by Chris Lynch
You answer it.
“Who’s next?” The young male caller wants to know.
“Excuse me?” You want to know.
“Where should we go, Reaper? We wanna see. We’ll go where you tell us.”
“Go to hell then,” you say.
“For you we will. With you we will. Say the word.”
The word is hang up the phone, Will. Stop listening. What are you there for? You do not have to listen—
“Do you really think I know?” you ask the voice.
“Fuckin’ right we do. You the one, Man. And we are ready to follow you anywhere.”
“Who’s we?”
“Check this out,” he says. There is a pause as apparently he boosts his probably outrageously expensive stereo to the max, and a phone-version Sinatra belts, “The summer wind came blowin’ in from across the sea . . .”
No no no no. We can’t have this, Will. Too much now, too much. You cannot merely accept everything. Do you stand for anything, Will? Will? Does anything mean anything ultimately? Stand up.
Will?
“How did you know? How did you . . . turn it off?”
Don’t talk to him. Run from him.
“I told you. You’re famous. You live quiet for a while till time comes then just bust out of no place. Like Jesus. And then we know everything. You are the one. We are your troops. We believe, Man.”
You don’t deserve this. You think you do? Is that what you are doing, serving penance here? You don’t deserve this.
“I deserve this,” you say.
“Yes you do, Angel,” he says. “You’re chosen.”
There are three or four similar, cracked male voices suddenly barking solidarity in the background. Then they start chanting along with Sinatra, making “Summer Wind” sound more like one of those brainless marine drill chants than the greatest song by the greatest crooner of all time. Make them stop. Can you make them stop? Do you stand for anything? Make them stop.
“Who are you?” you ask calmly. “Do I know you?”
The voice on the line suddenly sounds different, as if he is holding the receiver back from his mouth. “I am not important. I am nothing.”
Why are you subjecting us to this? Will, hang up the phone. Go out and putter in the garden with your grandparents. They always want you to come into the garden with them and you always fight it. Maybe it is a good time to stop fighting it. You will be surprised how much you can bury in the backyard under layers of fertilizer and rich peat moss. They know well. They will teach you. Put down the phone, Will.
“Do you have my stuff?” you ask softly, as if you are making a black-market deal.
“Nice work, Man,” he says, all low and slithery. “Nice, nice work.”
You shudder from this. Something goes through you.
“What are you doing with it?” you ask.
The caller’s voice goes from secretive to proud. “We saved it, Man. We liberated your works, all of ’em. Couldn’t let the authorities keep ’em, could we? We all know what the world does with prophets, don’t we, Man?”
Don’t we. Man.
“Do I know you?” you ask again.
“ ’Course you do,” he laughs. He addresses his friends then. “He wants to know if he knows us. Is the Man a jokester, or what?”
There is lots of laughter and agreement in the background.
You are a jokester, Will. You. Least humorous creature on the planet. Jokester. Prophet.
“You should give me my stuff back,” you say. “You don’t even know what it is at all.”
There is now a long silence. Then there is intense breathing, like this has turned from a fawning fan call to a merely obscene one.
“Fuckin’ course we do, Man. We know exactly what it is. We’re the only ones who do. We’re your—”
“Don’t say that again, okay. Just . . . I just need my things back, that’s all. I’m not feeling so great, all right, so, if you don’t mind . . .”
“I do mind. We mind.”
“You don’t understand . . .”
“We understand. Better than you do. We’re not like the others. We’re here to do your work. You’ll thank us. In the end, you’ll thank us, Man. Just tell us who’s gonna be the next one.”
“No. I won’t—”
You are talking to a dial tone.
• • •
The clock tweets. Every hour it tweets—or hoots or burbles or twitters—with the song of the white-breasted nuthatch, northern oriole, or whatever North American songbird happens to be the patron winged creature of that hour. You can only hear the clock, not see it. You haven’t the slightest idea what hour has been struck. But you know it is the American robin hour. Beautiful song. Sweetness itself.
“I’m going out,” you call.
Who are you telling, Will? There is nobody in the house.
“I am,” you answer. “I am in this house. But not for long.”
You should not go out. You should not go out now. You cannot do yourself any good out there now.
You go to the front door, knowing well that your caregivers, guardians, benefactors and collateral damage victims are way out back in the garden. They are not as spry as they once were. And less so with every passing event. They will never reach you before you are gone.
“See you later,” you call.
Probably, they would not have made much of an effort anyway. One of the sorry facts, that. When we give up, we often give up collectively.
Have they given up, do you suppose?
• • •
There, but not there. Your spot, as if you have paid for the season skybox seat high above the track, and it is always there available for you no matter how infrequently you attend, just like the important bigwigs at real sporting events. The truth is, there are loads and loads of other seats that are always available as well. Most of them, in fact.
But this one is yours. Because it is so far away from everything. Looking straight ahead, and down, you can survey all that happens, while all that happens cannot see you back. You are too small, too remote. Behind you, over a railing that is really too low to be safe, is a thrilling seventy-five-foot drop to the unpainted blacktop of the parking lot.
