“But what are we going to do with the gas, Benjamin?”
“They’re going to try to locate me visually. I’m going to write my name in fire so they can see where I am through their telescopes.”
I was no longer enthusiastic about any of this. I was only afraid. I tried to think of a reason to stop him.
“Um, do you think the light from fire will be strong enough to be seen all the way across the galaxy? Probably not, eh?”
It was the best deterrent I could think of under the circumstances.
Benjamin began pouring gasoline on the ground. A wet letter “B” was already starting to soak into the earth before he bothered to answer my question.
“Are you stupid or something, Dak? Their telescopes are at least a thousand times more powerful and a million times more accurate than our junky little Earth telescopes. And just in case you’ve forgotten, the aliens live on the other side of the universe, not the galaxy. If it were just the galaxy, I’d be long gone by now.”
Having spelled out his name in such a way that it covered almost the entire backyard, Benjamin removed a book of dime-store matches from his back pocket and struck one on the outside cover.
“Besides, I have to use fire — the aliens’ spectrographic analyzers are specifically calibrated to detect the light spectrum of gasoline fire in an oxygen-based atmosphere. So relax!”
He dropped the match at the base of the last letter “N.”
“Well, I guess this is it, Dak. By tomorrow night, I’ll be a million light-years from this stupid planet.”
The match flickered for a moment, then with a surprising roar, the entire word burst into flame, and Benjamin’s name illuminated everything around it. For a moment I was lulled — hypnotized by the allure of dancing fire.
Then, panic. Sheer panic. The flames that formed the word “BENJAMIN” began to spread. An appendage of the letter “E” advanced up the trunk of a tree. Another limb of flame swatted at the tool shed. Another licked at the wooden fence and still another crawled along the row of hedges. Within seconds, the entire yard was engulfed in an orange roar. Benjamin’s name became indistinguishable from the rage that flashed all around us.
We ran screaming into the house.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” Benjamin hollered. It was the first time I had ever seen Benjamin in tears.
His mother emerged from the basement, still slit-eyed from interrupted sleep. The glow from the backyard flickered on her face for a moment before she realized what was happening.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, as she slid sideways towards the telephone.
“Oh my God!” she began to scream. “Oh my God!”
Benjamin’s father appeared from upstairs.
“What the hell is all the racket . . . ?”
Benjamin began to sob.
“I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
His father walked directly to where Benjamin stood, and looked him straight in the face, unblinking, nostrils flared.
“Did you do this?” his father whispered.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Benjamin whispered back.
His father raised a huge fist into the air.
Benjamin began to shriek.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry!
With a swift, downward swing, the hovering fist slammed against the side of Benjamin’s face, sending him spiralling to the floor.
Screaming those nightmare screams I had heard on an earlier night, Benjamin’s mother ran towards him where he lay, quiet and motionless. She never got there because she was met halfway by her husband’s fist. There was a loud crack, like the sound of a hammer whacking a board, and Benjamin’s mother hit the floor.
Whimpering, she continued to crawl towards her son.
“Stay where you are, woman!” bellowed the father. “You leave that little bastard right where he is!”
The father stomped towards the telephone, cleared his throat, and spoke evenly into the receiver.
“Hello? Faireville Fire Department? Listen, we’ve got an emergency here at 43 Appletree Crescent. Our backyard is on fire and it may shortly be our house. Yes, thank-you. The sooner, the better.”
That was the last I ever saw of Benjamin’s house, or either of his parents. I ran out the front door and called my parents from a nearby convenience store.
In the car on the way home, my mother began to cry, saying that she always had a feeling that there was something odd about those people. Dad seemed pretty upset, too. Mom wrapped her arms around me and held me tight, and Dad drove with one hand, his free arm circling us.
An official investigation concluded that the fire was started by “an accidental fuel spill,” and that Benjamin and his mother “sustained minor injuries in the ensuing panic.” Despite this official clemency, I was forbidden to visit Benjamin’s house again. He stopped calling me on the phone, and I didn’t invite him to stay at my house anymore.
Six years passed before I saw Benjamin again. By that time, the status and stigma of being a child prodigy had slowly faded from my existence, and I was enjoying the life of a normal fifteen-year-old boy. After my stint at the Gifted School, I carefully refrained from too much intellectual development by devoting most of my thoughts to the mystery of girls. Many of my classmates eventually caught up with me.
In high school, it was easier to blend in, to become part of the great multi-tentacled adolescent mass. In fact, I became accepted by my peers to such an extent that I somehow managed to acquire a girlfriend. She was (and still is) Zoe Perry. I liked her even when we went to Faireville Elementary School together, but it wasn’t until high school that it became okay for me to actually have her as a girlfriend.
Anyway, I’m sure that even if the fire at the Gifted School hadn’t happened, and even if I hadn’t been streamed back into the regular school system, I probably would have quit hanging around with Benjamin by the time I reached high school. Benjamin and I were friends because we were different than everybody else. By grade 9, I wasn’t all that different.
But Benjamin did not simply disappear from my life. His name nonchalantly resurfaced one afternoon when Zoe was over at my house. We were working on a newspaper research project for our Canadian politics course, when an article caught her attention.
