by John Klima
Her small narrow face hardened.
“Good girl.”
Midmorning.
“Phone call, Jim,” said his mom. In a hushed voice: “I think it’s a girl.”
Big Jim banished his first thought, then took the call.
“Hello?”
“So who are you seeing now?”
“Huh?”
“Margie and Pete said they saw you going into a building in back of Southtown late last night. Who is she?”
“Macy? Is that you?”
“Is it someone from school? Debbie Morning?”
“Macy, this isn’t a good time.”
“Oh yeah, you play the big mournful loner, but all the time you’re wandering around from girl to girl—didn’t the time we had together mean anything to you?”
“Huh?”
And so forth, and when Big Jim hung up the phone, his mother said, “Say, have you got a new girlfriend there, Jim? Good for you. I always thought you could do better than that Macy Allen, you should bring your new friend over to the house sometime, maybe for dinner, maybe tomorrow night, hmm?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, Ma.”
Is it that obvious? Big Jim wondered, hightailing it out the front door. Is her song in my eyes? Is her face reflected in mine?
Down the sidewalk, the suburban totems returned to their daytime splendor.
Singing his own song.
Lock me in my room.
Please don’t let me hear the music tonight.
“Kid, kid, are you there? Listen, I wasn’t thinking straight when I told you to lock me in here. It was a joke. We kid around, don’t we? So unlock the door now, okay? Don’t you hear the music, can’t you understand? Listen! Hear it! Are you there, kid? Are you with me, kid?”
Time passes, the room is torn up, souls are tormented, bed-sheets are rumpled terribly. Visions of long strings, a strange orchestra. This sweet love.
“I’ll let you out on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“I’ll let you out if you let me go with you.”
“It’s a deal,” Big Jim said.
The doorknob rattled and turned.
Big Jim quickly pulled open the door, nabbed the kid by the arm and yanked her into the room, locking the door behind him, and made his getaway into the night before she could yell for Mom.
“I figured you’d be back.”
“I tried to stay away. It’s…her…it’s…the music.”
“It freaked me out too, first time I heard it. Got used to it after a while. Part of the job, you know.”
“I could never get used to it.”
“Same deal as last time, okay?”
“Right. Here’s the money.”
“I’m sorry to do it this way, it’s just that I’m not supposed to do this, I’m taking some risk here.”
“I understand.”
“Fifteen minutes. I’ll come get you.”
“Thanks.”
When the quarter hour expired, and they walked back to the entrance, Big Jim asked, “Have any of them ever, you know, left?”
“Not since I’ve been here.”
“But it could happen.”
“Sure. That’s why we’re here.”
“It will happen.”
“It might happen.”
“If you believe?”
“You never know.”
“You tricked me,” said Kid Sister when he returned. She was sitting on his bed, arms crossed, looking older than he had remembered.
“I didn’t mean it. Forgive me. I’m weak.”
“That was very mean.”
“I hurt my back. Things haven’t been the same since.”
“You’ve never been like this. You’ve never been anything like this.”
“This is grown-up stuff—you wouldn’t understand. You’re just a little kid.”
“Take me with you, I wanna understand.”
“No, please don’t ask me.”
“Please.”
“I can’t.”
“I’ll tell Mom.”
“Traitor.”
“You called me a little kid.”
“Forgive me.”
“Think about taking me with. Think about it, just think about it for a minute, okay?”
“You never know what will happen, if you believe.”
A car in the parking lot the next night.
“I can’t let you in, not now.”
“Why?”
In a whisper. “Family.”
“Hers?”
“Tonight isn’t good. I’ve helped you out, now you have to help me out. Go home.”
“Can I talk to them?”
“You need to leave.”
“I can come back later.”
“I don’t know how long they’ll be here.”
“I’ll wait in the weeds, over there.”
With a shrug. “Suit yourself.”
Big Jim crouched in the weeds partway up the hillside until the visitors left the building. They were weeping. He felt an empathetic wave roll over him, but didn’t truly understand the implications of their tears.
Big Jim’s girl troubles continued, Macy making her presence felt again. Who is she? What does she have that I don’t have? I just rode around with Greg Fox to make you jealous. I’m not doing anything tonight. Do you want to go to the drive-in?
Big Jim looked out the window. The tree branches were swaying with the wind, the young green leaves rippling.
I can’t. Not tonight. Forgive me.
That night, Big Jim knew Macy was following him from the moment he hit the boulevard. He saw her lurking among a line of cedars across from their house. He didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge her. He kept walking, no longer wandering, no more wondering, knowing exactly where he was headed. He took comfort in that. It was a good feeling. It made him feel right.
Now thoughts and memories about Macy came into his mind, fighting for attention with the music of his soul. He tried to conjure up the details of their relationship. Fuzzy blobs of yesterday. They hung out at the Red Barn, she and her #3 combo, he and his #5, good old number five, the chicken basket, onion rings, cole slaw, amen. They attended drive-in movies and pretended to be film buffs. Their favorite refreshment was the chili dog. Cruising down Penn Avenue, getting into an occasional drag race. Was there talk of marriage? Was there an open bottle?
