Freewill (11 page)

You wipe to clear the eye. Jacks swings you back around to him.

“I have been thinking about this a lot, Will, and I don't think you are quite ready . . .”

“Thinking . . . thinking a lot about
me
?”

“Yes, you shouldn't risk . . .”

“When would you have had time to think about me?”

“It is just too soon. You need to be fully . . .”

He's been tipped. Of course he's been tipped. He has been waiting for you. Alerted by one or more of your grandparents who are probably under official orders to let the world know where you are at all times. What do you think about that? You have become so important all of a sudden that everywhere you go, somebody has made a call to tip somebody off. Your every move is under surveillance.

“Am I going to have to wear one of those electronic ankle bracelets now?”

Jacks does it again. The cat yodels. “It's nothing like that, Will, you know that.”

You know nothing of the kind. The smallest certainty is impossible at this moment.

It is exactly then that you become aware of the lightness
of being you, the physical near-nothingness of it. You are not a body, not a kite, but a massive inflatable parade character, and Jacks's arm feels suddenly like the thing that is keeping you tethered to this earth. He is, in fact, guiding you, as the two of you newly great and good buddies wend your way, on display, through the crowd.

And some crowd. Look at them, Will. As much as you can look at them through the great distance, the blurring, the milky mist. Mist or no, though, it is a sad, scary view, and while you are wondering whether they are scared of you, you have every right to be the one who is afraid.

There is no life in this building. People are here because they have to be here or because where else are they going to go. It is more manageable for everybody to presume they need to be someplace, rather than having to decide all the time what they should be doing, with whom, where and why. That is why the school is at this moment loaded with students who are not going to learn anything, teachers who aren't going to teach anything, and you.

Choice, Will. It can kill you. It is supposed to be what makes living worthwhile. It is what makes not living an option.

They look so sad. Don't they look so sad? Every last person. You have to keep rubbing and rubbing your eyes to get a clear view of a face but you keep doing it and every time
you do you are repaid, with a sad, searching face looking hard back into you before turning quickly away.

You reach out, a blind man's move, trying to grab a touch of somebody who seemed to be right there, but then wasn't. You try a second time, reaching for a denim arm that seems
right there
, but then is gone. You squint at a lone small figure with long black hair. She drops her gaze to the floor.

Lock up your children, and avert your eyes. The teen angel of death comes again.

Jacks is, most likely, utterly lost. He takes each of your moves to be some kind of collapse, and gathers you back up into his benign, unwelcome embrace. You ignore him. Continue lurching, leering, attempting contact, mortifying people.

You never noticed them before. You never looked at them before. They never noticed you either.

That is changed. None of them want to touch, but you are all for sure noticing each other now. Because now you share something. You are all scared and lost, and not one of you knows what comes next.

Certainly you weren't expecting this. You let Jacks lead you blindly, but you didn't figure on seeing any crisp white uniforms again so soon.

“Why are we here? We were going to the shop . . .”

“You have to be cleared to come back to class, Will, that's
all. Nurse has to just look you over, give you the all's clear. For your own safety. Don't be concerned.”

And you are being examined again. Someone, Ms. Appleton, tall pallid unhealthy-looking school nurse, is looking deep into your eyes. As has happened a lot lately. She is asking you questions about yourself. As has happened a lot lately.

“I am in junior year.

“Yes, I am taking medication.

“The hospital didn't find a break. But I know there is one.

“No, I don't believe they are trying to keep something from me.

“I meant to be a pilot, not a woodworker. It was an administrative error.”

The next thing you know, you are headed back out the front door with a note in your hand. The halls are now all empty, but just as silent as they were with all the bodies.

“Just a few more days' rest, that's all,” Mr. Jacks is saying. “You don't want to come back too soon until you are feeling up to it.”

“I wasn't even coming back,” you say weakly, looking back over your shoulder into the heart of the school, but walking compliantly out of it. “I was just here to get my stuff.”

“Oh.” He seems mystified by this, perhaps by your ability to make a decision. “Well. Well, to tell you the truth, Will, I was going to ask you about that.”

“About what?”

“Your things. Where are they?”

“My things. Well, I have a jacket and a Montreal Expos hat in my locker. And at my station a couple of small . . .”

“No, your things. Your
stuff
. Your works.”

“My works. My woodworks?”

“Yes. I didn't want to say anything until I had a chance to talk to you myself. Didn't want you in any more . . . difficulty . . .”

Nice word, that. Eh, Will? You are in
difficulty
. How does one get in there, you might ask him. And how does one get out?

“Mr. Jacks, how am I in
difficulty
?”

“Where is your work, Will?”

“What do you mean? It's in the storage with everybody else's.”

He shakes his head slowly. “I wanted to give you a chance, Will. I know all about your hard times. But it has to stop now. Where are they?”

It is slow in coming. You want to help. You want to help the police and the teacher and everybody walking wounded with the sad long faces who so badly want to have all the life-lost teenagers put back here where they belong and you will quietly slip back out in exchange because as you and everyone else well knows, you never did. Belong.

It is a trade you would gladly make. Trade. Bring them
back. You go in their place. That would be as it should be, you are thinking.

Stop. Choice. You do not choose what others do, William, and others do not choose for you. What they did they did. What your father did or didn't do, he did or didn't do. Their choices. Your choices. You are free to go.

You would think so anyway.

Why can't you think so?

“I swear, Mr. Jacks, I haven't seen my stuff, any of it, since . . .”

He knows. He may not have had faith in you before, but the evidence appears plain enough. He knows now, you don't have them.

“Somebody appears to have taken your works, Will. I'm sorry. I thought it was you.”

He all but lifts you through the door, out into the most powerful sunshine you have ever felt. He guides you down the cement stairs where you are unfazed at finding your grandfather sitting in the car.

“Somebody stole my work, Pops,” you say as Mr. Jacks helps you into the car the way funeral attendants help the frail old widow into the limo.

•  •  •

You are trying to try. Trying to just get better. But again the ringing begins. Gran and Pops have taken to ignoring it,
unplugging it for most of the time unless they are expecting calls, or when they have made calls and simply forgotten to unplug afterward. They are old and getting older every minute now. Forgetting is not unusual.

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?