Into that Good Night

by Levis Keltner

  Two years had passed like this.

  •

  One of the rejects must’ve tried the nickname on the other dorks, geeks, and freaks of Palos Hills to dip a toe in a sliver of spotlight. Whiskers, Doug figured, for shock value, or the kid who looked like a poorly aged woman, blabbing about the “barftastic burn.” They’d all, in fact, repeated it. “Dead Man Walker”—it was hardly funny; harmless, no harm intended at least. It wasn’t slander, each outcast independently relying on the joke as a flimsy, one-use charm, a temporary +1 to Charisma, of which they’d relished every moment. Most listeners hadn’t laughed. Still, the nickname fed on their worries about John and his condition, and rooted in the minds of kids who hoped his fate didn’t befall them unless it meant being similarly idolized, going out in a blaze of (seemingly) everlasting glory.

  That November, Doug witnessed a fight at recess over the one thing he’d ever invented. A jock pinned some nerd’s arm so smoothly that no one shouted or scattered. The nerd kneeled in the sooty crust along the iced schoolyard. His brow trembled as if under moral dilemma. Those nearby turned to spectate. “Say it again, dickhead,” the jock dared. “What he do?” a prep in the crowd asked matter-of-factly. “Said he wanted to die,” another kid, the jock’s crony, answered and blew into his pink hands. Both were on the baseball team. “You shouldn’t treat people that way,” a girl said behind them. It was the girl of the religion that makes girls wear denim skirts year-round. “He said John’s a dead man,” the jock said and shoved the nerd face-first into the muck. A punk kid stepped forward but didn’t say anything. “Dead Man Walker,” the crony repeated. No one helped the nerd up. He didn’t move, either, and lay facedown after everyone had left until a teacher asked why he was doing that. “It was my fault,” he said and lied that he’d fainted. Doug was embarrassed for the kid, who went to the nurse’s office limping to convince everyone he’d paid dearly enough for his transgression. Mostly, Doug was glad it wasn’t him.

  “The Dead Man” spread fast after the fight, despite Doug’s usual bad luck. Kids whispered it in the hallways and in classrooms when teachers foolishly turned their backs. John’s loyal followers reacted with distaste: How could anyone disrespect a sick kid? After all he’d done. By some natural law of human argument, a fringe subculture of peer critics emerged to counter: Had they ever asked him for anything? What had he given them other than hope? Hope was the loyalists’ rebuttal, what Palos Hills so desperately needed since his diagnosis. Fall semester ended in stalemate. Students on both sides subsisted on rumors as to whether the boy would return one hundred percent or be dead before winter break.

  By then, the nickname’s acridity dipped into fondness as everyone at school used it, pleasantly or unpleasantly. And wasn’t that just like John, the boy they’d loved, even loved to hate? Dead Man Walker became a stand-in for the boy, a capsule of sentiment, a bubble of John-ness bearing his image, warped, though not yet burst.

  Doug smiled coolly whenever overhearing the nickname, pleased yet stunned that so many kids found something he’d said remotely funny or apt, though no credit was ever given. No harm done, he figured. By spring it would sputter out, and the guy could take a blow while he was down. He’d probably be back up in a few months, anyhow, possessing more influence and happiness at fourteen than Doug would ever know.

  •

  E. and Doug read upstairs in her bedroom a few evenings a week under condition the door remained open. They were “just friends,” she’d affirmed to her family after her younger sister had complained of the injustice of E. being allowed to bring home a boy. The open door rule wasn’t once followed or enforced, such faith the Summersons had in their daughter or such little threat they saw in Doug.

  The family lived in a brick two-story in upper Palos that appeared old enough to have been the first home on the block. E’s window overlooked the tree-lined Octavia Street and, though she’d taken down the curtains to sync her sleep pattern to the natural cycle of the seasons, as the greatest minds in history had lived, her room seemed a secluded corner suspended in time, where there was only E. and her ramparts of books and sometimes her jester-knight, Doug. The air was distinctly dry—a rug on the hardwood permanently stained from one of Doug’s nosebleeds—with ceilings that slanted to a high peak. Though equipped with modern amenities, she lit candles, even with the stand-up lamp on, and burned incense, sandalwood or some other contemplative fragrance. Time was not suspended there, however, and Doug spent too many of those evenings overly conscious of his luck, so the visits never felt real enough, and week after week he went home with a hole widening in his heart that started the size of a pinprick, then the puncture a juice box straw makes, which grew, gradually, nightly, until it gaped and was impossible to keep any satisfying bit of her with him, sealed away and not sloshing about. Instead he had less of her and was a mess of newer and more terrible emotions until near her again.

