Dead (A Lot)

by Howard Odentz

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “Sleeping in my makeshift hyperbaric chamber,” he said and tilted his head toward an upturned, red, plastic kayak that stretched along the back wall. Andrew was perched on top of the boat with his head tucked under his wing. “We had a little difference of opinion about the color because he kept insisting his chamber had to be green.”

  Prianka smiled and nodded approvingly—just enough to annoy me. Score another point for the man in the chair.

  “He’s usually so uncomfortable with strangers,” she said as she quickly glanced over at me. “Or the other way around.” There it was, the proverbial knife slipping quietly into my gut. “But most people don’t understand how special he is.” Yup, that was the sound of the knife being twisted.

  “Listen,” said Jimmy. “When you grow up differently abled you get lumped in with a lot of other kids who don’t quite fit the norm. You learn how to talk to them in ways they understand. He’s a genius, your brother. He told me exactly what he needed, and I filled in the blanks. I even gave him an old football helmet to wear. He hasn’t stirred while we’ve been talking. My guess is he’s out cold.”

  Okay. So Jimmy was a little impressive. I’d give him that.

  “And Andrew is totally into him. I’ve never seen that flying chicken bond so quickly with anyone.” The crow ruffled his feathers when he heard his name.

  The three of us backed out of the room and gently closed the door. We followed Jimmy down the hallway and turned right into a small kitchen.

  “You kids drink coffee?” he asked as he produced a match and lit the gas stove. A blue ring of flame appeared in a circle. He opened the dead fridge and pulled out a lukewarm jug of water and filled up an old pot and stuck it on the flames. Jimmy was so adept in his chair, it’s as though he wasn’t even in one.

  “Yes,” Prianka and I both said in unison.

  “Me, three,” added Trina, who had just woken up and joined us in the kitchen. “What time is it?” She stretched and yawned.

  “Almost sun-up,” I said.

  “I had the strangest dream. The world turned all zombie on us, and we had to leave Littleham to go find Mom and Dad. We were with this girl from school, her autistic little brother, and a wheelchair bound D.J. with a pet crow. Weird, huh?”

  “True that,” said Jimmy as he rummaged around in a cabinet for a jar of instant coffee. “You left out the part about not being able to wake up.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe I’m still dreaming.” All of a sudden she went rigid and terror ran across her face. “Where’s Sanjay?”

  “Chill,” I said. “He’s fine.”

  “It’s all good. He’s sleeping,” answered Jimmy as he pulled out four coffee mugs, a jar of instant coffee, and some nondairy creamer. “No sugar, guys. Sorry.”

  That was just fine with me. Coffee tastes like tar anyway, and no amount of sugar can help. What I really needed was a pop tart or something.

  “Got any food?” I asked.

  “My larder es su larder,” he said and pointed over to a cabinet next to the sink. What I found inside was pretty grim. He had a half a jar of organic peanut butter, some seaweed treats, bran, and a couple cans of bamboo shoots.

  “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” I said. “Your parents must have raised you better than this.”

  “Ah, foster child,” he said. “Never made the real family cut—they weren’t wheelchair accessible.” I suddenly felt about two inches tall. “But speaking of parents, what about going and finding yours. I left a bunch of phone books out near the door just in case one of them was for the town where your aunt lives. Maybe we can find the address.”

  The water on the stove began to boil, and Jimmy filled up four mugs. I went and got the phone books and brought the stack back into the kitchen and plopped them down on the counter.

  Prianka picked up one of the books and looked at the towns listed on the cover. “Would you know the name of the town if you heard it?”

  “Not sure,” both Trina and I said in unison.

  “My dad and his sister weren’t exactly close,” Trina explained. “So we didn’t see Aunt Ella and Uncle Don much—maybe once a year. Dad used to call them hippy freaks, and Mom didn’t like us hanging around them. She said they were a bad influence.”

  “Sounds like my kind of people,” said Jimmy.

  “Aunt Ella would have a field day with all this poxer crap,” I said. “She was always talking about how the government had things hidden up its sleeve and that someday someone was going to mess up really bad. She was one of those people who believed in everything. No conspiracy theory left unturned, you know? Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, UFOs, secret government labs—who would have ever guessed she was right?”

  “I saw Bigfoot once,” said Jimmy as he sipped his coffee. “I was in Maine and . . .”

  “Hippy freak,” said Trina, and we all laughed. It felt good to laugh—just for a moment—because laughing seemed like one of those things that we weren’t going to be able to do anymore, like playing video games or surfing the Internet. The laughter was short lived, and soon we were all quiet again, sipping our coffee and lost in our own thoughts, which, for me at least, were sort of frightening.

  After a while, I put down my cup and wiped my hands through my greasy hair. “So, um, yeah. We have to figure out where Aunt Ella lives. We know she’s up off the Mohawk Trail.”

  “That’s Route 2” said Jimmy. “I know how to get there.”

  Trina said, “We know there’s a coffee shop or something on the corner of the street we turn on to get to her house.”

  Prianka picked up one of the telephone books. “This one says Greenfield. I think Route 2 runs through there. A bunch of other towns are listed, too.”