“Hey, Dak!” she said, from behind her newspaper. “Take a look at this one! This is wild! ‘Boy Injured in Bizarre Accident . . . Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Cranston, of West Faireville, was hospitalized yesterday with multiple fractures and lacerations, as the result of an accident involving the use of a giant working catapult which the teenager had built from scavenged parts.’ Can you believe what some people will do for attention?”
“Give me that!” I said.
It was true. There, embedded in the hues of newspaper grey, was Benjamin: six years older than the last time I had seen him, and partially obscured by bandages. I felt tremendous guilt. I knew I would have to contact him, or else I would never be able to purge the image of that newspaper photograph from my mind.
To avoid a potential confrontation with my parents, who believed in leaving past traumas alone, I sneaked away that evening to visit Benjamin in the hospital. I must admit that I did think twice about it. Some friend, eh?
Benjamin was all smiles when I got there, and he didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me, despite the six-year hiatus. He intentionally kept me at bay for awhile with small talk before actually making any mention of the circumstances which had put him in the hospital. Perhaps this was his way of chastising me for the lapse in our interactions.
Finally, though, he explained everything.
Since his plan to be taken away by aliens was aborted, due to the backyard fire, he and the aliens had devised an alternate plan. They would simply scoop up Benjamin in one of their space ships as they flew by. All Benjamin had to do was build a catapult which would hurl him into the air as the ship flew past.
Of course, I knew that he
was joking. He was just referring to something that happened long ago — a fantasy which had been part of our times together. He was simply trying to break the ice in his own unusual way. I decided to play along.
“Why couldn’t you just stay on the ground and let the space ship scoop you up, Benjamin?” I laughed.
“Well, see, there’s a reason for that. Their propulsion systems create an effect around the ship similar to that of a vacuum. If they come too close to the surface of a planet they are drawn towards it and they crash. When they flew by, they missed me. It was my own fault. I was about a metre short of the minimum flight level for one of their cruisers.”
Benjamin began to chuckle again, despite the obvious pain that the movement caused him.
“Well, what now?” I asked, unsure of my real desire to hear his reply.
“I’ll tell you this much, Dak. I sure won’t make the same mistake again!”
“You mean you’re going to forget about the catapult idea?” I asked hopefully.
“Oh, no, of course not. I can’t let a few little injuries get in the way of the next giant step for human evolution, can I? I’m just going to have to put a better spring on the catapult, so it will throw me above the minimum flight level of the cruisers, that’s all.”
He stopped to clear his throat.
“In the meantime, though, until my bones mend and I get my strength back, I’m going to work on an electronic transmission device so the aliens can communicate more easily with me.”
I was beginning to grow tired of this silliness.
“But Benjamin, I thought the aliens talked to you through telepathy.”
“Oh, they do, they do, but lately I’ve been having these awful headaches, see. Sometimes they’re so bad they make me throw up. The aliens think they could be caused by over-exerting my underdeveloped human telepathic abilities. So, logically, I’m going to build a transmitter.”
“Ah. Logically.”
Benjamin eventually fell asleep, dreaming about his aliens, no doubt. I returned home feeling no better about anything, and wondering if I really should have seen him at all. My mind offered no explanations, no solutions. I could only shrug.
Two days later, it comes as a very great shock to me when I receive a telephone call from Benjamin’s mother.
Benjamin is dead.
For some crazy reason, I ask her if she means that Benjamin is just missing.
No. He is dead. There is a body.
She hangs up, crying.
I have been to a couple of funerals before, but they have always been funerals for the old. Benjamin was my age. The darkness feels a lot closer than it ever did before.
I deduce from the buzz of conversation that surrounds me that, technically speaking, Benjamin died of strangulation; he was hung by one of those crazy inventions of his. To be more specific, a rope was tied to the end of the launcher on Benjamin’s catapult and this rope somehow got wrapped — six times — around his neck just as the catapult fired.
The word “suicide” is being cautiously avoided at the funeral. People use the word “accident” instead.
I think about Benjamin’s other accidents now and I wish I had understood what was really happening then. Some prodigy I was! First I thought he was just playing. Then I thought he was crazy. Then, when all else failed, I quit thinking about him altogether.
I am not feeling very smart at all. By gritting my teeth hard, I am able to prevent myself from crying out.
Benjamin’s mother weeps uncontrollably. His father stands stiffly nearby, looking incredibly stalwart for a man who has just lost his only son. The other guests engage in small talk, pretending that they don’t feel the weight upon them.
The funeral makeup covers Benjamin’s bruises pretty well, but even so, I know they are there. They are everywhere. Benjamin’s bruises are all over the room. They are on me, too, and I fear that time will not have much luck healing them.
The police found a note taped to the base of Benjamin’s catapult. They dismissed it as the scribblings of a lunatic.
It read:
No Aliens AT ALL
None
NO Aliens
NONE.
Searchlight TV
(Grade ten)
I’m unable to sleep at night because any possibility of Zoe Perry remaining my girlfriend has disappeared. My younger sister Charlotte, through channels apparently only available to annoying elementary-school girls, found out from her equally annoying little friend Clarisse Tanner, that Zoe has started dating Clarisse’s older brother, Jimmy. Charlotte was only too happy to inform me of this development. She loves to see me suffer.