  As the daylight drained from the walls, from the pages, from E.’s hair, they would read and work for hours, legs up a wall or in bed stiffly on top of the comforter or whirling an inch a minute in the desk chair or basking under the tall window. Never would the kids read side by side and rarely in the same spot, except for when Doug managed to make himself small on the foot of the bed. He truly hated reading and spent all his time at home on video games. Yet with E., he endured several slim fiction classics, which devolved into genre classics, and soon hardcore fantasy, paladins hacking through crypts teeming with undead, mighty heroes traversing cold wastes against impossible odds. Doug battled boredom for her. Sometimes the kids would discuss what they’d read, though she mostly did the talking while he kept it going with questions, listening for the roundness of pleasure in her voice, appreciating even sour smiles at the expense of asking something boneheaded, convinced his devotion was a form of love.

  Junior high passed with Doug giving little thought to what was next, the next stage of life, that there were stages. He made no new friends. He skimmed dozens of books beyond his comprehension. He’d masturbated to hundreds of girls and none of them were E. Their time together blurred into a precious investment, in long anticipation of something great, which remained years later as proof of his constancy, then proof of his idiocy, then of just having grown up. Several of their inside jokes and intimate conversations, glimpses of what E. was deep down, beneath her influences, lasted decades. Because of what would happen next, however, one conversation stood out among the rest.

  “I wish I were an only child,” E. had said.

  In the adjoining bedroom, her sister Erika and her best friend were shrieking lyrics to a pop song. “I wanna. I wanna, wanna …” was all Doug could catch. There was some rhythmic thumping that might’ve been jumping on the bed. E. had gotten a noise cancellation system for Christmas, but it was no match against the preteens. The peaks of their laughter sawed through the walls.

  “Oh, yeah.” Doug couldn’t say more to make E. believe he understood. He and his six-year-old brother used to play together, but the year he met E., Doug lost interest. Like his parents, his little brother wasn’t bad or annoying, just around. “They have fun together, at least … I guess.”

  E. asked him to please fucking pound the wall. Doug followed her order with two upbeat knocks. The girls beat back, and he jumped.

  “Maybe they’ll just disappear,” E. said.

  “Dead Man Walker style,” Doug muttered.

  “Who-style?”

  He couldn’t tell if she were joking. E. looked at him deadpan. A book entitled Meditations bobbed in her hand as if she were waiting for a punch line.

  It was possible she’d gone through every announcement and award ceremony over the last few years with her head between two pages. She could be the one person who didn’t think much of the boy either way, obsessively, or at all.

  Doug started to explain: the Dead Man, John Walker, cancer, the fall of a local legend.

  E. went to her long mirror, which was covered with an old bed sheet. Doug
hadn’t asked why. A bottom corner peeked out at them, flashed S-O-S in candlelight. E. tugged the sheet over the glass completely, then stepped back to admire her work.

  “There’re worse ways to die,” she said.

  Her sister’s room went oddly silent. They turned their heads, not for too long.

  E. picked another book from her fresh-borrows stack and fluffed her pillow. She hefted the open end so it packed deep into the case, which she reshaped into a cylinder before smashing it against her back and the headboard.

  “I came up with that … you know?” Doug said. “The nickname.”

  E. snorted.

  He thought maybe she’d read a funny line in The Art of War. No, she looked down at him with a haughty grin as if to say, “That’s what he deserves.” Or, “That’s what false greatness deserves—mockery.” He interpreted either as her approval. Unless her laughter was directed at himself, for taking pride in something so trivial.

  She didn’t say anything more about it and became serious, stern. She asked what he was reading.

  “Oh … this?”

