by Neil Smith
In my office, I sit at my desk. A blank sheet of paper is in my typewriter. I have been working again on the story of my afterlife. I have finally reached the present day and am not sure where the story goes next.
No one has read my story yet. I wanted you to be the first, Mother and Father. The pages of my manuscript are in a three-ringed binder kept in a locked drawer of my desk. I fetch the drawer key from inside the base of the Wobblin’ Goblin music box, open the drawer, and take out the binder. On my way out of my office, I also grab the box of Lucky Charms from a crowded shelf. Peter Peter will be cross if we eat the cereal, but so be it. Given all we have been through, Esther and I deserve this gift from Zig.
She and I sit on threadbare armchairs we drag into Johnny’s Zoo room. We share the box of cereal, our hands digging in search of the marshmallows in the shapes of hearts, moons, stars, clovers, and diamonds. Esther finds the prize at the bottom of the box: an elf figurine. She gives it to me. “Elves are my f*cking bête noire,” she says. “Back in Utah, I was always asked to play one in the Christmas pageant.”
As we snack, I read the story of my afterlife aloud. To Esther, but also to Johnny. My blood brother still has a concentrated look on his face as though he is trying to figure out what our story means.
Sometimes during my reading Esther stops me to make a correction or clarify some aspect of our adventures. She nods her head a lot and even says “Amen,” the way I imagine Christians do in church when ministers read from their Bible.
I read up to the part where Esther arrives at Zoo. It is three fifteen by this time. My voice is going hoarse. Esther’s eyes are blinking shut, and her ringlets have come undone. “It’s time you put this baby to bed,” she says.
I assume she means she is the baby who is ready for bed (we will have to sleep on sofas at Curios tonight), but then she clarifies: “Go finish this chapter and then come read it to me.”
So that is what I do.
Here is one more chapter, dear Mother and Father. It is dedicated to you, as is every page herein. I have gradually lost faith that I will ever find a way to deliver to you the story of my afterlife, and so I will stop for now and say good-bye. I want to stop while I still remember what the two of you look like. In time, your faces will grow dimmer and dimmer. It will be as though you died instead of me. But even when I cannot see your faces anymore, please know this: your son still loves you. How curious that I never told you so before.
Dear Father and Mother, I have now lived in Town as long as I lived in America: thirteen years. I am no longer a newbie. It is hard to believe I ever was. Yet I have changed little in the intervening years. After all, we townies idle. Thelma Rudd claims I am now more mature. Perhaps, but I do not feel so.
Over the years, I have continued to live at the Frank and Joe and to do the same work at Curios. I am now the museum’s curator, a position I inherited when dear Peter Peter repassed more than eight years ago.
Thelma held a wake as Peter Peter approached fifty years old. A wake in Town, however, is different from a wake in America. In our wakes, we five-decade-old townies are not yet dead (or redead). Each night as we near fifty, our friends gather in our room. Zig does not necessarily steal us away on the exact date of our fiftieth rebirthday; we may disappear a week or two before or after this date (in the same way that a pregnant lady in America does not necessarily deliver exactly nine months after conception). During his wake, Peter Peter’s friends sat cramped together around his bed and talked. Peter Peter lay under the covers listening. One night he closed his eyes…and poof. No fade-out. No fifty-year aging all at once. Thelma screamed (though she had promised Peter Peter she would stay calm).
The other old boy, Peter Peter’s friend Czar, refused to have a wake. He said it was embarrassing to have people watch you redie. He said it was akin to having people watch you “take a crap.” As a result, he forbade anyone from being present in his room when he repassed, two months after Peter Peter.
Over the years, I have kept myself busy with various projects. I teach a constellation class at the Franny Glass School in Thirteen. After my first five years in Town, Zig changed the night sky backdrop, and thus I needed to start mapping anew. As time passes in heaven, the stars do not change places, not till the day when Zig changes the complete backdrop. I tell my students this is a metaphor for life: we go along thinking nothing will be different, till the day everything suddenly changes at once.
