by Neil Smith
“Somebody told me every day of my life.”
“Who was that somebody?”
“Zig.”
A sharp intake of breath from the audience.
“You mean you talk to Zig?” Reginald feigns surprise, though I can tell this exchange was planned. It almost seems as if we are watching a play in which the lines have been memorized.
“I’ve always talked to him. He tells me to do things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Bad things. Real bad things.”
Esther whispers to me, “A crock of sh*t.” However, there is a tinge of doubt in her voice.
“Does he tell you to kill people?”
“He orders me to. He talks to me through dogs and roaches.”
Grumblings in the audience. A boy hollers, “Throw the b*stard off the roof!”
Ringo yells back, “You’re banished!”
There is a pause as the house lights go up. I turn in my seat and see two jailers shuffle through the audience toward one of the boys from the gommer meeting I attended. It is the boy whose killer threw him off a bridge. The jailers pull him from his seat and drag him from the hall. “Kill him! Kill him!” the gommer yells, fist-punching the air.
Through his bullhorn, Ringo says, “Any of you other twats want out?”
I glance at Johnny. He is staring at me. He does not speak into the microphone, but I am close enough to read his lips when he mouths the words “I want out.”
The lights dim again. Reginald says, “Did Zig tell you to murder Mr. Dalrymple at your school in America?”
My holey heart twinges in my chest.
Johnny swallows loudly. His gulp sounds in the mike.
“Yes,” he whispers.
“Why target Mr. Dalrymple?”
Johnny is barely audible now. “Boo was in the wrong place,” he mutters. “He was an angel on Earth. He didn’t belong there.”
“An angel on Earth? What do you mean?”
Johnny speaks almost tenderly now. “Boo was strong and smart and pure,” he says. “Too perfect for America. He belonged here. Zig said so.”
I am feeling weak, stupid, tainted. Why is he making up these ludicrous claims? My breathing is shallow, but I cannot even raise my CO2 bag to my face. I narrow my eyes at Johnny, but he avoids my gaze.
Thelma tut-tuts. Esther whispers, “I’ll be d*mned.”
“Zig spoke through your dog, a basset hound?”
“Yeah.”
Giggles and hoots from the audience as people picture a talking basset hound with floppy ears and stringy drool.
“So you stole your father’s gun. You brought it to school and you killed Mr. Dalrymple and terrorized your classmates.”
“I did,” Johnny says.
“And you shot yourself in the head because you were also an angel on Earth.”
“No, I was a monster!” His voice is suddenly angry. He slaps the arm of his chair. “I’m still a monster. I was supposed to go to hell. That was the deal. Zig said I’d be sent to hell.”
“So why did you end up here?”
“Zig’s a f*cking fraud!” he shouts into the rafters. “A twofaced liar who sent me to heaven instead!”
Nobody is laughing or hooting anymore. Nobody makes a peep. The audience is awestruck.
“Why do you think Zig lied to you?”
“Zig wants me to kill people here too. I’m his assassin, man. I’m his Gunboy. He talked to me through a roach.”
Reginald explains to us that Johnny found a roach at a dormitory in Ten and that the insect has since gone missing.
“What did Zig the roach tell you to do in heaven?”
“To weed out kids who don’t belong here.”
Hogwash, I think to myself.
Thelma whispers, “What’s going on in that boy’s head?”
“And whom did Zig tell you to murder here?” Reginald asks Johnny, who glances down at us witnesses before him. His eyes home in on Czar.
“Zig said the hypnotist was a f*cking fraud and didn’t deserve an afterlife.”
I glance at Czar, who looks dumbfounded and scared, as though he believes Zig did in fact order his death.
“Luckily, Mr. Lindblom survived your beastly attack. But another poor soul wasn’t as fortunate, isn’t that right?”
Johnny nods.
“You managed to end a townie’s afterlife, didn’t you, Mr. Henzel?”
“Yeah, I did,” Johnny mutters.
“Who?”
I am thoroughly confused at this point.
“Some loony girl named Willa who didn’t belong here either. I pushed her off the roof of the Deborah.”
