Homeward Bound Ch. 08

"What are you saying?"

"The ending of Bound for Home. That's my ending; that's what I've called you here to do for me. No one else would do it."

"You want me to end your life with a bullet?"

"The pistol is there, in the drawer to the table. I am in so much pain, Charles. This cancer isn't me. This isn't the way I was meant to go."

"Stan—"

"But that's not the scene, of course. I could do it myself. I'm not a coward, you know."

"No, you have been a lot of things, Stan, but a coward was not one of them."

"The scene. Remember the scene."

And then I did. And my horror was magnified.

"You want me to turn the pistol on myself when I have given you release?"

"It's inevitable, Charles. It was always you. You and me. We are parts of one whole. I don't want to cross over alone. I want you taking the journey with me. And you promised me, whatever I called you to do . . ."

He was mercilessly cut off by a hacking cough that took all of his strength.

I said nothing, just drifted back to the table and sat down there. My valise was beside the table where I had dropped it immediately upon entering his rooms and seeing him lying there. I opened the drawer and, indeed, there was a pistol there. I checked the chamber. Three bullets. Enough.

And that's when, completely numb and in shock, I pulled my manuscript of Homeward Bound out of my valise and started furiously to write. I had no idea what I would do now, but whatever that was, I had an overwhelming urge to finish my book—to be at home.

I was writing so fast that my hand was running ahead of my consciousness, and I gave a little cry when I looked at the paper and saw that I had written, "One last promise to fulfill, and then freedom. Release." I dropped the pen as if it were a red-hot poker.

My mind was racing. At first confusion and then the forming of thoughts and questions. What was home to me? Every fiber of my being screamed at me to define home. The images surfacing in my mind became clearer and clearer. Asheville. My cottage. My chocolate-brown, ever affirming lover.

I stood up from the desk and picked up the pen again. I looked at what I'd written and shuddered. I took the pen and struck through that line, again and again, until the paper tore and the ink flowed into the scratch I had dug into the table surface under the paper. I wiped the back of a hand across my eyes and heaved a great sigh—a sigh that was prolonged as it set in motion a hoarse, deep-chested rattle from the gaping mouth of the man prone on the bed. I picked up both pen and papers and put them back in the valise and clicked it shut.

Then I picked up the pistol and opened the drawer, carefully set it inside the drawer, and silently pushed the drawer closed. This play was not going to have Stanford Dane's ending; I had always been the one who had made the plays believable—and satisfying. I would not let Dane—or the audiences that had applauded his version of the ending—do this to me. I was well beyond the age of permitting myself to be manipulated—prostituted—like this. I sat back down in the chair, crossed my arms, and dug my fingernails above my elbows—both wanting the assurance that I was still alive that the pain brought me and carefully containing my movement—fighting the urge to do Dane's will to the end.

After this was over, I would go home to finish—and to live—Homeward Bound. Dane soon spared me the wild-eyed pleadings to carry out his will by sinking into a fitful unconsciousness, and I stayed on to the end, wetting his lips with a wet towel and wiping his brow when he became restless.

Five days later Abe met me at the door to the cottage. He later told me he had remained there all of the time I was gone, next to the telephone in the entry hall—in case I needed him and called. Somehow that surprised me not at all.

"I'm home now, Abe. Free. Totally free."

"I'm glad," Abe said.

"So am I."