* * *
—
It is the second-strangest day of his life. All day—in hallways, classrooms, lunchroom, stairways, even the boys’ room—his peripheral vision is on high alert, ready for the briefest flash of raspberry. He stops at the water fountain—Move it, sonny—drinks long, hoping. He goes to the boys’ room three times. The third time he sneaks down to the auditorium, finds the same seat, imagines her onstage, bowing to the audience—Thank you…thank you…you’re too kind. He hears again the song she wrote, feels it below the land of words, finds himself crying again….Let’s blow this dump.
He barely survived Language Arts. Oh boy. I was afraid of this.
He shuns the bus, walks home. Makes a point of walking past the Play It Again Sam thrift shop…Dollar General…the beech tree. Considers doing the park, decides to save it for later. Finds the gardenia house. Picks one. Smells it. Smells her.
To please his mother, he eats a little dinner. Then into the woods, where he wanders…wanders. Dips his hand in the running water, in the mud. Pulls a sassafras root, inhales its root beer scent.
In his room he is by the window long after his parents have gone to bed. The light is out. The night outside is twinkling with fireflies. I thought the stars had come down. He does not know what time he goes to bed. He’s turned the alarm clock facedown on the bedside table.
When he closes his eyes, he brings the pillow to his face and kisses it long and sweet, reliving.
What rotten luck.
This is what Worm gets for ignoring his bike for so long: a half-flat back tire.
If it’s a leak, he prays it’s a slow one.
He finds the ancient hand pump, cobwebby in a corner of the toolshed. Takes off the air cap. Screws on the pump hose nozzle. Straddles the pump on its flat metal feet. Starts pumping.
He makes the tire as hard as he dares. Listens. No hiss. Tops off the front tire too.
Shakes the seat. The bottle, duct-taped to the seat bottom, doesn’t flinch.
No cell phone. No distractions.
He’s good to go.
* * *
—
The map is folded in his pocket. He looked up eastern Pennsylvania road map on his mom’s laptop and printed it out. Most of it is along Route 6.
At first he figured 15 mph, then remembered where he was. Hello?…Pocono Mountains? So: 10 mph. He ballparked one-way bike time at four to six hours. But who knows? Factor in the time he spends there—another unknown—and the return time. He’s lied to his parents, said he’ll be gone “all day,” intends to “start out early.” What else can he do? So here he is, coasting down the driveway at 6:00 a.m.—as in morning—and all he can do now is hope he makes it back home before his parents call the cops. Well, that and avoid becoming eighteen-wheeler roadkill.
* * *
—
It shocks him how quickly he finds himself in territory he doesn’t recognize. Bumps are rocky. But the tire is holding, which is good. He feels beneath the seat. The bottle is tight.
He keeps looking at his right wrist, where his watch used to be. He wonders if it’s still ticking away in its little grave hole, annoying some ants. Or worms. Each day so far he’s asked himself: Shall I dig it up? Each day the answer’s been the same: Not yet.
Left onto Hummels Hill.
Plowed fields. Something green coming up. Corn? He prefers white corn over yellow. Slathered with butter, heavy on the salt and pepper.
Handmade sign: country bread. Arrow pointing down a long, graveled driveway.
He wonders how long he’s been gone. It feels like two hours, but he suspects it’s less than fifteen minutes. Each day he seems to miss his watch less.
Left on Gwendolyn.
He was deliberately vague with his parents about his travels today. At first he was going to say he was riding with Eddie—which they always do, first day of vacation—but then thought better of it. Just his luck that Eddie would call their landline—after trying Worm’s cell and getting no answer because it’s in his room buzzing—and his mother answers, and he asks for Worm, and his mother goes into shock and says, “Robbie? Isn’t he with you?” So: vague.
Which doesn’t mean Eddie isn’t on his mind. As always, Eddie unfolds Worm’s mind like a cheap tent chair and plops it down whenever he pleases. Only now it’s not Eddie sitting in it. It’s Becca.
