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| Part 5 |
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| I followed Joey to his truck, mesmerized by the way he pulled himself alongon his crutches, swinging his heavy plaster leg out in front of him. Histoes never seemed to touch the ground, though they always looked as if theywere about to scrape the pavement at the low point of his fulcrum swing. Icould see his shoulder muscles through his shirt, working to carry hisweight forward. The crutches were awkward, but Joey was graceful as hebalanced on them. And strong. His arms seemed to pull him forward almosteffortlessly, though I knew better. It was a chore for him to pull himselfalong like that. I hurried around to the passenger side to help him intothe truck, but he had already opened the door, parked his ass on the seat,scooted himself into the cab of the truck, and pulled his leg in after him.When I got in behind the wheel, the bench seat was rolled all the way back.I reached for the lever underneath me to slide it forward, but looking overat Joey I realized he needed it all the way back, even on the passengerside. I had to sit on the very edge of the seat to reach the pedals. I drove us back to Joey's house from the high school. I knew the way,instinctively, even after all of these years. He was living by himself inhis mother's house. My mother had written to tell me that Joey's mother haddied shortly after I moved to Belgium. I had meant to send Joey a noteafter that, but never got around to it. Remembering that now as I drove himhome I felt guilty about that all over again. Since his mom's death he hadbeen living in the old house by himself as far as I knew. Walking up thesteps to the front porch of that house with Joey on his crutches ahead of mewas as familiar to me as walking in the front door of the house I used tolive in with my parents in Elyria twenty years before. For a moment it wasas if I had never left. Joey had clearly kept the house up. From the outside it looked great. Thehouse looked like it was freshly painted and there was a new wooden railingalong the front steps. I had a strong desire to help Joey navigate thesteps but he took them in stride, his practiced arms pulling and pushing thewooden crutches to smoothly propel himself up the incline. I do not expect the mess I find inside once we walk in the door. There is aheavy smell of dirty laundry and dirty dishes. I can see that the kitchensink is piled with unwashed dishes and pans. Newspapers and magazines anddirty clothes cover the small living room floor. Fast food wrappers coverthe kitchen table. Joey is clearly embarrassed. "I don't...it doesn't usually look like this. I just...since I broke myleg...I haven't been able to keep up. I just let things fall and leave themwhere they land. I'm sorry. The bathroom is...even worse. I wasn'texpecting company. I should have cleaned up." "Don't worry about it." "It's just with this goddamn cast, and the crutches, I can't...well ithasn't been easy." His voice catches as he finishes. For a minute I thinkhe might cry, but he doesn't. "Really Joey. It's OK." "Shit. There's not even anywhere to sit." He takes a crutch and sweeps apile of newspapers off of the Davenport onto the floor. "There. Have aseat. I don't think I even have a beer to offer you. Maybe we should havepicked some up..." "I'm fine. Really. After that punch at the party. I don't need anything."Joey carefully lowers himself down into the rocking chair that his motherused to sit in. I am still standing, watching him sitting in the corner ofthe room. "How about you? Can I get you anything?" I ask. "No. Sit. I'm fine. I just need to sit for a bit." He props his leg upon the old ottoman that has sat in front of his mother's rocking chair foras long as I can remember. We talk. It comes easily. In some ways it isas if I have never left. We used to sit on this Davenport together,reading, his casted ankle resting on my lap, my fingers playing absentlywith his toes. I see those same toes sticking up out of a different cast.I hear his voice, and my own responding to him, but in my head I havedrifted back twenty years. Then, as now, I stare at his cast, fascinated,unable to tear my eyes away. I need to know more about this cast. I need to know more about his brokenleg. I need to know how it happened. I don't know if he will want to talkabout it. I want to be interested in the other things he has to tell me. Iwant to pay attention when he talks about the gas station, the energycrisis, the long lines of cars waiting for gas, the five gallon limit. Iknow I should ask him about his mother's illness and death. I know I shouldtell him about my parents in Wisconsin, my job in Brussels, how much I liketeaching. Instead I ask him about his leg. "So how exactly did it happen? I mean a motorcycle accident. Jesus Joey.That's what your mom always worried about." "It wasn't really a motorcycle accident. Not like you're thinking. I wasin traffic. In the middle of downtown. It was like five o'clock. We werebacked up at the light on