Me & Death

  Death in itself is nothing; but we fear

  To be we know not what, we know not where.

  –John Dryden

  A man came to a river and wished to cross, but there was no bridge or ferry. He saw someone on the far side and called out, “How do I get to the other side of this river?” There was a pause and then the reply: “What do you mean? You are on the other side.”

  –Old Joke

  ME WHEN I WAS A PIECE OF CRAP

  CHAPTER 1

  I was walking up Roncesvalles, the big street in my neighborhood. Late June, late morning. Should have been at school but I wasn’t because, well, because I didn’t want to go. Hotter than spitting grease out – smells of tar and dust. Summer in the city. I moved slowly. Yawning. Enjoying the feel of the day around me. Other people being busy. Roncy has houses and apartment buildings on one side and stores on the other. I was on the store side, looking around. I stopped at the fruit place one block up from my house. K is the name on the sign. K FRUIT. The owner frowned at me. Little old Korean guy with his mouth turned down. I picked a plum from the baskets out front. I always waited until he was watching before I took stuff. I got a kick out of it because he looked so pissed, and there was nothing he could do. Arms like pencils sticking out of his short sleeves, dirty apron wrapped around and around his middle and tied in a bow. How could he hurt me? I was only in grade eight, but I was way bigger than him.

  “Lousy plums today,” I said.

  “What you do?” He had an accent, made him hard to understand sometimes. He picked up a broom. Like that would scare me. “What you do, boy?” He stepped right up to me, but he was afraid. I could tell.

  “Shut up.” I had my mouth full. Maybe he couldn’t understand me. Ha ha. Neither of us knew what the other was saying. What a yuck.

  “Why you not in school?” he asked. “Go on, boy. Go.” He made a sweeping motion with the broom.

  “Why you talk funny?” I said.

  I spat out the plum pit and walked away, one hand on my jeans to keep them up.

  I was wearing my new shirt. I’d swiped it the day before from Goodwill, pulled it off the rack and put it on over my camo vest. Red shirt with a dragony pattern on it. Cashier was like, Did you have that shirt on coming in?

  ’Course, I said.

  You sure? she said. ’Cause there’s a price tag on it.

  Sure as you’re ugly, I said from the door.

  The shirt freaked my big sister out when she saw it last night. That’s your dead shirt! she screamed, jumping up, mouth a black-rimmed circle in her white face. You’re dead, Jim! Dead! She ran past me up the stairs, skinny butt cheeks bouncing like tennis balls under her skirt.

  What’s with her? I asked Ma, dropping onto the couch. A commercial came on and she changed the channel. Belched a lungful of brown smoke.

  Who knows? she said.

  Cassie’s four years older than me and, well, kind of strange, peering into empty corners, talking to shadows. One morning I went into her room because she was screaming. She was in bed, pointing at the ceiling, yelling at it to go away. And now my dead shirt, what was that about? My sister, what a freak-o.

  I walked up Roncy past the donut shop and the pharmacy, and the Krakow Restaurant and the lawyer’s office, eating my lousy plum and thinking back to last night. What a screwup it had been. What a mess.

  The air conditioner above Jerry’s door dripped onto the sidewalk, making a puddle. Jerry ran a Buy and Sell – saxophones and game systems over the counter, hot cars in the laneway garage with the double lock. I stepped over the puddle into the cool of the shop. Jerry, on the phone, nodded hello. I made my way to the pool table in the back room.

  Sparks was doing push-ups on a patch of rug. Cap was leaning back in a broken chair, cell phone in hand, smoking. They were older than me – almost grown up. Cap was lean and dark-colored, and he wore a captain’s hat. He was kind of slimy. He’d put his hand on your arm and you’d want him to take it off. Sparks was white, except for his tattoos – lightning bolts and barbed wire going up and down and around his arms. Lots of ink, because his arms were huge. Sparks was real stupid, but loyal – wherever Cap was, Sparks was nearby.

  I said hi. Cap took a drag of his cigarette and flicked it at me. I caught it like a hot potato and stuck it in my mouth.