At graduation everybody was watching Eddie and Bijou. Hoping for drama, fireworks, something. Nothing happened. As far as anyone could tell, they never even looked at each other. Meanwhile, Eddie has already been seen snoogling up to Karen Deloplaine, the field hockey star.
Worm has to hand it to Eddie. He’s always in the center of the field, never on the sidelines. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t wait. He does.
Right on Moonjack Road.
Worm at graduation? Hugs from lots of girls, a couple he doesn’t even know. Long one from Claire Meeson. Not Mean Monica, of course. But one surprising thing: as she was talking excitedly with Bijou and other girls, a sudden shift of the eyes, visible to Worm even across the courtyard. Just a second, then back to the girls. The eyes could have been aiming anywhere, but for some brainless reason he decided they were aimed at him—until he remembered he’s not exactly great with eyes, remembered he once thought (actually believed) that Beautiful Bijou Newton sent him a love-struck look on the bus on Dead Wednesday.
Whatever, Worm was surprised to discover that a shift of two eyes can make him feel good. The moment returned him to a probably dumb question he’s had now and then: By the very act of not looking at or speaking to him, has Mean Monica been trying to tell him something? It’s at times like this that Worm totally gets what Eddie often says: “You think too much.”
Right on Dorchester.
The zone he’s been in since she walked into the green and shadows—there is no name for it. There is no vocabulary for the things that happened last Wednesday. Language dams feeling’s flow, names it, shapes it. Without words, he finds for the first time in his life something that is hard, if not impossible, to think about. And yet it is all there, inside him, filling him like air in a leakless tire. He feels it, and the feeling is better than thinking, better than words. He’s tried a number of them. Ghost doesn’t even come close. Neither does spirit or soul or angel. Becca. That’s all. Becca.
Ah…Route 6. Amosland Pike in these parts.
Anyway, having no words is no problem. Words are to communicate, and he has no intention of ever telling anybody what happened. Pedaling, he amuses himself by scripting imaginary conversations between himself and Eddie.
Worm: You remember my Dead Wednesday card? The girl? Becca Finch?
Eddie: I just remember seeing it. Don’t remember the picture. I’d remember if she was hot.
Worm: I met her.
Eddie: You already knew her? From before?
Worm: No. After.
Eddie: After what?
Worm: After she died.
Eddie: After she died?
Worm: Yep.
Now comes the best part. Because at first Eddie is ready to laugh or smirk—like, Yeah, right. But now he sees the look on Worm’s face and he knows—he knows—Worm is not messing with him, and, incredibly, Eddie Fusco looks lost.
This is Worm’s favorite version, as long as it ends right there. Because when he strings it out further—which he loves, he loves telling Eddie everything his feeble words will allow, her goofy ways, the hat, the pj’s, the kisses—Eddie always responds by shaking his head sadly and saying something like, Really, Worm? You’re so hard up now you’re making up girls? And always ends with Eddie’s favorite word, for the first time ever aimed at his best pal: Pathetic.
* * *
—
Spooling miles on his spinning pedals. He passes a sign:
ELWOOD 27
/> From the moment he turned and walked back through the woods, back home, he was pretty sure he would never see her again, though for years he won’t be able to drink from a water fountain without looking up. More generally, he doubts he will ever understand How It All Works. But so what? She doesn’t know either. Yet there she was. Is.
So he’s left with nothing but himself. Himself and a wordless memory. He knew he had to do something. And then immediately knew what that something must be. He must go to her. The mortal remains of her. The cemetery. Except for the bottle, he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he gets there, but be there he must. Gravity: he is an apple falling toward Elwood.
He has already googled her. Got himself a Facebook page and checked out hers. Was cryingly thankful it hadn’t been taken down. She didn’t post a lot. More pictures of other people than herself. The heartbreaker was a shot of her and Pooter. It was a selfie, him and her, cheek to cheek, mugging goofily into the camera. With Pooter’s face all crunchy, Worm couldn’t tell if he was as beautiful as Becca said. He wished it could always have been like that, fun.
