by Brady Udall
And the ghosts came back. Now that I had given up my urinal puck they wouldn’t leave me alone; I began to piss the bed again, woke up hollering in the night. Even in the day I saw visions, disturbances of air congealing into human forms, figures that moved only at the periphery of sight and spoke to me in faint, buzzing voices that crackled in my head like electricity.
Willie Sherman, I found out, was teeming with ghosts and the only way I could drive them off was by typing, sitting at my chair, the sound of the keys like the clattering of a chain. I would type myself into a trance, a small quiet place where nothing, not even my own thoughts, could find me. I tried other things to fend off the ghosts—the rock that had fallen out of my head, my bloody crucifix. I even tried a new deodorant cake from the bathroom urinals—this one square and ice blue—and carried it in my pocket, kept it under my pillow, but it had no magic in it. Like everything else at Willie Sherman, it wasn’t worth a damn.
Nights, afraid to go to sleep, I would sit up waiting to see my mother. Sometimes I thought I felt her presence, imagined I heard her high, airy laugh. Now that she was dead I thought we could talk, that she could tell me why she had left me, gone away to California, and once she knew I was alive and okay, why she had never come to visit me.
But she never came; in death, as in life, she had better things to do. I had to settle for occasional dreams, short and abrupt—more like flashes in my sleep—of scenes, fragments of memory from my old life: my mother mashing beans in a pot or kneeling next to me at the side of the road, a hot, ticking car beside us, holding my tiny penis so I could pee into the weeds growing out of the cracks in the asphalt.
One day after class when the clouds had parted and the sky had opened wide like a mouth, I hiked off toward the flat-topped mesa to the west. I hit a game trail at the bottom of a gully and began to half-jog; I thought that if I could get far enough away from Willie Sherman this black depression that dragged at my insides might dissipate. Even when it got dark I didn’t turn back; with Principal Whipple gone and no one yet to take over for him, the place had turned into a free-for-all. I would get in trouble only if I didn’t make it back by Lights Out.
There was no moon and it wasn’t long before I was lost, loping across rocky, uneven ground, thrashing through mesquite thickets, sometimes employing a swimmer’s motion to claw my way out, stumbling down into arroyos where with each step I kicked up wet clumps of sand that fanned up and showered down the back of my shirt, filling my underwear and the pockets of my jeans. The sky, shot through with stars, turned slowly on some distant axis. Sliding down a crumbling bank, I blundered into a patch of prickly pear. The thin, barbed needles pinned my pants to my shins and knees, but I kept on until I tripped over something and skidded forward on my chest, driving the cactus spines deeper into the meat of my legs. I lay flat, my cheek in the mud, my lungs heaving steam into the thick air.
When I caught my breath, I noticed the smell. I had tripped over the jutting corner of a board that had covered someone’s home brew. I could tell by the bitter, yeasty odor of it that it was fairly new, recently tended, which meant I couldn’t be too far from the school. I pushed some mud away with my hands, pried back the board and looked into the inky brew, which trembled and shifted like a miniature black sea, glittering with the stars overhead.
The sharp odor of it made me miss Cecil so much, so suddenly, that it felt like my heart had been stung. I rolled over, put my face all the way into the brew and sucked in as much as I could before my throat constricted and streams foamed out of both nostrils. I gagged, coughed, took a deep breath and although it felt like my insides were melting and my head was full of fumes, almost immediately I felt better. Before I stood up I took one more drink and had to gasp and growl at the way it burned and soothed me at the same time.
I don’t know how long I wandered through the brush, hardly feeling my feet touch the ground. A thin layer of clouds had covered up the stars and I might as well have been blind the way I tripped and careened between juniper and cedar trees that stabbed me in the eyes with their needles. I came to a gravel road, veered off it, located it again, and then found myself walking a game trail that felt familiar even though I was more lost than I had ever been in my life. When I stopped and heard the roar of the river it began to dawn on me. The trail dipped, then rose at an incline for a quarter of a mile or so and I glided heedlessly forward, knowing before they came each bend and switchback, and when I stepped out onto that narrow platform of rock I felt the hair on my arms stand up. After hours of stumbling through the dark I had ended up here: the jumping place.
