After Life

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Gilmore’s got some jump shot from the corner, doesn’t he?” Young asked.

  “Much more effective when he doesn’t waste time on the first bounce.”

  “Of course, but you see it with more expert eyes. My secretary, Mrs. Schwartz, explained our referral system to you, I take it,” Henry Young said.

  “Yes, she did. Seems rather organized.”

  “Most important,” the principal said sharply. “Discipline breaks down when it’s conducted in a slipshod fashion. I like to know what’s happening in my building. I don’t like surprises,” he added with an ominous note in his voice.

  Young paused to look at a heavyset black boy who came into the game as a substitute. Lee saw the way the principal smiled and thought they were thinking the same thing.

  “Billy Dyes doesn’t look in shape for basketball, does he?” Lee said. “Wonder why Andersen kept him on the squad. He’s out of breath just running onto the court.”

  “He’s a bull out there,” Young replied, his smile now coy, “when you need a bull.”

  “Bulls are for football,” Lee said dryly. “Basketball’s a game of grace, skill, and stamina, as well as strategy.”

  “Of course, but you’ll find this isn’t exactly a league of gentlemen. These little towns take their sports seriously; winning is a matter of pride because all these upstate communities have such a definite sense of identity.” He laughed. “One thinks it’s better than the other. It takes some getting used to, I guess. But,” he said, slapping his knee and standing, “you’ll get into it before you know it.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and wish you the best of luck with the team and see if there was anything I could do for you. Don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Thank you,” Lee said. He rose and shook the principal’s long, firm hand. It felt so warm, he thought the man was feverish.

  “Pick it up there, Dyes,” Henry Young coached. “This isn’t a Sunday-school picnic.” He laughed and started away. Lee turned back to game.

  Dyes took the ball and began dribbling awkwardly down the court. The boy guarding him charged forward, stabbing at the ball. Dyes turned his back and tried to dribble in another direction, but the boy shot to his right quickly to block him. The other members of Dyes’s team were shouting at him to pass. He stopped dribbling and searched frantically for an open member of the squad. The boy guarding him was all over him, waving his arms frantically. Lee thought he was doing a very good job and started to make note of him on his tablet when suddenly Dyes snapped the ball directly at the boy’s face. It struck him smack at the bridge of his nose and sent him backward, sitting him down sharply on his ass. Blood spurted from his nostrils. Instantly a number of his fellow teammates began to laugh.

  “What the hell…”

  Lee ran out to the middle of the court. As he did so he could see Henry Young standing in the gym doorway, smiling.

  “What the hell did you do that for, Dyes?” Lee cried.

  “I was just tryin’ to pass, Coach, and he got in the way,” Dyes said, making a weak attempt at denial.

  “Like hell he did,” Lee said, kneeling beside the stunned boy. He examined his nose bone quickly. “It’s not broken. Go into the locker room and get some tissues. Hold them tight with your head back.

  “Gilmore,” Lee ordered, “go with him and help.”

  “Aw, Coach, let him go to the school nurse.”

  Lee looked toward the doorway and saw that the principal had left without even checking to see if the boy was seriously injured.

  “The nurse is gone for the day,” Lee said.

  “So?” Gilmore said sullenly. “It’s just a damn bloody nose.”

  “He’s a member of your team,” Lee said, helping the boy to his feet, “and you’re supposed to be the captain. Know what that means?”

  “Means shit,” Gilmore mumbled.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothin’,” the boy said sullenly. “C’mon, asshole. Next time learn to duck.”

  Lee watched them go off. Then he turned to Dyes.

  “This sort of stuff doesn’t go with me, Dyes. It’s a cheap shot. Take ten laps.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me, run around the gym ten times,” he ordered.

  “He does that, Coach,” Benson said, “and he’ll drop dead.” Everyone smiled; Hodes laughed.

  “If he can’t do that, he can’t be on my team,” Lee said. “That goes for everyone here,” he added, spinning on them sharply. Some still held their smiles. “Physical conditioning is essential. I don’t even want to hear about any of you smoking, understand? Starting tomorrow, we begin each practice with twenty laps and we finish with twenty.”

  There was a chorus of groans.

  “Dyes?”

  The overweight boy looked ready to lunge at him. He turned toward Hodes and Lee thought he saw a slight nod. Then Dyes lowered his head and started to run, mumbling obscenities under his breath.

  “All right,” Lee said, releasing his breath. “Back to the scrimmage. So far I haven’t seen anything to lead me to believe you guys have a chance to beat the girls’ team in my last school. Hodes, take it out.”

  Lee returned to his bench and watched. Dyes ran with his arms against his sides as if he had to hold in his stomach, but Lee noticed he had his middle finger on both hands extended in silent, profane defiance. The other boys noticed, too, and some smiled.

  Gilmore returned and took his position, the injured boy behind him walking with tissues in his nose.

  “You okay?” Lee asked him. The boy nodded. When Dyes ran by, he glared at him hatefully and the boy cowered and retreated to another, more out-of-the-way place on the bench. The scrimmage continued until Lee saw Hodes jab his elbow into another boy’s face, causing him to bleed at the mouth. Lee blew his whistle and called them to gather in a circle before him.