  “Like what,” I said.

  “Greenfield, Lakeville, Niantic, Cummington, Turners Falls and Monta . . . Monta something.”

  “Montague,” said Jimmy. “Yeah, I know all those places. They do run up Route 2.”

  I turned to Trina. “Cummington sounds familiar, don’t you think.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Pri, her name is Ella Light. See if she’s listed. Oh and my Uncle is Don Dark.”

  “You’re joking,” said Prianka and Jimmy at the same time.

  “Aunt Ella always said they were two halves of a whole, like soul mates, so when they got married she kept the Light name, and he changed his last name to Dark. So they’re Light and Dark.”

  “No wonder your parents kept you away from them,” said Prianka as she began thumbing through the pages. She flipped through the Ds but found nothing. Then she went to the Ls and hit pay dirt. “Ella Light, 8 Captain Logan Way, Cummington.”

  “Let’s roll,” I said.

  Jimmy backed his wheels up and turned to face us. “Listen, you guys. I gotta thank you for getting me out of that jam yesterday. There aren’t a lot of people who would have done that for someone.”

  “That’s because there aren’t a lot of people,” I said.

  He smiled grimly. “Point taken. Anyway, I really appreciate everything you’ve done but . . . um . . .”

  Prianka was the first one to speak. “Yes,” she said.

  Trina agreed, and I reluctantly gave a thumbs up.

  “Yes, what?” said Jimmy.

  “Yes you can come with us,” she said. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”

  Jimmy smiled like someone who just got a reprieve from a death sentence. “I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I mean, once you saw that I was in a wheelchair I didn’t think I was going to get the sympathy vote.”

  “What wheelchair?” said Trina as she got up and went over to the window and peeked out. A shaft of light from the morning sunrise made her face glow a little. She touched her hair the way she used to d
o when she first starting dating Chuck, and kept looking outside.

  Jimmy couldn’t stop staring at her.

  17

  NONDAIRY CREAMER mixed with water for milk sounds pretty gross, but Sanjay didn’t care. Neither did he care about eating the last of our Frosted Flakes. He sat at the kitchen table with Andrew close by. Every so often, Andrew would hop over and dip his beak into Sanjay’s bowl and hop away with a soggy flake.

  Sanjay was fascinated. He took another spoonful of his cereal, swallowed, and said, “Poopy Puppy says Corvus brachyrhynchos.”

  I sat across the table from him eating out of the bag of potato chips that Trina had shoved in her duffle bag. “Say what?”

  “Poopy Puppy says Corvus brachyrhynchos,” he repeated and plopped the grimy toy on the table next to his bowl. “The American crow is a large passerine bird species of the family Corvidae. It is a common bird found throughout much of North America. It is one of several species of corvid that are entirely black, though it can be distinguished from the Common Raven by size and behavior and from the Fish Crow by call.”

  “If only we could harness your brain power for electricity,” I said.

  “His name’s Andrew,” said Sanjay as he slurped at the last of his cereal. “He talks.”

  Andrew hopped over to Sanjay again and looked at the empty bowl. He squawked and flapped his wings before hopping on the boy’s shoulder. Sanjay didn’t mind one bit.

  Prianka and Trina came in the kitchen with a box they filled with junk from the basement. “So we got batteries,” she said. “Some tools, matches, a lighter, a couple of flashlights, um . . . can you think of anything else?”

  “What else was down there?” said Jimmy, who was on his third cup of coffee. I’ve never been in the basement. I told my landlord I wasn’t going to need the space, so he used it for storage.”

  Prianka and Trina shared a wicked glance.

  “What?” I said.

  “What?” Jimmy echoed.

  Trina chewed at her lip. “Well there is something else that we thought might help.” She motioned for me to follow her and Prianka to the basement. I looked back at Jimmy and shrugged. I had no choice but to follow them.

  Storage was an understatement. The basement was a flea marketer’s dream. There were boxes upon boxes of everything laid out neatly in rows with labels on them.

  “A little anal retentive, don’t you think?”

  Trina just kept that wicked smile of hers plastered on her face and motioned for me to follow to the back of the room. There was an old couch there, and a couple of coffee tables, some boxes labeled ‘Grammy’s china,” and a tall glass-fronted cabinet with a padlock.

  “Ta da,” she said and pointed her flashlight through the glass.

  “Am I looking at what I think I’m looking at?”

  “That depends on what you think you’re looking at,” said Prianka.

  Illuminated by the beam of the flashlight was a series of hunting rifles. They gleamed beneath the light. The wood was shiny, and the barrels were mint.

  “A gun cabinet? No way. His landlord must have been a hunter.”

  “That’s not the best part,” said Prianka and bent down in front of the cabinet. There was a drawer on the bottom with a brass handle. She pulled it open, stepped back, and put her hands on her hips. “So what do you think of that?”

  My eyes turned into big, round saucers. “That would be bullets,” I said staring at row after row of neat white boxes. “That would be one boat load of bullets.”

  Trina put the flashlight down on the coffee table so it was still shining on the cabinet. She slipped through the pile of boxes and came back with an axe in her hand.

