by Chris Lynch
“Hey,” you say.
“That hand looks bad. Want to tell me how you got it?”
Gran sets a cup of tea down in front of Dahl.
“Gran, he’s going to take me away, and you’re serving him tea?”
“I am not here to take you anywhere, Will. It’s just, there’s a lot of stuff in there, and I need to look into it. You want to read?” He nudges the paper toward you, even though it is still facing his way, upside down to you. That is as it will stay.
“No thanks.”
“It’s every bit of it nothing but sick lies anyway,” Gran says. Pops says nothing. Pops appears for all the world to be waiting just like the good lieutenant, like every other concerned uninvolved tabloid reader, for the story to unfold. What is your grandfather actually thinking, you might ask. Well don’t. You cut him loose from this point, son. Don’t count on him, don’t work on him, don’t try to figure him out or bring him on board. That is complete dead-weight action. Believe it, cut anchor, move on.
“I’m sure it is, ma’am,” Dahl says. “I just have to check.”
“Check,” you say, as if the game is chess, rather than your life.
“Okay. Were you there when those kids went in the water?”
“No.”
“So how did you happen to know to start a memorial so soon after?”
“I didn’t. I planted it before.”
“Before. So, are you claiming then to know about suicides before they happen? Are you claiming, like the newspaper says, to be gifted? Some kind of teenage prophet of death?”
Gran begins sobbing behind you. Pops stares down under the table, at his feet or something.
And you, Will? How do you feel, hearing that?
“Why is the phone not ringing?” you ask seriously. “I would figure the phone would be ringing mental by now. But it’s not ringing at all.”
“Phone’s unplugged. I asked, Will, if you are claiming—”
“I’m not claiming anything.”
“Do you know who is next? Do you have any information, about any upcoming—”
“The boy said he doesn’t know any shit like that,” Pops growls.
You don’t. You don’t know any such thing. How could you know any such thing? The people who go go, and they take it all with them. You know that much, but that much everybody knows. Other than that, you have no information, right, Will? You do not know who is going to die.
“I am responsible,” you say.
“No,” Gran gasps.
“Talk to me,” Dahl says.
“I just did.”
“What did you do, to make yourself responsible?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything to make myself.” You shrug. And even shrugging brings pain to your hand. “I just am. I don’t have to do anything, and I’m not the prophet of anything. I’m just more like, the carrier pigeon of death.”
You start looking around the room. What are you looking for, Will? It isn’t there. You look back at Dahl to find that he is now looking around the room. But he seems surer of what he is looking for.
“You should really get Will to a hospital, folks. He should really . . . be looked at. That hand’s probably causing him a lot of pain.” His focus suddenly, penetratingly, pulls in to you. He is looking well into your eyes, though you are barely looking back. “You’re in a great deal of pain, aren’t you, Will?”
You look at your hand, then slowly back at Dahl. “Yes. Yes, sir I am.”
“Okay,” Dahl says, standing, putting on his hat. “I’m sorry to have troubled you all. I don’t think I’ll be needing anything else.”
There is nothing but silence in the room. Uncommon silence, the kind you cannot create merely by being silent. It is too much.
“Don’t you see,” you say to the officer, “what it’s become? It’s that now, kids are, like, coming to my sculpture . . .”
He holds up a hand, maybe something left over from his traffic cop days back in a helpful uncomplicated part of his career when he used to be able to help people.
“I know. You don’t need to be thinking about this stuff. Go with your grandparents and get fixed up. And take a few days off. Get yourself a nice rest.”
And, he wants to tell you, this’ll all blow over. He wants to tell you that.
Don’t you think it is fairly decent of him not to tell you that? Points for this guy.
“Thank you,” you say as both of your grandparents bundle him off and you tuck left-handed into hot cereal gone cold and the morning paper.
• • •
A lot of doctors for one hand bone. A lot of interviews to be giving, considering until yesterday you had gone an entire life without giving a single one.
The X ray didn’t show a broken bone. That’s because the X ray barely showed any bone. Too much swelling. You know anyway.
Splint, instead of cast. Take it off when you need to. Not a bad deal. One splint to hold you together.
One splint, and a whole lot of medicine.
And what was with the priest, do you suppose? Will? Suppose they’re expecting you to die from this? That’s what they bring in the priests for, isn’t it? Or is it the other thing? A confession?
Does either one bring absolution? Think you should ask? Think you should offer?
Bless me, father, for I am death.
• • •
You don’t want to take the pills. You don’t. For a while anyway, you don’t. But without them, there are problems. Pain, is a problem. Related sleeplessness, is another problem. You endure.
You don’t have to, you know. You don’t have to endure any more pain. You don’t have to take the pills. You know this, don’t you? You know this, that the choices are all yours, and that there is no predestined anything to stop you, or to start you, doing anything that does not suit you.
What suits you?
You don’t want to take the pills, and it is good that you don’t want to take the pills. It is admirable that you do not want to take pills.
