I leaned against her. “I told you he was an asshole.”
The following day I returned to the wharf. Alone. The loser was not there, but I waited. It took many afternoons, but as I have mentioned before, I am a very patient person. On the fifth day, an opportunity presented itself. He came cycling by, the wheels of his bicycle dangerously close to the edge, on an embankment. He did not see me, of course, as I was no different from a thin tree or a flickering shadow. And people rarely see what is right in front of their stupid faces.
Only a moment before he passed in front of me, I picked up a hefty stick and threw it, javelin-style. My brain did a rapid calculation of velocity and direction, and I aimed several feet beyond where he was.
Snap. Ah! Perfection.
The stick caught in his front wheel, locked it, back wheel coming up and over, his body moving through the air, and then, bloop, disappearing. I heard a weak girlish scream, then branches cracking, leaves ripping. There was silence then, other than the intermittent chitter of cicadas. I maintained my position and watched — of course I did. After about fifteen minutes, I detected moaning, then gravel crunching, a stream of cuss words. The loser crawled up over the side. His blue t-shirt was torn, face and chest swollen and bloodied from split skin. His left arm hung limp. Like a scene from a gory movie. Perhaps he had a broken collarbone. He would definitely need stitches. His wounds would heal and leave bright purple scars on his face. I doubt his mother would have the means to pay for pain relievers.
How unfortunate.
Obviously I could not tell my friend of my success, but she would see him when school started. She would see him, and she would imagine that some sort of balance had been achieved. Some sort of cosmic restitution.
Imagining this made me feel a flapping joy. I wondered how my expression appeared at that moment. If I were to encounter our doctor, would he use Button’s term, jubilant? I believed he would.
I was jubilant. I would do anything for her.
I never wanted her to experience emptiness again.
[52]
After Warren left Nora’s, he got into his car and drove until he found a field. It was about a mile south of the pig factory, and he pulled onto the soft shoulder, got out. A barbed wire fence surrounded the property, and a small glowing house sat back from the road. Light snow covered an old truck, and smoke twirled from the chimney. Warren spread the wire, slipped between, and walked across the barren field. In the wintry twilight, he wanted to remember. He wanted to remember every detail of his father’s death.
In the middle of the field, an enormous tree had been left to grow. Someone had tied a tire swing to a sturdy branch, and it took sixty-four long strides to reach it. Then he eased his lanky frame in through the hole. Gradually he settled his weight, adjusted his position so the edges of the tire did not cut into his skin. When he was confident the rope would hold, he lifted his two feet from the earth. Warren gripped the frozen rope, let his head hang back, and with barely any force, he began to turn. A cool breeze kissed his cheek.
As a boy, he had often worked side by side with his father on their expanse of land, a family garden, carrots, red potatoes, fleshy tomatoes tied onto stakes with strips torn from an old t-shirt. After breakfast, Warren always plucked weeds, watered, but on that particular morning his father had asked him to help with mulching. They used a mix of grass clippings and hay, and it smelled sweet and slightly rotten at the same time. Warren shovelled it into a plastic bucket, and when full, he carried it to his father.
They were working on a row of Brussels sprouts, when his father looked at him and said, “The mulch. It keeps their feet cool.”
“And they like that?” Warren had replied.
“Of course. Who doesn’t like cool feet in the summer?” Then he said, “War, my love? When the sprouts form, can you remember to snap off the leaves underneath each sprout? That way the energy goes to the sprout, and not to the leaf. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“So you’ll remember?”
“Yes, Dad, I will.”
And his father grinned at him, his face and eyes bright. Warren thought his father looked happier than he had in a very long time. Jubilant, almost.
“I know it, son,” he said. “You’ll do just fine.”
