by Neil Smith
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse Mr. Miller, my English teacher to whom I taught the difference between “who” and “whom.” He now has a potbelly, and his salt-and-pepper hair is now just salt. Another actual adult. I avert my gaze lest he think he has seen a ghost. Down the hall and across the lobby I hurry. As I push through Helen Keller’s front doors, I realize that the last time I left this school, I was lying on a stretcher, a blanket thrown over my corpse.
Outside I see so many things I have not seen in a dog’s age. Speaking of dogs, at the edge of the school driveway, I see a German shepherd, which runs by me leash-less. I see a dozen sparrows flutter into a tree. Around me are bungalows, automobiles, school buses, mailboxes, stop signs, traffic lights, and convenience stores. How liberating and peculiar to be free of the towering Great Walls that imprison us townies.
My eyes go watery from joy!
As I admire my surroundings, a gray squirrel bounds toward me and stands with its tail twitching and paws limp-wristed. “Thank you, Zig,” I say to the squirrel, as though Sciurus carolinensis were my god. The animal snatches a maple key and then scrabbles up a tree. I wish it were fall so I could see orange and red maple leaves! I wish it were winter so I could see snow, and perhaps grasp a bumper and skitch down the street!
On the edge of the sidewalk is an anthill teeming with ants. I drop to my knees. I am awed by my little friends’ strength and purposefulness. An ant can carry fifty times its body weight. Were I an ant, I could carry an ice-cream truck on my back. I mention such a truck because one passes by, ringing its bell and attracting a Pied Piper line of students. Townies would be envious, since ice cream is not among the foods Zig sends. For a frozen treat, we townies make do with putting peeled bananas in the freezer and then running them through a food processor.
Compared with Town, Hoffman Estates has such a variety of humans! After thirteen years of nothing but thirteen-year-olds, it is heavenly (ha-ha) to see, for example, an old man walking with a cane. How old is he? Sadly, I can no longer tell age. Sixty-two? Eighty-nine? Running beneath the translucent skin on his forearms are whole tributaries of snaky blue veins, so he must be very old.
“It’s beautiful out, n’est-ce pas?” I say to the man, whose nose has the same texture as cauliflower.
He looks up. An airplane is passing, creating contrails across the wild blue yonder. “The sky used to be bluer in my day,” he says.
“But it is your day,” I reply. “You aren’t dead yet.”
The next person I pass is a man in a tank top with ballooning muscles like a cartoon superhero’s. Then I see a shawled lady pushing an actual toddler in a stroller. In the child’s hair is clamped a swarm of bumblebee barrettes. As you know, I was never fond of young children because conversing with them is dull, yet I actually babble “Gitchy gitchy goo!” at the child.
I must stop all this staring at my surroundings and make haste. Who knows how long this haunting will last? I once thought a haunting would be unfair to you, cruel even. I have changed my mind. Perhaps I am being selfish, but I want to see your faces again. Zig willing, I will.
I start running. I am a speed demon. I intend to head straight for Clippers, since at this time of the day that is where you should be, but since Sandpits is on the way, I cut through our apartment complex. I take Hill Drive, and I am huffing and puffing by the time I reach 222. I stop and glance at the second-floor balcony. Through the balcony door, I glimpse movement, a person walking past. You may be home early! Or perhaps you have taken the day off because it is the anniversary of my death.
I hurry up the walkway and into our low-rise. When I reach Apartment 6 on the second floor, I see on our door a wreath made of sticks twisted together with little plastic cardinals nesting within. Mother, you must have made it in one of your arts and crafts workshops. I bang the door knocker without thinking what I will say if you answer and find your late son standing before you. I do not have time to think because I fear that Zig will reel me back any second—perhaps even the very second I glimpse your faces and you glimpse mine. Perhaps when the door swings open, I will vanish and you will have the ghost of your son burned on your retinas as your only proof I was ever there.
But when the door swings open, you are not whom I see. Whom I see is an older teenager with a nest of messy black hair. He wears a black T-shirt with the name ROBERT SMITH written across the chest in white letters designed to look like dripping paint.
“Are you the paperboy?” Robert Smith asks.
