Me & Death (5 page)

T
here was room for both of us in the elevator – barely. It was one of those sloooooow ones. Lots of creaking and whining. Took us a long minute to get to the third floor. I kept thinking we were going to get stuck.

When Wolfgang let go of my hand, I wiped it dry.

His hand wasn’t the only wet thing about him. His face ran with sweat, and the collar of his T-shirt was darker than the rest of it. When he shifted his weight, I swear I heard squishing sounds from his shoes.

He trembled a lot. As the elevator hitched and groaned its way up, I’d look down at him, and he’d have his thumb in his mouth and his eyes closed. And he’d be shaking. Tadeusz had said that ghosts were tied to Earth. That’s why they were staying at this pathetic hotel. Pretty clear that Denise was here because of her son. I wondered what tied Wolfgang. Did he feel sad because he never got to grow up? That didn’t sound right. When I was his age I didn’t regret anything. What have you done wrong by the time you’re six?

I asked him if he was a Mourner. He shook his head.

“Grave Walker,” he said without taking his thumb out of his mouth. Sweat dripped from the ends of his hair.

The elevator stopped, finally, and we got out. The third-floor hall had spiderwebs and peeling wallpaper. Bare lightbulbs hung from the ceiling. Wolfgang’s room
was the one after 314 and across from 315. The number on the door was 31. I figured that the 6 had fallen off. He swiped his card to open his door and led me in.

“You play Extreme Moto-X?” he asked.

“The video game? I used to.”

It’s a real old one. We don’t have a system at home, but Jerry lets Raf and me play the ones in his shop.

“Take a seat.” His voice was creaky, like a door that needed oiling. I guess he didn’t talk much. He went to the TV for the controllers.

There was no seat. Just an unmade kid’s bed, with a torn sticker of Daffy Duck on one side. The TV was on the far wall, maybe two paces from the bed. Not a big room.

The walls ran with damp. The air smelled sweet and rotten – unwashed clothes mixed with mildew and farts. I tried not to breathe too deep.

He plunked himself down on the bed and put my controller beside him. I sat cautiously. Had the sheets ever been changed?

Extreme Moto-X is a motorcycle race across a lame 2-D desert. The screen splits for two players. I was the bike on the left. I tried out the controller. Thumb-sized joystick, two buttons. B button was a skid control, I remembered. Okay then. I took a breath, shook my shoulders loose.

“The A button is jump, right?” I asked.

Wolfgang nodded, intent on the screen.

3—2—1—GO! The flag came down.

When the race started, the desert disappeared, replaced by my neighborhood. The graphics were a little
better, and I recognized Wright Avenue west of Roncy, down the street from Wright Avenue Elementary School, where they might, at that very moment, be wondering where I was. (Or not. This wouldn’t be the first day I’d skipped.)

I was expecting something like this to happen, but I got that stupid lump in my chest again. I never thought I was so emotional.

Like most streets in my neighborhood, Wright Avenue featured tall skinny houses leaning together, neat front lawns, cars parked like dominoes. My school was coming up on the north side – an old brick two-story. This was an early fall afternoon, the leaves just starting to turn color. Smelled like September. Fresh, you know? Even the dust smelled fresh.

I could see the back of another Moto-X cycle on my half of the screen. Wolfgang was ahead of me. Without thinking, I pushed the little joystick forward to accelerate. This was my past here – with my future on the line – but it was also a race. The bike skidded, so I pushed B to correct.

“Faster!”

I looked over. Wolfgang leaned forward, gripping his controller.

Fine. I’d show him. I pushed the joystick all the way forward and started to catch up. He swung left. I stayed straight, then saw I was about to hit a pothole. I pressed A, and the machine jumped in the air … and in a bump and a flash I was through the TV screen, careering down Wright on an
actual
Harley-Davidson Ironhead Chopper, neck and neck with Wolfgang.

