A Day In the Death of Walter Zawislak

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Sorry, you can go back to the day you watched Neil Armstrong on the moon, but you can’t be that guy. It’s all very tricky.”

  Again Walter deflated.

  “Most people are quite excited about this. One lady wanted to go back and watch Princess Di’s wedding again, can you believe it?” The boy prattled on while Walter tried to think of a day he wanted to most relive, but they were all a blur, smudged by time and distance. “One guy wanted to relive the day he stole his dad’s Porsche and ran it into a tree. You can do anything.” The boy raised a long slender finger. “Except change things.”

  The boy sat down on the swing and began to pump his legs, and the swing gained height. The boy soared over Walter’s head, far higher than earthly swing set chains could go. He swung up and eclipsed the sun, which was struggling behind clouds.

  The wild emotions left Walter tired and he sat down on the plastic step of the slide.

  He wished that at some point in his life he had stolen a Porsche.

  Maybe there wasn’t much to change. There was nothing to rage against and he found himself doing what he had learned best after he stopped drinking. Accepting. Things are what they are.

  He’d been in AA for most of his life. He’d repeated that Serenity Prayer every day without fully knowing what it meant. He had to lose his wife, his daughter, start drinking again, and then stop because of shame before those words made any freaking sense to him.

  Accept what I cannot change.

  Jennifer had come back. It wasn’t enough by any means; it didn’t erase the years of silent standoff, it didn’t give him back whatever he had missed of her in those years. But it was something. And that was so much more than what he’d had dying alone in that bed.

  His daughter was sorry and she forgave him, and the stones of remorse and regret were lifted from around his neck.

  He rubbed his hands over his face, scrubbed at his eyes.

  One thing was sure; death so far was nothing like what he had been told. Movies, Father Kennedy, the bible stories—none of them even suggested that gray hallway or the kid.

  The boy was still swinging, reaching impossible heights. He was higher than the house whose yard they were trespassing in and the neighboring houses. He was taller than the pine trees and suddenly the boy leaped from his swing and Walter gasped, lurching to his feet.

  The boy floated, took two steps off the roof, and somersaulted in the air. He lost his shape; his outline wavered and faded in milky sunshine and suddenly reappeared right in front of Walter.

  The kid no longer wore black; instead, he was in a pair of chinos, a madras shirt, and Chuck Taylors. He was a Life magazine photo of the 60s brought to life.

  Walter felt an odd quiver, and when he looked down he realized he had traded in his robe and slippers for a short-sleeved dress shirt and brown striped tie just like the ones he had been wearing to work for the past thirteen years. He used to be a very reluctant suit-and-tie man, but after he drank away the promotion he’d grown to like a little pomp and circumstance. It was a warehouse and he could have worn a sweatshirt like the employees, but he thought the tie said something. What, he wasn’t sure.

  “You look good, kid,”

  The boy smiled and looked down at his vintage ensemble.

  “Thanks. I always thought this look had a lot going for it.”

  “Who are you?” Walter asked.

  “My name is Peter.”

  Walter gasped. He’d been swearing at a saint? Rosie would kill him. “I’m sorry...Saint Peter, I had no—”

  The boy snorted. “You Catholics kill me, you really do. Yeah, I’m Saint Peter Goldstein.” He ducked his head and Walter saw a black skullcap nestled in the dark curls of his head.

  “You’re Jewish?” Walter hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention in church, but he was fairly sure that Father Kennedy at St. Mary of the Angel’s Catholic Church in Beaverton, Wisconsin, would be flabbergasted to see Peter Goldstein manning the Pearly Gates.

  “Well, my mother was. Dad converted.” Peter began walking away from Walter toward the sliding glass door of the house and Walter took a few running steps to catch up. “Ravi was supposed to have your file, but since you’re two days early and Ravi was dealing with the earthquake in China, I got you.”

  “Ravi?” Walter couldn’t quite follow this. “This is heaven, right?”

  “Sort of. It’s what you folks call Limbo.”