His lips are orangey red. His skin is as white as mine, but I believe he has applied powder, because I can see that it is caked in his nostril folds. He looks almost like the zombies that townies dress as on Halloween.
I stare at him. I am sure I am wide-eyed, as though he were the ghost, not I.
Is he your foster son, Mother and Father?
From the apartment comes music, a slow song featuring a sad violin and sung by a gloomy man who keeps repeating that he is always wishing for “impossible things.”
Robert Smith repeats his question: “Is it collection day? You deliver the Tribune?”
I slowly shake my head. Then I say, “May I speak to Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple?”
“Who?”
“The Dalrymples.”
“Never heard of them.”
He is not your foster son.
“They’re barbers,” I say. “They run Clippers out by the highway.”
“You got the wrong building. All the buildings look alike in this sh*thole.”
“The Dalrymples used to live in Apartment 6 at 222 Hill Drive. I am certain of that.”
“Well, they don’t no more. Me and my mom have been here three years now.”
Oh dear! It never occurred to me you may have moved. I am unsure what to do. I hesitate. Robert Smith stares at me with his mascaraed eyes. Finally, I take a step forward. “May I come in and look around?” I ask.
On his middle finger, Robert Smith is wearing a silver ring with a skull engraving, a kind of death’s head ring. I notice it because he reaches across the doorway to block my entry. He frowns his black eyebrows. “No, you little freak,” he says. “You can’t come in.”
A boy in pancake makeup with bouffant hair is calling me a freak.
“Pretty please,” I say.
Robert Smith slams the door.
Automobiles, trucks, and buses zoom along the highway. They seem to move faster than they did thirteen years ago, but perhaps my memory is faulty, since the fastest thing in Town is a ten-speed bicycle. The vehicles zipping by also seem louder and dirtier than before. The exhaust they belch is stomach-turning; the honks they emit are earsplitting. Town may have its flaws, but at least the air is clean and the worst noise is a tone-deaf townie lying to himself that he can master the saxophone.
I stand at a crosswalk with two girls, both wearing striped wool sweaters unraveling at the waist, pink tutus(!), and thick-soled oxblood boots. One of the girls, the one with big eyeglasses, says to the other, “You’re so bogus!”
Seeing the girl’s glasses, I realize I still have my twenty-twenty vision. I wonder if you will recognize me without eyeglasses. What am I thinking? Of course you will. Will I recognize you is the question I should ask. You have aged thirteen years. Perhaps your hair is salt. Perhaps you are flabby, jowly, and wrinkly.
The light turns green, and I cross the highway. More fast-food joints have sprung up. Despite how garish the jumble of fluorescent signs is, I am awed. After all, heaven has no giant yellow sombreros advertising tacos and no giant dancing lobsters promoting seafood. The lobsters, I must say, seem overly happy for crustaceans that will be torn asunder and have their flesh sucked out of their claws.
The sidewalk here is no safer than before. The strip of lawn between it and the oncoming traffic is so thin a car could easily jump the curb and strike a person. I hope you always remain alert as you walk to work.
I spot a baseball cap lying in the grass. It is all blue except for a red letter C (th
e Chicago Cubs). I adjust the back strap and don the cap, pulling the visor down low. I should be an incognito ghost, just in case I bump into somebody who knows me.
Should I just walk into Clippers and say, “Hello there, Mother and Father”? You may accidentally jab your customers in the eyes with your scissors. Or faint and strike your heads so hard you get a concussion. Casper says it is now ten after four. Should I wait outside your shop till your customers leave? Will Zig give me enough haunting time?
An eighteen-wheeler roars past, beeping its horn. The noise is like an electric prod, and I start to run. I run at top speed till I reach the strip mall and then slow to a jog. I pass the druggist’s, the pizza parlor, the pet shop, and the dry cleaner’s, and I cannot believe my eyes. I stop dead in my tracks. Your barber pole is no longer there! The red and white stripes are gone. The blood and the bandages are a thing of the past.
Like a fifty-year-old townie, Clippers has vanished. Poof!
