by K. J. Reilly
“This is Jesse.
“And Spindini…”
There was nothing left standing, but I kept swinging.
“And this is wrong.
“This is war…”
I stopped. Took it all in. Caught my breath.
“And it’s enough.”
I put the sledgehammer down and stepped back and Eli asked, “Joel, was Rooster living here?”
I nodded my head.
Benj asked, “Who’s Rooster?”
Eli said, “The guy from the soup kitchen who shot you.” She wiped away a tear.
Benj looked around, shook his head in disbelief, and then said, “I didn’t know he had a name….”
I started to say, “The guys at Hendricks Street who didn’t talk…” but Eli looked at me and then finished my sentence.
“Sometimes we gave them names.”
as he looked around at all the debris.
Then I took the largest boards I could find and laid them out on the ground and assembled them into the shape of a ten-foot-tall man. I attached the boards together with the old rusty wire and bits of rope that Rooster had used to try to hold his whole life together. First, I fashioned a torso with arms and legs and a head. Next, I started wiring shit to it. Tons of shit. Rooster’s newspapers and trash, old paperback books, flyers from grocery stores, empty soda cans, filthy clothes, pairs of my socks.
Lots and lots of my socks.
Jackson’s socks.
Benj’s bright orange socks became Rooster’s feet. Benj’s blue socks were Rooster’s hands in mittens.
Benj came over and tried to help.
“You’re making The Man from Burning Man for me,” Benj said, and I nodded my head in agreement.
Everything we strapped to The Man was important. Every empty soup can and pair of socks. It all stood for something. Then Eli jumped in and started picking stuff up and handing it to me.
A tin pie plate, a filthy shirt, a milk carton, a magazine…
Then in my frantic scrounging and rampage I picked up one of the medical reports I had seen a few days before:
January 14, 2015 3:10 p.m.
Veteran’s Administration Hospital
Patient Notes
Patrick Allen Samson
Rank Master Sergeant/US Marine Corps
Honorable Discharge 2014
IDENTIFYING DATA: PTSD, depression, psychosis, traumatic brain injury.
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: The patient is a 33-year-old white male who did two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He currently lives with his wife and infant daughter. He presented today with extreme agitation and erratic behavior.
PAST MEDICAL HISTORY: PTSD, depression, and substance abuse.
PAST SURGICAL HISTORY: 17 surgeries for cranial reconstruction, shrapnel removal, and hand reconstruction. Amputation at the distal phalange of the index and long finger from left hand.
ALLERGIES: None known.
MEDICATIONS: Sertraline (Zoloft) 200 mg daily. Past use of Venlafaxine (Effexor) 75 mg to 300 mg daily.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: Unable to obtain secondary to the patient being in restraints and sedated.
OBJECTIVE: Vital signs revealed a blood pressure of 130/80, pulse of 115, respirations of 22, and temperature is 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit. HEENT, and history and physical examination were unable to be obtained.
LABORATORY DATA: Laboratory reveals slightly elevated glucose at 100.2. Previous urine tox was positive for THC. Urinalysis was negative, CBC normal.
ASSESSMENT AND PLAN:
AXIS I: Psychosis. Inpatient Psychiatric Team to follow.
AXIS II: PTSD.
AXIS III: Deferred.
Evaluation to be followed up by medication adjustment and evidenced-based therapies: CPT and PE.
I read it out loud to Eli and Benj.
Then Eli bent over, picked up another piece of paper and said, “Joel, here’s another one. It’s from a year later on Christmas Eve.”
She read it out loud to us.
December 24, 2015 11:12 a.m.
Veteran’s Administration Hospital
Patient Notes
Patrick Allen Samson
Rank Master Sergeant/US Marine Corps
Honorable Discharge 2014
IDENTIFYING DATA: PTSD, depression, psychosis, traumatic brain injury. Apraxia.
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: The patient is a 34-year-old white male who did two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He is currently homeless. He presented today with extreme agitation and erratic behavior and verbally unresponsive. Friend who brought him in said he hasn’t spoken in months.
PAST MEDICAL HISTORY: PTSD, depression, and substance abuse.