  Sparks’s body rose and fell like a piston. No effort, no change of pace. He could do push-ups forever.

  “About last night,” I said to Cap. “Did you find out what happened to Rafal? The cops –”

  He must have signalled. Sparks caught my ankle in one hand and pulled hard. I fell, the cigarette spinning away. Sparks went back to his push-ups.

  “No talking about last night.” Cap never raised his voice.

  “Yeah,” said Sparks from the floor. “No talking.”

  “But it’s important.” I crawled to my feet. “Raf’s my partner. I want to know what happened.”

  “That’s your problem, Jim,” said Cap. “You’re too smart for your own good. You always want to know stuff. Isn’t that right, Sparks?”

  “Yeah,” said Sparks. “Too smart.”

  Up, down, up, down. No strain in his voice at all.

  “I want to know can get you in trouble, Jim. Sometimes it’s better not to know. You understand that?”

  “Yeah, but –”

  I stopped myself before he had Sparks grab me again. “I mean, I understand,” I said.

  “Good for you, Jim. Very good.”

  His cell phone buzzed. He flipped it open, started pushing buttons. Sparks kept on pushing up. I left.

  A black-and-orange cat sat on the curb, its mouth open in a yawn. I kicked it into the street. Stepped forward and down with the right foot, like a soccer goalie. Good thing Raf wasn’t there – he has a thing about animals. Cat went flying over a heap of garbage bags right into the road, legs sprawled, then scrambled away like a hairy streak of lightning as an SUV slammed on the brakes.

  I smiled, felt better. I hate cats. Hate ’em. Only now here was Lloyd with his face hanging out.

  “What’s your problem?” I said.

  He was a couple of storefronts away from me. He took a step back, licked his lips.

  “Don’t like me kicking the cat, Lloyd? That it? How about I kick you instead?”

  He turned and ran. I followed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do!” I called. “I’ll kick you like I kicked the stupid cat!”

  Lloyd crossed Roncy. I noticed that even now, with me after him, he looked both ways before leaving the curb. What a ween. He had sniffles and freckles, and ate his lunch at home every day. He was probably on his way there right now. I’d been picking on him since kindergarten.

  I leapt into the street. Someone called after me to watch out. I kept running. Lloyd’s ginger-colored hair flapped up and down. I kept it in my sights. There was the warning voice again. “Watch out!” Something familiar about it.

  I caught my trick ankle on the streetcar tracks and fell, hitting the back of my head. I’d had a problem with my ankle as long as I could remember. Mostly I could run and jump like everyone else, but now and then it folded over and I fell. No warning, I’d be walking along and suddenly I’d be on the ground. Happened once in the middle of a game of HORSE, cost me my shot. I wanted to do it over, but Raf said rules are rules.

  This was another bad time for my ankle to go. The world flickered off and on like a faulty connection.

  On: I was lying in the middle of Roncesvalles. Smell of pavement and diesel exhaust, with a hint of baking from the donut shops. An ear-shattering shriek of brakes and a long skid.

  Off.

  On: A beat-up blue Pontiac – I recognized the grille – was almost on top of me. The driver stared down at me with eyes
as big as Ferris wheels.

  Off.

  On: Tadeusz standing next to me. Tadeusz! Of all people. He bent over to peer at me, closely.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Hi, Jim.”

  I stood up, shook myself. Said hi. “You recognize me?”

  “Yeah. I heard your voice, telling me to watch out,” I said.

  We stepped away from the accident. Cars were stopped all around us. Horns blowing, people calling out. The driver of the blue Pontiac was leaning on her front fender.

  “Are you frightened of me, Jim?”

  “We-ell …”

  Tadeusz was a legend on Roncy. Started out stealing radios from parked cars, and by the time he graduated high school he owned a half-dozen houses. Cap was his second in command. Tadeusz wore tailored suits, and he ripped up parking tickets and boasted that he could eat an entire roast chicken at a sitting. Once, he gave me fifty bucks to go into the donut shop, buy a coffee and cruller, and bring them out to his double-parked Jaguar because he didn’t want to turn off the song on the radio. That was a couple of years ago. There was a big write-up in the newspapers when he was shot dead at the age of twenty-two. They never found out who did it.

