Duke Stewart
Odds
We have drunken of things Lethean
and fed on the fullness
of death.
Swinburne: Hymn to Proserpine
Simon righted himself in the tee box; unctuous vapors from the freshly cut fairway tickled his nose. He leaned forward, waggled his two wood distributing his weight, hips stalwart, knees flexed, then launched the ball two hundred and eighty yards, one of the best drives of his life: how could he be dying?
Simon felt hearty. He had the girth of a Santa Claus. Where radiation bedridden most men, the rays had energized him. He'd lost hair, a few pounds, but he'd been balding since grade school, and his penchant for Snicker’s Bars, he could do without.
His countenance radiated strength. On the treadmill, his vitals trolled extraordinarily low, the respiration of a long distance runner. He drank one beer a week. He’d never smoked. He suffered little financial stress, inheriting his father's stocks while in college. And he didn’t share the old man’s type A personality, whose blood pressure skyrocketed when his highly paid corporate lawyers failed to find the latest tax loopholes. But like two charged particles with the same valence, during high school he and his father could not occupy the same space. When Simon left home for college, he left for good.
Now the karmic consequences rushed at him with alarming speed. Sure, he’d cheated on his taxes, on his wife; got behind the wheel of a car after he’d had one too many, but considering what was out there, he was hardly evil.
He closed his eyes and meditated: white blood cells chased the jellyfish intruders, caught and digested them in their oversized jaws, stopping only when the docetaxal catabolized.
"You alright?" asked Dr. Stein.
Simon stared at the golf ball which was about the size of his recently removed prostate.
"Sure," he replied, hands interlocking, rocking his feet into the fescue, the iron behind his head, back pivoting, the catheter twisting, the club arcing down, sending a toupee of grass skyward, the ball lofting onto the green back-spinning to rest four inches from the hole. "Amazing," said the doctor.
Simon smiled. Any time now, Dr. David Stein would tell him. The lab had sent the report. On the golf course, Simon could better handle misfortune, inflict it on the ball; whereas, despite its cheery decor, Muzak, Rockwell prints, and the platitudinous nurses, the doctor's office swallowed hope. But amidst the blooming azaleas, dogwoods, lapis lazuli and loblollies, the wind whistling through the tops of pine trees; the forlorn call of the whippoorwills; fox squirrels playing tag, cerulean skies overhead, and turf beneath his feet, Simon pulsed with life, and for the instant the ball hung in the air, he felt immortal.
Closest to the pin, Simon pulled it out for his playing partner. Dr. Stein putted cross-handed, a concession to a waning golf game. His hands shook. He’d recently been forced to hire a partner, a John Hopkins resident who specialized in advanced laparoscopic reconstructions. The doctor misaligned his putt which curved like a bad case of Peyronie’s. Simon said nothing. They’d entered that phase where it was meaningless to correct the other’s flaws. Sure as truck-drivers suffered from kidney stones, the doctor missed, cursed and tapped in for a bogey. Simon rattled in his birdie putt. "Well done," said Dr. Stein.
"Lucky," Simon replied. On the way to the cart, Dr. Stein cleared his throat.
"I got the report," the doctor said, avoiding his eyes. On the horizon, an azalea burst into flames. Rising heat simmered from the fairways, and continued its wind-whipped dancing. Simon’s heart drummed.
"Remember when I told you the radiation wasn't a guarantee?"
"You said there was a thirty percent chance I might have to repeat the treatments.”
"Correct," said the doctor, whose grimace indicated his regret for prognostication. "The cancer has returned."
Simon saw virulent cells pillaging; a calvary of helmeted Genghis Khans in leather armor swirling scimitars around their heads, destroying everything in their paths. His insides poured out like salt, his throat felt arid as the desert.
"Metastases in the pancreas and liver, spine and brain."
Simon gripped his club. "Any chance…”
“God, I'm sorry, Simon."
He’d had a good life, surviving numerous close calls: falling asleep at the wheel of a car on an interstate in Florida; traveling on a 747 sliding down a runway in a snowstorm; being confronted one evening by a gunman who bound him and his workers in a storeroom. Each time, he had faith he would survive: that despite the broken glass imbedded in his eye, the broken pelvis and excruciating pain, the injuries would not kill him; that the smoldering fuselage was not going to explode before he jumped down the billowy chute onto the tarmac; that even if the edgy robber pulled the trigger, his brain would find a way to encapsulate the bullets.