  “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you guys ever heard about something called personal fouls.”

  “Ain’t that something that happens when you get caught?” Benson quipped.

  There was a short burst of tittering.

  “From now on,” Lee said, ignoring it, “whenever we scrimmage, everyone has the same limit we have in a game. Then you’re out.”

  “Shit, we all be out then,” Gilmore said, and the boys laughed again.

  “Then you’ll all be out,” Lee said as nonchalantly as he could. He perused the squad. To a man they were glaring back at him, and for the first time since he had begun his initial practice with his squad, he understood what was giving him this sense of foreboding.

  The team, his team, looked more like a pack of rabid dogs panting as they stood there staring back hatefully at him than they did a group of teenage boys training to compete in a civilized sport.

  Jessie paused in her preparations of the meat loaf she and Lee were to have for dinner. She held her breath and listened again. It was the oddest sound and it came from above, from old man Carter’s apartment. It sounded like some sort of steel-toothed creature gnawing away at the floor. The crunch, crunch sound was followed by a soft gasp. It gave her the chills. She embraced herself and waited. After another series of crunching and another gasp, it ended. She heard footsteps. Then she heard the door of the upstairs apartment open and close. She moved toward the front of their apartment to hear even better.

  Someone, obviously much younger than the aged tenant above, was coming down the stairs quickly. His steps pounded with a firmness and an authority old man Carter’s lacked. The heavy oak outside door opened and closed and the footsteps continued over the loose slats of the porch floor and down the stone stairway. Jessie went to a slightly opened front window and continued to listen. The sounds trickled away as whoever it was continued rapidly over the fieldstone walk.

  Lee had done a good job describing the structure and the grounds, so she could easily imagine someone moving about out there. But whoever it was didn’t get into an automobile and drive off as she was anticipatin
g. Instead he turned to the right and walked toward the cemetery, the footsteps becoming different. Jessie listened until the sound ceased.

  How odd, she thought. She knew that by this time of day, the late-fall twilight had set in and it must be rather dark outside. Lee had described the street, so she knew there were no streetlights to push away the heavy, black curtain of night. Who was this person? Where was he going in the dark?

  For a moment she didn’t move. She waited to hear old man Carter above, but there was only a deep, ominous silence. Just as she turned to go back to the kitchen, she caught a whiff of some putrid odor slipping under the front door of their apartment. It was so rancid and foul, she imagined some field animal had come into the house and died in the entryway. Perhaps it was a poisoned rat. The stench made her gag. She retreated quickly to the kitchen and got herself a cold glass of water. The cool liquid bubbled when it hit her stomach, but it seemed to clear away the stench that had lingered in her nostrils and throat.

  Poor Lee, she thought. He’s going to walk right into that, whatever it was. She felt for the clock with the raised numbers and confirmed that he wouldn’t be home for at least another hour or so. Then she returned to her dinner preparations, but kept a keen ear out for sounds of Lee’s return. She was surprised when she heard him pull his car into the shale-stone driveway beside the house only fifteen minutes later.

  That was one thing they would definitely miss, she thought, a garage. This old house didn’t even have a carport. Then she remembered that Lee had told her that old man Carter, although easily a man in his late eighties, still drove his ’72 Chevy.

  “He claims he’s had that car for nearly twenty years,” Lee had said, “and never parked it in a garage. Of course, all he has on it is thirteen thousand miles. He only uses it to go to get what he needs. Can you imagine? The inside’s immaculate, but the outside’s quite rusted and faded. No dents or bumps to speak of, however. And the engine sounds like it will go on for another twenty years. Just like him,” Lee had added, and Jessie had thought, Yes.

  Her initial meeting with the old man had left her confused. Lee had introduced her to him the morning after she had sensed they were living adjacent to a cemetery. The cemetery caretaker’s voice cracked with age, and the skin around his hand felt wrinkled and dry, but he had a youthful firmness in his grip and she heard something underneath the cracking, something buried just under the croaking, rasping voice that to her suggested youth. It was only one of those incomprehensible, intuitive things that Lee thought were symptoms of some mental disturbance lingering from the accident. Maybe he was right. She certainly couldn’t put her feelings about old man Carter into words.

  Jessie had the table in the dining room set and everything warmed and waiting in the kitchen when Lee entered the house. She turned toward the front door as soon as she heard him insert his key in their apartment door.

  “Hi,” he called out. She moved quickly to greet him. She had remained at the rear of the house ever since she had heard the footsteps and smelled that horrible stench, but as she made her way toward Lee she didn’t smell it anymore.

  Lee embraced and kissed her.

  “Something smells great,” he said.

  “You didn’t smell anything horrible on the way in, then?” she asked.

  “Horrible? No. Why?”

  She told him, the two of them still holding on to each other.

  “No,” he said again. “Nothing like that. Maybe the old man had an exterminator in and they caught whatever it was and that was what you caught a whiff of. This house is probably old enough for that kind of problem. Don’t forget, we’re out in the country.”

