by Neil Smith
The notice on the door reads as follows:
IN THE MATTER OF JOHN HENZEL
After due consideration, the thirteen members of the jury assigned to hear the trial of John Henzel, reborn on October 12, 1979, and formerly residing in the GUT district of Eleven, have reached a unanimous decision in the sentencing of the prisoner found guilty of murder and attempted murder. In a manner and on a date to be revealed in the coming days, Mr. Henzel will hereby be put to
REDEATH.
I rip down the notice and tear it up. As I fling the bits of paper onto the stairs of the Gene, the front door opens and Tim and Tom Lu step back out.
“Despite that T-shirt of his, the victim sure doesn’t look very peaceful,” Tim says. He has a second scroll in his hands.
“No, I’d say he looks unhinged,” Tom replies.
“I’d go so far as to say ‘demented,’ ” Tim adds.
They stare at me as unblinking as cats. I scowl back.
“Luckily, we made several copies of our communiqué,” Tim says, and tacks a second notice to the door.
A few days later, it is also announced that the jury has given its consent to the stoning, which will be held within a week. Technically, however, the stoning will be a “bricking” because, in Town, bricks are easier to come by than large stones. Townies remove loose ones from the exterior walls of schools and dorms, and the holes grow over with new bricks in the same manner that a broken window remakes itself. The bricking being organized is a horrific game of murderball. It will occur on the basketball court of the Marcy, the gymnasium where Johnny and I holed up while on the lam. The brickers will stand on the overhead running track while Johnny kneels handcuffed and ankle-cuffed in the center circle of the basketball court. When the clock strikes midnight, they will all launch their bricks at Johnny. They will keep bashing him with bricks till he is crushed, till he is redead.
The execution is set up in such a way that no one person is the executioner and no one person shoulders the blame. Spread the responsibility among enough people and no one person need feel too guilty. “If I hadn’t thrown a brick, he’d have redied anyway,” each bricker can claim.
In a murder mystery, the most important piece of evidence is the dead body. Yet, in this killing, there will be no body. Traces of the crime will vanish as Johnny’s corpse repasses. Even his spilled blood will disappear into thin air. All that will remain will be a vile quarry of thrown bricks. The pockmarks caused by these bricks will even fade from the gymnasium floor within a few days.
Townies need to apply to the Gene to serve as brickers. They can leave their applications with the Lu brothers in the jail’s lobby. Jail authorities expect a large turnout, Thelma tells me. Gommer groups urge all their members across Town to take part. The loathsome slogan they came up with is this: “Give as good as you got.”
I am trying to relate these events to you coolly, Mother and Father. I am trying to stay calm. Yet I am sickened; I am revolted. My heart twinges nonstop, but my tears have all but dried up. I want to speak to Johnny. He must recant what he said at the trial—and so must I. Yet Johnny is refusing to see me, even though he has been granted permission.
I can no longer sleep. At night, I lie in Johnny’s bed and have crazy, illogical thoughts. For instance, in my insomniac stupor, I wonder whether Zig might reincarnate Johnny as a new son for you to raise, Mother and Father. It brings me peace of mind to think of you caring for a reincarnated Johnny. He could have my room, my models of Saturn and its moons, my periodic table, my dictionaries of etymology.
On the day before the bricking, there is a knock on my door at seven thirty in the morning. Probably Thelma with some news. But when I open the door, I find Reginald Washington in the hallway.
“Good morning, Boo,” Reginald says with a tight smile. “May I call you Boo?”
Even though he said, “may I,” I shake my head.
“Oh, sorry, it’s just that John calls you Boo all the time.”
“You can call me Mr. Dalrymple, Mr. Washington.”
I feel oddly jealous that he is in touch with Johnny even though they certainly do not have the blendship that Johnny and I have.
“May I come in for a minute? I have a message from John.”
I do not want this weasel here in our private space, but if he has word from Johnny, I must consent. I wave the council president in and sit on Johnny’s unmade bed while Reginald sits on mine.
