CHAPTER 27
Frank woke before she did; rose, dressed and walked down to the lake—Harriet.
Frozen. The world was frozen. As only Minnesota could be—frozen, yet with life scurrying all over it and under it: petrified…he walks aware of those who live under it, not only the plants sleeping and the seeds anticipating but the pioneers dead and the Indians dead and whomever was here before the Indians...Frank sees clearly, Minnesota is anticipation, expectation, a frozenness which is somnolence, a waiting: for a return, a revivification, more than spring or springs gushing from melted snow…it is this he is knowing as he stops at the lake’s edge, undefined edge for when does the land end and the ice begin?
She is beside him in a moment of acknowledgment, not of spatial awareness—he glances sideways, to his left and she is there: Professor Carroll...fully unclothed but body not shivering or iced or blue in any way, rather a softness, not of light but as of presence—she is quietly beside him and as silently slips into his mind for as he looks he is aware that he can see through her, see the mounds of snow, the gravel trapped, gagging within ice’s grip…“Your father is not dead.”
He turns and glances to his right.
“Your father is not dead,” again.
Frank turns, a third time...fourth, right angle pivots—the words, again, but this time it is Dalores. Diaphanously present.
Frank turns, a fifth, sixth time, rotating the plane covering all n-dimensions—the words, again, but this time it is Bertha.
Cold words. Words to chill a son’s heart. Ice words. Imprisoning words. They each and all speak in chorus: You father is not dead…He’s dead! He’s dead! I buried him. I dug the pit. I heaved the dirt. I hammered the lid shut. He’s dead! He’s dead!…Hot words. Words to fire a son’s heart. Molten words. Escaping words.
“He’s dead!” Frank, wake up, sweetheart, wake up, you’re dreaming, Frank.…
They had breakfast in a weekday morning way. Hurried way. Habitual acts of consumption. Reading the morning newspaper: he. She: flicking on “The Today Show.” Words and images washing them; cleansing them of nighttime’s lingerings. She off onto one of her many projects, crusades, commitments, gatherings, and part-time job at a Dinkytown used book store: Very part—time, Frank had always caustically noted...the money his dad left would keep them for quite some time, but he felt that Dalores should work, yet he never fought over this, never pressed it so as to provoke her…hot cereal: he brown sugar she honey, dark roasted coffee, hand-ground, tea—pot whistling for drip…hugs, kisses, a meaningful glance—each knew that they could stop the charade and sit down at any moment and “get real” but each also wanted the charade, for there were things brewing within each and within the marriage which each day of this trinitarian year began to make themselves present...“serious” stuff, but because so serious each trod lightly.
“Going to the All Peoples rally tonight?” a question which was also an invitation.
Dalores momentarily pauses in the boot alcove after she has yanked the inside door shut behind her. The house’s heat sucks the cold inside, always creating a pressure differential which caused one to pause to make sure that it was properly shut—an oddity of Minnesota and frigid lands which she never realized as odd until her trip, at fifteen, to a maiden Aunt in California. “You only have one door!” exclaimed the startled youth, snatching a short riff of laughter from the adults...she realized that she had much to learn from this strange land where it is, “Always nice, dearie. It’s always nice here.”
Paused, but this time not only to ensure that the door was shut, but a pause of recognition, that the next door she was opening would be one through which she walked as someone leaving this house, someone who did not live here...as someone who was leaving behind someone—here, Frank.
Frank did not leave the house, that day. He didn’t go to the U to do research. He didn’t continue the day as their weekdays had been continued.
The dream bothered him.
It bothered him that Professor Carroll was there. Who is she?
The doorbell rings.
If he had been younger. If he had not missed the Draft...avoided? dodged? Whatever. He would have instantly given into the “knock-on-the-door” paranoia rampant among students: narcs, MPs, FBI, CIA!
Could be, rises from his dress: long black coat, high quality, New York type fedora, Wall Street earmuffs, glasses which were not hip, but more of a straight-arrow stance.
Frank peeps out the security port and sees The Establishment peeping back!
“Francis Frakes?” Another question which was not a question but an assertion of identity.
Before lunch, he was gone:, both he, this man, “Professor Brad Campbell,” which turned in the course of the conversation into “Major Campbell”...that title seeping, leaking as the conversation went on into nuanced areas of projects which could not be named with hints of unnamed titles bestowed by unnamable organizations kept secret for clearly unnamable reasons of “National Security.”
Throughout these morning hours Frank drinks liters of coffee—his visitor’s cup fades to room temperature.
“National Security?” It almost made Frank giggle; he struggled not to act like a Left Wing crazy nor a “Wow!” dope-head paranoid.
But after lunch, Frank was also gone.
It had been a talk not as much about academics as Frank first thought, receiving Professor Campbell as a colleague: “Professor Carroll suggested we meet,” an invitation which Frank couldn’t give or receive, just let it be…a talk which began with references to “archetypal studies” and went somewhat autobiographically from “Brad. Please, call me Brad. We’re near the same age, you know.”…an autobiography not, in the main, unlike his own, but taking a detour into “Service,” meaning the “Marines,” he smiled hard-lipped as he said the word—an echo of Semper Fi! bounced around the house, but Frank hushed it...such a phrase made all this seem too, too cartoonish.
“National Security” began to pop up quite regularly during their second hour, he linking psychological studies to the war effort. Frank translating this into propaganda efforts, ala old World War Two B-movies which he had seen, more than once. “National Security”—Frank wondered what Professor Carroll had to do with this guy as much as what he had to do with him!
“Yes.” Frank knew about Jolly’s work with prisoners: “Personality is a social creation, not a personal right.”
“Yes.” Frank knew about Rhine’s work on the paranormal: “Mostly card tricks, yes?”
“Yes.” Frank was more than familiar with Laing’s implication for anarchical revolution: “We’re all insane!”
“Yes.” Frank had heard about Jung’s Nazi sympathies: “Freud was Jewish, remember.”
“Yes.” Frank was aware of the growing feminist rant: “Goddess cultures were not violent cultures!”
“Yes.” A bundle of yeses. Almost like a multiple-choice test. Where is this going?
Your father is not dead.
Frank knows he is not dreaming. But he hears the words.
Professor Major Bradford Campbell: “Your father is not dead.”