Task complete, and Warren wandered over to the tree in their front yard, hopped into the tire swing and kicked back off the trunk. Each time his sneakers struck the bark, his stomach lurched. He began to wonder about his insides. How his muscles and bones, connected to one another, stopped from the force of the jolt, but his insides continued to move. An object in motion wants to stay in motion. He had learned about inertia from his father’s old science book. When his rubber soles collided with the tree, his guts wanted to stay in motion. They continued downwards, until they were contained inside the cradle of his pelvic bones. He glanced up at the sky. Were his guts somehow glued to his body cavity? Or were they simply piled on top of one another, a bit of tissue holding the mass together. He would have to ask his father. A man who was always patient, excited even, to share his seemingly endless knowledge. Warren kicked off from the trunk, closed his eyes.
Body swinging, and he felt a cool hand brush his cheek. Rough fingers moving like threads of wind through his overgrown hair. A gentle tug near the nape of his neck. “You!” he squealed, and turned, expecting to see his father. Smiling over his successful creeping, catching Warren off guard. But there was no one there. The entire backyard was empty. Not even Beth lurking around. He climbed down from the swing, pushed the rubber tire so it thumped against the tree. Ran his fingers on the back of his neck to smooth the alerted hair.
His legs felt weak, stomach queasy, throat tight and dry. He wondered how long he had been in the tire swing. Crossing the backyard, he went to the door to the kitchen. Stopped to admire a Luna moth clinging to the screen door. Bright green wings, span wider than Warren’s whole hand. Four vacant eyes. His father had told him the Luna moth does not even have a mouth.
“It can’t eat or talk?” Warren had asked. “What’s the point? No one will hear it if it’s in trouble.”
“Good point, it needs someone to watch over it. Protect it. But that said, it can fly,” he replied. “I suspect soaring above everything is a beautiful experience.”
Warren entered the kitchen, took a glass from the cupboard, and filled it with water from the tap. Gulping. He wiped his wet mouth in the crook of his arm, could smell sunshine on his skin. How had he absorbed it? All those rays of light penetrating him, making him smell like summer. Making him smell sweet.
After his eyes had adjusted, Warren looked around the kitchen. His father’s lunch was still on the table. The same as it was every single day, a large lemonade, a sandwich made on thick white bread. Warren touched the glass, still slick with condensation. No one had tasted the sandwich, but someone had lifted one half, laid it down on the plate again so that Warren could see the line of meat and mustard, thick layer of butter. For a moment, Warren paused and stared at the glass. An expanding puddle of water surrounding it. And then he stared at the sandwich. He was confused why it still sat on the plate.
He turned around.
“Dad?”
The house was still, but through the open window, Warren could hear the distant yelling of farmhands working the neighbour’s field. An engine stuttering, then dying. The slish of a breeze through drying corn stalks.
“Dad? Da-aad?” His father’s muddy boots were placed neatly on the rug by the back door. “Where is everyone? Geez, it’s so quiet around here.” He did not yell this out, but continued talking, his voice cluttering the silence.
The door to the basement was ajar. Warren nudged it with his foot, and it swung open. Cool damp air rose up out of the darkness. When he flicked the light switch, nothing happened. “Dad?” He knew his father spent considerable time in the cellar, tinkering with anyth
ing tinkerable. Sanding rust off of old saws. Sewing up worn corners of seed bags with a sturdy black thread and massive blunt needle. He ventured down into the darkness, each step squeaking.
Three steps along the cement floor, hands outward, and he felt his father’s soft plaid shirt. “There you are, Dad.” Words a melt of relief, though his heart refused to slow. “Why’re you standing here with no light? Did it just blow out?” Warren pushed his face into his father’s back, hugged him. “Your lunch is ready. Probably drying up. Fly food.”
The first thing Warren noticed was that his father’s belt was a little higher. The second was the sharp odour, the stench of a dirty chicken pen. The third, and most disturbing, was that with the gentle pressure of Warren’s hug, his father’s body swayed slightly, edged away from him, and smoothly returned. Warren squeezed, but the affection was not returned. “Dad? You okay?” Silence, except for a rhythmic creak. Like rope from his tire swing burning the branch.
