In Blake’s Time: The end of something

At the shore there was another boat. There would always be other boats. No one stood waiting.

Blake and the doctor climbed in the boat. They shoved off. They dipped wooden paddles into the water. They felt the current through their paddles. It was cold on the water, and they rowed in short, choppy motions, to move, to stay warm.

The cast on Blake’s hand made the rowing difficult, but he did not complain, at least not out loud. Instead, he mimed the doctor’s earlier orders to wake up by stretching his mouth wide and slow in the moonlight.

“Where are we going, Doc?” Blake asked.

“Over to another camp. Someone there is very sick.”

“Oh,” said Blake. “Is it in the zone?”

“No, Blake, it is not in the zone.”

“Okay,” said Blake. “But are they into comedy?”

The doctor leaned into rowing. The paddles dipped into the current moving all around them. The world rushed by.

Across the water and through the darkness they found another shore, outside the zone. An orange light, no larger than a nickel, glowed near the shadowy line of fir trees.

A dark silhouette moved along the wooded edge. The orange light glowed and flared. It descended in an arc.

“Avery,” said the doctor to the crunch of approaching footsteps.

“Doc.”

Blake could smell warm tobacco on the man’s breath and clothes.

“You got any more of those Auerbachs?”

“That’s the last of the ones you gave me.”

“That’s too bad.”

“They’re waiting for you.”

The doctor checked his watch. “Secure the boat.” He turned toward Blake, “You ready?”

“I still don’t know why we’re here.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

The two men, the doctor in the lead and Blake behind him, walked away from the water. As they did so, Avery dragged the boat farther from the river.

The lamp the doctor carried disappeared and reappeared in the woods beyond the water’s edge. The glow hovered over a dew-soaked meadow. Blake walked on the edge of the lamp’s halo falling on the ground. He imagined a device he could hold in his hand. The device would grant him access to all the world’s jokes. Tomorrow he would whittle a prototype and show it to the doctor.

They arrived at a bend. Dogs barked in the distance. The barks grew louder as they drew closer to a huddle of shacks. Blake judged the shanties too small to be houses, but he was wrong. People lived here.

A man with a lamp of his own greeted them.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young man. In what came as a surprise to everyone the man, whose name was Andre Drummond, had been in labor for two days. And what came as an even bigger surprise the man, whose name was Reggie Jackson, lay on the bunk above him and he, too, was in labor.

“Told you it was bad, Doc.”

First, the doctor admitted he hadn’t seen anything like his current predicament, aside from a poorly conceived frontier short story. Then he ordered some water be heated and prepared to deliver these men from their pains.

As the doctor transformed the inside of the shanty into a makeshift delivery room, Blake smirked. Then the smirk cracked into a giggle. And then the giggle burst into laughter as the young man keeled over holding his own hard belly in his hands. When he finally gathered himself, he huffed and heaved in an effort to gather thoughts into syllables: “But they’re both—”

But the doctor cut him off before he could finish. “These two men are going to have babies, Blake. We may not understand it, but it’s the world we now live in.”

Blake didn’t respond. He always struggled to respond when the doctor mounted his high horse.

Just then both pregnant men shrieked, and if Blake had not been staring at the anguish twisting their faces, he might have mistaken the sounds for schoolgirl reveries.

“Well, if that’s the case, can’t you stop them from screaming?” asked Blake.

“No, I can’t,” the doctor said. “But my job’s not to really hear the pain of other. Instead, I do what’s best for the team so to speak.”

The water could be heard boiling over the fire. The doctor walked into the kitchen and placed some of his tools and items in it. He stared at Blake and washed his hands.

“Blake, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they’re not. Then again, maybe that doesn’t matter here. I don’t really know how a man’s supposed to give birth. I really don’t know how a man, not to mention two men, get pregnant. The thing is, Blake, I have to operate.”

The doctor turned toward the bunkbeds: “Pull back those quilts, Stan.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” said a chubby man with a brown mustache.

As the doctor performed surgery, Blake held the water basin. The ordeal took a lot of time and also no time at all. Years passed by in a matter of moments.

“Huh?” said the doctor. He hunched like he was holding a baby, but when he turned around, he held an orange sphere smeared with rust-colored blood and slick fluids. He handed the ball to the man named Stan. Then he turned and cut another basketball out the second man’s belly and handed it to Stan also. “Well,” said the doctor, “there’s your problem.”

Blake tried to look away. He squinted at the bloody spheres, not really knowing what to make from the shapes the world seemed to be taking.

The doctor began to sew up the incisions he had made in each man.

Outside, the doctor relaxed. He said, “Well, that’s one for the books,” to no one in particular. He felt good. Perhaps lighter.

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, come now, Blake, you just have to trust in the plan or the process or whatever it is.”

“But birthing basketballs doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, come now, you’ve read about evolution.”

“I don’t think that’s what just happened,” said Blake.

The doctor did have to agree with that. “Still,” the doctor responded, “who else could have done such a thing?”

As if in response to the doctor’s question, a scream broke from the woods, back toward the boat landing. The doctor snatched his lamp from the shanty and dashed toward the sound. Blake followed. So did the man named Stan.

In the woods, they found a man laying on the ground with an arrow through his head. Blood pooled on the damp soil underneath him.

“Take Blake back to the camp,” said the doctor.

Stan placed his hands on Blake’s shoulders and tried to turn him away from the body.

“Come on, Doc! This isn’t any more graphic than what I just saw!”

“This is different,” said the doctor. “This is different.”

The doctor shielded the sight from Blake’s young eyes. “Besides, someone has to help Stan here watch over those basketballs.”

“Aren’t you going to?”

“I’ll be there soon enough. Seems like other things might need to happen first, though.”

Blake stared with a blank look in his eyes. He turned and walked back toward the camp with Stan, glancing over his shoulder only once.

Next: The Encyclopedia of Modern Moves

It was just beginning to be daylight when the body rolled over and opened its eyes. The young man sat up and reached for the arrow shaft protruding through his skull. When he removed it from his head, Doc grinned. A plastic arch connected the front half of the arrow with the back portion. The feathers caught the light and almost looked real.

“Well,” said Tobias, “I guess he bought it.”

“He didn’t have much choice,” said the doctor. “And we don’t have much time.”

The two men sprinted through the woods, over the ground sloping to the water. The doctor and Avery climbed in one boat, while Tobias and a larger man climbed in another.

On the journey, a fish hefted itself free of the current, making a circle. Tobias sat in the stern of the boat, a fake arrow through his head once more, and dragged his fingertips through the water.

On the shore, with his back to the rising sun, Blake watched them go. He knelt with his hand in the water too. The current felt still and warm and far from his heart. He yearned for a sandwich.