But do you want to be admired? Or do you want the pain to stop? And the sound. You could use the peace. Couldn’t you use the peace, Will? Wouldn’t you like this to stop, even for just a while?
“Yes, I would like it to stop,” you say. Finally, finally, finally. You say.
No shame. There is no shame. You take your pills. You take your peace.
• • •
Are you still sleeping? You are seeing, that much is certain.
Certainty. It is the opposite of faith, isn’t it? Which would you rather have now?
Reach out your good hand. Try and touch. Tables and shelves and gnomes and whirligigs of all description. A phantasmic, freakish familiar gallery of your own unintentions.
“I was supposed to be a pilot. This all never should have happened.”
You are awake, for certain. And you are going to school today. All advice is that you stay exactly where you are, but you will not be taking that advice. Though you will compromise by taking your medications.
And anyway, you are not going to school per se. You are going to the school, but not to school. This is not a situation you are condemned to live with, just as nothing in this life will be.
Nothing has to be, Will. It is up to you.
So you are not going to school to work in wood. You are going to tie up loose ends. You are going to finish unfinished business. You are going to clean out your locker.
You are not an inmate of Special Programs.
You are not a woodworker.
You are a pilot.
You promise your teary grandmother and steely grandfather that you will be at bocce ball in the afternoon. She is always teary grandmother these days, isn’t she, and he is always steely grandfather.
“Promise,” she says.
“I promise,” you say.
“No, promise,” she says.
“Yes, promise,” you say. And wonder why it is you have to repeat everything.
• • •
&nbs
p; You are no sooner in the door—and not the little door into the little isolated freezer case of the woodworking gulag, but the big door into the healthy free-range world of the general Socratic population—than Mr. Jacks is right up there in your face, glad-handing and oversmiling you back to lifelike civilization.
“Great to see you back so soon, Will,” Mr. Jacks says, putting an arm around your shoulders.
Like you were Charles Lindbergh. Before he misplaced his baby. They taught you stuff like that once. When you were suitable for history.
Or maybe not Lindbergh. Maybe more like the guy who murdered the baby.
He is squeezing you awfully tight. “I won’t try to escape,” you say.
He laughs out loud. Mr. Jacks is a decent enough guy, but you have never heard him laugh. Kind of like hearing a cat yodel.
“No, no, no, Will, not at all . . .” He is not only squeezing you, but steering you down the hall. “I’m just really surprised, and pleased, to see you up and around, and back with us.”
You can’t even manage it, to do the self-preservation thing briefly. To attempt to even look like you are paying hard attention to the man. He is talking, and you are drifting, like a kite.
People look like they are retreating as you pass through the corridors. You see faces—not clearly, but they are there—seemingly forever. Two girls, bumping shoulders, hush-toning as girls do. But they don’t seem to pass. They are looking at you—well of course they are—and you are looking at them. You are going your way and they are coming this way, but you don’t ever reach, ever pass. You look at Jacks, like for an explanation, then look at the girls, only they are boys.
They are looking at you, though. Make no mistake.
You want to talk to students. You want to talk. You want to shake somebody’s hand and say, listen, I am sorry just like you. Sorrier than you, even.
But as you feel yourself pulling ever gently out of Mr. Jacks’s benevolent grip, you feel him tightening up. No matter anyway. Faces are not opening up to you. They are closing, or shrinking or—inasmuch as you can tell as the viscous shield between you thickens—clenching at the sight of you.
The only certainty is that you are noticed.
Why? Why should you matter now? And why should Jacks even be aware of your arrival? Even if he cared, which you must seriously doubt no matter how genial a guy he is, why would he know? You are one problem amid his hundreds of problem chores, and you’re not even supposed to be back for another while yet.
Finally, you feel, hear, see, something different.
“Yo, nice work,” comes the muffled voices as you are bumped by a passing student. You turn from Jacks to catch just the black coat, dark hair, black hat, swinging side-to-side gait.
You wipe to clear the eye. Jacks swings you back around to him.
“I have been thinking about this a lot, Will, and I don’t think you are quite ready . . .”
“Thinking . . . thinking a lot about me?”
“Yes, you shouldn’t risk . . .”
“When would you have had time to think about me?”
“It is just too soon. You need to be fully . . .”
He’s been tipped. Of course he’s been tipped. He has been waiting for you. Alerted by one or more of your grandparents who are probably under official orders to let the world know where you are at all times. What do you think about that? You have become so important all of a sudden that everywhere you go, somebody has made a call to tip somebody off. Your every move is under surveillance.
“Am I going to have to wear one of those electronic ankle bracelets now?”
Jacks does it again. The cat yodels. “It’s nothing like that, Will, you know that.”
You know nothing of the kind. The smallest certainty is impossible at this moment.
It is exactly then that you become aware of the lightness of being you, the physical near-nothingness of it. You are not a body, not a kite, but a massive inflatable parade character, and Jacks’s arm feels suddenly like the thing that is keeping you tethered to this earth. He is, in fact, guiding you, as the two of you newly great and good buddies wend your way, on display, through the crowd.
