Fireball (14 page)

‘Sure. I guess so.'

‘Well, you can only be a follower for so long. You can't be a sheep your whole life. Chris has to make his choices. You have to make yours. Understand?'

I nodded. I was still seared and found his whole speech pretty confusing.

‘I sent Chris home,' he said, ‘and I'm going to do the same to you. You look a little under the weather, understand? You're feeling sick, and need the rest of the day off. And you're not going to come back until you're feeling better. Are we absolutely clear on that?'

‘Yes sir. One hundred per cent.'

I practically ran out of there. He didn't even phone my dad. It was fucking rad. Me and Chris had the whole day off. When I got home, he was already waiting in the basement.

‘Hey stoner,' he said.

‘What's up, boner?'

‘Mr Green busted me and sent me home.'

‘Me, too.' I grabbed him in a headlock and we started shoving each other around. ‘He gave me a huge speech about you.'

‘What'd he say?'

‘I can't really remember. I was blitzed. But he said you look like James Dean.'

‘That's awesome.'

We smoked another bowl and biked up to the movie store. When we asked the lady if she had any James Dean movies, she told us to try the library. It was right next door. We found one, too.
Rebel Without a Cause
. It was harsh old-school, and some of the other actors were pretty shitty, but James Dean was awesome. He didn't really look like Chris, but he acted like him. We hadn't made one of our movies for ages – we kind of gave up all that stuff when we hit high school – but after watching
Rebel
we busted out my camera and threw together a few scenes. Mostly it was just the two of us standing around in my dad's blazers, smoking our faces off. The annoying part was that I felt too much like the little sidekick. You know – the scrawny kid who acts kind of gay and doesn't get the girl.

That harsh depressed me, actually.

24

He hit the ground like a sack of cement. Wham. I'd seen Chris give it to a lot of guys, but none got it as bad as Bates. Chris put everything into those punches: all the hate and rage and frustration that had been twisting his insides for weeks.

The elastic had finally snapped.

Bates lay there, half-conscious, making these little groans. There was blood everywhere. It streamed from his nose and mouth and cuts on his cheek and forehead. His face was a red, pulpy mass – like a squashed tomato. Chris started kicking the tomato. He kicked it across the jaw, and two or three times in the gut. After the first kick Bates went still. After the fourth kick, or maybe the fifth, I grabbed Chris in a half-nelson.

‘That's it, man. That's it.'

He fought against me, still kicking. I didn't let go until he stopped resisting and tapped me on the forearm to let me know he was calm.

We stood over Bates, panting like dogs.

‘Shit. Did you kill him?'

At that point, the whole situation felt fairly surreal. Only fifty yards away, hidden by trees, dozens of people were enjoying a regular day at the beach. I couldn't see them but I could hear them, shouting and laughing and splashing. Overhead, all these seagulls circled around and around, like scraps of paper caught in a whirlwind.

‘You coming?' Chris asked.

He was sitting in the squad car, his face half-hidden by shade, and I was standing by the driver's side door. The sun slapped down on my scalp and the back of my neck. I glanced over at Bates. He lay completely still, like a fat blue slug squashed in the sand. Beyond him I could see the flicker and flare of sunlight off water. Then there was the beach, with its coal-hot sand and constantly breaking surf. That was the world, as far as I could tell: just an unbearable mix of heat and noise and light.

I couldn't let him go alone.

I walked around the front of the car and slipped into the passenger's seat. Chris popped the handbrake, backed up, and shifted into drive. We cruised past the boat ramp and through the Cates parking lot. There were people all over the place: lounging on the grass, unpacking beach gear, waiting for parking spots. None of them noticed us. When a cop drives past, people don't pay much attention to the driver – they only see the car. It's a lot like a hearse in that way. Chris turned his hearse onto Dollarton Highway and accelerated. He hadn't driven much but the squad car was an automatic, which made it easy. Things began to feel more normal. It was a beautiful day and here we were, driving along. I rolled down my window and rested my elbow on the door, mimicking Chris.

‘Check it out,' he said.

He pointed at a pack of smokes on the dashboard. I lit one for both of us and started fiddling with the radio. I don't know if it was broken or what, but I couldn't find any FM. Eventually I just gave up and left it tuned in to this Chinese radio station. All the music and ads were in Chinese. Even the DJ spoke Chinese. Mandarin, I guess. It was pretty awesome, actually.

‘Sweet, man. Turn it up.'

I did. This funky rift filled the cab, trilling along our spines, and a lady started singing at the top of her lungs. It was like we were in the opening sequence of a movie – one of those gritty Hong Kong action movies where everybody's always sweating and smoking and driving super fast, and nobody gives a shit whether they live or die.

25

They invited us to the funeral. Don't ask me why. We were a little surprised to receive the invitations. I guess they thought we had a right to be there. Maybe they assumed we wanted to pay our last respects to this lady we'd never even met, whose life we had almost saved.

But basically, we decided to go.

Jules drove us to this church across town. It was the first time I'd been to a funeral, except for my mom's and that doesn't really count because I was still a baby. I won't ever go to another one, either. I'd rather drop acid again than go to another funeral. We parked on the street across from the church – a tiny building covered in white stucco.

‘Ready to roll?'

‘Roll out the red carpet.'

‘Yeah,' Jules said. He never really got our jokes. ‘Ready or not, here we roll.'

