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“You sound like my dad,” Robert yawned. A grimy window in the cramped second-floor room overlooked a fire escape, an empty lot littered with mattresses, tires, and rusty oil drums, a battered taxicab resting on an unpaved street. Ken took note of grotesque stains on the room's ceiling and walls, of a cockroach meandering up a sunburned roller blind. As Robert, sitting heavily on a beanbag chair and untying his shoes, started to pull the Dreambucket over his ears, Ken grabbed it and held it, saying,
“I'm not finished talking to you.”
“Look,” Robert shouted, “I don't want to work for you, okay?” A tugboat whistle tooted in the distance.
“Why don't you want to work for me?”
“For one thing,” Robert said, “I hate computers.”
“Most addicts hate their drugs,” Ken said. Both looked at the Dreambucket. “I'm offering you a way out of this hole,” Ken said.
“Thanks for the offer.” Robert drained the beer can and tossed it into a corner. “Pull the door shut on your way out.”
“Now you're sounding like your dad.”
“I don't give a roach about my dad.” Robert flipped his shoes off.
“You obviously don't give a roach about yourself, either,” Ken said. Robert whipped off his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt, saying,
“The other thing is, you're a crank.” Blowing on his trifocals, Ken answered,
“I'm also a genius.”
“Look, I've been driving all night.”
“Help me light me up your father's night.”
“I can't help you,” Robert said, lying down on a creaky bed and stretching his long legs and arms.
“I say you can help,” Ken said. “Get some sleep. I'll be here when you wake up. I'll help you pack.” Robert turned his face to the wall. “You think you're stubborn,” Ken continued, “don't you? Your old man thinks he's stubborn, too. Neither of you know the meaning of the word.”
§
In January of the following year, on a Friday morning, Anita received a mysterious phone call. Immediately upon hanging up the telephone she started packing. “Get dressed,” she told me peremptorily. “Pack your guitar.”
“Where are we going?” I had been dozing in my La-Z-Boy, digesting breakfast, listening to The Doors on my headphones, and fantasizing about Snow. This was over eight months after Snow's visit. I felt feminine hands hook me under the arms and give an upward yank.
“You'll find out,” Anita answered. “You'll find out,” she repeated when I asked who telephoned.
“I'm not a child,” I sputtered.
“You need a change of scenery.”
“Answers,” I said, “are what I need.” Anita had never attempted anything like this, snatching me out of my comfort on some secret mission. “Now, where are we going and why?” Anita replied with two questions of her own:
“Have I ever failed to look out after your interests? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?” Within three hours I was listening to the freeway with the wind in my hair, riding shotgun in Anita's Cadillac Whatever.
The radio was my compass. The wind was my speedometer. A Sacramento radio station fading in fixed our course as northeasterly. After another hour my popping ears, the chilly air, the twisty road, all told me we were climbing out of the valley and ascending the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Classic Rock Radio, KTOY-AM, South Lake Tahoe, was coming in strong as Anita parked the Cadillac around 6 PM. She checked us into some bustling hotel.
Not until the next morning was my strange journey completed, and explained, after a short drive, then a short but snowy walk into what smelled like a nursery hothouse. My ears were assaulted by organ music that could have been Bach. Anita perched me on a flip-down theater seat, where before long I heard these utterly unexpected words: “Do you, Robert Wolff, take this woman, Snow Black, to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I do,” answered a familiar voice.
“I pronounce you man and wife.” Hearing Anita leaving her seat, then joyfully congratulating somebody across the room, I felt like the butt of a joke.
“Kiss me, Daddy-In-Law.” Snow's ringing voice was unmistakable. Soft hands found my face, roses filled my nose, lips touched my cheek.
“Glad to see you, Pop,” said Robert. My son hugged me and told me he loved me.
An hour after the ceremony, when Mrs. Eva Black, Snow's mother, in a prima donna voice, thanked Robert “for being in the right place at the right time in the right way after the operation,” I put two and two together, and interjected,
“I take it that Ken performed a vision-restoring procedure on Snow which was not a complete success.” I listened to a long interval of Asian string music accompanied by the click of chopsticks. Ginger and garlic scented the air. Five of us were seated at a restaurant table celebrating the marriage: Anita, Robert, Snow, Snow’s mother, and myself.
