“What will we do with Brown?” Julie demanded rhetorically. It was a matter of definition: no matter what happened, the principal was always wrong. That was one of the unifying principles of the student body.
Colene glanced around, saw that the teacher in charge was not paying attention while nearby students were, and launched into one of her clever little stories. She was good at this sort of thing, and she enjoyed it in her fashion.
“Why, we should hold a benefit for him,” she said brightly.
“A benefit?” Julie asked blankly, playing the straight man to Colene’s act.
“Yes. When he drives up in his Datsun with the tags saying OBITCH—” She paused, giving them time to put that together: DATSUN OBITCH. An expanding circle of sniggers indicated that the joke had registered. “Then we should stage a gala fund-raising extravaganza, a dunk-the-idiot benefit, with Principal Brown as the main event. Three balls for a dollar, and whoever scores on the target makes Brown fall on the biggest, loudest, smelliest whoopee cushion ever put out by the Ack-Mee Novelty Company!” She put the back of a hand to her mouth and blew the whoopee noise.
It came out too loud. The teacher glanced quickly over at them, and they all had to stifle their laughter. Then the bell rang, saving them. That reminded Colene of a recording she had once heard at a party she wasn’t supposed to attend: a “crepitation” championship match, in which the contestants broke wind in novel ways, each effort appropriately named, such as the sonorous “Follow-up Blooper” and cute little “Freeps,” and the end of the round was signaled not by a bell but a flatulent horn. The school buzzer was actually more like that than a church bell.
JULIE and Colene got off the bus and walked home. It was a pleasant neighborhood, with neat lawns, trees, and even some overgrown lots that were almost like little jungles. Drainage ditches were forming into the beginning of a stream that wound on out of the city. Colene had explored the recesses of that nascent river many times, on the assumption that there had to be something interesting there, like buried treasure or a vampire’s coffin. Maybe even, O Rapturous Joy, a lost horse looking for someone to love it. But all she had ever found were weeds and mud.
“Groan, I have to go in for X-rays tomorrow,” Julie was saying. “Those damned hard ridges on the pictures always slice up my gums. I don’t know why they can’t make them softer.”
“Easy to fix,” Colene said brightly. “Just bring the president of Code-Ack in for X-rays, and have his gums and roof-of-mouth cut up by those corners. Make him really have to chew down on them for retakes, and tell him, ‘Don’t be a difficult child now; those things don’t hurt!’ I guarantee: next day those edges would be soft as sponges.”
“Yes!” Julie agreed, heartened. “If only we could!” But they both knew that nothing that sensible would ever be done, and that sharp edges would continue to find their helpless victims. That was just the way of it. The people who manufactured things never actually used them themselves.
As they approached Colene’s house, her wandering glance spied something in the ditch. It was probably just a pile of cloth, or garbage tossed from a car; there were creeps who routinely did such things. But she felt a chill, and surge of excitement. Suppose it was something else?
She said nothing to Julie. She wanted to check this by herself. Just in case.
They walked on. Julie’s house was beyond Colene’s house, so Colene turned off. Her parents weren’t home at this hour, of course; they both worked. Not that it mattered. She had ways in her imagination to glorify the empty home. She liked to pretend that the drainage ditch behind was a great river that wended its way past the most illustrious regions: the Charles. Her simple residence became a gloomy mansion on the bank of this river, where death was a familiar presence. Thus it was the Charles Mansion, a takeoff on a grim killer in a text on legal cases. Her folks wouldn’t have thought that funny, and her schoolmates wouldn’t have caught the allusion. That seemed to be typical of her life: she couldn’t relate well to either parents or peers. But she was the only one who realized this.
She unlocked the door and entered. She set her books on the table and walked straight on through to the back door. She unlocked that and went out, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure that there was no one to see her. It was fun being secretive, despite the fact that her whole life was pretty much an act, papering over her secret reality. She fancied that she was a princess going out to discover a fallen prince from a far land. What she would find would most likely be garbage, but for thirty seconds she could dream, and that was worth something. Even garbage might be better than tackling her stupid homework early.
She came to the cloth, and froze. It was a man! A grown man, lying face down on the weedy bank. His clothing was strange, but it was definitely a man. Was it a corpse, thrown here by some drug gang? Such things did happen, though not in this neighborhood. Of course the neighborhood wasn’t what it represented itself to be either; a lot was covered up for the sake of appearances.
Thrilling to this morbid adventure, she approached. Death fascinated her, though she hated it. This was as good as watching her blood flow. Would the body be riddled with bullet holes?
She remembered one of her favorite lines, from a song she could not otherwise remember. It was about some great Irish or Scottish battle, and a sore wounded soldier had staggered back from the front line. But he had not given up. “I’ll lay me down and bleed a while, then up to fight again!” he declared. She knew she would have liked him. Maybe this was such a man, who had laid him down to bleed and had forgotten to get up again before overdoing it.
Then it moved. Colene stifled her scream, for all that could do was alert the neighbors and bring a crowd, and her little adventure would be over. Cautiously she approached.
The man lifted his head, spying her. He moved his right arm, reaching toward her. He groaned. Then he sank back, evidently too weak to do more.
But if she stepped within reach, he might suddenly come to full life, and grab her ankle, pull her down, and rape her. It could be just a ruse to get her close. After he had his way with her, he might kill her and roll her body under the brush near the trickle of water that was the river. After several days she would be found, covered by flies, and he would be long gone.
It was as good a way to die as any. When it came right down to it, it hardly mattered whether death was pretty or ugly; what counted was that the escape had finally been made. A certain amount of messiness could be tolerated for the sake of the novelty. She stepped deliberately within reach.
But the man did not respond. He just lay there, breathing in shudders. Maybe he was sick with some deathly malady, and she would catch it, and die in horrible agony of a disease unknown to science.
She squatted. “Who are you?” she asked.
The man reacted to her voice. He lifted his head again, and uttered something alien, and sank down once more. He really did seem to be too tired to do more. He hadn’t even tried to grab her ankle or to look up her skirt. He didn’t look diseased, just worn out.
That clothing was definitely strange. His language, too, was unlike anything she had heard before. Could he be a diplomat from some faraway little kingdom who somehow got off at the wrong stop and got hopelessly lost? Unable to speak the local language, perhaps with no local money, he might simply be starving.