by Neil Smith
Given the lack of lakes, bridges, arsenic, and subway trains in Town, I gather that the gommers are suggesting redeath penalties in line with their own murders. I look at Thelma seated beside me, expecting her to balk, but she does not. She just rubs her palms up and down her thighs as though wiping away sweat.
I glance at the glittery forgive/don’t forgive posters. I am about to respond with irony, to say, “Hey, you can forgive if you want,” but Esther speaks first.
“What if Johnny fingers the wrong kid?”
The gommer group leader, the girl who presumably was pushed in front of a subway train, asks, “Why would he blame some innocent boy?”
Esther clenches a sofa cushion in her lap, and I fear she will swat a gommer with it. “He never even saw his killer!” she shouts. “He sees this kid only in his frigging nightmares!”
The boy who was probably stabbed insists a gommer’s nightmares are always very telling. “They’re proof as far as I’m concerned,” he says.
The bridge boy cries, “Hear, hear!” which is echoed by other gommers.
Esther ignores them and turns to me. “Maybe Johnny’s a little crazy, Boo,” she says, “and doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.”
The subway girl jumps in: “The murdered are always a little crazy when they first come here. You can’t understand. You aren’t one of us.”
Esther says with an exasperated sigh, “Oh, get over it already.”
Now all the gommers glare at her. Their faces look creepy and almost evil, as though they have just transformed into their own killers.
Thelma says, “Esther, don’t be rude.”
Esther huffs and then announces, “I’m going for a pee.” She gets up from the sofa and asks me, “Don’t you have to pee too?”
Thelma always encourages us to use the facilities before we hit the road, so I nod even though I have no urge to urinate. Esther and I step around the gommers, who continue to give her defiant stares. When we are in the hallway, she tells me to follow her. She heads into the boys’ room (because she is a feminist and deems separate rooms for boys and girls a form of segregation), then goes into a stall and closes the door. While she urinates, I wait at the sinks and wash my hands with a cake of glycerin soap.
“I’m serious about Johnny being a bit crazy,” Esther says from the stall. “Was he always so weird?”
Weird? How strange that Esther considers Johnny the weird one. If eighth graders from Helen Keller were asked which boy, Johnny Henzel or Oliver Dalrymple, was weirder, I would win the vote by a landslide. Any students choosing Johnny would have to be odd themselves—for example, a girl like Jenny Vasquez, who keeps in her pocketbook a zoo of plastic farm animals, which she often converses with.
I tell Esther I do not recall too much overt weirdness from Johnny, but then again, he and I had little contact. I can confirm he was not prone to fistfights, rude behavior, or spitball shenanigans at school.
Esther comes out of the stall and washes her hands. She is just tall enough to see herself in the mirror hung over the sink.
“We’d better find Johnny soon before he wreaks havoc,” she says.
“He won’t wreak havoc,” I assure her.
She takes a paper towel from a stack on the sink, dries her hands, and then crumples the towel and throws it at me. “How can I trust your instincts?” she says. “You’re biased because he’s your friend.”
I pick up the balled-up towel from the floor and drop it in the wastebasket. “As a junior scientist and researcher, I promise you I always remain unbiased.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Neutral and objective.”
“He’s bloodthirsty, your friend.”
“He’s just a bit nervous.”
“There’s never been a murder here, Boo. If Johnny or the gommers kill Gunboy, who knows what’ll happen. Who knows how Zig will react.”
“You think he’ll punish us?” This thought had not occurred to me.
“I’m not saying the ground will crack open and swallow us whole, but for sure there’ll be a reckoning.”
I wonder about this, because if Zig is also overseeing America, he does not seem to pencil in days of reckoning—despite the injustice, violence, and death penalties there.
“Boo, it’s up to us to stop Johnny,” Esther says. “If we don’t, we’ll have blood on our hands.”
After the gommer meeting ends, I am sitting alone on the steps of the Ponyboy Curtis School when the boy who was stabbed in the gut sits down beside me with a beat-up skateboard in his hands. “Howdy there,” he says in a southern drawl. One would think that in the melting pot of our heaven, townies would eventually lose their accents, but no: the accent we come here with is the accent we have for all fifty years.