“The operation worked,” Snow answered shakily, “but my brain doesn't.”
“I love your brain,” Robert cooed.
“Are you seeing anything now?” I asked. “Snow?”
“The glasses are in my purse,” she replied.
“The Wolff Transmitter Spectacles,” Robert explained. He was now Ken's employee. “When she wears them all she gets are flashes and headaches. Uncle Ken says that's about what he expected. She has to learn to process those flashes into vision.”
“Demons,” Snow sighed. “When I wear those things, my brain feels as if it is being taken over by demons.”
§
“Things have changed, Donnie,” Ken said dully. I struggled to sit up straight in a chair soft as quicksand. “I won't be doing the operation again, on you, or on anyone else.”
“What about your guilty conscience?” I asked. While Snow and Robert were still honeymooning on the shores of Lake Tahoe, Anita and I had flown to Minnesota to surprise Ken with my decision to let him operate on me.
“All the work I've done,” Ken told me, “all those years of struggle, all I have learned, has helped me to forgive myself for blinding you.” Ken apologized for declining to operate, explaining, “I've lost faith in the vision procedure, in the whole conception.” The smell of disinfectant soap was in the air. Our meeting was taking place in a modular, temporary building where my brother had set up an eye-care clinic. The rat-tat-tat and whine of construction came from the permanent building going up next door.
“Wasn't the operation on Snow a success?” I heard the rustle of paper. I imagined Ken hunkering behind a cluttered desk. “Is she not getting images in her brain?”
“Those images scared her silly,” Ken said sadly, “and broke her heart. I couldn't help someone I loved. I couldn't make her see.”
“Have you given up on Snow learning to see?”
“People should think twice before they mess around with nature,” Ken said distantly. I pointed out that doctors were paid to mess around with nature. “I have no right to subject you to a procedure that probably won't work and might kill you.”
“I'm ready to die or see again,” I said.
“How would I live with myself if ...” A skirmish of hammering drowned Ken out.
“I know what you're really afraid of.” I attributed the squeaking in front of me to Ken's chair. “You're afraid of solving and letting go of this glorious problem of restoring eyesight, this distant misty dream that has sustained you and motivated you for twenty-two years.”
“I'm impressed with how well you've learned the guitar,” he replied. “You've really reminded me, and the world, that the blind can lead productive lives.”
“Crawl out of your shell,” I told him. “You're running away from greatness.” Carpentry had paused. “You're afraid of success,” I accused. The silence was profound. “Answer me, Ken! Are you still here, my brother?”
§
It was dry and mild in Minnesota that spring, I understand. I spent little time outdoors. I was in surgery, havi
ng the occipital region of my skull ventilated.
Surgically placing the dozens of electrodes into the vision centers of my brain took Ken 58 days. Some days I could feel a tremor in his hands. Summer had crept into the air by the time he took up the delicate job of adjusting and calibrating the Wolff Transmitter Spectacles. “I'm going to nominate you for the Nobel Prize,” I told him on the morning of Tuesday June 25. With a sound like alien music, when that first flash after 13 years of blindness crossed my brain like lightning, my Martin classical guitar slipped from my hands and cracked on the floor. Ken's own hands were shaking wildly as he removed the heavy prototype from my face to adjust it one more time. I must have gaped comically when he finally slid the spectacles back over my ears. Across the pink freckled scalp of the thin, middle-aged stranger in a white lab coat, the strands of gray hair were marvelous. I think my head swiveled a full circle. The man in the lab coat raised my poor guitar up and laid it on an examination table like a patient. “I'm going to make you rich,” I croaked. My neck ached and my head pounded as I took in the room: ocean-green cabinets, golden window drapes, a digital clock with orange numbers reading 10:20, blue linoleum, a journal open on a counter, an oscilloscope, and my own pictures on the walls: the eagle, the grizzly. The man in the lab coat stepped over to a sink, removing his own trifocals, washing his hands, splashing his face. Then he sank into what looked like a dentist's chair. He exhaled like a balloon.
He sobbed, a man who had lost a dream forever because it had come true.
###
About The Author
Paul W. Silver was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He attended public schools in Long Beach and Los Angeles and the California Maritime Academy.