A roar goes up from the audience, a roar so loud it drowns out Ringo’s shouts into his bullhorn. Somebody behind me shrills, “Stop him before he kills again!” A girl runs down the center aisle grasping what looks like a penknife, but a jailer tackles her to the floor. Beside me, Thelma lets out a yelp. Something has just glanced off her head and is rolling across the stage. It is a rotten apple! A volley of apples follows, thumping and splattering against the stage. Reginald darts into the wings, and many of the jurors scramble out of their seats and follow.
Throughout the mayhem, Johnny sits in his red velvet seat and stares up at the lights above. He is mumbling to himself. He is pretending, I believe, to converse with Zig.
We witnesses have been escorted back to our waiting room because a time-out was called in the trial. Thelma, though, is off in the restroom with Sandy, who offered to scrub the apple gook out of her cornrows with a handkerchief.
Esther is arguing with Ringo, who wants us to sit and wait in silence. Esther wants to question Albert Schmidt, the asylum manager, who is waving Thelma’s hand fan in front of his face and muttering, “Dear me.”
“No way did Johnny push Willa,” Esther shouts at Ringo. “I saw that chick jump. She was bonkers, wasn’t she, Albert? She was always threatening to kill herself. She was completely out of her mind!”
“Dear me,” Albert repeats.
“For a little person, you sure got a big f*cking mouth,” Ringo says to Esther, his arms crossed over his chest.
Esther goes almost as purple as a do-good armband. “I’m reporting you, assh*le. I’ll get you fired.”
“Yeah, get me sacked. You’ll be doing me a favor. I’m tired of this bloody job anyway. I should be a tailor rather than a jailer. Much less headache.”
I tell Esther to come sit with me. “It’s not worth getting riled,” I say, even though I am riled myself and feel sick to my stomach.
“Oh, Esther,” I whisper, my voice cracking as though I am finally going through puberty. “Johnny wants to redie.”
“What are you talking about?” she says, but by her anxious look, I can tell she knows exactly what I am talking about.
“He wants the redeath penalty.”
Redeath, I realize, may be the portal he thinks he has found.
Esther shakes her head. “What kind of game is that imbecile playing? He’s so calm and collected even though he’s saying the craziest things. It’s like he wants to appear sane so that he seems even more dangerous.”
“Sane?” Czar scoffs. “As sane as Jack the Ripper.”
Esther shoots back, “Too bad you aren’t still in a coma.”
“For shame!” Benny Baggarly says. “Czar almost redied.”
“Dear me!” Albert Schmidt repeats, waving his fan frantically. “A patient was murdered on my watch. How will I ever forgive myself?”
Ringo cries, “I’ll murder somebody if you all don’t shut the f*ck up!”
I believe that Johnny, despite his claims, has no clear recollection of the broken boy he used to be. Zig edited Johnny’s memories, which is why he has trouble recalling the last months of his time in America. The Gunboy he sees in his nightmares is his madness, yes, but this insanity no longer swallows him whole as it eventually did in his former life. Perhaps, though, it still nips at his heels from time to time here in heaven
and makes him claim, for instance, that he pushed a sadcon from a rooftop.
We are all back in the auditorium, and Reginald is wrapping up his interrogation. “I have one final question for you, Mr. Henzel,” he says, putting down his notes and resting his hands on the podium. He does not look at Johnny when he asks this question. He looks instead at the audience.
“What do you consider a just punishment for the crimes you’re pleading guilty to?”
I expect members of the audience, gommers especially, to cry out the penalty they deem fitting, but nobody says a word. We all hold our breath. Even the humming from the spotlights overhead seems to cease.
Johnny lifts his microphone to his lips. He looks my way. He touches a finger to his eyelid and then reaches out his hand as if to touch me too.
“An eye for an eye,” he says.
“Which means?” Reginald asks.
His eyes still on me, Johnny says, “A tooth for a tooth.”
I shake my head and mouth the word “No.”
“Damn it,” says Esther.
“Heaven help us,” says Thelma.
“Justice!” cry the gommers. “Justice! Justice!”
“You’re requesting the redeath penalty?” Reginald asks.
“I am,” says Johnny.
“Yes, yes!” cry the gommers.
