SW ORE Tales by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

Agony in Agness

by Mike Bozart

© 2020 Mike Bozart

Julian and Julia Jansenjehn. Recently married, early-30-something, ultra-tech-savvy, Caucasian Dutch-émigrés-to-the-United-States entrepreneurs. Their second joint venture, a virtual baseball game with an uber-realistic, streak-momentum-constantly-and-instantaneously-updated, MLB-total-runs-per-game-average-matching (8.76 for the 2010

season) algorithm with an embedded almanac, has just sold for a whopping $6.16 million. Now they can vacate their cramped, high-priced, maintenance-often-deferred duplex in Silicon Valley (Los Gatos, California), and begin to live the American Dream just about anywhere. And with both of them being outdoorsy types who love being immersed in nature –

the more the better being the prevailing sentiment, as long as there is a reliable high-speed (satellite will suffice) internet connection – they settle on a partially wooded, semi-secluded 9.88-acre (4-hectare) tract of land along the a-world-away-from-Chicago Illinois River, just south of the confluence with the Rogue River in the tiny Agness community of southwestern Oregon.

Despite the lucrative windfall, their Rijnmond-rooted frugality holds firm: they order a three-bedroom, 1,916-square-foot (178 square meters), Cape Cod, metal-home kit with a two-car garage. The outer shell is assembled and anchored to the freshly poured concrete slab in three days. Their first night in their new prefabricated home is Thursday, August 4th in 2011.

And a mere eleven days later, Julia gives birth at near-full-term to a healthy son, Jason. All is going swimmingly. A third online-based project is nearing completion with potential buyers already nibbling. They couldn’t be happier. “Wauw, we hebben het gehaald in Amerika!” [“Wow, we made it in America!”] they exclaim numerous times over dinner.

Jason’s toddler years whiz by with nary a hapless incident.

He is soon attending kindergarten at the local, public, just-two-rooms-and-not-much-more

Central

Curry

[County]

School District elementary school. Their taller-than-average, slender son is a precocious, though somewhat solitary, lad.

In the spring of 2018 (second semester of 1st grade), Jason has his parents sign him up for the area T-ball team. He does well at hitting the stationary baseball off the car-radiator-hose-attached iron stand, as well as fielding at the shortstop position.

His love for the sport grows. He plays again the following April. And gets better at all facets.

By the middle of 3rd grade, Jason is reading and writing on a fifth-grade level. The teacher encourages him, as do his parents. He is fascinated by words.

After several months of live-pitch practice with his dad on the flat, lush-grass-carpeted, riverine portion of their property; Jason, even though a little anxious and a bit unsure, decides to try out for the regional Little League team. He makes the cut and has a fairly good season with a calculated-by-his-father batting average of .281. The only injury sustained during the eight-week-long, 4th-place-finishing stint would be a lower-leg bruise from a shin-to-shin collision when he slid into 3rd base, attempting to stretch a double into a triple.

And that is when everything began to change. For the worse.

The shin bruise took much longer than normal to recede.

Soon Jason was getting bruised whenever he bumped into something, no matter how slightly. His complexion began to grow pale. He often complained of dizziness and headaches over the summer. When his gums and nose began bleeding for no apparent reason on Wednesday, July 31st (2019), his parents drove him to the closest pediatrician, who took some blood samples. The doctor’s office would call back a week later with the dreadful results: Jason had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The news of the ALL diagnosis was devastating, but all three tried to remain positive. Julian reminded Jason that the odds were in his favor to beat it. Julia, a longtime agnostic in the modern-day

Netherlands’

predominantly

nonreligious

doctrine like her husband, began to look to her grandparents’

Calvinist faith for strength.

A chemotherapy regimen promptly started in Portland, some 5½ hours away by car. Jason soon lost all of his brown hair.

He was often nauseous with very little appetite. He became frustrated and decidedly miserable. Life had become something to endure – not to enjoy.

Schooling, though, continued online during the 2019-20

year. With the start of 4th grade in the 2020-21 school year, all primary instruction was moved to online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This made Jason feel a little less removed from his peers, as all of the students were now

metaphorically in the same-but-unseen, remote-learning boats, drifting down the Rogue River.

The initial treatment, the induction phase, did its job; it knocked the cancer down. Jason was now in remission.

However, only three months later his white blood cells were going rogue once again, crowding out red blood cells and platelets.

More treatments followed over the winter and into the early spring. Because of the spread of the novel coronavirus, Julia and Julian could no longer be in the same room with Jason after May (of 2020). It was heartbreaking.

This made a dire situation even more stressful. Julian became an ardent atheist, often railing: ‘All religions are scams predicated upon a grand falsehood that needlessly divide, distract, and prey upon the feeble-minded.’ Julia, nonetheless, quietly continued to pray, constantly pleading for divine mercy. Her sole soft-spoken retort to Julian: ‘My dear husband, no one has ever conclusively disproved the existence of God. Why not give it a chance? It can’t hurt.’

Yes, marital relations were becoming strained.

Then came the blunt, stone-cold pronouncement from the team of cancer specialists on September 9, 2020: Jason had terminal cancer. None of the leukemia treatment methods or drugs would improve his situation for more than a few weeks; nothing would take hold. It was hopeless.

They brought Jason home for the last time after being told that there was a 97% chance that he would die within the next three months. But, exactly when no one could say.