  “And Ravi…”

  “Hindu. Nice guy. Heaven is whatever you want, but Limbo…” The boy winked. “We get everyone.”

  “So everyone goes to heaven? We all get redemption in the afterlife.” Walter remembered the years spent in confession on his knees, worried that the thoughts he had about MaryAnn Arneson were going to land him in the fiery pits. The years after the war when he was sure the blood on his hands had soaked right through to his soul.

  Man, won’t Father Kennedy just blow a fuse when he gets here.

  “Church? Confession? All that stuff. I was right? None of it matters?”

  The kid shot him a skeptical look. “When, Walter Zawislak, was the last time you were in church?”

  Walter stood up straight. He swallowed hard, tugging at words rooted in the back of his throat. “There’s no benevolent father watching over us. I know this. I am proof that God is vindictive. So save your preaching.”

  “There is nothing more tiresome than a philosophical discussion with a man who has forgotten his faith.” Peter deepened his voice an octave in a way Walter could only assume was making fun of him. “Show me. Prove it. You doubters never get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “There’s no proof.” Peter shrugged. “It’s faith. It’s the step off the cliff into the ether. And it doesn’t matter what you put your faith in, a holy spirit or the beauty of mankind, faith is faith.”

  “Well, Rosie was the one with faith.”

  The boy stared at him long and hard, and again Walter felt uncomfortable with this gaze, like the kid was seeing past his flesh and bone into those places hidden and dark and lost to him a million years ago.

  “You have a decision to make, Walter. And I…” he looked back down at the beeper at his side “…have a two o’clock with the lamentable result of a bad piece of fish.”

  Right. The business of reliving one day.

  The vertical blinds on the other side of the glass door shimmied and a little girl appeared, her dark face pressed flat against the glass.

  Walter jerked and looked to hide before he remembered he was not visible to that girl. She lifted her arm and pulled with all of her weight. The seal on the door popped and it slid open.

  “It stopped raining, Mom!” the girl yelled. She looked like she was about eight years old, her hair pulled back into two ponytails on the top of her head.

  “Wear your boots!” a woman shouted back and Walter smiled, reminded of Rosie and Jennifer during his daughter’s young, pleasant years.

  “Who are these people?” Walter asked. The little girl pulled on a pair of pink rain boots and slicker that matched and charged out into the damp air.

  “I’ve never met them,” Peter said.

  Walter turned to look at Peter, but from the corner of his eye he saw where there had only been one tree, suddenly there were two and then four. All the trees began to multiply and grow. The single spruce became a forest of long established trees that knit themselves together to create a thick canopy. The swing set vanished and a large granite overhang replaced it, part of the Northern Shield. Roots grew under Walter’s feet, slithering like snakes underneath the brown pine needles and rotting leaves that hadn’t been there before.

  The sky opened up past the tops of the trees, like a soaring cathedral ceiling. Clouds seemed taller and the air suddenly tasted good. Like pine and wood smoke. The house faded to mist and a river ran beneath it, babbling over rocks, glittering in the sun that moved from its western slope to just above the eastern horizon.

  “What’s going on?”
Walter asked, panicked.

  5

  “It’s morning,” Peter said.

  “Morning where?” Walter stumbled as rocks slowly bubbled and solidified beneath his feet.

  Peter turned, searched the north for something, and out of air, wind, and whatever magic this boy controlled, Walter’s grandparents’ cabin appeared on the bluff overlooking the river.

  Nostalgic, little-boy wonder, something he’d long ago forgotten he’d ever experienced, manifested itself from the dying remains of his earthly emotions. “We’re in Minnesota,” Walter said.

  And just like that, the drone of a thousand mosquitoes filled the air. Black flies the size of sparrows orbited his head but never landed.

  “Lovely,” Peter muttered, swatting at the sudden swarm.

  “But what are we doing here?”

  Peter handed him the sheet. “It’s the first day on your list.”