I experienced a moment – a second really – of complete, total all-over awesomeness. Wow! Oh, wow! Then I saw the pothole coming up faster than I could steer. There was no A button on my motorcycle. I hit the middle of the pothole, lost control, and crashed the bike, flipping over the handlebars to land on the sidewalk in front of the school. Wolfgang stopped next to me and got off his bike, laughing at my spill. The moment he let go of his bike, it disappeared. Mine was gone too. Pretty cool, I thought. I got to my feet, unharmed. This was the past, after all. I wasn’t really there.

We bounced toward the school like astronauts in zero g. Passing through the main floor window was as easy as pushing aside a curtain. We were in a classroom. “Grade one,” said Wolfgang.

“I know.”

We stayed at the back. It was the end of the day, and the kids were clustered on the carpet for story-time. I could smell the white glue, chalk, Magic Marker, and then, faint as hope, a whisper of perfumed soap. Miss Macrow’s smell.

My first-grade teacher sat tall and straight in her story-time chair, holding the book so that the kids could see the pictures. She had long black hair and eyes like wet stones. Her dress went past her knees. Her hands were clean. Her voice had steel in it.

“What a bunch of losers!” sneered Wolfgang. Funny, coming from him. He was about the same age as the kids in this class.

I noticed a boy quietly picking his nose in the back
of the crowd. A big kid, with brown hair cut close and sloppy clothes. My grade-one self. He stared vacantly, not very interested in the story about the soldier who helped a witch find a tinderbox. He slid himself forward, rubbing his sock feet on the carpet to pick up static electricity. When he touched the bare neck of the little kid in front of him, there was a spark. The little kid started to cry. Jim smiled broadly.

Wolfgang nodded approvingly. “Nice going.” A lot of whispering and squirming on the story-time carpet now. A concerted movement, a general drawing away from the crying kid.

Is there someone in your life you hate for no reason? Their voice makes you want to throw up, their smile makes you want to punch it? Everything they do drives you crazy? You know someone like that? Me too. Lloyd. I hated his high pants and double-knotted running shoes. I hated his limp ginger hair and his long eyelashes. I hated the way he moved and talked. I hated the way he breathed.

He was the kid in front of Jim. His pale, round, firstgrade face was squinched up, and his legs were twisted under him like a couple of pretzels. A stain darkened and spread across the story-time carpet underneath him.

Hey, Lloyd peed his pants!
yelled Jim.

Lloyd closed his eyes.

Peed his pants, peed his pants
. The class laughed.

“Is this why we’re here?” I asked Wolfgang. “Is it Lloyd?”

“Huh?”

“Is
he
the one I’m supposed to remember?”

I was thinking back to what Tadeusz had said about these memories showing me who I should treat better. I still thought Lloyd was a ween, but I guess I had been a little mean to him. Wolfgang didn’t know what I was talking about. He shrugged.

Quiet!
Miss Macrow was on her feet.
Quiet, all of you!
She said all of you, but she was glaring at Jim. When he shuddered, I felt an echo of his fear myself. Wolfgang felt something too. He stopped laughing abruptly and put his thumb back in his mouth.

The beautiful, sweet-smelling, caring teacher knelt beside Lloyd and put her arms around him, ignoring the pee on the carpet, and Lloyd sniffed onto the sleeve of her blouse.

CHAPTER 10

T
he bell rang. We drifted out through the wall as easily as we’d drifted in. The fall afternoon was all around us, coating us with golden light. And here was Maq with his hair blowing all around his head. I’d recognized him back in class. He looked like a sunset from the neck up, had these big fat rays of red hair coming out from his head in all directions.

Maq walked home alone, even from grade one, because he lived next door to the school. He still lives there, but he switched to some genius school on the other side of the park, so I don’t see him much anymore.

I heard a rhythmic banging sound behind us. I turned. Jim was pushing Lloyd against the back of a parked car. He had his hands on the smaller boy’s shoulders, and he was slamming him into the rear bumper.
Bang. Bang. Bang
. This was happening between parked cars, hidden from the moms clustered in front of the school.

Wolfgang and I sat on the trunk of the nearer car. He nodded approvingly. “This takes me back,” he said. “Good times. Good times.”

