by Neil Smith
The mode of transportation in Town is ten-speed bicycles. Their paint is often chipped, and their chains sometimes fall off, but they work well enough to go from point A to point B (no riding on the sidewalks, though). The bicycles belong to everybody; in other words, we may not own one specific bicycle that catches our fancy. Yesterday I reserved a ten-speed at the bicycle depot and rode it to the Guy Montag Library to spend the afternoon browsing the stacks. I tied the requisite red ribbon to the handlebars to show that the bicycle was in use, but when I came out of the library later, my borrowed ten-speed was gone. One would assume that angels respect rules and do not filch what is not theirs. Sadly, townies have the same foibles as the people of Hoffman Estates.
Another disappointment: our libraries have only books of fiction. How I long for a book on entomology or astronomy! But, no, I must make do with murder mysteries, comic books, literary novels (umpteen copies of Lord of the Flies, for example), and young-adult novels about such topics as teen pregnancy and drug addiction. True, Town has no insects, so a book on entomology seems useless, nor does it have teen pregnancy (the only kind of birth here is rebirth) or drug addiction (though there is no marijuana, a boy in my dorm claims he smokes chamomile tea leaves to get “mellow yellow”).
Town, in fact, lacks many things Americans take for granted: telephones, televisions, newspapers, high-rises, cars, traffic lights, supermarkets, mailboxes, and much more.
One thing Town has that American towns do not is gigantic concrete walls—four Great Walls called the North Wall, South Wall, East Wall, and West Wall that surround our home and rise an estimated twenty-five stories high. Slabs of concrete the size of dinner plates sometimes fall off the walls and shatter on the ground. The lower sections are covered in murals done by artistic children. Sometimes groups of townies gather at the foot of a wall and scream or sing together in hopes that somebody on the other side will answer back. So far, no reply has ever come.
Town’s lucky number is thirteen (on account of our age), and so it is divided into thirteen zones arranged in a patchwork: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, et cetera. (The Frank and Joe, by the way, is in Eleven, near the North Wall.) Some townies imagine Town as a rectangular concrete terrarium and all of us in it as lab mice. They wonder if a terrarium to the south houses thirteen-year-old Mexicans and a terrarium to the north, thirteen-year-old Canadians. They think of our god as a scientist conducting endless experiments in a gargantuan laboratory filled with angels.
How I wish our god were a scientist, like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins or primatologist Jane Goodall. (As I told you time and again, you two are the spitting images of Richard and Jane even if Mother insists she looks more like a blond Olive Oyl.)
In my opinion, our god is not a scientist but instead an eccentric hippie artist. I call him Zig because the name sounds hip and groovy (hereinafter, Mother and Father, whenever anyone says “God” to refer to the god running our heaven, I will change the word to “Zig” in my story to you). I picture Zig as a skinny man with long hair and a beard, like depictions of Jesus Christ, though Zig does not wear robes but rather faded jeans and T-shirts printed with such things as daisies or the yin-yang symbol. On his feet, he dons flip-flop sandals, which are popular in Town. In my mind, he smokes marijuana (not chamomile tea), burns incense, and wears mood rings on several fingers. Zig must not be a real, honest-to-goodness god because gods are generally thought to be infallible, whereas our Zig is always messing up. For instance, the toilets here constantly get blocked and overflow. As townies say, “Zig don’t know sh*t about plumbing.” (Since you are opposed to swearing, Mother and Father, I am softening the blow with an asterisk.)
Zig never sends us chemistry sets, astronomy textbooks, protractors, or periodic tables. Instead, he sends us poster paints, pastel crayons, chalk, pencils, and markers, all in a full spectrum of colors. We even receive canisters of spray paint (which explains the graffiti everywhere).
Our father who art in heaven (ha-ha).
Zig also sends us instruments like ukuleles, acoustic guitars, trombones, fiddles, tambourines, and harmonicas. Kids are musical here, and I would join in if I did not have a tin ear, a weedy voice, and two left feet. Who am I kidding? I would not join in even if I had twinkle toes and the baritone voice of an opera star.
