The Afterlife

by Gary Soto

  I had never seen anyone die before, and I didn't want to start right then. I applied my cool ghostliness to his forehead. The man was funky smelling, his teeth nearly orange as Cheetos. I noticed that a part of his earlobe was gone. The man, it seemed, had had a rough life.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Crystal was biting the ends of her hair, a bad habit. Leaves were falling through her body. That seemed like a habit, too—things passing through us because we were ghosts with the weight of smoke.

  "Is he going to be okay?" Crystal asked.

  Okay? I wondered. Probably not. What man parks his body against a tree at night?

  Slowly the ghost that he was giving up receded back into his body. He moaned with relief and tossed his head side to side. His shivering began to lessen.

  I stood up and flowed to Crystal, and together we watched the man sleep, his fever having broken. His breathing was even, and when he cranked out a nasty snore, we had to laugh. He was sick, we knew, but in the morning he would have to figure out whether to drag himself to a clinic or just lie against the tree and wait for his ghost—his afterlife—to resurface and rise from his body. It was up to him.

  "Let's go," I suggested. "I don't know what else to do."

  It was still dark among the trees, whose tops were thrashing about, but I could tell that the sky was becoming pale in the east. Crystal led me through the park, confused about where she had parked her car. Then we found it by the tennis courts. Beads of dew frosted the front window. We approached slowly. Crystal lowered her head. If she could have produced tears, she would have dampened the lawn with her sadness.

  The police hadn't yet found her car or her body.

  "I can't look," Crystal cried. She spun away and walked inside a eucalyptus tree, its thickness absorbing her.

  I was full of distress, too. I considered walking inside the same tree to see if we fit, one girl and one boy. Instead, I sat on top of a bench and remembered when I was little and how Eddie and I used to play "pretend dead." Shot by imaginary gangsters, we would topple on the grass and see who looked more dead than the other—I had my little trick of keeping my eyes open and staring at the sky motionless. And Eddie? I couldn't do what he did. He would let flies crawl on his face. Once, a mosquito even landed on his throat and starting pumping away. Did Eddie slap that vampire of insects into a bloody mess? Chale! No way.

  Finally, Crystal emerged from the tree. She pulled her hair behind her ear. We held and rocked each other as if we were slow dancing. In fact, we might have been slow dancing to some rhythm inside our head. In that position, I asked her: "Why did you kill yourself? You're so beautiful."

  "You think so?" she asked, her head turned slightly away. She doubted her own natural beauty.

  I kissed her neck and breathed in her ear. "Are you kidding?"

  She lowered her face into my shoulder, a new sensation for me, one that made my back and shoulders quiver. God, a young woman crying into my shoulder. Most of the ones I met wouldn't let me hold their hand, let alone share with me their grief. But this was so different. I hugged her tenderly, and glanced over her shoulder at the car, where the Crystal that most of the world knew was slumped. I realized I didn't want to see her that way. At the moment, I didn't care how she died. The cops, though, would want to know everything. And they would. It was dark now, but once the eyelid of night rose on a new day, some early-morning jogger would come across her body. The one in the car, not the one leaning into my shoulders.

  SELMA, RAISIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. That's what the bullet-pierced sign read as Crystal and I approached the outskirts of a city that still smelled of harvested grapes. The vines, however, were bare, the leaves having fallen and scuttled to wherever leaves go. At one farm, I spotted a rabbit running between rows. The rabbit was followed by another rabbit, then still another. Life was multiplying right before my eyes, it seemed.

  It was getting light. The eastern horizon was pinkish, though the big-eyed sun had yet to show itself and wrap the valley in its autumn warmth. Because we were in the country, roosters were stirring up the air with their racket. A few dogs, too, were yapping about the start of a new day. A tractor was starting up with loud, smoky coughs. So this was country life. It was neither beautiful nor quiet as on TV What did TV know about los compos, the fields? I had to admit that I wasn't an expert, either. I had worked just six weeks in the grape fields. There wouldn't be any work today, or very little. It was Sunday. Most fieldworkers were in bed, some snoring off hangovers and others resting their bones.

