On occasions when Mikey saw Sally Forrest out in Lackawanna, he had to fight his urge to report back to the others. As far as Mikey could tell, Sally remained in her mother’s home after high school and he continued to see her out from time to time, standing in line at the CVS pharmacy, massaging peaches at Tops, or walking up Ingram with a cell phone at her ear, although Sally always seemed to be listening, never speaking into that phone. Mikey did not know if she worked. He did not know if she had new friends, or who spoke to her from the other end of that phone.
With high school behind them and the others far away, Mikey had initially been hopeful that he and Sally might be able to reconnect, that she might finally reveal to him what had caused her to abandon the group, and that he might have the opportunity to apologize if he’d had any part of it. But when they encountered each other in public, Sally continued to look past Mikey with the same cold disdain she had when they were still in school. As though she’d never known him, as though they’d shared nothing. When he saw Sally, Mikey was filled with a dense, aching emptiness, one that contained so much.
He longed to report to the others that their old friend Sally was still so, so thin, perhaps had even lost weight since the last time he’d seen her. She always wore sunglasses, so he could not see her eyes. She carried a canvas bag with a fruit basket embroidered on it, and there was a large, bright yellowish stain on the strap. He still missed her, wondered about her, wondered what had gone wrong, and whether the others did, too. But he always reasoned with himself that if the others cared, they would ask. No point picking at a sore and drawing fresh blood if everyone else was content to leave it be.
There was often talk of a reunion between the five of them, but plans never came together. Even so, with brief and infrequent face-to-face contact, and all these years later, Mikey still considered Alice, Jimmy, Sam, and Lynn his dearest friends. He had trouble connecting with peers at work, and despised social events. He had not grown less shy over the years. He couldn’t bring himself to start social media accounts because he hated all photographs of himself: left eye always a bit creamy and strange and faraway, right eye focused but never quite meeting the camera’s lens, as though he feared its judgment. Cheeks always flaming, freckles overlaid with red. Cowlick always wild, as if it had an ax to grind.
Mikey therefore always read the emails from The Gunners with great interest, and felt deeply invested in their lives. He went on soaring Google Earth explorations through their towns, zooming around parks and downtowns and up and down residential streets. He made a habit of sending birthday cards—actual cards, via snail mail—to the others, who always expressed incredulous gratitude for the gesture.
Mikey did not tell his friends that he might be going blind and was mining childhood relics, yearbooks and journals and stacks of Polaroid photographs rubber-banded together, searching for pictures of his friends and meditating on them, knowing that these dear faces might one day elude him.
In early January, the city of Buffalo was fossilized beneath three feet of hard gray snow, the air bitterly cold and humid. People moved slowly, like cogs in an old machine, muscles hard, cold licking at their faces. Pipes had burst at General Mills, and Mikey was working twelve-hour days. Mikey’s thirtieth birthday came and went, with a text from Alice and a generic card from HR in his work mailbox, the typeface meant to resemble actual handwriting, acknowledging him as a valued employee and wishing him a special day.
It was a week after Mikey’s birthday that he received word of Sally’s death.
The news came from a colleague, someone who had attended Mikey’s high school but who was several years younger than Mikey. The colleague had not known Sally, but news of a former student’s suicide had reached him through the local news. Her body was found in the Buffalo River, less than a quarter mile downstream from the Buffalo Skyway. Her car was parked just off the entrance to the Skyway, an elevated steel bridge that soared one hundred feet over the water beneath. Her mother had reported her missing late the night before. Although there was no note, it appeared to be a straightforward suicide. Her mother confirmed her struggle with depression. Video surveillance from the bridge showed that she acted alone, just after midnight. Mikey’s colleague realized that Sally would have been about Mikey’s age, and he asked Mikey about it at work, wondering if Mikey had heard the news about his classmate, wondering if Mikey had known or would even remember the girl. Her name was Sally, the guy said to Mikey. Did you know a Sally?
Funeral arrangements were announced—it would take place in two weeks at St. Mary’s, the church nearest Sally’s mother’s home, just six blocks off Ingram.
Mikey was broken, muddled, distracted. He could think of nothing else, yet no matter how long and hard he thought on Sally, he could never reach her center. Furthermore, as he tried to recall memories of her, he realized he could never reach his own center—he could never reach something that felt entirely real, or true. He began to wonder if he had no center. A hollow man.
Mikey was in touch with Alice, Jimmy, Sam, and Lynn to make sure the news had reached them. They all planned to come to town for the service.
Knowing that he would see the four of them brought Mikey some measure of solace as well as nervous anticipation. Adulthood and years of living alone had taken a toll on his confidence. He wanted to believe that he would still be able to relate to his friends face-to-face, would still genuinely interest them, could offer comfort and share a laugh. But in pessimistic moments, he feared uneasiness between them brought on simply by the passage of time, too much life lived apart.