PAST SURGICAL HISTORY: 17 surgeries for cranial reconstruction, shrapnel removal, and hand reconstruction. Amputation at the distal phalange of the index and long finger from left hand.
ALLERGIES: None known.
MEDICATIONS: Sertraline (Zoloft) 200 mg daily. Past use of Venlafaxine (Effexor) 75 mg to 300 mg daily.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: Unable to obtain secondary to the patient being in restraints and sedated.
OBJECTIVE: Vital signs revealed a blood pressure of 140/90, pulse of 110, respirations of 20, and temperature is 96.0 degrees Fahrenheit. HEENT, and history and physical examination were unable to be obtained.
LABORATORY DATA: Laboratory reveals slightly elevated glucose at 114.2. Previous urine tox was positive for THC. Urinalysis was negative, CBC normal.
ASSESSMENT AND PLAN:
AXIS I: Psychosis. Inpatient Psychiatric Team to follow.
AXIS II: PTSD.
AXIS III: Deferred.
Evaluation to be followed up by medication adjustment and evidenced-based therapies: CPT and PE. Consult on apraxia.
The medical reports were littered all over the place. Piled on the ground. Assembled in folders.
I collected all of them and put them aside and then used them to fashion hair, Medusa-like hair.
I stepped back.
It was done.
Patrick Allen Samson
Rooster had a real name.
right next to the old oak tree where Patrick Allen Samson had pinned me that day when he gave me the plastic bag with the gun in it and I stood back and then me and Benj and Eli just looked at it for a long time.
“What are we going to do now?” Eli finally asked.
And Benj said, “We’re gonna burn it.”
“Burn it? Why are you doing this, Joel?”
Then Benj said, “I told Joel that I wanted to go to Burning Man so he’s doing this for me. That night when I was drunk and Joel picked me up with his dad, I told him that my parents died in a car crash with an eighteen-wheel tractor trailer.”
Eli hugged Benj and they both started to cry.
I said, “Benj told me late that night that he never got to say good-bye to them.” And then I added, “He told me that at Burning Man they build a beautiful temple where people come from all over the world to leave prayers for the people they have lost.”
Eli squeezed both of our hands.
Then Benj said, “Then, after everyone has left their prayers and said goodbye, they burn the temple to the ground with all the prayers inside and they watch the smoke as it rises toward the sky.
“People say that after that experience they feel like they can go on. And they feel closer to God. Not that it takes the loss away, just that they can accept it more.”
Then Eli said, “But this is Rooster’s stuff, Joel.”
And I said, “He told me to do it. I asked him when I went to see him at the hospital a few days ago if he wanted me to get rid of this place and he nodded his head. I asked him if he was sure and he lifted one finger—that’s his way of saying yes. I think he knows this isn’t right. So I came here yesterday to go through his stuff and I pulled out some things to save for him. Here, look.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a medal in a little case.
Patrick Allen S
amson’s Purple Heart.
“I’m going to bring it to him at the hospital.”
Eli took it from me, looked at it closely, and then said, “Let’s say a prayer.”
And I handed them both a pen and said, “How about we say a whole bunch of prayers?”
So that’s what me and Benj and Eli did. We wrote prayers on Patrick Allen Samson’s medical reports and attached them to The Man with anything we could find—wire, string, nails….
Then I doused The Man in gasoline and lit it on fire.
And Eli and Benj and I stepped way back and watched as it burned.
We watched as the smoke rose toward the heavens and we said goodbye to Benj’s parents. To Andy. And to Rooster.
And to a perfect world.
And it felt like the end of everything.
Eli said that she had to walk back to the truck to get her phone to call her mom.
Once she was gone Benj said, “You know, Joel, even though my parents died and Andy died and Mr. Stanley’s daughter’s dead and Jacey brought a gun to school and I got shot and there are homeless vets and Eli can’t park a car for shit and will never go out with you, we are transitioning from sequential worsening to positive compounding.”
This is what I said: “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The good things are progressing geometrically, too, Joel.”
I just looked at him.
“What good things?”
