Chapter #4Possess your father by: Seuzz   You go back upstairs and worm your away under the door to the master bedroom. Horrible snoring noises confirm that your father is in bed, asleep. When he's out, he's out hard, so you don't have to be careful as you clamber up the bedspread and onto his torso. His head is back on the pillow and his mouth is hanging open. But though you're not worried about waking him, you move into him very slowly, stretching yourself out and moving down him only a bit at a time. Your movements interrupt his snores, but otherwise don't disturb him.
Of course, it's dark and you can't sense anything, and for a few seconds you wonder if you are just sitting somewhere in his esophagus. But then your vision clears. What you see, though, is baffling. You are not in bed: instead you are standing next to a conveyor belt as a long line of chocolates pass by. You gape, having no idea where you are and what you are doing.
Suddenly you find yourself picking up and wrapping the chocolates in paper. You are working very fast, under the dim dread that something bad will happen if you don't get all the chocolates wrapped. And then Lucille Ball comes in. She glares at you and says you'll have to do better than that: Mr. Wonka will be very upset if any of the chocolates get past you. You find yourself working harder under her wrathful gaze, and the conveyor speeds up. You can't keep up. Then a man comes in. Lucille Ball isn't surprised by his appearance, even though he looks nothing like Willie Wonka. He calls her "Miss Madison" and asks how Johnson is doing. She rolls her eyes, and then the man takes her in his arms, calls her "Dolly," starts to make out with her. Your heart sinks down toward your toes.
With a jerk, you feel your eyes open; you're staring at a dark ceiling. And yet the vision of candy factory doesn't fade. It gets even more complicated as an Oomp-Loompa comes in with a stack of tax forms to fill out. At the same time, though, you feel yourself lying in your parents' bed.
It occurs to you, finally, that you are watching your father's mind as he is dreaming. You, inside his body, are awake—you scratch your chest and rub your nose and sit up, confirming that you are in a quiet bedroom—and yet the dream continues somewhere in your head. If you have access to his dreams, what else do you have access to?
You concentrate. Your father works for an insurance company. It's a high pressure job. His supervisor is Will Madison, and he suspects that Madison is having an affair with one of the company vice-presidents. Ah, that would explain a number of things in the dreams—and you guess it makes sense that those thoughts and memories of his would be at the forefront of his brain, given the contents of the dream. But what else is there that you can learn about him?
The dream, without quite vanishing, retreats. Instead, you find yourself sinking into a thick web of memories and desires and fears and hopes. If you could gasp, you would: Everything your father knows and feels is open to you. You embrace them, and wrap yourself in them. More dreams come and go as the night wears on, but you are too busy grasping and swallowing the rest of his mind—making it and its contents their own, you soon realize—to pay them much heed. By the time the alarm rings, it is second nature to reach over blindly and touch the snooze button, knowing that it is Saturday and that you don't have to get up for work.
* * * * *
It is, finally, the smell of coffee that pulls you from bed. The dreams have all faded, and you feel no mental disorder. Nor do you feel your father's presence or will inside or next to your own; there is no sense of "fight" as you swing over to regard the empty space in the bed next to you and wonder what you will tell Martha. She never came to bed, but apparently spent the entire night waiting up for ... Who? You, or your son?
You find yourself puzzling slightly over the question. You are, unquestionably, David Johnson, and you have possessed the mind and body of your father, John. And yet your father's thoughts and habits feel so naturally part of your own that you can't quite shake the habit of thinking of yourself as "John Johnson." That's probably good, you think, as you absent-mindedly pull out a fresh pair of athletic shorts and t-shirt from the dresser. You'll spend at least one day pretending to be your father, you decide, before revealing yourself to anyone.
"David never showed up?" you growl as you walk past your mother and into the kitchen. She looks haggard and unkempt, and says nothing. You pour yourself some coffee. "Might as well figure out his punishment before he shows up."
"What if there was an accident?" she says quietly.
"Then we pay his hospital bills out of his college fund. He can get a job, like I had to."
"If he was in the hospital we would have heard by now," she says. You sip at the hot coffee. You can tell that she is trying very hard to suggest—without saying—that you might have met with something worse than bodily injury.
"Then he's not in the hospital," you retort. "He's out with Caleb or Kevin or some other ass. He just never bothered to call." The part of you that thinks like your father suspects you wound up over at a girl's, where you spent the night kissing and fucking and canoodling and then fucking some more. But of course he'd think that. Your father, who is so straight-laced and conservative on the surface, spent his high school years nailing a long string of girls, not all of whom were all that good looking, but who liked a football player's attentions.
Martha sighs. "It's not like him. He's careless, but he's never done this kind of thing before."
"And if we hit him hard enough he'll never do it again." You sit down at the table across from her and give her a steady look. "We've let him slide too much. If he's going off to college next year, he has to do a lot of growing up in a short time."
"He was never that bad," she says wistfully. "Every boy needs to do something really stupid at least once."
"So that they'll learn. The last part is what we have to make sure happens."
Joanna comes in at that point, and so you both drop the subject. There is some light morning chat—though with a dark undercurrent—as she eats cereal. Then you go back upstairs and take a shower. Your father works out twice a day, and you feel the call of the weights and need to get things loosened up.
* * * * *
You are halfway through your workout when you hear the doorbell. You ignore it, but then Martha comes in with the news that a man from Fort Suffolk wants to speak to the both of you. You nearly drop a dumbbell on your foot. Why would someone from the base be out here?
The man in your living room is in his mid-fifties, trim and clear-eyed and very crisp and cool. He shakes your hand firmly and introduces himself as Colonel Quincy Lord.
