A Day at the Beach (Part 3)
by VATERGrrl
"What do you think it's like after you die?" Tom picked up a round, live sand dollar, running his thumb over its short, dark purple spines. The creature felt like sandpaper, or a man's two-day growth of beard stubble, and Tom assumed it had washed in with the last wave of the rising tide, since it was still wet and glistening. He walked it to the water's edge, then flung it with all his might back into the Sound, hoping the thing would find a safer home out there and not end up a dessicated, dead husk, bone white against the cool dark green of seaweed fronds.
Cory, who had been fondling the odd, goosebump-textured, goldenrod yellow pod of a kelp strand, accidentally squeezed it hard enough to pop it, though nothing but air and a tiny bit of seawater came out. "What?" He looked over at his friend, who had returned from the water's edge but remained standing while Cory sat on dry, smooth rocks.
Tom spied a round, silver-dollar sized gray claybaby near his feet and plucked it up, but rather than flinging it, too, out into the water, he turned it over and over in his hand, then bounced it a few times in his cupped palm. "Just wondering."
"Okay." Cory kept watching the waves, trying to figure out why on earth his best friend was suddenly being so morbid. "You're not asking me just because my folks died, are you?"
"Jeez, no." Tom flinched, recalling his friend's fairly recent past. It had been two years, and Cory occasionally mentioned his birth parents, but it seemed to Tom that he was adjusting really well to living with his new parents. "I mean, my mom died before I was even a year old, so I didn't even really know her." All he did know of her was through his father, who kept a few photographs around the house as mementos. Jinna Wyman wasn't a forbidden topic in his house, though his dad's eyes still went all dark and sad when Tom asked about her, but it wasn't like he couldn't ask about her at all.
"I guess I just -- aw, I don't know." He dropped the claybaby he'd been holding, hearing it hit the rocks with a tap before rolling off to claim its own space. "You wanna go back in the water?"
"Sure." Cory followed Tom into the waves, pausing when the water came up to his chest. Tom swam a little further out, until he had to tread water to keep his head dry. When treading water lost its appeal, he floated, face down, turning his head to the side when he needed a breath of air. The first foot or two of the Sound was warm, absorbing the sun's energy. When he dove down just a few feet more, however, the water became cold and murky, a nearly impenetrable greenish haze.
This must be what it is to be dead, Tom thought, pulling his knees up near his chest and floating in a modified fetal position, settling into the cold of Puget Sound for as long as he dared. Death must be cold, and dark, and really, really quiet. When his held breath ran out, making him dizzy and a little panicked, he touched the slick bottom of the inlet's shelf with the balls of his feet, flexing his knees a little and then pushing off toward the light. He popped back up to the surface with a minimal splash, crowing in great lungfuls of blessedly warm summer air.
"Whoah." Cory still stood chest deep in the water, waving his arms back and forth in little sweeps over the warm layer at the surface. His fingers brushed against the translucent, slick surface of a jellyfish, but he wasn't particularly worried about getting stung. The ones you had to look out for, he reasoned, were the man o' wars and others with really long, creepy-looking tentacles. The few jellies that floated in the Sound here almost entirely devoid of trailing things, and you could pick them up without getting stung. "You were down there a long time -- over a mniute, I think."
Tom shivered involuntarily, tried to stop thinking about how cold, how endlessly quiet and lonely it had been underwater. "I just wanted to see what it was like," he said enigmatically, more to himself than to Cory.
"Huh? What what was like?"
"Being dead." Tom swam back toward shore until he could feel something solid beneath his feet, then stood. In line with Cory, the water came up around Tom's neck, emphasizing the height advantage the taller, skinnier boy had.
"You're not thinking of killing yourself or something, are you?" Cory was suddenly worried that maybe his friend had gone suicidal. It had been mentioned in a book he'd read during a break at his gifted-kids summer camp. They'd been allowed to do anything they'd wanted, and Cory chose to look around the library, finding himself morbidly fascinated by book with titles like "When a Parent Dies," and "How to Survive the Loss of a Love". "Your dad would just die too, you know."
"No, no, I don't want to die. That's the problem." Tom waded toward shore, turned and planted his rear end on a dry patch of beach. Cory followed, still not understanding what was going on.
"Everything dies eventually." Cory thought of the flat, heart-shaped kelp bud he'd accidentally popped, the sand dollar Tom had flung back out into the water. Sooner or later, that same `dollar would wash back up onto the beach, maybe at night, and then there would be no one around to rescue it.