Something gripped Warren then. Panic. As real as a thousand hands squeezing his skin. He dropped to the ground, felt his father’s swaying legs. Moving his hands down over damp pants, he reached his father’s grey socks. A hole in the heel. Area of muck on the floor, and for a moment, Warren thought his father was dripping, like the condensation coming off the glass in kitchen. He nearly giggled, was about to tell his father about this curious occurrence, but then, sliding his fingers further, Warren touched air. Air where it did not belong. The space not more than the width of his hand. Between his father’s feet. And the damp clay floor.
Warren remained in the kitchen while two neighbours arrived, cut his father down. His mother told him and Beth to wait. Not to budge. He obeyed, sat at the table. Beth swung her legs, backs of her buckled shoes hitting a metal bar beneath her. A steady clack. Clack. Clack. Warren counted each clack, then lifted his arm slightly, and she abandoned her drumming, slid underneath his elbow, pushed her ribcage against his. “Warsie?” “It’s okay, Beth. Don’t look. Just don’t look.” When they removed the sheeted body, Warren pressed his hand over Beth’s eyes, could feel her lashes tickling against his palm. “Eyes closed, Beth,” he said, though he knew she was straining to see through the gaps in his fingers.
He stared at his father’s last meal. Uneaten. A black fly buzzed through the open window, landed on the edge of the plate, rubbed its greedy legs together. He shooed the fly away, but it kept coming back.
“Did anything happen today?” The neighbour asked his mother.
“No, no, nothing.” Unnatural pitch. “He got up and had toast and an orange and put on his boots and went out the door. He did the same thing. The same thing he did every day. I heard him singing. He left the peels right there beside the sink.”
Then to Warren, “And with you? Anything?”
He shook his head. “We cooled the feet on the Brussels sprouts.”
“What?”
“We mulched.”
“And that’s it?”
“He told me to snap off the leaves. When they start to grow. I promised I would.” Looked down at the grit underneath his nails. “I won’t forget.”
Warren blamed his mother for the death. She had made that lunch and left it there. A dull lunch that his father touched, but when he saw the contents of the sandwich, he could not bear to consume it. Did it strike him as boring? Did the monotony of a cold meal every day destroy him? Could his mother not have managed a scrambled egg, a melted cheese? Was the plain meat and mustard and way too much butter a sure sign that his mother no longer loved his father? Was the sandwich just one in a stream of a thousand slights?
Warren did his best to pinch the thoughts. They were stupid. Childish. No one destroys a life over a sandwich.
Even so, as a boy, he could not shake it. The notion that his mother was at fault. Wispy at first, but it morphed into something concrete. Something certain.
“Hey! Just what the hell do you think you’re at?”
A shadow had emerged from the house, was marching across the expansive field toward him. Warren could not see his face, but he noticed the shape of something long and skinny resting on the man’s shoulder.
Sliding out of the tire swing, Warren started backing up, palms showing. “Nothing, nothing. I was turned around. In the dark. I needed to remember. I’m sorry.”
“Sick fuck in my kid’s tree?” Then the sound of metal sliding, definitive click. “Last time you’ll be remembering.”
The man raised the gun, pointed it at Warren’s head, and without thinking, Warren turned and ran. His feet skimming the top of each furrow. Ignoring the tenderness in his limbs, his ribs, his skull, he rolled underneath the fence, tearing the fabric of his jacket. Then he scrambled over the ditch and fumbled with the car door. High above his own panting, he heard the man’s voice behind him. Splinters of good-time laughter. Flying toward Warren, and sticking in his back.
The next morning, Warren awoke to the local paper slamming against his front door. Warren inched open the screen, reached for it. The headline read: Science run amok, and beneath that, the words: Gifted student dies trying to solve deadly question. He sighed. Everything would be okay, now. Everything would go back to normal. People’s suspicions would dissolve.
[53]
On the first day of school, my best friend burst through those doors like she owned the place. She was wearing a lemon yellow dress, and her frizzy hair had been tamed, pulled into a tight ponytail, her bangs pushed back with a silver headband. Her white patent leather shoes shone, and inside them she wore neon green socks. They crinkled around her ankles, making her calves appear more fragile than they were.