But cancer. In the internal World War, he was the agent of destruction. His mitochondria powered the nuclei. His DNA reproduced on the assembly line of his genes the malignancy that ingested his body. And now his brain.
He'd studied brains in college. At his rubber coated lab desk, the graduate student placed a reeking sheep's brain, formaldehyde dripping onto a stack of paper towels. With a butcher knife the instructor illustrated how to slice the brain in half, down the corpus callosum. When the instructor hacked it apart, the sound reminded Simon of Eskimos clubbing baby seals, their pillow-soft fur absorbing the blows. Simon hated the brittle touch of the organ, soaked in paraffin. If dropped, it would shatter. Now he wondered would his brain sit on the desk in front of some petrified student, ready to be sectioned?
"Let me buy you a drink?" The request from a former alcoholic, surprised Simon.
“You sure.”
"After all these years one drink isn't going to make much difference," the doctor replied, forcing a smile. The image of the scan still glimmered, the metastases like exploding supernovas. It always amazed him how a patient's outward demeanor could belie the carnage within.
Simon sipped his beer. On the Clubhouse walls were plaques engraved with the names of the Annual Winners. His name was up there twice: Championships in 2016 and '17. '17 had been a classic.
With four holes to go, Simon trailed by four shots. Joe Berrigan appeared to have the match won, but then his driver failed him. He struck water on the fifteenth, rough on the seventeenth and sand on the eighteenth, dropping four strokes, as Simon, mano a mano, rattled in putt after crucial putt, the last one twenty feet on the final hole to force a playoff. The playoff was the longest in Club history: seven holes. Each man had to execute their shots, hole by hole, any miscalculation spelling doom.
On the last and decisive hole, Joe drove nearly out of bounds under a pine grove. Simon teed up and meaning to coax the ball safely into the center of the fairway, overplayed and sliced into the rough. Simon thought Joe would have to pitch out but he surprised everyone by hooking between the trees onto the green, five feet from the pin. The gallery hooted and hollered, forgetting the sanctity of the game.
After the crowd quieted, Simon steadied himself over his ball. But with the pressure of striking a perfect shot he undercut hitting into a sand trap behind the green with an ominous front lip occluding the flagstick. The game was all but over; the next shot, from buried sand to inside the hole: one in a thousand. He dug his feet and blasted his wedge behind the ball. Sand fantailed, the ball hurtled out of the trap with enormous backspin hitting with such force that it nearly knocked the pin over as it plopped into the hole. The shot was much too strong, but the pin had saved him. Startled, Joe missed his short putt. Simon had won the Championship.
"What're you thinking?" asked Dr. Stein.
"Odds," replied Simon
"Odds?"
"When you think you have no chance, it's only then that you discover how lucky you are. What are my chances?"
As an oncologist, Dr. Stein preferred not to discuss odds. "Each circumstance is unique. No two bodies are alike."
"One in a hundred, a thousand?" asked Simon.
"I don't know."
"A million?"
"No. Less than that."
"If I choose no more treatments. What then?"
"None,” answered the doctor.
Simon rested his hand on his drink. Beads rolled down the sides of the longneck dampening his palm.
Even at sixty-one his hands were steady. He could nail a board with the best of them. He could thread a needle without glasses. He could have been a surgeon like his brother if he had wanted. When Jason described working on a heart, the soft mesh of muscle, the pulse of life, the coagulating buttery smell of blood Simon wanted to say, "I know exactly how you feel." But his brother would think him foolish to compare golf to open heart surgery. However, on the day of his playoff triumph that was the way he felt: his life infused with meaning, each shot ordained, his vision crystalline, his hands crafty as any surgeon, beating the odds, avoiding defeat.
"Less than one in a million?" Simon asked.
"Yes."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
Lying on the table, Simon imagines himself on a sandy beach in mid-August. The radiation machine, a metallic Cyclops, clicks on and off. The technician, an attractive woman with parted brown hair, a skimpy smile, and long freshly painted fingernails, scampers behind the lead wall between settings; her flight indicative of the deadly rays. The treatments tenderize his hands and feet, parch his mouth, ransom his hair and appetite. Red and yellow corpuscles like ants out of a mound dazzle in front of him. Laser beams strike the cancer cells which explode like paint splattered on canvas. When the treatment ends he feels tired, a bowling ball on his chest. He coughs, but even after he vomits, the heaviness remains.