Zig sends us sports equipment as well—footballs, baseball bats, badminton rackets, basketballs, field hockey sticks. I must admit I find these items sinister: at Helen Keller, I was regularly humiliated in gym class. During murderball, for instance, I was always the most savagely murdered, and hence I was never fond of team sports.
In fact, my policy back in America was this: steer clear of others. It is a policy, Zig willing, I will also adopt in Town.
Heaven has no churches, but it has what are called houses of good. On the fifth week of my stay in Town, do-gooder Thelma Rudd takes me to the Jonathan Livingston House of Good to attend a punch party. A punch party may sound as violent as murderball but is in fact just an evening cocktail party where the drinks are fruit punch. Thelma is not a girl with a steer-clear policy. She says I, as a newborn, need to get out and meet people to forge friendships—especially since I have no roommate yet.
“But I never had any friends back in Hoffman Estates,” I reassure her, “and I never suffered ill effects.”
She raises an eyebrow and says, “Oh, baby, don’t lie to Thelma.”
I think back to my friendless days at Helen Keller. In science class, I had no partner with whom to dissect frogs. Nobody wanted to be paired with me despite the A+ he or she would earn by riding my coattails. Before I adopted steer-clear, I tried at times, especially back in seventh grade, to engage my fellow students in conversation. I first practiced in front of my bedroom mirror because, in the past, things I had said had caused offense or irritation. To my mirror I said, “Hello, Cynthia Orwell. How were cheerleading tryouts today? Did you perform the splits to your liking?” When I said the same thing to the real Cynthia Orwell, she scrunched her nose as though I gave off a foul smell. She said, “Oh, Boo, don’t be schizo. Get lost, okay?” I learned I was no good at small talk, perhaps because I do not know how to make talk small.
I try to think of something to say to Thelma as we walk along a sidewalk and bicycles zoom by in the street. Weather is a small topic. I glance into the gray sky with its thin, wispy clouds (cirrus). So far, every day has been warm. I estimate high seventies or low eighties with a drop of five to ten degrees at night. I wish I had a thermometer, but thermometers are another thing Town does without, perhaps because there are no extremes to measure. The weather here is always early summer.
Sadly, there are no birds in the sky. Heaven is without bird life, animal life, or even insect life, except apparently for an occasional specimen that slips in. Maybe Zig thinks Americans tortured other creatures enough back home.
Thelma and I turn down John Clayton Street. The names of streets are written in indelible ink on cardboard wrapped in cellophane. These signs are then taped or nailed to the sides of buildings (as they are in Europe). Buildings, streets, and parks bear the names of characters from novels, and every so often local residents vote to change or update a name. I am about to ask who John Clayton is when Thelma says, “You’d make a fine do-gooder, Oliver.”
“Have you been smoking chamomile tea leaves?” I reply. “I’m no people person.” I pick up a rock lying next to the sidewalk. “I’m more comfortable with rocks. I’m a rock person. This little friend of mine has iron oxide bands.”
Despite the no-bicycles-on-the-sidewalk rule, a boy zips by on a bike with a sparkly banana seat. The handlebar grazes Thelma. “Watch out, lard butt!” he yells.
Thelma grabs my banded friend from my palm and is about to whip it at the cyclist, but she refrains. She closes her eyes and mumbles, “Zig give me strength.”
Thelma Rudd also lives in the Frank and Joe Hardy Dormitory, but a floor below me on the second. The do-good council assigned her to be my guidance counsel
or. She is responsible for checking on me, so she often drops by my room to ask how I am faring. I insist all is fine (actually what I say is “hunky-dory,” because you use that odd expression, Mother and Father, and I picture your faces whenever I say it). Thelma often eyes me with a mixture of concern and bewilderment. She must suspect me of hiding something because last time I said “hunky-dory,” she said, “Tell Mama the truth.”
Some of the older girls—by “older” I mean the thirteen-year-old girls who have been here for twenty years or more—like to refer to themselves as “Mama.” They act motherly toward a newborn. They sew patches on the seat of his jeans. They bring him a bran muffin for breakfast to ensure that his bowel movements are regular. They call him “honey,” “sweetie,” “baby,” and “pet.”