  At that early hour, I imagined priests, awake but tired as well, sitting at large oak tables writing on lined paper: "Jesus has risen." Heck, they might have been talking about me, because didn't I share His name—Jesus, though I was better known as Chuy? And hadn't I also risen, though instead of in a tomb my resurrection took place on a dirty floor? But unlike the son of God who washed away all our sins, I wasn't going to be around long. That was clear when I saw that my legs were gone up to my knees. Most of my forearms were gone, too.

  "Chuy!" Crystal cried.

  At first, I assumed her outburst was meant for me. But I was wrong. Crystal was examining her feet—the tips of her toes were gone. Soon the whole of her two feet would disappear and then she would be like me.

  Then Crystal saw me. "Oh, Chuy" she cried. She had noticed that more of me was lopped off.

  I wish I could have been braver and made a silly remark like, "Don't worry, baby. It ain't nothing." But it was something. I was worried that I might disappear altogether before I could force my mom to take back that handgun from Eddie. Why get him involved in my bad luck? After all, I was the loudmouth who made the mistake of complimenting some dude for having nice shoes. What kind of words could I use to tell my mom to please, for God's sake, go get that gun from Eddie? What parts of my ghostly body would there be left after I saw Crystal home?

  But I did groan, "Ah, man, look at me now!" My ghostly eyes must have given away my fear. Crystal could see this. She hugged me and I did my best to return her gesture.

  "I love you, baby," I said. "Come on, show me where you live. I want to see your ribbons."

  Crystal smiled, eye cocked at what she perceived as my naughtiness. "You mean you want to see my bedroom. That's where they are."

  Her bedroom! Yeah, I thought. I want to see her bedroom.

  Crystal released me with a single kiss on my throat, and began to run in long, beautiful strides, which I recognized as the graceful movements of a true distance runner. I never had those kinds of strides when I ran for my school, and I didn't have them now.

  The sun was bloodred in the east, and the first newspapers were being delivered. But the news of her death would not be there. If the police hadn't located her car at Roeding Park, they wouldn't know about her death either. But I was certain that her parents were up, dressed, and pacing the house or the police station. After all, their daughter never came home.

  She was coming now, but how would they recognize her, this ghostly Crystal with the bad habit of biting the ends of her hair and letting leaves fall through her?

  Chapter Seven

  I REMEMBER Dad saying that life is a journey that ends in the same place where you begin. He was philosophizing after the Raiders lost a playoff game—the attempted field goal that would have put the team up by one point hit the uprights and bounced left, also bouncing the air out of every Raider fan from Oakland to Los Angeles. That late afternoon, his eyes were misty with sadness, his jowls heavy with disappointment. His breath thick and beery. I don't believe Dad knew what he was talking about. He was just moving his lips.

  I was moving my lips, too, muttering, "No way," because the unlikely occurred. Crystal lived on the farm where I had worked picking grapes when I was twelve. Maybe that's what Dad meant—or sort of meant—when he said that life brings you back to the same place. I stood neck deep in vines that were stripped of leaves, revealing bunches of grapes missed by the pickers. I gawked at an older but well-kept white house with
a wraparound porch. A dusty but newish truck sat in the driveway. A chained dog slept in a puddle of morning sunlight.

  "What a trip," I remarked, and approached the house.

  I remember the house and a girl—Crystal?—reclining in a chair and reading a magazine as I went to hose my face after I got stung by a wasp. I remember she glanced up, pushed up a small but sincere smile at poor me, and immediately cast her eyes down again at whatever she was reading. Even then, with my swollen face, I was in love with her, or in love with someone who could kick it on a porch, an icy soda at her side.

  That was five years ago. Now I was hovering off the driveway in front of a house that seemed empty. Crystal had flown ahead of me because she wanted to visit her parents alone. She would sit with them in the living room sharing their sadness. In her own way, she might apologize for killing herself.

