Free God's Gym by John Edgar Wideman Page A

left of their lives. Would they understand they'd never understand. Not even this simplest thing about being on the earth. Caught in a net that's nothing but holes.
    The doctors say his time's almost up and suddenly he's old, just about as old as he'll ever get. An old man, all the people who once mattered long gone so the death sentence a fresh start too. He owes nothing to anyone. Owns the little time left. Though he can't afford to waste a second, no rush either. Size doesn't matter. Everybody gets a whole life—beginning, middle, end—no matter how quickly it's over. Like those insects
ephemerids
he'd read about, their entire life cycle squeezed into an hour of a May afternoon. Like his siblings, the twin boy and girl who couldn't stick around long enough to receive names, dying a few hours after birth, taking his sweet, sweet mother with them.
    How long does it take to die. Well ... that, of course, depends on many factors ... He watches the doctor's face, watches himself lean forward, and in a weird way he's watcher and watched, patient and doctor, weather and weatherman. The doc's gleaming brow reassures, sleek flesh befitting his whopping fees, the location of his office, the trust you must invest in his words, healthy sheen, vacation tan. Tiny ellipsoid spectacles slide down his nose a smidgen as he closes a smidgen the distance between you, kisser and kissed. He's seen the same commercials you have, represents just this side of convincingly the actor acting like a doctor, this doc with big hands and big face and a habit of staring offstage at the imponderably heavy-duty shit always lurking just beyond the high-definition scene in which the two of you are engaged in delicate conversation about fate—your fate, not his, because this doctor's a permanent member of the cast, always available to move the plot along, advise, console, subtle as a brick revealing the brutal verdict. I've never figured out how to inform the patient, he confides. Fortunately, I don't see cases like yours very often. What can I say, except it's one of those things in life we must adjust to as best we can. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. It's a job and somebody has to do it, somebody's got to die. Did the doc really say that. Was he complaining about his tough job or commiserating with his patient. Does it matter. He steals the doctor's voice again, pipes it through the plane. This is your captain speaking ... We are experiencing an emergency. Please remove the oxygen mask of the helpless passenger beside you before you remove yours.
    He'd begun compiling a list of chores, necessary things to do to prepare for the end. A notebook page full before he realized the list was about expecting time, using time, filling time, about plans, control, the future, wishful thinking, as if time were at his disposal. As if he possessed the power to choose—blind or deaf—as those silly scare games proposed. As if he weren't already eyeless, crippled, helpless, just about out of time. Next move always the last move. When he switched the list to
must do,
he was relieved by its shortness. Only two items: he must die, and before his time's up he must end the bad ending of his father's life. Couldn't leave his poor daddy behind to suffer any longer—how long, how long. He must take his father's life.
    An unimaginable thought at first. How in hell could you kill murder whack terminate snuff your own father. Ashamed of the thought, then guilty when he doesn't act. If he loves his father, why allow him to suffer. Somebody needs to step up to the plate. Who, if not him. In the limbo of the veterans' hospital his father's shrinking body, in spite of its skinny frailty, of the burden of its diseased mind, might not fail for years. Meaningless years in terms of quality of life his father could expect, meaningless except for whatever it means when a fatally wounded animal suffers, means when an intensely proud, private man whose major