  Prianka stuck out her hand. “I’m having rage issues this morning,” she said.

  “Aw come on,” whined Trina. “How often do we get a chance to break things?”

  “My rage issues trump your glee at breaking things. Gimme.”

  Prianka wouldn’t budge, so Trina handed the axe over to her. We both took five steps back and covered our faces with our elbows. Prianka held the axe handle tightly between her fists and tested the blade against the lock.

  She managed to whack the lock once. but nothing happened. She hit it a second time. The third time around, she didn’t even bother. She just smashed the glass with the axe head and let it shatter all over the floor.

  “Feeling better now?” asked Trina.

  “We’ll see,” she answered.

  There were four rifles there. I knew a little about shooting. My dad used to take me to the annual Turkey Shoot over in Hanover every year.

  Shooting turkeys isn’t as heartless as you think. The contest winner is the guy who can hit the paper turkey target as many times as humanly possible. The winner gets a huge Thanksgiving turkey from Brimmer’s Turkey Farm, which is a local town fixture in Littleham. We never won, but I always had a blast.

  Prianka picked up one of the rifles and tested its heft like those tough guys do in the movies. She held the shaft out straight and studied the barrel with one eye closed.

  “Don’t tell me. You know how to use that thing, too?”

  “I will soon enough,” she said.

  “All of us will,” said Trina as she unloaded the guns from their cabinet and stooped to take out the boxes of bullets. Over near the old couch was a stack of milk crates. I grabbed one and stacked the boxes of bullets neatly inside.

  After a quick look around, the three of us left Jimmy James’ basement for the last time, guns and ammo in hand.

  18

  TRINA AND I decided that we’d be the ones to do it because if anything happened to Prianka, Sanjay would be totally lost—and as mucho macho as Jimmy was, he was still in that damn chair.

  We stuck the paddle inside the kayak, and Jimmy made us take his life vest and shove it way down in the nose of the boat. He said, “It might come in handy.”

  I took the phone book with Aunt Ella’s address, ripped out the page, and put it in my back pocket. I also ripped out a hunk of paper and handed a bunch to Trina along with a lighter. I shoved the rest of the pages down the front of my shirt so they’d be easy to get to.

  Jimmy was at the window.

  “Okay. Mrs. Demetrion’s out in front of her house just sitting on her stairs and twitching every once in a while. There’re some girls who live down a couple houses. I can see three of them. They’re doing that wandering back and forth thing. I hate that.”

  “Can you see to either side of us?” I asked.

  “Double checking.” Jimmy craned his neck and pressed his face against the glass, first one way than the other. “Nothing,” he said.

  We were all packed and ready to go. Sanjay sat on the futon in the living room clutching Poopy Puppy. Prianka stood by the door. At her feet were the few boxes that we had packed along with the milk crate of bullets and all the guns.

  Andrew soared out of the kitchen and landed next to Sanjay. He delicately stepped on to his shoulder. I didn’t need to ask. The bird was coming, too.

  “So my guess is we’re going to draw a lot of attention as soon as we start moving,” I said to Jimmy and Prianka. “We’ll try to be as quick as we can, but if you see something we don’t, scream. As far as I’m concerned every one of those things can pop and burn, but if any of that goo gets on my car . . .”

  “Your car?” said Trina.

  “You know what I mean. If any of that black crap gets on the car, it’s like freaking molten tar. I don’t care about the paint job. I care that we don’t have fried wheels.”

  Jimmy rubbed his thighs with the palms of his hands. “You sure you don’t want me to do this, man? Putting the kayak up on a car is cake. I’ve done it a million times.”

  “It’s not a car, it’s a truck,” I snapped. “And this isn’t
a contest.”

  Thankfully, Trina backed me up, even though she should have throttled back just an eensy bit. “This isn’t a game of who can do more pushups.”

  Ouch.

  Jimmy looked away and didn’t say anything.

  Sanjay held his stuffed dog to his ear and said, “The world record for the most number of non-stop pushups is 10,507 by Minoru Yoshida of Japan, which was achieved in October 1980.”

  We were all quiet. Trina crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. Prianka bent and pretended to tie her laces.

  “I get it,” said Jimmy and went back to looking out the window. “I get it.” He blew out a gust of air. “Let’s just get this done.”

  The kayak was laid out in a straight shot to the front door. There were handles on the bow and the stern, and it was incredibly light. I picked up the front end and Trina picked up the rear. When we were ready, I nodded to Prianka, and she quietly unlocked the door and swung it open.

  Just like that Trina and I were out in the open. Seconds later, we were at the Hummer and heaving the kayak on top.

  “Upside down,” hissed Trina. “It has to be upside down.”

  She jumped on the hood, I grabbed the end, and we turned the boat over. Surprisingly, our movements aren’t what got the poxers moving. Instead, the clank of the paddle inside the plastic shell is what alerted Mrs. Demetrion that there was fresh meat in town.

  I saw her out of the corner of my eye as I struggled to thread the straps underneath the roof rack and over to Trina. Mrs. Demetrion hunkered down on her steps and let her arms hang down below her like some sort of demented ape. Seconds later she stood straight up and started toward us.