The Risk Pool

it when he finished. He was looking at the painting as if it genuinely consumed his interest.
    “See how it’s on … the left side of the road?” he said. “The wagon? In a few … minutes it’ll be over there … on the right side … wait … you’ll see.”
    He could only get out a few words before breaking off, gulping oxygen. After catching his breath though, he inched like a crab toward a sitting position. When I saw what he was trying to do, I stood to help, but he waved me off and finally accomplished the design himself. The effort cost him his breath again and it was a while before he spoke. Finally, he said, “Who blabbed?”
    “Smooth called,” I said, lying instinctively to protect Wussy, realizing even as I spoke that there was no reason to protect anybody from Sam Hall’s wrath. Not anymore.
    “Figures,” he said, then thought about it. “How’d he get your number?”
    I said I was in the book, and that seemed to satisfy him.
    “Well,” he said. “This is about it, I’m afraid.”
    “They lied to you, didn’t they,” I said.
    He shrugged, closed his eyes sluggishly, opened them again. “That’s all right … I never believed them … anyway … when you still got it … you know.”
    “You might have told me.”
    He looked at me. “What for?”
    “Because I’m your son,” I said, almost adding, “because I love you.”
    “So … you had a month without … any headaches … my treat.”
    “I shouldn’t have believed you. I should have guessed.”
    “You never … could tell when I was lying,” he said, grinning weakly, in reference to our old game. “How’s your dolly?”
    “Good,” I said.
    “You figure you’ll marry her.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Good,” he said. “You need somebody to … look after you … I never did, myself.”
    “She’s a good girl,” I said.
    “Seems like it,” he said. “Don’t bring her … here … I’d like to meet her but …” He looked away, in the general direction of the hall, which was brightly lit, in contrast to the perpetual dusk of the room.
    “See my new cheaters?” he said, spying them on the bedstand and handing them to me.
    I tried them on, made a face, handed them back to him.
    “New apartment … new glasses … new television … new furniture … old everything else. Smooth asks you … to pay for anything … tell him where to get off.”
    “I will.”
    Neither of us said anything for a minute, but I could tell he was worried about the way he was leaving things.
    “Do me a favor,” he said finally, taking off the oxygen mask and tossing it on the bed.
    “Sure,” I said, figuring that he was going to ask me to adjust the bed or something.
    “Take me home,” he said. “To hell with this place.”
    I blinked.
    But he’d swung his thin legs over the side of the bed and was pointing to the small closet where his clothes hung.
    I stood, but made no move to get them. “Dad,” I said. “You can’t. You’d never make it.
We’d
never make it.”
    “Just … do like I say for once,” he said.
    And then he stood up.
    Seeing him do it filled me with awe. There was absolutely nothing left of him, you see. The nurses would tell me later that he had not eaten in days. For a week he’d politely pushed the tray away when it was set in front of him, unless there was ice cream, which tasted good to him, for some reason. Then one night he’dseen they were serving something he remembered liking and was for some reason half hungry. He thought he’d try a little, provided they’d hold the gravy, which he never could eat even when he was healthy. But despite his plea it had come smothered with gravy, and he’d picked up the dish and tossed it out into the hall. When the tough head nurse came in and read him the riot act, he’d told her from now on they could serve the food any goddamn way they liked, because he wasn’t going to eat it anyway.
    “Have you ever been force-fed, Mr. Hall?” the nurse had asked him.
    “Have you ever had a spoon shoved up your ass?” he’d replied. “Sideways?”
    And the next night when he didn’t eat dinner he had the spoon in his hand when the nurse came in. She’d taken one look, shaken her head, and retreated, returning for the tray and the spoon after he’d fallen asleep. He hadn’t eaten since.
    So when he stood up and made clear to me that it was his intention to get dressed, with my help or without it, I did