Life in the Land of the Living

by Daniel Vilmure

  “You were doing it again,” I tell him.

  I pull the pillow away from him and he looks at me, blinking.

  “Doin’ what?”

  I get up and close the door tight, so they can’t hear.

  “This, ” I tell him, and begin to sing. I finish, and he looks at me. “Just like that, ” I say. “Only you sung it twice as loud, and you kept your hands up around your mouth like you were trying to stop the words from coming out.”

  He looks at the door.

  “Did they hear it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I ain’t sure.

  He rolls back over, face against the wall, not looking at me while he talks.

  “Was it pretty? Hunh. I bet it was. You don’t have to tell me it was ’cause I know.”

  After that I don’t wake him in the nights when it happens. I just lie there and sometimes open the windows, listening to the music of the wind in the palms. He sings the same song every night, and he never sings it any time other than when he’s in his bed sleeping, and sometimes I take my things to his room and lie there in the dark just waiting for him to begin, because it’s the kind of thing you can go sleepless for, the kind of thing you can die feeling good you heard.

  I took to the downslant of the pebble hill and it brought me to a clump of brush near the road. I could hear the skidding sounds of morning traffic, but I couldn’t see anything of the street through the brush. The sky was getting slowly lighter and beneath me I could feel my own feet stumbling. But I felt strong in the legs, and the storm had perked my heart up some, and I knew that all I needed was a bottle of medicine to make everything complete.

  Though there wasn’t much rain falling, I was shivering from the dampness of the cold. I had to stop walking every couple of steps to let the chills run head to toe through me. I felt sorry being without anyone to walk with, and as I left the tracks for the brush I had the feeling that I might not make it without somebody to stick with, that if only I had some company, I could get through it all all right.

  I came out of the trees and weeds and sandspurs and came upon a bunch of men working on a patch of road in the halflight. One had a rivet and the others had shovels and they were all dressed in seethrough rainslickers, even though it was raining so light there wasn’t any need for them. None of the men had much to say to each other and they went about their work in hangdog silence. I tried to pass by one guy in a necktie who sat sort of sullen on a bleached barricade, and he punched me lightly on the shoulder.

  “You know how to break road?” he said. “One of our men done quit on us. I’ll give you twenty-five dollars straight out of my pocket if you break road for my crew for five and a half hours. That’s as good a pay as any of these men are getting, and I can see you’re strong enough to do the work.”

  I looked at the other workers and they were taking me in sort of lethal and hard, like I might be a potential traitor. I turned on the man in the necktie.

  “I don’t want any part of your business,” I told him. “Not for twenty-five dollars or twenty-five hundred.”

  I hadn’t gotten more than a block away when I heard the sound of running behind me. It was a worker stooped over in his rainslicker, and he had something lumped in his hand which he wanted me to take. I asked him what it was, and he said it was money. I told him I didn’t need it because what I wanted I could steal, and he said he supposed I’d make a manager some day.

  “I hear tell you re taking applications for stockboys.”

  He sticks his gum behind his ear and pulls a piece of wax from the other one.

  “How old’re you, son?”

  “Eighteen”

  “Eighteen, huh? You be straight with me now”

  “I’m eighteen, sir, ” I tell him, trying to make my voice drop. “I swear it in truth.”

  ‘Well,” he says, squinting an eye, “if y’are eighteen, and not merely in talk, take this form and fill it out. You have a pen?”

  “No, sir, I—”

  “Here.” He reaches beneath the counter and tosses me a ballpoint. “Fill it out and give it to the head cashier.”

  “Thanks you, sir. I will.”

  I leave the store and look for him. He sits at a busstop bench bouncing a Super Ball in between his knees. I settle beside him and snatch the ball away and he stares at the form I got folded in my hands.

  “You want me to fill it out?” he asks.

  I nod yes.

