My Friend Carl

6 The Dream

Chapter 6

Bobby

The Dream in the Coma

The M-1 carbine suffered as a joke. The weapon survived as a wooden toy shooting real bullets. The enemy would laugh. His dream plunged into an alternate world. The vision of the firearm instigated him to puke. Did war mean killing someone with a play stick? Mae Sua failed to materialize. He attempted to conjure her, but she refrained from emerging. Perhaps she was assisting a meager soul elsewhere in the world at the same time.

Bobby asked Carl, "Who expects us to fight? We prepare for the worst and expect the best." Carl shrugged his shoulders but kept silent. However, Bobby recognized Carl and struggled with him. Presence prompts pacifying the mind. A calmness saturated their being. Carl and he locked eyes and a smile appeared on their lips. They inhaled deeply and relaxed. Possibility presented a positive prospect.

Reality Remembered

The first day on duty uncovered men twice his age calling him 'Sir.' Those eighteen to twenty-one appeared old and wrinkled. He shivered and hugged his weapon. His second night on the job found him observing a flight of Air Policemen on guard duty.

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were attempting to infiltrate the base where he was assigned. A missile slammed into Carl and a mortar hit near Bobby. He woke up in a hospital at Clark Air Force Base, Philippines two months later where he could not walk, talk, barely sucked in air and trembling extracted the only movement or sound.

Dark Despair of the Awakening

Rehab and physical therapy presented laborious and painful torture. The wheelchair kept him from falling. Someone strapped his body in, and he required the same person to push him where necessary. No one understood what he was saying. Gibberish and slobber spewed from his mouth. His fingers could not tighten around a pencil. His hands trembled, and no one could understand the scribbles.

Comprehension vacated his attention. Reason escaped him. He uttered nothing intelligent. He glared at everyone and no one. The few who faced him would turn and flee. Much of the time those near him ignored his grunts and growls.

New people who came within two feet of him shuddered. Their faces darkened as their eyes focused elsewhere. He could not understand what they said. Their expressions frayed with feeble, furrow, and fastidious frowns which flung in his focus. Trapped in his mind he experienced an alien cosmos.

The mirror depicted a distorted demon. Bobby's eyes beheld a lopsided gape in the mirror. Fire flashed from his frame. His right shoulder slanted higher than the left one. Grumbles discharged from inside him, and brassy drums exploded in his head. Pain gushed through his body. Screams extended as snarls or howls.

He flapped his arms reminding one of a scarecrow among the corn on his daddy's farm. Voices failed to reach him. He rattled the bed and threw things. His writing converted to unreadable scratches. The groanings he expressed frightened those who came near.

The meds wore off as pain tortured each inch of skin. When he attempted to turn his head, agony circulated him. A jokester enrolled him in typing school. The instructor expelled him from the class because of the shrieks he created, and the shape of his disfigured body and face. He was assigned individual instruction. Two teachers escaped quivering. Anger haunted him. Who understood? He survived as a caged animal.

The third instructor was calm. There was no anger or terror. Peace possessed Bobby. The new teacher appeared with a smile. She presented a pleasant personality peering at him. He experienced her tenderness. A bond created hope.

Further therapy gave him the ability to lift himself out of the wheelchair. Nonetheless, the pain persevered. The power of his torso and arms advanced quickly. His hands lifted his legs above the floor as he shoved back and forth on the parallel bars. He turned into a blob cluttering the rug. His forearms propelled him across floor. It permitted him to scurry to the window. He shoved himself up two feet. Then he sat in an armchair behind an old manual typewriter peering out the window. In an hour he typed two words, HELP me!

Gurgling came from his mouth. Bobby's fore fingers pointed to his ears, and he shook his head left and right. Her lips quivered. The nurse's jaw plummeted as tears flowed. She said, "Oh my God, you 'cain't' hear! You poor 'thang.'" He heard nothing.

She scrunched her face, furrowed brows and motioned downwards with her hands as her lips mimed the words, "You stay right here." As if he was going to get up and run away. Then she scurried out the door reminiscent of a hound after a rabbit.

His eyes widened as his gaze froze, forehead wrinkled, and he grunted. "What did I do to run her off? It was too late to redeem myself." The moment crushed him.

Perhaps he grunted too much, or the drooling from his chin frightened her. He dragged himself to the mirror and viewed an excuse of humanity. He garbled, "I terrify everyone." Tears jutted from his face.

One tear darted from of his left eye as he babbled. "Not even God could love the creature staring back at me. There was no reason to keep living. Perhaps, someone will help me die." He believed the wretched state happened and he deserved every bad consequence. Maybe he could fall out of a window and break his neck dominated his deliberations. He grunted, "Why would anyone want to love me? Will I be alone the rest of my life?"

He mumbled again and again, "Bobby Davis the ex-high school and college football star of Boyd County is an ogre. My world vanished. I survived to endure in an institution the rest of my life."

He assumed his uttering scared her away. Any happiness was destroyed. "What is it? It's eerie. She reminded me of someone I recognized, but who, from a former existence?" His rationale altered. "What brings her here? What part of my life claims her presence? Will she return?"