“Well, the jurors will certainly take your request into consideration,” Reginald says.
Thelma turns to me, her face stricken. “They’ll never agree to it. Nobody here has ever been put to redeath.”
“Insanity,” Esther whispers. “Pure insanity.”
Reginald says he has heard enough. “I have no need to hear from any of the witnesses because the accused admits his guilt.” He shuffles his notes and then takes a seat.
The warden comes to the podium to address the jurors. “There is still one person,” she says, “whom I believe you need to hear from.” She looks over at me.
“Boo! Boo!” the audience chants. “Boo! Boo!”
Ringo has given up scolding the crowd. He actually puts his bullhorn to his lips and says, “Boo! Boo!”
“Mr. Dalrymple, would you come to the stage?”
For a second, I am frozen in my seat.
“Go, honey,” Thelma says. “Go save your friend from himself.”
I rise and shuffle past the other witnesses. Czar looks peeved that he will not be addressing the crowd.
On the side of the stage, I climb the few steps to where the podium is positioned. Meanwhile, two jailers carry out another armchair, a baby blue one, and set it down about a yard from Johnny’s chair.
The warden smiles at me, but her forehead has worry lines that look bizarre on a thirteen-year-old who never ages. She motions to the baby blue chair.
When I draw close, Johnny says, “Hey, Boo,” nonchalantly, as though I just ran into him at the school cafeteria.
“Hello, Johnny,” I say.
As I sit down in the witness’s armchair, a jailer passes me a microphone.
At the podium, Lydia says, “Mr. Dalrymple, I realize you feel sympathy for the accused. Why show him mercy when he showed none to you?”
I look toward the audience. Because of the spotlights, I cannot see terribly well, but I can make out Thelma and Esther. Thelma’s cheeks puff out as though she is holding her breath. Esther clutches her sunflower purse. She nods at me.
I turn to Johnny, who stares at me expectantly. His lips utter three words so softly that only I can hear. “Let me go,” he says.
I look away. Out in the dark theater, townies await my answer. “Is this horrid boy worth saving?” these people seem to ask. I want to explain that the boy sitting beside me is not a monster. His madness is the monster. I try to speak, but again Johnny mutters under his breath: “Let me go, Boo. You promised.”
I shiver. It is as though heaven’s usual temperature has just dropped twenty degrees. I try to speak but find I cannot. I open the CO2 bag in my lap. It is ripped along its creases from my incessant folding and unfolding.
“Mr. Dalrymple, are you okay?” says Lydia Finkle in her fake cashmere.
I nod. I close my eyes. I am bone-weary.
Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.
I picture you, Father and Mother, in your living room. You are building a shelf on the wall. It will be the stage on which my urn will stand. You do not want to let me go. In any case, do we ever really let anyone go? Even those who are no longer with us are still with us.
I must have muttered something aloud because Lydia Finkle says, “Excuse me, Mr. Dalrymple, but we can’t hear you. Could you speak into the mike?”
I blink open my eyes. I lift the microphone to my lips and whisper, “Oh, my goodness.”
Then it starts. For a second, when I feel the wetness on my cheeks, I think I am bleeding. My hand drops the microphone, and I swat at my cheeks.
Tears.
I am shocked. I emit a groan.
The groan gives way to a sob.
I shut my eyes again. I see Johnny and me, not as we are now, sitting in judgment in front of two hundred people, but as we were then, lying on the floor of Helen Keller. One boy with a hole in his torso, one boy with a hole in his head. Two blood brothers with their blood leaking from their bodies, the rivulets coming together like fingers interlacing.
I see the ghastly wounds, the pooling blood, the terrible sorrow.
I start weeping so violently that I choke on my tears. I lean forward, drop my CO2 bag. My head spins. I keel over onto the floor.
Blackness. A few missing frames in a film reel.
I come to. I turn over and look up into the rafters and spotlights. My vision is fuzzy. I blink away tears. Johnny is kneeling beside me, his hands resting lightly on my neck. “I’d never hurt you,” he whispers.
“Stop him! Stop that monster!” one of the girl jurors screams. I glance sideways. Ringo is running toward us. He hooks an arm around Johnny’s neck and jerks him away from me. More jailers emerge from the wings. They descend on Johnny and carry him off, one jailer with his hands under Johnny’s armpits, one jailer grasping his feet.