The gommer introduces himself as Benny Baggarly. Though blond, he is not pale like me. In fact, he is tanned, as if he has imported sun from the American South.
He leans in close and says, “I tracked my killer down and now I’m hauntin’ that b*stard.”
“Pardon me?”
“Hauntin’ him. Ever hear of a hauntin’?”
“You mean you’re a portal seeker?”
“Portal seeker? Portal finder’s more like it.”
He pulls a slip of paper from his pocket. “Don’t show this to nobody. This is for you and you alone.” Benny glances around, but no one is within hearing distance. The other gommers have cycled off into the night.
Thelma and Esther are arguing on the lit basketball court beside the school. I feel a tinge of sadness because it seems our little group is breaking apart.
I unfold the slip of paper Benny passed me. On it is a hand-drawn map of Six. An X is marked in the middle of Buttercup Park, which lies on the zone’s northern edge, where Six meets Five.
Benny whispers, “We’re meeting in that park tomorrow night at three in the morning.”
“Who are we, Benny?”
“Haunters, my boy. Go on a haunting and you can do some sleuthing. Find out if your killer’s down in America or up in heaven. Hell, you might even find out the kid’s real name. ’Cause it sure ain’t ‘Gunboy.’ ”
I must look skeptical because Benny offers a further lure: “You can visit your folks too. Give your pa a hug, your ma a peck on the cheek. It’ll do them a world of good.”
I slip Benny’s map into my pocket and thank him for the invitation. I have my doubts about the safety of this haunting business, however. I think of poor crazy Willa Blake and her eerie dive.
Benny gets up from the steps and dusts off the seat of his pants. “If you wanna know more, come tomorrow night. Don’t be late. And make sure you come alone. This is an exclusive club. We don’t invite any old Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
As Benny skates off across the schoolyard, I think, Any old Tom, Dick, and Johnny would be more like it.
When the girls and I arrive back at the Jack Merridew Dormitory that evening, I rush to my room in case Johnny has returned. The intact orange still on the desk tells me that no, he has not been here. Disappointed, I sit down on the chenille bedspread as Thelma comes in. I wonder aloud whether Johnny has headed back to the Frank and Joe.
Thelma’s guess is that he is out showing his dead-or-alive poster around to see if he can find Gunboy himself. “Wait a day or two, honey, and he’ll show up,” she says, sitting on the bed opposite.
“If Johnny finds Gunboy, will he really bash his head in with a brick?”
“Oh, Oliver, that’s just bravado talking. Johnny’s scared. He’s as scared as any newbie gommer. Getting over murder ain’t something you do overnight.”
Her comment is directed at me too. She believes I am not emotional enough about my killing. I should not have gotten over it already.
“Do you think Gunboy deserves a bashing?” I ask.
Thelma stares at the palms of her hands as though her lifelines might reveal an answer. “Honest to Zig, I don’t know, sugar.”
She stands up between the two beds
as I lay my head back on my pillow. Tonight she sings “Lullaby of Birdland.” Her voice sweeps through the room and flows out the window. I expect other townies to come knocking on my door to hear Thelma’s beautiful voice better. When she sings about a weepy-old willow that knows how to cry, she closes her eyes and then I close mine. After she finishes the song, Thelma bends over and plants a kiss on my forehead. Though I usually recoil from such a kiss, I do not this time, so perhaps I am changing. Just a little bit.
“Sleep tight and don’t let the death’s head bite,” she jokes before shuffling off to the room she shares with Esther. I hope Johnny and Rover are looking after each other.
When Thelma is gone, I glance around. The walls look bare without the pencil sketches Johnny tapes up to make our temporary lodgings feel homier. My favorite sketch so far showed Esther zooming down the street on her pinkmobile, her hair and the handlebar streamers blowing horizontally. Johnny drew her in Wonder Woman’s costume. He told me we were all superheroes tracking down our archenemy, Gunboy. When I asked which superhero I was, he said, “Brainboy.”
