Life on Mars

by Lori McNulty

  “Five bucks more to tongue her,” Gordy convulsed, stepping out from behind a wall of jocks, holding out a crumpled bill.

  Sam hunched his shoulders, but he held his hand out.

  “Just a joke,” he chuckled, when I shoved him and slapped the bill from Gordy’s hand. The slow dancers broke apart, encircling us, laughing. When I looked up into the bleachers, Yani was gone. Left me isolated as Mao’s China. I finally spotted him in front of the girl’s change room, just behind the gym’s double doors. Seeing my drawn face, arms folded tight beneath the “No Exit” sign, he shrugged dismissively, flashed a reckless smile, and pointed up toward the prank we’d been waiting all year to pull.

  Our favourite English teacher had brought in a Time magazine cover as a way of discussing modern writers grappling with the meaning of existence. The cover was solid black with a question composed of three words printed across it. Yani and I had the cover printed up large, rolled it up and taped it from the railings. Next to it, we painted an identical cover with the answer.

  Is Yes.

  God Charon

  Dead? demands job.

  Shooting me a hard, furtive look through those glass doors, he smirked, mouthed something like “Fuck them,” and gave the fire alarm a tug on his way out.

  Samuary.

  Second Down. And we’re screwed.

  Ten minutes left on the clock. Down by five points. The field is a trampled mess. The gloves are off. I can’t feel the tips of my fingers.

  My heart is on fire when I look out at Sam and Prem who know I need five yards for a first down, and they’re not about to give me an inch.

  “Run ten yards then curl in,” I instruct Pork-Eye in the huddle. “Don’t stop until you smell pigskin.”

  Faking a hand-off to Kevin, I hit Pork-Eye who curls outside by mistake and is shouldered hard by Sam, though he makes the catch.

  “Out,” Sam yells, raising his arms.

  “Not a chance,” I shout.

  “Look,” he gestures down at the makeshift sideline. “Both feet. Out of bounds.”

  Prem echoes Sam, who marches out a straight line between the catch and the two backpacks we used as sideline markers.

  We look over at Yani to make the call.

  He sits up from his sideline perch, eyes the two backpacks. With great drama, he raises his yellow cane to eye level, closes one lid like he’s looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

  Calls the ball out.

  Christ, he’s stubborn. He just wants his fucking pizza.

  Maudit, merde.

  You had to know the rules with Yani. I tried to keep his world together when things broke down at home. Through his eyes, I had found my strength, tempered my weakness. But the rules kept on changing. He expected unfailing attention, my unshakable loyalty, the bonds of an immutable friendship. Or maybe it was just me who did.

  Christmas holidays were in full swing. Exams aced, classes out. Deliverance was ours. Yani and I had made up again when he gave me a mixed tape with handwritten liner notes by way of apology. We listened to it in his basement, over hot chocolate with a splash of crème de menthe that tasted like bitter mouthwash.

  Hunkered down that night in our upper balcony hideout at the theatre, Yani and I leaned back, popcorn tubs on our laps, heads tilted as the lights dimmed. Extra butter on top and no Disney bullshit, please.

  Escape from Alcatraz loomed, as heavy as thunder, across the big screen.

  We grinned, watched the camera slow pan across San Francisco Bay, zooming in on the island prison where Capone was once locked up; just B-block and his banjo. Onscreen, a brooding darkness hangs in the air as heavy rains slash the open waters. Clint disembarks from the boat, is stripped down inside the prison then escorted naked through the dank halls to his cell.

  “Welcome to Alcatraz,” the guard says, as he slams the cell door shut, inches from Clint’s face.

  All I had ever seen of the island was from San Francisco during a family holiday, but we never got any closer than Pier 39. Weather was wretched and tickets for the boat tour had been sold out for weeks. I refused to talk to my family the entire day.

  Some kids go crazy for light sabres and aliens. For Yani and me, Alcatraz Island was a notorious thing. An elusive white prison-castle, seabirds circling above it, hacks in the prison towers ready to pick off escapees. And all the prisoners could do was look back at the mainland, in plain sight, yet over a mile-long swim in the bay’s freezing, choppy stew. The Rock. And what the rock belched out. A skyline full of fog-bathed tourists, hippie-dippies, and fishermen selling fresh catches right off their boats. And all of it just out of reach.