  Doug began to talk up the sci-fi novel in his lap, written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level, though still he struggled with its more convoluted sentences. He soon wasn’t hearing the bullshit coming out of his mouth, like how one of the book’s layers was this really crazy commentary on good and evil being just layers of evil. Something changed in E.’s face. One moment she was listening, the next she’d phased out. Her eyes refocused, if it were possible, and no longer looked outward, but in, her pupils tracking ideas that popped dazzlingly as fireworks inside her brain. She smiled, not to him or anything he said, but vaguely, in refrain of hearing him or expressing herself, cardboard-cutout attention, a stand-in for the girl.

  He’d bored her, was his first thought. Wasn’t smart enough. He might never be.

  Doug wondered if she were even conscious of slipping behind the cover of her mental landscape. He hoped not.

  She was still physically there, in the room, of course. He asked about her new book.

  E. blinked. Her gaze gathered intention as she found him among her stacks, an old friend in kid years. A minute later, she’d returned and discussed the benefits and drawbacks of high ground guerrilla warfare.

  One day, she would wake to him like this and more—smile not vaguely, not amused or merely fond, but fortunate to have him near. That’s what Doug believed, anyway. They just needed a little more time.

  •

  A week after the murder, E. messaged: “SAVE ME FROM MOTHER.” It was the first he’d heard from the girl since, “Dingbat got herself hurt,” and fifteen minutes later, “*Dead.” Doug sent frantic questions, then condolences that’d provoked no reply.

  The wake and funeral passed without invite. In the weeklong silence, he’d had his dad drop him off at the mall, alone, where he didn’t see the holiday storefronts—trees, deer, and mannequins in tight silver foil lost amid spills of paper snow—so intently he tried to imagine losing a family member. His sole reference was a pet turtle that’d dried up like beef jerky and which had made him disappointed in himself and sort of relieved too because he was always doing too much or too little and hurting the creature and feeling terrible about it and unable to communicate how sorry he was. E. would better cope with much greater loss, Doug was sure. Nevertheless, she might be changed. Their relationship might change. He’d bought her a gift that day, which he later wrapped in white tissue paper and too much Scotch tape, and swore that he would support her in any way possible and no matter what. Ready for her summons, he dunked the gift into his backpack seconds after she’d messaged and came lightning-quick on his Huffy.

  That evening, Mrs. Summerson never looked more pleased to welcome him into their home. She’d always regarded the boy coldly, beneath her daughter, called him “Douglas.” This time, she took his coat and said to never mind the slush he’d trekked in, just go on up to her, please, go up to her daughter’s bedroom where the door was locked.

  Doug risked it. The woman didn’t have blood on her hands. She wasn’t a friendly lady, but he didn’t really think she … No suspects had been officially named. Wasn’t it always the parents?

  Her slippered feet shuffled behind him to the stairs. Doug took two steps, then turned and asked Mrs. Summerson if she was OK.

  An un-tucked nightshirt hung over her work slacks. She seemed to have aged twenty years. Her typically powder-white face was gray but for the purple stamp of sleeplessness around her eyes, large with gratitude. Her hands trembled and were clasped together as if holding themselves back from seizing him.

  “If I can do—um—anything,” Doug said, referring to her daughter, whom he knew wouldn’t ask for water in the desert from the woman if it necessitated a sincere, heart-to-heart discussion.

  Mrs. Summerson pulled him close. She squeezed for an uncomfortably long time. The forty-year-old’s breasts ballooned against his meager body. Doug put a hand on her back and eased into the strangeness.

  Mr. Summerson wasn’t in the living room in front of the TV news. The house was quiet enough to hear the heater tick. Down the hall, only the kitchen was lit. The man wasn’t home. That he could be anywhere but with his family bothered Doug. There was some reasonable explanation, surely. And what’d he know about being a husband and losing a child? The more he thought of the man, Doug felt worse about not checking in with E. daily, two or three times, at least. He should’ve come over sooner, shown up to the wake, even if she hadn’t returned his messages. If she hadn’t liked it, well, that was fine because E. needed him even if she didn’t know what to ask for, even if he wouldn’t know what to say. But he hadn’t. He’d blown his best chance to prove how much he cared. Maybe there was still time.