Ever since I told Thelma that you, Mother, are a fan of jazz standards, she has been singing me bedtime lullabies from the American songbook. I may be past the lullaby age, but in Thelma’s eyes, I am still a newborn. Last night she chose “Begin the Beguine.”
On Merricat Blackwood Street, Thelma stops in front of an old warehouse where dozens of townies are pushing rattling shopping carts filled with canned goods like green beans, creamed corn, pears, and chickpeas.
Thelma says, “We had a delivery today.”
I ask to go in because I have never seen inside a food warehouse. The space is the size of the Helen Keller gymnasium, but instead of bleachers along its periphery, the warehouse has racks of metal shelving that stand high enough that ladders are needed to reach the top. These shelves serve as rebirthing beds for the canned goods, boxes of cereal, rice, pasta, bags of potatoes, carrots, apples, and all the other simple foods we eat here. The food is vegetarian because, as Thelma would say, meat is death, and nothing truly dead can exist in Town.
“Does the food appear in the blink of an eye?” I ask Thelma. “Just like a newborn?”
“Yep, but the food don’t come till we remove every single morsel from the last delivery.”
We leave the warehouse and continue up the street to the Jonathan Livingston House of Good. It turns out to be a community center with furniture that seems to come from a rummage sale. The miniature fridge and stove in the kitchenette are dented. The wooden chairs around the room are mismatched and chipped. The coffee table is a battered steamer trunk with leatherette handles hanging half off. The plaid couch where Thelma and I take a seat is shabby with quilts laid over spots where the stuffing fluffs through. Hung over the couch is a cuckoo clock with no hands to tell time. Every few minutes, the little shuttered window on the clock swings open and a platform with nothing on it sticks out and then darts back inside.
Most townies at the house of good wear the same purple armband Thelma has around her left biceps. The armband is a symbol of do-goodism. Other than the armband, they dress like everybody else, in jeans and T-shirts.
The boys here, like the boys at the Frank and Joe, have jagged haircuts. There are no barbers in Town, so we cut one another’s hair, and consequently some of the boys have bald spots. As barbers yourselves, Father and Mother, you would be appalled. At least hair grows faster in heaven, in the same way wounds and scabs heal more quickly.
Girls’ hair is less hacked because girls usually let their hair grow long. The girl who sits down with Thelma and me has long golden hair, the type seen in shampoo ads in America. Thelma introduces us; the girl’s name is Esther Haglund. Esther would never be chosen to star in a shampoo ad: she is a dwarf, albeit a tall one (she is about a foot and a half shorter than I am). She has the larger cranium and bulging forehead common among dwarfs.
“Esther’s a do-gooder in training,” Thelma explains to me. “That’s why her armband is light purple.”
“Mauve,” Esther says. “And I knit it myself.” She touches the band around her left biceps.
Thelma points out the pleated skirt Esther is wearing. “Esther makes all her own clothes.”
I just stare. I have never been around a dwarf before.
“So how do you like do-goodism so far?” Thelma asks her.
“Well, I’m no complainer, but, Thelma, I swear the residents in my dorm can be pigs sometimes. I make them snacks, organize their school schedules, offer a shoulder to cry on, and even darn their damn socks, and then they leave a Zig-awful mess in our kitchenette and expect me to clean it up. One of them even said to me, ‘You do-gooders live for sh*t like this.’ ”
Thelma shakes her head.
Esther notices my staring. “Do you have a question, Oliver?” she asks.
“Yes, Esther. I was wondering, what type of dwarfism are you afflicted with?”
“Afflicted with?” Esther’s eyes bulge. “What the hell kind of talk is that?”
“I am having trouble recalling the types of dwarf—”
Thelma cuts in: “He’s a newbie, Esther.”
“I don’t give a fig if he’s a newbie or an old boy. That question was plain rude.” She turns to me. “We don’t say ‘dwarf’—we say ‘little person.’ You got that, kid?”
I nod my head.