Another technician reads off some numbers, talks briefly to his assistant then asks Simon how he's doing. Simon tells him he feels fine. The tech for some reason seems dissatisfied, frowns and jots down more notes and says okay.
An orderly wheels Simon into his room which he shares with another patient. A blue curtain divides the room. Simon has yet to meet his roommate. When Simon arrived, he was on the operating table. The man’s artificial leg sits on a chair at the foot of the bed. A sheet respectfully covers the prosthesis outlining the stump and harness, his amputated leg a victim to cancer’s appetite.
What Simon missed most while in the hospital was his daily trip to the Downs. Ever since watching his first stakes race, a wire to wire finish with whips flailing, the horses churning up clods of mud, and the man next to him cursing, tearing up tickets, raining confetti over him, horse betting had enthralled him.
The window handlers knew his name. He ate regularly at the track delicatessen sitting in a side booth with a view of the stalls. Above the stalls were the names of Triple Crown winners who once boarded there. One stall seemed to be luckier than the others: it had three winners engraved on the faceplate. Most owners requested that stall. An owner will spend millions on stud fees and training, but when it comes right down to it, he's as superstitious as the next guy. If he had a couple of million invested in a horse, Simon figures he would be too.
On his bed, Simon contemplates his odds. A long list of patients has slept in the same room. He wonders why the hospital doesn't put on the walls the names of those who made it. It would mean more than the sunburst yellow paint, waxed tiles, the happy face balloons and silk flower arrangements.
Around eight, a nurse doles out pills. The lucky ones sleep. Others, insomnolent like himself, listen to sporadic moans and curses, the hip hop beat of the radio at the nurses' station, the pendulum swishing mop of the custodian during the graveyard shift.
In the morning, the recreational therapist wheels him into the exercise room. Several rope and pulley machines protrude from the wall. Tony tells Simon to climb out of his wheelchair. Tony’s arms are round as Simon's thighs; his chest twice as wide as Simon's shoulders. If Tony ran in Pamplona and got cornered at Hamburger Wall, Simon would place odds on him against the bull.
Simon walks on a treadmill. The nausea hits suddenly, but by timing his breaths, he swallows the vile. After several minutes the therapist takes his pulse and tells him he's doing great. Simon completes a fifteen-minute routine: free weights and barbells, a handgrip, stretching exercises. Another attendant logs Simon's performance on a clipboard. Last week Simon did five setups: today, not one. When the nausea becomes unbearable, Simon visualizes.
He remembers a scene from childhood. His father carried him to a horse farm. It took them half the day to locate the farm, and then the gate attendant told them the farm didn't accept visitors. "But it's his birthday," pleaded Simon's father. The caretaker on the speakerphone explained the situation to the owner who graciously relented. Simon and his father walked around the infield to a fenced pasture with several chestnut trees. Inside the pasture was an old and blind thoroughbred. A gelding had been placed in the pen to keep him company.
The attendant said the thoroughbred had been a potential Derby winner but had broken a leg. The veterinarians wanted to destroy him, but the owner refused. He'd given the horse to his granddaughter for her sixth birthday, and said like hell if he was going to let him die. The veterinarians worked around the clock to save him.
The horse sidled up to Simon and licked his hand. The tongue felt rough like the bristles on a hairbrush; his ears erect, his tail swished, his coat brushed to a lacquered, mahogany luster. The trainer came out and told them he had grossed over a million in stud fees. As if to prove himself the horse whinnied and then in a flash ran away, providing the image Simon now uses to heal himself: sprinting majestically through the tall bluegrass heading straight for the fence, then, as if on radar, turning, sightless yet assured, galloping against all the odds.
and fed on the fullness
of death.
Swinburne: Hymn to Proserpine
Simon righted himself in the tee box; unctuous vapors from the freshly cut fairway tickled his nose. He leaned forward, waggled his two wood distributing his weight, hips stalwart, knees flexed, then launched the ball two hundred and eighty yards, one of the best drives of his life: how could he be dying?
