Page 42 of Phoenix Fire

“Grandma Myrena! Please try to breathe deeply. Grandma Myrena! Please ...”

Jenny saw Myrena's body stiffening, saw the shudders and spasms of pain rocking her body. Myrena's mouth still agape, words trying to come, with only 'ack' sounds issuing forth. There was a whitish buildup of saliva in the corners of her mouth and along the lower lip. There were panicked guttural gasps as she fought to breathe. Her facial pallor deepened and gripped more tautly the bones of her cheeks and forehead.

“Wardley!” Jenny screamed into the console on the side table. “Wardley! Please come! We need you! Wardley! Wardley!”

Jenny lifted Myrena's taut body from the chair, half carried, half dragged her to the nearby sofa, still screaming for Wardley as she stumbled along.

“Oh, God, Jason!” she pleaded. “Please come to us!”

Chapter Twenty-seven

He remembered.

With his recall came an involuntary shiver. He knew where his car was. He could account now for the night that was lost to him. There was shame in remembering and more fuel for his fits of gloom that was raging inside of him. But, there was also a shallow victory. There was some satisfaction as he recalled the best part of the previous evening. That was when he had slipped away from his free-loading drinking 'buddies,' on a pretended mission to the men's room.

After he had abandoned Hal and Roy, he had driven his car for some time and found himself in downtown Phoenix, unaware of how or why he had ended up there. He had gotten lost. Lost! In a metro area where he had spent a lifetime? During his slow meandering drive to downtown Phoenix, he had passed a police cruiser, its red lights silently flashing off the street curbs and the high rises. The police officer was giving a sobriety test to a comical citizen, the latter's shirt partially out of his pants, hair mussed, eyes glazed and vacant. Jason was just barely alert enough to realize that he could easily be that sorry wretch of a man wavering and stumbling around on one foot.

It was that droll street scene that had caused Jason, in his own drunken mist, to pull into a parking lot and check into a seedy hotel. There was some inner awareness, some internal security system working on his behalf. There was some comfort in that.

It was funny how a few drinks could loosen the knots of memory. He could even remember now putting his money and clip into his wallet after he had taken out enough cash for the hotel room. That recall brought a smile to his face. Comic relief, he thought. That act was some clumsy attempt at protecting his assets. Very funny, as he looked back on it.

He emitted a short high chuckle that caused the bartender to look his way. Jason simply waved a hand in the direction of the bartender and lowered his head, as if to say, 'don't mind me. I'm stupid.'

The three drinks had brought back some balance to his system. The darkness of mood was there just below the edge of his consciousness.

The dark and seedy bar was nearly filled with heavy whiskered, foul smelling, shabbily dressed people of the streets. The air was filled with an ugly amalgam of odors, cigarette smoke, spilled whiskey, and hastily wiped away vomit. When Jason walked into the bar, he felt like he belonged to this unfortunate mass of human debris. As the drinks brought some nascent relief, he began to feel uncomfortable with the stares and whispers of his unlikely peers. This discomfiture and the black, hovering depression roused him to movement. He could not face another drink. He had his balance back and he also had his fill of booze. He did not try to understand the minor shift within him. He accepted it and was grateful for it. He knew that he must get away from this foul-smelling place. It was an urgent need within him.

Jason left the bar and went to his car.

Aimlessly he drove north on the North Central corridor, along the high rise condos, restaurants, and buildings of commerce.

Further north, beyond the high rises, he passed the first home he could remember living in. The memories flooded back:

Carlton and Jason in the backyard swimming pool, playing Marco Polo; Carlton and Jason at bedtime, kneeling by their beds with their Mom and Dad, praying 'Now I lay me down to sleep;' Carlton and Jason on their first bicycles; Carlton and Jason playing chess in the library, their favorite room where the beautiful gloss of the dark mahogany bookshelves gave off their reflections, where the great books seemed to beckon them, where there was the faintest hint of pipe smoke; Dad, Mom, Grandma Myrena, Carlton, and Jason piling all their camping gear into the large station wagon, laughing, teasing, eager to be on their way to the high country.

At some point he turned east for some blocks, then north again on Cave Creek Road. As he drove the familiar streets and passed the landmarks he knew so well, he had more flashes of memory:

There was the first church he attended when his parents were alive. He remembered Carlton pulling the hair of a little girl in front of him at Summer Bible School; remembered Carlton looking over at him for approval and giggle confirmation of his childish deed; remembered Carlton pulling a bully off of his pinned body on the play field next to the church.

On he drove, facing the poignant mind pictures of his past. Unconsciously, he reached and wiped away tears that were flowing down his cheeks.

On he drove as if by an autonomic will. The miles slipped by like unremembered dreams until he found himself out in the high desert beyond the town of Carefree, out among the cacti, the Palo Verde and Mesquite trees. Great black birds of prey wafted on the desert thermals, circling effortlessly, patiently, and in graceful confidence.

Jason stopped the car. He was on a winding dirt and gravel road, high above the vast expanse of valley to the south. He had wandered farther west and north. He was not exactly sure where he was, but the terrain looked vaguely recognizable, like a déj? vu flash of the mind. There came a vague and fleeting twitch of subliminal recall, there and gone in a shutter frame of time.

He left the car and walked along an animal trail for a short distance until he came to a small clump of rocks. The rocks were stacked into a grave-like mound. The heap looked secure so he decided to sit. He barely noticed the heat of the rock on which he sat. He also seemed oblivious to the intense heat of the high desert sun.

He sat and looked out at the burnt brown space around him. The giant saguaros stood stoically and regally, some with arms hundreds of years old, some with arms charred and gouged by some previous lightning bolt. Ants and bugs crawled at his feet. A soft wind blew in his face, and he inhaled deeply the hot dry breath of the zephyr. Jason watched as one of the large hawks dove low into a mesquite bush and flew away with a snake clutched in its hooked talons, cawing triumphantly to a waiting mate.

His thoughts bored relentlessly on, bleak and somber stabs of shame and self-loathing. His depression was consuming him and he had dwelt so long now in these dark corners of his mind, had fueled the abasement so long now with alcohol, that he could find no hopeful gap in the black procession.

His brother was dead. So much was left undone with his passing. Jason now could never make right the unsettled business with Carlton, could never now find atonement for having given up on his brother, defaulting on his sibling loyalty.

Gone.

His brother was gone. Inexorably, irrevocably gone. Jason sat on the clump of rocks and cried in great moaning heaves, a lone effusive speck among the surrounding primal space.

His Grandma Myrena was dying.

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