Jimmy Tanner is this puffed-up pretty-boy creep in grade eleven. I’m not sure what Zoe can possibly see in him. Clearly, she must think I’m smarter, because she studies with me, not him. I’m pretty sure I’m taller than him, too. The only thing I can think of is that Jimmy’s parents are rich, and they have given him his own car (a shiny red Camaro) which is very useful for taking girls on dates.
I turned sixteen a couple of weeks back and I’ve already passed my driver’s test so only one last hurdle remains: If I am going to pry Zoe away from Jimmy Tanner before I go crazy with desire for her, I am going to have to get a car. And since my parents are definitely not the Rockefellers, I will need a second job to afford one before Jimmy and Zoe get married, have kids, grow old together, and get buried side-by-side in the family plot.
I’ve been scanning the Help Wanted section in the Faireville Examiner, and there are a few jobs that would pay the kind of money I need. The problem is that they contain discouraging phrases like “experience necessary” or “post-secondary education required.” I am about to face the grim prospect of losing the love of my life to a weasel with a red Camaro, when in today’s paper I see it, the ad which will help make Zoe Perry mine:
SEARCHLIGHT TV
Faireville’s only choice for
Television Sales & Service
is looking for a motivated individual
for
SATURDAY DELIVERIES &
INSTALLATIONS.
Driver’s license necessary.
DOUBLE MINIMUM WAGE PAID!
See owner Liam Capper at store for interview.
JESUS BLESS AND
FORGIVE YOU!
JESUS SAVES!
I also see Searchlight TV’s weekly full-page ad in the Faireville Examiner in which the “t” in Searchlight is shaped like a cross. The store’s owner must be on pretty good terms with Jesus to use one of His trademarks in a business logo! Every Searchlight TV ad concludes with the lines, “Jesus forgive you,” and “Jesus Saves!” but after comparing their prices with the ads from the city newspaper, it seems to me that if Jesus saves at Searchlight TV, everybody else gets ripped off.
Nevertheless, if I want to win Zoe’s affections away from Jimmy Tanner, I need to make some extra cash. I immediately walk downtown to Searchlight TV to apply for the job.
The interior of Searchlight TV is dusty and claustrophobic, lit with dim incandescent bulbs hanging on wires from the ceiling. The televisions are haphazardly displayed with the front of each box chopped off to show the appliance inside. Clearly Liam Capper is not making many sales based on the aesthetics of his store yet he can afford full-page ads in the local paper. What is the secret of his success?
At the back of the sales floor, beneath a huge cardboard sign that reads “Jesus forgive you!” a young woman rests her palms on a paper-strewn countertop, contemplating the paint flaking from the ceiling. There is no makeup on her face and her long hair is tied in a braid. She wears a long-sleeved blouse and a floor-length skirt like a pioneer woman. A few feet in front of her, two men and a woman are gathered around a partially opened television box. This woman also has her hair in a long braid and is dressed in a long, bland dress like the girl behind the counter. The two men are arguing over the price of a television set.
“But, Liam,” says the taller man, “four ninety-nine sti
ll seems like an awfully high price for such a small television.”
The shorter man is obviously Liam Capper, the store’s owner.
“Ronald,” he moans, “you have to understand that we sell only top-quality, premium-brand electronics like Panasonic and Sony — not the junk those discount stores sell!”
A quick look at the stacks of televisions reveals that this is not entirely true. The logos on the TVs look like name-brand sets, but they actually say Panisonic and Sany. The Assembled in Laos labels on the boxes are still partially legible under the scribble of black marker.
“But Liam,” begs Ronald, “this same TV is selling for two ninety-nine in the city!”
Liam Capper spreads his arms wide and wails, “Ronald! You’re not telling me you would be willing to put your hard-earned money into the hands of a sinful, idolatrous corporate discount store, are you? They can offer lower prices because they cut Jesus out of the picture! You know that a portion of the proceeds of every sale at Searchlight TV goes right back to our own beloved church, don’t you?”
“Well, sure, Liam,” says the taller man, “but four ninety-nine still seems like a lot.”
Liam Capper’s eyes bulge maniacally, an effect that is amplified by the thick lenses of his eccentrically large glasses. He does not fit the image of what I supposed a man of Jesus would look like. He is short with a sunken chest, stumpy legs, and disproportionately large forearms. His bristling red hair has receded several inches, making his forehead shine like a pink light bulb. Yet wiry hair grows in abundance everywhere else — sticking out from under his rolled-up sleeves and bursting from his open collar, nearly concealing the enormous gem-encrusted crucifix against his chest. Liam Capper looks like a cross between a high school chess club geek, a ‘70s pimp, and Popeye the Sailor Man.
“You heard Reverend Rathburn’s sermon last week on supporting your fellow parishioners, didn’t you?” he rails. “Did he not mention a number of local businesses who are endorsed exclusively by the Church of the Lord’s Holy Command?”
“Well, yes, of course, but — ”
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