"Well, duh." Tom crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look bored. If he was honest with himself, he would have admitted it was a protective gesture, a way to try to insulate himself from fear. He swallowed a couple times before he said anything else, not wanting his voice to waver or crack or anything babyish like that.
"Dad made me get a bunch of blood tests, after that day that I got that nose bleed at your house." He measured out his words, trying to keep a distance between himself and what he feared.
"Yeah, I remember that. It was really gross. Mom freaked out when you came in looking like something out of a horror movie."
"Yeah." Tom's response held a note of bravado, then faded out. "But, uhm, a couple days after that, he said I was going to need more tests." He paused, placed special emphasis on his next words. "Stuff they can only do in a hospital."
Cory weighed the word, shrugged. "Eh, Rose had a bunch of tests done in the hospital, you remember, had to drink radioactive stuff and not burp and get her stomach x-rayed and everything. And she's fine now."
"Yeah, I guess, but I think this is different." Tom was afraid to admit what he feared. Rather than articulate it right away, he sniffled and ran a wet forearm under his nose, inhaling the brackish scent of saltwater.
"Dad didn't want to say anything about the test results, not really, but I think..." Another pause, followed by a deep, quick breath. "I think I have cancer."
"No fucking way." Out on the beach, away from adults, Cory felt free to express himself, though even he was a little shocked at his language.
"Yeah, way. You know my dad, he's all `tell the patient what they have, get them involved,' that whole open policy. But he won't tell me what's going on, not really. He said there was something `wrong' with my blood, but that was it." Tom lifted his hands and curled his fingers when he said the word "wrong," giving it special emphasis the way he'd seen his father do when he was quoting from a book.
"And it was the look in his eyes, the same one he gets sometimes when I ask him to tell me stories about my mom. It's like he was going to start crying or something." He snuffled as deeply as he could, figuring he had the freedom to do it away from his father, who would have grimaced and made a big deal of it.
Cory just shrugged. "Weird. I mean, your father's usually a really funny guy, or he was when I first went to see him at the clinic."
"Yeah, he usu- snfff! usually is at home, too." Tom pressed the knuckles of his right hand hard up under his nose, trying to stave off an increasingly intense urge to sneeze. "But id the past couple days he's bid avoidig be. Sniiiff!"
"Maybe because he doesn't want to catch your cold?" Cory watched his friend's increasingly peculiar facial contortions with a blend of amusement and concern, amusement taking the upper hand.
"I doad have a c-cold. Sub wahhh-achh-huh! Sub wadder god up by nnn-tshhh! By dose." Tom scrambled to his feet, let out another uncovered "hup-tchhh!" and drew his forearm back under his nose.
"Gesundheit. Maybe we ought to head back?" Now concern won out, and Cory gestured down the beach.
"If you wadda, I guess we cad. The tide's cubbig id, addyway." Tom began walking in the direction of his father's beach house, giving a sharp, watery sniffle every ten steps or so.
"Aaaghh!" Cory yelled in shock as a wave sluiced over his bare feet, then ran for higher ground nearer the line of concrete bulkheads which most homeowners on the island had built to forestall the natural erosion caused by the relentless tides.
Tom trailed slightly behind his friend, daring to drag his fingertips lightly over the rough surfaces of the bulkheads. Most of the homeowners who were out on their porches simply waved at the two boys, and a few even smiled and said hello, recognizing Tom from previous jaunts up and down the beach. One resident, however, scowled at both boys when they strayed too close to the bulkhead, and marched on heavyset legs up to the edge of the concrete wall.
"Hey!" The homeowner's deep voice boomed out of a barrel chest, and blue eyes scowled down from under a mop of short, grey and white hair. "Get the hell off my beach, before I call the sheriff!"
From his vantage point, Tom thought he could see all the way up the guy's nose, but the flash from his half-round reading glasses obscured the view, thank heavens. "We're dod odd your beach, bister. Id's public lad." He took a step back, wincing when another cold wave of water washed up at his heels.
"If you can touch my bulkhead, it's my land." Tom's retreat didn't seem to mollify the homeowner, who kept on scowling and making menacing gestures. "Now get lost! Or, can't you read signs?" Indeed, the lawn that stretched for a hundred feet from the front of the house, had a huge "No Tresspassing" sign stuck into it on a slim wooden picket, and Tom wouldn't have been surprised if a pack of Dobermans had come racing out of the house to guard the perimeter of the property.