  I considered climbing the front porch but instead ventured around to the barn to confirm my belief that this was the same family farm. I looked up at the rafters and flew to the eaves where I made out a row of honeycombs, little gray houses where wasps snuggled to bed. A few wasps flew through me like needles, as if they were sewing me up. A pair of bats, like pieces of dark fruit, hung under there, too. But the bats were asleep, their paper-thin wings like a blanket around their eyes.

  "This has to got to be the place," I uttered to myself. I felt a weird joy.

  Flying, I scanned the vineyards. At the end of one row, a crazy dust twister was lifting up sand. When I was a kid, I used to see these heat-created twisters in the country. Once, when my dad had pulled off the road because of a flat, a twister popped up out of nowhere. When it approached our car, I did what any other kid would do: I jumped in its center, thinking about The Wizard of Oz and ending up in a magical place. The only place I ended up was in the backseat of the car, Dad hollering at me because I had sand in my hair, my eyes, and even my chones.

  This twister, however, quickly died.

  I flew to the end of the farm's property and back to the house, where I encountered Crystal sitting on the front porch. She was chewing a fingernail. I figured that her mom and dad weren't home, but instead were at the police station, maybe the hospital. I sat next to her, and didn't say a word when I noticed that both her feet were gone—she was disappearing more quickly than me. We sat in silence, with wind whistling through the stripped vines.

  "I never liked my feet," Crystal finally said. "They were ugly."

  I couldn't believe any part of Crystal was ugly. I was liking her more and more and believing we were meant for each other.

  "No way," I argued. "You had pretty feet."

  Crystal rose and manufactured a smile that was mechanical, forced. Still, I liked it a lot and followed her as she went through the front door. The living room was dark with shadows in spite of the lamp that was on and the feathery sunlight cast on the wall. The furniture was nice and everything was in its place, clean. A large clock in the shape of a sunflower hummed atop the TV On the wall hung a reproduction of a painting I remembered from history and from Kmart. I winced as I tried to remember its name.

  "Its The Blue Boy," Crystal filled in for me. "Gainsborough."

  "Man, I knew what picture it was," I lied. "And the dude who did it!"

  The next smile Crystal gave me was sweet and sincere. So was her description of me. "You liar," she uttered softly and rubbed her nose against mine.

  Hijole! I was making headway with her!

  I followed Crystal down the hall, aware of where we were going—her bedroom. I imagined it was pink and frilly. But first we stopped and gazed at the telephone in the hallway. It was blinking three messages. Then a telephone in another part of the house began to ring. Quickly Crystal hurried into her bedroom and stood over her own phone. On the third ring, the message machine kicked in, "Hey, I'm not here. But I'd like to hear from you." Then a voice said in a whisper, "Crystal, it's me, Jason."

  Crystal reached to pick up the phone not once but twice, but had no power to lift it to her ear. It was her boyfriend, I was sure, and to give her privacy I returned to the living room, where I watched the action inside a fishbowl. Two goldfish were throwing up bubbles that broke on the surface.

  Still, I heard the message. It was from her boyfriend who sounded nervous because Crystal's dad and mom had shown up at his house asking about her. He said that they were just leaving. Crystal made a remark about being sorry.

  Crystal emerged from her bedroom and said, Let's go.

  "No, let's wait for your mom and dad to come back," I suggested.

  "No," she snapped, "let's go!"

  The telephone in the hallway began to ring and beg for attention. On the third ring, the answering machine picked up: "Sorry, we're not here to take your call, but if you leave a clear and well-spoken message we'll be sure to get back to you." The voice belonged to her mom. The somber voice that came on belonged to the police. "Mr. and Mrs. Kerr, we would appreciate a call from you if you're home. Also..." There was a squawk of a radio. "A sheriff in your area is going to come by..."

  It was clear to me, and it was clear to Crystal. They had found her body. The police were saying as much.

  "I'm sorry," I mumbled to Crystal.