“I could have sent Tim and Tom Lu, but I thought it best that I deliver this message myself,” he says.
I look down. There is a stain of orange pekoe tea on the sleeve of my robe. I am becoming unkempt.
“Mr. Dalrymple, I know you wish to speak to John. Well, he has agreed to see you.”
I clap my hands. “Thank Zig,” I say.
“There’s one condition of John’s, however. He wants to speak to you, but, well…not right away.”
“What do you mean? The bricking is tomorrow night!”
“He wants to speak to you on the basketball court before the…beforehand.”
The council president cannot muster the courage to say the word “execution.”
“He wants to say good-bye, Boo.”
I glare at him. The pink starfish-like blotch on his forehead seems larger than before, but this cannot be.
“Mr. Dalrymple”—he corrects himself—“he wants you to be the last person he speaks to.”
I cover my face with my hands.
“The situation has been hard on us all,” he says. “But let’s not forget we’re respecting John’s wishes. We should take heart in that.”
I uncover my face. “You think your intelligence quotient is high and enviable, don’t you, Mr. Washington? You are proud of your brains.”
He throws me a puzzled look.
“Let me tell you something,” I add. “If I had a brick, I’d gladly beat those dear brains of yours out.”
He stares, looking scared, as though I might pull a rock-filled flashlight from under Johnny’s pillow. There is no flashlight, but there is a little revolver hidden under the mattress of Johnny’s bed.
“I accept your anger,” he says, one hand up to his heart. “I understand your pain.”
“Vamoose!” I say, a word I adore but have little occasion to use. (Etymology: a bastardized pronunciation of the Spanish vamos, which means “let us go.”)
Reginald pats his knees. He stands. “Please do come,” he says. Then he lets himself out and closes the door behind him.
I remain sitting on Johnny’s bed. Unlike the princess with the pea under her mattress, I cannot feel the lump. I get up and lift the corner of the mattress. “Hello, my little pretty,” I say. I take the revolver out of its hiding place and cup it in my hands. It nestles there like a giant death’s head cockroach.
The revolver is loaded. The bullets, of course, fit perfectly.
“Throw rice, not bricks” is the slogan of a pacifist group that sprang up to oppose Johnny’s redeath penalty. Group members encourage couples across Town to tie the knot, to offset hatred with love. I have never discussed love before because it is not a topic as fascinating as, say, electricity and garbage chutes. But, yes, two townies can fall in love and even wed here. They hold their wedding at a house of good with a member of the do-good council as their priest. Pledges of “I do” are exchanged, confetti is thrown, and tin cans are tied to the backs of bicycles.
Esther considers the wedding campaign lame. Nonetheless, she sits beside me with a plastic Baggie filled with rice dyed pink. I have a Baggie of blue rice. We are in the chapel of the Jonathan Livingston House of Good, where Liz McDougall, the vice president of the do-good council from Eleven, stands on a little stage in a shiny robe that looks to be made out of a theater curtain. “We are gathered here today,” she says, “to celebrate the love between Thelma Rudd and Peter Peterman.”
When their names are spoken, the bride and groom swing open the doors at the back of the chapel. They march down the cent
er aisle wearing matching macramé vests, which Esther calls hideous—but the party pooper has tears in her eyes. As do I.
When the bride and groom reach the foot of the little stage, Liz McDougall says, “Thelma Rudd, do you take Peter Peterman as your husband and equal and promise to help him remain an honest and upstanding townie in the eyes of Zig?”
Thelma nods her beaded head. “Do I ever!” she exclaims.
“Peter Peterman, do you take Thelma Rudd as your wife and equal and promise to help her remain an honest and upstanding townie in the eyes of Zig?”
“I certainly do.”
I always wished I had attended your wedding, Father and Mother, so this day is special to me.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Liz McDougall says. “You may kiss!”
Thelma and Peter Peter turn to face the two dozen guests and then peck each other on the lips. People cheer and clap. Esther and I stand and throw fistfuls of rice into the air. It rains down hard on our heads.