"We're sorry, sir." Cory grabbed Tom's arm just above the elbow. "C'mon, let's go." As they galloped away from the forbidden property line, Tom ventured a look back, and wondered why on earth the guy, who looked offended even at Cory's polite apology, was wearing hot pink pants and a white windbreaker with a coordinating hot pink stripe across the chest.
"My God!" Cory splashed through the waves and laughed, finally stopping to hunch over and catch his breath after the big blue house was no longer in sight. Tom trailed gamely behind, seeming a bit more winded than he should have been, by Cory's reckoning, when he came up alongside.
"What the hell was his probleb? I bead, the beach belogs to everyode, or thad's what Gradfather tells be whed I go to visit hib oud od Deah Bay." Tom sniffled again, then coughed. His grandfather, one of the council members and traditional medicine people on the Makah reservation out on the Olympic Penninsula, told him a little bit about his mother's culture every time Tom visited, and was particularly committed to keeping the old ways living, rather than letting them fade into memory in a textbook or a museum.
"He's just cranky, I guess. There was a guy like that in my old neighborhood, in Kansas. Hated kids, yelled at anyone who tried to cut across his property on the way to school." Cory shrugged. "The older kids would toilet paper his trees and put shaving cream on his car windows every Halloween, try to get back at him. I don't know if it worked, but it was sure funny to see the next morning."
Tom was mildly tempted to sneak out that night and do something similar to the blue house, but he figured his dad would ground him for a month if he tried it. Instead, he just savored the idea in his head, which was good enough for the time being. If he was honest with himself, he felt a little tired -- fatigued, he guessed his father would call it -- and with the sun dropping down behind the horizon, it was getting cold out. He could feel the small hairs on his arms and legs rising up in goose bumps to try to keep him warmer.
"Race you back to the house!" He announced, setting off as quickly as he could over the seaweed covered rocks and through the rising tide. Cory yelled and chased after him, and they traded the lead back and forth during the five-minute dash back to the house, where Jed Stevens was sitting on the porch, reading.
"Ah, there the two of you are. I was just going to put on a jacket and come look for you." Jed closed the journal he'd been reading, placing it cover-down beside him, then pushed his arms over his head in a practiced-casual gesture. He noticed that Cory's short blond hair was standing up stiffly, as if a golden hedgehog had planted itself on his scalp. Tom's hair hung just past his shoulders, stuck together in places into odd, salted waves.
"Have a good time swimming?" Both boys nodded, then shivered simultaneously as a light breeze swept up from the water, cooling their bare backs and calves. Tom wrapped his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his arms, and sniffled.
"It was fud, but sub guy yelled at us, told us to get off of his beach." He sniffed again, freed one hand to rub against the underside of his nose then tucked his hand back under his armpit.
Jed resisted the reflexive urge to ask his son if he needed a tissue. "What did this guy look like?"
"Kind of short, fat -- well, not fat, but kind of..." Cory searched for the right word. "Solid."
"Ad he had od wibbed's clothes -- pig pads."
"Pig pads?" Jed was momentarily flummoxed, then translated. "Ah, yes, pink pants."
"Thad's whad I said, Dad. Jeeze. Snfff!"
"Was this `man', as you're calling him, in a big blue house right by the water, maybe ten houses past the bridge? Short gray hair, half-glasses? Kind of top heavy?"
"Big boobs, yeah." Cory volunteered quite cheerfully, as if the opportunity to say the word "boobs" was just too good to pass up.
"I think, guys," Jed said, looking back toward the house when Tom sniffled yet again. "The `man' who yelled at you is our former governor, Dixie Lee Ray. She lives on the point of the island, retired there after her second term in office. Ah, let me go get something, and I'll be right back?" He went back into the large central room, found both boys' packs, and took out the lightweight jackets he'd made sure they brought with them. Asking both boys to put them on would seem more democratic than singling his son out for special treatment, though he did make a detour into the small bathroom for a box of tissues before he went back out.
"Cory, I don't want your parents accusing me of letting you freeze." He balled up a dark green jacket and tossed at the blond-haired boy, who caught it easily with one hand and put it on, briefly adjusting the elastic cuffs around his wrists.
"Tom?" He tossed his son a similar jacket, waiting until Tom had zipped it up before holding out the tissue box, shaking it gently for emphasis.
Tom reluctantly pulled a bunch of tissues from the box his father had offered -- no, foisted upon him -- and blew into them, crumpling them up when they were full and shoving them into the pocket of his jacket.
"So why was the governor yelling at us?"
