Creeps

by Darren Hynes

  He gets to the front, but officers are there with outstretched arms and they’re keeping everyone back, so Wayne looks past them and sees the paramedics on their knees and one’s breathing into Marjorie’s mouth and the other is pumping her chest and counting and a fireman holds his helmet next to his chest and wipes his eyes because he’s probably thinking of his own little girl and then the wet snow comes hard and fast but no one moves because wet snow means nothing compared to this. And then there’s a voice in the distance and he turns around and it’s Marjorie’s mother running down the hill towards the lake and she’s still in her robe.

  Wayne focuses back on the paramedics who are now looking at each other, bowing their heads, wiping the wet from their faces or is it tears and getting to their feet and walking away and the body is there for everyone to see and Wayne loses his breath and nearly falls because it’s not Marjorie.

  TEN

  Dear God or whoever,

  How can our lungs be drawing breath and our hearts pumping blood and our brains thinking thoughts and then have it all stop like a wound-down toy and if it’s really you or whoever that’s in charge then you’re either stupid or else you didn’t think things through when you started everything!

  It didn’t look real, more like plastic or rubber or something and I can’t believe that’s what we look like when the life’s gone. They carried the body right by me and I looked away and covered my mouth as if it was contagious but then it dawned on me that I have it already so what’s the point?

  Why all the wet snow? Were you meaning to wash it away?

  What a waste some lady said and when I looked she was shaking her head and looking into her purse and pulling out a stick of gum and unwrapping it and then putting it back without chewing it and someone laughed and a fight broke out and the cops had to hold a man down and then some kid pulled down his pants and just started peeing and I wonder if that’s what they call shock?

  And there I was thinking that it was sort of what I wanted but not REALLY so am I partway responsible?

  I thought it was her, so I imagined walking into the water my own self ’cause what did you think I would do without my fellow creep? But it wasn’t, it was someone else.

  Will they cancel school tomorrow? What about the drama festival? It’s the last thing I should be thinking about, I know, but I’d rather think of that than what I saw today.

  Can you bring the life back? Probably not, eh. I mean, if you don’t do it for little babies you certainly won’t for a fifteen-year-old.

  Your friend who knows you can’t bring the life back,

  Wayne Pumphrey

  ELEVEN

  All the pews are full, so people have to stand near the back. Some are holding babies, while others fan themselves with their programs because it’s warm with everyone jammed in. It smells of perfume and old wood, and hardly a moment goes by without a child’s whining or a blown nose or a cough or a sneeze.

  Wayne sits in the centre right aisle, Wanda and his mother on one side of him and his father on the other. Wearing his good trousers and hardly worn shoes and his tie’s a clip-on and his shirt’s too big around the neck. Hair gelled and parted to the side and he’s splashed on some of his dad’s aftershave.

  The casket is just in front of the altar, yellow-flower bouquets on either side, a framed photograph resting on a mahogany table: Pete in track pants and holding dumbbells and there’s sweat on his forehead and he’s looking right at the camera and his face seems to be saying No pain, no gain, and behind him, on the wall, is a UFC poster of welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.

  What was that the priest just said … something about being taken before your time but having left an impression anyway? I’d say, Wayne thinks.

  Pete’s mom wails and Pete’s second dad goes to hold her but she pushes him away, so he tries again and this time she lets him, burying her face in his chest.

  The priest adjusts the mike and moves his mouth closer and tells everyone that God will bear the grief, but Wayne doesn’t think that’s likely. That’s when he sees her, two rows ahead, on the left side. Hair done up and wearing a dress, and her mother’s beside her. Out from behind the curtains at last. Marjorie must sense him staring because she looks back and their eyes meet and he tries to smile or lift his brows in acknowledgment but he’s frozen, so she turns back around.

  Then the priest leaves the pulpit and a member of the congregation walks up and takes his place and it’s Mr. Avery and he fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, but drops it and doesn’t pick it up. Grips each end of the pulpit and goes to speak but nothing comes, so he lowers his head, then raises it and tries again. And it’s all about Peter as a boy. The way he’d sit in the middle of the kitchen and play trucks for hours and how he could never get enough of his mother’s cod au gratin. How, when he was older, he made snow forts and skated on the homemade rink till the sun went down and it was freezing. Then came the two and a half hours of weightlifting every night and the raw eggs in a glass and the jogging and the skipping rope and the obsession with the UFC. Mr. Avery pauses to clear his throat and to wipe his forehead. Another deep breath and now it’s about how Peter’s real dad hadn’t treated him right and how Peter had his challenges and wasn’t a saint and got into trouble but was loved more than anything and Pete’s second dad says that he was blessed to have had what time he did with his son.

