by Kurt Gepner
"Yeah," Dale concurred. "We paced him at thirty-two miles-per-hour, when he first got it."
Hank gave an appreciative whistle. "So where’s he going?" He asked again.
"Oh," Dale snapped back from the place where his mind had wandered. "Um, it’s up, over that way," he said as he flapped his hand toward the northwest. "Eight or ten blocks, by Safeway. Brody’s his best friend. Until a couple years ago, me and Val spent a lot of time with the boy’s parents. We’re still friends; we just don’t hang out as much."
"Jeremy’s a good kid," Camille observed. "It’s good that he’s so concerned with his friend."
"Hmm…" Hank said with a nod. "That scooter’s a good find. Have you come across anything else we can salvage?"
"There’s not much that would be worthwhile after going through that fire," Dale answered.
"I know," Hank said, as he clapped a hand on Dale’s shoulder, consolingly. "Keep looking for stuff. Maybe you should leave this place to Camille. You might feel better if you move on to some other place."
Dale shrugged the hand from his shoulder and turned his back to the men. "This isn’t just a place!" He growled. "This was my home." Dale stumbled to the concrete steps that met a blackened back door. He sat down hard and pushed his fingers into his curly, dark hair. "I’ve lost everything."
"What the hell are you doing?!?" Camille shouted at his neighbor. Dale looked up at the old man, stunned by his sudden and unexpected attack. "What kind of shit is this?" Camille flung his hand in disgust at Dale. "You know, back before they had Social Security and four-oh-one-kays and all the crap that made the boomers soft, they had nothing! Nothing but what their hands could hold and build and keep."
Camille was in a rage and shook his fist at Dale in emphasis of his words. "And when you’re house burned down, you didn’t sit around and cry about it. You just got your shit together and built a new house."
"Yeah, but Camille," Dale implored, "things are different."
"No they ain’t!" Camille grabbed the bill of his hat with both hands and tugged it firmly down to his brow. "They were different, but now they’re the same! You got nothing." He waved his arms like an umpire calling a runner safe. "So now you got nothing holding you back."
Throwing his thumb at his son-in-law, Camille went on. "This man here is a smart one. He knows what’s going on. He’s got everything and he’s letting go, ‘cause he knows it’s time to leave." Dale’s mouth was slung open in a clear effort to reconcile the change in his typically meek neighbor.
"You need to stand up like a man and be thankful that you got nothing holding you back. We’re all heading up to the promised land." Camille pointed at Dale and laid his finger along side his nose. And with a nod and a wink, he said, "That’s what you gotta think from now on." With a firm shake of his head, he ranted on. "It won’t do your people no good, so you best not dwell on things you lost." He slapped the back of his hand into Hank’s gut, who oofed in surprise, and said, "You got this fellow and that’s a lot more than most."
Camille was suddenly silent and Dale boggled at him. His jaw slammed shut, as he became aware of the breeze crossing his tongue. Dale looked up at Hank, who was eyeballing his father-in-law, and then looked back at Camille, who pushed his bottom lip out and gave him a knowing nod. "You’re right," Dale said with astonishment over this new revelation. "I’ve got nothing holding me back."
"Damn straight," Camille declared in full agreement.
"Let’s get to work, guys," Dale said as he sprang to his feet. "We’ve got a lot of it to do."
Camille scrunched his toothless face into a prunish grin and gave him a nod. "Now you’re talking sense," he said. Hank left the two men to their task and got back to his own.
CHAPTER TWO
Everything seemed still as Jeremy rode swiftly toward Brody’s house. They both had left school at the same time. Jeremy was angry with himself that he hadn’t even thought of Brody for a second after they waved goodbye yesterday. Brody Wallace was his best friend and had been since second grade. Jeremy was at Brody’s house almost as much as he was at home. They did everything together and Jeremy liked Brody’s parents better than his own. Jeremy couldn’t think; he just tore across the asphalt as fast as he could.
Vaguely, as he rode full-tilt, Jeremy was aware that the trees and shrubs adorning the manicured lawns were as cheerfully green and vibrant this morning as they had been any other morning. In his mind, this contrasted irreconcilably with the burned down shacks that were once the homes of his neighborhood and made him seriously wonder if he was dreaming. From the sanctuary of cars and vans, people began appearing to him. Their doors flew open and their wide eyes watched as he zipped past on his motorized scooter.