I stayed still for awhile, my whole body vibrating. There was a buzzing at the back of my eyes and for a moment I thought I might have a fit, but the feeling passed and I stood in the middle of that perfect darkness, the river hissing below me, and felt no fear, no pain, nothing. I held my hand on my crotch and was amazed at how much I wanted to jump and how difficult it was to come up with a reason not to.
Slowly I backed up along the trail that Sterling and I had worn smooth over these past few years with all our visits, twenty, thirty paces. I stopped and waited. I listened to the hissing river and to a single cricket peeping far away. I thought about the boys and girls of Willie Sherman, just a few hundred yards on the other side of the tree line, sleeping in their bunks. I thought about Art in his motel room drinking under the glare of a blank TV and Cecil in a place called Nevada where he shared a cell with three other young criminals. I thought about my father, some stranger who, I was sure, tried to forget every day that he had a child, and a mailman who tried to forget that he had killed one. I thought of my mother, up in heaven, and I hoped that there was music, like Raymond said, and that the beer never ran out. And I thought about Sterling, who I figured had become one of those angry ghosts who hung around Willie Sherman—he might even have pestered me a few times—and it made me feel good to believe that maybe he was here now, watching me.
I took one step forward, another, and then it was like my legs were no longer mine and I hurtled forward into nothing. I did not leap or dive, only ran until there was nothing under my feet and I realized I was falling only a second or so before I hit, before the hard shock of it jarred me to my bones.
At first I was aware of nothing but a red pain that covered everything. Then the cold began to seep through, a chaos in my ears, and I took in a mouthful of ice water when I tried to breathe, which brought me fully conscious. In ten terrifying seconds I learned to swim well enough to right myself and get my head above water. I flailed and kicked to keep from being dragged down and the same astonishing thought kept flashing through my mind: I jumped into the river.
The current yanked me along, slamming me into a submerged rock or tree, spinning me around and towing me under, until the river widened and grew shallow enough that the river bottom came up and hit me like a large, unyielding hand. I sank my fingers into the silt like grappling hooks, set my heels, and was finally able to lurch to my feet, the shallow flow knifing against the backs of my knees. Time and time again I was knocked down, the rug pulled out from under me, dragged ten or twenty feet before I managed to surge forward, slipping over the mossy river rocks, my joints stiffened with cold, and hug the soft, grass-covered bank. It took all the strength I had left to pull myself out of the water and lie down in the mud, which to me felt as warm as just-made pudding.
For awhile I did nothing but gasp and hack to get air into my waterlogged lungs. There was just enough light coming through the breaking canopy of clouds so that I could look across the river, which was swollen and angry, twice as wide as I had ever seen it. No, I realized, I hadn’t jumped farther than anyone ever had before, hadn’t flown past the red stones into the water. The river, gorged by rain and the snowmelt from the past couple of warm days had reached, in some places, all the way to the canyon walls. I had jumped—probably not very far at all—and the river had caught me.
Every part of me was either numb or alive with pain. It took me half an
hour or so just to get up the nerve to use my left arm—the one that hurt the least—to cover myself with the warm, soupy mud. Before I fell asleep I was surprised to hear myself laugh, a hoarse, delirious hoot that echoed all the way down the canyon and into the dark sky.
THE ELDERS
I SHAMBLED ALONG the gravel road, limping stiffly and moaning like a sad, disoriented swamp monster risen from the muck. I was encased in a thick crust of dried mud and my left knee had swollen up so badly I had to tow my leg behind as if it was made of solid iron. Above everything else, the river had stolen both my shoes, one of my socks and one of the two pair of pants I owned. Thankfully, Edgar still had his underwear.
It was a sharp beautiful morning, birds singing and the sun warming everything like a blessing. Up ahead, I heard the rattling of bicycle chains before two people appeared on the rise ahead of me, coming along fast. I stepped off the road and tried to camouflage myself in the dirt and bushes; the last thing I wanted to do was give somebody a fright. I watched them out of the corner of my eye and they were easy to recognize: two young men, wearing white short-sleeved shirts and ties: the Elders.
