into the soil to take the temperature. I figured I could.
WHAT I WAS SURPRISED TO SEE WHEN I WOKE UP: That the spaceman wasn’t next to me in the room. Wasn’t my side just split open and didn’t I just give him a part of me, and shouldn’t we be close to one another, wouldn’t that make the acceptance of my kidney into his body that much easier? Weren’t we like Siamese twins now, and separation would be traumatic? Maybe my body needed to be close to my kidney, and close to the new body it now lived in. Then I realized it was just the spaceman I wanted to be close to. I wanted to know if my son was all right.
WHERE THE SPACEMAN WAS: Down the hall. They wanted us walking up and about as soon as possible. They figured we would be more likely to do so if we had to walk a ways to visit each other.
WHAT I SWEAR BY: Morphine.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID HE SWORE BY WHEN I TRUNDLED DOWN THE HALL WITH A WALKER TO VISIT HIM: Morphine.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN WAS HOLDING UP: A bag of urine my new kidney in his body had produced. He was very happy, as he had not produced his own urine for a while now. Through his bag of yellow urine I could see out the hospital window. I could see trees in a small park and the trees looked anemic and looked as though the branches could barely carry the weight of the fat squirrels who were fed peanuts by the lonely old men on park benches and did not look like our svelte squirrels who had to gather their food. I thought of Arlo, who said he never left his home because he didn’t want to see other places’ trees, and now I knew what he meant and I longed for my own trees, and the view of the trees I had on the hillside beyond the pond.
HOW MANY DAYS I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL BEFORE MY WIFE TOOK THE TRAIN DOWN TO DRIVE ME HOME: Four.
WHAT I SAID TO THE SPACEMAN BEFORE I LEFT: Good luck, take good care of my kidney. I will, said the spaceman. Come visit us if you can, if we are still living where we are living and haven’t moved off the grid to a small house in the thick of the woods to avoid paying high taxes, I said.
Don’t move, he said. I like your house.
You don’t really have to visit if you don’t want to, I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want him to have to think that he should have to visit me. I did tell him though that turkey season was coming on and that we didn’t have a blind, just camo clothing he could borrow and a shotgun that was once my father’s that we could wrap in camo masking tape. I said, Come visit in the fall, not in the spring. I’m not keen to hunt in spring turkey season as I believe the turkeys don’t taste good then, after a long winter with little to feed on. Come visit in the fall, when the turkeys would have had time to fatten up, I said.
You’re not really much of a hunter, are you? You’re always concerned about the animals, he said. Yes, I said. I wouldn’t feel right about shooting a dinosaur anyway, not when we thought they’d all gone extinct for so long. Listen, I said, don’t bother visiting. Just send me postcards from exotic places, from the tops of the tallest mountains, from the pyramids and glaciers. I want to know my kidney is going places. Write to me you are in the finest health, I said.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’m sorry we never found out the name of the man who shot your son. We can still do that, you know, when I’m out of here. I can still help you, he said. It’s the least I can do.
WHAT I SAID: I thought you already know. I thought that boy… I thought you paid him, I said.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Yes. I did give him money. I don’t know what for. For the windows, for the horse that was so skinny. Don’t you think that if I had known the name of the man I would have told you?
WHAT I SAID: It doesn’t matter. I’ve already given that man a name. I call him Danglars. I don’t ever want to learn his real name.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Are you sure? The man should pay for his crime, he said, looking again at his bag of yellow urine hanging on its hook.
WHAT I SAID: I’m sure.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Maybe there’s hope for us yet, I mean humans. Maybe if the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, then we won’t. We’ll just evolve, the spaceman said.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID WHEN SHE SAW MY SCAR: So the spaceman really did abduct you. And then my Jen punched my shoulder and said, That was for making me drive a sheep to the doctor’s.
WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE: Tell me, do I look like our librarian now? The one with the scar? The one who swims in the pool but never looks like he goes anywhere?
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: No, you look good. The scar is small.
WHAT I NOTICED ON THE TREES AS WE DROVE CLOSER TO HOME: Buds on the tips of branches looking like the flames of torches that, instead of burning with flame, glowed with the pale warmth of new green.
WHAT I DID: Opened the window wide to smell the melting snow and the roadside’s fresh mud which was veined with narrow streams whose water was from the melting snow of nearby hilltops and mountain peaks.
WHAT SARAH SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Where were you?
WHAT MIA SAID: Mommy got a transmission to give the spaceman a kidney and Poppy gave him one so the spaceman wouldn’t die.
WHAT SARAH SAID: Good, then the spaceman will live.
WHAT SAM SAID: Maybe we shouldn’t turn on the radio anymore.
WHAT BRUCE SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: He kept barking at me, maybe he was trying to tell me all the things that had gone on while I was away. I sat down on the hearth and let him stand in my lap and I hugged him and told him he was a good old dog, the best.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken quarters on the grill.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID WAS FOR DINNER: Barbecued dinosaur, aka “Dino on the barbie.” The day was unusually warm, even though we still had patches of dirty snow on the property. I sat by the pond wearing shorts and I wore a straw hat my wife said made me look like a Floridian. I saw how my white legs looked like death. I rested and watched the children paddle around in inner tubes on the pond and try to push each other out. The water was still as cold as snow, but the sun burnt their arms and gave them red cheeks.
CALL: Another goat in labor can’t deliver.
ACTION: Drove to farm on a windless, sunny day. The owner walked me through the barn. Along the way we passed long rows of tables and on the tables were hamsters and rabbits and rats in cages. The owner said they raised them for sale. The primary customers of course being pet shops. I stopped to look at a rat and the owner told me how affectionate rats were and how they would never bite you unless they had a litter of