If you enjoyed “The Haunted Creature,” you might also enjoy Silver’s The Dangerous Dream, a novel, available in most online bookstores.
Hanging In There
Dick and Jane In Hell
Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends
“I'm not finished talking to you.”
“Look,” Robert shouted, “I don't want to work for you, okay?” A tugboat whistle tooted in the distance.
“Why don't you want to work for me?”
“For one thing,” Robert said, “I hate computers.”
“Most addicts hate their drugs,” Ken said. Both looked at the Dreambucket. “I'm offering you a way out of this hole,” Ken said.
“Thanks for the offer.” Robert drained the beer can and tossed it into a corner. “Pull the door shut on your way out.”
“Now you're sounding like your dad.”
“I don't give a roach about my dad.” Robert flipped his shoes off.
“You obviously don't give a roach about yourself, either,” Ken said. Robert whipped off his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt, saying,
“The other thing is, you're a crank.” Blowing on his trifocals, Ken answered,
“I'm also a genius.”
“Look, I've been driving all night.”
“Help me light me up your father's night.”
“I can't help you,” Robert said, lying down on a creaky bed and stretching his long legs and arms.
“I say you can help,” Ken said. “Get some sleep. I'll be here when you wake up. I'll help you pack.” Robert turned his face to the wall. “You think you're stubborn,” Ken continued, “don't you? Your old man thinks he's stubborn, too. Neither of you know the meaning of the word.”
§
In January of the following year, on a Friday morning, Anita received a mysterious phone call. Immediately upon hanging up the telephone she started packing. “Get dressed,” she told me peremptorily. “Pack your guitar.”
“Where are we going?” I had been dozing in my La-Z-Boy, digesting breakfast, listening to The Doors on my headphones, and fantasizing about Snow. This was over eight months after Snow's visit. I felt feminine hands hook me under the arms and give an upward yank.
“You'll find out,” Anita answered. “You'll find out,” she repeated when I asked who telephoned.
“I'm not a child,” I sputtered.
“You need a change of scenery.”
“Answers,” I said, “are what I need.” Anita had never attempted anything like this, snatching me out of my comfort on some secret mission. “Now, where are we going and why?” Anita replied with two questions of her own:
“Have I ever failed to look out after your interests? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?” Within three hours I was listening to the freeway with the wind in my hair, riding shotgun in Anita's Cadillac Whatever.
The radio was my compass. The wind was my speedometer. A Sacramento radio station fading in fixed our course as northeasterly. After another hour my popping ears, the chilly air, the twisty road, all told me we were climbing out of the valley and ascending the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Classic Rock Radio, KTOY-AM, South Lake Tahoe, was coming in strong as Anita parked the Cadillac around 6 PM. She checked us into some bustling hotel.
Not until the next morning was my strange journey completed, and explained, after a short drive, then a short but snowy walk into what smelled like a nursery hothouse. My ears were assaulted by organ music that could have been Bach. Anita perched me on a flip-down theater seat, where before long I heard these utterly unexpected words: “Do you, Robert Wolff, take this woman, Snow Black, to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I do,” answered a familiar voice.
“I pronounce you man and wife.” Hearing Anita leaving her seat, then joyfully congratulating somebody across the room, I felt like the butt of a joke.
“Kiss me, Daddy-In-Law.” Snow's ringing voice was unmistakable. Soft hands found my face, roses filled my nose, lips touched my cheek.
“Glad to see you, Pop,” said Robert. My son hugged me and told me he loved me.
An hour after the ceremony, when Mrs. Eva Black, Snow's mother, in a prima donna voice, thanked Robert “for being in the right place at the right time in the right way after the operation,” I put two and two together, and interjected,
“I take it that Ken performed a vision-restoring procedure on Snow which was not a complete success.” I listened to a long interval of Asian string music accompanied by the click of chopsticks. Ginger and garlic scented the air. Five of us were seated at a restaurant table celebrating the marriage: Anita, Robert, Snow, Snow’s mother, and myself.
“The operation worked,” Snow answered shakily, “but my brain doesn't.”
“I love your brain,” Robert cooed.
“Are you seeing anything now?” I asked. “Snow?”
