I'm losing you.
I used to resent you whenever you disappeared to Bora Bora or
Tibet. When things got hot, you flew away. God, how I wish you
could do that now. Now, your wings are clipped. You sit all day
in the tv room of that goddamned nursing home, ten kilometers
outside of Paris, staring out the window. If you notice anything
now, I sure can't tell anymore.
You used to talk my ear off. And Mac's. And you ran up one hell
of a bar tab. You never did pay it off. When I visited you last
week, I did all the talking. The last time you spoke, over a
month ago, you asked me for a beer. I couldn't give you one, of
course, not in your condition.
Mac had you committed finally, two months ago. For some reason,
you'd made him your next of kin. After you stopped answering your
calls for a week, Mac and I busted down your door. You were lying
on the couch in front of the tv, catatonic. You hadn't washed.
You hadn't shaved. You hadn't eaten. Maybe a hundred beer bottles
littered the floor around you. The smell was...well it was pretty
bad.
Ohhh, Old Man, I was so sure you'd outlive us all. How could I
believe otherwise when I've only got a few decades of my own
left? I'm just a Mortal. I really miss your jackal laugh. You
were so vibrant, so bright. And you seemed so young. That was an
illusion. I can hear the staff talk about you when I come visit.
"It's so sad," they say. "He's so young. It
doesn't seem fair." If only they knew how old you really
are. We see the Sphinx on the sands, and we think, if it's lasted
over 4000 years, why not forever? And you, even older than that
hunk of desert rock--because you look so young, we thought that
you'd always have more time. You were a constant--first a myth,
then an exasperating, cagey survivor. A force of nature. Seeing
you like this is like watching the sun go dark.
Your body goes on, naturally, as tough as ever. You've lost
weight, though. You were always rangy. But, that faded t-shirt
and those stained sweatpants they put on you every day just hang
off you now. You wouldn't make much of a challenge anymore. Any
other Immortal would find your formidable Quickening an easy
prize. I can't protect you 24 hours a day. So, I just visit you
as much as I can, and hope for the best.
Still, your physical condition isn't the problem. Your body keeps
on regenerating and maintaining itself
with its usual efficiency. It's your mind that's broken, crumbled
to dust by the weight of five millennia.
Those were hard years, too. You weren't any Darius, hiding in a
monk's robes on Holy Ground. No, you stayed out in the
world--living, dying, loving, hating, roaming, studying,
building, burning. You were a busy boy. Even when you did the
monk gig, you wandered.
Let's not forget the Horsemen. Even Darius, with his Immortal
Catholic guilt, couldn't top the thousand years of sins that you
stocked up as Death on a Horse. You once told Mac you had a
thousand regrets. Was one more too many?
I guess, if you noticed anything anymore, you'd be disappointed
in us. Mac has made it out to the nursing home maybe three times
since you arrived. Amanda could only handle it once. I try for
twice a week. I'm sorry. It's so hard, seeing you like this. You
lie in your chair, in a parody of your familiar, casual sprawl.
Your eyes stare, unfocused, past my shoulder. I think they used
to be hazel; now they're this muddy, light brown. Sometimes you
drool, your mouth hanging open. Your face was always pale; now
it's pasty. Your lips are cracked, your hair unwashed. Most days,
they don't shave you. You never react to that nursing home stink
that makes me choke--the miasma of strong people who have lost
all control over their lives. You don't hear your roommate
screaming at the walls all day long.
Next to you sits a picture frame. You never look at it anymore.
We found you clinging to it, in your
apartment. The photo is one of those tourist snapshots. You and
Alexa roped some poor local in Santorini into taking a picture of
you two on the beach. It's nighttime, a sunset glow behind you.
You're both laughing, overexposed by the camera flash. Your eyes
are closed. Alexa has redeye, her face blotchy. Your hair is
sticking up on one side. The angle is skewed, as if the picture-
taker had been as drunk as you two were.
I am so glad that she didn't live to see you like this.
The nurses encourage me to talk to you. They think you might
still be able to hear me, that you might
respond. I try. I do the touchy-feely stuff, patting you on the
head, shoulder or knee, the way I would a little kid. I use every
name I can think of that you might recognize: Methos, Adam, Ben,
Doc, even Death. I hug you when I come in and when I leave.
Sometimes, I ruffle your hair. It's a funny thing. It used to be
that you would have tolerated that kind of familiarity for
approximately a second. Then, you would have disemboweled me with
your sarcasm.
In the beginning, a little over a year ago, you used your wit as
a shield. I remember the first time I really noticed the cracks.
You walked into the bar, the morning after standing me up for
lunch. When I called you on it, you laughed at me, told me I was
getting senile. Then, Mac stomped in from the cold, in a snit
because you'd stood him up for dinner. That wasn't so funny then,
was it?
It turned out later that you didn't remember that day at all.
After that, the holes got bigger and harder to hide. You started
to blank out in the bar. I'd come off stage from playing a set.
You'd be sitting there, staring intently up at the stage. When
I'd talk to you, you wouldn't respond for a couple of seconds.
Then, you'd drag yourself out of some inner place. You'd flash
your crooked smile at me, tease me, call me, "Dad" for
acting so concerned. The joke wore thin once you started fading
out on me in the middle of conversations.