Chestnut Ridge. It was stop and go. The lightchanged and the cars ahead of me started to move. I was just starting torole forward. I was going maybe five, maybe ten miles an hour. This ladywho was parked along the street there on the left-she just opened her cardoor into me. She wasn't looking. It was just bad timing. I was exactlybeside her at the moment she opened her door. I could feel myself goingover. I tried to pull out of the fall but I couldn't. I tried to put myleg down to catch myself, but I was moving too fast to catch myself. I wentover on my right side with the bike on top of me. It was like slow motion.I could see it all happening but I couldn't stop it. I could hear thegrinding metal and the breaking glass from my headlight. I was mad aboutthe bike being wrecked. My leg sort of buckled under me as I went over.The way my foot caught the pavement, and then with the bike coming over ontop of me, there was just enough torque to snap the bones. I could feelthem break, just below my knee. It was like my leg was holding me up andthen all of the sudden it wasn't. I knew it was broken, but I was stillmoving, and the bike was moving on top of me, and the car behind me keptcoming. Like I said it was all slow motion. That car was trying to stopbut he was so close behind me he couldn't, and his front wheel came up overmy bike. The car was on top of me before he could stop. He didn't reallyrun me over. I was already down, and the bike was on top of me, and the carwas on top of the bike. I could feel this incredible weight bearing down onme. Almost like in a dream when you are being smothered. There was allthis weight on my leg. I was pinned and couldn't move, but I felt like Ihad to. I felt like I was holding up this car with my body and I couldn'tdo it any more. Then the whole thing shifted. It was like everything wasstacked up on top of me and it was all balanced and then something moved andthe whole thing shifted just slightly. That's when my femur broke. I couldfeel it go, only I didn't know it was my femur at the time. It was justlike the weight was too much. I guess I was twisted somehow, and with thebike and the car, it was too much. My leg just broke again. There was likea pop I could feel when everything shifted. I thought it might be my hipthat broke. I knew something bad had happened. I wasn't really in pain.It was more like I was numb. I knew my leg was broken below my knee. I hadfelt that go. Then I thought my hip was crushed. I knew I couldn't move.I was pinned to the street. Everything still seemed like it was moving inslow motion. The whole thing, start to finish probably didn't take fiveseconds. It felt like fifteen minutes to me. I was calm. I think maybe Iwas in shock. I knew people were moving around me on the street, but I waslike in a world of my own. Once everything stopped moving I was actuallycontent to just lay there. I didn't want to move anymore. I closed myeyes. Then things started to move again. The weight on top of me changed.The car rolled backwards off of the bike. That's really the first time Ifelt pain. There was a wave of pain that washed over me and almost made menauseous. There were people screaming at me, and trying to get me to answerquestions. I still had my helmet on. It felt like I was in a bubble andthey were all on the outside. It was all very unreal. Eventually thepolice came, and an ambulance. They pulled the bike off of me, and splintedmy leg. They had a plastic form they slid around my leg and strapped it uptight. They put a collar on my neck, and strapped me to a backboard. Theythought my back might be broken. Then they put me on a stretcher, and putme in an ambulance, and off we went. I was completely strapped in. Icouldn't move my head or my arms or my legs. I knew I was in a bad way fromthe way the ambulance guys were acting. I think they thought it was worsethan it really was. When we got to the hospital they x-rayed me every whichway. It seemed like I was lying around on a stretcher forever. Thenfinally the doctor came in to talk to me. He told me the good news was thatmy back was fine and my hips were fine, but that my leg was broken. Ialready knew that. He said my tibia and fibula were both broken, and myfemur, and that my patella was cracked. I was surprised about my knee. Inever felt that. Then he asked me when I had broken my ankle before. Itold him when I was in high school. He said it looked like that neverhealed right. He said there was some scarring that showed up on the x-rays,and some calcification. And the bones were misaligned. He said they couldmaybe fix that up with surgery later if I wanted. Then he said there wasmore good news in that none of the bones had broken through the skin. Hesaid the fractures were pretty clean, without much soft tissue damage. Thenhe said the bad news was that because of the way the femur was broken anddisplaced they wanted to put me in traction for about a week or ten daysbefore they put me in a cast. And then he said they'd have to take me intoCleveland for that. So they loaded me back in an ambulance