  He and his folks and brother had vacationed dozens of times up here over the years, but the date printed in black and white meant nothing to him. Could have been any one of those vacations.

  “I don’t—”

  “Here they come.”

  Leaves rustled behind him and Walter turned to find, emerging from the pine trees to stand on the granite overhang, his father, Vicktor, his brother, Christopher, and cousin Dan, and finally bringing up the rear—himself.

  “Holy shit!” Walter cried. “That’s me.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  They all had fishing poles and tackle boxes. Christopher wore the hat Dad had given him with the lures tucked in the band. It was too big. He had to keep pushing the hat out of his face, his fingers constantly pricked by the lures.

  Walter had no such hat.

  “God, look at me.” Walter approached his young self. He was a child. A baby. Though, from the view of his ankle over his Chuck Taylors and below the hem of his blue jeans, he’d experienced a heck of a growth spurt recently.

  Always tall, always skinny, he looked startlingly so in whatever odd hindsight this was. His hands holding his fishing pole looked awkward or vulnerable, too big on the whip-thin bamboo pole. Not a boy’s hands and far from being a man’s hands, but the first taste of the ungainly teenage years to come.

  Walter still couldn’t place this day. Fishing at the cabin with his dad and brother was a pretty common occurrence. The fact that Dan was there and that his right arm ended in a stump just below the elbow made it a summer after July 4, 1954.

  “What’s so special about this day? I mean I like fishing, but...”

  “You used to dream about this day.” Peter walked through branches as if they weren’t there. “When you got older. You dreamed about this day more than anything else.”

  “Really?” Walter ducked under a broken tree limb and realized he had no head to hit. Old habits, dying hard. “I don’t remember that dream.”

  “Most people don’t.”

  “But if it’s important, you’d think I’d remember.”

  “You’d think.”

  Fishing, he thought, with real uncompromised pleasure. Why the hell not?

  Peter hit a button on his mysterious remote with his thumb, and like a rope had been tied around Walter’s waist and then yanked with the force of a dozen horses, Walter was jerked backward. He folded in on himself, squeezed and squashed until it hurt. Until he thought his eardrums would burst and his nose would bleed. And then the pressure was gone and he lost the sensation of his body.

  Walter floated. Like something cut loose in the wind—leaves or a plastic bag from the grocery store. He twirled and dropped and then was tossed high again, and then it seemed the wind ceased blowing and he...just...stopped.

  6

  June 12, 1956

  Wabash, Minnesota

  Eastern Bank of the Kettle River

  * * *

  “Let’s split up,” Vicktor said, eyeing the river beneath them like a battleground. “Dan and Walter, you guys head north. Christopher and I will go south.”

  “I don’t want to go south—” Christopher whined, and Walter held his breath. Holy Crap, Christopher, it’s like you want to get smacked.

  “I didn’t ask you what you want, did I?” Vicktor didn’t even look at Christopher.

  “No sir,” Christopher whispered, and under his mustache Dad’s lips twitched in a smile. Slowly, Walter let out that breath.

  It had been a good morning so far, but Christopher’s whining could ruin everything.

  “Remember,” Dad said, looking over at Walter with his cold, hard eyes.

  Don’t flinch, he thought. Don’t look away.

  “You don’t catch anything, you don’t eat anything.”

  He said it like he already expected Walter to come up empty. I’m good, he wanted to shout. I’m patient and careful and I’m better than Christopher, not that you notice.

  But what he said was, “Yes sir,” and nodded at Dan before stepping through the trees along a deer path that ran beside the river.

  They walked for about twenty minutes until the trail ended at a granite lip that jutted out into a small set of rapids. Dan dug something out of his pocket and sat down, leaning against a dead tree stump, his pole forgotten at his side.

  Walter stepped up to the water and made a big show of looking through his tackle box, but mostly he watched Dan out of the corner of his eye. Dan could still roll a cigarette even though he didn’t have his right hand. Mom said he had to be nice and not stare, but Jesus. Dan was rolling a cigarette with one hand!