And some crowd. Look at them, Will. As much as you can look at them through the great distance, the blurring, the milky mist. Mist or no, though, it is a sad, scary view, and while you are wondering whether they are scared of you, you have every right to be the one who is afraid.
There is no life in this building. People are here because they have to be here or because where else are they going to go. It is more manageable for everybody to presume they need to be someplace, rather than having to decide all the time what they should be doing, with whom, where and why. That is why the school is at this moment loaded with students who are not going to learn anything, teachers who aren’t going to teach anything, and you.
Choice, Will. It can kill you. It is supposed to be what makes living worthwhile. It is what makes not living an option.
They look so sad. Don’t they look so sad? Every last person. You have to keep rubbing and rubbing your eyes to get a clear view of a face but you keep doing it and every time you do you are repaid, with a sad, searching face looking hard back into you before turning quickly away.
You reach out, a blind man’s move, trying to grab a touch of somebody who seemed to be right there, but then wasn’t. You try a second time, reaching for a denim arm that seems right there, but then is gone. You squint at a lone small figure with long black hair. She drops her gaze to the floor.
Lock up your children, and avert your eyes. The teen angel of death comes again.
Jacks is, most likely, utterly lost. He takes each of your moves to be some kind of collapse, and gathers you back up into his benign, unwelcome embrace. You ignore him. Continue lurching, leering, attempting contact, mortifying people.
You never noticed them before. You never looked at them before. They never noticed you either.
That is changed. None of them want to touch, but you are all for sure noticing each other now. Because now you share something. You are all scared and lost, and not one of you knows what comes next.
Certainly you weren’t expecting this. You let Jacks lead you blindly, but you didn’t figure on seeing any crisp white uniforms again so soon.
“Why are we here? We were going to the shop . . .”
“You have to be cleared to come back to class, Will, that’s all. Nurse has to just look you over, give you the all’s clear. For your own safety. Don’t be concerned.”
And you are being examined again. Someone, Ms. Appleton, tall pallid unhealthy-looking school nurse, is looking deep into your eyes. As has happened a lot lately. She is asking you questions about yourself. As has happened a lot lately.
“I am in junior year.
“Yes, I am taking medication.
“The hospital didn’t find a break. But I know there is one.
“No, I don’t believe they are trying to keep something from me.
“I meant to be a pilot, not a woodworker. It was an administrative error.”
The next thing you know, you are headed back out the front door with a note in your hand. The halls are now all empty, but just as silent as they were with all the bodies.
“Just a few more days’ rest, that’s all,” Mr. Jacks is saying. “You don’t want to come back too soon until you are feeling up to it.”
“I wasn’t even coming back,” you say weakly, looking back over your shoulder into the heart of the school, but walking compliantly out of it. “I was just here to get my stuff.”
“Oh.” He seems mystified by this, perhaps by your ability to make a decision. “Well. Well, to tell you the truth, Will, I was going to ask you about that.”
“About what?”
“Your things. Where are they?”
“My things. Well, I have a jacket and a Montreal Expos hat in my locker. And at my station a couple of small . . .”
“No, your things. Your stuff. Your works.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to say anything until I had a chance to talk to you myself. Didn’t want you in any more . . . difficulty . . .”
Nice word, that. Eh, Will? You are in difficulty. How does one get in there, you might ask him. And how does one get out?
“Mr. Jacks, how am I in difficulty?”
“Where is your work, Will?”
“What do you mean? It’s in the storage with everybody else’s.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I wanted to give you a chance, Will. I know all about your hard times. But it has to stop now. Where are they?”
It is slow in coming. You want to help. You want to help the police and the teacher and everybody walking wounded with the sad long faces who so badly want to have all the life-lost teenagers put back here where they belong and you will quietly slip back out in exchange because as you and everyone else well knows, you never did. Belong.
It is a trade you would gladly make. Trade. Bring them back. You go in their place. That would be as it should be, you are thinking.
Stop. Choice. You do not choose what others do, William, and others do not choose for you. What they did they did. What your father did or didn’t do, he did or didn’t do. Their choices. Your choices. You are free to go.
You would think so anyway.
Why can’t you think so?
“I swear, Mr. Jacks, I haven’t seen my stuff, any of it, since . . .”
He knows. He may not have had faith in you before, but the evidence appears plain enough. He knows now, you don’t have them.
“Somebody appears to have taken your works, Will. I’m sorry. I thought it was you.”
He all but lifts you through the door, out into the most powerful sunshine you have ever felt. He guides you down the cement stairs where you are unfazed at finding your grandfather sitting in the car.
“Somebody stole my work, Pops,” you say as Mr. Jacks helps you into the car the way funeral attendants help the frail old widow into the limo.
• • •
You are trying to try. Trying to just get better. But again the ringing begins. Gran and Pops have taken to ignoring it, unplugging it for most of the time unless they are expecting calls, or when they have made calls and simply forgotten to unplug afterward. They are old and getting older every minute now. Forgetting is not unusual.