It came with the blanket pulled over John’s thin
body, with the light turned out by a young mother, with the radio
coverage ending at midnight. He tried to lie in bed, his little gut
and thin limbs sprawled like a dead floating turtle. Earlier his
mother, bleached blond hair on thin adolescent looking frame, turned
out the light, told him to sleep. He quietly turned on the radio to
listen to a game, and after the game, to listen to the endless talk
about plays and players, coaches and calls. He listened to escape
sleep, or more precisely, to escape what preceded sleep each night.
The night was not special. It was a warm spring
night in northern Texas and the windows were open to allow a cooling
breeze to freshen the stale air that occupied the house during the
closed winter months. Crickets chirped, as did some distant traffic,
traffic beyond the calm of his suburban neighborhood streets. The
sounds were faint but present, and it made him smile, comforted him
in a special way like a favorite uncle taking him to watch the
trains pass in the countryside. He concentrated on these sounds,
these calls to life, but eventually they dissipated, faded into
recesses of memory.
It began with the neighborhood sounds disappearing.
Everything became still and motionless, as though there was nothing.
What was left was bordered emptiness, a sort of chaos with a
definitive end. And if that end was found, that border reached, time
and history would once again exist. But for a moment he lost that
border, lost that sense of time and history. What he felt as
himself, his body, shrank to the point of a pin while his mind, then
blank, expanded beyond the confines of the room and house and
neighborhood and, eventually, anything known. It was cold and devoid
of emotion, and seemed as if he entered it fully, if he let the
borders dissolve, he would die. His body, the protruding knees and
elbows on bony legs and arms, the baby fat midsection, and head too
large for neck- all these things were not felt. They disintegrated
into bordered chaos that had such depth as to be repetitious,
circular.
He lost the ability to think, to conceptualize that
which was him and that which was other. For a moment they were one
and it left him overwhelmed with loneliness, with loss and
isolation. He was certain that he’d found death and would never
return to his family and friends again. He wouldn’t see the trains
or hear the crickets and distant traffic. He would never listen to a
ball game on the radio and know that he was united through those
announcers to others like him, others quietly listening in the
recesses of their homes. It was this feeling- this pain so deep as
to not be bodily felt, loss so deep as to annihilate the soul- that
helped him notice a border out in colorless expanse. It was not
defined, merely suggested. He didn’t grasp it but it was there and
it presented itself when he felt he was no more.
In his loss he found it, pulled back from the void,
felt a rush of hurried movement about his body. His stomach spun and
slowly the hair on his head and arms and legs stood upright, ready
for reentry into the civilized world. The borders returned, first
the neighborhood, then the house, and eventually the room. The
borders encroached, and as they did, he rediscovered his body
floating on the bed. The covers felt light against sun burnt skin.
He moved his fingers, wiggled his toes, and turned his head toward a
window illuminated by a half moon. He was alive! Death did not come
that night!
He smiled and closed his eyes, exhausted as if he
had just suffered a great loss. He took a deep breath and exhaled.
It felt refreshing, a verification of existence. He opened his eyes
one last time. The moonlight highlighted a model plane project on
the floor and caught the corner of a fish tank. He stood from bed
and turned on the light to the tank so that when in bed, when
attempting to sleep, the fish watched over him, protected him from
dissolving, from forgetting to breathe. He watched them move
effortlessly in the tank. Some were black with magnificent fins,
others green and nondescript. His favorite, a grey catfish, sucked
scum from the tank walls. With their movements his eyes became
heavy. He closed them and drifted, but he fought for one last
thought. He thought, tomorrow turn on the light to the fish tank
before turning off the radio. The fish, they would protect him from
dissolving beyond the neighborhood. Tomorrow he would remember.