  The prisoners all had scars, pocked faces, and harelips. They made shanks in their bunks, dreaming up a new destiny then digging it out from their cells using sharpened commissary spoons.

  When Escape from Alcatraz came out in the summer of 1979, we watched the afternoon matinee, stayed for the early evening screening, and repeated the ritual.

  No one ever busted out of Alcatraz? Sure they had. We’d seen Clint do it seven times already.

  “Adults only in the uppers,” a pimple-pocked usher commanded, waving his flashlight spear at us.

  “Nothing but gimps and grandpas up here,” Yani smiled. He made a big show of hauling his dead right leg up over his left. The usher muttered apologies and retreated.

  “See you later, man,” we said, quoting the film. “Jinx.”

  Yani’s bum leg came from some bug that had crawled into him as a kid in Winnipeg. Started out like some flu, body aches, his head burning up. Then his whole body swelled, his hips became so weak he couldn’t get out of bed for six months. A year later, after he had recovered enough to return to school, his father had to uproot for work and moved them all the way to Ontario. Yani had no friends, an awkward limp, and a new life in the burbs. He told me it was like being sucked from the mother ship and hurled at Mars, wearing a cracked space helmet.

  Yani and I watched Clint sprint twenty yards across the prison yard, dodging the roving spotlight. Here the music did an epic build-up. We smiled at each other, kernels plugging our gums. We’d watched this scene so often, yet always froze up.

  Clint is shimmying down fifty feet of drainpipe, playing gravel-mouthed Frank Morris, a real-life criminal with a super-high IQ. His breath plumes. Light falls over his grim face. Fearless.

  “They made it, you know,” Yani whispered, digging a finger into my kidney.

  “Drowned like sewer rats,” I shot back.

  “Never found the bodies.”

  “Three cons in a rubber raft made of raincoats?” I gave my popcorn tub a firm shake. “Please.”

  Clint tucks and rolls, barely evading the tower guards. The spotlight glances across his shoes.

  “Froze to death in the bay,” I told him.

  Yani smirked and leaned over. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Guess what? Anna in the office says the school’s adding co-ed touch football next year.”

  I nearly had a heart attack.

  Yani snorted. “Short skirt, a little lip gloss.” He shook imaginary pompoms in my face. “You could be starting cheerleader. Gimme an A!”

  “Asshole!” I twisted his bony wrist.

  Yani pinched my thigh. I fist-pounded his weak bicep.

  “You’re not a guy, May. Get over it. Buy a skirt. Grow some real tits.”

  “Think you’ll ever get a date with that ugly fence post of yours?” I hissed. “Not even a dog-faced circus girl with chin pus and halitosis.”

  “Aw. Daddy’s little boy is pouting,” he jeered, pretending to pinch my cheeks.

  And for some reason I pictured my dad and me wearing matching beige vests in our two-man aluminum boat, casting on the rod and reel TV show we loved to watch together. Arms over shoulders after landing a ten-pounder. Attaboy. Good man. I was the son my father would never have; the boy’s absence in me like a phantom limb.

  With all the force in my body, I landed two elbows in Yani’s chest.
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br />   Yani dumped his entire Coke across my lap but neither of us bolted.

  The thing you have to know about Yani is how hard he tried to fail. Class-cutting. Whining about moronic teachers and idiot jocks in a voice growing so tense and shrill it was like an electric guitar wailing in my ears. Anything to distract from that crooked stump. One minute he’d be red-eyed over his parents’ fighting, the next a sullen lump of hate. Push the wrong button and he’d disappear. Then his loss was a translucent bruise spreading beneath my skin. I never knew how much it would hurt, once the trouble started.

  Staring straight ahead, we watched three fugitives kick out toward the frozen riptide, their arms wrapped around a raincoat raft fastened with rubber cement. Into the foggy night, three men vanish. Drowned in the furious bay currents or having reached mainland; no one ever knew. None of the men were ever seen or heard from again.

  Samuary.

  Last down and long.

  “No prisoners,” I call out in the huddle.