In the days leading up to Sally’s funeral, Mikey got a haircut and shoveled snow and vacuumed up Friday’s hair. He often found himself short of breath, even when he had barely stirred.
He avoided the Skyway, taking the long and indirect route north on Niagara Street instead.
Several days before the funeral, Mikey received a call from Jimmy inviting him to a catered dinner following the funeral service at the lakeside vacation home not far from Lackawanna that Jimmy had purchased years earlier for his family. Jimmy said he would be inviting Alice, Lynn, and Sam as well. Jimmy said there were enough beds for everyone, and all were welcome to spend the night.
Mikey thanked Jimmy for the invite and said, “Can I bring something?”
“Oh God, no.” Jimmy laughed bleakly. “Zeppelli’s catering the thing. There’ll be enough for an army.”
Mikey said, “How are you holding up, bud?”
Jimmy said, “I just can’t believe she’s gone. Again.” It was quiet for a bit, then Jimmy said in a strange voice, “I can’t stop wondering . . . Well, do you know anything, Mikey?”
Mikey’s head felt way too heavy for his neck, not right at all. His heart was loud. He had the strangest sensation, as if he were being pulled at, as if he were in someone else’s dream.
He stared out his window and saw that an enormous flock of grackles—there had to be a thousand of them, maybe ten thousand—had come to rest in the row of diseased-looking maple trees just on the other side of the street.
Mikey got up, phone still at his ear, walked to his door, opened it, and stepped out into the snow.
The air was thunderous, full and alive with the clamorous chatter and vibration of the birds. But moments later, when Mikey closed the door behind him, some of the birds nearest him were startled by the sound and took flight. Others followed. More. Mikey exhaled a white cloud, and his empty lungs tickled with cold. He coughed and watched the birds as they lifted off the trees in a magnificent ripple. It wasn’t long at all until the entire flock had departed in a huge spinning black cone, leaving only a blank and depleted void in their wake. An after sound. A holy, yearning silence, like a prayer that was too sad and too deeply felt to be spoken aloud.
Mikey still held his phone at his ear, his lips now paralyzed by the cold, and Jimmy said, “Mikey? You there?”
Mikey final
ly said, “I don’t know.” As these words slid out of his mouth, they felt long and cool, like snakes.
Chapter 3
When Mikey started kindergarten, he was a shy boy who sat by himself on the bus while other children hollered and clapped and traded jokes and insults and items from their lunch boxes. Mikey watched out the window in the morning as other children were picked up from his street, and in the afternoon as they were dropped off. The Italian kid with eyes the color of a swimming pool who hung out with the chubby, blond, pink-faced kid whose r’s came out like w’s, the two of them always talking football, drawing out plays with smelly black markers, X’s and swooping lines in a notebook. The tall, black-eyed girl with broad, high cheeks who ordered everyone else around, working in as many curse words and creative insults as possible. Butt-slug! Ass-face-mouth-breather! The freckled girl with the curly red hair who skipped recess to practice the piano in the music room. The slim, silver-haired girl who lived several doors up from Mikey. Usually, like him, she waited for the bus alone, but on rare occasion, her slim, silver-haired mother waited by her side. She typically sat by herself on the bus, too. Often, she sat in the seat directly behind Mikey, and sometimes he could hear her singing quietly to herself.
One morning, this girl sat down directly next to him.
As she sank into the seat, she said with low eyes, as though issuing an apology, “There are no more empty ones.”
She smelled very clean. She wore a green headband. Up close, Mikey could see that her hair was not actually silver, but the whitest blond he had ever seen, so white that it took on the hue of other colors and lights around them. Her face was as pretty and delicate as lace. She arranged her backpack beneath her little legs.
Mikey said, “It’s okay.”
The girl sighed and touched the ends of her hair.
He said, “What’s your name?”
“Sally.”
“I’m Mikey.”
“You’re a kindergartner?”
He nodded. “What grade are you in?”
“First.”
“Do you know how to read?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I don’t yet.”
“That’s okay,” Sally said. “Is that your daddy who was soaping up the car?”
“What?”
“I saw a guy soaping up a car in your driveway the other day. A big old white car.”
“Oh, yes,” Mikey said. “That’s him, and that’s his car.”
“Where’s your mommy?”
Mikey said, “I don’t have one.”
“Is she dead?”
Mikey thought. “Maybe.”
Sally was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “My mommy says my daddy’s a deadbeat and some other things.”
“Is that the same as dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mikey said, “Do you want a Jolly Rancher?”
“Yes.”
Mikey offered her watermelon or grape or green apple. She took the green apple. She sucked on it silently, and her warm breath became sweet and strange.
The next day, Sally sat next to Mikey once again, even though there were empty seats available, and the day after that, too.
Usually, they didn’t talk very much. The silence between them was easy, companionable. Sometimes, Sally placed her backpack on Mikey’s lap, rested her head there, and slept. Mikey watched her sleeping face morph softly into and out of many expressions, and he tried to imagine what sort of dream produced each different one.