“The glasses are in my purse,” she replied.
“The Wolff Transmitter Spectacles,” Robert explained. He was now Ken's employee. “When she wears them all she gets are flashes and headaches. Uncle Ken says that's about what he expected. She has to learn to process those flashes into vision.”
“Demons,” Snow sighed. “When I wear those things, my brain feels as if it is being taken over by demons.”
§
“Things have changed, Donnie,” Ken said dully. I struggled to sit up straight in a chair soft as quicksand. “I won't be doing the operation again, on you, or on anyone else.”
“What about your guilty conscience?” I asked. While Snow and Robert were still honeymooning on the shores of Lake Tahoe, Anita and I had flown to Minnesota to surprise Ken with my decision to let him operate on me.
“All the work I've done,” Ken told me, “all those years of struggle, all I have learned, has helped me to forgive myself for blinding you.” Ken apologized for declining to operate, explaining, “I've lost faith in the vision procedure, in the whole conception.” The smell of disinfectant soap was in the air. Our meeting was taking place in a modular, temporary building where my brother had set up an eye-care clinic. The rat-tat-tat and whine of construction came from the permanent building going up next door.
“Wasn't the operation on Snow a success?” I heard the rustle of paper. I imagined Ken hunkering behind a cluttered desk. “Is she not getting images in her brain?”
“Those images scared her silly,” Ken said sadly, “and broke her heart. I couldn't help someone I loved. I couldn't make her see.”
“Have you given up on Snow learning to see?”
“People should think twice before they mess around with nature,” Ken said distantly. I pointed out that doctors were paid to mess around with nature. “I have no right to subject you to a procedure that probably won't work and might kill you.”
“I'm ready to die or see again,” I said.
“How would I live with myself if ...” A skirmish of hammering drowned Ken out.
“I know what you're really afraid of.” I attributed the squeaking in front of me to Ken's chair. “You're afraid of solving and letting go of this glorious problem of restoring eyesight, this distant misty dream that has sustained you and motivated you for twenty-two years.”
“I'm impressed with how well you've learned the guitar,” he replied. “You've really reminded me, and the world, that the blind can lead productive lives.”
“Crawl out of your shell,” I told him. “You're running away from greatness.” Carpentry had paused. “You're afraid of success,” I accused. The silence was profound. “Answer me, Ken! Are you still here, my brother?”
§
It was dry and mild in Minnesota that spring, I understand. I spent little time outdoors. I was in surgery, havi
ng the occipital region of my skull ventilated.
Surgically placing the dozens of electrodes into the vision centers of my brain took Ken 58 days. Some days I could feel a tremor in his hands. Summer had crept into the air by the time he took up the delicate job of adjusting and calibrating the Wolff Transmitter Spectacles. “I'm going to nominate you for the Nobel Prize,” I told him on the morning of Tuesday June 25. With a sound like alien music, when that first flash after 13 years of blindness crossed my brain like lightning, my Martin classical guitar slipped from my hands and cracked on the floor. Ken's own hands were shaking wildly as he removed the heavy prototype from my face to adjust it one more time. I must have gaped comically when he finally slid the spectacles back over my ears. Across the pink freckled scalp of the thin, middle-aged stranger in a white lab coat, the strands of gray hair were marvelous. I think my head swiveled a full circle. The man in the lab coat raised my poor guitar up and laid it on an examination table like a patient. “I'm going to make you rich,” I croaked. My neck ached and my head pounded as I took in the room: ocean-green cabinets, golden window drapes, a digital clock with orange numbers reading 10:20, blue linoleum, a journal open on a counter, an oscilloscope, and my own pictures on the walls: the eagle, the grizzly. The man in the lab coat stepped over to a sink, removing his own trifocals, washing his hands, splashing his face. Then he sank into what looked like a dentist's chair. He exhaled like a balloon.
He sobbed, a man who had lost a dream forever because it had come true.
###
About The Author
Paul W. Silver was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He attended public schools in Long Beach and Los Angeles and the California Maritime Academy.
If you enjoyed “The Haunted Creature,” you might also enjoy Silver’s The Dangerous Dream, a novel, available in most online bookstores.
Hanging In There
Dick and Jane In Hell
Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends
The Haunted Creature