In its place stands a plant shop called Back to the Garden. I hurry to the window. Baskets of flowers have replaced your bottles of shampoos and hair tonics. Hung on the window is a poster of Adam and Eve, their bodies covered in vines. The sign reads, PLANTS: A GIFT THAT GROWS ON YOU. I press my nose against the glass and see an Asian man dressed in an apron who is selling a bouquet of gerberas to an old lady with lavender hair.
Where are you, dear Father and Mother?
There is a phone booth outside the pet shop. I trot back and leaf through the white pages. I find all the Dalrymples living in Cook County. Eight listings, but none of the names are yours or even Aunt Rose’s. I flick through the yellow pages so wildly that I rip a page in half. There is no Clippers among the barbershop listings.
I rest my forehead against the glass of the booth. “Help me, Zig,” I whisper, my hope fading. “You brought me here. Tell me what to do.”
I see a cat sleeping in the pet-shop window. A Siamese. Then I notice the shop’s name on its front door.
In 1979, the pet shop was called Animal Lovers.
Today its name is Zoo.
Lordy! Lordy!
I hurry out of the phone booth and push open the shop’s front door. A bell jingles, and the cat in the window lifts its sleepy head and throws me a look of ennui. Behind the cash register stands a young woman in a purple velour tracksuit. She is affixing discount stickers to boxes of birdseed and barely gives me a glance.
The name cannot be a coincidence, can it? I wander the aisles pondering what to do. The only customer in the store is an older teenager whose kneecaps stick out of big holes in his pale blue jeans. He is grimacing as he drags a hefty bag of dog kibble to the checkout counter.
I end up at the back of the shop in the rodent department, which smells strongly of wood chips. Shelves are stacked with terrariums of gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, and mice. I drum my fingers against the glass of the mouse terrarium and eight pairs of nostrils sniff the air. The mice stare at me, beady-eyed and alarmed. As a ghost, I am only scary enough to give the willies to a litter of mice.
There are also tanks here containing tarantulas and lizards, and I notice a pair of beautiful geckos whose yellow bodies are covered with dark spots like a banana going mushy. Their little pink tongues dart in and out, reminding me of Pierre.
Another tank catches my eye. It is filled with insects crawling all over one another. Holy moly! They are death’s head cockroaches! Dozens and dozens of Blaberus craniifer! I remember that this roach species is often used as lizard food.
Behind the wall of terrariums is a small area where employees tend the animals. Someone is there now. I see the person between the tanks. He is standing at a sink. His back is to me, but I see his dark ponytail, which extends to his shoulder blades. He is wearing khaki shorts and a sweatshirt.
The little hairs on the back of my neck go stiff.
I know this man.
He turns around and approaches the wall of tanks, lifts the wire-mesh lid of a terrarium, and drops in an empty paper-towel roll for the gerbils to chew apart.
Petrified, frozen in place, I watch the man. From somewhere in the shop, a parrot emits a loud squawk, and the cashier calls out, “Shut up, Aristotle!”
Johnny Henzel looks exactly the same as he does in Town. His hair is the same length, as is his beard. His cheekbones are just as sharp, his eyelashes just as dark. He even has the same pimple on his cheek.
He tried telling me the truth years ago. He was still in a coma here in America, he said. Rover was a bug, he claimed, but in the sense of a listening device that transmitted the voices of those around his hospital bed. Only he could hear those voices.
I did not believe him. He was a half-deader, but I thought him half-mad.
Patients in long comas often wake forgetting their past. Has Johnny forgotten his? Has he forgotten all about Town? All about me?
I step closer to the terrariums, my face between the gecko tank and the lizard tank. I remove my Cubs cap and drop it on the floor.
Johnny has turned away from me. He takes a bag of rabbit pellets from a shelf and cuts it open with a pair of scissors.
I begin to hum a song, quietly at first and then louder.
The song is by Cole Porter, its lyrics a portmanteau.
Johnny puts down the pellets and turns slowly around. He knits his brow, creating the approximately-equal-to symbol (≈) in the middle of his forehead.
He takes a few steps forward and stares at my face between the terrariums. His mouth falls open. His eyes go wide.