Because she's a prick, Jed thought privately, but said instead, "Oh, she just feels as if the entire span of beachfront is hers, even though the beaches belong to everyone, and everyone is entitled to walk along at low tide, and to have reasonable access even at high tide.
"Anyway, that's all pretty boring stuff." Jed waved a hand dismissively. "The coals should be just about perfect by now -- I set up the hibachi so we could have an old-fashioned hot-dog roast. You guys, run into the house and take the hot dogs and buns out of the refrigerator and bring them out here. Might want to change back into long pants, too, come to think of it." He shivered for emphasis. "It's cooling off really quickly."
Tom and Cory scrambled for the open door of the beach house, though Jed noticed that his son went through the doorway a full five paces after his friend, his movements perceptibly slower. He pushed himself up to a standing position, careful to pick up the journal he'd been reading and roll it with the cover on the inside. No need to accidentally upset anyone, after all, and it was easy to shove it back into his briefcase unnoticed. Both Tom and Cory, who had changed back into jeans and t-shirts, were absorbed in the process of finding the hot dogs, buns, and assorted condiments in the refrigerator.
"Ketchup?" Tom looked over at Cory's choice of toppings, frowned. "That's gross. You don't put ketchup on hot dogs, just fries."
"Naw." Cory shook his head. "Malt vinegar's for fries. Ketchup and relish for `dogs."
The two friends continued to argue as they struggled to carry everything out to the patio area at once. A can of root beer fell from the crook of Tom's arm, hitting the pebbled surface of the patio and promptly fizzing out in a geyser from the punctured side of the can.
"Cool!" They said in unison as they watched the fountain of foam arc and then slowly subside into a sticky brown puddle. Jed came out to assess the damage a moment later, holding three "roasting sticks" improvised from wire hangers under his left arm.
"Cool, huh?" He smiled at the boys' enthusiasm. "Cory, could you dash back in and bring out a couple more cans?"
"Sure." Cory ran back into the house, leaving father and son to stare at the can, which had finally stopped rocking back and forth and spilling out its contents.
"You feeling okay? Not feverish or anything?" Jed had waited until he was alone with Tom to ask the standard fatherly-doctorly questions, wanting to respect his son's right to privacy and hesitating to appear too hovering and worried in front of his friend.
"Yeah. Still stuffed up, but I'b okay otherwise."
"Good, good. If you get tired early, feel free to --"
"Huh-eshooo!" Father and son spun around to find Cory perched on the second step from the top, looking almost as shocked as his audience. "Hihhh, ib-ghhh..." The blond boy fought against the need to sneeze for as long as he could, making sure to step down onto the patio and set the three cans of soda down safely before giving in.
"Heh-ishhgkkk! Ish-chhh! Ishhh-huh!" He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, and pressed his left hand as hard as he could up under his nose. "Ib-chhhhggg! Chhhgggkk! Chhhgggkk!"
Jed jammed his hand into his back pocket, the gesture programmed after so many years, but stopped when he realized he had already used the handkerchief he kept there. A quick inventory of his jacket pockets also turned up nothing more than a few fragments of lint and a crumpled tissue, which was also not fit to offer to anyone.
"Chhhh! Chshhh!" His bare hand offered little in the way of muffling his sneezes, but Cory kept it held up anyway, trying his best to not sniffle and inadvertently inhale any remaining dust from either his hand or from the ridge just inside his nostrils.
"Tom, can you go into the kitchen and find a roll of paper towels? There should be one still wrapped in plastic, under the sink."
"Sure." Tom spared his friend a brief, worried look, then took the stairs two at a time, coming back out holding the requested towels in both hands a minute and a half later.
By the time Jed could rip the plastic from the roll and strip off a first square, Cory's sneezing fit seemed to have lost most of its momentum, perhaps aided by simply being out in the fresh, salt-laced air. Even so, it rattled Jed a bit to think that this was probably what Cory went through every day, to a greater or lesser degree depending on indoor air quality and pollen counts. A solid year of shots seemed to have had some dampening effect, but Cory's system was also attuning itself to new pollens unknown in his native Kansas, and Jed feared that new sensitivities would simply move in to replace the old, defeated ones.
"Hehhh-chhhhh." The last sneeze was long, but quiet, a bit like all of the air being let out of a tire, and when Cory pulled his hand down and away from his nose, Jed stepped forward to offer him the towel, folded in half to make it easier to handle.
"Oh, thags, Dogder Steveds," Cory said, sounding just as he had during the car ride earlier, but this time, he was not faking his congestion. He cupped the two layers of rough paper towel around his nose, blowing into them as hard as he could before adjusting the towel and blowing again.