  There wasn’t much to speak of as far as the streets surrounding the old bay port were concerned, just a couple of fruit stands, an auto parts store, half a dozen bars, and as many big churches. To get to where I had to go I took a shortcut through a parking lot where tool sheds of all different shapes and sizes were displayed for folks to look at. Obviously someone had forgotten to lock the sheds up the night before, because as I walked through the lot I could hear derelicts and portbums snoring and talking to themselves from inside the sheds. As I came to the last and biggest shed on the lot—a light blue number with pink-and-yellow daffodil trimmings—I opened the swinging doors to find a dozen bums lumped together on the floor. Their clothes were worn and ratty, and their hair was greasy and rank, and one of them scooted over to make room for me on the floor. “Plenty of room for everybody,” he said. Another one, who looked like he might have been sleeping before I barged in, stared up at me with unbelieving sheephead eyes and asked if it had stopped storming. I told him it had.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Manager told me to give this to you”

  She takes the application and surveys it.

  “Why, all right. I’d be glad to take this for you. I’ll give it right back to the hiring man and if he’s interested he’ll give you a call before the week’s out.”

  When I leave, the cashier lady tells me I have pretty handwriting. I thank her and give my brother an extra quarter.

  The tool shed lot led to a muddy gravel road that looped back in a halfcircle to the parking lot of an old church. The parking lot lay on low-lying ground and had flooded over with rainwater from the morning storm. A bunch of kids were out early playing in the flooded stillwater, little boys and girls with shirts off and water to their waists, splashing each other and dunking one another and shooting jets of water from puckered blowfish mouths. One older kid on a streetbike came tearing through the flooded lot with a little girl on a roped-up skimboard sitting behind him. The wooden board cut a zigzag pattern through the filthy water, and the little girl knelt with her hands around the plank, laughing and hollering, “Faster! Faster!” When the older boy got tired he dropped his bike on the less wet grass and took the skimboard and ran at the shallower water with it. He’d get going real fast, then drop the board and hop on top of it, and a couple of times he got out of control and flipped head over heels from the slippery wood. The little girl, who I supposed was his sister, clapped her hands and hugged herself every time the boy had an accident, and once he took such an awful spill that he rose from the water with his forehead bleeding. He wasn’t hurt bad, just bloodied up, and his sister ran at him squeezing her hands. She jumped on him and started to pet him, as if to tell all the other kids this hero was her brother, his blood was partially hers, and the boy seemed to take a liking to the little girl’s fawning. He lifted her high up over his head and spun her around twice for good measure, then brought her down butt first in the skanky water. She came up gagging and laughing, and as soon as she’d caught her breath she threw herself on top of him again and tried to force him under the water. To be a good sport he let her have her way, and down he went, her small body bobbing on his shoulders.

  I went to them.

  “Did you ever pour water over me like him?”

  Beside the basin, a cup of his hands.

  “Did you ever pour water over me like him?”

  She takes, he lifts, they let the water trickle.

  “Did you ever pour water over me like him?”r />
  The name, him crying, they pronounce together.

  “Did you ever pour water over me like him?”

  And they say, “No.” And it is not a lie.

  “Do me.”

  The boy looked me over funny.

  “Do me,” I told him.

  I knelt down in the water.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  He did not move.

  “Do me,” I repeated.

  He was about my age.

  His sister stopped splashing and went to his side.

  “See?” she whispered. “He wants to be baptized.”

  The boy broke out into a mean peal of laughter.

  “Goddamn! Me? Oh, goddamn!”

  The little girl told him to be quiet.

  “Don’t say ‘goddamn’ if’n you got to baptize!”

  “Baptize!” he howled. “I ain’t no goddamn priest.”

  She said he didn’t have to be.

  “Hell,” he told her. “I ain’t even celebrate!”

  She asked him what him that meant, and he moved his hand like he was jacking off.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  He told her to be quiet. Then he looked at me and gave me a kick and said, “Get up!”

  I told him I wouldn’t.

