Dad. William Wharton

getting out from under; you can wind up smashed into a pancake. Two days later I was floored again. I went in to cash out. But already I was a good enough choker so they offered me more money to stay.

      You can get by with anything. I worked as a boatbuilder in Portland. I told them I’d built boats in L.A. I looked up a boatbuilding outfit in the L.A. phone book at the library.

      I’ve never even built a model boat. I get seasick watching a boat. But I landed the job. They set me to sanding mahogany pieces of wood and filing rough edges off fiberglass. Then I was promoted to cutting forms out of plywood using a jigsaw. An hour at any of those jobs and you’ve learned all there is to know.

      The thing I don’t understand is how guys stick all their lives with these jobs. No wonder they wind up stoned, or glued to the boob tube.

      We pull into Glenwood Springs before dark. The Rockies stand up in front of us like a wall. The sun, coming from behind, looks as if it’s trapped, totally blocked, on this side of the mountain. From here, you’d think it’s dark on the other side, all the way to the East Coast.

      We find a hotel built into some foothills. It’s an old-time place, not a motel. There’s a foyer with worn-out rugs, an oaken check-in desk and a punch bell. There’s even a regulation-size pool table. The price is about the same as a motel, so we splurge. I can’t remember ever staying in an American hotel before.

      The room is old-fashioned, with twin beds and paint-thick, castmetal steam radiators under the windows. This place must be freezing cold winters. In the bathroom there’s a genuine bathtub sitting up on lion’s paws. We take turns in the tub and there’s all the hot water you could ever want. I usually take showers, but there’s no shower. I fill the tub till it’s at the edge, then let myself float. I make the water hot as I can stand, then gradually cool it off to cold.

      I dry myself at the window while Dad takes his bath. It sounds as if he only puts in about three inches and doesn’t stay in more than five minutes. He’s always in such a hurry about everything.

      Downstairs we rent cues for the pool table. I played some in the rec room at Cowell in UCK SUCK; I’m no shark but I’m reasonable. We play rotation. Dad’s awkward as hell, looks as if he’s going to drive the damned cue straight through the table, but he puts them in. I hardly get to play at all. When and where the hell’d he learn pool? Maybe in the army.

      Neither of us can face another pizza. There is a Pizza Hut across from the hotel but we find a steak house on the far side of the river. With the steak, we have hash browns and corn on the cob. You hardly ever get corn on the cob in a restaurant. But the mother’n bill comes to almost twelve dollars. How in hell can a person live with food costing like that?

      Dad’s barely holding up his head as we go back to the hotel. He puts on his crazy sleeping-running suit and climbs into bed. He goes right out, snoring like a train till I push him over on his side.

      I’ve snitched a Mad magazine from a table in the foyer, so I stretch on the other bed. I turn on the TV in the corner, low. There’s only one channel and it’s a cowboy film to go with all the cowboy music. I’d go nuts if I lived around here. In ten minutes I’m bored; I’ve read the Mad before, it’s two years old. I think of going out and wandering around town, maybe investigate the river, but I’m too tired.

      I wish I could figure out just what the hell I’m going to do.

       8

      The next morning I’m in the kitchen making breakfast when Dad comes in still wearing his pajamas.

      ‘Johnny, something’s wrong in here; would you step into the bathroom and have a look?’

      I go back to see what it is and the toilet bowl’s full of blood! I turn to him.

      ‘What happened?’

      I’m looking to see if he’s cut himself somewhere. He stares into the bowl.

      ‘I don’t know. When I peed, it came out like that.’

      I’m scared. Big quantities of blood always set off my adrenaline.

      ‘Geez, Dad, we’d better get you in and have this checked. All this worry and everything maybe has you mixed up inside.’

      He looks at me.

      ‘You don’t think it might be cancer or something like that, do you?’

      Dad has an absolutely deadly fear of cancer. His father died painfully from liver cancer; two of his sisters from breast cancer; it seems to run in the family.

      ‘I’m sure not, Dad. But just to be safe we’ll make an appointment to see a urologist when we go visit Mother this afternoon.’

      At the hospital, Mother’s more reconciled to things. She promises she’ll do as the doctors say and she’s really going to take care of herself. She’s glad I talked to her and she hadn’t thought of it that way.

      ‘Besides, Jacky, I have to live for his sake.’

      Afterward, I take Dad down to the urology clinic. We don’t tell Mother. Down there they give us a bottle and point out a bathroom. I show Dad how he’s to pee in the bottle, then attach the paper on the outside with a rubber band. He’s nervous, but says he can do it.

      In a few minutes he comes out smiling, the bottle filled with urine to the brim. It’s still reddish but not so bad as the urine in the toilet this morning. The nurse looks and schedules him for an emergency appointment.

      The next day, I take Dad in at nine o’clock. I stay with him instead of going over to see Mother. I can’t be everywhere, and this is more important right now. He’s nervous, pale, quiet. After ten minutes, a great, handsome black fellow comes out. He tells us the doctor will see Dad now. I ask if I can go in with him. He looks at Dad and nods.

      The doctor’s named Santana. He says he’ll need to do a cystoscopic examination. Well, I know about this trick; it’s a very painful affair. I ask if it’s really necessary.

      ‘It’s absolutely essential. We can’t tell anything for sure until we look in the bladder.’

      Dad’s so nervous he’s physically shaking. We go outside to wait for Sam; that’s the name of the black guy. Dad wants to know what’s going to happen.

      ‘Well, it’s not really much, Dad. They’re going to stick a thin little tube up the hole in the end of your penis. They use this to look around in there.’

      ‘You mean, up the hole I pee out of?’

      ‘That’s right. They have a tiny light on the end and they can look into your bladder and see what’s the matter.’

      ‘That must hurt, Johnny!’

      ‘It does hurt. But there’s no way around it, it has to be done.’

      When Sam comes out, he tells us we should come tomorrow at eight o’clock. Dad isn’t supposed to eat anything from six o’clock this evening.

      I take him straight home. He just can’t visit Mother in this state, and I’m afraid to leave him alone. He’s getting more anxious by the minute.

      At home, he asks two or three times an hour when we’re going for the examination. He reads the simple instructions Sam gave him over and over. He’s terribly concerned about doing it right and, at the same time, frightened out of his mind.

      Myself, I’m turning into a nervous wreck. I’ve been separated from my own life too long and I’m missing the daily support of Vron.

      I call Marty and talk to her but it doesn’t help. I almost ask her to go visit Mother but that would probably be a catastrophe.

      Soon as Dad knows he isn’t supposed to eat, he gets ravenously hungry. I don’t feel I should eat in front of him so