Bright laughed. 'You're not alone in that, my friend.'
'I suppose I'll go back to teaching. It's all I know. But right now that's too far ahead to think about.'
Bright thanked him for the interview and left. The artide appeared in the paper two days later, the day before his leg surgery. It was on the bottom of the front page, and the headline read: JOHN SMITH, MODERN RIP VAN WINKLE, FACES LONG ROAD BACK.
There were three pictures, one of them Johnny's picture for the Cleaves Mills High School yearbook (it had been taken barely a week before the accident), a picture of Johnny in his hospital bed, looking thin and twisted with his arms and legs in their bent positions. Between these two was a picture of the almost totally demolished taxi, lying on its side like a dead dog. There was no mention in Bright's artide of sixth senses, precognitive powers, or wild talents.
'How did you turn him off the ESP angle?' Weizak asked him that evening.
Johnny shrugged. 'He seemed like a nice guy. Maybe he didn't want to stick me with it.'
'Maybe not,' Weizak said. 'But he won't forget it. Not if he's a good reporter, and I understand that he is.'
'You understand?'
'I asked around.'
'Looking out for my best interests?'
'We all do what we can, nuh? Are you nervous about tomorrow, Johnny?'
'Not nervous, no. Scared is a more accurate word.'
'Yes, of course you are. I would be.'
'Will you be there?'
'Yes, in the observation section of the operating theater. You won't be able to tell me from the others in my greens, but I will be there.'
'Wear something,' Johnny said. 'Wear something so I'll know it's you.'
Weizak looked at him, and smiled. 'All right. I'll pin my watch to my tunic.'
'Good,' Johnny said. 'What about Dr. Brown? Will he be there?'
'Dr. Brown is in Washington. Tomorrow he will present you to the American Society of Neurologists. I have read his paper. It is quite good. Perhaps overstated.'
'You weren't invited?'
Weizak shrugged. 'I don't like to fly. That is something that scares me-'
'And maybe you wanted to stay here?'
Weizak smiled crookedly, spread his hands, and said nothing.
'He doesn't like me much, does he?' Johnny asked. 'Dr. Brown?'
'No, not much,' Weizak said. 'He thinks you are having us on. Making things up for some reason of your own. Seeking attention, perhaps. Don't judge him solely on that, John. His cast of mind makes it impossible for him to think otherwise. if you feel anything for Jim, feel a little pity. He is a brilliant man, and he will go far. Already he has offers, and someday soon he will fly from these cold north woods and Bangor will see him no more. He will go to Houston or Hawaii or possibly even to Paris. But he is curiously limited. He is a mechanic of the brain. He has cut it to pieces with his scalpel and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control. You must never tell him I said that.'
'No.'
'And now you must rest. Tomorrow you have a long day.
2.
All Johnny saw of the worldfamous Dr. Ruopp during the operation was a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses and a large wen at the extreme left side of the man's forehead. The rest of him was capped, gowned, and gloved.
Johnny had been given two preop injections, one of demerol and one of atropine, and when he was wheeled in he was as high as a kite. The anesthetist approached with the biggest novocaine needle Johnny had ever seen in his life. He expected that the injection would hurt, and he was not wrong. He was injected between L4 and L5, the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, high enough up to avoid the cauda equina, that bundle of nerves at the base of the spine that vaguely resembles a horse's tail.
Johnny lay on his stomach and bit his arm to keep from screaming.
After an endless time, the pain began to fade to a dull sensation of pressure. Otherwise, the lower half of his body was totally gone.
Ruopp's face loomed over him. The green bandit, Johnny thought. Jesse James in horn-rims. Your money or your life.
'Are you comfortable, Mr. Smith?' Ruopp asked.
'Yes. But I'd just as soon not go through that again.'
'You may read magazines, if you like. Or you may watch in the mirror, if you feel it will not upset you.'
'All right.'
'Nurse, give me a blood pressure, please.'
'One-twenty over seventy-six, Doctor.'
'That's lovely. Well, group, shall we begin?'
'Save me a drumstick,' Johnny said weakly, and was surprised by the hearty laughter. Ruopp patted his sheet-covered shoulder with one thinly gloved hand.