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Show against the vastness that is the Alaskan wilds, the vastness of the universe? Or is it because his mind, cast to sea, unable to latch onto anyone or anything long enough to recover rationality, holds the GPS like a flotation device, willing the linear to return? For whatever reason, Jerry insists, and because of his insistence, we, as a family, will be able to return someday to that shore, to those willows, to those rocks, and stand in the thicket where he laid down to die. My dad gets Jerry ready for bed, dressing him in his long Johns and tucking him into his sleeping bag, as he did for me as a child, perhaps as Jerry once did for him. Hours later, from his own tent, my dad hears Jerry struggling with the zipper on his tent. What are you doing, he asks. And Jerry responds that he wants to try his new fly line. The first coherent words in over a day, my dad takes it as a sign that that drugs are kicking in. Go to bed, he says. And this time, when my dad lays down to sleep, it is the sleep of release. Things will be okay, he tells himself. The drugs are working. In the early morning hours of July 15, my dad hears Jerry struggle again with the zipper on his tent. When he goes over and asks Jerry what he is doing, Jerry responds, What are you doing here? My dad repeats the question; Jerry repeats the answer. Unlike all the other times in which my dad has explained that they are in the middle of Alaska trying to get home and Jerry has responded that he knows that but had just forgotten, this time Jerry never returns to the here. He remains there, wherever there is, and wonders what my dad is doing at his side. lO When the sun comes up the next day, Jerry is gone. 249 |