The newlyweds lead us all out of the chapel and into the garden at the back of the house of good. Set up under an awning is a table with a bowl of punch and plates of sandwiches. Liz McDougall also serves as the hostess. While Esther is off fetching us food, I sit on the grass beside a bed of daisies and try to think of what to say to Johnny when I see him tonight.
Czar wanders over and sits beside me. He is wearing a T-shirt printed with a tuxedo jacket. His hair is shorter, so now his ears seem to stick out even more. Despite how big they are, they are also thin and delicate. They look as though they might break if I tweaked them.
“Have you found me a portal yet?” he asks.
“Death might be the ultimate portal, Czar.”
“Yeah, but once you walk through that door, there’s no turning back.”
“Some of us don’t want to come back.”
“You’re doing okay here.”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Johnny.”
“Listen,” he says, “Petey says we’re too old to bear grudges. As usual, he’s right. So I want you to know I won’t throw bricks tonight. For cripes’ sake, I live in a glass house.”
How odd that the hypnotist and I have forgiven Johnny, but the gommers have not. I hear they are the only ones who applied to be brickers. They want payback no matter what the cost.
In the middle of the garden is a little gazebo with a shingled roof. Thelma climbs its steps and asks for our attention. “Me and Peter Peter are going to have a bigger party one day to celebrate our wedding. But today’s event ain’t about us. It’s about a boy I met months back. I have a song I want to sing for that boy, Johnny Henzel. May he rest in peace.”
Thelma starts singing a song about a new kid in town called Johnny-come-lately, whom everybody loves. While she sings, Czar fishes his blue bauble necklace out from under his tuxedo T-shirt. He takes the necklace off and slips it over my head. The bauble, which is the size of a Susan B. Anthony coin, rests against my heart.
“Wear it tonight, kid,” he says. “It’ll bring you luck.”
Tonight Zig conjures up holy mackerel clouds so thick they hide the honey moon that should rightly be Thelma’s and Peter Peter’s on the eve of their marriage. Yet perhaps a dark, menacing sky is more fitting under the circumstances. After all, no one in our little group (the newlyweds, Esther, and me) is in the mood to celebrate as we bike to the Marcy, guided only by the light of the streetlamps.
Despite the darkness, Thelma insists I wear a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up so that I am less recognizable. She does not want townies badgering me tonight with nosy questions or tactless comments. I also wear overalls, which I chose because they have big pockets to conceal a little revolver.
As the four of us near the Marcy, my holey heart twinges, my intestines knot, and my stomach somersaults. In spite of the late hour, dozens of townies are zooming down the road in the direction of the gymnasium. Those opposed to the redeath penalty are holding a redie-in during which participants will writhe on the ground and scream in feigned agony to protest the bricking. Meanwhile, those foes of Johnny’s who cannot stomach the idea of actually wielding bricks will demonstrate outside the Marcy with their usual slogans and placards. As we approach, I spot a gommer carrying a placard that reads, THIS TOWN AIN’T BIG ENOUGH FOR THE BOTH OF US.
The two groups are gathering at opposite ends of the Marcy’s lit softball field. It would be thoughtful of me to go thank the hundreds of opponents of the bricking, but Thelma disagrees. She fears my presence on the field might trigger a scuffle between the opposing camps, so we ride past both groups and park our bicycles in the Marcy’s circular driveway next to a hedge of evergreens—each bush trimmed, regrettably, in the shape of a bullet.
Johnny Henzel is already inside. This morning, he was transferred here, tied again to a stretcher. I wonder if his jailers are detaining him in the janitor’s office in the bowels of the building. If so, has he thought fondly of the time he spent in that room with me?
The three hundred brickers are also already inside the Marcy. At the door to the sports center stands a line of jailers, burly pubescent boys in purple armbands who will allow inside only those townies whose names appear on official lists. Those lists are in the possession of Tim and Tom Lu. The twins have donned T-shirts decorated with the zodiac symbol for Gemini.
Tom says, “Overalls and a hooded sweatshirt. That’s not a very attractive look, is it, Tim?”
I lower my hood.