A dismal mood permeated their home; an incessant pall of despair hung over their heads. Their miens were downcast; all eyes were always to the floor. Conversations became nothing more than brief murmurings.

Saturday, November 7th (2020). It is a cool, partly cloudy afternoon in autumnally scenic Agness. Julian is walking through the sylvan sector of their large lot. A new leaden thought crash-lands with each deliberate step on the fallen maple leaves. Wonder when my dear son dies. Has to be any day now. Which date – which series of numerals – will then be etched into my brain for the rest of my doleful life?

Why Jason? Why not me? Would gladly trade places. And

after Jason dies, what happens after that? Will Julia and I stay married? We seem so distant now. Even angry with each other. All the time. Does she blame my genetics for this? But, most cases aren’t hereditary. Neither of us were cigarette smokers. Was Jason exposed to some toxic chemical in our steel house? I bet that’s the culprit! There’s probably something sinister in, or on, the interior walls.

Maybe it’s the synthetic coverings. Or, is it the counter coatings? The house had a peculiar smell when we first moved in. And it lasted for almost a whole year. Probably the outgassing process. Some mutation-causing sixteen-syllable chemical. Yeah, I bet that’s it – the cause of my precious son’s demise. Should I start an investigation? Eventually initiate a class-action lawsuit with one of those late-night-TV

law firms? But, is it really worth the time? And the agony?

Agony in Agness. A misspelling never corrected.

Julian’s rueful brooding is startled by a barking dog. Bram, their large-penned, six-year-old, male beagle, has caught Julian’s scent as he walks towards the still-dry-season-shallow stream. Guess he wants out. Or some more treats.

How nice to be a canine, and oblivious to this mental turmoil.

All those baseball practices on this makeshift field. His first catch of a pop-fly. ‘Dad, I caught it!’ What might have been?

A round object then gets inadvertently kicked by Julian’s right, steel-toed, earth-brown hiking boot. It is a slightly-buried-in-the-unusually-green-for-late-fall-grass, bone-white-cowhide, regulation-size baseball. He picks it up with his left hand. Ah, the one that we lost last year. How did we lose it?

Was it an errant throw? Or, was it a bases-clearing blast?

What day was that? Guess I could check my 2019 desk calendar. May have noted it. Maybe. Maybe not. Wait. Hold on. This baseball is way too new-looking for 2019. Jason must have been out here alone playing lob-and-hit recently.

And then abandoned the ball. Maybe he thought: ‘That was it

– my final home run. I’ll just let it lie right there.’ For me to find someday? Oh, this agonizing life. What does it matter?

Now. Then. Ever. What does anything matter? What a torturous existence for Jason. Life’s just not fair. It never has been. Though monetarily, millions would love to be where we are. But, no sane person would make that trade-off.

Back in the somber abode, Julia is looking through an old photo album in the living room. She stops on a page with images from where she grew up: the Feijenoord

neighborhood of Rotterdam. She muses. Really miss my home. More than ever. Sure would be nice to be with mom, dad, and the whole family. Should we have just stayed in South Holland? If we would have, would things be different?

Would Jason be cancer-free right now? Should I have joined a church here? Is praying selfish? God?

Jason quietly loses consciousness alone in his bedroom.

And passes away at 3:09 PM. Julia would discover his lifeless body fifty-three minutes later.

Julia and Julian would agree to have their son’s corpse cremated three days later. After placing the sealed bronze urn of Jason’s ashes on the center of his old cedar dresser, Julia begins to go through the drawers, removing and boxing Jason’s clothes. In the smaller, top-right drawer, she discovers a folded sheet of notebook paper under his socks.

The neatly printed message:

Dear Mom and Dad,

You have both been wonderful parents. Truly amazing parents. You have done so much for me. All those trips to the hospital in Portland.

All those overnights beside me, until they would not allow it for Covid-19 reasons. Thank you so very much!

Health update: the ALL has now almost completely won out. Yes, I know that I will be dead very soon. I can feel it in my bones and in my blood, my bad blood, my out-of-control blood. It is probably only a matter of days, or hours, now.

I will be hiding this note later. I am wondering right now which of you will find it, and when you will find it.

Oh, right now is 2:17 Friday afternoon, November 6th. [2020] It’s a gray day, kind of gloomy, but no rain yet.

Dad, I enjoyed all of those baseball practices. The hitting and catching really helped me.

Mom, thanks for all those great breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

They were absolutely delicious, especially those dill-pickle chips and cheddar cheese sandwiches.

Well, I obviously won’t be on the baseball team next year.

However with this evil pandemic, who knows if there is even a baseball season? Probably a lot of games get cancelled, I bet.

Remember how I used to say “Why me?” all the time? I’m sure that it was very annoying. I really could not understand my bad luck.

What did I do wrong to deserve this? Death from cancer at the age of nine? What kind of God does that? I tried, but could not figure it out. I guess that I was just unlucky. Just as simple as that.

Oh, I did my own research. A certain percentage of children get cancer. A certain percentage survive and live a normal life. And a certain percentage don’t. Well, I was obviously in that last category. That’s just how it goes, I guess.

Honestly, I actually don’t care to live in this agony anymore. Death will be a most welcome, permanent relief.

I will always love you both, eternally, wherever I end up or whatever I become.

Please don’t let my death separate you two. Please.

Jason

another pSecret pSociety pshort pstory

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Remote by Mike Bozart (Agent 33) | March 2021