One morning about six years ago, a kite sailed in over the South Wall in Seven. Because the kite is red with one big yellow star and four smaller yellow stars, the design of the Chinese flag, certain townies believed it came from Chinese thirteen-year-olds in a nearby terrarium. Sadly, no note was tied to its tail, so we are unsure of its origin, but at least it gave us proof we are not alone. The “Chinese” kite is now on display in Hall 3 at Curios.
Four years ago, a large upper section of the Southwest Corner in Six crumbled, severely injuring several townies gathered at the bottom of the wall for a folk festival dedicated to the music of Bob Dylan. Was this incident intentional on Zig’s part (perhaps not a fan of Mr. Dylan’s work) or simple neglect? Some think the former; I presume the latter. The damaged wall grew back within sixteen days, by which time all of the injured had been released from the Paul Atreides Infirmary in Seven.
Some changes have been on a smaller scale. Guess what! We have a dog, a French poodle that arrived only two months ago in a warehouse located just down the street from Curios. Pierre (named by Thelma in honor of Peter Peter) has a woolly chocolate coat, which we do not clip, and a little pink tongue, the tip of which often sticks out of his mouth. His favorite foods are black-eyed peas, carrot greens, and butternut squash, and, thank Zig, this carnivore thrives on a vegetarian diet, though of course he will grow no bigger. He will idle like the rest of us.
I could continue citing other interesting developments in Town in the intervening years, but let us move on to the reason I am writing to you again after such a long pause.
Something magical is happening in Town, and it has renewed my faith that I may eventually manage to deliver my story to you.
The magic involves Johnny Henzel.
For many years, Johnny played a much smaller role in my afterlife. Yes, I continued to check on him and change his clothes as needed, but for a long time he did not occupy my thoughts the way he had during my first year or two here.
There is an old wives’ tale in America that hair and fingernails keep growing after a person’s death. In the case of townies, ours do, but in the case of Johnny, this was false. In the years he lay in bed at Zoo, his hair stayed the same length it was on the day I shot him: four inches at its longest. Yet last week, while changing his clothes, I noticed his hair seemed longer. I fetched my ruler and measured: five and a third inches. Then I spotted his fingernails. Before his redeath, he had chewed them down to the quick, so imagine my shock when I saw crescent moons appearing where no nails had been before.
My old friend is growing.
Johnny Henzel goes from five feet three to five feet four, then five five, then five six. The peach fuzz above his lip and on his chin turns into dark whiskers. Dark hair also sprouts along his arms and legs, in his armpits, and in his pubic region.
For a few days, I shave his face with the electric razor displayed in Hall 2, but then I abandon this ploy. Instead, I close off his room at Zoo with a heavy armoire and lie that I am redesigning the space to boost attendance. People believe me because over the years Johnny has drawn fewer and fewer visitors. Most townies have seen him. They know his story; he is old news. Johnny would, however, attract hordes of bedazzled townies if they knew he was the first among us to grow past age thirteen.
“What is this magic?” I ask Johnny as I dab acne cream on a pimple on his cheek. I slip a thermometer into his mouth to see whether there is a change in his normal body temperature of ninety-six degrees. He has never grown cold. He has always felt as though he died only five minutes before, but
now his temperature has risen a degree.
I close down Curios altogether, with the excuse that I am planning a major revamp, and do not allow others on the premises at all. I stay here practically around the clock, zipping out only to pick up takeout meals at a cafeteria.
I claim I need my solitude. Only Pierre stays behind to keep me company. When townies ask about my design plans, I remain vague. I speak of flowing creative juices, a visiting muse. The artistic townies eat up such talk, including Thelma, who pats my head encouragingly. Esther, though, looks doubtful. “What are you scheming?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. Yet even she leaves me alone since she is busy planning her wedding. She will marry her tailor partner, Ringo (whose real name, by the way, is Nigel Bell).
Once Curios is closed down, I move sofa cushions into Johnny’s room to sleep on. We are roommates again. Given Johnny’s steady growth, I change his clothes often. I have to wrestle with his big lanky body. His arms and legs are gangly, his feet long, his toes pointy. I clip his fingernails and toenails daily but no longer trim his hair. His hair and beard grow as long as a flower-power hippie’s. His chest fills out, making his bull’s-eye wound look smaller.