"You're welcome." Jed shoved his fists into the front pocket of his trousers, feeling like an idiot when his left hand stopped an inch short of its usual space, impeded by a wadded up cotton cloth. He pulled his hand back just enough to extend his fingers, using his index and middle fingers in a pincer-like grip to grab hold of and then pull out a crumpled bandanna.
"I, ah, believe you could use this back." It was the same cloth Cory had sheepishly asked Jed to hold onto earlier that afternoon, and the ten-year-old looked almost as relived to have it returned as Jed felt to have found it for him.
"You didn't go into the living room and bedroom, did you?" He was concerned, as he watched Cory mop at allergic tears and then blow his nose again, that his sweeping and dusting project hadn't been thorough enough. The last thing he wanted was to subject Cory to allergens all through the night, a miserable trial to say the least.
"Huh-uh." Cory shook his head, then grimaced and caught a sharp "chishhh!" neatly in his bandanna. "I was loogig for a glass id the kidched cabideds, ad I busd have godded a dosefull of dusd."
"One of the few places I overlooked, Cory, and I do apologize for that. I haven't used this place in, let's see, three or four months, maybe longer."
"I thoud id was subthig lige thad." Every time Cory had visited Tom's house, the place had been, if not immaculate, then at least as allergen-free as possible. No pets, not even a goldfish, since Jed would have brought any pet danders with him into his clinic, unknowingly on his clothing. There was a small garden in the backyard, but it was primarily for experimental or heirloom breeds of vegetables, and even Cory was able to stay out there for hours without any major symptoms.
"If you'd like a glass, I'll go wash one, but I thought we'd do the manly roughing-it thing this weekend. You know, drink pop right out of the can."
"And burp a lot?" Tom piped up, chugging half of his can of root beer and then letting loose with a magnificent belch. "Urrrrrrp!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Jed frowned at his son, but picked up a can of cream soda and popped the top on it. "You're an amateur, kid." He gulped the entire can down, then inhaled deeply and belched out half the alphabet, finally flaming out when he hit the letter L.
"Coool. Can you teach me to do that?" Cory, who had recovered from his sneezing fit and was now trying to thread a hot dog onto his coat hanger cum roasting stick, looked up from his task and regarded his allergist with awe. Truly, he had never gotten even the faintest glimpse of this side of Doctor Stevens' personality, certainly not in his clinic appointments and not even in the less formal space of the Stevens home.
"Well," Jed said diplomatically, taking the stick from Cory and making sure the hot dog was threaded securely before he gave it back. "It takes practice, but I think you might have the gift. First, guys, let's eat -- I am starving like Marving."
The trio sat down on webbed nylon lawn chairs, poised around a small hibachi grill, and roasted hot dogs until the casings were singed in some places and a dark shade of brown everywhere else. Jed was pleased to see Tom devour two hot dogs, complete with buns and a slathering of mustard for both, keeping pace with Cory, who put away food at am amazing clip for such a string bean of a kid. After they'd had their fill of "dinner," nutritionally sketchy as it was, they broke out the fixings for s'mores, a chocolate bar for each boy and a packet of graham crackers to sandwich the marshmallows and chocolate between.
While Jed roasted his marshmallows with almost surgical precision, both Ciry and tom preferred the dive-bomb approach, holding their sticks close enough to the glowing coals to ignite the puffs of whipped sugar The third round of `mallows was a particularly magnificent experience, after the two boys had gotten the hang of setting them alight at just the right moment.
"Oooh, extremely cool!" Both Cory and Tom stared in awe at the marshmallow, aloft on its wire and burning like a medieval torch, bright orange flames curling up from and around the charred black surface.
"Just don't go flicking that anywhere, guys." Jed carefully rotated his own marshmallow over the glowing embers, holding the slowly-tanning cylinder of whipped sugar a practiced distance from the heat. "I'm not looking forward to treating second-degree burns."
Tom pulled the coat hanger down toward him, blowing at it to put out the flame. He waited a minute to allow it to cool down, then wrapped his fingers around the crumbly black shell and pulled it off, revealing a gooey center, which he tugged off of the wire with his teeth.
"Ohhh, Aaaad, ooo urry oo uch."
"Yes, so I do. But humor me, it's my very favorite hobby. Other people tie fishing flies or knit hats, I worry too much." Jed pulled his own perfectly-tanned marshmallow off its wire, reaching back for another graham cracker and snapping it in two before sandwiching the marshmallow between the halves. The puffy tan and white sugar squooshed satisfyingly toward the edges, and he took a cautious bite. "Mmm."
