All the Old Haunts (11 page)

Yesterday afternoon was the wake. Last night was the wake. The night before and the afternoon before, too. Four sessions, four times I came up here to be with Nick up close and stayed past my time and nobody broke it up until they had to.

And Nick’s been doing things to me. Haven’t you, Nicky? See Nick doesn’t move when I talk to him. Some kind of a rule, I suppose, that dead folks don’t answer when you want them to. So I talk to him a lot now. More and more and more. So he’ll stop, and so he’ll stay stopped.

This morning is the funeral. It seemed like a long way to this morning. Eight fifteen service in the funeral home, nine thirty mass, ten thirty burial at New Calvary.

Seems like a long way to ten thirty.

The paper had a little thing about the tragedy. Papers always do that, have a little thing about tragedies involving kids. People must be very interested in that genre. I know I am. There wasn’t a teenager who died all last year who didn’t wind up seeming like me by the time I was done reading. Nick’s tragedy was extra tragic, wasn’t it, Nicky? Because it was in that subgenre they call “a senseless tragedy.” Young life snuffed out for no good reason. Carelessness. Shouldn’t be swimming late at night in that black quarry, now should we. Probably shouldn’t be swimming there in the daytime. But we know that. Those of us who swim there, we know that.

Those of us who were there that night, we know that’s true.

Those who were there know that’s true.

Those there know what’s true.

We know, don’t we, Nicky. I know, and you know. And you know what I know about that night. And you’re not going to let me forget.

The first afternoon of the wake, Nick fluttered his eyelids. Like someone getting electrical shocks, Nick’s eyelashes beat at the air, over and over and over, so long, so much longer than I have ever seen a body twitch before, that I turned around, to see if anybody else could tell.

The line of people stood primly behind me. Just waiting.

When I’d turned back to Nick, he was still again. Don’t pull this crap on me, Nick, I don’t like it.

“So what if I was saying something? I’m saying good-bye, all right?”

This time it’s a funeral-home employee moving me along. He seems embarrassed, because what kind of rat shoos a kid away from saying his good-byes to a dead boy. Only I should thank him, Nicky, because I wish someone would or could drag me away from you, or drag you away from me because enough is enough already. The truth is, I wish I was saying good-bye to you, but I’m afraid that I’m not. Not yet, anyway, am I right, Nick?

The second time, during the first evening wake hours, seven to nine on Wednesday, Nick pursed his lips. Like when one guy tells a big fat lie and the other guys says, ya, right, kiss me why don’t ya.

They have the casket open even in the church, the top half of it’s open, anyway, but that’s more than enough, I think. He doesn’t give me a break, Nick doesn’t, not even when I’m only filing past him to get my Communion. I’m thinking about it, thinking about how good he looks anyway even despite what happened and even though he’s dead now three days. And I look at him, of course, as I pass, and I think, except for the one thing, the neck. Where the neck was broken. Maybe it shifted during the ride over, but you can see it, the way it doesn’t lay quite right, where it slightly changes course, turning where a neck isn’t supposed to turn. Showing, reminding everybody of exactly how Nick died, which is exactly what is not supposed to show.

I look at it as I pass, and it is striking to me, and perverse, that broken crook of Nicky’s neck, and I know where he got it.

And then zing, Nicky pulls it tight and straight again as if somebody’d yanked both ends of the spinal cord like a taut rope.

This time I don’t even look around to see if anyone else has witnessed. I know this show is for me alone.

I don’t take Communion in my palm because my hand is shaking too hard. I take it on my tongue, turn and go back. I try not to, but it’s useless now, so I peek again as I pass Nick again and the neck is broken again.

Again. The neck is broken again.

I want to reach in and fix it. I want it not to be broken, and I want to be the one to fix it. But I can’t because I know as sure as I know anything that if I reach in there that Nick is going to grab me by the wrists and pull me in with him. That’s what he wants, is to pull me in with him. It’s what he’s been waiting for.

It’s okay mostly when I don’t have to see him. He leaves me alone mostly when I’m not seeing him. I don’t sleep so well at night yet, but that’s not Nick’s doing exactly, not directly, and I expect that problem to get better. As soon as I don’t have to see him at all.

They close the top half of the box now as I stand beside it getting ready for the procession out of the church. That should be it, has to be it. There will be no more viewings of Nick. Nick, there will be no more viewings of you. Wake’s done, funeral’s done. The box will not be opened again, so you’re done, too, Nicky. You’re done.

I walk alongside the box to the hearse. I do my small part to lift the box into the back. I ride in the motorcade two black cars back from Nick’s body, a nice distance, and we’re almost there.