Lately, I have not felt all that brainy. The smarts I have—about amoebae and nebulae and formulae—are useless here. What I need is the kind of intelligence that helps me understand why a boy might walk into a school and start shooting a gun, why one victim might forgive this boy, and why another never will.
At four thirty, I jerk awake, pulse racing because I hear Johnny screaming in his dreams, but when I flick on the light, all is quiet and the second bed is still empty. The screams must have been in my dreams. I drag the desk chair over to the window and sit watching the full moon and the hodgepodge of stars.
When I had insomnia back in America, I would read my school textbooks till it was light enough outside to go for an early-morning constitutional. I wish I were back at Helen Keller, memorizing the map of Africa, studying glacier formation, and conjugating verbs in French (je meurs, tu meurs, il meurt, nous mourons…).
When the pinprick stars fade out and the holy mackerel clouds float in, I change out of my pajamas and into my gym clothes. I pull on my white knee socks with red and blue stripes at the top (perhaps more Bicentennial leftovers) and then lace up my running shoes.
Outside, the day is still. No cyclists are around, and I wonder what it would be like to come to a heaven not just divided by age and nationality, but so segregated that I would be the only one inhabiting it. In other words, spending my afterlife truly alone. I shudder. I can make do with what heaven lacks: animals, cars, telephones, books of science, et al. But no people would be unbearable—even for a loner like me.
I recall a chat I had with Johnny during a morning jog almost a year ago. Though I am usually a light jogger, I was sprinting that day across a grassy backyard stretched between the buildings of Sandpits. At first, I did not notice Johnny and his sidekick, Rover, sitting on the grass and reading the Tribune. (Okay, the dog was not actually reading, but it was looking at the paper with interest.)
“You should join the track team, Boo,” Johnny called out. “We could use you.”
I slowed down and walked back, pushing my eyeglasses up my nose. I told Johnny I would not enjoy running with others. I did not want to hear their breathing and footsteps. The sound of my panting breath and my thumping feet was calming; the sound of theirs would be annoying and distracting.
Johnny said he could understand. “I like my alone time as well,” he told me. “That’s why I deliver the paper at five thirty in the morning.”
Then he added something I did not understand. “Besides, I hate people too,” he said.
I was taken aback. “Oh, but I don’t hate people,” I replied. “Sometimes they’re a burden, especially when they interfere with my experiments and cut into my reading time, but I don’t claim actual hatred.”
“Yes, you do. It’s okay to say so.”
I did not wish to argue, so I said nothing. Johnny changed the topic. He asked, “Does anybody at school know you run?”
I shook my head as Rover yawned over the sports section.
“Do your folks know?”
Another shake of the head. Mother and Father, you assumed I went for long walks in the morning. I did not want you to know I jogged because you would fret about my fragile heart. Already you had sent my gym teacher a note requesting that he not put undue strain on me.
Johnny looked intrigued. “Not a soul knows?”
“You know,” I said.
Johnny smiled and stretched out an ink-stained hand. “It’s our secret, then,” he said.
I shook his hand quickly, hoping the newsprint would not transfer to my skin.
Now, as I jog down the streets of Six, I keep an eye out for the troubled soul that is Johnny. Maybe he, too, is out early. Perhaps he slept poorly and is already up.
Few townies have risen, besides some early birds gathered with shopping carts at a warehouse, doors thrown open to reveal shelves packed with a jumble of supplies. Let us hope the delivery includes a valuable curious object—like a telescope.
I jog on till I reach Buttercup Park. Despite the portal it may contain, the park looks as ordinary as the rebirthing beds. It consists of a grassy field for sports, a scattering of trees, picnic tables, and a slightly rusty jungle gym. I have a soft spot for jungle gyms. They were invented by the son of a mathematician as a way to help children grasp three-dimensional space. This one is a 3-D grid five cubes long, five cubes wide, and five cubes tall.