As he pedals, he thinks of other things he could do. Get a look at her school. Her house and family. Waldo’s. Whatever has replaced the crashed car. Pooter. Walk the route from her house to school. Get Wendy Wins. Read it. New things keep occurring to him. He can see himself making a pilgrimage to Elwood every week—month?—for the rest of his life.
ELWOOD 12
He feels for the bottle. He got it at Acme. Expected to get a soda bottle, but they were all plastic. So it’s Heinz apple cider vinegar. He emptied out the vinegar down the sink and chucked the cap.
Pedal…pedal…
On the map it’s only a couple of inches.
The plan came to him over the weekend. He will smash the bottle against her tombstone. He knows it sounds weird, and if he has to, he’ll pedal to Elwood a hundred times till he can do it without being seen. He knows it’s just a futile, symbolic gesture and hopes/suspects/prays that she’s free from the bottle anyway. He’s doing this for himself, he understands that. But then again…
He keeps reminding himself: he doesn’t know How It All Works, so if there’s a one-in-a-trillion chance…
Eddie remains, and probably always will remain, the only other person he’s shown Becca’s card to. Every day he replays the scene on the stairwell, Eddie all proud, showing him the picture of his gorgeous dead girl, Kat—then barely glancing at Becca and writing her off with a sniffy “Not impressed.”
He’s passing a roadside fruit stand now. Long Old West dresses, gauzy caps: Mennonites. He waits till he’s past the stand and shouts it across the truck-roaring mountains: “Well, I am!”
ELWOOD 2
Long uphill here. He feels the gust of a passing truck. His calves feel like bricks, not achy, just pumping away, like his heart, banging on his ribs like it wants to get out. He knows it’s not just about the hill.
He’s happy to note that the obsessive question that hounded him for days—Am I crazy?—is receding. What’s surprising is the reason why: there’s no need for an answer. It makes no difference. It’s neither yes nor no. He had an experience and it was real for him and that’s that. For all he knows, people all over the world are having similar experiences and, like him, they can’t talk about them. Nobody would understand. Or believe.
Worm-word-wise, there’s been no eruption since The Day. If his raging outburst came as a surprise to Becca, it did not surprise him. The inside of his head has heard rants like that for years. The difference since Wednesday? The words are coming out. Not rants, just regular talk, and not just with Eddie. And more than once he’s caught himself being the first to speak.
Every night and sometimes in the morning, Worm reaches into the back of his closet and touches them: the raspberry fluffie and the floppy, yellow-feathered sombrero. Quite a few times already he has seen his mother—in the garden, bringing apron pocketfuls of string beans into the kitchen—wearing her featherless, floppy hat, making of herself, in Worm’s eyes, someone she will never know: sister to a dead girl.
And something else happens at random moments during the day, something he cannot touch or pick up yet feels no less, a memory that his body feels now, pedaling, a week later: the weight of her—the sheer, human, earthly weight of her—sitting on his lap in his father’s pickup.
And here we are:
YOU ARE ENTERING
elwood
He knows where to go. Down the main street, Willard. Through town. The usual stuff: stores, traffic lights, people. Left on Persimmon. Down a ways…on the right…and here it is. Fair Acres. Shabby sign. Needs painting. One of his trips here, he’s going to bring paint and brush, do it himself.
He stops inside the entrance. He refolds the route map and returns it to his pocket, where it joins her Dead Wednesday card. He carries it everywhere he goes, intends to wrap it in plastic. He could have printed out the cemetery map, the layout of grave sites, but he memorized it, wanted it in his head, part of himself. It would be insulting to need a map to find her. Her grave is on Westview Drive.
He starts to pedal. Stops. Needs to calm down. All that riding and now he’s out of breath. A sudden percolation of doubts. Last Wednesday was something that happened to him. Now it’s him driving the bus. Is he intruding? Messing with How It All Works? Should he turn and go home?