  “You want one?” Dan asked, holding out the finished product of his efforts.

  “No,” Walter muttered and peered back into his tackle box, moving things around like he hadn’t been watching, his heart beating hard against his ribs.

  Dan made him nervous these days and it wasn’t just the hand. He’d turned fifteen this year. And seemed different because of it. Like he knew things Walter would never know.

  Dan pulled a lighter from the pocket of his blue jeans and lit the cigarette.

  They used to be friends. They’d ride bikes to each other’s houses after school. But now...Walt didn’t know what they were.

  Just cousins, maybe.

  “Your dad must hate you,” Dan said. He pulled a flake of tobacco off his tongue and squinted at Walter.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Walter selected a mayfly lure and tucked his pole between his knees so he could tie the little bit of feathers and plastic to his line.

  “He always puts you with me.”

  “So?”

  “Well…” Dan chortled. “He definitely hates me, so I figure that’s why he puts us together.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Walter said, but he couldn’t be sure. Dad really acted like he didn’t like Dan. Always had. Which didn’t make any sense considering Dan used to be the nicest guy. He still was nice, he just wasn’t...polite, maybe. The guy was smart. He could jump higher than anyone else at the high school, he’d even made the varsity basketball team as a freshman. But Dad always treated Dan like he’d done something wrong.

  “Christopher’s little, is all.” He took the line between his forefinger and thumb and cast into the still area around the rocks just this side of the rapids. The fish liked those places best.

  “Christopher can’t fish!” Dan cried and started laughing. “Your Dad gave him that hat and Christopher hates it!”

  “That’s not true.” Walter looked over his shoulder at Dan. But it was. Christopher didn’t like the bugs and he said that Dad was too mean to make it fun. Dad made it hard.

  Which was true, but that’s the way Dad did everything.

  “Why didn’t he give you the hat?” Dan asked. “You love fishing.”

  Walter swallowed and pulled his line a bit, jerking the lure to attract something, anything that might end this dumb conversation.

  He liked the hat. The lures Dad had taken all that time to tie and put on the band glittered and gleamed in the sunshine. It was a serious hat. A great ha
t.

  “It was Christopher’s birthday,” Walter muttered. Mom told him he needed to be kind to his brother. But he wanted to take that hat. Christopher didn’t treat it well, he left it balled up under his bed, but Walter always pulled it out and hung it over the lamp so the lures wouldn’t get tangled and the hat kept its shape.

  “So?” Dan tapped the ash from the cigarette beside him on the stone.

  “So what?”

  “Why doesn’t he like you?”

  “He likes me just fine! Why doesn’t he like you?”

  Dan blinked. And then smiled and shrugged like the answer didn’t really matter to him. “I don’t know.”

  Walter swallowed the ball of guilt. He shouldn’t have said anything. They didn’t talk about the accident. After the fight between Dad and Uncle Mark, not even Grandma talked about “poor Dan.”

  “The thing with the firecracker was an accident, you know,” he felt compelled to say.

  “You sure about that?” Dan looked down at his cigarette as he ground it into the stone. He pulled his supplies out and started assembling another one.

  “He thought it was a dud.”

  “Good,” Dan smiled. “Everyone should believe good things about their dads.” He nodded out toward Walt’s line. “I think you just got robbed.”

  Walt turned and started reeling in. Sure enough, his hook was empty and his lure was gone. Damn it!

  “I’m going to take a nap,” Dan said.

  Walter didn’t say anything, he tied on a new lure, slung back his arm, let his elbow and wrist go fluid like Dad taught him, and set the lure spiraling out through the sunlight and swarms of mosquitoes that hovered over the still places on the river. He got it as close as he could to the rapids and then, like he’d been taught, he waited.

  He counted trees on the opposite bank of the river.

  He stood in one spot as long as he could, counting to a hundred, sometimes a hundred and ten, and then he shifted and started all over again.

  He named all the states that began with the letter A and all the countries that started with the letter C.