"Are there any more chocolate bars left?" Cory had devoured an impressive number of s'mores, two for every one Tom had eaten.
"Nope, afraid not. We still have a few more marshmallows, if you want them plain."
"Okay." Cory leaned to his left to stick a hand into the bag Jed held out, taking two marshmallows and stabbing both of them with the end of his wire roasting "stick". He took more care with the last two than he had with the previous four -- or had it been six? -- turning them slowly as if they were on a rotisserie two inches above the coals until they had achieved the same perfection of golden brown that beach bunnies spent days and weeks pursuing.
"Want one?" He held the stick out first to Jed, who declined politely, then to Tom, who pulled one off and put it into his mouth, holding his mouth open a little so that the marshmallow could cool. Cory waited a fraction of a minute longer, and was able to devour his as soon as he pulled it off the stick. "Yummm."
"That was really good," Tom agreed, leaning back to look up at the night sky. "Hey, Dad, you see Orion up there?"
"Yeah." He sighted his way up his son's outstretched arm, finding the belt easily. It was actually the only constellation he could find reliably, but he needn't have worried, as Cory pitched in to help find ursa major, ursa minor, and a dozen other summer constellations visible in the northern hemisphere. They traded stories back and forth about what they recalled of each constellation, renaming them as they went along, until an hour had gone by and Jed noticed both boy's eyes beginning to droop.
"Okay, guys, time for bed. You go get ready, and I'll put out the coals, here." He nodded to the hibachi, where a few remaining embers still glowed a faint orange, then took a bucket from the edge of the patio and walked toward the edge of the water to fill it up. The coals were quickly doused with a hiss and a puff of steam, but Jed stirred them up twice and doused them again to make absolutely sure they were out. In the morning, he would dump them into a paper bag, but that would wait.
When he came into the small bedroom in the cabin, which held a double bed and a nightstand, both Cory and Tom sat up, the light blanket tenting around their folded and raised knees.
"Brushed teeth?" Two nods.
"Used the bathroom?" Two more nods, followed by eye rolling
"Good, good. Cory, you have an extra handkerchief under your pillow, just in case?"
"Yes." Cory patted the pillow behind him.
"Good. Tom, I'll leave the box of tissues here on the nightstand."
"Okay, Dad." More eye rolling.
"I'll be in the living room, if you need anything." The couch folded out into a serviceable hide-a-bed, though Jed anticipated staying up far into the night to read the medical journals he'd brought with him. "Sleep well guys."
He left the door to the bedroom ajar just an inch, and heard the two boys talking to each other for another half hour before silence descended over the cabin. With the front windows open, Jed could hear the whooshing noise the waves made as they came up and pulled back, and their rhythm was soothing, exactly the counterpoint he needed as he read through yet another article on a new procedure for cross-matching bone marrow for transplantation. It was a new procedure, pioneered at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which everyone in Seattle affectionately called "The Hutch," and other centers had been getting fair results with it as well. There were always risks from rejection, but at least it was emerging as a last-ditch treatment for leukemia and other hematological cancers.
Later that night, as Jed was about to doze off after one more article about some new and weird outbreak of pneumocystis pneumonia in San Francisco's Castro District, he heard Tom cry out from the midst of some nightmare. He ran to the bedroom, trying to minimize the noise his bare feet made on the floor, only to find that Cory had instinctively, and without waking, rolled over to place his arm protectively over Tom's shoulder and chest, cuddling around his son like one puppy around another in a newborn litter. Tom made a small mewling noise, then sighed and fell back into a deeper sleep, Cory's arm still around him.
Assured that neither Tom nor Cory were likely to wake again before morning, Jed padded back to his bed in the living room, tucking himself into bed and allowing the gentle wash of the waves on the shore lull him into a deep and, mercifully, dreamless sleep.
The "character" of Dixie Lee Ray is based on a family story my dad tells of my brother having been screamed at by Governor Ray when he dared to cut across her property. Gov. Ray is long since dead, and I'm sure she was a nice lady most of the time. No libelous or slanderous intent here. And a major tip of the hat to the late Randy Shilts, who reported for the San Fransicso Chronicle when AIDS was first taking hold in the Castro District. His _And the Band Played On_ is an amazing work of investigative and medical journalism, and the article Jed is reading at the end of this story is an allusion to the first cases of HIV/AIDS in San Fran's gay mecca of "The Castro".