He’d have been a tough, scary little kid, like Jim here. Like me.

Stop that!

Maq stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips.
Stop that at once!
he cried.

And now I remembered. “Oh, yeah,” I said to Wolfgang. “I know what happens now.”

Fighting is stupid. Stop now or I’ll call my papa!

Jim threw Lloyd to the ground and stood over him, breathing hard. He had the dissatisfied, poison-ivy look. He’d scratched and felt better for two seconds, but the itch was back.

Are you calling me stupid? No one calls me stupid!
said Jim. He stepped up onto the sidewalk, towering over Maq. Who didn’t move.

Stupid!
he cried.

They pushed back and forth for a few seconds. Jim punched Maq in the throat. Maq went down but climbed to his feet, roaring. He swung with his left hand, more push than punch because the arm was bent at the elbow. Jim grabbed the arm hard, and it came off in his hand. Yes, that’s what I said. The whole arm, from well above the elbow, came away from Maq’s body. His shirtsleeve flapped against the side of his chest.

You can see why I remember the scene.

For a second Jim stared at the arm, still bent at the elbow joint, a giant chicken wing. An actual arm, part of someone’s body, and he’d ripped it away. I remember the shock, the feelings of power – and horror.

He screamed and dropped the arm.

Papa!
cried Maq.
Papa, come quick!

“Way to go!” Wolfgang nudged me. “Pick on the boy with one arm. Nice!”

“Hey, I didn’t know the arm was fake.” This was early in the year. I hadn’t noticed that one of Maq’s arms
was always bent, and a slightly different color from the rest of his skin. Later on we got used to it. I remember Maq beating time in music class, clapping his living hand against the plastic one.

His dad came out on the porch.
What the hell is going on?
he shouted. He had a Montreal Canadiens accent, so it sounded like,
What de ’ell?
He was a barrel-chested guy in paint-stained overalls, with long dark hair and a beard. Looked a bit like a biker and a bit like Jesus. An old, fat Jesus. Had a big knobby nose on him.

Maq!
he shouted.
Where is your arm?

You know, you don’t hear that question very often.

Here, Papa
. Maq picked it off the ground.

Don’t play games. Your arm is not a toy!

This boy pulled it off!

Maq’s dad leapt down from the porch.

Lloyd took off like a bullet from a gun, and Jim followed. I don’t think either of them wanted to meet Maq’s papa. As Wolfgang and I scrambled after them, I heard the man’s deep laughter. Very genuinesounding. Looking back, I saw him run up the steps with Maq under one arm and Maq’s arm in his other hand. His big frame made the steps shudder. The front door slammed.

Did I hear that laughter way back in grade one?

Back at the school, Lloyd was panting next to a man in a buttoned cardigan. The man sneezed, and Lloyd said,
Bless you, Daddy
in his piping voice. He was safe from Jim’s
bullying but still looked nervous. Cardigan Guy took his hand and led him down the street.

Jim was trying to explain things to Cassie and Louise. They’d have been in grade five. Louise was my sister’s best friend. Still is. Chunky, average-looking, except for her chest. (You know how some girls are just enormous there? Louise looks like a map of Africa. I saw her in a bathing suit last week, tanning in the backyard with Cassie, and I had to run inside and take a shower. She was no more than ten or eleven here, and already she had something under her shirt.)

Where were you, Jim?
called Cassie.
You were supposed to wait for me!

Didn’t you hear? I pulled off a guy’s arm!

Cassie stamped her foot.
Jim!

Really, I pulled and it came right off!

(It is funny, you know. Horrible, but funny too. No wonder Maq’s dad had laughed.)

Wolfgang and I floated after the children like kites on strings. In the distance I could see the lake, glinting silver in the afternoon sun. On my left, the office towers of downtown poked their heads and shoulders above the blanket of trees and smog. I counted houses in from Roncesvalles. Mine was the fifth. One-half of the roof is green, the other gray. Raf and his dad move every year or two, but I’ve always lived in the same place.