Hot dog, it’s a plan, and I am just about to wake up Eddie when I realize I have no idea what to say.
Do I tell him?
Should I let him know he is going to pass away tomorrow morning?
How can I?
There’s no way, I can’t do it, but am I right in holding out?
Would I want to know?
If it plays out right, we will have a blast and stay up all night and hopefully, in the morning, he will peacefully fall asleep and never wake up. If the fates are merciful, he will never know.
Just then, as if to punctuate my thoughts with a cruel burst of laughter, the fates throw a monkey wrench into my pleasant little Vegas plan. The engine chortles like a constipated bull and then cuts out. I coast along for a few pathetic miles until the car slows to a stop. My eyes settle on the instrument panel. The gas gauge reads E.
Fuck!
I knew it. I noted it even. I said to myself: Self, get off the freeway and get another car or somehow steal some gas. Self, the foolish procrastinator, responded quite coolly and calmly: Soon, man, soon.
Soon?
Fuck me, I am an idiot. I cross my fingers and give the engine a crank. The car roars to life, my heart flutters, I jam my foot down and take off. This stretch of highway seems to be mostly desert and animals, traversed by sporadic amounts of traffic, interspersed with huge stretches of empty spaces between desolate little towns. Unfortunately, we happen to be in one of those empty stretches of space. Not a town or a gas station in sight. After about three minutes the car sputters and dies and I coast onto the dirt shoulder of the highway.
“Gas?” a quiet, sleepy voice asks from the backseat.
So much for making Eddie’s end a memorable one. Gee, sorry buddy, looks like we get to spend the rest of your short life stranded on the side of a desert road. Or, my apologies, but instead of conquering a roller coaster and marveling at the lights of Vegas we have to flag down a hapless Samaritan and beg for a ride or perhaps attempt to steal their car.
“Charles?” Eddie’s voice is delightfully scratchy.
“You called it. Gas.”
“I dreamed I was dead.”
Appropriate. “Well, here we are, not dead, just stranded.” Not really very cheerful, but uplifting considering the imminent alternative. I go on, “Got any ideas?”
“I just woke up.”
“Right, and you were dead, but now you’re back. Genius intuition?”
This gets Eddie going and he sits up straight and exclaims, “All we have to do is wave someone down. They’ll stop because I’m five. No big deal. No rush.”
If he only knew.
I get out of the car, stretch, and then open Eddie’s door. “Come on, we don’t want to let any cars pass. We don’t want to miss our chance.”
“This is a major highway,” Eddie starts in as he touches his socked feet to the dirt shoulder, “there will be plenty of chances. We won’t have to wait long. Are you feeling better?”
“Better?”
“At the gas station where we should’ve gotten gas”—he rolls his eyes—“you looked sick.”
“No. I mean, I’m fine. Thanks for asking. You fell asleep fast.”
“At my age there isn’t much I can do about it. I woke up around three a.m. and then stayed awake all through breakfast and past my naptime. This causes extreme exhaustion and before long I fall out of sync and am unable to control myself. It’s frustrating. Five-year-olds need to follow a stringent routine. It’s good for our mental and physical health. Deviations from the day-to-day schedule tend to make me crabby and apt to fall asleep at any moment, kind of like a narcoleptic with an attitude problem. In any case, I feel better now, but I am famished. I don’t suppose we have anything nourishing to eat?”
“Not unless you have something buried in that mound of clothes.” I point to the backseat. Eddie yawns and stretches away sleep. The sight of the little guy brings a grin to my face. He is still wearing his pajamas and his hair has gone nappy from sleeping at odd angles. I look even worse for the wear, greasy and most likely smelly, although my nostrils have since acclimated and there’s no telling.
“No, just clothing.” He sighs. “I really am hungry. I have never gone without a meal. Logically, I should be fine for a while. The human body, even at five years, is remarkably resourceful and capable of fasting for long periods of time. Nevertheless, despite reason, I feel that if I don’t eat soon, I will waste away.”
