David went up, cheeks wet, eyes swollen, still tasting chocolate and wet paper in his mouth, still hearing the gasp of the accordion-thing in his ears. He felt he would find some other sign of Brian on the platform, like the 3 Muskies wrapper on the path, but there was nothing. Just the sign nailed to the tree, the one that said V1ET CONG LOOKOUT, which they had put up a couple of weeks after completing the platform. The inspiration for that (and for the name they’d given the path) was some old movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, David didn’t remember the name. He kept expecting to come up here someday and find that the big kids had pulled the sign down or spray—painted something like SUCK MY DICK on it, but none ever had. He guessed they must like it, too.
Abreeze soughed through the trees, cooling his hot skin. Any other day and Brian would have been sharing that breeze with him. They would have been dangling their feet, talking, laughing. David started to cry again.
Why am I here.
No answer… Why did I come. Did something make me come.
No answer.
If anyone ’s there, please answer!
No answer for a long time… and then one did come, and he didn’t think he was just talking to himself inside his own head, then fooling himself about what he was doing in order to gain a little comfort. As when he had stood over Brian, the thought which came seemed in no way his own.
Yes, this voice had said. I’m here.
Who are you.
Who I am, the voice said, and then fell silent, as if that actually explained something.
David crossed his legs, sitting tailor-fashion in the middle of the platform, and closed his eyes. He cupped his knees in his palms and opened his mind as best he could. He had no idea what else to do. In this fashion he waited for an unknown length of time, hearing the distant voices of the home-going children, aware of shifting red and black shapes on the insides of his eyelids as the breeze moved the branches above him and dapples of sun-light slipped back and forth on his face.
Tell me what you want, he asked the voice.
No answer. The voice didn’t seem to want anything.
Tell me what to do, then.
No answer from the voice.
Distant, distant, he heard the sound of the firehouse whistle over on Columbus Broad. It was five o’clock. He had been sitting up on the platform with his eyes closed for at least an hour, probably more like two. His mom and dad would have noticed he was no longer in the driveway, would have seen the ball lying in the grass, would be wor-ried. He loved them and didn’t want to worry them—on some level he understood that Brian’s impending death had struck at them as hard as it had struck at him—but he couldn’t go home yet. Because he wasn’t done yet.
Do you want me to pray. he asked the voice. I’ll try if you want me to, but I don ‘t know how—we don ‘t go to church, and—The voice overrode his, not angry, not amused, not impatient, not anything he could read.
You’re praying already, it said.
What should I pray for.
Oh shit, the mummy’s after us, the voice said. Let’s all walk a little fluster.
Idon ‘t know what that means.
Yes you do.
No I don’t!
“Yes I do,” he said, almost moaned. “Yes I do, it means ask for what none of them dare to ask for, pray for what none of them dare to pray for. Is that it.”
No answer from the voice.
David opened his eyes and the afternoon bombed him with late light, the red-gold glow of November. His legs were numb from the knees down, and he felt as if he had just awakened from a deep sleep. The day’s simple unzipped loveliness stunned him, and for a moment he was very aware of himself as a part of something whole—a cell on the living skin of the world. He lifted his hands from his knees, turned them over, and held them out.
“Make him better,” he said. “God, make him better. If you do, I’ll do something for you.
I’ll listen for what you want, and then I’ll do it. I promise.
He didn’t close his eyes but listened carefully, waiting to see if the voice had anything more to say. At first it seemed it did not. He lowered his hands, started to stand up, then winced at the burst of pins and needles that went whooshing up his legs from the balls of his feet. He even laughed a little. He grabbed a branch to steady himself, and as he was doing this, the voice did speak again.
David listened, head cocked, still holding the branch, still feeling his muscles tingle crazily as the blood worked its way back into them. Then he nodded. They had put three nails into the trunk of the tree to hold the VIET CONG LOOKOUT sign. The wood had shrunk and warped since then, and the rusty heads of the nails stuck out. David took the blue pass with EXCUSED EARLY printed on it from his shirt pocket and poked it onto one of the nailheads. That done, he marched in place until the tingling in his legs began to subside and he trusted himself to climb back down the tree.
He went home. He hadn’t even gotten to the driveway before his parents were out the kitchen door. Ellen Carver stood on the stoop, hand raised to her forehead to shade her eyes, while Ralph almost ran down to the sidewalk to meet him and grab him by the shoulders.
“Where were you. Where in hell were you, David.”
“I went for a walk. Into the Bear Street Woods. I was thinking about Brian.”
“Well, you scared the devil out of us,” his mom said. Kirsten joined her on the stoop. She was eating a bowl of Jell-O and had her favorite doll, Melissa Sweetheart tucked under her arm. “Even Kirstie was worried, weren’t you.”
“Nope,” Pie said, and went on eating her JelI-O.
“Are you all right.” his father had asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure.”
“Yes.”
He went into the house, yanking on one of Pie’s braids as he went past her. Pie wrinkled her nose at him, then smiled.
“Supper’s almost ready, go wash up,” Ellen said.
The telephone started to ring. She went to answer it then called sharply to David as he headed for the down-stairs bathrooni to wash his hands, which had been pretty dirty—sticky, sappy, treeclimbing dirty. He turned and saw his mom holding out the telephone in one fist while she twisted the other restlessly in her apron. She tried to talk, but at first no sound came out when her lips moved. She swallowed and tried again. “It’s Debbie Ross, for you. She’s crying. I think it must be over. For God’s sake be kind to her.”
David crossed the room and took the phone. That feeling of otherness had swept over him again. He had been sure his mom was at least half-right: something was over.
“Hello.” he said. “Mrs. Ross.”
She was crying so hard that at first she couldn’t talk She tried, but what came through her sobs was just wahh wahh-wahh. From a little distance he heard Mr. Ross say “Let me do it,” and Mrs. Ross said, “No, I’m okay There was a mighty honk in David’s ear—it sounded like a hungry goose—and then she said: “Brian’s awake.”
“Is he.” David said. What she had just said made him feel happier than he had ever been in his life… and yet it had not surprised him at all.
Is he dead. Ellen was mouthing at him. One hand was still plunged deep in her apron, twisting and turning.
“No,” David said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece to talk to his mother and father.
It was all right, he could do that; Debbie Ross was sobbing again. He thought she’d do that every time she told anyone, at least for awhile. She wouldn’t be able to help it, because her heart had given him up.
Is he dead. Ellen mouthed again.
“No!” he told her, a little irritated—it was like she was deaf. “Not dead, alive. She says he’s awake.”
His mother and father gaped like fish in an aquarium. Pie went past them, still eating Jell—O, her face turned down to the face of her doll, which was sticking stiffly out from the crook of her arm. “Told you this would happen, she said to Melissa Sweetheart in a forbidding this-closes—the-discussion tone of voice. “Didn’t I say so.”
“Awake,” David’s mother had said in a stunned, musing voice. “Alive.”
“David, are you there.” Mrs. Ross asked.