  Mr. Avery stops and looks at the casket for a long time, then he turns back and presses his lips against the mike and says, “Hug your kids tonight.” He steps away from the pulpit as the organ kicks in and the choir starts “Amazing Grace” and the rest of Pete’s family filter up to say their goodbyes. Mr. Avery stumbles en route and Pete’s mom bumps into the casket. Another man who looks a lot like Pete’s second father drapes his arm across her back and steadies her. There are others too: a youngish woman with short hair and fat thighs, and two skinny teenage boys not much older than Wayne. They stand in front of the casket for so long that the choir starts “Amazing Grace” again. Pete’s mother is the first to walk away, but she doesn’t seem to know where she’s going and the man who looks like Mr. Avery goes over and takes her hand and shows her. Mr. Avery has gone pale and looks exhausted and seems to be sweating as he struggles to make the few steps back to his seat. The rest wait patiently behind him. After they’re seated, others go up. One boy peers into the casket for so long the priest has to tell him to move on. Two girls who might be sisters walk up arm in arm, but neither can find the courage to look inside. Mr. Rollie goes up and Adrian’s with him and he has long hair and a week’s work of stubble on his chin. Then the principal’s there and Mrs. Cooper and the geography teacher and Mr. Ricketts and his ancient-looking wife, Daphne, who’s even more hunched over than her husband. Then more people. And more still. The organist has to stop to shake out her cramping fingers. She plays again. Then Bobby’s there, and he places his palms on the casket and bends over, seemingly getting ready to crawl in himself—to join his friend in the afterlife so they can bully the angels—but his father is there to grip his shoulder and keep him in the land of the living. Harvey’s next, walking up with his parents and his hair’s all cut and he’s wearing a nice suit and shoes and he looks like he’s lost weight.

  Wayne’s father nudges him and whispers, “You don’t have to,” but Wayne says he wants to. And when he looks towards the front again, Marjorie is just getting there. Her mother isn’t with her and she waits for the person ahead of her and then goes up herself and looks at Pete for ages. Now his own mother’s lips are against his ear. “Isn’t that her?” she says. Wayne nods and then Wanda leans over and says, “It’s a wonder she’s here.” Wayne looks up and Marjorie’s still there and people are waiting but she stays where she is. Now the priest’s going over and he places a hand on her shoulder and says something in her ear and you can see Marjorie nodding but still she doesn’t move. And the choir starts “Amazing Grace” for the third time and suddenly Wayne’s on his feet and
his father tells him it’s not his turn yet but Wayne ignores him and pushes past the others in the pew and goes out into the centre aisle and starts walking. He slips past those in line, up to Marjorie and the priest and goes to speak but he’s too taken aback by the look of Pete to get the words out: his almost-a-moustache shaved off and so white and looking nothing like himself, more wax than human, and Wayne wonders if it’s all some joke and where’s the real Pete? Then the priest’s asking him if he belongs to Marjorie and Wayne pauses for a moment, then says that, yes, he does belong to her … in a way. So he takes her hand and tries to get her to come, and she does, just like that. And they go back down the aisle, but instead of delivering her to her mother he walks right on past, and instead of sitting back with his own family he walks past them too, beyond those standing at the back and into the lobby and out through the heavy wooden doors into the morning. Down the church steps and then onto the street. Cars lined along the road, some with their wheels on the sidewalk. She slips her hand out of his and just stands there.

  There’s a sun—although it’s not giving off much heat—and the kind of chill that finds its way through layers, skin … bone.

  She looks at him. “I was sure it was you. Because of what I said about being a black hole and how we were better off on our own, and I thought, He’s gone and done it on account of me.”

  He goes to speak, but she beats him to it—

  “So I needed to be sure because I wasn’t about Dad and then they buried him so it was too late.”

  Quiet for a long time. Then a butchered version of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” filters past the stained-glass windows and neither can keep from smiling.

  “The funeral’s sad enough,” Wayne says.

  Marjorie sort of laughs and so does Wayne and then they stop and stand facing each other. Marjorie says, “He had a lot of friends.”

  Wayne nods.

  Then Kenny’s just up the road and he’s smoking and his sports coat is hanging open and his tie is loose and his hair’s in his face. They all catch each other’s eyes and, for a minute, it looks as if Kenny might take off, but then he flicks his smoke into the air and comes forward.

  “Let’s go,” Wayne says.

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  They start walking, meeting Kenny halfway. No one says anything.

  Wayne looks up and sees Kenny’s almost healed split lip and can’t help thinking that the guy responsible is just up the street in a casket.

  At last, Kenny says, “He didn’t look the same.”

  Neither Wayne nor Marjorie speaks.

  “They inject you full of shit so that you don’t look anything like yourself.” Kenny pauses. Brushes the hair out of his eyes and glances at Marjorie and says, “You okay?”

  Marjorie stays quiet.

  “I’m sorry.” Then, “I’ve been longing to say that.”

  Marjorie holds Kenny’s gaze. He looks away and says, “I had no idea. Swear to God.” He reaches inside his sports coat for another smoke. “Stole these off my old man. He’d have a conniption.”

  A cloud moves in front of the sun and the morning suddenly darkens.

  Kenny buttons his coat. “It’s gotten colder again.”

  They stand there like strangers as the last tortured lines of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” are carried on the wind.

  A hearse drives past and they watch it slow down and make a right into the St. Paul’s parking lot.

  After a long time, Kenny says, “I keep thinking how cold the water must have been.”

  No one speaks.

  More church bells. Another hymn, and it’s better, not so disjointed, the choir actually on key.