  “I know. You told me the nearest neighbor was at least a good half mile away in either direction. But why would an exterminator park his vehicle so far from the house?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Maybe you just didn’t hear him get into the truck,” Lee said, and released a heavy breath of stored tension from his lungs. She sensed it in the tightness of his muscles and even heard it in his voice.

  “You don’t sound as if you had a good day, Lee,” she said when he released her and started toward their bedroom to change for dinner.

  “I’ll tell you all about it after I get out of these clothes.”

  “Why didn’t you shower and change at school like you used to?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I just felt like getting out of there quickly today. I’ll just be a few minutes,” he added quickly, and continued on to the bedroom. She listened after him.

  Strange how she had come to be able to sense his mood even in the way he walked. But then again, she could tell a great deal about someone from the way they walked. Heavy ponderous steps conjured up the image of a big person or someone with a lot on his mind. Light tread was carefree, young. She could sense age, temperament, confusion, firmness, and determination just from the sounds of footsteps.

  That’s what made those footsteps she had heard before so confusing, she thought, now that she recalled them more thoughtfully. They were fast, energetic, but there was an intermittent shuffle, especially after whoever it was went out of the house.

  Yes, she thought, almost crying out, the dying away of sounds…it didn’t come because of distance; it came because the footsteps changed until it sounded more like the individual was dragging himself or herself over the walk. How odd, she thought, but she put her confusion aside for the moment and went into the kitchen to get the dinner on the table.

  Lee’s mood was dramatically changed when he returned from his quick shower. It was as if the water had washed away the turmoil that had somehow formed a crust of depression over him.

  “I am hungry,” he announced, slapping his hands together, “and this does look great. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “From memory mostly,” she said. “Don’t forget, I did a lot of cooking for my mother before I met you.”

  “Well, remind me to thank her for being so lazy,” Lee quipped, and laughed.

  “You want to talk about your day now or wait until after we eat?” Jessie asked.

  “Naw, it’s all right. The regular day went great…small classes, manageable, most of the kids quite nice. I met a few more faculty members, mostly old-timers, a few newcomers, which in this school means being here less than ten years. These places don’t have the same kind of turnover we saw around the city.”

  “So,” Jessie said, her smile quickly evaporating, “what was it that turned the day around for you?”

  “The team, I’m afraid. They’re so undisciplined, wild, and so many of them are quite self-centered. Frankly I’m very surprised. Everything I’ve heard about Kurt Andersen would have led me to believe his players were different. A number of people told me he was an old-fashioned coach who demanded respect and was admired by his boys. I can’t envision these boys admiring anyone who demanded they treat each other with respect, much less him.”

  “Aren’t you being a little hard on them, Lee? It is traumatic for them, too, to have their coach die unexpectedly and have to adjust to a new man.”

  “Ah, it’s not just dealing with me,” he said, “or Andersen’s death. Matter of fact, no one so much as brought up his name, and when I mentioned him, I didn’t see any sorrow. Some of them were even smirking, especially the team’s so-called stars—Gilmore, Hodes, Benson.” He paused.

  “There’s more?” she asked perceptively.

  “Yeah. A very strange thing happened at practice. One of the boys deliberately hurt another, hit him directly in the face with the ball.”

  “My God.”

  “That wasn’t what was strange, however. I’ve seen malicious kids in action before. What was strange was Henry Young was there at the time. He saw the whole thing.”

  “The principal? What did he do?”

  “That’s it. He did nothing, Jess. In fact, I thought I saw him laugh.”

  “Oh, come on, Lee. You must be mistaken.”

  “I don’t know, honey. But even i
f I am mistaken about that, he never even checked to see how the boy was.”

  “Is the boy all right?”

  “Yeah, just a bloody nose. I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Lee said, sighing. “A lot more than I ever anticipated. Basketball skill might be the least of it,” he added. He reached for another scoop of mashed potatoes, but stopped when he saw the expression on Jessie’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have waited until afterward. Didn’t want to disturb you at dinner.”

  “No, Lee. That’s all right. In fact,” she said, tilting her head back so that she looked as if she were gazing through the ceiling, “I somehow anticipated you would have problems.”

  “Aw now, Jess, you’re not going to start that talk about dreams and premonitions, are you?”

  She pressed her lips together as if to keep herself from speaking and shook her head.

  After they had eaten and cleaned up, they retired to the living room and Lee described some of the other people he had met.

  “Oh, before I forget,” Jessie told him, “Tracy Baker called today. She wants to come by tomorrow to pick me up and show me around. And the Bakers want to have a dinner and introduce us to some of their friends, one of whom is Dr. Beezly, the doctor they spoke of so highly when they were here. I said I would check with you as to the date.”

  “Any night’s as good as another right now, Jessie,” Lee said. “My social calendar isn’t quite set yet.”

  “I know. I as much as told her that.”

  “Great,” Lee said, stretching. “Gosh, I can’t believe how tired I am already.”

  “Tension does it to you, honey. After you’re settled in and you start getting things to go more the way you want them to, you’ll relax.”

  Lee got up and sat beside her on the couch. He took her hands into his.

  “What makes you so wise? And so patient?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m not so wise.”

  “Don’t tell me. I know wisdom when I see and hear it,” he insisted. She grew serious, the lines around her mouth tightening.