those distant Asian empires where I will never walk. On the brink of
dusk, I’ll remove my sunglasses and watch the dying of the light.
I’ll have to squint. Bright light pains my eyes. Its effect is so
total and swift that I can virtually feel the developing burn.
As the blood-red light at the periphery of the blinds deepened to
purple, my father’s hand tightened on mine.
I looked down, saw that his eyes were open, and tried to tell him all
that was in my heart.
“I know,” he whispered.
When I was unable to stop saying what didn’t need to be said, Dad found
an unexpected reserve of strength and squeezed my hand so hard that I
halted in my speech.
Into my shaky silence, he said, “Remember I could barely hear him. I
leaned over the bed railing to put my left ear close to his lips.
Faintly, yet projecting a resolve that resonated with anger and
defiance, he gave me his final words of guidance: “Fear nothing,
Chris.
Fear nothing.”
Then he was gone. The luminous tracery of the electrocardiogram
skipped, skipped again, and went flatline.
The only moving lights were the candle flames, dancing on the black
wicks.
I could not immediately let go of his slack hand. I kissed his
forehead, his rough cheek.
No light any longer leaked past the edges of the blinds. The world had
rotated into the darkness that welcomed me.
The door opened. Again, they had extinguished the nearest banks of
fluorescent panels, and the only light came from the corridor from
other rooms along its length.
Nearly as tall as the doorway, Dr. Cleveland entered the room and came
gravely to the foot of the bed.
With sandpiper-quicksteps, Angela Ferryman followed him, one
sharp-knuckled fist held to her breast. Her shoulders were hunched,
her posture defensive, as if her patient’s death were a physical
blow.
The EKG machine beside the bed was equipped with a telemetry device
that sent Dad’s heartbeat to a monitor at the nurses’ station down the
hall.
They had known the moment that he slipped away.
They didn’t come with syringes full of epinephrine or with a portable
defibrillator to shock his heart back into action. As Dad had wanted,
there would be no heroic measures.
Dr. Cleveland’s features were not designed for solemn occasions. He
resembled a beardless Santa Claus with merry eyes and plump rosy
cheeks.
He strove for a dour expression of grief and sympathy, but he managed
only to look puzzled.
His feelings were evident, however, in his soft voice. “Are You okay,
Chris?”
“Hanging in there,” I said.
From the hospital room, I telephoned Sandy Kirk at Kirk’s Funeral Home,
with whom my father himself had made arrangements weeks ago. In
accordance with Dad’s wishes, he was to be cremated.
Two orderlies, young men with chopped hair and feeble mustaches,
arrived to move the body to a cold-holding room in the basement.
They asked if I wanted to wait down there with it until the mortician’s
van arrived. I said that I didn’t.
This was not my father, only his body. My father had gone elsewhere.
I opted not to pull the sheet back for one last look at Dad’s sallow
face. This wasn’t how I wanted to remember him.
The orderlies moved the body onto a gurney. They seemed awkward in the
conduct of their business, at which they ought to have been practiced,
and they glanced at me surreptitiously while they worked, as if they
felt inexplicably guilty about what they were doing.
Maybe those who transport the dead never become entirely easy with
their work. How reassuring it would be to believe as much, for such
awkwardness might mean that people are not as indifferent to the fate
of others as they sometimes seem to be.
More likely, these two were merely curious, sneaking glances at me. I
am, after all, the only citizen of Moonlight Bay to have been featured
in a major article in Time magazine.
And I am the one who lives by night and shrinks from the sight of the
sun. Vampire! Ghoul! Filthy wacko pervert! Hide your children!
To be fair, the vast majority of people are understanding and kind. A