I inspect the park but find nothing out of the ordinary, apart from a cracked blue vinyl Elvis Presley album probably used as a Frisbee. I do not know what I expected to find. What would a portal look like? The porthole door to a washing machine? A sewer grate? A manhole cover?
If I did find a portal, would I have the gumption to climb into it? I think of fearless brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, flashlights in hand, as they slink down a dark, mysterious passageway, as on the cover of The Secret of the Lost Tunnel. Maybe if Johnny were here, I would climb through a portal. I would get to the bottom of The Mystery of the Lost Gunboy.
The next infirmary the girls and I visit, the Sal Paradise Infirmary in Five, is not a mental hospital. This comes as a relief because broken bones and concussions are easier for a researcher to study than sadness and confusion. My research assistant, Esther, and I check healing times with the do-good nurses. In one bed lies a comatose girl who fell off a roof in a skateboard accident. Unlike Willa Blake, she did not disappear in a bed of black-eyed Susans.
“Revoke everybody’s rooftop privileges,” says Esther. “We klutzy angels shouldn’t be trusted up there.”
Afterward, we go to the main office, where we find Thelma at a desk thumbing through a rebirthing book bound in red leatherette.
“Bingo,” Thelma says. She has come across the name of a girl who passed in Illinois not so long after Johnny’s own passing. “Is Schaumburg close to Hoffman Estates?” she asks.
“They’re practically twin cities,” I reply.
I glance over Thelma’s shoulder at the ledger. Typed on the page are the names of newbies, along with their place of origin, date of passing, cause of passing, and zip code in Town. Thelma points to the name Sandy Goldberg. In the Cause of Passing column is written the word “peanut.”
“She was done in by a nut, Boo,” Esther says. “You have that in common.”
“Peanuts are no joking matter,” I tell Esther. “If you’re allergic, even a lick of peanut butter can trigger anaphylactic shock. Your throat swells shut and you suffocate.” I hold my hands to my throat.
“Rest in peace, poor sweet girl,” Thelma says as she jots down Sandy’s particulars on a slip of paper.
“How do you know she’s sweet?” Esther says. “She might be a b*tch. Maybe Sandy ate a peanut on purpose just to get attention.”
Thelma huffs and says, “Why do you always think the worst of people?”
“Because people are the worst,” Esther says.
Thelma looks up. “Zig give me
strength,” she says as though he is twirling overhead on a blade of the ceiling fan.
“Do you think Zig listens to you?” I ask.
“I hope so,” Thelma says, closing the book. “But he probably has bigger fish to fry.”
“He isn’t our daddy to go running to when the going gets tough,” Esther says. “He wants us to figure things out ourselves.” She picks up a snow globe paperweight from the desktop and shakes it. Inside are a tiny boy and girl sitting side by side in a sleigh and wearing matching earmuffs.
“We expect certain things from him,” Esther goes on. “A place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear. And he expects certain things from us.”
“What kind of things?” I ask.
“That we make do with what we have. That we show one another a little respect. That we don’t let loose the worst in us.”
While Thelma is returning the rebirthing book to a filing cabinet, Esther gives me a wink and slips the snow globe into Thelma’s knapsack.
After we leave the infirmary, I suggest lunching in Buttercup Park, which is close by. We order takeout from a local cafeteria and then wander into the park. Thelma and Esther sit on either end of a seesaw. Given the difference in their weights, Thelma’s end remains grounded and Esther’s end stays lifted in the air. We eat peanut butter sandwiches, which we chose in honor of Sandy Goldberg.
Despite their argument the other day, Esther and Thelma seem good friends again. They are joking and laughing together, and Thelma is even touched when she discovers the snow globe. “North Carolina never got much snow, and Town never gets none, so this snow is all I’m ever gonna get.” Still, she thinks we should return the stolen globe to the infirmary, but Esther insists it will never be missed.
I am unfamiliar with the art of friendship: the teasing, quarreling, and reconciling. How many days should a person remain upset, for example, when a friend utters an insensitive comment or shows disloyalty? These are figures I should jot in my ledger.