Waste away. Yes, indeed, despite reason, Eddie will in fact waste away very soon whether he finds a meal or not. I struggle to push the idea from my head and move on, but it refuses to budge and sits heavy on my brain. A little voice echoes inside: Tell him. He has the right to know.
And he does, but not from me. As smart as Eddie is I’m not sure his brain can handle it. He may know a lot, but he is still just five and doesn’t need to hear it. What we need to do is get cleaned up and off this highway so we can fill his head with an eventful memory.
“What are you struggling with, Charles?”
I ignore him and focus on clearing my head. A few cars pass and I wave but they blur by without even slowing
“Do you have something to tell me? I can’t see it, but there’s something.” Eddie persists.
I continue to ignore him. “Is there anything you can wear in this pile?” I lean in the car and start rummaging through the clothing. “We have to look presentable if we want someone to help us out.”
“I told you earlier, they’re women’s clothes. Those are my mama’s goodwill clothes. She goes through her closet, gathers up what she no longer wants and then throws them in the back of the car until she gets around to taking them to the Salvation Army, which usually doesn’t happen for a long, long time, but it’s okay because I like the way they smell.”
“Yeah, well, we gotta find something because you’re a cute kid, but not that cute, and nobody wants to help out a filthy pair of bums like us.” Tell him, the inner voice persists.
“If there is something you have to tell me, even if it’s negative, I can take it. I want to know.”
Letting out a frustrated sigh, I turn from the clothes. “Eddie.” I say his name very solemnly, enunciating every letter for emphasis and effect. I want him to understand how very serious I am. “Stop trying to read my thoughts. Stop trying to drag things out of me that have no business beyond the confines of my skull.”
“I was just—”
I don’t let him finish and continue hammering home my point, “Are you my friend?”
“Of course. I have only just met you, but you are the best friend I have ever had. In actuality, you are the only friend I have ever had, not to debase the fact that you are the best. If I had others whom I considered friends, there is no doubt in my head that you would still be the best. You treat me fairly. Almost like an equal. You are my best friend.”
“Good, and I like you very much and consider you a friend as well, but you have to respect my head space. You can’t read a friend’s mind unless you are invited to do so. Understand?”
“My apologies.” Eddie steps around me and begins sifting through the clothes. He finds a dark green T-shirt and holds it up. “This will probably fit you. It isn’t too feminine, is it?”
The green shirt is very feminine and it clings to my torso in uncomfortable ways, but it is worlds better than the filthy, mucked-up sweater I have been wearing. We rummage some more and find a pair of gray sweatpants that serve as a suitable replacement for my supersoiled pants. Before I change I am sure to remove Annabelle’s address from my old pocket and stuff it into my left sock for safe keeping. For Eddie we find another dark green T-shirt—this one a little smaller, although it still looks too big on him. We have no luck in the pants department and much to his chagrin his pajama bottoms will have to do.
It is almost dark and there haven’t been any cars in a while. Eddie and I sit on the hood of his mother’s car, ridiculous in our green women’s T-shirts, and scan the horizon f
or approaching traffic.
“Charles, did you like being a kid?”
“It was all right,” I lie.
“Did you get along with other children?”
“Sometimes. I guess I did. I didn’t really have problems until I was a teenager,” I lie again.
A pair of headlights appear in the distance. I jump off the hood and motion for Eddie to follow. “When this car gets closer, we have to start jumping up and down, okay?”
“Okay. Was it because of your hand?”
“Yeah. It ruined my life.” I motion for Eddie to pay attention to the oncoming car.
He nods and keeps talking. “In my dreams I trust you, but your hand is evil. What’s wrong with it?”
“It causes seizures. Wave your hands.”
“You’re epileptic?” Eddie raises his arms.
“No, it’s just a weird phenomenon. The seizures come from here.” I show him my left hand and point at the smooth palm.