“It’s the murder victim, Tom. And now he’s also a fashion victim.”
“Poor, poor boy,” Tom replies. “He’ll never recover from the strain he’s been under.”
“Mark my words,” Tim says. “He’ll end up at the Deborah.”
“Shut your traps!” Thelma cries, a hand raised in the air. “Or I’ll smack your faces so hard you’ll be looking backward.”
“My, that sounds like a threat,” says Tom.
“Oh, what a violent world we live in,” says Tim.
“In the end, we are all truly victims,” says Tom.
Thelma narrows her eyes at the boys, and they finally pipe down. Since the names of my traveling companions are not on the official lists, Esther, Thelma, and Peter Peter must now bid me good-bye and go join the bricking opponents on the softball field, where they, too, will squirm on the ground in mock death throes as part of the redie-in.
Thelma cups my cheeks in her palms the way you used to, Mother. She says, “Mama has faith in you, child.”
Old boy Peter Peter says, “Whatever you do, son, you’ll do us proud.” He ruffles my hair the way you used to, Father.
Esther pulls me aside and gives me an almost embarrassed look. Her cheeks are flushed. Finally, she says, “Give Johnny my love, okay?” Then, because I am still averse to hugs, she gives me a light kick in the shins, what she calls a “love tap.” I return the kick. Then Peter Peter and Thelma join in, and under the puzzled gaze of the evil twins and the jailers, my friends and I stand at the entrance to the gymnasium kicking one another.
When I finally pull myself away from my makeshift family and walk into the Marcy, I have the curious feeling—call it a sixth sense—that I am off to meet my maker.
The brickers wear pillowcases over their heads with eyeholes cut out. Their droopy hoods make them look like a slovenly offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. They stand immobile, hand in hand, on the overhead track, all three hundred of them. They wear gym shorts, T-shirts, and ringed knee socks as if a bricking in a gymnasium were a real sporting event. Under their hoods, are they sweating? Are they queasy and woozy? Are they already regretting the part they will play tonight? Or are they so bloodthirsty they can hardly wait for my part to end and for theirs to begin?
I stand alone in the center circle of the basketball court where Reginald leaves me. The lights overhead are bright and cheery, as though the Trojan basketball team from Helen Keller will soon burst from the locker room and Cynthia Orwell and her cheerleading squad will shake
their pompoms and do the splits. Shall I attempt cartwheels and backflips to entertain the brickers as they wait? From where I stand, I cannot see the bricks stacked on the overhead track, but I know they are there somewhere. Six hundred bricks. Two bricks apiece. Enough bricks to bash in the brain of the only Trojan who will emerge from the locker room.
Casper the Friendly Ghost reads eleven forty. In a few minutes, Johnny Henzel will be led out. He and I will have fifteen minutes together before the clock strikes midnight and the bricks fly.
Why has Zig himself not put a stop to this folly? Has he no shame? No wisdom? No superpowers? What is the use of a god without superpowers? Zig’s only response so far has been to put the ball in my court. Or the bullets, I should say. Two bullets are inside the little revolver that lies in the left pocket of my overalls. I feared that the jailers might search me, but they did not. Ringo, in fact, even wished me luck earlier. While Reginald was preoccupied, the British jailer leaned in close and gave me a fixed look. “I will miss Johnny boy,” he whispered. “I sometimes played my guitar outside his cell door so he’d feel less lonesome. I’d even take his special requests.”
Now, as I wait, I stick my hand in my pocket and stroke the little revolver with the tip of a finger, just as Johnny would stroke his roach’s back. Around my neck I wear Czar’s blue bauble. It lies against my heart under my sweatshirt.
Up on the running track, one of the brickers breaks from the ranks and hurries down the track toward the exit sign. A moment later, three more brickers do likewise. The brickers on either side of the gaps move together and clasp each other’s hands again to close the circle. Reginald told me some brickers might drop out at the last minute. Consequently, jail authorities signed up alternates to step in as needed. Soon the four hooded alternates appear along the track and squeeze into the ring.