Dumb, Awful Luck by Alain Kerfs

Harris knows his sick brother is about to die, and wonders whether to tell him, while reflecting on the role of luck in their lives.

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Harris has lived for almost seventy-six years, paying scant attention to his health, and yet he has never felt his heart palpitate, never felt his mind seize in searching for a person’s name, never felt arthritis clench a joint. He finds this disturbing.

Harris sits in a white soft chair in a hospital room, his younger brother, Lloyd, is in the bed next to him, and constrained by stark metal railings, Lloyd is reverting, held like a baby in a crib. Harris remembers that when he was fourteen and Lloyd only eleven, they played basketball on the driveway, Lloyd moving around him effortlessly, Harris’ arms windmilling, churning air, unable to halt Lloyd’s drives to the basket. Lloyd was already taller and faster and stronger.

Since Lloyd was admitted, Harris has been there every day in the same chair, pulled up beside the bed. Nurses come and go and Harris feels their curiosity, their annoyance that he is not doing more, that he is not reading to Lloyd, not talking in an endless stream of words, not using the power of touch. But when Harris looks over at Lloyd, he feels something that adds weight to the air and presses Harris to his seat: anger. It is hard to hold the hand of the person who killed the first thing that Harris had truly cared about.

It’s late and Lloyd’s asleep, exhausted and medicated. The manufactured sounds of the hospital fill in the gaps between Lloyd’s slight breaths. Harris doesn’t need a doctor’s whispered words or a monitor’s flattening line to know that Lloyd is dying. Harris can tell when it happens, something that Harris feels as a cold and almost imperceptible swirl of air as if the body, readying for departure, is slowly extricating itself, cell by cell, fleeing.

His brother is dying, Harris just doesn’t know what to do about it.

Fifty-five years ago, convalescing at the American evacuation hospital at Long Bihn, Harris looked at the other wounded soldiers and knew who would die. The outward appearance of their injuries meant nothing. When Harris limped down the row of rigid white beds, he knew who wouldn’t be there the next day. He could put his hand above a body and feel cool air spiraling upward. Soldiers watched him do this, and the next day they watched orderlies remove the bodies. No one wanted to see him stop before his bed, or the bed of a friend, and float his hand in the air. No one talked to him, the grim reaper, the magician who made people disappear with a wave of his hand, a final salute.

Other than recovering from his war wounds, Harris has never been a patient in a hospital but he’s visited people, too many people, in hospitals. He laid on the edge of the narrow bed, his arms wrapped around his wife’s thin chest, tubes knocked askance, as her life pulled away. He knew when it left her. In another hospital, in another city, he watched medical personnel work frantically in a failed attempt to revive his older sister. He wanted to touch those dutiful, hard-working people and tell them, let her go, it’s her time. He recognized death with certainty, even as a body continued moving, a limb twitching, a muscle contorting, feces or urine voided, the involuntary purges of the body’s final acts, small and unseemly.

There has been so much loss. The loss of fellow soldiers and civilians in a foreign country, the loss of many friends and family members, lost to heart attacks, cancers, hurtling automobiles. He lost his faith along the way and gained it back ever so slowly over decades, so slowly he did not notice it returning, coming back stronger than before and it almost surprised him to find himself at church, not just on Sundays, but most mornings. He and the other stalwarts, many older than him, making peace with themselves, paving their way.

In Lloyd’s hospital room, Harris thinks about his life and Lloyd’s life. They had not been so different, they had both followed the path prescribed by parents, by school and society, they had been decent, hard-working people, the kind of people who quietly kept everything running, the lights on, the streets safe, the shelves in the stores stocked. People who scraped by, pleased to finally own a small house, pleased to see their children off to college with an implicit promise of a better life. Having done all the right things, was it fair that Lloyd now has rebellious cells rampaging through his body, vicious vagabonds glomming onto any home? Why did this happen to Lloyd and not to Harris, the older brother? Dumb, awful luck. Harris has known that luck before.

During the war, Harris’ position near the Mekong River was overrun. Through shrouds of warm rain came a barrage of mortar shells followed by an infantry attack. Everyone around him dead, and Harris sat in the brown gulping mud in his collapsing foxhole. Somehow enemy soldiers went around him, hitting positions on either side. Later, when the medics arrived, they discovered, among other injuries, a bullet lodged in his leg, the bone broken into shards. In the army hospital, they took mortar fragments out of the back of his head, his neck, his upper arms. They patched up the holes on both sides of his left shoulder, where a bullet had gone clean through, avoiding bone and major arteries. They took the bullet out of his fibula. Doctors bent over him, shaking their heads. “How,” one asked, “did you survive all of this?”