  “Do me,” I said. “I come here. It’s only right, and you got to.”

  “Got to!” he snorted. “I ain’t got to do nothing! And if you want to kneel up to your neck in shitwater, that’s up to you. Come on, Dolores.”

  His sister looked at me pitifully and the two of them made to leave. I noticed then that all the other children had gathered close around us. It was impossible for the boy to get out of his duty.

  “Do me,” I repeated, and he turned around and started toward me. “Now you ain’t got no other way.” When the boy’s face was about five inches from mine he said, “All right. I’ll do you.” And he struck me in the jaw and his boot rammed up into the crotch of my pants and there came a noise of splashing and screaming and running. I rose from the water to find that all the children and the boy and girl had gone, and though my groin ached and my mouth was running, it was a baptism of sorts and I felt somehow better.

  “Did you ever pour water over me like him?”

  I limped from the lot to the church courtyard.

  Walk fast to your own end. I’ll be there to see you. Go.

  I was bloody from being hit and pretty dirtied up by the stillwater and I knew I couldn’t get medicine unless I’d cleaned myself a bit. I looked around the churchyard for a water spigot but couldn’t find none, so I tried the door of the church, and it was open. It was a good thing for me there wasn’t nobody inside, ’cause I knew there had to be something wrong about what I was doing; I didn’t want to run the risk of getting in trouble with the law when I’d come as far as the morning had brought me.

  First thing, when I entered the church, I found a bowl of water attached to the wall beside the door. It was cold and it had a sweet, perfumish smell to it, and I took it out and dumped it over my neck and chest and shoulders. I found two more waterbowls just like it and did the same with them, but I knew I wasn’t clean yet, so I wandered about the church looking for more. I tried to keep my head down because I knew if I looked at all the things in the church, I’d either feel guilty and leave or get so taken in by the prettiness of it all I wouldn’t want to finish what it was I had to do. Now and then, just to indulge myself a little, I took a peek at the tiny framed pictures they had on the sidewalls every couple of pews. I didn’t look at the stained glass none because I knew it was too nice for me to set my eyes on. I just concentrated instead on the pictures of the suffering man, because they were so plain and simple drawn I figured they mustn’t have been too important.

  The pictures started on the right-hand side of the church and followed all the way around to the very end of the left-hand side. There were about fourteen cartoon frames in all, and only after I’d studied the first five did I come to understand that a story was being told.

  In the first episode you saw two guys taking the suffering man out of what looked like some kind of bathtub where he must’ve been soaking. He was awfully punk and sickly-looking, and the men had him wrapped in a towel so he wouldn’t be naked.

  In the second episode you saw the same two fellas trying to get the suffering man to stand up, he was so pitiful weak and everything. They had him leaning against some kind of healing cross, and you could tell that if they could only get the poor guy up there, he might start coming around to himself.

  Episode three had him up there all right, but he didn’t look no better. His eyes were still closed and that dead heaviness hung about his face. A man and a woman, probably his mama and daddy, had gathered beneath the healing cross praying for him to come to, but they didn’t look too hopeful.

  Number four was less bleak than the first three because at last the suffering man had come around. His eyes were wide open and he was moaning in agony while the physician’s assistants helped him off the cross. One of the men steadied him while the other drew the surgical-steel bolts from out of his hands and feet, and I was surprised that neither of the men took that heavy-looking solid-gold helmet from off the suffering man’s head. Maybe it was part of his continuing treatment; I didn’t know. But it certainly looked uncomfortable.

  Come the fifth episode the suffering man was getting downhome service. Two soldiers had gotten him a new set of clothes and they were helping him try them on. The stuff looked like it fit him pretty good, but the suffering man wore this burnt-cheese expression, as if their tastes clashed.

  Episode six had the suffering man down on the ground, like he’d fallen from the weight of the new clothes or what-have-you. The soldiers looked annoyed that he couldn’t handle a new set of skivvies, and they were bending down to help him to his feet.