“I’m not dead. Jace didn’t shoot the gun. Patrick Allen Samson is going to get help. We’re friends now. There’s good stuff, too.” I kicked at some of the embers and looked back to where Rooster’s shanty had been. Then Benj said, “Hey, you didn’t object when I said we were friends, so I guess we’re officially friends now. Right, Joel?”
I said, “That’s a definite maybe, Benj,” and smiled.
And Benj said, “Thanks, Joel.”
Then Eli came back and I took out my phone.
“Who are you calling?” Eli asked.
“I’m not calling anyone. I’m texting Andy.”
Eli’s face softened and she put her hand on my arm.
“Andy Westfield?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Joel, Andy’s dead,” Eli said, like she thought I didn’t remember.
“Just because he died it doesn’t mean that I can’t talk to him, Eli.”
Benj said, “He’s right, Eli. It’s not that weird. I talk to my parents all the time—in the beginning I even left them voice messages—and they’re dead, too.”
TEXT FROM JOEL TO ANDY 4:43 p.m.
If you start with a penny, and you double it every day, in one month you’d have $10.7 million. How fucking cool is that, right?
But here’s the thing.
Since the bad stuff compounds too, you just have to make sure that the good stuff compounds faster than the bad stuff.
The new kid I told you about told me that.
I think pretty much he should sit with us at lunch from now on.
You do know you still sit with me at lunch, don’t you?
but cinders and ash, Eli said, “I’m going to go out into the world and help as many people as I can.”
I said, “I’m going to plant food for the hungry, spread peanut butter as thickly as I want to, take foster kids in when I’m older, and make sure that everyone has socks.”
Then Benj said, “I’m going to make friends and not take anyone for granted.”
And I said, “I’m going to not judge people, read all the banned books, and embrace the violence of words.”
“What about God?” Eli asked.
“That would be a maybe. A soft maybe.”
Eli smiled through her tears and squeezed my hand. Then I told her there was something that I wanted her to read and I took out my phone.
“There are six hundred and ninety-three text messages that I wrote to you over the past year but never sent. I saved most of them and I want you to read them now.”
“You wrote me six hundred and ninety-three messages that you didn’t send? Six hundred and ninety-three?” Eli asked.
“Six hundred and ninety-three? Seriously, man?” Benj asked.
“Pretty much that would be a yes.”
I opened the save to draft file, handed Eli my phone, and in the process opened the door to a car that was careening toward a tractor trailer at high speed with no brakes and I jumped.
But I didn’t care.
I just tucked my head, put my shoulder into it, and rolled.
Eli took my phone and walked a few steps away and then sat down on the grass and started scrolling through a one-year conversation she and I never actually had.
And Benj and I watched as the last wisps of smoke trailed up to the sky.
Then Benj said, “This was great, Joel. Thanks again, man.”
“It was nothing. We’re friends now, remember?”
“You know, we could still go to the real Burning Man.”
And I said, “How’s the penny project?”
And he said, “Not so good.”
Then Benj and I looked over and Eli was crying again.
Benj said, “That move you just did? Brass balls, man.”
“I know, right?”
“Yep.”
“Which way do you think it will go?”
“Well, it was either the absolute worst fucking idea in the world or the best. She’s either going to get a restraining order against you or light up your night sky.”
Eli’s face was riveted to the screen of my phone and she was reading every one of the crazy-ass, deranged, overly emotional, wholly embarrassing texts that I had typed to her thinking that she would never see them. And you know what?
I was okay with it.
Then Eli walked over and handed me her phone and she said, “Read this, Joel Higgins.”
I said, “What is it?”
Benj said, “Probably that restraining order or hate mail.”
Eli said, “It’s a list.”
Then Benj said, “Should have seen that coming.”
I looked down. The list had a title.
EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT JOEL HIGGINS
And it was surrounded by yellow hearts and birthday cake emojis.
I had to read the title five times to make sure that it didn’t say EVERYTHING I HATE ABOUT JOEL HIGGINS.
I said, “Is this one of your short lists or long lists?”
And Eli said, “It’s the longest list I’ve ever written.”
And then Eli kissed me.
As in, Eli kissed Joel.