Things are hazy for you. You couldn’t recognize a familiar face twenty feet ahead of you if it was standing still, nevermind speedy athletes of only passing acquaintance off yonder in the distance. You are all too aware of this. Why are you here?
She is here. You cannot make her out, but you know she is here, and that is enough.
But no, you can see her. Sure you can. She is coming into focus, coming, coming, coming.
She is outrageously, impossibly, beautiful. Her every move—her every component of every move, from the backstroke of her left arm while lifting her right leg, to the bobbing of her head and flaring of her nostrils as she lunges for the tape—is majestic. If you could be her, you could be all right. She works properly. She flows. She is right.
And she is the only one you can see clearly. You realize. All the other beautiful speedy beings continue on their cloudy foggy way while Angela pulls tightly into your focus.
And she looks at you. She has won her event, whatever it is she does. And she has turned suddenly to look up into your special skybox to see that you are up there. You are. She is coming your way. Walking across the oval interior of the track, she ignores the shotput, threads the relayers, hops the low rail, mounts the concrete steps.
Sits next to you. She is covered in sweat. Healthy, perfumy, beady sweat, that you love to be next to, that makes you want to drink it. Not at all like that diesel fluid that comes out of your own pores.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
“I know that,” you say. “You think I don’t know that?”
“So?” she says, probingly.
“So,” you say, neutrally.
“So what do you want from me?”
Altogether too direct. Altogether. This is not something you are p
repared for, is it, Will? You have not been prepared for this. Apologies. You should have been prepared. Better. Long ago. But apologies won’t help you now. Listen. Think. Listen, think, respond. Act.
“Nothing.”
She sighs. Stands. “Fine.”
Now Angela is doing what she does. She is doing. She is walking down the stairs, toward the field and pumping hearts and winning and losing and sweat. Away from you.
And you are doing what?
“Would you miss me?” you blurt.
She stops, turns, looks you over.
You know the lookover. People checking your eyes, your posture, your mannerisms, for signs of whether it’s okay to be honest with you or careful with you or if they should even get involved. You know this look, but you don’t know it from Angela. From Angela, it could as well be she’s looking for the spot to hit you.
“Some. But it would fade.” She shrugs. She heads back down the steps.
And there you sit. Watching her leave. Satisfied, are you, Will? Is that what you were after?
You jump to your feet, wobble, steady yourself for one last gasp.
“That’s not supposed to be the answer,” you yell. “You’re not supposed to say that.”
Now you have done it. You don’t know exactly what it is, but you have done it. Angela has turned and is taking the broad concrete steps two at a time to get at you.
“You know how it’s supposed to work, is that it? You don’t know a goddamn thing. Miss you? Miss you? Possibly, maybe, I don’t know because I don’t know who the fuck you are. But miss this?” She makes a grand sweeping gesture from your head to toe like she’s trying to make you disappear. Then she punctuates it by poking you hard in the chest with every last word. “Sorry, junior. Sorry, sorry, and sorry.”
Is she sorry, do you think? Do you think? Go on and think, Will. Think.
“You’re not sorry.”
“Ahhh,” she yells, right in your face. “Of course I’m not fucking sorry. You are the sorry-ass. You want to go swanning all around the place acting all woe is me, and checking to see who’s catching your act. And I guess I’m the lucky one, right? I’m the one who gets to watch?
Had enough, Will? She doesn’t understand you. Nobody understands you. Nobody understands anybody, and everybody’s an ass. That about covers it, doesn’t it, Will?
“What are you staring at?” she demands. “Why don’t you say something, defend yourself, tell me I’m wrong, tell me your secret, tell me I’m the stupidest bitch you ever met, tell me you’re Jesus and you’re doing all this suffering for me? Why don’t you tell me something, and give us both a chance to feel sorry for you or better about you? Huh?”
Why not? There’s a perfectly good question, Will. Why not. She has certainly given you enough choices.
Or too many. Is that it, Will? Too much choice?
Well, it’s too much something, because you remain, lifeless, paralyzed, silent. She waits. She can’t wait long though. She won’t.
“Shut up,” she says to your silence. “Life, okay. Life is a gift. Only you can’t return it if it don’t fit right. You just grown into it.
“Grow up, Will.”
She throws you a disrespectful little mock salute as she spins away, toward the track, toward speed and sweat and heavy breathing and elevated heart rate. She is leaving now and you know she won’t turn back again.
“Life goes on,” she says, like a dare.
Before you even get a chance to debate that, she is back on the track, back in stride, back to magnificent motion, back to winning, back to blur with the rest of the field.
• • •
Back at the glacial pond where you sit on the slope, everything has stopped. There is no trace of anything that was there during the heady days after the first girl went under. Outside of in here, there is a spectacular nothingness of quiet. Not even a ripple on the water. Inside, is another story. It is crippling.
At the bridge, the brown water is running hard. There is an urgency, as it slaps and swerves its dark path under the bridge, under your feet, past you and gone, but still there and coming all the time, all the same. Small yellowcaps lick up off the surface of the water in your direction. It is a noisy water, full of voice.