When they saw me they both put on the brakes, their back tires chattering and hopping on the loose rock. One of them was thick-limbed with a wide, curved face, and the other, smaller and leaner, had a head of red-blond hair that shone in the sun like hammered copper.
“Hey,” the big one said, “you okay?”
I looked down at my feet, which were bleeding from the gravel shards and broken beer bottles in the road. I thought if I stayed absolutely still and kept my head down they might give up on me and go on their way.
They got off their bikes, let them fall right in the middle of the road and came over to me. The blond one craned his neck and peered into my face as if I was something that had just fallen out of the sky. He said in nearly perfect Apache, “What happened to you?”
I glanced up at the big guy, who was looking a bit alarmed, and shrugged. I said in English, “I jumped off a cliff.”
“What? You did what?” said the big one. His voice was much too high and sweet for such a large body. I saw from the black tag on his shirt that his name was Elder Turley.
“I jumped off a cliff. I don’t feel real good.”
The Elders looked at each other. “Have you been drinking?” asked the blond one, who, according to the tag on his shirt, was called Elder Spafford.
I shook my head, then nodded. “No,” I said. “Yes.”
The Elders quickly agreed that I should be gotten to a doctor as soon as possible. Elder Turley hoisted me onto his handlebars and began pumping at the pedals like a man possessed, his hot breath on the back of my neck. In the round mirror above his rubber handgrips I could see my reflection. My eyes were startlingly white, like two boiled eggs embedded in a dirt clod. My hair was matted in such a way that it stuck up from both sides of my head like a pair of horns.
“Where do you live?” shouted Elder Spafford, pedaling furiously to pull up alongside. I told him and he asked me if they had a doctor there.
“A nurse!” I shouted back, the jouncing of the bike making it feel like every nerve in me was spitting sparks. “But she’s not a very good one!”
Back at Willie Sherman, an AWOL operation was in full swing: there were two sheriff’s cars in front of the main office and a few deputies, off in the distance, combing the bushes above the cavalry stables.
Raymond, who was talking to Mr. Hansen on the steps, was the first to see us. He took one look at me and said, “What in the name a God.”
I was carried into the infirmary and Elder Spafford helped Raymond pour warm water on me to get the mud off while Elder Turley went to fetch the nurse.
“We found him on the side of the road,” Elder Spafford said.
“He don’t look so good,” Raymond agreed. “Nossir, he don’t.”
When Nurse DuCharme appeared she took a long drag on her cigarette before stepping inside. She put her hands on her hips and in a puff of smoke said, “I guess we’re going to have to name this place the Edgar Mint Memorial Hospital.”
Eventually, they brought in a doctor from the Indian clinic, who pulled out a bunch of cactus thorns still embedded in my shins, cleaned the scratches and shallow lacerations that crisscrossed me from head to toe, set the small finger on my left hand which had been broken in two places, prodded and pulled on my badly twisted knee, and pronounced me the luckiest damn kid he had ever seen.
Once I was bandaged up and smelling of alcohol and salve, the Elders asked Raymond if they could say a prayer for me. Raymond patted me on the chest. “This boy, lemme tell you, he needs it.” Elder Turley folded his big, hammy arms and offered up a short prayer, asking God to help me, to heal me, to look down on me in His love.
“You didn’t save my life,” I croaked at them from my bed before they left. I don’t know what got into me to say such a thing. I only knew that I was sick to death of being saved.
TOUCHED BY GOD
THE WEEK I was in the infirmary the Elders stopped by twice. They brought comic books and peanut brittle and stayed awhile to keep me company. When Nurse DuCharme came in sucking on a cigarette, Elder Spafford told her straight out that it was neither ladylike nor healthy to be smoking in the presence of a sick child. Her face went red and she headed back across the road, mumbling something about know-it-all nincompoops.
Elder Turley shook his head. “People,” he said.