Alice Clancy formed the group, really made it official, the summer between her first- and second-grade year. School had been out for only a week, and already Alice was bored of TV and fights with her older brothers over who got the first or last or largest portion of things.
One afternoon, she wandered into the backyard of the green house just a few doors down the block from her own, after she heard voices and laughter lifting up from behind the house. She caught sight of a ball in the air.
She walked right to the center of things, between two boys wearing baseball gloves, and she stood there with her fists dug into her hips. She was six inches taller than either of them.
“You boys ride my bus,” she said.
She looked back and forth between them. The chubby blond kid punched his fist into his glove. He had round shoulders and a thick neck, and was the tiniest bit dim in the eyes. His nostrils and the thin, pale skin around his eye sockets was chafed pink, as though he cried a lot, or had lots of allergies. He didn’t wear a shirt. His belly was fat but firm, accentuated by a disturbing little outtie.
Alice said, “What’s your names?”
The black-haired, blue-eyed kid said, “Jimmy.” His eyes were remarkable—as bright and interesting as tiny planets.
The blond kid said, “Sam. Why are you at my house?”
“I’m Alice and I live in the only brick house on the street, and we have that big black mutt named Jake.” She paused and jerked her chin over her shoulder in the direction of her house. “Anyways, I have a club and I’m president,” she said. “Looking for members. You guys in or out?”
Sam said, “Who’s in it?”
Alice released an exasperated little noise and scowled at him. “None of your beeswax,” she said, “if you’re not members.”
Sam shoved his thumb toward Alice’s face. “Look at my blood blister,” he said.
Alice said, “Gross.”
Jimmy said, “What do you do in your club?”
“Lots of secret stuff.”
Sam tossed the baseball up and down to himself and said, “Me and Jimmy need to talk it over. We’ll let you know tomorrow.”
Alice returned the following afternoon. Sam reported that they had talked it over and decided that they would join her club if she would let them play with Jake, her big black mutt. Alice said, “Sure, but don’t blame me if he snaps at you. He has some places he doesn’t like when you touch.”
Sam said, “So who else is in the club?”
Alice said, “I’m about to ask some other kids on this street. That little boy, the one who’s a year younger and always sits with the white-haired girl on the bus, the two of them. And that red-haired girl who plays piano during recess.”
Sam said, “Wait, so you don’t have a club, you’re starting one.”
Jimmy added, “Like from scratch.”
“What difference does that make?” Alice said, arms crossed, her tone both pushy and cavalier.
Sam was quiet for a bit. Then he said, “Can I be vice president?”
“What?”
“I want to be the vice president or we won’t be in your club.”
Alice considered this for a moment, then she said, “Fine, sure, whatever.” She turned to Jimmy. “You wanna be something?”
Jimmy blinked. His eyelashes were black feathers framing those blue eyes. He said, “Maybe like treasurer? I’m good at money.”
Alice said, “Okay. We’ll have that piano girl be the secretary, and the other two can just be there unless they think up something special to be.”
Alice, Sam, and Jimmy made their way up Ingram Street and successfully recruited Lynn, Sally, and Mikey. Alice had already scoped out The Gunner House as a potential gathering place, and they held their first official meeting later that afternoon. Alice brought her mutt, Jake, and a slotted spoon in case he pooped inside. “His bowels are rotten,” she explained. Sam dragged in a taxidermied sheep’s head that he had found on the curb just up the block. The place smelled strongly of mildew and cat piss, and dust hung thick and motionless in the hot, hot air above the children’s sweating heads and their eager, happy voices.
Chapter 4
When Sally was eight years old, she and Mikey decided to walk all the way to Gasser Park. It was August. They were the only Gunners who weren’t either enrol
led in Bible School at St. Mary’s Parish or away at summer camp in Ellicottville on this particular week.
Sally and Mikey had both been to the park before, but never without a parent. They knew that it was far to walk, but that they would reach the park if they took Ingram to Lakeshore, then followed that east for a long while. They filled a backpack with ham and mustard sandwiches, Fritos, Twizzlers, and a canteen of water. They had all day to make it there and back; Sally’s mother would not be home from work until after five—much later than that if she went out drinking with one of her boyfriends—and Mikey’s father would return around seven. Both Sally and Mikey were already capable at this very young age of letting themselves in and out of their homes using a key. At Mikey’s home, this key lived under the doormat; at Sally’s it was in a fake football-size rock that opened and closed on a hinge.
It took them an hour to reach the park.
Along the way, they talked about the upcoming school year. Sally told Mikey what he could expect from all the different teachers. She told him about the live crab that lived in Mrs. O’Casey’s classroom and all the amazing facts about animals he would learn in her class. How ostriches can run faster than a horse, and that male ostriches roar like a lion. She told him about the strange and unpredictable migration of the snowy owl. She told him about the wood frog, which didn’t hibernate like other animals but instead buried itself in the ground and allowed itself to freeze.
The Gunners Page 2