and took me intothe hospital in the city. By now it was like the middle of the night and Ihadn't eaten and I really was in pretty bad pain and it was starting to getthrough to me. This is getting to be a long and boring story. There isn'tmuch else to say really. They took me to Cleveland. They set the bones.They strung me up in this metal contraption with a wire rack with my leg upin the air, and I was stuck like that, in the hospital, for about ten days.Then they put this cast on and sent me home. And here I am. I've beenhobbling around like this since they let me go. I guess I'll be hobblingaround like this for quite a while. Not very sexy I'm afraid." "I don't know," I said, smiling at him and throwing caution to the wind. "Ithink it's pretty sexy. I think your cast is really cool. You've alwayslooked good to me in a cast." I knew I was way out of control. He staredat me without revealing what he was thinking. "Yeah well, like I said, I wanted to be sure you'd recognize me." He wassmiling too now. "The cast and crutches were a dead give away." "I thought they might be." We spent that night together in his double bed as if it were the mostnatural thing in the world. There was no sex between us. We just sleptside by side, Joey on his back, with his cast propped up on a fat pillow,and me next to him, on my side, watching him breathe. Joey's sheets smelledstale, kind of like a locker room and kind of like dirty laundry. Joeysmelled sort of sweaty and stale himself, as if he hadn't washed in a coupleof days. I wondered how he'd managed to bathe at all without any help.Joey fell asleep quickly. I snuggled up close to him, so that I could feelhis cast against my skin. The next morning I helped Joey bathe. First I washed his long hair in thekitchen sink. Then I spread out towels in the bathroom and sat him on theedge of the toilet and helped him with a thorough sponge bath. He wasn'tconfident about standing up in the shower, even with my help, and I didn'tblame him. He didn't seem to be self-conscious about hid nudity, or abouthaving me help him sponge and soap and rinse and dry himself. I wasfascinated by the changes in Joey's body. His chest and arms were much moredeveloped than the last time I had seen him without his clothes on twentyyears ago. But he was thinner, and his butt seemed softer, and flatter.The dark chest hair in the very middle of his chest was starting to go gray.His stomach was still firm, and mostly flat, but there was a soft roundnessto the edges of it near his waist and at the sides. Our touching was notsexual, and his nakedness revealed no sexual arousal while we bathed anddried and dressed him. I was amazed how easily I touched him, and howeasily he let me touch him. He was grateful for the help, and let me domore than was necessary. He could reach most parts of his body himself, butlet me scrub and rinse and dry him almost everywhere, while he sat. I hadto keep stepping over his cast as I moved around him to wash him. I helpedhim stand up on one leg and he leaned heavily on me for balance while hetook a soapy washcloth and reached around behind himself to wash his ownass. His balls and flaccid cock hung lower than I had remembered. After his bath I spent the rest of the morning cleaning his house. I didthe dishes and took out the trash and mopped the floor and took all of thelaundry to the basement and started to wash his clothes. I stripped the bedin his room and put clean sheets on it, and opened all of the windows to airout the house. Joey kept telling me half-heartedly that I didn't need toclean the house, but he was grateful for the help, and admitted that hecouldn't do it himself. We talked while I worked. He followed me aroundthe small house, leaning on his crutches, or perching on a counter or achair. He was in my line of vision almost constantly, and whenever I lookedup from what I was doing I could see his cast setting there in front of him. Our breakfast of instant coffee and Poptarts had not really been verysatisfying. I was getting hungry again, and there was clearly no food inthe house. I had none of my stuff with me and I had not showered or shavedand was beginning to feel pretty ripe myself. We hadn't talked at all abouta plan for the day or the rest of the weekend or even for the next meal. Iwasn't sure if I was moving in with him or shaking his hand good-bye at theend of the afternoon. I rinsed out the mop in the kitchen sink and wrung itas dry as I could and put it back in the closet where I had found it. "So," I ventured, hoping he would help me out, or at least give me somesignal about what he was thinking. "I guess I should go back to my hotel.Or at least get my car from the high school. I could pick up some food." "What hotel are you staying at?" "The Days Inn, over off the bypass." "Why don't you check out of there and get your stuff and come one back here?There's no point in paying for a hotel room you ain't gonna use." "OK," I said, unsure exactly of all of the implications of what he had justsaid. |
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