When I finally got out of the hospital, they immediately stuck me in prison there near the coast of North Florida. They didn’t call it prison, but that’s what it was–it being the house I grew up in.

It was a two-story Tudor, set at the edge of town, and the only room I could get into was the guest room downstairs. My old room overlooking trees and quiet streets was filled with memories and light but the stairs were steep–there were 25 of them–so I ended up in that musty cell below, humid and dark. Towering oaks heavy with Spanish moss grew next to the windows, and the sun could never quite penetrate.

My father had died, my brothers and sisters had moved out, so my mother and I lived there alone. She told one sister that I probably would be a better person for what had happened to me–more sensitive, more understanding of the problems of others–and she was sure, she confided to another, that I would be completely cured. With enough persistence and exercise, I would outgrow my sickness just as I had outgrown puberty, pimples and mumps.

I was not then and am not now able to articulate what it was that made me want to get out of that house and away from that person who had created me. Starting at age 14, I had been independent, on my own. Now, five years later, in my new wheelchair, I was back under her roof.

Understand, she wasn’t unkind, this mother of mine. She was just confused by what had happened to me. In those days, the idea of grief therapy hadn’t been invented. The reigning philosophy on trauma was that the soul would take care of itself in its own time. It was believed that, soon enough, I would adjust to the new me, my bad moods would evaporate, and my sunny childhood personality would reappear like the sun. Mind and soul and heart, if not body, would then be back to normal.

Family and friends, I suspect, didn’t see that I was already well into my new body. It was weird but it was mine, and the two of us were going to school, learning new tricks. Like how to get into a room without everyone falling silent. Or how to get out of a room without everyone falling silent.

Too, I was learning how to fend off statements like, “You’re an inspiration to all of us” (from the clergy), “We’re really proud of you” (from my uncles and cousins) and, “When are you gonna get rid of that chair and start walkin’ again, boy?” (from strangers). These voices were all tainted with ignorance and pity, and the only responses I could dig up were disgust and silence.

My New Friends
Like many of her generation, this mother of mine knew sorrow but had never been taught what to do with her sorrow. She knew enough, however, to give me some freedom. After a few weeks, she bought me a used Plymouth coupe with hand controls. The brochure that came along with it said the paint job was called “Sea-Bubble Gray.”

It was my escape. Not with friends, because the friends that I had known from before seemed as uneasy around me as I was around them. We had come to know each other over the years by swimming together and running on the beach together and falling down drunk together, even sleeping together. But the cheery me they had known was either gone or temporarily out to lunch, and the new sulky me was not that much fun. Like Mum, they tried–probably too hard–to make sure I didn’t feel isolated, different and crippled. Since they tried so hard, that’s how I felt.

I lost most of my friends but gained two new companions–my new body and my new gray coupe. We spent lots of time together. In an evening, at probably dangerously high speeds, on primitive roads (freeways had scarcely been invented then), I could make it all the way to Mayport, Live Oak or St. Augustine and be back so late my Mum would have already gone to bed. And if I slept in the next day, I could slip out of the house after she went shopping and be away from her and her heartfelt sighs, which could be heard all the way down to my dark cell in the lower part of the house.

There came to be another friend, someone I had not known from before, who seemed at ease with me and my new body. She was a nurse, or rather, had been a nurse, up until the time the dying Roger d’Ladel had come under her ministration. He had cancer, and she was a caring nurse, and during his last days she cared for him a great deal, and near the end, to his family’s displeasure, they were married. When he passed on, he left his estate to her.

Her large house and fancy surroundings in St. Augustine didn’t appeal to me as much as the fact that she was a familiar. My wheelchair and I, and my new isolation, were no big deal to her. I could visit with her and talk with her and spend the evening drinking with her and we didn’t have to talk about the thing that had come to me in the night and whipsawed my life around so.

One night it was late and I had drunk a lot. She was one of those older ladies who had jingly things on her wrists and dangly things around her neck and a slightly oriental cast to her eyes. She sat down very close to me, and the next thing we knew I was out of there. There was some part of me not ready for whatever it was she wanted to give me. I was on the road again, but this time I turned south, me and my gray friend, and we drove for almost 400 miles on two-lane roads through forests of loblolly pine and dozens of small towns until we reached the end of the continent.

Freedom
It took almost 14 hours to get to Key West, which in those days was no more than Ernest Hemingway’s home and a military base and lots of drinking establishments with names like “Land’s End” and “The Last Round-Up” with signs that said “Our credit manager is Helen Waite. For credit go to Helen Waite.”

I drove as far as I could, which was up to the gate of the Navy Station where I stopped briefly and stared at an MP who showed no signs of letting me go any further. So I turned around, then I stopped for several beers at the “It’ll Do Tavern,” which was the only one I could find with no steps. Then I headed back up over the causeway, back up through Miami and Palm Beach and up the coast until the sun went down.

I remember thinking that I had learned something on this trip. For the first time, I knew that it was possible to drive alone, without anyone else, without getting in trouble. For the first time I found I could do everything on my own. If I could get in and out of Key West and the It’ll Do Tavern and handle all those gas stations without anyone else’s help, I could go wherever I wanted. I was out of prison at last.

After it turned dark and well after I passed Daytona–having driven steadily for 30 hours without sleeping–I found that my gray car and I had some Zeppelins riding along with us. They traveled just behind, just out of my range of vision. If I turned my head quickly, I could get a glimpse of them. They moved at exactly the same speed that we did.

Somewhere closer to St. Augustine, we also ran into some icebergs. Over there in the Atlantic, under the full moon, if I didn’t look too hard, I could see them floating just offshore. This is Florida, I said to myself, and it’s summer and a hot night, so there can’t be any icebergs. But there they were, just off the beach, great hulking things rising up out of the water, the moonlight glittering across their snowcaps. They, like the dirigibles, followed us up the coast until we reached home.

Mum hadn’t stayed up for me and, unlike before, had left no note for me (“Your supper’s in the oven. See you in the morning. Is everything OK?. Love … “) The next afternoon, by the time I got up, she had gone out to do the shopping and by the time she got back, I had packed my suitcase, was back in the gray coupe, and on my way out west.