"I'm very sorry to have to come to you with this news," he says with quiet gravity as the three of you sit down. "There was an explosion at the base late yesterday afternoon, and there is some indication that your son, David, was involved." Martha gasps.
You feel two quite different emotions rising in you. From your father comes the angry conviction that you must have blown something up and are now sitting in a military stockade. You yourself, however, are alarmed that the military knows that it was you who caused it.
"Is he alright?" Martha asks.
The colonel's eyes fall. "I'm sorry. I wish I could be definite. We don't know if he is alright or not."
"What do you mean?" you say with a sharp tone in your voice.
"I mean that we have found no traces of him," the colonel says carefully. "No remains and no shreds, even of clothing." Martha chokes a little. "That could be good news, of course," the colonel continues. "He may have caused the explosion and then run off. In fact, I was hoping I would find him here."
"But?" you ask, sensing that the colonel will say the word if you don't.
The colonel looks at you with sympathy. "It was a very powerful explosion, and it was followed by a very fierce fire. We are still combing the wreckage. If he was anywhere close to the center of it, there might be very little to find."
Martha gives a faint cry, then rises from the sofa and quickly leaves the room. The colonel, despite his cool manner, looks very gaunt.
You roll your tongue around inside your mouth, thinking. You want very much to know what the colonel knows, but you need to ask while still seeming to be the concerned father. Luckily, he says nothing while waiting for you to speak.
"I see," you say at last. "So what you're saying is, either he's blown himself to bits"—the colonel flinches a little at this—"or he's off someplace hiding in fear and shame."
The colonel shifts uneasily in his seat, but a faint, wry smile plays on his lips. "Those do seem to be the two possibilities."
"What about hospitals? Might he have been hurt but gotten away?"
The colonel grimaces. "It's possible, but unlikely. We're not close to town, you know. But we have already looked into that. No one answering to your son's description, with anything like the injuries he'd be expected to have sustained, has been admitted anywhere."
You sit back. "His 'description'?" you repeat in puzzlement. "If there's no trace of him, how do you know how to describe him? Come to that, how do you know it was our son?"
"He was there with another boy, a friend," the colonel replies. You start a little. "We've questioned this friend. He told us that your son went into the building shortly before the explosion."
"Caleb." You mutter. The colonel looks at you questioningly. "It was Caleb Ryerson, wasn't it," you add, trying to cover up your blunder. The colonel nods. "It couldn't have been anyone else," you mutter. "What's going to happen to him? Caleb, I mean."
"I'm not certain that's your business," says the colonel gently. "Anyway, he doesn't seem to have been involved in anything else."
You sigh, and both you and the colonel are silent for a few moments. When the latter speaks again, though, it is with some energy.
"Mr. Johnson, I don't want to give you and your wife any false hopes. But the fact that we haven't found any traces makes it quite plausible that David survived, and the fact that he hasn't shown up in any hospitals suggests he might even have escaped without any—" He pauses. "Any apparent injuries. I think there is a very good chance, better than even, in my opinion, that he has simply run off someplace and that he will turn up. But given the nature of some of the compounds on the base, it is very important that you bring him to us if he does show up."
You gnaw on your lower lip and nod. The colonel waits for you speak, and when you don't he sighs and stands up. "Again, I'm very sorry to have to be the bearer of this kind of news. I don't want to impose myself any further on you and your family. But you can call me at any time, and I will keep you closely informed of what we learn."
You accompany him to the door and silently shake his hand. But before he goes he leans in toward you. "It's probably not something you want to think about, considering the alternatives, but it has to be said. I don't want you to concern yourself overly with any of the possible punitive consequences of David's actions. Even if he is entirely unscathed, I think we would all prefer that this matter not cause any further hardships for anyone." The thought forms in your father's head that the military has reasons of its own to hush up what happened, but you just nod thoughtfully and tell him to have a safe trip back to the base.
* * * * *
You find Martha up in the bedroom, sitting on the bed and quietly sobbing. You sit down next her and pull her close. She weeps and sniffles for a little while, and through her tears tells you that she's phoned Mary. "She had to hear," she says. "She's coming back as fast as she can. She should be here sometime on Monday." After that, you tell her what the colonel said after she left. She doesn't take much comfort from his suggestion that her boy is probably alive and only hiding out. You hold her close for what feels like a long time.
She spends the rest of the morning and afternoon in a daze. You also try to occupy yourself with your father's chores around the house. But, naturally, you are deeply preoccupied with Colonel Lord's visit. In particular, you are struck by his conviction that you survived the accident. If the explosion was so massive that he could plausibly suggest that it basically disintegrated you, how can he even suggest—to himself, let alone others—that you might off hiding? His news about Caleb explains how he knew your name, but it can't explain why thinks you might still be running around. Did someone catch a glimpse of you before you made it outside the fence? Or did he learn something from Caleb that he isn't sharing with your parents?
You find your thoughts turning toward Caleb. You wish he hadn't abandoned you at the base, but you also wish he hadn't gone back and told them that you were the person in the hanger during the explosion. But on reflection you don't see that he really could have done any different. If you were in his place you'd have probably done the same.
You suddenly feel very exhausted, and you realize it is an accumulation of stress: your own stressful feelings about what has happened to you, and your father's stressful feelings about the same. (Luckily, you don't feel any stress associated with pretending to be your father; unfortunately, your intimate association with his mind, which makes it so easy to play him, is also probably making you feel his own unease all the more strongly.) Part of you wants to just let things slide, to let them unfold without your doing anything. But—and this, again, is the part of you that has absorbed your father's mind and personality talking—you feel you have to do something. And right now the only "something" you can come up with is going to see Caleb.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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