When he reached the entrance, Big Jim turned to the darkness and said, “Macy, come here.”
She had been hiding behind Santa’s Workshop, and now hurried across the lot, coming up short at the Doric columns.
“What’s that weird smell? What’s that creepy sound? What is this place?”
“The music, it’s the music, that’s what you’re hearing,” Big Jim told her. “Isn’t it the most beautiful music?”
“So this is where you meet your girlfriend?”
“Do you want to come in?”
“I’ll give her a piece of my mind, you can count on that!”
When the door opened, the attendant looked at both of them and said, with a short laugh, “Table for two?”
The moon broke free of the clouds, injecting the land with white. The wind settled down; the wanderer had come home.
Beyond the entrance was a modest foyer, past that an arched doorway leading to a larger room with a vaulted ceiling. The lighting was subdued, deep red and gold.
“Well, this is different,” said Macy. “I didn’t even know this place was here. Didn’t there used to be a bar somewhere back here?”
Into the main room, circular and smelling of flowers and fetidness, Macy hesitated. “What in the world…”
Big Jim wore a happy smile.
The attendant was smirking.
`Alcoves along the curving walls, interior circles with slabs, each with a well-dressed patron resting on it in a highly prone position.
Wires led up from the residents to a common destination in the ceiling: a harmonium-like device with an air-pressur
ed bellows positioned among the ventilation screens. Occasionally the wires jiggled, causing tones of various octaves to emanate from the organ; taken together they formed a strange, dark symphony, a new American songbook.
“I…I don’t understand,” Macy said, stumbling numbly through the main room.
“Welcome to the Hillmont Leichenhaus,” said the attendant in a tired monotone. “Our Leichenhaus was built by the Society for the Prevention of Premature Burial, Hillmont branch. Throughout history there have been cases of people thought dead, reviving after being placed in their final resting places; vivisepulture as the scholars call it, or in common language, being buried alive. The horrible deaths, the chewing of fingers, the crushing of skulls against the casket lid in a desperate bid to escape their early interment, have haunted the generations. It would be safe to say that in earlier years the subject was a matter of much consternation for proper society, including the composer Chopin, King Leopold I of Belgium, the poet Edmund Yates, Lady Burton, wife of explorer Sir Richard Burton—just to name a few. Often they stipulated in their wills that they were to be decapitated or worse after the death certificate was signed to avoid the horror of a premature burial.
“Was there a better way?
“Yes!
“The Leichenhaus, the House of Corpses, was originally conceived in Germany in the 1800s. The Leichenhaus was a transition place between life and death, a waiting room, if you will. You can’t be too careful, why take chances, you may be next! You’re asking yourself how it works. All our guests are carefully monitored in a very scientific manner. Sensitive wires are attached to various parts of the anatomy. Any movement by the waiting ones will result in the wire being pulled, creating a clear tonal chord up there.”
“Now listen to this next part,” said Big Jim. “It’s swell!”
“I know you’re asking yourself—but what are all these sounds I’m hearing now, this music? Does that mean all the residents here are not really dead, are in fact alive? To the uninitiated observer it may seem that way, but in fact as the human body rests in this twilight state, gases are eliminated, tissues are in transition, the body as a whole does not in fact truly ever rest. As a trained Leichenhaus attendant, however, I can usually determine which sounds are from this natural regression, this settling if you will, and which sounds may indicate an individual has been given a premature verdict of death.”
They reached the most precious of slabs.
She lay still, pale, perhaps slightly bloated, the flowers framing her entire body, the scent sweetly choking them.
“See,” Big Jim said, “there isn’t anything for you to be jealous about, Macy. Listen to the music…isn’t it beautiful?”
Macy stepped backward, her eyes wide.
“You’re crazy! You’re crazy! She’s dead, she’s dead, they’re all dead!” Macy screamed and ran for the entrance.
As she escaped back toward the known Hillmont, Big Jim and the attendant stood at the stately threshold of the Leichenhaus.
“She doesn’t understand,” said Big Jim.
“Most of them don’t.”
“They’re not really dead, not for sure.”
“They wouldn’t be here if we were sure.”
Macy disappeared over the hillside.
Big Jim thought of the flowers circling his beloved. She loves me, she loves me not.
“She followed you,” Kid Sister informed him when he returned. “I used my spyglass on her and I saw her follow you.”
“You saw who?”
“Macy.”
“Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Well, what happened was that Macy and I came to an understanding, I think. I think if you ask her she would say the same thing. Understand?”
“Oh. You are the grown-up, I guess.”
“Yeah, that follows.”
Finally some stability came into Big Jim’s life. He felt that he had finally made a clean break with his past. He had to—there was no way to straighten his spine, no way to turn back the hit parade. School was out.
But what of the future?
Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps that was why he had found her, made the connection, heard the music, got strung out on her. Maybe something stirring inside her, maybe this is what drew him to her instead of one of her compatriots in that twilight world. Maybe he would be there when she awoke.
In his dreams that night he dreamt that he roused his beloved with a kiss.
Then the music changed.
It happened two nights after Macy’s visit to the Leichenhaus. Big Jim almost slept through it. He didn’t spring to attention when he heard it, just slowly came to consciousness, climbing out of several heavy layers of grogginess.
Fully awake, he listened hard. A change, subtle yet distinct. Colder, more discordant. A factory, a plane, the wind, something faraway, maybe not music, maybe not music at all.
Big Jim got up and followed the well-worn path down to the Leichenhaus, realizing with some alarm that it was the path that led him to the Leichenhaus, not the music itself.
The attendant didn’t answer his secret knock, so Big Jim let himself in and stepped into the main room. Darker here, shadows laying over the scene. He breathed easy when he saw the familiar alcove still occupied. Thank goodness. The change in the music must mean that time was running out for her. He had to move fast.
He drew close, quickly leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, the cold jumping across the void.
Big Jim pulled back. Something was wrong. The form on the slab was larger, the hair darker, the corpus fresher.
“Her family came this afternoon,” said the attendant, appearing behind him.
Big Jim looked dumbly at the man, fingers on his lips.
“Sorry. They usually don’t give us much warning.”
“They came this afternoon?”
“They felt it was time to take the next step.”
“She’s gone.”
“Yeah.”
“Where did they take her?”
“Don’t know. Not my business.”
“You must have heard something.”
“A hole in the ground with a headstone on top, that’s all I can tell you.”
Big Jim scanned the big hall, running from alcove to alcove, hoping there was a mistake, praying she had just been misplaced.
“Sorry, guy. I know it’s a blow.”
Big Jim blew out of there, his mind rocking in disbelief. He had trouble finding his way back home, kept making the wrong turns, confusion and despair, the twenty-minute trip taking two hours.
Kid Sister fortunately was asleep on the sofa. He placed a blanket over her and quietly went upstairs.
He shut the window to keep the new music at bay, opened it again so he wouldn’t miss anything, then lay in bed, wrapping himself in the covers, fingering his still frigid lips, coldness through and through him, through and through.
Much later, Big Jim is out wandering. Wandering without direction, hoping for elation, listening for her music, believing that wherever she may be, the music will find him.
Wandering through parks with stone markers and freshly turned earth. Hearing nothing, the silence of their situation, it would be easier to hear her in these places, a soloist among the congregations of the dead.
Big Jim wanders by the Hillmont High stadium one Friday night. Bright lights shine down on the field, green with white stripes. The stands are filled with people, many familiar faces, although less familiar than they used to be. How they cheer, how they breathe. The players dash around the turf, legs churning, sharp cracks sounding when they collide. They rise after having fallen, every single time.
The school band is playing a song.
The crowd is singing along.
Big Jim stops outside the tall fence beyond the end zone, fingers gripping the wire. No alcoholic beverages allowed on the premises, warns a sign.
Big Jim listens to the music.
W
ave the flag for Hillmont High School
Her colors black and gold.
Marching always on to victory,
No matter who the foe.
So, we’ll forever praise and cheer you,
Our Gobblers brave and true.
Wave again the dear old banner,
Hillmont High we’re all for you.
By the time they recite the final line, the music and words sound like gibberish to Big Jim. A national anthem from a country whose name he can’t pronounce. White noise. Big Jim turns and heads back into the darkness, to the burying places, crouching low among the mounds, the markers, his fingers chewed down to the knuckle, skull bashed against the bitter ground, listening for an old song, a song of life and death and eternal hope, the song of his soul, the heartbeat of his beloved.
* * *
E•C•Z•E•M•A
ec·ze·ma ig-'zē-me, 'eg-ze-me, 'ek-se-me
noun
: an inflammatory condition of the skin characterized by redness, itching, and oozing vesicular lesions which become scaly, crusted, or hardened
* * *
Eczema
CLARE DUDMAN
THE THREE CROWS were at Melissa’s funeral. I was in the mood for noticing everything. It seemed as if everything had become louder, brighter, sharper—and yet I didn’t feel I was really there at all but looking at it, a spectator, uninvolved, too numb to care. It was a small affair—just Laura and a few people from her office and a couple of the long-standing neighbours—so the crows stood out. They were silent, hooded as usual in their black scarves and cloaks, their faces hidden in shadow, one of them with a pair of black plastic-framed glasses protruding over the opening for her eyes. “Crows” had been Melissa’s name for them. She had seen them move in a fortnight ago when everything had still been all right. She had called me to the window—she had been in her favourite spot, perched on the arm of a chair, a place where she had liked to think she was invisible from the street, hooking back the net curtains just a little with a finger. Melissa liked to think she knew everything—that no one in that street was able to twitch an eyebrow without her taking note. But in fact all she ever saw was the detail—the important things that should have concerned her the most, she missed.