Still later, you began to confuse languages. I watched you trying
to get gas once after you'd taken me
to an outdoor jazz concert. You banged your head on the steering
wheel, getting angrier and more frightened as you cycled through
half a dozen dead languages, trying to communicate with the gas
attendant. After you started crying in sheer frustration, I
stepped in and paid the kid 50 francs that I couldn't afford. You
didn't rediscover French (or English) for another hour.
Sometimes, it really sucks not having legs anymore. We could have
used mine that day. As it was, I had to get the attendant to pull
the car over to the side of the garage until you remembered how
to drive again. He looked disgusted as we finally drove away.
Stupid kid. Did he think he'd never grow old? Did he think he'd
live forever?
Other times, you were manic. I still remember the night you
played Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be With You"
repeatedly on my jukebox for three hours. You sucked down beer
after beer, dancing by yourself with your eyes closed. Then, you
babbled about Alexa to anybody who would listen. It didn't seem
to matter that your wife had died five years before that night.
You acted as if you'd lost her yesterday.
I had to close the bar early. The other customers were getting
nervous. I didn't like the way they stared, whispering behind
your back. Later, I sat with you at a table in the silent bar as
you shaped her in the air with your hands, talking, talking,
talking about Alexa. The longing in your voice...I guess I'd
thought you'd get over her eventually, the way you seemed to get
over everyone you ever lost. I didn't understand that you were
already forgetting her, losing her a second time along
with the rest of your life, helpless to stop the erosion. I was
so wrong about you, in too many ways.
Like Lucifer, you crashed and burned. No long twilight for you.
No Immortal come to take your head at sunset in one last
challenge. You pretended to the end that nothing was wrong, until
it was much too late to express your wishes about anything. Mac
won't do what he needs to for you. Please don't blame him. He
still thinks there's some magic that will bring you back. He's
only four centuries old. He can't let go of you. After all the
bitterness and betrayal, he still loves you. You are still his
revered elder, his Immortal clan chieftain, even in eclipse. It's
up to me, now.
I know you don't want to linger like this. You loved life, more
than anyone I've ever met. You loved it beyond reason. This isn't
life. You'd know that if you still knew anything.
That's why I've brought you out here to this cemetery that holds
so many of your dead, with a sword.
It's your Ivanhoe blade, too heavy for me to use, but too
appropriate for me not to. At least you can walk unaided. You
wander between Amy and me, going wherever we guide you. The
afternoon is turning fair and warm after a foggy morning. A
breeze ruffles the flowers sprouting out of the thawing earth.
Spring is here.
I didn't think you'd want to die in the morning. You always hated
mornings. I wish you would give me some sign that I'm doing the
right thing, but you probably won't. You'll be contrary to the
end, I'll bet.
Thank God for Amy. Not only has she started speaking to me again,
but she's also willing to go to the wall with me for you. I guess
you saved more than her life that day four years ago, when I
tried to sell you down the river. Thank you for my daughter, Old
Man. It will be worth it going to prison for you. Amy will
probably get time, too, as an accessory, but it doesn't matter.
They can't take my daughter away from me again.
We don't have much time. We snuck you out of the home while Mac
was distracted arguing paperwork with one of the nursing
supervisors. He'll be hot on our trail, soon. And if not him, the
police.
In a way, I hope he catches up with us in the end. I don't want
your Quickening to go to waste like Darius', despite the risk.
The doctors say you have some kind of senile dementia, like
Alzheimer's, that your brain, not your mind, is what's finally
breaking down. Maybe that's the reason why there are no other
5000 year old Immortals. If that's true, then your Quickening
should be clean and true, and I won't have to watch Mac go down
into the dark like you did. He's the only one who deserves that
gift from you.
All too soon, we arrive at our final stop. The flowers that I
ordered for Alexa's grave have been neatly
planted around her headstone. I thought this might be the last
place you'd like to see in the world. I already know that you
want to be buried here.
I pull your sword out of my coat, then stop, not sure how to go
on. I glance at Amy, who shrugs. You're a big guy, Old Man, and
your sword feels like it weighs a ton. My artificial legs hurt
like hell, making it hard to concentrate on raising the sword.
How do I get you on your knees so that I can do this quick and
clean? How do I do this so that you go out like a man and not a
potted plant?
Then, I get that miracle I was looking for. As you stand in front
of Alexa's headstone, something in you stirs. Slowly, you kneel
down in front of the stone, reaching out to touch the hyacinths
and yellow daylilies there.
"Alexa..." you whisper.
I lurch forward. "Methos?" You look up at me. I think
you know me again, Old Man.
"Joe?" you say.
"Methos!" The faint shout comes from out on the road.
Oh. God, Mac. Not now.
"Joe! Don't do it!" Mac's voice blue-shifts, closing
fast. He's not in sight, yet, but he's obviously figured
out where we've gone.
"I'll stall him," Amy says. "Hurry!" she
calls back as she runs down the row of graves. "I don't know
how long I can hold him."
I turn back to you and you are there, all of you. You move away
from the headstone to face me, still on your knees. You're
holding a daylily. You raise your head high, your back straight.
You look me full in the face. I see you: ancient, scholar,
Horseman, wanderer, Watcher, teacher of Duncan MacLeod, best
friend of Joe Dawson.
"Thank you, Joe," you say, three words of love and
absolution. Then, you smile, the sun breaking through the clouds.
There's a smell of grass and flowers on the breeze. I raise your
sword high, wrists aching from the weight.
"Do it," you say.
The sword comes down in an arc, quick and clean even through my
tears.
END
| "I Only Want to Be with You," by Dusty Springfield | |
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