  “Had enough?” Prem asks as I line up behind Pork-Eye. “Better punt.”

  My head is a block of ice with teeth. Both snot-stuffed nostrils are flaring, like those black plastic gorillas with the removable arms that go pop! when you pull them.

  Yani has moved in closer to the sidelines to catch the final play. He doesn’t give a shit about the game, but I promised to buy us pizza because his Christmas was such a bust. He keeps gesturing with his hands how many hot slices he’s planning devour on my dime.

  Pork-Eye gives me the snap. I wind up, arm back for the throw.

  My hand hovers mid-air, remembering the arc, cool air where my finger and thumb form a V. I lean forward, sailing too.

  The ball pings high off Prem’s right shoulder ten yards away.

  “Interception!”

  I sprint forward, manage to scoop up the wobbly ball in my outstretched hands. Breaking toward the sidelines, my boots slip-slide on the slick, packed snow. Three stooges on the defensive line are trailing me. I look back, am almost across the end zone when someone clips my boot heel, catapulting me toward the foam-covered posts.

  “Don’t move,” Yani yells, hobbling toward me.

  I can’t. My eyes fill. My right arm is bent unnaturally under my hip. Where I clipped the post, my knee feels plump, fat as a pink grapefruit. The sharp pain in my stomach makes me want to vomit.

  “I never touched her!” Prem protests, as the guys circle around.

  “Jesus, May, are you all right?” Sam approaches me cautiously. Lying on my back, I can see his blond curls brush across the top of his eyebrows.

  Salty tears. Like I’ve sprung a goddamn leak.

  Struggling with his cane, Yani kneels next to me, holding his hand out the way Clint would, a mighty, manly grip that will take us over the wall.

  When I try to sit up, Prem takes a startled step back, seeing my blood-stained lips.

  “Geez, May, I’m really sorry,” Sam falters, bending down and reaching past me for his Christmas ball. “But I gotta go. Dinner’s early. Dad’s here from Detroit.”

  Yani whips his cane across, striking Sam’s shin. “Fuck you.”

  “Don’t shove me, gimp,” Sam blasts Yani, pushing him backward.

  They tumble together, but Sam easily recovers. “Look, May, I’ll call your mom.”

  “Don’t,” I implore.

  “Okay,” he nods. “I’m really sorry,” and sprints away with his ball.

  With a trick of his cane, Yani manages to return upright, and in a crouch, pull his arm around me and lift us, bearing most of my weight on his cane.

  My arm is throbbing, a piercing pain shoots up my shoulder.

  “Let’s go, warrior,” he says, steadying me. Gently, Yani shifts me around, so my back is turned toward the rest of the guys. My whole body shakes in his grasp. Keeping my right arm tight against my chest, we hobble off the field.

  “I was like Gabriel going in for the clutch,” I sob.

  “More like your head went in cabbage and came out coleslaw,” he says, and leans in to kiss my bloody lips.

  Sirens scream through my dreams that night. Dazed, barefoot, still dreaming of Hail Mary passes, I wake up to sirens wailing outside my window. I hop toward my frosted glass, wincing as I cradle the weight of my new arm cast.

  Flames pierce the blackened sky.

  My mother rushes into my room. “Stay there, May,” her voice taut and trembling. “There’s a fire across the street.”

  She hurries out and thunders downstairs after my father.

  From the window, I focus hard enough to see Mrs. Feltimore, wrapped in a pale pink housecoat, stumbling barefoot over a snowbank. A man in a uniform scoops her up and hustles her into his squad car. Her two young girls, with tussled hair, open coats over pajamas, are sitting up on stretchers. Another two fire trucks arrive. An ambulance follows. Neighbours slowly stray across their doorsteps to form a ragged line across the burning scene.

  Shocked, still groggy, I brace against the railing on the slow climb downstairs to join my mother at the front door. She hugs me. We both watch as my father sprints across the driveway, blankets crowding his arms.

  Firemen fling off their masks to suck in fresh air. Shingles are flying from the roof. Two more firemen rush inside the smoke-shrouded house. Another ambulance arrives, skidding across black ice. My mother leaves me to grab the ringing phone, and I hop out the door without a coat, watch the entire Feltimore living room peel away like tarpaper.