  Mrs. Summerson shuddered with heartbreak. After a minute, Doug touched her hair to stroke it, as in to comfort her. He must’ve seen people do that in movies. The woman froze. He’d crossed some invisible line or she had. Either way, she turned her head, as if not clutching him but an oozing troll she couldn’t bear the sight of. With a flick of her hand she shooed the boy, unable to look at him while waiting for him to go. Doug was too embarrassed to apologize, and he went upstairs, cursing his awkwardness.

  E. said to hurry up and let him in. She relocked the door and, without another word, sat in bed with her legs folded and read with Zen-like focus. After minutes of waiting in the desk chair for her to finish her paragraph and then her page and then her chapter, Doug opened his backpack and rolled the papered gift, weighty and awkward as a bowling ball, crinkling from one hand to the other. He quickly berated himself for bringing a gift, which now seemed grossly insensitive, as if her sister’s death were cause for celebration. Frustration and desperation to do one thing right for somebody racked the boy.

  “How are things?” he said.

  “Mother’s been talking at my door all day about counseling,” E. said, calmly, reasonably, violence tucked in behind her curls of enunciation. “Clearly, she needs the therapist. Have you seen her? Her face is a mess. She’s inconsolable, disturbed. Did she ask you for anything? To ‘save my soul’? I don’t think she’s bathed. Did you smell her? She’s as stale as she looks. It didn’t rain on you, coming over? Do you want my sister’s Xbox?” Her gaze never lifted from the page.

  Doug wanted to say more than, “No.” He didn’t. He set the gift in the trashcan.

  That was the last they’d talked about Erika.

  2

  Doug Horolez was the first to learn why John H. Walker had reappeared at school that spring, half dead and nearly forgotten. On the last Friday of April, the Dead Man pointed him out after social studies among thirty kids who scattered to make class by the bell. Doug’s brain flatlined from fear. John waved him over, mouthed, “You.” At last, it was time to pay for having defied the order of the social universe and inched up his esteem at a dying star’s expense. The guy must’ve somehow traced the nickname back to its source and come to drag him down to the underw
orld in retribution. What else would John Walker want with someone who couldn’t fit in with the band kids? Doug hesitated to join the guy in the pale light that filtered through the tall, clouded windowpane at the end of the hall. Shuffling his feet, mind thawing after a lecture on Manifest Destiny, Doug speculated if he could swing at someone to save his life, a dying guy no less, who he couldn’t even see clearly. Doug would’ve sworn that his glasses had begun to fog after a panicked spike in body temperature and burst of perspiration. Or maybe it was the glare that lent John’s figure a misty outline. Not fast enough to run away and no friends to go to anyway, Doug walked into the light.

  John patted the kid’s shoulder softly as if to say, “It’s all right, bud.” It was the same stiff-armed reassurance that John’s father gave when a teammate had botched a play or threw a game. The dork’s mouth hung open beneath his glasses revealing a pair of maroon and wet lips. His gawking persisted as John talked, so that it seemed the kid wasn’t receiving a single word of it. He needed to reach Doug now. To utter a single sentence in a manner casual enough to mask his deep fatigue took great effort. John sighed to release his frustration with his own limits and explained again, more slowly this time, that he needed Doug to introduce him to Erika Summerson’s older sister.

  The chance that the much leaner, but potentially still a powerhouse John Walker might have a crush on E. was ridiculous, Doug told himself. The girl was irregular, a goth-y first-chair clarinet player predisposed to long and determined silences. Not only was she beak-nosed (in a smartish way), acned (not too-too badly), and decidedly unathletic (sports were awful, anyway), but her preference for the company of books over people—and the fact her sister was now famously dead—had forever cast the girl as a social pariah. Not that she minded, which was what Doug admired most about E. She was easily the most fearless person he’d ever met and would never go for a jock who tried so hard to be liked. Yet jealousy made Doug hesitate, second-guess how best to answer the guy. “She wouldn’t waste a glance on a guy like you,” was what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t comfortable pre-judging someone he didn’t really know. Also, the remark could come across as defensive and lead John to perceive him as an obstacle to be stepped over, possibly on—not worth the risk. Doug closed his lips to swallow, throat parched though his mouth a pool of saliva. He clutched the back of his neck with one hand, fingers tugging at the fuzzy hairs, like he did during tests or whenever his parents suggested that he try to make more friends at school, as he struggled to find the right words to satisfy the predicament.