Tough Old E

By J.D. Reed

THIS IS THE CHILD by Terry Pringle Knopf; 194 pages; $13.95

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,/ Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,/ . . . Remembers me of all his gracious parts,/ Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form."

Shakespeare's recollection of a dead son in King John echoes through the literary works of grieving authors, from John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud (1953) to Mary-Lou Weisman's Intensive Care: A Family Love Story (1982). Books about children struck down by disease seem to constitute a genre; by now the reader should be inured. Yet some of those memoirs still have the power to move.

This Is the Child is all the more powerful for its lack of calculation. Terry Pringle writes about his son's battle against leukemia with unadorned honesty. In 1980 Pringle, an Abilene, Texas, insurance claims adjuster, his wife Brenda and their two sons, Michael, 6, and Eric, 4, are plucked from their ordinary lives of Star Wars, shopping malls and Sunday school. In Houston's huge and hectic Tex as Children's Hospital, Eric, comforted by a Han Solo toy, endures daily blood drawings from his hands, spinal taps, radiation and chemotherapy. Although ravaged by treatment, the boy adapts better than his father. "His stomach protruding, his head bald," writes the horrified Pringle, "he now believes he looks just like his grandfather."

Pringle can handle most of the deficiencies of modern medicine: indifferent nurses, inept interns and medical students who observe a parent-doctor conference "like bright-eyed evaluators for a game show." But the bureaucracy is unendurable: "I feel like an immigrant unable to get through customs." Listening to Eric as he receives injections, Pringle writes, "My child shouldn't be stuck and made to scream. We have lost control."

At home during a remission, Eric seals a special bond with his father. Each evening they visit a nearly empty mall because Eric must be isolated against infection. There they window-shop and occasionally play Space Invaders. Pringle gives Eric's medicine a personality. Vincristine, a derivative of the periwinkle plant that is responsible for Eric's baldness, is dubbed "Sheriff Pete Periwinkle," aiming to outdraw the bad blood cells. But the sheriff loses, and the pain returns with a shock: "This five-year-old is no longer protected, and he knows it."

When Pringle confesses that he cannot look at the excruciating bone-marrow aspiration procedure, the child becomes father to the man. "Next time," Eric orders, "you watch."

The end comes without recriminations. Pringle offers his son a poignant farewell. "Because it seems important that even a child should leave a legacy, I say, 'Everybody I know talks about how tough old E is.' " Eric responds with resolve in his last hours. "Suddenly this depleted child is furious, twisting and jerking in my arms. 'I can't hold my breath. I can't, I can't.' 'Who's telling you to hold your breath?' I ask. 'God,' he says simply."

Pringle has balanced his account perfectly. He employs neither sympathy-card sentimentality nor gruesome closeup. At its core, This Is the Child offers a truth as simple--and tenacious--as the child himself: love, even doomed love, is damned hard work. --By J.D. Reed This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.