Jarvis woke up most mornings with a dull, relentless headache. Aspirin didn't help. Coffee didn't help. At first, he thought he was starting to have an adverse reaction to cheaper cigarettes and switched to a more expensive brand. But the only impact that had was on his already stretched bank account. Then he gave up smoking, thinking that would help. Then he tried drinking until the headaches went away; but he just ended up passing out. And instead of sleeping through the night, he would wake up in the middle of the night, feeling as if he couldn't breathe.
He never remembered dropping off to sleep; but he knew that he always did. He slept hard and deep and nothing disturbed him until the headache woke him exactly seven minutes before his alarm. On weekends when he didn't set the alarm, he still woke up at the same time.
Various doctors had told him various things over the years to explain the headaches. He'd had all kinds of scans, taken all kinds of marvelous drugs. Jarvis had been to so many doctors trying to get the right combination of pain killers and tranquilizers that they started to believe he was a junkie. He was once referred to a shrink who, after seven sessions at $950 for a fifty minute session (only half was covered by his company insurance plan) told him he was repressing rage about the death of his father. He stopped going to the shrink after that and tried the remainder of the drugs he had; but the drugs worked like booze. He'd nod off for a while but end up waking up with the sensation that he was choking.
This morning was like every other morning except that Jarvis had a moment. It was less than a moment. Brief. Shorter than a half a breathe. He knew he was about to wake up and his eyes opened. The headache was gone. The dull thud that had haunted him since he was ten years old had disappeared. It was glorious and reminded him of life before the headaches. It reminded him that once upon a time, he loved being out in the sun; that his tan was so dark from playing outside all day in the summer that the neighbor kids used to laugh and call him the village nigger. He'd even gotten into a fight over it once with Tommy Delaney and won.. and it had been a glorious win. That had been before the headaches.
And he remembered something else. An image, or a sensation. Snow covered hills. Riding on a large wooden cart being dragged by two large oxen. He was sitting next to someone that he had known, but no one he recognized from his everyday life. But in the dream, the person was someone he knew and trusted. He knew the man had a scar over his left eye even though he could not see his face in the dark.
Jarvis wanted to hold onto the memory as long as he could. He rarely remembered his dreams, but when he did, it came in brief flashes. They were always different and always the same. Sometimes he would revisit places he'd dreamed about before. He always knew the landmarks and never got lost and was never scared or worried. He was trying to remember if he had ever seen the ox driver's face when the image was shattered by the onslaught of another headache. He covered his ears with his pillow and let the alarm go off for a full five minutes before he ripped it from the plug and threw it across the room, smashing the body length mirror that hung on the back of his bedroom door.