“Just dumb luck,” Harris replied.

After the war, Harris wondered, why did he live? Perhaps, he once reasoned, he was spared for a purpose; he was here to accomplish something. Now, that feels like hubris. He’s had a complete life; he did what was expected of him. He served his country, he worked, he went to his son’s Little League games and even his high school drama productions, he suspended Halloween and Christmas decorations on the front door and from the eaves, he put his son through college, he never struck his wife, he had good friends. It was easier to think his life had special purpose before he had lived it.

A nurse brings dinner for Lloyd. He picks at his food tray in slow motion, a bite of this, a bite of that. He doesn’t need much, Harris tells himself.

“What is. On?” Lloyd asks in a voice thickened by medication.

Harris picks up the remote control and slowly clicks through the channels while watching Lloyd. Eventually Lloyd nods and Harris puts down the remote. The calliope music of a game show comes on. A colorful wheel is spun, a woman turns letters. Harris looks at Lloyd and thinks about what to say.

“She is. Cute,” Lloyd says.

Harris looks back at the television. A talking gecko commercial.

“She is,” Harris says.

Lloyd has lately taken to commenting on women. He had never done this before and Harris feels that Lloyd is trying to act young, prove that he still has healthy appetites, that he is still alive. The show comes back on.

“She is. Pretty.” Lloyd says.

“Save your strength,” Harris says. “Your family will be here soon and we’ve talked enough over the years.” Harris knows this isn’t true. For over a year, when he was a teenager, Harris withheld his words from Lloyd as punishment, as if his words meant that much, as if his words were so powerful that their absence would teach Lloyd a lesson, would extract suitable retribution.

They watch the wall-mounted television in silence and Harris can’t shake the feeling, in that stretched stillness, that Lloyd is looking at him surreptitiously, thinking why not him? He’s older. Take him.

Harris remembers his wife, Penny, with her incessant vigilance for lumps that grew and moles that changed, her insistence on flossing, her healthful meals and moderation in alcohol, her sprint to the nearest doorway at the first rumble of an earthquake, only to be felled too early anyway. Harris knew that based on statistics, on the actuarial tables, Penny should have outlived him. Awful luck. For both of them.

Lloyd lifts his hand. Surprised, Harris takes it in his hand. It feels odd to do this; Harris couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt Lloyd’s skin against his own. They had never been close. The three-year difference in age presented too wide a gulf, different friends, different interests. They did not confide in each other, they did not talk about missed opportunities, first kisses, fears and regrets.

With cancer in his liver, Lloyd’s skin is yellowing and under fluorescent lighting the surface of Lloyd’s hand looks ancient and thin, exaggerating the raised veins, making visible the proof that blood and life still move within him. It’s easy to forget, Harris thinks, that Lloyd’s now dry and weightless hands have held the hands of women and children who loved him, have palmed basketballs, have gripped bicycle handlebars and car steering wheels, have been tinged green from lawn clippings, have carried creased black lines from hundreds of oil changes.

It’s not as easy to forget how angry Harris had once been at Lloyd. When Harris was fifteen, he had a beagle. The dog slept in bed with him and followed him around the house with one-owner loyalty and devotion. Every morning, Harris woke to the triangle of glistening black nose and eyes, framed by soft flopping ears. One day, Lloyd had opened both the back door to the garage and the large front garage door, and the beagle shot out, down the driveway, out into the street and around the corner. Harris and Lloyd had hung posters around the neighborhood, spent hours riding their bikes calling her name, looking for the dog. They never found her. It was the uncertainty that tortured Harris, not knowing what had happened, was she someone else’s pet now, was she starving in an alley, was she curled in a broken heap by the side of a road. It was the image of her face that haunted Harris, picturing the downtrodden ears and moist eyes, the dog looking for him, wondering why he had deserted her. Harris knew it was an accident, but it hurt deeply. Harris barely spoke to Lloyd for a year. Then Harris got a driver’s license and a fast-food job, got drafted, came home to a few years of community college, then marriage, construction jobs and contractor work, an evolving life that held one thing constant: it barely included Lloyd.

Lloyd’s family comes for their nightly visit, timing their arrival with an hour left in visitor hours. Harris doesn’t blame them; Lloyd has been in the hospital for weeks and it has become routine. Harris leaves the room because he feels they should be together, husband, wife, children, and grandchildren, an entire branch of the family tree brought to the bedside, and because Harris is uncomfortable with them, everyone so hopeful, so expectant, wearing smiles like amulets against death. Despite the doctors’ assurances that Lloyd has passed the critical stage, Harris knows what they can’t see; it may be a week, it may be a few days, but it will soon be Lloyd’s time.