I stop humming. In a loud whisper, I say, “Boo!”
“I thought I was f*cking crazy, man. Like maybe I dreamt it all up while I was comatose for all those months. Town, the Great Walls, Thelma and Esther, Zig, the death’s head, the bricking.”
Though still recognizable, Johnny’s voice is much deeper than before. He and I are in the back room of Zoo, the door pushed half-closed. Beside us is a stack of cardboard boxes, and the bored-looking Siamese is now curled up atop them. Inside the boxes are tins of a cat food with an apt name: 9 Lives.
Johnny looks me up and down. “Man oh man, I can’t believe you’re here,” he says. “It’s so awesome, but also real f*cking freaky.”
It is strange seeing him too. He is no longer the boy I knew. He is over six feet tall. He has a beard, which he keeps stroking. He is standing close and smells oniony, perhaps because he has no one here to remind him to shower.
“Where are my parents, Johnny?” I say, my voice squeaky. “I can find neither hide nor hair of them. I just stopped by 222 Hill Drive, but they are no longer there. A fellow with a powdered face lives in their apartment.”
“Oh, jeez, your folks left years and years ago, back when I was in ninth grade. I heard they went to Alaska, but I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“Alaska!?” I cry. “I have serious doubts Zig will grant me enough haunting time for a trip to the largest state in the union.”
The back room is furnished with a scratched desk that looks much like Johnny’s old desk at the Frank and Joe. Scattered across the top are rubber chew toys for dogs: colorful bones, a plucked rooster, a great white shark. Beside the desk is a door to the outside propped open with, of all things, a brick.
“So you found a damn portal!” Johnny says.
“On my rebirthday, no less,” I say. “Zig has granted me permission to visit you after all these years. But why now? I do not have the foggiest idea.”
“I think I know.” He pushes up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and holds his hands out palms up. Around both his wrists are flesh-colored bandages.
There is shame in his voice when he says, “I did a real stupid thing.”
“Oh, Johnny, why would you do that?”
He smirks at me. “Once a sadcon, always a sadcon.”
I touch one of the bandages with the tip of my finger. I know what lies beneath: the same ugly scars are on his wrists back in Town. It dawns on me that his doppelgänger at Curios probably started aging on t
he day Johnny sliced through his veins here in America.
“My shrink has me on anti-sadcon pills, but the f*cking things don’t always work.”
He gives me a searching look. “You’ll think I’m nuts, but sometimes I miss Town. Sometimes I put my ear against my tank of roaches, hoping I’ll hear voices from Town. Maybe even you talking to me again, correcting my grammar.”
I do not mention his twin at Curios lest I frighten him. “You can never go back, Johnny,” I say with finality.
He nods his head, looking a little morose, but then he brightens. “Man, you’re so young!” he exclaims. “Or I’m so old. I don’t know which. You’re just a little kid. In my mind, I remembered you older.”
“I am older than I used to be in the mental sense, but of course not in the physical.”
“Whereas I’m old and I’m mental,” he says, and lets out a guffaw.
Though his joke is macabre, I do crack a smile.
“I’ve missed you, man.” He reaches out and gently ruffles my staticky hair the way you used to, Father. “You saved me, Boo. You saved my life. And now here you are again when I need you most.”
The Siamese meows as if agreeing with Johnny. Its eyes are the same sky blue as mine.
“You’re a sign,” Johnny says.
“Of what?”
“Of life,” he says. “The life I’m supposed to hang on to.”
Should I finally ask why he shot me?
Perhaps it is best that I not know.
We are standing near a bulletin board, and a photo thumbtacked to it catches my eye: Johnny with Zoo’s cashier. They wear matching T-shirts, the word NIRVANA written across the chest. Below the word is a kind of smiley face, but the eyes are X’s and the mouth is squiggly. Above their heads Johnny and the girl hold large signs. His reads GRAND; hers reads OPENING.
“Is that your sister?” I ask.
“Yeah, Brenda’s the only one I told about Town. I said the place was probably just some weird, psychedelic dream, but she was like, ‘No, no, Johnny. You died and that’s where you went.’ She believed even when I had trouble believing.”