Once, during practice for junior varsity football, he had sprinted one hundred yards in thirteen-point-six seconds. During Spanish class that day, he worked it out on paper. If he could keep that pace for one mile, it would have taken him four minutes to cover that distance. He had been racing at fifteen miles per hour during that all-out sprint. Now he was riding down the road twice as fast as he could sprint.
"Wait!" Some guy shouted, as he jumped out of the back of a camper. Jeremy swerved and looked over his shoulder. He saw a man in grungy blue-jeans and a black tee-shirt chasing him. "Come back!" His pursuer yelled. The man quickly faltered and broke off the chase. Jeremy leaned left and headed down Thirty-Seventh Street. As he barreled past a silver two-door car, the tiny face of a young child pressed against the window, watching him ride by.
He turned up the alley between Gladiolus and Hydrangea Streets and finally came to a stop at the back gate of Brody’s house. Like every other place he had passed, it was gutted. In fact it was leveled. But the Wallace's had a shed in the back, which now stood slanted and barely upright. The shed door opened as he pushed his way through the gate. Brody stumbled out, and looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. Those eyes, which were always confident and laughing, held more fear and more sorrow than Jeremy had ever seen; more than he could understand.
"Jeremy!" Brody’s desperate relief to see his friend was obvious. "My parents are dead."
"No way," Jeremy rejected the idea. "How do you know?" Jeremy knew that his friend was prone to exaggeration. His parents worked a long way from here and there was no way Brody could know they were dead.
Brody’s face screwed up into a mask of anger and then pain. Tears welled up as his lips contorted into a horrible grimace. His voice squeaked out. "They were home, yesterday. The propane tank blew up." He couldn’t go on. Brody crumpled into a ball and keened, mournfully.
Jeremy felt awkward, watching his friend crying like that. "Well, maybe they had gone out. Did you check the house?" Brody shook his head. "I’ll go check. They’re probably not in there."
Brody’s keening unnerved Jeremy. His friend was always so tough. He was the first to call someone a pussy if they whined about getting hurt. Jeremy looked back at his life-long friend as he approached the flattened house. Where a large propane tank had once stood, there was now a six-foot crater. Brody’s house and the one next to it were blown away. It was amazing that the tool shed in the back corner of the yard was still standing.
The first floor was collapsed, obliterated, but Jeremy saw a gap where he might be able to get under and look around. He lowered himself over the edge of the foundation, onto a workbench in the basement. It was clear that nobody would have survived if they had been anywhere above ground level. When he planted his foot on the floor, he was in six inches of water before he realized that the basement was flooded. "Shit!" He muttered and pulled his foot out. Then, with shrug, he plunged both feet into the cold, murky water.
The converted basement had been high enough for anyone to walk without ducking, but now he had to crouch low to move around. There was some light filtering through holes, here and there, but it was very dim in the blackened world under the floor joists. Jeremy let his eyes adjust.
As soon as he could see his fingers stretched out
in front of him, he started to slog, duck-walking into the gloom. There was very little that wasn’t destroyed by the explosion, or ensuing fire, but what he did find, he picked up. Two cans of Coors Light were sitting, neatly, on the bottom shelf of the largely undamaged work bench that had been his platform to climb down. Using the bottom of his t-shirt like a pouch Jeremy collected them, as well as a jar of finish nails.
When he found the chest freezer, he lifted the lid and dug around inside. Everything inside felt mushy. It must have melted in the fire, he thought. He kept feeling around until he came across some flat, paper wrapped packages. They were near the bottom and still hard with ice. The middle of the freezer had been insulated enough to save some of the food. Steak! He dumped the steak and packages of frozen vegetables into a couple of plastic grocery bags that he had also fished out.
When the bags were bulging to capacity Jeremy grabbed a softening, but still cold, ice cream sandwich and closed the freezer. The cold was more delicious than the sweetness of the sandwich. When he finished gobbling down the dessert, he wiped his sleeve across his face and waddled deeper into the basement.