The beach, your beach, is not what it was before, and it certainly isn’t what it was before that. The celebration has been wiped clean. All evidence gone. All manner of tribute gone. You love that about your beach, don’t you? That it just won’t put up with it. The ocean takes care of its own business, dumps what it wants to on the shore and takes back what it wants. Sand castles, flowers, teddy bears or heads and bodies. The wind and tide decide.
And they do not care about intentions. Not the cop’s intentions or the victim’s or the crier’s or the reporter’s.
And not yours.
You’re all wiped clean away.
It is not your place anymore.
It is so loud. It was always loud, your beach. But it is screaming in your ears now and the sound does not blend as it once did into the long creamy understanding sigh it used to because it has shattered into its individual ninety million tiny horrible distinct voices.
You would like the screaming to stop, wouldn’t you, Will? You would so like it to stop.
• • •
“Look what I found.”
It is dark when you wind up, through no effort of your own, at your own doorstep. Angela is sitting there. She’s got something of yours with her.
You are speechless. You did not expect to see either of them again. Did you want to?
“Where did you get that?” you ask.
“My front yard,” she says coolly.
You approach, reach out, and start stroking the smooth blond wood. You run a finger into and out of every curve and angle, over every finely sanded bit of surface.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but, what is this, a present? A joke? A fucking death threat?”
“I don’t . . . I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry. Yes, we have established that you are very sorry indeed. But that doesn’t tell me anything.”
“I don’t know what it’s about.”
“You had absolutely no part in this . . . thing being planted in front of my house?”
“No. None at all, I swear.”
She sits there, scowling at you from the steps of your own residence. Then she nods. “I guess I figured that anyway. Still creepy as all hell, Will. And you are the source of it, whether you planted this one or not. I don’t like this, and it has to stop. No more of this shit.”
“No,” you say weakly, almost to the sculpture. “No, this isn’t good, is it? We can’t have this.”
Your eyes, you can feel, are half closed and aching from the lack of sleep, the relentless tug of the medications, the wind and the mere effort of constantly trying to focus.
“Go to bed,” Angela says, lifelessly. She stands and brushes past you.
“I will take care of this. Don’t worry,” you say. “I am going to end this.”
“That’s reassuring,” she says bitterly, fading away into the darkness.
You pick it up, carry it on your shoulder into the house.
“Where have you been?” Gran says, shaky.
You take a long, lost pause that cannot very well reassure her. Then, you point to the wood. “I was . . . getting back my stuff,” you say. “See. It was at Angela’s.”
She looks at it, at you, then at her own wringing, wringing hands.
“Are you going to bed, Will?” she pleads. “Just tell me you are going to bed now. You look . . . you look bad. You need to sleep.”
“You’re right, Gran,” you say. “I am bad. And I’m going to sleep.”
She nods, and stands at the foot of the stairs until you have made it all the way up. Once there, you turn and wave to her. You may as well be waving from the moon. You even feel it, don’t you. The first stirrings of weightlessness. Gravity releasing you from its g
rip. You shift, one foot, to the other, to the other.
Teeter.
Teeter.
Then, in the hallway, you check the phone. It is as you expected. You plug it back in before going into your room and propping up in bed to wait.
• • •
Of course you can’t make it. You tip over with exhaustion and don’t have the strength to get properly into bed at any time during the night. You sleep on top of the covers, on the side of your face, with your arms tucked underneath you.
You are awake for untold minutes or hours before you can even manage to move.
The clock sings the song, on the hour that belongs to the blue jay. He whistles it out, the rising notes, then pulls it all right back again, the same strong song in reverse. You are still drifting on that song when you hear another, the house wren, a funny question of a tune, like it’s surprising itself. Two birds. A whole hour. Just like that.
Finally you arrive on the first floor, still in yesterday’s clothes.
“I don’t want you going out, not just now,” Gran is saying, greeting you at the bottom step. “Can you just do that for me? Just this once?”
“Where’s Pops?” you ask. It’s all feeling so suspicious at the moment. Something is wrong. Plenty is wrong. Why does Gran have her hands on you? Gran does not put her hands on you, like a cop, to keep you from going out. Why this, why now?
You go to the curved parlor window, parting the hazy cottony curtains to see Pops scurrying around, taking it all down as best he can. When Gran comes over to get you away from the window, you make your break for the door.
“Just go back inside,” Pops says, tossing something into his wheelbarrow. “You don’t need to worry yourself about this.”
This is, of course, entirely yours to worry about. The front lawn of your grandparents’ house has been turned into the public museum of your nightmares.
Could you, really, have created all these things? Did you, really, have the time, the inclination, the energy to carve so many garish, ferocious little beings? Gnomes, gargoyles, whirligigs. Thirty, forty of them, grinning, spinning, leaping. Gap-toothed, horned, eyeless. Long Salvador Dali mustaches. Some cut sharp as crystal figurines. Some appearing to melt.