Simon felt hearty. He had the girth of a Santa Claus. Where radiation bedridden most men, the rays had energized him. He'd lost hair, a few pounds, but he'd been balding since grade school, and his penchant for Snicker’s Bars, he could do without.
His countenance radiated strength. On the treadmill, his vitals trolled extraordinarily low, the respiration of a long distance runner. He drank one beer a week. He’d never smoked. He suffered little financial stress, inheriting his father's stocks while in college. And he didn’t share the old man’s type A personality, whose blood pressure skyrocketed when his highly paid corporate lawyers failed to find the latest tax loopholes. But like two charged particles with the same valence, during high school he and his father could not occupy the same space. When Simon left home for college, he left for good.
Now the karmic consequences rushed at him with alarming speed. Sure, he’d cheated on his taxes, on his wife; got behind the wheel of a car after he’d had one too many, but considering what was out there, he was hardly evil.
He closed his eyes and meditated: white blood cells chased the jellyfish intruders, caught and digested them in their oversized jaws, stopping only when the docetaxal catabolized.
"You alright?" asked Dr. Stein.
Simon stared at the golf ball which was about the size of his recently removed prostate.
"Sure," he replied, hands interlocking, rocking his feet into the fescue, the iron behind his head, back pivoting, the catheter twisting, the club arcing down, sending a toupee of grass skyward, the ball lofting onto the green back-spinning to rest four inches from the hole. "Amazing," said the doctor.
Simon smiled. Any time now, Dr. David Stein would tell him. The lab had sent the report. On the golf course, Simon could better handle misfortune, inflict it on the ball; whereas, despite its cheery decor, Muzak, Rockwell prints, and the platitudinous nurses, the doctor's office swallowed hope. But amidst the blooming azaleas, dogwoods, lapis lazuli and loblollies, the wind whistling through the tops of pine trees; the forlorn call of the whippoorwills; fox squirrels playing tag, cerulean skies overhead, and turf beneath his feet, Simon pulsed with life, and for the instant the ball hung in the air, he felt immortal.
Closest to the pin, Simon pulled it out for his playing partner. Dr. Stein putted cross-handed, a concession to a waning golf game. His hands shook. He’d recently been forced to hire a partner, a John Hopkins resident who specialized in advanced laparoscopic reconstructions. The doctor misaligned his putt which curved like a bad case of Peyronie’s. Simon said nothing. They’d entered that phase where it was meaningless to correct the other’s flaws. Sure as truck-drivers suffered from kidney stones, the doctor missed, cursed and tapped in for a bogey. Simon rattled in his birdie putt. "Well done," said Dr. Stein.
"Lucky," Simon replied. On the way to the cart, Dr. Stein cleared his throat.
"I got the report," the doctor said, avoiding his eyes. On the horizon, an azalea burst into flames. Rising heat simmered from the fairways, and continued its wind-whipped dancing. Simon’s heart drummed.
"Remember when I told you the radiation wasn't a guarantee?"
"You said there was a thirty percent chance I might have to repeat the treatments.”
"Correct," said the doctor, whose grimace indicated his regret for prognostication. "The cancer has returned."
Simon saw virulent cells pillaging; a calvary of helmeted Genghis Khans in leather armor swirling scimitars around their heads, destroying everything in their paths. His insides poured out like salt, his throat felt arid as the desert.
"Metastases in the pancreas and liver, spine and brain."
Simon gripped his club. "Any chance…”
“God, I'm sorry, Simon."
He’d had a good life, surviving numerous close calls: falling asleep at the wheel of a car on an interstate in Florida; traveling on a 747 sliding down a runway in a snowstorm; being confronted one evening by a gunman who bound him and his workers in a storeroom. Each time, he had faith he would survive: that despite the broken glass imbedded in his eye, the broken pelvis and excruciating pain, the injuries would not kill him; that the smoldering fuselage was not going to explode before he jumped down the billowy chute onto the tarmac; that even if the edgy robber pulled the trigger, his brain would find a way to encapsulate the bullets.
But cancer. In the internal World War, he was the agent of destruction. His mitochondria powered the nuclei. His DNA reproduced on the assembly line of his genes the malignancy that ingested his body. And now his brain.
