Three Day Summer(9)

It’s not that Ned said he didn’t understand. It’s not like he tried to talk me out of it, or told me it was a silly dream. He took a slight pause, just long enough for one blink behind his glasses, and then changed the subject to taking me out to the movies.

I never brought it up again. To anyone.

As I think about it now, I slice a carrot neatly in half with my butter knife, a beautiful, precise cut. I imagine I’m holding a scalpel.

“What happened to your hand?” I look up to see my dad pointing a fork at Wes’s bandaged palm.

“Splinter,” Wes grumbles.

My dad frowns. “Must have been an awful big splinter.” Maybe inadvertently, he glances at his own arm then, the one that got shot in Korea and sent him home early, much to his dismay.

I catch the angry glint in Wes’s eye and butt in. “It was. I wrapped it up.”

“Hmmmph,” Dad says before turning back to his loaf. I can’t help but notice how both he and Wes stab their meat at the exact same moment with the exact same amount of unnecessary force.

Seems like the china is going to get the brunt end of their relationship today. Mom catches my eye and we shake our heads at each other. She gives a little sigh and I wonder if she’s going to try to talk to my dad tonight. Once when I was little and the bathroom on my landing was backed up, I went upstairs to use theirs in the middle of the night and I heard them whispering to each other. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, only catching all our names—Mark’s, Wes’s, and mine—woven throughout the conversation. I was up there for at least twenty minutes and they never stopped talking.

Even still, sometimes, it’s hard for me to imagine how my parents ever got together. How my dad got home from World War II and, against his parents’ wishes, married a half-Indian girl who lived on a reservation. I wonder if something in that made him go superconservative all of a sudden, like he had reached his rebellion limit by loving Mom. Love is strange, I think, as I move on to cutting gorgeous slices of green beans.

I hardly remember even getting into bed. I must be exhausted, because with all there is to think about—Ned, Mark, Wes, the patients, and the next three days—I fall into a deep sleep the moment my cheek touches the pillow.





Friday, August 15





chapter 10


Michael


My first thought when I wake up is that I’m being choked by a horde of yellow snakes in the wilderness of upstate New York.

I jerk up, hitting the top of Amanda’s head with my chin. Her hair is tangled around my neck and shoulders.

She screams and flails her right arm, hitting me squarely in the nose. I yelp.

It’s like a skit on Benny Hill, ending with Amanda holding her head in a dramatic fashion and yelling at me for five minutes for being a clumsy idiot.

It’s during the end of her rant that I get a good look at the field around me. I swear, it’s like the population has multiplied overnight, like rabbits. In fact, from my peripheral vision I’m pretty sure I can see two naked people going at it like rabbits, too. I don’t bother to investigate further. (Okay, fine, so I sneak a peek at a boob freely swinging not ten feet away from me. I am an eighteen-year-old male, not a saint.)

I hear laughter and bits of conversation coming at me from everywhere.

From somewhere to my right: “I’ve dropped the acid, man.”

“Solid.”

“No, man. I literally dropped it on the ground. And I think you just stepped on it.”

“Oh, shit.”

From somewhere to my left: “Would you like to try some homemade granola? It’s one hundred percent vegan. Remember, animals are our friends, not food.”

There are kids my age as far as the eye can see. Where have they all come from suddenly in the middle of the night?

A few feet away from me, Evan and Rob emerge from the woods that surround our field. Evan has a particularly huge grin on his face. I notice that he keeps his fist closed as he walks back toward me and only opens it when he’s right in front of us.

Inside are six small, shiny brown squares.

“Morning Glory,” Evan identifies the batch of acid. “It’s like a bitchin’ pharmacy in there!” He points with his thumb to the forest behind us before popping one of the tabs onto his tongue. He lets it hang out while the tab dissolves.

Rob and the girls each take one too, the girls more demure about their tongues. I actually have never done acid before and I hesitate for a moment, looking at the last remaining tab.

“Do it for our country,” Evan yells, before adding, “you yellow-bellied coward!”

I look around to see Amanda eyeing me warily, about to call me something much worse. I take the thin film and place it on my tongue.

It feels as flat and tasteless as paper. I don’t know why but I expected something more, like a tingle or a metallic taste or something. I guess it’s the word “acid”; it conjures thoughts of lab experiments in Chemistry.

Evan takes out his banana bunch. There just happen to be exactly six. We each take one. I’m starting to relax now, starting to feel like my usual laid-back self.

This is going to be superb. I’m going to see Joan Baez and Jimi and Grace Slick perform. We’ll hang out in these beautiful fields. I’ll see stars again every night.