  In the seventh picture the suffering man seemed to have made a lightning recovery. He had his healing cross tucked under his arm and he was asking some ladies the quickest way to get back home. They were crying and sobbing because they couldn’t help him none and his cross looked awful heavy, but he seemed to be saying to the women, “Cool your jets, now. This here thing looks heavy, but it’ll make me whole again. You should’ve seen how weak I was till I got this thing. Don’t let looks deceive you; this here cross is the living end.”

  Episode eight was sort of funny and I got a bang out of it because it was so true. Right after you mouth off to somebody about how you’re on the road to recovery, how you never felt stronger or better in health, straight out of nowhere comes absolute trouble. Number eight showed you the suffering man on the ground a second time, only minutes after he’d bragged to the crying ladies about his journey and his healing cross. And who was helping the suffering man now? Who else but the same beleaguered soldiers. They must have been sick to death of tending him.

  The ninth episode was awful strange and I wasn’t sure I understood it, but it was real beautiful and mysterious and I spent the longest time just studying it. It seemed as if the suffering man had run into this artist girl who was trying to make some kind of Xerox copy of his face with a veil. I didn’t know what she put on the veil to get it there, but she certainly did one hell of a job. When the suffering man pressed his face down onto it, a second, identical face bloomed up. I supposed the girl gave the veil to him as a keepsake, because in the tenth episode it was plain that while one man was helping him carry his healing cross, two other dudes—I tried to convince myself that they weren’t the pair of soldiers—were busy trying to hustle the veil out of the suffering man’s backpocket. For all I knew they might have done it too; the next episode didn’t say.

  Episode eleven showed the suffering man asking directions from another lady. Just like the other women, she didn’t have any idea where he should go, but she prayed for him and cried over him and he went on his way, only to fall down a third and final time in the twelfth episode. It was a good thing for the suffering man that the two
soldiers were there to help him. They must have been trailing him a good while suspecting he might need their help, and being regular princes they lifted him up and pointed him in the right direction.

  In episode thirteen the soldiers had gotten the right idea about how to care for the suffering man. They tied a rope around him so he wouldn’t stray or collapse anymore, and they pushed him onward with his healing cross in the direction of his home.

  Episode fourteen, the final picture, saw the suffering man reunited with his loved ones, with the soldiers commencing to untie the rope. It was an inspiring sight seeing the suffering man having come so far—from sickness to health, from loneliness to good company, from being lost to being found—and it did a heart good to study that picture because it was just like the way life should be. You almost felt as if you’d gone all the way from death to life with him, and I wanted to walk on over to the right side of the church and start the journey all over again, but I knew I couldn’t. Time was wasting, and I needed to clean myself.

  I scavenged around the front of the church and came upon a gold basin full of all the water I could possibly need. I lifted off the top of the contraption and took a step up with the intention of getting in, but I realized that I might get stuck, it being so small and everything, so I contented myself with dunking my head under and came up feeling wet and dizzy as a dog.

  “I saw this thing, a new thing. Girl showed it to me at school”

  He drops his booksack on the hallway floor and runs to the bathroom. I follow him, and he kneels in front of the toilet.

  “What? You gonna throw up or something? Some girl teach you how to throw up?”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “No, no. I know how to throw up.”

  I pat him on the back.

  “Right proud of you there.”

  “Come off it,” he says. He rolls up his shirtsleeves and unbuttons his collar and brushes his hair back off his forehead. His eyes are hysterical and excited-looking. “She showed me something else,” he says. “A neat trick.” Next thing I know he has his hand over his nose and his head in the toilet. His other hand gropes for the flusher and he catches it and pulls and begins to holler with laughter. When he rises from the throne his hair stands in a Dippity-Do, like the top of a soft-serve icecream cone. “Swirly! Swirly! She taught me how to get a Swirly!”