He'd studied brains in college. At his rubber coated lab desk, the graduate student placed a reeking sheep's brain, formaldehyde dripping onto a stack of paper towels. With a butcher knife the instructor illustrated how to slice the brain in half, down the corpus callosum. When the instructor hacked it apart, the sound reminded Simon of Eskimos clubbing baby seals, their pillow-soft fur absorbing the blows. Simon hated the brittle touch of the organ, soaked in paraffin. If dropped, it would shatter. Now he wondered would his brain sit on the desk in front of some petrified student, ready to be sectioned?
"Let me buy you a drink?" The request from a former alcoholic, surprised Simon.
“You sure.”
"After all these years one drink isn't going to make much difference," the doctor replied, forcing a smile. The image of the scan still glimmered, the metastases like exploding supernovas. It always amazed him how a patient's outward demeanor could belie the carnage within.
Simon sipped his beer. On the Clubhouse walls were plaques engraved with the names of the Annual Winners. His name was up there twice: Championships in 2016 and '17. '17 had been a classic.
With four holes to go, Simon trailed by four shots. Joe Berrigan appeared to have the match won, but then his driver failed him. He struck water on the fifteenth, rough on the seventeenth and sand on the eighteenth, dropping four strokes, as Simon, mano a mano, rattled in putt after crucial putt, the last one twenty feet on the final hole to force a playoff. The playoff was the longest in Club history: seven holes. Each man had to execute their shots, hole by hole, any miscalculation spelling doom.
On the last and decisive hole, Joe drove nearly out of bounds under a pine grove. Simon teed up and meaning to coax the ball safely into the center of the fairway, overplayed and sliced into the rough. Simon thought Joe would have to pitch out but he surprised everyone by hooking between the trees onto the green, five feet from the pin. The gallery hooted and hollered, forgetting the sanctity of the game.
After the crowd quieted, Simon steadied himself over his ball. But with the pressure of striking a perfect shot he undercut hitting into a sand trap behind the green with an ominous front lip occluding the flagstick. The game was all but over; the next shot, from buried sand to inside the hole: one in a thousand. He dug his feet and blasted his wedge behind the ball. Sand fantailed, the ball hurtled out of the trap with enormous backspin hitting with such force that it nearly knocked the pin over as it plopped into the hole. The shot was much too strong, but the pin had saved him. Startled, Joe missed his short putt. Simon had won the Championship.
"What're you thinking?" asked Dr. Stein.
"Odds," replied Simon
"Odds?"
"When you think you have no chance, it's only then that you discover how lucky you are. What are my chances?"
As an oncologist, Dr. Stein preferred not to discuss odds. "Each circumstance is unique. No two bodies are alike."
"One in a hundred, a thousand?" asked Simon.
"I don't know."
"A million?"
"No. Less than that."
"If I choose no more treatments. What then?"
"None,” answered the doctor.
Simon rested his hand on his drink. Beads rolled down the sides of the longneck dampening his palm.
Even at sixty-one his hands were steady. He could nail a board with the best of them. He could thread a needle without glasses. He could have been a surgeon like his brother if he had wanted. When Jason described working on a heart, the soft mesh of muscle, the pulse of life, the coagulating buttery smell of blood Simon wanted to say, "I know exactly how you feel." But his brother would think him foolish to compare golf to open heart surgery. However, on the day of his playoff triumph that was the way he felt: his life infused with meaning, each shot ordained, his vision crystalline, his hands crafty as any surgeon, beating the odds, avoiding defeat.
"Less than one in a million?" Simon asked.
"Yes."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
Lying on the table, Simon imagines himself on a sandy beach in mid-August. The radiation machine, a metallic Cyclops, clicks on and off. The technician, an attractive woman with parted brown hair, a skimpy smile, and long freshly painted fingernails, scampers behind the lead wall between settings; her flight indicative of the deadly rays. The treatments tenderize his hands and feet, parch his mouth, ransom his hair and appetite. Red and yellow corpuscles like ants out of a mound dazzle in front of him. Laser beams strike the cancer cells which explode like paint splattered on canvas. When the treatment ends he feels tired, a bowling ball on his chest. He coughs, but even after he vomits, the heaviness remains.