“Hmmm. That doesn’t make sense. How can your palm cause a seizure? Seizures are neurological disorders.” Eddie furrows his brow and looks ready to go off on a related tangent, but shakes it off and gets back on track. “Regardless, why would seizures cause you so many problems? Lots of people live with medical conditions.”
“They disrupt everything and people don’t care, they don’t have the patience for them. When you have a seizure in junior high school, when you have twenty seizures a week in junior high school, kids tend to make faces, talk mess and stay away. Everything just sort of went downhill from there. Here it comes.”
The car nears—it’s a black minivan, and we begin gesticulating wildly. Our frantic signaling works and the car pulls over a few feet up the road.
“Yes!” Eddie cheers. “Come on, friend,” he calls as he runs to the minivan.
Friend. Cute. I follow and start turning over plans in my head. Do I kill the driver? Do I get rid of him or her and commandeer the car for myself, or do I state my direction and sit back and enjoy the ride? If Annabelle returns and I have acquired another friendly human, or worse a set of friendly humans (it is a minivan), she is going to be royally pissed. Ordinarily I couldn’t care less, but the treacherous swells of heat and joy I feel when I think about her tell me otherwise. It matters and I have purpose so it’s probably best that I kill him or her or they as soon as I get the chance. I’ll urge him or her or they to pull over at the next gas station or town or rest stop, lure him or her or them away from Eddie and the minivan and drain them. Then it’s off to Vegas for a few hours of reprieve before Eddie passes.
My thoughts turn over endlessly and an alternate plan is beginning to form. I am mere feet away from the black minivan when my toiling thoughts crumble around the horrible sound of Eddie screaming. I catch a glimpse of his tiny frame being pulled into the van as its sliding door slams shut. Before horrendous disbelief has the chance to set in, the van speeds away in a cloud of roadside dust.
I stand stunned.
For a second my brain just sort of drops out and I feel like so much nothing. I feel like we will all probably feel when this thing is over. I feel like Eddie will feel in some hours. I feel empty, airy, unmade and surprisingly content. No more Eddie. No more feeling. A guy could get used to this. No one can get used to this.
It starts at my feet, I think—the burn, the river of heat, not the good Annabelle love heat, but the fuck-you-all, flesh-to-puddles heat—and it begins to travel upward steadily and evenly. When it reaches my head, I know I will come unglued and I will become the antithesis of these nothing feelings. I will become irrational rage, raw and ready and frustrated to the point of detonation. Seizing upon this momentary calm, I rush to the car and turn on the headlights. I flex my left foot to make sure Annabelle’s address is still there and then I run around to the front of the car and stand in the flooding glare. A car will come by soon, and when it does, I will get the driver to stop. By any means necessary I will get the driver to stop and then I will tear this highway to fucking pieces until I find him.
And then what?
Save him from death?
Protect him from a world that is dying?
No, none of these things, but something new, something like the love implanted inside for Annabelle, something good in a dreadful world, something I haven’t felt in years if ever at all. If I am lucky enough to find him, I will offer him my friendship: total friendship and the lost ability to reciprocate concern and kindness.
In the short time I have known him, he has shown a legitimate concern for my physical and mental well-being and he is the first person to ask me about myself, who I am and what I feel—in ages. Granted, I have constructed a self-imposed wall and don’t let people in, but Eddie sensed this and pushed through anyway. He noted the pain in my eyes and the sorrow in my heart and he didn’t shrug them off, or ignore them, or even delude himself into thinking that everything was okay. He wanted answers and he wanted to know what was wrong with me so that maybe he could help. The fact that he couldn’t is moot. I have to stick with my initial plan and do everything I can to save him and make sure his last few hours are worthwhile. Besides, the idea of some monster hurting him makes me fucking crazy.