  “What I don’t understand is how he could keep himself under, you know. I mean … he must have wanted to come up.”

  The church doors open and the priest’s there. Then the casket. Carried by the wrestling team and they’re wearing white gloves.

  “How can he be in there?” Kenny says.

  Pete’s family is trailing the coffin. Behind them is the rest of the congregation, many of them clinging to shoulders and elbows and hands.

  Kenny turns away and Wayne thinks he’s crying, but when Kenny looks back his eyes are dry. “He was more fucked up than I thought, but he was my friend and now he’s gone, so …”

  Pete’s loaded into the idling hearse and the priest waits for the mourners to gather and then raises his Bible and says a prayer and one of the wrestlers closes the back of the hearse and it pulls out of the lot and makes a left and drives past Wayne and Kenny and Marjorie, the smell of its exhaust somehow mixing with the odour of things too late to fix.

  Marjorie grabs Wayne’s hand. “Take me somewhere.”

  “Where?” says Wayne.

  “Anywhere.”

  They start walking, leaving Kenny alone on the sidewalk.

  TWELVE

  He thinks he might be holding her hand too tightly and taking the more troublesome route, but she’s said nothing. Teenagers playing street hockey make obscene gestures with their sticks when they pass and, farther along, a Dutch shepherd gives chase, but its owner calls it and the dog retreats happily, its brindle tail wagging. Two ladies in headscarves tell them to get off the sidewalk if they’re going to run, while an old man in a tweed cap shakes his fist in the air because Marjorie and Wayne have scared away the squirrels he was feeding.

  A quick cut to the left behind the houses on Alcott Street, then across the intersection where Gower connects to Mills Crescent, past the Two Seasons Inn and the Ultramar and the Kentucky Fried Chicken with the big rock-like hole in its bucket, and past the soccer field and the hospital and the recreation centre and into the woods.

  “How do you know this way?” she says, and he doesn’t answer her because he has no idea how, just that he does.

  Upwards now, and it’s harder going, but he doesn’t slow down or let go of her hand, and she’s right behind him and he likes the feeling of having her close like a blanket or extra sweater. Then the trail levels out again and they run a ways farther and then emerge into a clearing. They stand there catching their breath. Then, without prompting, he’s heading towards the steel ladder and he’s climbing and not looking down and she’s right there and it’s he who helps her over this time. And they walk to the centre of the water tower and lie flat on their backs and stare up at the sky and it’s a little warmer now from all the walking and climbing and the clouds have moved on, so the sun’s helping.

  The sounds of each other’s breathing and birds and the train—loaded down with iron ore pellets— passing through. And he feels fingertips on his palm and he looks over at her and her eyes are wet but she’s smiling so he shimmies closer and so does she and they’re holding each other. Kissing’s next and then her hand’s on him and his is on her and he’s not sure what he’s doing only that he’s doing it and she doesn’t seem to be minding. And the wind whistles in their ears and she moves against his fingers and he’s suddenly shivering but he’s not cold and she makes a sound like there’s pain but when he opens his eyes pain’s not on her face.

  Just lying there afterwards.

  No one speaks for ages. Then at last, he says, “I thought it was you, too.”

  She rests her head on his chest. “You’re not a black hole. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You’re my only friend.”

  He looks at the sky. “You’re my only friend, too.”

  Church bells in the distance.

  Birds fly across the sun.

  “Has it ever crossed your mind?”

  She takes a moment, then nods. “But I wouldn’t.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Big difference between thinking and doing.”

  “Yeah.”

  Quiet.

  “Can I ask you something?” Wayne says.

  “Okay.”

  It takes him forever, but at last he says, “W
as it here? Your dad?”

  Marjorie lifts her head and sits up and straightens her dress and Wayne sits up too and straightens his shirt.

  They look out over Canning.

  “Some sadness can’t be fixed,” Marjorie says.

  Wayne looks across at her. Sees the man with the smile that had no happiness in it and Pete with the bad beginning and hears The Meat’s second dad saying Hug your kids tonight. What must have gone through Pete’s mind in his final moments, Wayne wonders, or perhaps nothing had.

  “I picture him alive here,” Marjorie says, “sitting like you and me. I don’t understand graveyards.”

  After a while Wayne says, “You upset the play was cancelled?”

  “A little.”

  “Do you think we could have won?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “So much for St. John’s.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  “You would have got best actor.” It dawns on Wayne then that, for the first time, he can’t see the iron ore cloud and he thinks about asking Marjorie if she can, but he changes his mind because he often misses what’s right in front of him.

  More church bells.

  A dog barks.

  “I saw your mom in church,” Wayne says.

  “Out of her bathrobe; can you believe it?”

  “She looked nice.”

  “They’ve upped her dosage. She’s a little better.”

  He thinks of Pete The Meat and the wrestling team’s white gloves and the hearse pulling away and how, in the end, Pete got a ride in a trunk of his own.

  They tilt their heads back, allowing the spring sun to warm their faces.

  Then Wayne pulls out an envelope.

  “What’s that?” she says.

  “I’d intended to put it in your mailbox.” He hands it to her.

  She takes it.