by Neil Smith
“Yes, Brenda told me you were away at summer camp.”
He looked at me with steely eyes. After a pause, he said, “Yeah, I was away at Camp Squeaky Fromme.”
“Did you have a pleasant stay?”
He finally smiled, or at least the corners of his mouth lifted. “It was a laugh a minute, Boo, a f*cking laugh a minute.”
Then he pushed through the front door of Clippers, and the bell jingled behind him.
Mother, you asked me what was wrong with Johnny. He seemed a little off that day, you said. I told you I did not know if anything was wrong. “He was away all summer at Camp Squeaky Fromme,” I said.
Mother said, “Squeaky Fromme?”
“Strange name for a camp,” I said. “It sounds like the name of a cartoon mouse.”
“Oliver, Squeaky Fromme is the crazy lady out in California who tried to assassinate President Ford.”
“That is illogical. Why would a camp be named after that lady?”
Mother gave me a smirk. “That boy’s pulling your leg.”
I thought, Why would Johnny Henzel pull my leg? Jermaine Tucker, Kevin Stein, Fred Winchester, and Henry Axworthy might do so. Johnny Henzel, however, would not. He was different. He saw the beauty in slate gray skies. He saw the appeal of early-morning solitude.
And, unlike my other classmates, he saw something good and worthy in me.
Johnny is being held at the Gene Forrester Jail at the foot of the East Wall in Nine. Reginald Washington and Sandy Goldberg are on their way there now with the intent of identifying Johnny. Sandy claims to have the facts from back in America, but the fact is that I distrust the facts in this land I now live in. The facts of America do not apply here. The fact is that an unplugged lamp should not turn on. The fact is that thirteen-year-olds should not stay thirteen for decades on end. The fact is that people should not vanish into thin air when they die. So I will need more proof of Johnny’s guilt than so-called facts from a newly passed girl from Schaumburg.
“Listen to reason,” Thelma says when I suggest the nut girl’s memories might be faulty.
“But there is no rhyme or reason here,” I reply. “If there were, heaven would not exist.”
“Oh, Oliver, if you think hard about what she says,” Thelma insists, “you’ll see it all makes sense.”
I always think hard. I am thinking hard, and nothing at all in this Zigforsaken place makes sense.
According to Thelma, Sandy Goldberg got her facts from kids at her own school in Schaumburg. Sandy swears that the shooting at Helen Keller involved only two boys, not three. She does not remember names, but she does remember faces, and she had seen ours in the newspaper. One kid was “a freak” and one kid was “a mental case,” Sandy said. The mental case was suicidal and had spent the summer in a “psycho ward.” As for the shooting, she could not remember a motive, or even any other details beyond the fact that “One kid was weird and the other was nuts.”
Thelma tells me there was an all-points bulletin out on Johnny here in heaven. Benny Baggarly, friend of the comatose hypnotist, spotted Johnny and me at the gymnasium and reported us. It was Reginald Washington’s idea to arrest Johnny in the middle of the night.
“Reginald wanted the two of you separated,” Thelma tells me. “Being friends with Johnny, he said, would harm your mental health.”
“That is bullsh*t!” I shout, and Thelma looks surprised because I usually do not shout and I usually do not swear.
“My mental health is hunky-dory,” I lie.
“But, Oliver, your friend Johnny, he’s…” She pauses, trying to find the right word, but there is no right word, so she simply says, “He killed you.”
“The jury is still out on that.”
Thelma and I are sitting on the bed in my temporary room. She is hugging a pillow tightly. The pillow is a stand-in for me.
“Reginald and the do-gooders are planning a trial.”
“A trial?”
“They’re all fired up because heaven never had a murderer before. They think Zig goofed. They want to fix his terrible mistake.”
“Do you think Zig made a terrible mistake, Thelma?”
My face has probably gone even whiter, even more ghostly, because she looks at me with a mix of pity and concern, just as Sandy Goldberg did. Thelma passes me the pillow to hug. I hold it limply in my lap.
“Oliver, you know how Zig changes some townies? Like retarded kids come here a bit smarter, right? And blind kids can see. Well, maybe Zig made Johnny less crazy so he could live peaceful here in Town. Is that a terrible mistake? Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t.”