I watch him age about a year every two days, and soon he is Town’s first real man. His body grows to six feet one inch and stops. He keeps aging, though. I see the changes mostly in his face; all the baby fat in his cheeks melts away, and his cheekbones stand out. I estimate he is nearing twenty-six years old, the same age he would be if he were still in America.
I think he may be handsome, but I am not sure: I have always had trouble seeing beauty in human beings. What I find beautiful—a crop of pimples in the pattern of an ankylosaur constellation, for example—others find repugnant.
Every day, I lift his eyelids to check his pupils, but they remain dilated and motionless. I put my ear to his chest. His heart offers not one chug.
One evening, as I am examining him, I see something frightening: a red pool spreading out beneath his left palm. I grab his hand, turn it over. His left wrist has been slashed several times. Blood seeps from the gashes and runs down his arm.
Then I notice his right wrist. It, too, is oozing blood.
I yank open the drawer beneath his bed, pull out an old T-shirt, dab at the blood. Within minutes, the gashes on both wrists have scabbed over.
“What in hell’s name is going on?” I say aloud.
At five in the morning on September 7 (my rebirthday), I slink out to a supply warehouse to filch some clothing for Johnny. It has been about five weeks since he began to grow. I hope to find him some extra-large gym shorts and tank tops, the kind made for the biggest boys among us. As a precaution, I fill my flashlight with rocks. Zig knows what type of enemy I may encounter in these strange and uncertain times. I still do not understand how Johnny’s wrists bled. His scabs have healed, but deep zigzag scars linger.
I head off to the warehouse, one hand on my flashlight, the other holding Pierre’s leash. The dog scurries down the sidewalk, tugging surprisingly hard for such a small creature.
As I approach the warehouse on Carrie White Street, the two quarter-pie windows above the warehouse doors go from dark to bright. Whenever a delivery comes in, Zig automatically turns on the lights as a kind of beacon to us townies. Perfect, I think. I will have first dibs before the sorters arrive at eight thirty.
Outside the warehouse are two security guards sitting on overturned buckets and playing crazy eights on a wobbly card table. They are used to my visits. As curator at Curios, I have a special pass to visit warehouses in search of curious objects. The guards barely glance up from their game, despite the presence of Pierre, who usually elicits so much cooing and fussing from passersby that I tend to walk him only early in the morning or late at night.
I grasp the metal door handle, heave the door open, and slip inside the warehouse. I unhook Pierre from his leash so he can scramble over the hoard of goods Zig has bestowed on us. As usual, the delivery looks like a yard sale of unwanted, unloved items: used desks, mattresses, and stoves; piles of secondhand T-shirts; a jumble of compact discs; boxes of paperback books, their corners curled with age; even a half dozen scratched, tarnished tubas, their mouths all facing one another as though they are conversing.
I am on my knees riffling through a box of secondhand gym shorts when I hear Pierre’s sharp yaps coming from the other side of the warehouse.
Pierre can do a trick whereby he throws back his head and imitates the wee-ooo-wee-ooo sound of a European police siren. We tell ourselves he learned this in the streets of Paris. Everybody loves it when he does his trick. I myself find his howl grating, and so when he starts up in the warehouse now, I put down my armful of gym shorts and go to shut him up.
I spot him in front of an old school locker that stands upright between a refrigerator and a photocopier. He is pawing the locker between howls. Pierre arrived in a cardboard box of throw cushions himself, and perhaps this locker contains another dog or a cat or even Town’s first raccoon. As I approach the locker, however, I realize there is something familiar about it: a dent halfway up its army green surface, as though a student’s head was once butted against its door.
It is then I notice the number on the metal plate near the top. It is 106. “Holy smokes,” I say to Pierre, who finally stops his barking.
