The Four Fingers of Death Read Online Free
Author: Rick Moody
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction
west of town. And yet Monaco 37, the comet, didn’t seem to have been a factor in George’s untimely demise. The sunset was a factor, however. To George, locked in the constraints of a misunderstood brain disorder, history unfolded erratically, and anew. Every day was a day of import. Congress was meeting again tomorrow, there was the restocking of the depleted shelves in our supermarket price clubs, the collection and densifying of refuse in municipal garbage trucks, the ritualized busing of homeless persons to the camps by the border.
And so the young man whose lungs would soon rest in my wife’s chest cavity kicked up the kickstand of his reassembled motorcycle. He throttled his throttle. He headed up into the northerly hills without giving much thought to his destination nor to returning expeditiously so as not to alarm his working parents. Then came his fervent apperception of the sunset. On the pavement, he followed the perfect crimson light of the magic hour, when the sun dipped behind the western peaks, when these peaks were bathed in pomegranate quanta. He followed the sunset intuitively, without questioning it, looking for its sweet spot, from which best to contemplate. I wish I could say now that George’s death was not his fault, that there was a runaway semi, a teamster who had simply worked too many shifts in a row, or maybe there was a reintroduced wolf loitering on the tarmac. It was not so. The southwestern sunset did George in. Apparently, George, unlicensed and unable to control his motorcycle, failed to operate the bike on one of our myriad regional hairpins, and despite his promise and his triumph over adversity, George sailed out over the embankment, becoming almost instantly a white plastic cross with artificial flowers and a love letter from his mom.
As I say, I wrote many pages about George. And I waited. When I cut down all the reams of eulogistic ramblings about George, when I eliminated anything that was excessively sentimental, that described too accurately the look on the faces of George’s parents when I called on them, that utterly dignified but devastated Hispanic couple—what remained was the sentence:
He was just a kid.
A scant two hours after George’s demise, my wife was contacted by the international organ lottery, and we were told to report immediately to the university medical center. Preparations for leaving the house took some time because my wife was down to 15 or 20 percent of lung function. She was scared, if resigned, and kept saying “Monty, I just don’t want to die on the table.” I could barely understand her through the oxygen mask. “Monty, if I die, who is going to harass you?” To which I would say, “Nobody is dying.” I put her in a wheelchair that I used when we were making longish trips, and I wheeled her out into the driveway, and I went next door to ask the neighbors, the Rodriguezes, if we could borrow their car or if they could otherwise give us a ride, because we didn’t have a car. This had been a long-standing arrangement between myself and Mike Rodriguez, namely, that a day would come when we would be called to the hospital. On this day, there would be no time to waste. I’d told Mike all of this, fumbling, shifting from foot to foot. Could we rely on him? I’d made the same arrangement with the other neighbors, on the other side, until, as with so many houses on the block, the for sale signs went up in front of the unit. And never came down.
The Rodriguez family was not answering the bell. I thought I’d stressed to Mike the importance of his letting me know if and when he was traveling. I shouted to Tara, out in the driveway, “Should I call a cab?” As you know, most of the taxi companies had been priced out of the market by the extremely high cost of corn-and-petroleum-blended fuel products. And the taxis had not exactly been replaced by a reliable system of mass transit. Unless you count walking. There was a lot of walking going on. A
And so the young man whose lungs would soon rest in my wife’s chest cavity kicked up the kickstand of his reassembled motorcycle. He throttled his throttle. He headed up into the northerly hills without giving much thought to his destination nor to returning expeditiously so as not to alarm his working parents. Then came his fervent apperception of the sunset. On the pavement, he followed the perfect crimson light of the magic hour, when the sun dipped behind the western peaks, when these peaks were bathed in pomegranate quanta. He followed the sunset intuitively, without questioning it, looking for its sweet spot, from which best to contemplate. I wish I could say now that George’s death was not his fault, that there was a runaway semi, a teamster who had simply worked too many shifts in a row, or maybe there was a reintroduced wolf loitering on the tarmac. It was not so. The southwestern sunset did George in. Apparently, George, unlicensed and unable to control his motorcycle, failed to operate the bike on one of our myriad regional hairpins, and despite his promise and his triumph over adversity, George sailed out over the embankment, becoming almost instantly a white plastic cross with artificial flowers and a love letter from his mom.
As I say, I wrote many pages about George. And I waited. When I cut down all the reams of eulogistic ramblings about George, when I eliminated anything that was excessively sentimental, that described too accurately the look on the faces of George’s parents when I called on them, that utterly dignified but devastated Hispanic couple—what remained was the sentence:
He was just a kid.
A scant two hours after George’s demise, my wife was contacted by the international organ lottery, and we were told to report immediately to the university medical center. Preparations for leaving the house took some time because my wife was down to 15 or 20 percent of lung function. She was scared, if resigned, and kept saying “Monty, I just don’t want to die on the table.” I could barely understand her through the oxygen mask. “Monty, if I die, who is going to harass you?” To which I would say, “Nobody is dying.” I put her in a wheelchair that I used when we were making longish trips, and I wheeled her out into the driveway, and I went next door to ask the neighbors, the Rodriguezes, if we could borrow their car or if they could otherwise give us a ride, because we didn’t have a car. This had been a long-standing arrangement between myself and Mike Rodriguez, namely, that a day would come when we would be called to the hospital. On this day, there would be no time to waste. I’d told Mike all of this, fumbling, shifting from foot to foot. Could we rely on him? I’d made the same arrangement with the other neighbors, on the other side, until, as with so many houses on the block, the for sale signs went up in front of the unit. And never came down.
The Rodriguez family was not answering the bell. I thought I’d stressed to Mike the importance of his letting me know if and when he was traveling. I shouted to Tara, out in the driveway, “Should I call a cab?” As you know, most of the taxi companies had been priced out of the market by the extremely high cost of corn-and-petroleum-blended fuel products. And the taxis had not exactly been replaced by a reliable system of mass transit. Unless you count walking. There was a lot of walking going on. A
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