She is saying that just as Zig may have lowered my intelligence quotient a notch or two, he may have raised Johnny’s level of sanity enough to let him function here.
“Maybe Zig changed Johnny’s memories of the events,” Thelma suggests. “Or maybe Johnny erased them when he shot himself in the head. Or maybe his sister lied to him when he was in his hospital bed.” Thelma puts a hand over her heart. “Jiminy Crickets, I don’t know what to believe, Oliver. But I don’t believe what Reginald and some of them do-gooders do. They think Johnny’s faking his amnesia and remembers what he did.”
I push the pillow aside and stand. My legs feel wobbly, as though I have been bicycling all day. “I have to see Johnny,” I say.
Thelma does not want me going to the Gene. “You’re dead tired and in shock,” she says. “Besides, Reginald and the do-gooders won’t let you see Johnny. They won’t even let me. Esther took off for the Gene, but she won’t get permission either.”
“I will not be deterred,” I say.
She acquiesces, but only after forcing me to eat a bran muffin, a banana, and a handful of almonds. She then gives me her map of the zones, wishes me luck, and tells me to meet her back at the Frank and Joe tomorrow.
I hurry out of the Rhoda Penmark Dormitory, jump on a ten-speed, and pedal like mad, wishing I had thirty speeds so I could reach the jail before Reginald and Sandy do.
First, I make a quick detour to the Marcy to look for Blaberus craniifer. I spend fifteen minutes combing the janitor’s office, even checking the Monopoly game box, but to no avail. Rover has disappeared. I hope the roach was not trampled to death in the melee last night.
I rush back outside and hop on my bike. The trip ahead will be a long jaunt requiring me to wind through a labyrinth of streets and to cross four zones (Five, One, Two, Nine). I tell myself to focus on the road. I must not become careless and smash into a streetlamp or another cyclist. I do not want to end up in an infirmary with a concussion, which, according to my notes, takes from four to six days to heal.
Still, my mind does wander. I keep picturing the hallway of Helen Keller in the first seconds after the gun went off and everybody in the hall—except the boy who pulled the trigger and the boy who was struck by the bullet—turned toward the bang. What did my classmates and teachers see?
My mind’s eye imagines everyone and everything frozen in the moment. Henry Axworthy bends over the drinking fountain, an arc of water suspended before him. Jermaine Tucker drops his math book, but it does not hit the floor. Patsy Hyde’s lips peel back in a scream, exposing the braces she usually keeps hidden. Cynthia Orwell dribbles a basketball that hovers a foot from her hand. The art teacher, Mr. Huston, holds a still-life drawing he is set to tape to the wall outside his classroom. Helen Keller, as always, sits posed with a mortarboard on her head in her portrait hung across from locker No. 106.
Their eyes are all turned in the same direction.
There seems to be a blind spot in my imagination, because though I see everything else perfectly, even my crumpled body at the foot of my locker, there is one thing my mind’s eye cannot make out in the hallway: the face of the boy holding the gun.
The Gene Forrester Jail is the ugliest building in Town. Its concrete facade is covered in black soot as though a fire once engulfed the Gene, but there was no fire because fires do not break out here. We do not even have matches. In
my first month in heaven, I often tried lighting a leaf on fire using a magnifying glass and a sunray, but the experiments proved fruitless. Only a thin wisp of smoke ever emerged.
The windows at the Gene are barred, so it is lucky that buildings do not catch on fire. Another unusual thing about this four-story building is its shape: a perfect cube. Most buildings I have seen are rectangular. Also, the Gene has no exterior architectural features. No awnings or cornices, for example.
I wonder who the inmates are. They must be townies who have committed offenses like serious acts of vandalism, disturbances of the peace, and violence causing injury. Such offenses are rare here, though. Perhaps Zig subdues certain townies in order to make the most wicked of dead American thirteen-year-olds a bit kinder and to avoid bloody clashes in Town.
I get off my bicycle and tie a red ribbon around the handlebars. The day is sunny and the sky the azure color that you, Father, call wild blue yonder. It is the kind of day when you, Mother, would remind me to wear a sun hat.
