David LeGault
We are given the essentials: a key, a stack of towels, several bottles of homemade wine.
***
A piece of paper, a message taped to the bathroom mirror of a stranger’s home. I am sleeping in this house, renting a room for the weekend, a cheap alternative to a hotel stay while I run a marathon on the Lake Superior shoreline. The stranger is supposed to be here: to feed us and play host and give directions around the city. The homeowner has left, hours before our arrival, for his father’s funeral.
***
For Isaac
Strong, healthy
Vibrant, straight
Bones—tumor
Free
***
I have been dreaming of ghosts, of the remnants of forgotten selves.
***
This marathon will be my fifth. It will also be the worst of them by a significant margin. Three years ago I was winning races in my age division, collecting medals, nearly qualifying for the Boston Marathon; now I begin walking before the halfway point of the course, collapsing and vomiting after limping across the finish line. I find myself questioning whether I should ever try this again.
***
The stranger’s home is full of wood veneered furniture, knitted blankets and hundreds of books. There is no television. From one wall hangs a giant crucifix with wooden beads the size of a baby’s fist.
***
There are 206 bones in Isaac’s body. Most of them are not meant to be straight.
***
Isaac’s bones are like the rest of ours: they are hard and calcified, strengthened when destroyed cells fill the gaps between the new, overlapping patterns like scales or armor. Isaac’s bones are full of blood.
***
In the stranger’s absence I explore this house. I walk through guest rooms and bathrooms and the master suite, examining the shelves, occasionally peeking through drawers and cabinets, finding nothing of interest.
***
The stranger works in the walkout lower level of his house, a massage therapy center. Here, I find pamphlets on Myofascial Release: “a safe and highly effective hands on treatment which involves the whole body.” “It involves manipulating the fascia system (connective tissue) using stretching and sustained pressure into the fascial restrictions.” I lie down on the massage table; I push my face into the stuffed leather headrest, dream of a time my body didn’t feel like this.
***
I find pictures of children, a man made of wire. There is a locked room at the end of the hallway, and after we are given nearly unlimited access to his house, to his kitchen and to his place of business and even to his bedroom, I wonder what it is that the stranger wants to hide.
***
Does this constitute theft or trespassing? Does it matter that I was invited into this home?
***
The straight human bones are those of the limbs, fingers and toes. The spine, its interconnection of vertebrae, is irregularly shaped.
***
“It utilizes a variance of pressure.” “It acknowledges and addresses the entire body, mind and spirit connection.”
***
The stranger’s name is Dennis. I can’t help but wonder if it is Isaac’s bones that are going underground.
***
Bone cancer usually stems from a different type of cancer spreading into the bone, rather than originating within the marrow. The primary diagnostic symptom is pain.
***
From years of running I am plagued by plantar fasciitis: the muscles of my foot pulled so tight that they are separating from the bone. I am in the early stages of falling apart. Doctors have told me what comes next: the pain and inflammation, the bones breaking down from continued impact, heel spurs which take on the appearance of tumors themselves.
***
Maybe I am meant to explore this house: to make the strange unstrange; to work my way into unsanctioned areas and become a part of it; to find my place between pain and death, between secrets shared and stolen.
***
“It is what holds us together, spreading throughout our body like a three dimensional web.” “It is where we store our trauma.”
***
And I wonder whether Isaac is dead at all, whether I assume too much about the lives of strangers.
***
What does it take to make our bones vibrant? How much force is required to pull marrow from its casing? What would it take to separate tumor and tissue? How are they different? Why must I always go too far, dig too deep? What is it about the gentle touch of a stranger, about hands that help the body heal itself?
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David LeGault’s work has recently appeared in The Journal, Fourth Genre, and Barrelhouse Magazine. He lives and writes from Minneapolis, though he still considers Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to be his home.