He figured that he must be under the front room, but it was difficult to tell because very little light was penetrating this portion of the basement. His hand came across a Hot Wheel car sitting on top of a floating plastic bin. He picked it up and held it close to his eyes. It was yellow. Maybe it was a vintage Mustang, he couldn’t tell. He considered pocketing it, but dropped it into the water instead.
There wasn’t much farther he could go. The explosion had caved in the foundation wall nearest to it. The first floor slanted downward toward that side of the house. Jeremy thought that he had given it a fair look but decided to go in as far as he could so he could tell Brody, for sure, that his parents weren’t in the house. He had to get on his hands and knees to penetrate any farther, but the floor was carpeted and soft, so he wasn’t worried about it.
Jeremy thought he should be in their game room by now and when his hand brushed a pool ball, it confirmed his guess. Just ahead he found the pool table. Underneath it, on the breaking end, there was a small dorm refrigerator that was always stocked with soda. As he expected, it was loaded.
Grabbing one from the top shelf, he popped it open and sat against the pool table. Jeremy was now thoroughly soaked below the waist. The soda wasn’t cold, but it was still cool. Even though the handle was charred, the pool table had sheltered the refrigerator from the worst of the fire. It was too dark to see what kind of pop he had, but he didn’t really care. With head tilted back, he let the refreshing sweet taste of Mountain Dew wash across his tongue and sweep down his throat. He gulped at the liquid and sucked at the last few drops.
He hadn’t had a pop since yesterday afternoon. Usually, even before he ate breakfast, he would down a Pepsi. By this time of the morning, he would have had another one before class started. At lunch, he always had two. Then, when he got home, he drank one with dinner and another one while he did homework or watched a movie with his family. He thought the Shumway's were a little weird for a lot of reasons, but this morning he really disliked them for the fact that they didn’t have any pop.
Once he had released the belch that always followed a soda guzzling, he felt a lot better. The breakfast had been pretty good. Eggs, bacon, toast and milk, but he was used to having Pop-Tarts or a bowl of Captain Crunch. The only thing sweet had been the blackberry jam, on the toast. It was good and Evie made it every year, but his mom had told him not to use much, so it was just a tease. From outside, he heard Brody yell to him. "Hey, Jeremy, are you okay?"
"Yeah," he shouted back. "I’m in the game room. I’m just about to come out."
"Did you find anything?" Brody asked.
"Naw," Jeremy answered. "But there’s some pop in the ‘frige. You want one?"
Brody was excited by this news. "Yeah! Get the box out of the little freezer, too. You know what I’m talking about, right?"
"Dude! I forgot." Jeremy grabbed out a couple more sodas and then pulled open the door to the tiny freezer. Inside, behind a couple of Hot Pockets, he found an Altoids tin. Jeremy shoved the sodas and Hot Pockets into the bulging grocery bags and opened the tin box. Inside was a small stainless steel pipe, a flat butane lighter and about a quarter-ounce of the marijuana they called Bubblegum.
Jeremy pulled out the lighter and tucked the tin into his shirt-pocket. Then he jabbed down the igniter on the tiny torch, sending a small arc of electricity across the suddenly released gas. A flame instantly appeared and illuminated his surroundings better than the trivial amount of sunshine leaking into this portion of the basement. Across from him, within arm's reach of the small refrigerator, Mrs. Wallace was sprawled with her head crushed under a beam. Jeremy yelped and dropped the lighter with a plop.
"What happened?" Brody yelled down to his friend. Jeremy couldn’t speak. All he could manage was to press his palms into his eyes. Behind his closed lids, he couldn’t rub out the image of the woman he had called "Mom" as often as his own mother. The image was vivid; he could see the gruesome details with the acuity of a microscope.
She wore the blue, fuzzy slippers that left her red, painted toes uncovered. On the second toe of her left foot, a silver ring sparkled in the dancing light of the little flame. Jeremy knew that Brody’s parents had been sick with the flu but he didn’t know they had stayed home until his friend had told him so. Her blue flannel pajamas were evidence that she had been taking it easy. In her right hand, she still held the remote control for the little TV in their game room.