Into her microphone, Lydia Finkle says, “Mr. Dalrymple, are you all right?”
I sit up as Thelma and Esther rush up the steps to the stage. They hurry over to me. Peter Peter also appears.
Esther kneels beside me. She is wide-eyed, both astonished and vexed. “That idiot!” she cries. “What the hell’s he doing? He had his hands around your neck! Was he pretending to strangle you?”
I reach up and touch my neck. It feels fine.
Johnny starts yelling from the wings. “Booooo! Booooo!” he shouts in the same critical tone an audience uses when a performance is not to its liking. When he is dragged far enough away that I can no longer hear his voice, I pick up the microphone off the stage floor and hold it to my lips. “Everything Johnny said,” I say, “is true.”
I cry all the time now. I order a stir-fry in the cafeteria and tears dribble down my face (“I’m very sensitive to onions,” I lie to the waitress). At Curios, tears fall on my typewriter keys as I type up a notice about our sea monkeys, which are repassing one by one. When I read the novel Tarzan of the Apes, I weep when Lord and Lady Greystoke are killed. At this point, I would blubber if, during a trying investigation, Nancy Drew broke a fingernail.
My nickname may soon be Boo Hoo (ha-ha).
I used to pride myself on my independence. In America, I could spend days speaking to no one but you, Mother and Father. I had my morning constitutionals. I had my documentaries on PBS television. I had my books. I had my visits to the library, a place where spending time in one’s head is highly valued.
I am still independent, but also lonely—a new feeling for me. I spend plenty of time by myself in my office, where I play the Wobblin’ Goblin music box, which is working again. I identify with that poor creature up in the sky, almost falling but somehow managing to stay afloat.
Thelma, Esther, and Peter Peter believe that my mind
was muddled after I fainted onstage. That is why, they reason, I corroborated Johnny’s version of events. “You didn’t know what you were saying, did you, Boo?” Esther asks. “I was confused,” I tell her. “Sad and confused.” She seems to believe me—or perhaps only pretends and actually wonders whether I am seeking some sort of revenge.
Thelma and Peter Peter worry about me. Peter Peter invites me on father-son outings. Last week, he taught me to catch a football. Thelma came along because her throwing arm is even better than his. The two of them have been seeing a lot of each other. They often exchange gifts. Yesterday, Thelma made him a loaf of zucchini bread, and Peter Peter gave her a half-ounce sample from our bottle of Tigress perfume.
As for Johnny, I have not seen him. Until the do-good council decides on his sentence, I am not allowed to visit. Nonetheless, I go to the jail every day in case a decision is reached.
Tim Lu: “The Grade F is still awaiting his sentence.”
Tom Lu: “So no visitors today.”
Tim Lu: “When will the pathetic victim get on with his afterlife?”
The gommers still demonstrate outside the Gene, clamoring for the redeath penalty. The method they favor is especially barbaric: a stoning.
I was subject to a kind of stoning, Mother and Father. On the first day of eighth grade, three days before my passing, I arrived home with a bloody nose because Kevin Stein, Nelson Bliss, and Henry Axworthy had whipped rocks at me in the field behind our school. “I was away all summer,” Kevin cried, “and boy oh boy did I miss torturing you, Boo,” a remark that drew much guffawing from his friends.
Father, you wet a washcloth with warm water and gently wiped away my blood. You said, “Age thirteen was the most dangerous year of my life, son.”
My dear gentle father, you, too, had attracted the wrath of bullies.
“But you’ll grow up, Oliver,” you said. “You’ll leave eighth grade far behind.”
“Father,” I say aloud now, alone in my room, “I’m stuck at age thirteen. I’m stuck here for a frigging lifetime.”
One morning two weeks after the trial, I rise at dawn, slip on my cutoff jeans and my peace T-shirt (a decal of a hand making the peace sign), and bicycle all the way to the Gene. As I ride up to the jail, Tim and Tom Lu are on the front steps unrolling a scroll. They tack it to the door and then scurry inside when they see me coming up the driveway.