As I have mentioned, our skin never burns in heaven. Yet I do feel sunburned after my two-hour bicycle ride. Maybe I am suffering from heatstroke and should look for a water fountain. I stumble up the steps of the building into the Gene’s lobby, where a long wooden desk is manned by identical twin boys whose name stickers read, TIM LU and TOM LU. They are both wearing T-shirts with a yin-yang decal. I surmise they died in an accident like a house fire or a car crash. Their passing at the same time is lucky in an odd way; after all, losing a twin must be like losing a part of yourself.
The Lu twins are reading twin copies of The Swiss Family Robinson. “Greetings. My name is Oliver Dalrymple. I am here to visit an inmate,” I tell them. “A boy named Johnny Henzel.”
“Did he say Johnny Henzel?” Tim says to Tom.
“Yes, oh my, he did,” Tom says. “He did say Johnny Henzel.” I nod.
“The boy who came in last night,” Tim says to Tom as they both put down their books.
“The Grade F.”
“We never have Grade F’s. When was the last one, Tom?”
“Before our time, I’m sure. Decades ago.”
“What does ‘Grade F’ mean?” I ask.
“Oliver Dalrymple doesn’t know what ‘Grade F’ means.”
“Of course he doesn’t. He’s an outsider. ‘Grade F’ is an insider term. It means Johnny Henzel did something really, really bad.”
“Heinous, you might say.”
“Yes, heinous or even egregious.”
The twins do not look at me while they talk. They look at and speak to each other.
“I wonder what he could have done,” Tom says.
“Maybe he kidnapped somebody,” Tim replies. “We haven’t had a kidnapper in ages, have we, Tom?”
“No, I can’t recall the last one.”
“But kidnappers are usually classified as Grade D.”
“Maybe it was a series of kidnappings.”
“Oh my, a serial kidnapper,” Tim says. “How despicable.”
I cut in: “Johnny Henzel is not a serial kidnapper. He hit a boy over the head with a flashlight.”
“A flashlight?” Tim says to Tom. “That isn’t Grade F. That is Grade B, or at most C, depending on the injuries.”
“Also, it is alleged he shot somebody to death back in America.”
“Murder!!!!” Tom shouts.
“Keep it down, Tom! You’re not being very professional.”
“Murder is definitely Grade F.”
“Could I see Johnny Henzel?” I say.
“Oliver Dalrymple wants to visit a Grade F!”
“Even Grade D’s can’t have visitors. Even Grade D’s are in solitary confinement on the fourth floor. So imagine Grade F’s!”
“But I am the boy who Johnny allegedly shot.”
“Oliver Dalrymple’s the victim! Oh my! Oh goodness! A shooting victim!”
“Well, this is highly unusual, don’t you think, Tim?”
“ ‘Unprecedented’ is the word that leaps to mind.”
Tim and Tom Lu converse back and forth like this before deciding that one of them will check with authorities to see if Johnny can receive a visit from the boy he shot.
“Allegedly shot,” I say as Tim pushes back his chair and heads off.
While Tim is gone, I sit on a bench in a far corner and stare at the colored floor tiles, which form a kind of circular mandala like those that Buddhist monks create out of sand. Mandalas are supposed to favor peace, but my state of mind is hardly peaceful.
People who believe in a god often think, during trying periods in their lives, that their god is testing them. Is Zig conducting some kind of experiment here in Town despite his usual hands-off policy?
After ten minutes, Tim Lu is still not back. Meanwhile, the front doors to the Gene open, and in come Reginald Washington and Sandy Goldberg. They walk with purpose, their running shoes squeaking across the mandala. Reginald takes out his official do-good council president badge. They speak to Tom Lu, who says, “Boy, is our Grade F a popular boy today. There’s a lineup to see him.” Tom nods toward the bench where I sit. I stand as Reginald and Sandy turn toward me.
Reginald narrows his eyes. He looks peeved. “Heaven help us,” he says, loudly enough for me to hear. He crosses the floor to speak to me.
“Hello, Oliver,” he says, a forced smile on his face. “What a surprise to see you here.”
“I want to see Johnny,” I say.
His smile disappears. “Did Thelma send you? What was that girl thinking?”
“I want to be the one giving Johnny the news.”
Reginald slowly shakes his head. “No can do, brother. No can do.”