  “You are a ghost, aren’t you?” I said.

  The only other explanation was that this was a dream. And it didn’t seem like a dream. Too vivid. The crowd around us was growing. People were screaming and calling out. I recognized a lot of neighborhood faces. Mrs. Solarski from the pharmacy had her hand clamped over her mouth. The driver of the Pontiac was sobbing. In the distance I could see the flashing light on the top of a cop car.

  “I’m what they call a Mourner. Kind of a ghost.”

  “So I guess I’m a little scared,” I said.

  “Good!”

  “Good?” I said. “What’s good about it?”

  “I want you scared, Jim. You’re a piece of crap, and I want to frighten you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  He took me by the arm and led me away from the crowd. We stood on the sidewalk by the public library, in the shade of a maple tree.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I rubbed my arm. It was cold from where he touched it.

  Tadeusz held his hands away from his body and turned around like a fashion model.

  “How do I look?” he said.

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to upset him.

  “You remember what I used to be, Jim? I was the king of Roncesvalles, wasn’t I? I was like the Godfather. I could walk into the Krakow Restaurant and get the table at the window any time I wanted. There was a hostess who would save it for me. Jolanda. She’s still there. I …” A spasm crossed his face and he looked away. “Point is, Jim, I’m not the king now. Do I look like a king?”

  I shook my head. His body was sunk in on itself, like a rotten piece of fruit. His trademark suit flapped and bagged around his shrunken paunch. Of course the blood and bullet holes didn’t help.

  And he was ghostly in color. Suit, shirt, shoes, hair, eyes, skin – all as gray as fog.

  “You look pretty bad,” I said.

  “Do you know what a ghost is, Jim? A ghost is a guy who was a piece of crap when he was alive.”

  “But you weren’t!” I said. “You were the bomb. I thought you were the coolest!”

  “I lied, I stole, I hurt people. I let them down. I was a bad guy, Jim.”

  I struggled with this. “Yeah, but you were a good bad guy,” I said.

  He smiled sadly. “I like you, Jim,” he said. “You remind me of me, when I was young.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Shut up. Pay attention to what I say. You do not want to be a ghost. Ghosts are in pain. That’s why we’re hanging around. Do you want to be like me when you die, Jim? Staying at the Jordan Arms, and wandering up and down Roncesvalles for years and years – maybe forever? And sad. That’s what Mourners are – sad ghosts. I’m so sad I’d kill myself if I wasn’t already dead.”

  He coughed – a long, racking one.

  “Sorry, Jim. It’s like there’s something stuck inside me and I can’t get it out.”

  Truly he was a changed guy – the Tadeusz I remembered did not apologize for anything.

  Traffic on Roncy was stopped. Cars idled in the heat of a summer noontime. The nearest one was a Civic with blacked-out windows. It vibrated from the bass beats inside.

  I thought about being Tadeusz like he used to be. I imagined myself driving a cool car, getting out of it to beat people up, driving away again. I’d sleep late, play pool, start fires. Raf and I could hang out together in our own place, so he wouldn’t have to live with his dad and I wouldn’t have to live with Cassie. Cap and Sparks would ask my permission to do things.

  It’s good to be the king. But Tadeusz wasn’t a king now, sniveling and coughing up his lungs. It would not be great to end up like him.

  “You have been given a gift,” he told me. “A great chance. Come with me.”

  Tadeusz led me back to the front of the Pontiac. No one noticed us. One guy turned around and looked right through us.

  “Here you are, Jim.”

  A boy’s body lay on the ground with his legs under the front of the car and his eyes closed. I knew his face from the mirror in the bathroom at home. The body was mine.

  “You’re lucky,” said Tadeusz.

  “Because I’m going to die?”

  “Because you’re not.”

  Lying-down-me was breathing, I noticed. But I was clearly unconscious. The Pontiac driver was on her knees beside me, weeping. A whole bunch of old people were shaking their heads and talking about how awful the traffic was these days.