Flames eat my brain and it feels as though my heart has been pulled from my rib cage. Why does shit like this happen? Can I get any deader inside? I mean, what are the fucking odds? Anti-luck, from day one. Poor Eddie—my friend, my only friend—I am the worst thing to ever happen to him.
I squint and stare hard into the night. No car lights in either direction. The minivan is gaining a tremendous lead and I kick the ground in helpless aggravation. Waiting, always waiting. I feel like I am drowning.
The fucked-up thing is I can barely remember what the minivan looks like. The incident happened so damn fast and the whole time I was plotting the fate(s) of Eddie’s captor(s). It’s ultimately indicative of why I am here and why this world deserves the sickness I am about to unleash upon it. Everybody’s constantly plotting, constantly thinking about themselves. This alone doesn’t necessarily warrant mass extinction. Self and survival are important things, but they must be tempered with compassion and an exterior awareness. Humanity is far too audacious for its own good. I never considered for a moment that the minivan driver was a threat. He or she or they, with their twisted abduction plans, probably never considered me a threat.
The end is coming and I am proud to bring it because humanity as a collective can’t possibly think outside of itself. It can’t even recognize the harm it may or may not be doing to anything other than itself because it only thinks about itself.
The crazy, esoteric details of my mission, the stuff I struggle with, the notion that the earth is dreaming us and we are somehow infecting it, a dream consuming the dreamer, makes little to no sense, but the idea that we as a species are forcing our will and mindlessly corrupting something of beauty, enslaving it and bending it to our whims makes complete sense—after all, it’s what we do.
And it’s a shame because the Eddies of the world are suffering for mistakes they haven’t yet made. “Yet” being the operative word. Even Eddie, if given the chance to grow old, would eventually give up on poking around in other people’s minds and he would get lost in his own.
A loud horn blares. While absorbed within myself, thinking idiot thoughts, I failed to notice the car that has pulled onto the shoulder.
The car looks very fast, a Porsche, I think, though I am pretty bad with car names. I run up to the passenger door and the window rolls down. A man with dark, oily hair and wild, wild eyes yells over the roar of his engine, “Are you all right?”
“I need help,” I respond and the man motions for me to get in. I do, but then he says, “Your lights. You better turn off your lights.” I nod and get out and run back to the car.
A minute later we are tearing down the road.
“Name’s Logan.” The oily-haired man sniffs hard and extends his hand. He is wearing leather gloves with cut-off fingertips. I pretend not to
see his hand; I don’t know if this guy will be able to help me and I don’t want to infect him just yet.
After a second he withdraws his hand and puts it on the wheel. “So you broke down, huh? Need a lift to the next town?”
Words don’t come. I don’t want to spook him, but I am trying to figure the best way to explain. He looks strong and potentially mean and he may be an asset if he hates kidnappers as much as the next person. Not that I need any help what with my killing hand, but it’s nice having a driver—it gives me more time to think.
Logan takes his eyes off the road and gives me a long stare. “Have you been crying?”
I wipe my face. I guess I have. Embarrassment blooms. “Thanks for stopping.”
“No prob. You look like you needed some help is all.”
I decide to lay it out for him. In quick, concise words I tell my story. Me and my friend, um son, were driving along when we ran out of gas and a black minivan rolled up and on and on.
Logan sniffs a few more times, steps on the gas hard, and then starts shaking his head no. “I can’t fucking believe it, man! I cannot fucking believe it! Don’t worry…What did you say your name was?”
“Charles.”
“Don’t you worry, Charles, we will get your boy. We will find those sons of bitches and cut their goddamn balls off. We will shove their cocks down their slimy throats!”
Fishing around under his seat, Logan brings out a big, shiny gun and then says low, under his breath, “We’ll blow their fucking heads off. You’re lucky I picked you up, man. This is your lucky day. We’ll blow their heads off. Their big heads and their little heads if you catch my drift.” His volume returns. “You catch my drift?”
I Will Rise Page 15