Esther reaches for her glass of punch on the side table and then heads off into the crowd of do-gooders in her bowlegged gait.
“I guess I made a friend,” I say to Thelma. (This comment, please note, is true irony.)
She pats my leg. “Don’t mind her.”
“I wonder why Zig doesn’t fix dwarfs,” I say. “After all, he can fix cancer and blindness.”
“Being a little person ain’t a disease, Oliver. It don’t need no fixing.”
I mull this fact over and then ask, “What about children with Down syndrome?”
“Well, some people claim retarded kids come here a little smarter to make their afterlives easier.”
“Zig adjusts their IQ up?”
“That’s what people say, but who knows if it’s really true.”
I have a frightening thought: maybe Zig adjusted my IQ down. Maybe my IQ was too high back in Hoffman Estates and prevented me from interacting normally with my peers. Mr. Miller, my old English teacher, once said, “Oliver, being over-smart is a handicap.” At the time, I thought Mr. Miller was bitter because I had corrected his grammar in class. (“It is easy: ‘who’ is a subject and ‘whom’ is an object,” I told him as he eyed me with such vexation I feared he would crack his yardstick over my head.)
I do not know my actual intelligence quotient, Mother and Father, since you did not want me tested. You did not want me skipping grades. “You stick out enough as it is,” you reasoned, Father. In hindsight, I deem your decision wise because had I never spent time with children my own age, I would be completely out of my element here.
Somebody else catches my eye at the house of good. A boy over by the hors d’oeuvres table is taking quick nibbles of a carrot stick. He is a black boy with an Afro, but he has white splotches on his arms and a few on his face, including a kind of starburst patch on his forehead.
I point out the boy to Thelma.
“That’s Reginald Washington,” she says. “He’s the president of our do-good council.”
“He has vitiligo,” I say. “It’s a disease that destroys the pigmentation in the skin.”
“He came to Town like that, but the spots haven’t spread none since he got here. He says Zig put a stop to them. One of the reasons he became a do-gooder was to thank Zig.”
Reginald Washington claps his hands for attention. He stands at a podium set up near the hors d’oeuvres. “Kindly lend me your ears, my friends.”
He gives a talk about do-goodism, the importance of helping others instead of floundering around aimlessly in one’s own head. He holds a small bullhorn, which he uses to amplify certain phrases so they sound like the word of Zig. “Do right by others, and they will do right by you!” he thunders as the do-gooders nod their heads—all but Esther, who rolls her eyes.
That do-right tenet is malarkey. For example, I once allowed Oscar Stanley and Larry Schultz to copy from my geometry homework, and did they
do right by me? No—the next day, they tripped me as I was walking down the front stairs of Helen Keller, and I sprained my ankle.
I stop listening to Reginald. I prefer to flounder in my own head, thank you very much. I wonder again if my brainpower has fallen a notch in the afterlife. I work myself into such a lather that I feel in mourning for those lost points of IQ. I finally excuse myself and go to the boys’ room, where I sit on the toilet and recite the periodic table to make myself feel better.
I will tell you right away that the next scene is a dream. I dislike stories where a dream is presented, even briefly, as reality. I do not appreciate such trickery and will never knowingly deceive you, Mother and Father.
So here is the dream I have on the night of the punch party: I am lying in the center circle of the empty basketball court at Helen Keller. Along one wall is stretched a banner reading, GO, TROJANS, GO! The me in my dream believes he has been reborn in America because his eyeglasses are on his face and he is once again stark naked. He stands and starts heading toward the gym doors when, in the blink of an eye, the space fills with secondhand supplies—couches, stoves, bicycles, boxes of books, mattresses. So many objects are piled around that he must climb over them in an attempt to reach the gym doors. As he clambers over crates of the same mystery novel (And Then There Were None), he hears a pounding coming from the doors. Despite his atheism, he feels that some higher power is knocking. He stubs his toe and twists his ankle as he climbs through the debris, but he finally reaches the exit and swings the doors open. A blinding light greets him. He says to the light, “Are you there, Zig? It is I, Oliver.”