There are moments, Harris realizes, where you understand that everything about your life is going to change: when the draft board pulled his birthdate, exchanging wedding vows with Penny, holding his just-born son, and now, for him, what life changes are left? Just the very last change, when life is over. A moment that seems far away for Harris. Closer for Lloyd.

Harris walks away from Lloyd’s room, wanders the hospital hallways. He is at home among the harried hospital people, busy with found life and negotiated death. Harris feels a suspended state of anxiety palpable in every corner, every patient is there to change, held at a tipping point, to get better or to ease away. It is obvious to Harris which way Lloyd is going.

Harris walks down one pale vacant hospital hallway after another, passing different wards where people fight battles against disease and aging and bad luck. Should I tell him? He wonders. Will he believe me?

The long, empty hall reminds Harris of the Vietnam memorial, where he did what every veteran did when they visited, running his fingers over the names of the men he knew, needing the tactile connection, ruing the loss of these men’s futures, everything they missed, everything that he had been allowed to experience. Lately, Harris has taken to wearing his Vietnam Veteran cap and army insignia when he walks into grocery stores, where he is often thanked for his service, sometimes by people his own age, and he wonders if they might have once shunned him. Things change, things come full circle. Perhaps it is time for forgiveness.

An intercom goes off in the hallway, a series of muted beeps. A man dashes by, lab coat flapping. It’s past visiting hours but he doesn’t see Harris, in a hospital no one notices an elderly man, limping faintly, a ubiquitous presence.

Harris thinks of calling his son, Justin, living in Boston. It will be three hours later there, of course, and Harris and Justin have never been close, Justin quiet and sensitive, having taken after his mother in personality and interests. There had always been a slight distance between Harris and Justin, but there was always love. He’s not sure Justin knows. Penny anchored them, connected them, each year without her they spin further away from each other, distant orbits. Harris thinks about the forks in the path of his son’s life, the decisions he made: a computer science degree, a career in tech, a move to Boston to work on robotics, a move that dropped three time zones and the width of the country between them. Harris thinks instead of going home. Penny is everywhere in the house, in every book on the shelves, most of them hers from her work as an editor at a publishing company. She’s in the kitchen, a dusting of flour on her clothing, the yeasty buttermilk-like scent of sourdough starter in the air. She’s in the garage, leaning over the potting bench, green leaves clinging to freckled arms, dirt smudge on her face, heroically eking out tomatoes and zucchini from their barren clay soil. But Penny is fading from the house. Still there, but you have to lean in, you have to inhale. She, too, is becoming vapor.

I can’t tell him. He’ll be angry.

Illness held Penny for a long time, her last days drawn out, and Harris missed meals and lost sleep, afraid to leave her side. When her life left her, Harris felt distant, suspended. He wonders if he’d been more alert, more lucid, if he’d fought his way through his weary stupor, could he have kept her heart beating? Could he have said something, used words strong enough and sharp enough to push through a haze of pain and drugs and grip her heart? Could he still have Penny in his life? Penny, the only woman he had ever been with. For that, he has no regrets.

How would I tell him? What words could I use?

He remembers Penny in the hospital shortly before she died. He remembers her walking the hallway slowly, with precise steps, bent over the hospital walker, her gown loose over thin legs. Harris holds many other memories, as buffers: her barking laughter while watching All In The Family, standing in the doorway listening to her sweet voice as she turned Beatles songs into lullabies when a young Justin couldn’t sleep, the way she brushed her fingers against the back of Harris’ neck as he bent over his financial papers. He thinks of all the words they exchanged during their time together and now yearns for the words he doesn’t have. A few minutes before she died, Penny and he had been muttering to each other, dulled by fatigue and fear, curled together on the narrow hospital bed. Harris can’t recall his wife’s last words to him, nor his last words to her.

Lloyd has the right to last words with those he loves.

Harris sees their ghosts in these long halls, all the people he knew who have passed away, friends and family members, fellow soldiers. How long must he bear witness to all this loss? He feels doomed to longevity, his life destined to go forever, a curse, not a blessing. He knew that Penny, if she were alive to have this conversation with him, would mention Sisyphus doomed to push that rock up the hill forever. She had a myth or a fable ready for everything.

