MIKE MADE IT to his feet a few times, but he could only take a couple of steps before he fell. He screamed then, as if he’d broken something, and continued screaming, sometimes banging his head on the floor, until my mother came to gather him up and quiet him. I remember him in his highchair at meals; if he dropped his spoon, he shrieked and rocked and banged his head so hard against the back of the chair that he had lumps. Dad tried to discipline him out of this by removing him from the table, or by threatening to spank him or to take away his crayons and coloring book. Sometimes a little beer in a plastic cup would quiet him. Dad fixed a pad of foam rubber to the back of the highchair with electrician’s tape.
Mike stayed in the highchair for a long time. When Bob began to outgrow his wheelchair, Dad bought a larger one, secondhand, from the hospital, and Mike inherited the old one. He never outgrew it.
Mike became a good talker. When it came to TV shows he’d seen, sports events, things that happened at the crippled children’s school he attended, or what funny thing Mom, Dad, Joe, or Bob had said while I was out, he could really make the story come alive again, reaching far back to the details leading to the event, and sometimes losing his audience before he got to the point. He loved company, though we had few visitors during that time.
One day the newsboy was allowed into the living room while Mom went to find some money for him. I was reading and looked up and nodded hello; Bob did the same. The newsboy was uncomfortable with the two wheelchairs. Mom took a long time, and the boy, rocking back and forth and looking at the floor, asked me what I was reading.
“First time he went fishing,” Mike said, “he went with Eddie Freeman and his father. You maybe know them if they get the paper from you—oh, that’s right, you must. I know they do because Mrs. Freeman asked Mom if she saw in the paper where there was this guy who was grabbing all the ladies uptown in the stores and kissing them. That’s right. And they went fishing out near Quakertown, and Eddie caught three big fish and Mr. Freeman put them in a big tub so we could see them still alive when they got home. Bob put his fingers in the water and touched them. Not me; I was too afraid. And Mrs. Freeman said they were dirty fish and they should throw them out, not eat them.” Mom came back with the money. As the boy was leaving, Mike shouted after him, “It was Eddie caught all the fish, and that’s why Dick keeps reading fishing books!”
His screaming went on and on, mostly at night. The defeats and frustrations of the day became the fears and nightmares that woke us all at night. At first the doctor said that he would outgrow his terror; later he said that it was an electrochemical problem and recommended a diet. Nothing worked.
Sleeping downstairs with him, Bob knew more about Mike’s nightmares than the rest of us. Somehow he became used to being awakened by screams a few feet away, and was able to anticipate them. If we slept undisturbed some nights, it was because Bob woke him just before he would have screamed. They talked; there was something between them, sharing the same small room, the same fate, that I can never know. Once I asked Bob if he knew what Mike’s nightmares were about. “He’s scared,” he said.
“But what’s he scared of?”
“Nothing. He’s just scared. Sometimes it’s a clown. He says a big clown laughs and laughs at him and tries to kill him. Once he told me that a puppet chased him and knocked him down and nailed him to the floor. Another time he told me there were worms in his bed. He’s just scared, that’s all.” He gave me a look then, as if he were going to go on, but he didn’t.