Mrs. Wallace only came down here to watch TV if Mr. Wallace was watching a show on the big-screen up stairs. Jeremy felt a pain in his heart as his mind’s eye passed over the neck of his second mother. It was twisted like the ends of link sausage and her gold chain, which held her great-grandmother’s wedding ring, dangled from it. But the part that was most horrible, the image that Jeremy most wished would go away, was how her head was crushed. It was broken like a boiled egg smashed in the shell, but her left eye was untouched and open. It just stared at him, dully. That eye reflected the flame from the lighter and it was completely and utterly without life. Mrs. Wallace, Mom, was dead.
"Jeremy!" Brody shouted frantically. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Jeremy managed to say, loudly enough that Brody heard him.
"What happened?" his friend asked.
"Your mom is dead," Jeremy blurted. He didn’t think he could say it, but he got it out. And when he heard the words, it made the fact hard in his throat, like swallowing a golf ball. Brody was totally quiet. Jeremy forced down the lump in his throat. "Did you hear me?" He shouted up to his friend.
"Yeah." Brody answered. Both boys were silent for a few minutes. Jeremy couldn’t keep the image from flashing back in his mind. She had been right there while he was drinking the Mountain Dew. She was down there the whole time while he was eating the ice cream sandwich. When he had burped and felt good, she had been right there, dead. Jeremy couldn’t stand being down there for another minute. He felt around and wrapped his fingers around the dropped lighter.
"Dude," Jeremy shouted up at his friend. "I’m coming out. Do you…" Jeremy swallowed down the bile that had suddenly gripped his throat. "Do you want me to get the ring off her necklace?" He didn’t really know what it meant to Brody, but Mrs. Wallace had called her ring an heirloom. She talked about it like it was a sacred treasure. So Jeremy thought he should say something to his friend. When Brody said that he did want it, however, it was the worst thing Jeremy could possibly imagine.
He spent a minute tamping and blowing the lighter dry. Then holding his breath and squeezing shut his eyes, Jeremy got to his hands and knees and pressed his thumb on the torch. The lighter ignited in front of him and he could see its light through his eyelids. The heat was beginning to hurt his thumb before he opened his eyes. When he did the visage before him was more gruesome and gory than the first glimpse that had seared into his psyche. He willed hi
mself to crawl closer to the body.
"Come on, Jeremy! What’s taking so long?" Brody sounded different, cold.
His hand was reluctant. It’s just a dead body, he told himself. It’s no different than that buck I shot last year. He knew that he was right, but he couldn’t seem to overcome a terrible horror that had firmly taken hold of his guts. He was right next to the corpse. The light was dancing in that unblemished eye. Jeremy reached out his hand, but he couldn’t draw his gaze from the unseeing eye. Finally, he looked down so he could pluck the dangling loop from the rope of gold that held it fastened to the neck of the dead Mrs. Wallace.
Jeremy pulled and cringed as the flesh of the neck began to yield to the pressure being exerted by his tugging. Just yank it, he told himself. The necklace'll snap and then you’re done. He gave the necklace some slack and slipped his fingertip into the ring, squeezing it tight. With a swift jerk, he snapped the chain. The force of it was all that the, mostly severed, tissue needed to tear away from the wooden beam that held it pinched into place. The body slumped forward and Jeremy scrambled, crab walking backward, as the corpse nearly fell into his lap.
It was more than he could take. Jeremy rolled to his side and grabbed the edge of the pool table. Vomit and bile gushed forth, unbidden and unhindered. It flooded from his mouth in a cathartic release. Once, twice and a third time, he heavy and then he just shook.
"Jeremy," Brody called. "Are you puking?"
It sounded like an accusation, almost like his old friend was saying "are you a wuss?"
Jeremy chuckled, weakly. A lot of bad things have happened, he realized. And a lot more was going to happen. If you wig out like this - he berated himself - ever time you see a body, considering what’s happened, you’re going to spend all the time being wigged out. He called up to Brody. "I’m all right. I’ll be up in a minute."
After a couple breathes to calm himself, Jeremy cracked open another soda and swished the foul taste of vomit from his mouth. He chugged the last half and tossed the can. Taking the grocery bags from the pool table, he crawled back along the path he’d taken. Jeremy also pocketed the Hot Wheel, when he found it again. When he got back to the work bench, he dug around until he found a framing hammer. Satisfied with his find, he climbed back into the daylight.