Another technician reads off some numbers, talks briefly to his assistant then asks Simon how he's doing. Simon tells him he feels fine. The tech for some reason seems dissatisfied, frowns and jots down more notes and says okay.
An orderly wheels Simon into his room which he shares with another patient. A blue curtain divides the room. Simon has yet to meet his roommate. When Simon arrived, he was on the operating table. The man’s artificial leg sits on a chair at the foot of the bed. A sheet respectfully covers the prosthesis outlining the stump and harness, his amputated leg a victim to cancer’s appetite.
What Simon missed most while in the hospital was his daily trip to the Downs. Ever since watching his first stakes race, a wire to wire finish with whips flailing, the horses churning up clods of mud, and the man next to him cursing, tearing up tickets, raining confetti over him, horse betting had enthralled him.
The window handlers knew his name. He ate regularly at the track delicatessen sitting in a side booth with a view of the stalls. Above the stalls were the names of Triple Crown winners who once boarded there. One stall seemed to be luckier than the others: it had three winners engraved on the faceplate. Most owners requested that stall. An owner will spend millions on stud fees and training, but when it comes right down to it, he's as superstitious as the next guy. If he had a couple of million invested in a horse, Simon figures he would be too.
On his bed, Simon contemplates his odds. A long list of patients has slept in the same room. He wonders why the hospital doesn't put on the walls the names of those who made it. It would mean more than the sunburst yellow paint, waxed tiles, the happy face balloons and silk flower arrangements.
Around eight, a nurse doles out pills. The lucky ones sleep. Others, insomnolent like himself, listen to sporadic moans and curses, the hip hop beat of the radio at the nurses' station, the pendulum swishing mop of the custodian during the graveyard shift.
In the morning, the recreational therapist wheels him into the exercise room. Several rope and pulley machines protrude from the wall. Tony tells Simon to climb out of his wheelchair. Tony’s arms are round as Simon's thighs; his chest twice as wide as Simon's shoulders. If Tony ran in Pamplona and got cornered at Hamburger Wall, Simon would place odds on him against the bull.
Simon walks on a treadmill. The nausea hits suddenly, but by timing his breaths, he swallows the vile. After several minutes the therapist takes his pulse and tells him he's doing great. Simon completes a fifteen-minute routine: free weights and barbells, a handgrip, stretching exercises. Another attendant logs Simon's performance on a clipboard. Last week Simon did five setups: today, not one. When the nausea becomes unbearable, Simon visualizes.
He remembers a scene from childhood. His father carried him to a horse farm. It took them half the day to locate the farm, and then the gate attendant told them the farm didn't accept visitors. "But it's his birthday," pleaded Simon's father. The caretaker on the speakerphone explained the situation to the owner who graciously relented. Simon and his father walked around the infield to a fenced pasture with several chestnut trees. Inside the pasture was an old and blind thoroughbred. A gelding had been placed in the pen to keep him company.
The attendant said the thoroughbred had been a potential Derby winner but had broken a leg. The veterinarians wanted to destroy him, but the owner refused. He'd given the horse to his granddaughter for her sixth birthday, and said like hell if he was going to let him die. The veterinarians worked around the clock to save him.
The horse sidled up to Simon and licked his hand. The tongue felt rough like the bristles on a hairbrush; his ears erect, his tail swished, his coat brushed to a lacquered, mahogany luster. The trainer came out and told them he had grossed over a million in stud fees. As if to prove himself the horse whinnied and then in a flash ran away, providing the image Simon now uses to heal himself: sprinting majestically through the tall bluegrass heading straight for the fence, then, as if on radar, turning, sightless yet assured, galloping against all the odds.
--
Duke Stewart has published or has forthcoming work in many magazines including Cimarron Review, Puerto Del Sol, Passages North, Shenandoah, Permafrost, The Umbrella Factory and Bellevue Literary Review. Honors include an award from the Kansas Arts Council for Best Story–Fiction, a grant through the Georgia Council for the Arts for literature, and several Pushcart nominations.
Duke Stewart has published or has forthcoming work in many magazines including Cimarron Review, Puerto Del Sol, Passages North, Shenandoah, Permafrost, The Umbrella Factory and Bellevue Literary Review. Honors include an award from the Kansas Arts Council for Best Story–Fiction, a grant through the Georgia Council for the Arts for literature, and several Pushcart nominations.