  When the toxic clouds finally lift, I feel numb, no pain in my broken arm at all.

  Two months after the blaze, my father and I are shovelling the driveway for the second time that afternoon. Mr. Naylor from down the street drops by to talk. I drag my shovel toward them, lingering a few paces behind my father. Mr. Naylor is shaking his head, complaining about the record snowfall we are having, but I can tell he is itching for a real talk because he keeps glancing over at me and dropping his voice.

  “Think it blasted up from the basement,” he says, pointing to a random mark on the blackened concrete foundation where the Feltimore place had once stood.

  He smiles over at me. Both men step closer together, looking out across the street.

  “Wife heard he wanted her back for the holidays. Divorce wasn’t his idea,” Mr. Naylor speculates in a hushed tone.

  “Heard they found a stack of open paint cans, loose rags, an old TV plugged in along with the space heater,” my father says, leaning on his shovel.

  “Could’ve been my basement,” Mr. Naylor observes, shaking his head.

  “A short. One spark. All it takes,” my father agrees, shaking his head. With his gloves, he pulls his toque way back on his forehead. His salt-and-pepper hair is plastered to his face. Even from where I stand, I can see him wipe the corner of his eye and look away.

  “Such a mess down there, so much debris removed by the firemen, they ruled the cause of the blaze indeterminate,” Mr. Naylor notes.

  In a strained voice, my father adds, “Hear the boy’s going to be okay, though.”

  And I can still picture him lying on the corduroy couch in the basement, inhaling thick smoke billowing through the wood-panelled walls. Sam, sixteen years old, holding his father’s football.

  Samuary.

  Before bumper crop dandelions.

  Before long hallway kisses and late-night TV.

  Before I went from cropped hair to shoulder-length, for good.

  Behind the scrimmage line, a flag is thrown. In my mind, the passing play marched back to the forty-yard line, to the thirty, all the way to that blaze-filled blackness. I still remember my eyes stinging, watching the firemen work. Flames pouring out the windows then clawing up toward the Feltimore’s roof. Billowing smoke. Bitter cold. The blurring lines.

  Salty summer taste on my tongue, I whip the lawn mower around the azalea bushes, keeping my cut line straight.

  Eight months after the fire, across the road, men toss residual scraps of wood onto a rubble pile whil
e a Bobcat hauls away the last remaining trace of fire on a street stained with suspicion. At the far edge of the property, next to the Feltimores’ maple, the workers pitch their pinched cigarettes at a huge gravel pile.

  In a few months, the leaves will turn mottled yellow, the tall maple screaming the landscape crimson.

  In a few years, I will no longer trust what I’ve seen.

  How I had stuttered at the police station when the officer asked me in the days after the fire. “What was the last thing you saw, miss? Someone moving toward or away from the house? Could it have been a fireman? A man’s hand or a tree branch waving in the distance?”

  “A hand or a tree, miss, which was it?”

  The brusque officer kept making me repeat the story.

  How I tiptoed through the facts, trying to make sense of that night. Crews and ladders and veils of smoke. Rubbing my stinging eyes as I hopped forward to the end of the driveway. Watching the flames grow, thick smoke like steel wool knotted up my throat, while my mother tried to calm the sobbing next-door neighbours. I couldn’t make sense of the shadows. Was there a figure dodging in and out of the trees at the back of the house? The investigators tried to paint me a scene. “Think carefully, May. Take your time. I know this isn’t easy. Was there a man beneath the snapped branches of the Feltimores’ maple?”

  “I don’t know,” I finally told the cops, breaking down. “It was dark. I was half asleep.” Could have been nothing, my mind playing tricks. There were trucks, fire crews, people running everywhere. Maybe there could have been a man in a Detroit Lions jacket near the house. A flanker trying to find his opening. My mother finally stepped in, saying that I had had enough and she was taking me home.

  How my heart sank with the sound of the officer’s pen scratching his pad.

  How we marched across the parking lot, my dad buckling me in the back seat like a young child. “Okay honey, it’s all right. Let’s go home.” How we drove all the way home in silence.