“Take it easy,” I whispered. Her arms were down, bent slightly at the elbow, wrists out at ninety degrees. “Can you just walk, you know, normally? In a straight line?”
My words were illogical. I admit that. Even if she were not skipping awkwardly, she was still an explosion of colour and energy, hurtling down the hallway, yelling, “Hello!” to everyone. “Hello, new friends. Hello, everybody!”
She paused her twirling happy dance when she noticed a student slamming a smaller kid into a locker. Elbow pressed underneath the kid’s chin, the punk was spitting, “Bucktooth, give it here.”
“Hey, hey,” she breathed, touching the aggressor lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, now. There’s nothing wrong with his teeth. They are perfect and functional and spaces are good. I mean, didn’t your dentist ever tell you that? You should be nice to him.”
The loser appeared surprised at her boldness, then just gaped at her, mouth twisted in disgust. Freed from the chokehold, the small boy slid sideways, eased out, and darted down the hallway.
“It doesn’t hurt to be friendly,” she said, smiling. A beaming sort of smile. “It’s easy!”
I breathed through my mouth. Once again, she reminded me of Button. Those wide eyes, that positive grin. An unshakable belief that everyone was capable of holding hands and humming kumbaya. The entire scene made my muscles tighten. In my neck, my jaw, my upper back. A nerve compressed inside my stomach. It was like something out of a 1960s television show. She was practically singing “Good Morning Starshine.” But unlike with Button, I did not want to change her. I wanted her to stay exactly the same.
“Hey,” I said, and she slowed down. I went up behind her and fixed the zipper on the back of her dress. With her flurry of movement, it was creeping downwards.
In class, our teacher asked the three new students to introduce themselves. She snapped up from her desk, jack-in-the-box-style, and squealed, “I am totally excited to be here. Do you know how bad my old school was? How horrible all the kids were? Nobody liked me. Nobody at all. And here I am! In a new place. With tons of new friends. There is nothing! Absolutely nothing! Better than a fresh start!”
I heard several snickers. Someone mumbled, “What the fu-uck is wrong with her?”
“Thank you,” the
teacher said. “Thank you, and welcome everyone. It’s going to be a great year. I know a lot of people your age are afraid of science. I’m hoping you will see it’s not something to fear, but something to embrace. Science is everywhere! In our bodies, our cars, our homes, our backyards.”
“Our bodies?” That crab-blinding asshole was in our class. He slapped his desk three times. “What parts, hey? What parts got the science? And what do they do with that science?”
I stared at his face, lines of stitches where it had been torn and repaired. I was disappointed not to see a cast or a brace or anything indicating serious injury. Then I noticed our teacher blushing, and at once my friend’s arm was waving in the air. Frantically. As though she were drowning, had gone underneath the surface, and had just re-emerged, desperate for oxygen.
Popping up again. “We are full of molecules and energy, and did you know that every part of us is actually billions of years old? Sounds crazy, but it’s true. And we’ve got lots of iron inside of us. Just like the iron in cooking pots. Weird, hey? And if you count the number of human cells in my body and the number of bacteria in there, there’s waaay more bacteria cells. So we’re mostly bacteria, and we’re totally all science. Every part of us.” She shrugged, smoothed her dress. “So that’s totally cool. Does that help?”
The teacher nodded, said, “Well done,” while the crab-killer stared at his fingernails, then clipped some dead skin with his teeth.
I put my head down on my desk, and closed my eyes. The cool of the dirty veneer moved through my cheek. This was day one, and my friend was already sticking out, a glow of blue fire inside the dimness of a foggy classroom.
When I opened my eyes again, and scanned the room, I caught the biggest bitch in the entire world staring at my friend. Noodle’s owner. The whore that lived in my future home, and had treated Button like shit. She was gawking. That same snotty expression that was engraved in my mind. As though a photograph was hanging there, interrogation light shining straight on it. Her lips were parted, lower jaw jutting out beyond her upper teeth. She was not blinking. Her face was dripping with disgust.
The Substitute Page 29