Charlie switched medications in December and appeared to bounce back. Through January he resumed his habit of snow-shoeing or skiing through the snowy woods alone, doing whatever it was he did out there. He kept his weekly lunch appointments with me, as well as with, I think, certain other people, as he had not done in previous Januaries (Allen, too, altered his plans, skipping his annual family vacation to the Keys), but otherwise the month seemed normal. I indulged in the thought that he might simply go on like this, terminally ill in a technical sense only, and that he might teach his spring classes after all.
I found myself in an emotional muddle, wanting desperately, I discovered, to teach those classes, and also wanting desperately not to be needed in that way.
But Charlie gave no indication of wanting his classes back. When the new students arrived, he did not introduce himself, either casually in the Dining Hall or officially during any of the various orientation activities. I taught every one of his traditional workshops, and Raven G. hired and supervised the new groundskeeping team. Charlie was no longer taking on new students, so he saw no point in, as he put it, advertising himself. I wondered if I was supposed to put myself forward, make myself available to students needing to choose a master--one doesn't have to be a member of the Six to serve in that way--but I couldn't bring myself to ask.
In early February, he started sliding again. It was subtle, at first--he seemed translucent, somehow, almost glowing, unearthly, and I could not figure out what was generating that impression, what had actually changed. Whatever it was, I didn't like it.
Then he got tired again, or at least stopped pretending he wasn't tired. He grew weak.
He fell on the stairs, this time with a witness, and Nora must have convinced him that breaking a hip would be bad, because he agreed not to go up and down by himself anymore. He went to stay with his sister for two weeks, and when he came back he agreed to move downstairs into the Herbarium--I have heard he's not the first medically-retired master to do so, and it does have it's own back door. On the main door, the one that opens on the Dance Studio, he hung a sign: if door is closed, do not enter. He left it open when he went out.
He asked Rick and I to help him move. Actually, we did all the physical work of moving. Charlie only supervised, while we put his books and his equipment and his various knickknacks in boxes. Some things, already occupied chests and crates, and we planned to bring those down entire, but he had said not to try to move his furniture--the herbarium already had what he needed. He didn't have a lot of stuff, so packing didn't take very long. It felt very, very wrong.
Charlie didn't speak, except on practical matters, as we worked. Only at the end, when Rick and I were about to start carrying down boxes, did he voice even a hint at what he was feeling--he looked out the window and remarked "This is the last time I'm ever going to see this view."
We carried the boxes and other things down in several trips, leaving Charlie in his emptying room alone, as he wanted. We unpacked most of the boxes in the Herbarium, putting books on newly-available shelves in their proper order, folding his few clothes neatly into drawers. Eventually we left. Greg, we knew, would meet Charlie upstairs and walk him down, two old men walking together through impermanence.
Spring classes started. I had taken a leave of absence for my job at the landscaping place and was drawing full-time (if not lucrative) pay from the school. I wanted to work in the campus gardens, but that was Raven's territory and that of her crew--I wasn't needed. Instead, I made myself available again as a writing tutor, both on campus and with outside, paying, students. I also took on a few free-lance writing and editing. It all added up to a reasonable income.
It was very strange, working with yearling students who didn't know who Charlie was. They had come to recognize the old man who lived on campus and now occupied the Herbarium, but they didn't know anything about him, and most of them didn't ask. They had heard his name, but could not always remember it.
At one of our lunches in March, I broached a subject I'd been thinking of for a while.
"Charlie, is there anything I....or anyone else, needs to know?"
"What sort of thing?" I'd expected him to tell me there was a lot I needed to know, but apparently he'd decided not to be a smart ass for once.
"Well, um, like what you want? If you...can't make decisions for yourself anymore, does anyone know what to do?"
"All the people who need to know do," he admitted. But I must have looked quite stricken to be reminded I'm not one of those people. His face softened a little. "I have left instructions that I am not to be taken to a hospital or emergency room for anything cancer-related. It's a little more complicated than that, but basically if I choke on my dinner, sure, give me a Heimlich, but I will not be institutionalized, even if it buys me a few more weeks."
I both did and did not understand that, and I looked at him curiously. He pulled back the sleeve of his uniform shirt and showed me the faint little blob of a tattoo, the same one I bear.
The tattoo made from the ash of the wood of the campus, the one that means we can't ever permanently leave.
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