  Old people drive you crazy.

  “You sure I’m going to make it?” I said to Tadeusz.

  He nodded. “You’re in a coma.”

  Lying-down-me had a rip in his shirt – like I did. His cheek was bloody. And (reaching up and having my hand come away red) so was mine. Huh. I wiped it on my pants.

  “That’s my great chance? A coma?”

  “You’re going to have a near-death experience. In fact, you’re having it right now.”

  I noticed a woman floating in midair. She wore a hospital gown, kind of billowy, and a cap on her head. She looked sad and anxious – like someone’s mom. She hovered about telephone pole height, peering down at the scene of the accident.

  Tadeusz noticed her too. He waved.

  “That’s Denise up there. She’s going to take you to the Jordan Arms for the day. Pay attention to her, Jim, and to everything else that happens to you there.”

  “Uh-huh. What is this Jordan Arms? Sounds like a bar.”

  I was still staring up. You don’t see flying women every day.

  Tadeusz grabbed my shoulder. “I’m serious, Jim. You’ll get a chance to watch your past there. You’ll see the people you’ve let down and hurt. Remember those people when you wake up in the hospital. Treat them better. Change! Don’t be such a piece of crap. Or you’ll end up like me.”

  It was like his hand was dry ice. My shoulder burned, it was so cold.

  “You are standing in wet cement, Jim. All the fear and anger, all the sadness in your life ties you down. When you die the cement sets, and you’re trapped. Today is your chance. Learn from the past, so you can climb out while the cement is still wet.”

  He turned to go. I rubbed my shoulder, trying to warm it up.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Sounds like what you’re saying is that you want me to be nice to people. Is that it? Is that the great secret?”

  He looked back. “I wish I had known, before I died. I wish I had had your chance, Jim.”

  “Yes, yes, but … nice?” It sounded so lame. “Nice?” I raised my voice. “Saying please and thank you? Helping old ladies? Using my napkin?”

  He was gone, skimming through the crowd with his feet barely touching the pavement. I had to laugh. Tadeusz used to collect his rents with a baseball bat. He’d beat people up for exercise. One time Raf saw him pus
h a kid through a storm door. A little kid – smaller than me, Raf said. She ended up on her back on the sidewalk, covered in bits of window glass. And now this super-tough guy was begging me to be nice. It was just, well – funny. I laughed and laughed.

  CHAPTER 4

  Denise touched down beside me with a gentle bump.

  “You’re Jim.” Gloomily.

  “Yeah.”

  She peered at lying-down-me, checking his face against mine. Nodded to herself, like I was a parcel she was signing for.

  “Yeah, that’s you. I’m Denise.”

  “I know.”

  She frowned.

  “You know,” she said heavily. “Yes, you do. You know a lot for a crappy little kid. Do you know how you became a piece of crap?”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Well, let’s find out.” She took my hand, and we floated away like balloons.

  Maybe floated is the wrong word. We moved upward slowly, with pauses, like a roller coaster going chunk, chunk, chunk up that first hill. It was a little queasy-making. I’ve never liked rides much.

  Her hand was as cold as Tadeusz’s. I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t. She was stronger than me. I gave up. We were getting too high to jump anyway.

  They weren’t moving my body, I noticed. Someone had backed the Pontiac off me and covered me with a blanket, though.

  “You had a bad accident, Jim,” said Denise. “But you’re not dying.”

  “Yeah. Tadeusz explained. You’re going to take me to the Jordan Arms. I’m supposed to pay attention to you because I’m stuck in concrete.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. Something he said.”

  We were at rooftop level now and still rising. An ambulance was making its way slowly up Roncy. Lloyd stood on the curb with his mouth open. Little ween. Wait ’til I got hold of him. I was in a coma now, but I’d be back, and then he’d get his.

  My pants started to slip. I grabbed them with my free hand.

  Higher than the apartment buildings, and still rising. Cars looked like dots. We floated side by side, not looking at each other, like you do in an elevator with a stranger, both of you watching the numbers change in silence.