“Worm.”
He laughs out loud….No, he didn’t really hear her whisper his name, but his ever-clever mind went movie scene and—ka-ching—whispered it into his ear. And in the process breaks the tension and, doubts begone, he knows he belongs here as much as anybody. He locates Westview and slowly cruises the winding way, a feeling of her—Becca—getting stronger and stronger as he closes in.
And here it is. Her stone.
High as his waist. White marble, looks like. Rounded top.
He stops. Is suddenly afraid to come closer. He reads the chiseled figures:
rebecca ann finch
beloved daughter
NOVEMBER 1, 2003–DECEMBER 24, 2020
Sitting on his parked bike, no more than ten feet from the stone, he realizes that the sense of her—her presence—has fled. So powerful, so personal, was his experience last Wednesday that this—a stone—leaves him deflated, empty. Whatever may be here, it’s no match for the Becca Finch who sat on his lap. He knows now he will never make this trip again.
He dismounts. He unfastens the vinegar bottle from under the seat. He’s expected this moment to be so powerful, if only symbolic. Now it feels silly, vandal-like. But he feels bound to go through with it. He steps up to the marble marker, goes around to the faceless back so as not to disturb the lettering, and without ceremony whips the bottle against the stone.
He tries to convince himself that he hears a smashing-glass echo somewhere in the afterlife. Yeah, and camels speak French.
* * *
—
“What’s going on?”
He’s never heard the voice before, but he knows who it is before he looks up. Pooter. As beautiful as Becca said. Dusty-pink polo. Gray cargo pants. Linebacker legs.
“Hi,” says Worm brilliantly.
“What’s going on?” says Pooter, taking a step forward. No car is visible nearby. Does he walk here every day?
“I came to visit,” says Worm. “The grave.”
“Becca? You knew her? Who are you?”
He should have been ready for this.
“Yeah, our families were friends. Going way back. They would come see us. We used to talk. Me and Becca.”
“Where you from?”
Not Amber Springs. “Scranton.”
“What’s your name?”
“Wor—uh—Robbie.”
“Robbie what?” He takes another step forward. He’s looking at the ground.
; “Johnson,” he says. Lying is exhausting.
“What’s all this glass?”
“Yeah,” says Worm, “that’s what I was wondering. I got here and this is what I found. Figured I’d start picking it up.”
Pooter stares at him, skeptical. He looks back at the bike. “You came on that?”
How far is Scranton? “Yeah. Started out early. First day of vacation, y’know?”
“All this way? Bike?” Skeptical.
“Yeah,” says Worm. Deals a little chuckle and nod, like, I know what you mean. “Wasn’t sure I could make it. Lotsa hills.”
And suddenly Pooter is here, towering over him, his shoes crunching glass. “I never heard her mention you, you’re such old pals. Robbie…”
“Johnson.”
“Johnson.” He looks around the cemetery. He’s standing with his arm touching the stone. He looks Worm up and down. “You didn’t bike here from Scranton.”
Change the game. “She talked about you all the time…Pooter.”
That gets his attention. He boggles. His lips falter. The glare is gone. But only for a moment. He recovers with a face harder than ever. He’s mad. Worm said the wrong thing. He gives Worm a shoulder shove. “You’re lying.” For Pooter, Becca stops at the end of what he knows. “How do you know my name?”
Spill it and scram. Be bold.
“She babysat me when I was little. We texted a lot. Especially about you. Harmon Dean Baker. She named you Pooter. You met at Waldo’s. ‘Thank you, good sir,’ she said when you opened the door.”
He’s backed off but still fighting it. “You weren’t at the funeral.”
“I was sick. The flu. We all stayed home.”
Pooter starts shoeing pieces of glass into a pile. He looks at the bike, shakes his head. “No way. From Scranton?”
Dead Wednesday Page 11