The church was hot and cramped as a kiln. Not many people came – maybe thirty or forty – but there wasn't even enough room for everybody to sit. The late arrivals had to stand against the walls. We got the last three seats in the back. I was dressed in a cheap suit that my dad had bought me for my cousin's Christening. When I was twelve it might have fit me. Not any more. I felt like I'd squeezed myself into a straitjacket. The sleeves were way too short, and every time I moved I expected the shoulders to rip apart. That was bad enough, but I was also sweating my balls off. Streaks of morning sun smashed through the plate glass windows, setting the church ablaze with orange and red and yellow light. Outside you could see waves of heat squiggling in the air, and the whole place stunk of perfume, cologne and body odour. At one point it got so bad I covered my face with my shirt and started breathing through my mouth. It was nuts.

Things began to happen.

A minister waddled up to the altar. Behind him hung this wooden cross with a life-size Jesus stretched out on it. Even Jesus looked hot. His sad old eyes stared straight down, towards the coffin at his feet. The casket was open but from where we sat I couldn't see inside. After mumbling a few words of welcome, the minister started preaching. I felt awful for him. He was wearing these huge robes that looked thick and heavy as blankets. A glaze of sweat glistened on his face, and he kept having to wipe his forehead with his handkerchief. I don't remember much of what he said. It was impossible to concentrate in all that heat, and the minister didn't have the stamina to speak with conviction. He started strong but by the end his words were coming out in short, wheezy phrases – like an asthmatic.

Finally, he gasped, ‘Let us pray.'

One by one all the heads in front of us dropped down. Jules did the same – lacing his hands together before his face. He went to church every Sunday so he knew exactly what to do. Chris didn't. Neither did I. I've never said a prayer in my life. It seemed kind of stupid to start for no reason, so I kept my head up and my eyes open. All I could see was row after row of sweaty scalps, as if the whole congregation had ducked down to hide. The minister mumbled a few words about Mrs Reever being up in heaven and at peace.

Then he said, ‘Amen.'

And everybody else said, ‘Amen.'

Speeches came next – too many speeches to count. First the family gave speeches. Her husband was dead so he didn't give one but her daughter did, and both her sons, and even a bunch of her grandchildren. Then came her friends from the apartment block. All of them had something nice to say about her. She loved cats. She enjoyed playing bridge. She drank single malt whiskey. She had a collection of silent films. She baked cherry tarts. Meanwhile noon was approaching. The temperature rose about a hundred degrees and I started getting dizzy. Each heartbeat sounded like a gong going off in my head. It got harder and harder to see. The people up at the altar became these colourless, blurry shapes. I could hear them talking but none of them actually said anything. The meaning of the words evaporated in the heat. Between speeches, I imagined standing up and putting an end to it.

I wanted to shout, ‘She's dead, okay? Let's leave it at that.'

I didn't have the guts, though. Plus, what was the point? They needed their little speeches, to connect with her in some way. And part of me understood why they were trying so hard. On the other hand, she was dead and we were alive. Where's the connection in that? The only thing we had in common with her was that, one day, we'd all be just as dead.

Some of us sooner than others.

At the end the minister asked us to rise. That was the weirdest part of all. We stood up and formed a line and passed in front of the casket one by one. It was time to say goodbye to Mrs Reever. By that point it must have been mid-afternoon. The heat kept up its slow torture. Sweat had soaked through the back of my shirt and my collar felt tight as a choker. The air was too thick and cloying to breathe. You had to drink it in big gulps, like perfumed water. The stench caught in my throat, and I was terrified I'd puke. I'd puke on the flower display or down the front of somebody's suit or all over the glistening coffin. It wasn't just the smell that made me nauseous. It was the thought of seeing her again.

But she looked different than I expected.

The line moved forward, smooth and steady as a conveyer belt, and when our turn came the three of us stood side by side, looking down. Her face wasn't all grey and pasty like I remembered. They'd dusted her cheeks with rouge and lined her mouth with dark lipstick. Silver hair curled around her head in an old-fashioned perm. In a lot of ways, she looked more alive than she had on the day we'd saved her.

Jules got all teary-eyed.

‘She's so pretty,' he sobbed.

I didn't have it in me to cry. Neither did Chris. We just stood there, dazed, until the momentum of the line moved us along. Afterwards there was a reception, with crackers and drinks and people talking in small, solemn voices. We headed straight for the bar. It wasn't really a bar – it was just a table they'd set up with a dozen bottles of wine and some cheap styrofoam cups. We hung around that table and got completely hammered. That's the only good thing about funerals – when it comes to the booze it's pretty much a free-for-all. We couldn't figure out why everybody else wasn't pounding the stuff back. I mean, a few people had a glass or two, but only one other guy was interested in getting really tanked. At first he'd swing by, pour himself a drink, and then make a slow tour of the room before circling back for more. Later on he stopped pretending and just stood there drinking with us.

‘Say,' he said, ‘this wine is quite good, don't you think?'

‘Yeah, it's pretty tasty.'

He was scrawny and pot-bellied, and had combed his hair in a weird little twist over his bald spot. He kind of reminded me of the guy in this play we'd gone to see for drama class –
Death of a Salesman
. He looked exactly like the actor who played the old man, the one who has an affair and then dies in the end. You know – the salesman.

‘You boys related to the old girl?' he asked.

Chris and I didn't know what to say. We stared into our wine cups, and let Jules explain how we'd dragged her out of the water. He didn't mind. He liked talking about it in a way that Chris and I didn't. The only problem was that he tended to get all choked up. By the end of the story his eyes were watering and he was having trouble finding the right words.

‘If… if only we'd gotten there sooner…'

It was a little embarrassing, actually.

‘Don't feel too bad about it, kid.' The guy selected a bottle and topped all our glasses up with white wine. He was pretty awesome. ‘Old Mrs Reever was getting on. She hadn't been the same since her husband died. You understand what I'm saying?'

We didn't. We just stared at him.