His idea was that we all take a sheet of paper and write down everything we could remember of our dreams over the last week, then compare notes. This was just scientific enough so that Harold couldn't grumble too much.
Well, the only dream I've had is the one I've already written down, and I won't repeat it. I'll just say I wrote it down, leaving in the part about my father but leaving out the part about the baby and the coathanger he always has.
The results when we compared our papers were rather amazing.
Harold, Stu, and I had all dreamed about "the dark man," as I call him. Both Stu & I visualized him as a man in a monk's robe with no visible features - his face is always in a shadow. Harold's paper said that he was always standing in a dark doorway, beckoning to him "like a pimp." Sometimes he could just see his feet and the shine of his eyes "like weasel's eyes" is how he put it.
Stu and Glen's dreams of the old woman are very similar. The points of similarity are almost too many to go into (which is my "literary" way of saying my fingers are going numb). Anyway, they both agree she is in Polk County, Nebraska, altho they couldn't get together on the actual name of the town - Stu says Hollingford Home, Glen says Hemingway Home. Close either way. They both seemed to feel they could find it. (Note Well, diary: My guess is "Hemingford Home.")
Glen said, "This is really remarkable. We all seem to be sharing an authentic psychic experience." Harold pooh-poohed, of course, but he looked like he'd been given lots of food for thought. He would only agree to go on the basis of "we have to go somewhere." We leave in the morning. I'm scared, excited, and mostly happy to be leaving Stovington, which is a death-place. And I'll take that old woman over the dark man anytime.
Things to Remember: "Hang loose" meant don't get upset. "Rad" and "gnarly" were ways of saying a thing was good. "No sweat" meant you weren't worried. To "boogie down" was to have a good time, and lots of people wore T-shirts which said SHIT HAPPENS, which it certainly did... and still does. "I got grease" was a pretty current expression (I first heard it just this year) that meant everything was going well. "Digs," an old British expression, was just replacing "pad" or "crashpad" as an expression for the place you were living in before the superflu hit. It was very cool to say "I dig your digs." Stupid, huh? But that was life.
It was just after twelve noon.
Perion had fallen into an exhausted sleep beside Mark, who they had moved carefully into the shade two hours earlier. He was in and out of consciousness, and it was easier on all of them when he was out. He had held against the pain for the remainder of the night, but after daybreak he had finally given in to it and when he was conscious, his screams curdled their blood. They stood looking at each other, helpless. No one had wanted any lunch.
"It's his appendix," Glen said. "I don't think there's any doubt about it."
"Maybe we ought to try... well, operating on him," Harold said. He was looking at Glen. "I don't suppose you..."
"We'd kill him," Glen said flatly. "You know that, Harold. If we could open him up without having him bleed to death, which we couldn't, we wouldn't know his appendix from his pancreas. The stuff in there isn't labeled, you know."
"We'll kill him if we don't," Harold said.
"Do you want to try?" Glen asked waspishly. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Harold."
"I don't see that you're being much help in our current situation, either," Harold said, flushing.
"No, stop, come on," Stu said. "What good are either of you doing? Unless one of you plans to saw him open with a jackknife, it's out of the question, anyway."
"Stu! " Frannie almost gasped.
"Well?" he asked, and shrugged. "The nearest hospital would be back in Maumee. We could never get him there. I don't even think we could get him back to the turnpike."
"You're right, of course," Glen muttered, and ran a hand over his sandpapery cheek. "Harold, I apologize. I'm very upset. I knew this sort of thing could happen - pardon me, would happen - but I guess I only knew it in an academic way. This is a lot different than sitting in the old study, blue-skying things."
Harold muttered an ungrateful acknowledgment and walked off with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. He looked like a sulky, overgrown ten-year-old.
"Why can't we move him?" Fran asked desperately, looking from Stu to Glen.
"Because of how much his appendix must have swelled by now," Glen said. "If it bursts, it's going to dump enough poison into his system to kill ten men."
Stu nodded. "Peritonitis."
Frannie's head whirled. Appendicitis? That was nothing these days. Nothing. Why sometimes, if you were in the hospital for gallstones or something, they would just lift out your appendix on general principles while they still had you open. She remembered that one of her grammar school friends, a boy named Charley Biggers whom everyone had called Biggy, had had his appendix out during the summer between fifth and sixth grades. He was only in the hospital for two or three days. Having your appendix out was just nothing, medically speaking.