“Why not? I am his friend. One of his few friends here.”
Reginald pats my shoulder. “You’ve had a shock,” he says. “You need to rest in peace. In fact, I’ve asked Thelma to book you into the Deborah.”
“The asylum?!” I picture Willa Blake’s sickening plunge from the roof. “That is the last place I need to be!”
Reginald tells me I can wait in the lobby till he and Sandy finish their business upstairs with Johnny and the authorities. “Afterward, I’d like to talk to you about acting as a witness in a trial,” he says.
He returns to speak with the Lu twins. I feel exhausted. I press the palms of my hands into my eyes, just as I used to do in America when my eyes were red from reading mathematics books for hours on end. When I remove them, Sandy stands before me.
“Hello again, Oliver. You sure made good time. Reginald and me stopped along the way for blueberry pancakes. There was no butter, though. I totally miss butter, and I wish Zig would send us some, but at least we got syrup, right? Imagine if Zig decided, ‘No sweets for my children.’ ” She does Zig’s voice low and gruff. “ ‘Their teeth will rot out of their head!’ That would be a tragedy and a half, don’t you think? Having no sweets, I mean. Not rotten teeth. Are you a butter person?”
I have the unkind thought that her brain is the size of the peanut that did her in. “May I ask you a question?” I say.
“Sure, ask away. I’m an open book.”
“Did Johnny Henzel target me back at Helen Keller Junior High? When he shot his gun, did he plan to hit me?”
I cannot stop myself from asking, even though my question implies that I believe Johnny is guilty.
Sandy shrugs. “I hardly remember a thing, just that the other kid was in a psycho ward. I remember that ’cause I almost got sent to a psycho ward once. My mom thought I was anorexic—can you believe it?—but the reason I didn’t eat much was ’cause I was just always afraid of swallowing an allergen. I was allergic to loads of things—nuts, strawberries, buckwheat, tomatoes. But nuts were totally the worst. I couldn’t even—”
“You hardly remember a thing?!” I say, my voice rising and going squeaky. “One must be absolutely certain with accusations such as yours, Ms. Goldberg!”
She shrugs again, and I finally understand the phrase “shoot
ing the messenger” because I want to slap her silly face.
Reginald comes back. “We have to go now, Sandy,” he says.
“Tell Johnny I’m here,” I plead with them. “Give him a message from me. Tell him…”
What to tell him? Do not lose hope. Do not lose your mind.
“Tell him, ‘If you’re ever in a jam, here I am.’ ”
It is a line from the song “Friendship.”
Tim Lu has returned and says loudly to his brother, “Until further notice, Mr. Dalrymple is denied the right to visit the Grade F.”
Because of his council president badge, however, Reginald is not denied visiting rights. Tom Lu escorts him and Sandy to the staircase leading to the upper floors.
When they are gone, I tell myself I must be as hardy as Joe and Frank: I must concoct a plan to rescue Johnny from this place. I sit back down. I am so dog-tired that my body, seemingly without my brain’s consent, lies across the bench. Thelma had given me a hooded sweatshirt to wear over my T-shirt, and I take it off to use as a pillow under my head. Tim and Tom throw me scolding looks from behind their novels, but I do not, as Johnny would say, give a flying f*ck (an expression whose etymology I cannot even guess).
Nobody else comes in or goes out. The jail seems to be the most underused building in heaven. It is so quiet that I wonder if I might hear Johnny’s reaction when he learns of the charges against him.
It is unfathomable to me that Johnny Henzel was Gunboy on the fourth day of eighth grade at Helen Keller Junior High. It simply cannot be. But even if it were true, I tell myself, it should not matter. What should matter is whether Johnny is Gunboy now, here in our heaven reserved for American thirteen-year-olds.
The front door of the jail opens. In walks Esther, wearing a pink beret. I sit up. She spots me right away and waves. I am heartened to see her. I wave back.
It is New Year’s Eve day, the last day of the seventies. It has been three weeks since I last saw Johnny. When I pass by the Gene’s backyard, I gaze up at the windows on the fourth floor, but they are tiny—barely larger than the cover of a comic book. I cannot see whether anyone is looking out. I am not even sure which room Johnny is held in.