“What kind of tomfoolery are you up to, Zig?” I say aloud as I touch a palm against the locker’s cool surface. What will I find inside? The periodic table? Photographs of Richard Dawkins and Jane Goodall? My old gym clothes? My protractor?
As I inch the locker door open, its rusty hinges let out a series of squeaks that, considering my nerves, could also be coming from me.
Inside the locker is a face I have not seen in thirteen years.
The locker itself is empty, but its rear panel is missing, and, instead of revealing the back of the warehouse, the space opens onto a hallway where there hangs a black-and-white portrait of a blind and deaf high-school graduate wearing a mortarboard on her head.
In the years since I last saw Helen Keller, she has not changed one iota. She has been locked in time like me. She gives me an encouraging look, as encouraging a look as a blind lady can. “Come along now, child,” she seems to say. “Don’t be afraid.”
Helen faced many ordeals in her life boldly and bravely, and so must I. I look down at Pierre. He looks up, wet-eyed, tongue tip sticking out. He emits a low squeal.
“Stay,” I say to him. “I’ll be back.”
Will I, though?
I wedge myself into the portal before me. I know I will fit: Jermaine Tucker once shut me inside this very locker. I close the door behind me so that Pierre cannot climb through. Just as I slip out of the locker and into the hallway of my old school, the bell rings. Hordes of students spill from the classrooms up and down the corridor. For a moment, I am frozen. My heartbeat quickens because I fear seeing Jermaine Tucker, Kevin Stein, Henry Axworthy, and their ilk—but of course I do not. I do not recognize any of the seventh graders and eighth graders jabbering and cursing and giggling and roughhousing. Thirteen years have passed.
Am I invisible? I hold my hands to my face. They look pale but solid. The ghost around my wrist, Casper, now reads three thirty. The bell that rang is the last bell of the day.
“Do you mind?” says an Asian girl with butterfly clips in her hair and a shell necklace around her neck. “You’re, like, totally blocking my way.”
I am not invisible.
I step aside so the new owner of my old locker can fetch her belongings. Since I stepped out of it, the locker has closed behind me. The girl fiddles with her lock, and I almost ask if the combination is still 7–25–34. But she does not give me a second glance, nor do the other students. Yet the blind Helen seems to. “Get a move on,” I imagine her saying. “You have a haunting to do.”
I swerve through the crowd as the students jostle one another. Unfurled on a wall is a team banner reading, TROJAN, SLAY THY ENEMY! The walls have been repain
ted: they were once pale yellow but are now spearmint green.
I pass an empty classroom, the room where I used to study science. On the teacher’s desk is a plastic model of the human heart with its chambers, valves, and arteries exposed. I am drawn toward it, but before I can examine the heart, another item attracts my attention. Thumbtacked to a corkboard is, lo and behold, a periodic table. An updated periodic table!
“May I help you?”
I turn around and face a man whose head is bald but whose chest must be furry because a tuft of black hair pokes out of the top of his shirt. I have not seen an adult—other than the grown-up Johnny Henzel—in thirteen years, so I am startled, as though I just stumbled on a bear in the woods.
“Your periodic table,” I say to this man whom I do not recognize, “it has one hundred and nine elements now.”
The science teacher glances at the periodic table and then looks back at me. “That’s right. One hundred and nine, yes.”
“I thought there were only one hundred and six. I imagine that”—here I read from the table—“bohrium, hassium, and meitnerium were discovered in the last dozen years.”
Speared behind the teacher’s ear is a long pencil indented with teeth marks. The man gives me a quizzical look. “Oh, we’re making new discoveries all the time,” he says. “You never know what’ll turn up next.”
Peter Peter used to say more or less the same thing about objects destined for Curios.
“Good day to you, sir,” I say to the science teacher.
“Good day to you too,” the man says, scratching a patch of psoriasis on his elbow.
I turn and walk from the room into the crowded corridor. I am pushed along, past bulletin boards filled with students’ reproductions of album art (Little Earthquakes, Lucky Town, Nevermind, 99.9F°), a poster for auditions for a play (Death of a Salesman), and a perplexing campaign flyer for student council (PHIL PRATT IS PHAT!).