I laughed a little too long and patted John’s hand gently.
“Tommy.” Roy’s voice was soft, and he spoke slowly.
“Yeah? What’s up, Roy?”
“Tommy—”
“What, Mr. Kirby?”
“Tommy—son, I think your friend is dead.”
FIFTEEN
That’s not funny, Roy. You better take that shit back right now.”
“John is dead, Tommy,” he repeated.
“Why you want to say some shit like that, man? Why you gotta fuck with me?”
I could hear the desperate tone in my voice, and I hated myself for it. I willed it to go away, but it increased instead as he tried again.
“He’s not breathing, Tommy. He hasn’t been for a while. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Your friend is gone. He’s dead. Look at him, son.”
“Shut the hell up, you old fart. Just shut the fuck up right now!”
“Tommy…”
“He’s not dead. You don’t know shit, man. You don’t fucking know, okay?”
“Look at him, Tommy!”
“No! Now knock it off.”
“Look at him.”
“I SAID NO!”
Without thinking about it, I swung the pistol out from me at arm’s length and pointed it at him. Gasping, they all scurried backward, trying to push themselves into the wall, trying to hide behind each other. Roy closed his eyes in fearful resignation. Kim whimpered. Sharon and Dugan cowered close together. Oscar let out a frightened squeal. Only Sheila held her ground. She bent her head and listened while Benjy whispered something in her ear. Then she looked up at me, her face serious.
“Tommy, Benjy says to check his pulse.”
“I don’t need to check his pulse. He’s alive.”
“He’s not breathing.” Roy tried again. “It’s over. How many more people have to die before you let us go, Tommy? Who’s going to be next? Me? Kim? The boy?”
“Don’t start with that shit! I told you to drop it!”
“His chest isn’t moving. What do you think that means, Tommy? That he’s sleeping? Of course not. He’s dead…”
Now Sheila interrupted Roy. “Shut up for a minute, Mr. Kirby. Tommy, please. Just do it.”
Before I could reply, a series of coughs rattled my chest. Bloody phlegm and spittle shot out of my mouth and onto John’s shirt, mixing with his own. It looked bright and fresh against his darker, dried stains.
“Tommy, check his pulse.”
I looked at the two of them, mother and son. They seemed so sure, so urgent.
“Please, Mr. Tommy,” Benjy pleaded. “He doesn’t have much longer until he goes to see Jesus. The light is coming. It’s just a little pinprick right now, but it’s getting bigger.”
Something in Benjy’s voice, an honesty that only a child could convey, forced me to calm down. If you have kids, then you know what I’m talking about. I looked into those big, innocent, brown eyes—eyes that should have been home watching cartoons instead of being held hostage in a bank vault, and my heart shattered.
John’s chest wasn’t moving beneath my hand. It probably hadn’t been for a while. I just hadn’t noticed.
“He’s my best friend,” I sobbed. “We grew up together, goddamn it. I’ve known him since we were little kids. It isn’t fair for him to end up like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I always watched his back, kept him out of trouble. And look what I did to him now…”
Using his feet, Benjy pushed away from Sheila and scooted across the floor toward me.
“He’s not dead yet, Mr. Tommy.”
Hunched over, I pressed my lips to John’s cold forehead—and froze. A soft puff of air, so slight that I almost missed it, escaped his lips. Quickly, I put my fingers to his throat.
“He’s breathing. Barely… but there’s no heartbeat. He’s still breathing but I can’t find a pulse.”
I felt a weak flutter beneath my fingertips, then nothing. I checked again for another breath, but all that came out of his gaping mouth was a small trickle of blood.
“Oh Christ! Come on, John—breathe.” I pounded on his chest in frustration. “Breathe man.”
“Mr. Tommy, I can help him, but we have to do it now. He’s almost to Jesus. He’s on his way, now. The light is getting brighter.”
He’s on his way now! Look out! Jesus H. Christ, here he comes! Coming at an alarming rate!
“Mr. Tommy!”
I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“I can’t, Benjy. If Sherm comes back in here and finds your hands untied…”
“Then you’ve got to stall him,” Sheila insisted. “Benjy only needs a minute or two.”
“She’s right, Tommy,” Roy said. “We’ve all heard what the child can do. I’ve felt it myself, and I know that you saw it. You believe, whether you want to admit it or not. And even if you don’t, isn’t your friend’s life worth the chance?”
John’s face was completely drained of color. His skin looked like snow. Snow…
One winter, when we were about ten years old, school got canceled one day because of a snowstorm the night before. John and I spent the day with some other kids, sledding down the big hill on the outskirts of town, the same hill I’d gone to the afternoon I was diagnosed with cancer. At the bottom of the hill was a short grassy strip, littered with beer bottles and fast-food bags, and beyond that, the road leading from Hanover to Spring Grove. Not a major road, but busy just the same. Truckers used it as a shortcut between towns, rather than taking the highway. The storm had dumped about two inches of sleet on top of the snow, so the hill was one big mountain of solid ice. Kids were flying down it at breakneck speeds, turning their sleds at the last moment to avoid going out into the road. All except for John… He’d done it on a dare. A stupid dare. Richie Wagaman had called him a pussy—told him that he didn’t have the balls to ride his sled straight across the road and into the field on the other side without stopping to look for traffic. Rich bet him a House of Pain cassette (remember, we were kids and House of Pain was still the bomb back then). John looked down the hill, glanced up both sides of the road, saw that there was no traffic coming, and took the bet. I pulled him aside and tried talking him out of it, but unlike he usually did, John wouldn’t listen to me this time. Instead, he just stared at Richie and his friends, clustered together and calling him a pussy, laughing to each other and any girl within earshot about how chicken shit John was. The next thing I knew, John ran to the edge, threw the sled down, jumped onto it (landing on his belly), and rocketed down the hill like a runaway train. Kids were cheering and shouting—and then we all heard it at the same time, the loud blast of a truck horn. The Department of Transportation’s dump trucks had been out early, covering the roads with salt and cinders, but all that did was make them slicker. There was a hiss of air brakes as the trucker tried to stop, and then the back end of the trailer began to fishtail, taking up both sides of the road. I tried to scream but my breath caught in my throat as John shot across the grass and directly into the path of the jackknifed truck. Time seemed to slow down then, just as it had done on the morning of the robbery. The truck slid toward John, John flashed across the road, and the truck slid on by and crashed into a snowbank, sending brown snow and cinders and dirt flying high into the air. The cloud obscured everything, and there was dead silence from the kids on the top of the hill.
The cloud settled, and the trucker clambered out of his cab, unhurt but shaking an angry fist. There was still no sign of John…
And then we saw him, clambering off his sled and waving at us from the other side of the road. I’ll never forget how my panic dissolved, how grateful I was to see him at that instant. To see him alive—there in the snow.