The third time they came I had just got out of classes, my first day back. Except for my broken pinkie and my limp, which I exaggerated as much as I could, I was fine. Elder Spafford asked if we might go somewhere and talk about God a little bit. He said he had a special feeling about me, that I had been spared because I was a special person and was meant to do special things.
I sighed; I had heard all of this many times before.
The day was worn white with sunlight, and odd gusts of wind stirred up dust devils along the parade grounds. We sat down at the old picnic table just outside the cafeteria doors. Every inch of the table was covered with graffiti, but there was one message that dominated all others: someone had taken great care and consideration to gouge out the word BITCH in perfectly formed letters ten inches high. I watched the Elders closely but they didn’t seem to notice.
We started with Elder Turley offering a prayer and then Elder Spafford asked me what I knew about God. I told them I didn’t know anything about anything. Elder Spafford asked me if I knew why I was here on Earth, what the purpose of my existence might be.
“I think you’re going to let me know,” I said.
“I am,” Elder Spafford nodded, his face full of conviction.
Over near the basketball courts, a group of kids had gathered and were taunting and cursing the Elders in four or five different tongues, none of them English. Normally, I would have been included, but it had become widely known not only that Edgar Mint was the one responsible for getting Nelson, Rotten Teeth and the rest shipped away, but that he had also leaped off the jumping place and survived. For the rest of his stay at Willie Sherman, no one would ever bother him again.
“Those kids are punks,” Elder Turley said, glaring over his shoulder. “I really should go over and stomp on ’em some.”
Elder Spafford continued on about God’s great plan, about the gospel of Jesus Christ restored to the earth and how this had all been revealed to a boy about my age, the young prophet Joseph Smith. In a voice shot through with sincerity he told me of how young Joseph, confused by the many religions professing different truths, went off into the woods one day to pray, to ask God for guidance. I listened and idly scanned the table for any new graffiti that might have appeared since the last time I checked. When he got to the part about the boy Joseph kneeling in the grove to pray and seeing two figures outlined in light appearing in the air above him, I looked up, so excited that I blurted out, “Ghosts!”
“What?” said Elder Turley.
“Ghosts,” I said. “I
see ghosts sometimes too.”
“You see ghosts?” Elder Spafford said.
Elder Turley leaned over to Elder Spafford and I heard him whisper behind his hand, “Evil spirits.”
Elder Spafford swallowed. “Not ghosts, Edgar. The Father and the Son Jesus Christ themselves appeared to Joseph Smith. In person. One of the most wonderful events in human history. They told him that none of the religions were true and it would be his calling to bring that truth to light, to establish it once more upon the earth.”
“Oh,” I said.
Elder Spafford rummaged in his bag and came up with a book with a dark blue cover and gold lettering that said THE BOOK OF MORMON.
“Joseph Smith was responsible for bringing this book to us,” Elder Spafford said, hefting it in his hand as if its worth lay in how much it weighed. “It is a book that will change the world.”
“Did he type it?” I said.
Elder Turley started to laugh until Elder Spafford shot him a hard look.
“He didn’t have a typewriter,” Elder Spafford said, the little muscle in his jaw popping out. “But that really isn’t important. What is important is that you read this book and find out if what it contains is true. If you do this, Edgar, I promise it will change your life. Do you know how to read?”
I nodded. “I just don’t know how to write. That’s why I have a typewriter.”
Before they left, they asked if they could give me a blessing. This time, instead of folding their arms and praying, as they usually did before they left, they came behind me and put their hands on my head, their fingertips lightly touching my scalp. Across the road the kids had started yelling, laughing and pointing, and a sudden gust of wind blasted us with grit. In a near shout Elder Spafford called on the name of God and immediately I felt a warmth at the crown of my head, a light, liquid tingling that slowly moved down into my neck and chest.
“We ask Thee to bless this child,” Elder Spafford called over the noise of the snickering children and the wind in the grass. “Free him from the evil spirits that torment him, give him peace, heal him, heal his body and his spirit.” Elder Spafford paused for a moment and I began to feel like I was floating above the bench. “Allow Thy love to shower down upon him and let him know that he will never be abandoned, that he will always be protected, that he will always have Thy love. These blessings we ask Thee in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.”