  "But you already know that I'm dead."

  This was true. I was sorry for her parents. I imagined the crumbling when the news got to them. I swallowed. I had no moisture in my swallow or water and salt to form a single tear. Their daughter, I thought. Dead over a boy. Why did she do that? I would have loved her. Hell, I would have picked those grapes for the rest of my life for her love. I opened my mouth and told her so.

  "Right," she said, blowing me off with a single word. She was worried for her parents. Or was it her boyfriend?

  "I love you a lot," I argued, then pouted. God, if I could only grow a second pair of arms to hug her. I hesitated before I told her, "You won't believe this, but I worked on your dad's farm."

  "You're full of lies." She propped her hands on her hips.

  "No, I did, really."

  Her arms moved from her hips to across her chest, a sign that she didn't believe me.

  "Dad brought me here when I was twelve. He said he wanted me to know what it was to work with my hands." I looked down at where my hands might have been attached.

  Crystal huffed.

  "And I remember you." I recalled the day the wasp had stung me and how I saw her on the porch. She had everything—magazines, sodas, even her daddy's cell phone. "You were so spoiled."

  "Me? Spoiled?" She pointed a thumb at her heart. A little smirk at the corner of her mouth gave her away. "Maybe."

  "Yeah, you were. Kicking back while us Mexicans were working in the field." I was going to take my argument as far as it could go.

  "Us Mexicans? I'm Mexican, too."

  "Get out of here." It never occurred to me that she could be raza. Her hair was light brown and her skin was freckled along the tops of her arms. But suddenly her face became Mexican, and lovelier.

  "Half Mexican, at least. My mom is Mexican ... I can even make tortillas."

  I laughed. Make tortillas? I would have continued laughing except the telephone started ringing again. We both stared at it, and before the message machine kicked in, we were out the front door and down the porch, both of us throwing ourselves skyward and flying. We didn't need the answering machine to tell us what we knew already that Crystal was dead. At my side, she seemed more than alive enough to me.

  I TRAILED Crystal over one family farm after another, avoiding the twisters that stirred the brittle autumn leaves like cornflakes. I churned my legs and flapped the stumps of my arms to keep up. Crystal was not only a good runner, but she could move sweetly in the air. I was so in love with her, but did she care? The girl was fast, eager, and thoughtless—she had to be aware that I knew where we were headed. Her boyfriend Jason's crib.

  "Your parents aren't going to be there," I shouted. My strategy was to get her mind off her boyfriend and change our course back to her farm
.

  Crystal ignored me.

  Her boyfriend lived in town in a house that looked like mine, down to the rosebushes and the shaggy mint growing by the front faucet, where the garden hose was rolled up all nice. But I didn't have time to assess the house like a real estate agent because her boyfriend—the dude was good-looking, and strong—came out of the house shrugging into his letterman's jacket. His sport, I could see, was football. I then noticed the crosshatched emblems of baseball bats on his chest. There were medals, too, and a couple of pins I couldn't read. He was a hero in all seasons!

  I fell from the sky, hurt that the guy was a stud. And me? In life I was just an ordinary kid named Chuy with faded third-place ribbons back in his bedroom. The only part of my body I could brag about was my stomach—it was flat and a valley when I lay down. But what of it? I couldn't go around pulling up my shirt and crowing, "Hey, check out my abs, homeboys."

  I nearly begged Crystal to go back to her house—her parents would be returning home to the messages on the answering machine—but I recognized in her face that she had something to share with him. I guess it wasn't my business. I could have flown away, or rolled like a tumbleweed back to Fresno. But, no, I joined Crystal, who sat shotgun in her boyfriend's tricked-out Honda. Shamelessly, I sat in the back as her boyfriend, eyes raised up to the rearview mirror, backed out of the driveway recklessly, nearly hitting the trash can on the curb. He wrestled with the steering wheel as he roared down the street, scattering leaves and a cat orange as a pumpkin—and nearly bloody as a pomegranate if he hadn't scampered quickly.