Harris comes to the hospital cafeteria. The doors are closed and an empty beige hallway stretches out before him. Harris remembers standing in the school playground, in a group of fourth-graders, and seeing Lloyd across the playground. It was Lloyd’s first day in the first grade and he was alone, shrunk against the wall. Harris thought that he should go over to him, he should give him this gift, this show of acceptance, knowing it would make Lloyd more comfortable and elevate his standing among his peers. Harris’ friends were talking to him, he had to turn to face them, he had to respond, they wouldn’t understand brotherly devotion, and Harris turned his back so he wouldn’t have to see Lloyd there, that small boy alone against the yawning beige stucco wall.

Lloyd will be alone now, his family gone, another opportunity for words squandered. Harris thinks of the distance between Lloyd and him, the words they never shared, the few conversations at holidays and family events, strained and awkward, words doled out as if painful to release.

I am the only one who knows what is coming.

Harris returns to Lloyd’s room.

“Lloyd,” he says quietly. For Lloyd the line between sleep and wakefulness is permeable and wavering; it takes little to move him from one state to the other.

Lloyd’s eyelids tremble. “What?” he says.

“I forgive you,” Harris says, keeping the words soft, hoping they land lightly.

“What?”

“My dog.”

“What?”

Harris takes a deep breath. It doesn’t matter if Lloyd doesn’t understand. Harris understands. “I need to talk to you.”

Lloyd’s eyes flicker open, pale and distant. “What?”

“Lloyd, you need to think about something,” Harris says. He feels cool air shifting over the bed, stirring the hand-made get-well card left by one of Lloyd’s grandchildren. Harris bends in, places his face near Lloyd’s. “Your final words.”

“Doctors.” Lloyd’s head shifts slightly toward Harris. “Better.”

“Yes.” Harris doesn’t want to upset his brother, doesn’t want a scene that will summon inquisitive nurses. “But just in case, yeah? You should be ready to say what you need to say to your loved ones. They will want to hear that.”

“What?” Lloyd’s eyes are closing, mere slits now. His eyelashes, Harris notices, are long and thick, beautiful. Harris had always known that Lloyd was the better looking one, the taller and stronger one, the more athletic one. The one he had always thought was blessed.

“Tell them everything,” Harris says, remembering Penny’s final moments. “Have no regrets.”

“Can. Not.”

Harris grips the metal rails, takes another long breath. Lloyd can’t use the gift Harris is presenting; Lloyd’s not well enough to act on it. It’s too late. Harris looks down at his hands, at his fingers, blunt and ungraceful, nothing special, but perfectly healthy. And then it comes to Harris, a solution so perfect and so obvious. He feels the weight of anger lifting from him, forgiveness settling in, as if somehow a door had opened, a way through the wall between them. “I’ll sit right here, all day. Whenever you can, you speak. I’ll write it down. One word at a time. I’ll be your recorder and then your messenger to your family.”

“Sure.” Lloyd’s eyes are tightly closed.

This is the reason for this knowledge, for all my dumb luck. For this one task.

Harris finds the air lighter now, as if gravity has relaxed its hold. Lloyd’s words might come at any time, Harris realizes, whether Lloyd’s awake, asleep, or medicated, the words rationed, every one of them freighted with importance. Harris realizes he’s not properly equipped; he will need paper and pens, maybe a tape recorder, maybe photo albums and yearbooks to jog Lloyd’s memories. He will go home, he lives just a few blocks from the hospital, to retrieve the material he needs. He’ll back when visiting hours reopen.

“We’ll start tomorrow,” Harris says.

Harris finds himself in front of the large double-doors at the entrance of the hospital. His younger brother is inside and Harris knows that he won’t live much longer. Beyond the parking lot, over the low hills, the sky is a deep featureless black, no moon or stars, a heavy curtain falling on the end of the day.

A nurse steps outside and stops beside Harris, resting her hand on his shoulder, the shoulder the bullet went through. Her hand is warm and light, blocking the cold wind from hurtling unhindered through the bullet hole. “You should wait in the lobby,” she says. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“No, I won’t,” Harris says. “It’s not my time.”

She narrows her eyes, skeptical and appraising. After a moment, she says, “Be careful.” She steps away, wrapping a coat tight around herself.

Beyond the parking lot, four lanes of heavy traffic rim the front of the hospital. Cars hurtling past, grounded by gravity, slipstreaming pockets of air behind them, their headlights sweeping beams of light across the glass doors, across Harris. The red light at the intersection flashes like the blinking lights on the hospital monitor, pulsing out the remaining moments of Lloyd’s life.

Harris has outlived so many friends and loved ones; outlived them with dumb, awful luck. They’re all gone, like leaves torn from a tree in the fall, until there is only one remaining leaf, stubborn and bereft, buffeted by winter wind.

It’s not Harris’ time. He has something he needs to do.