They Dragged Them through the Streets: A Novel

V

187 V I haven’t been sick in years, I tell them, but still: a checkup. They slide me into the MRI; they slide the cushion under the knees, the cushions next to the ears. From the corner a voice: There will be a clicking sound. Try to keep still. The clicking is really a thumping, screeching and thunderous , but I don’t mind. I lie there, still, sometimes I sleep. Not many people can sleep through that racket, the technician says afterward, smiling, folding the blanket. A beautiful brain, they have always told me, clicking through the images: soft gray clouds of flesh, thin white rim of skull. Lobes curve symmetrically toward the ears, down into the neck, the perspective shifts, click. I don’t know how anyone can distinguish anomaly in this complicated perfection. But this time they pause. There’s one bright spot: they point at it on the films until it rainbows a little with the oils of their fingertips. What do you think of…? they ask each other. I watch. 188 On the film one can’t see the eyes, just a graceful indentation , the space left for eyes within a skull. The doctors discuss; I am silent. The brain is silent; the machine hums. Beautiful, they have always nodded at my films before. Yes, fine. They nodded me out. But then this spot—what does it mean? I ask. They don’t quite answer: It’s often nothing, the doctor says. We’ll need to do some follow-ups. It isn’t necessarily scarring, he explains, clicking back, rechecking . They’re often just—light. We don’t know what. These things are common, he says. Lots of things are common, I say. It’s not really a recommendation . I can see the spot on the film now that they’ve shown me: a shard of mica, a fleck. It could just disappear, as if none of this ever happened, the doctor says. The mind is mute, a fruit held in the shell of the skull: a brain has made a machine to which the brain is mere fruit. That spot is a bruising; no, a ripening; no, a silver thread of vision coiled on the mind’s surface, curled like a caterpillar in the grooves. Grooves that circle back under, go nowhere but into the firm curve of the spine. They will look at the results then call me. They will say nothing of what they can see in them other than: Should I fear? Never, should I love, should I hope? Never: we saw in the poise of the head on the neck, your pride; in the tilt of the chin, your humility. We saw: anything born nested in this gray must beat itself against bone. 189 No, they stand to look at my chart; flick the light on behind the film; turn back and have a look at me. Probably nothing to worry about, they say. Try not to worry. • The next day on my morning walk, through the cemetery, by the farmland along the river, I notice: it isn’t even quiet here anymore, cars passing constantly. But this is my walk, my habit, to cut through the old graveyard and follow the trail by the river, tripping a little, the earth here is soft and tufted, so many small hillocks—nothing sinister, the land by the river has always been like this. ...