AS IN, HER LIPS ON MY MOUTH.
And it was the best thing that ever happened in my entire life.
Possibly the best thing that had ever happened in the whole world.
Ever.
Then Benj said, “You know, now that you two are a couple, the three of us could all go to Burning Man together.”
“Not happening, Benj. I have to read the rest of Winnie-the-Pooh to Patrick Allen Samson at the VA hospital this summer.”
“Okay, how about just me and Eli, then?”
“Not happening, Benj.”
“I have a yurt.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Okay, maybe not yet but I will, and you’ll see, Joel. You’ll change your mind.”
“No way.”
“Way. Okay, how about the SATs? At least take the SATs.”
“Not happening, Benj.”
“You’ll see. You’ll change your mind on both counts.”
“No way.”
Then Eli said, “Way.”
“Way what?”
“You’re taking the SATs.”
“Okay, maybe in the fall.”
Then Benj added, “Wait, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Ka-ching! It’s the pennies compounding,” Benj said as he grinned.
And then Eli kissed me again.
And again.
And again.
And I knew that I was going to kiss her back 10.7 million times.
Okay, maybe more.
I would like to thank (in no particular order) A. A. Milne, advocates for freedom and democracy around the world, E. B. White, inspirational teachers, Harper Lee, rebel moms, Shel Silverstein, defenders of free speech, Maya Angelou, librarians everywhere (you rock), Lynne Banks, veterans, wounded warriors, Roald Dahl, the inventor of Haagen-Dazs chocolate peanut butter ice cream, anyone who has ever stood up to injustice and been brave, Astrid Lindgren, small organic farmers, Toni Morrison, seed savers, J. D. Salinger, the people who paved the bike paths in Westchester County, and Sgt. R. Hubert of the Bedford, New York, Police Department for advising me on police protocol. And because no one ever thanks them, I would like to thank all of the AWFUL people in this world (you know who you are) who remind the rest of us every single day that while it’s so easy to say and do negative things, it’s so much better to say and do—and write—positive and compassionate and forward-moving things.
Also, profound and heartfelt thanks to my husband for all those ink-runs to Staples and for never admitting to being sick of rereading the same material no matter how many times I asked and for digging my sunflower garden every year without complaining and for growing vegetables and fruit and flowers and ideas and children with me and for a lifetime of precious moments too numerous and too personal to mention here. I am also deeply grateful to all three of my children for being the best reading buddies ever—I wouldn’t trade the time we had with books for anything—with extra super-special thanks to my daughter, Kate, who lived through the day-to-day writing of this book with me. Thank you for knowing how to spell so many more words than I do and for never getting exasperated and never telling me to stop being so annoying and use spell check and for always asking if I have any new pages to read. Your interest in knowing what happened next was my canary in the coal mine.
Sincere thanks to everyone at Hyperion who advocated for and shaped this project: to Emily Meehan and Julie Rosenberg, whose offer read more like a love letter to Joel and Eli than a business contract. To Hannah Allaman, who adopted the manuscript and dove in headfirst to edit it—you pushed me to make it better. It is better. So much better. I am grateful for both your sensitivity to my vision and for your insight and guidance on plot points, scene construction, voice, and character—it was invaluable. Thank you! I also owe a debt of gratitude to the rest of the publishing team: Jacqueline Hornberger for copyediting the manuscript without putting a single punctuation mark in any of the rambling monologues—as tempting as it must have been to do so. Thank you for that, and also for gently pointing out that there aren’t eight weeks in a month and that four Stevies in one book is probably three Stevies too many. I would also like to thank Jamie Alloy for designing the best book cover in the history of the world, and everyone—including Elke Villa, Andrew Sansone, Sara Liebling, Guy Cunningham, Dina Sherman, Amy Goppert, Frank Bumbalo, and Therese Ellis—in marketing and sales and production who helped turn this story into something luminous and alive. I would also like to extend heartfelt thanks to all the booksellers, bloggers, reviewers, and readers who picked up a copy of this book and took valued time away from other things in their lives to read it. As I am sure you already know, you are the most important people in the book universe!