We stop at the site. Everyone gets out. A short walk now, over to the hole, lay him down. And it’ll be over, it can be over. I do my small part again, and I think I’m the only one nervous. Nick’s uncles aren’t nervous, the teacher isn’t nervous. My hand slips twice with the sweat, the brass handle sliding right out of my hand. No one even seems to notice as I regrip.

One small problem, the dip in the terrain. A short little hill we have to walk down before we reach the plot. The guys in front, like me, we go down, go down, while the rear guys are up high still.

Bump. Bu-bump. Twice. Inside the box Nicky shifts two times as we’re coming down the hill. Like he slid down onto his feet—unless I’m holding his head end—inside the casket. Did he fall on his head again? Did his neck bend, did it break, again? It happened twice in there, and it was hard and loud and unmistakable, like he crashed his head, pushed himself off, then crashed again. Did he break his neck again and again?

Does it hurt, Nicky? Can it hurt, again and again?

I look around me now, and nobody seems to notice a thing. I’m no longer touching the brass handle I’m supposed to be carrying. I let my hand hang there over the handle, but I’m not touching it as we set the casket down at the grave.

He’s going in there. Nicky you’re going in there. He’s in there. Throw your handfuls of dirt, people, because I’m going now. And when I’m gone whoever does it is going to come and cover that hole with a half ton of dirt and it’s going to stay there and you’re going to stay there, too, Nick.

Good-bye, Nicky. I’m sorry. I told you that already, and I don’t have to tell you that anymore. But I am. Sorry.

Good-bye is good-bye, Nicky.

And whoever it is is going to have that hole packed tight before I try to sleep tonight. The earth covers you, the night covers me, and good-bye is good-bye, Nicky.

It’s ten o’clock and I go to bed but I don’t sleep. It was supposed to be done by now, but it doesn’t feel like it’s done.

It’s eleven o’clock and I’m still in bed but I still don’t sleep.

It’s twelve o’clock and maybe I slept for a few minutes but not now.

It’s two
A.M.
and I’m not sleeping for good, because Nick is here, which isn’t supposed to be.

“Good-bye is good-bye, Nick,” I say, moving nothing but my eyes.

“Get up,” he says.

“Good-bye is good-bye, Nick. It’s done now.”

“Good-bye is good-bye, but it ain’t done yet. Get up.”

“No, Nicky, I won’t get up. I won’t move from here. You have to be gone now.”

“I ain’t never going to be gone if you don’t get up.”

I get up. Because whatever it is he’s going to do to me, it cannot be worse than his never going away.

“Put your suit on,” he says. “But you won’t need a towel.”

The cliff above the quarry is about seventy feet high. I don’t feel cold, standing there, even though the wind is pushing at me steadily. There is room on this ledge for the two of us and a few empty beer bottles, but not much else. Below, the water looks calm and still, looks deep, even, in its blackness. A sharp granite boulder pokes its crest out of the water here and there, so that you might think you know where the bad spots are. You might.

Nick is standing with his toes hanging over the edge of the cliff, his back to me.

“What am I doing?” I ask.

“You know what you’re doing,” he says.

“No, Nicky, I don’t.”

“You’re finishing,” he says.

“What finishing? I’m not finished with anything.”

“I ain’t the school guidance counselor. I know you ain’t done.”

“Well I say I’m done.”

Nick does not turn to me. He stares and stares straight down at the quarry that he knows now better than anyone knows it.

“Remember you said it yourself. The movement. You get it when things aren’t right. And things aren’t right, are they?”

“No,” I say almost down in a whisper. “They’re not.”

For a moment, there is a relief there. That I can say it finally.

“And the movement ain’t going to stop, as long as it ain’t right. No matter how many tons of dirt they put on me.”

Then, Nick turns to me. Just his head, turning way, way around while his shoulders remain squared the other way. “I was trying to tell you before. Didn’t you hear me knocking for you today?”

He smiles at me in a way that makes me want to jump, to fly past him and away. Then he looks back toward the water.

“So now all you have to do is finish. Jump, like you were supposed to when I jumped. Which you forgot to do.”

“I’m not jumping.”

“Okay. Let’s go home, then.”

There is a long silence as Nick stands on the edge looking down, and I stand looking at his back.

“No, Nicky, you can’t go home with me. I can’t take any more of that.”

“Finish it, then. You’ll probably come through it fine. Me, I just made a mistake. You won’t do that, because you’re smart. You were always smarter than me, weren’t you? You always did the smarter thing.”

He still doesn’t look at me. He is right there in front of me, so close that if I reach out I can place my hand flat on his back.

“So if I jump, it’s done?”

“So if you do, it is.”

He knows I can’t do it. If I could, I would have done it the first time. He also knows I can’t bear one more day of what he’s doing to me. Every way I turn, I find me a coward.

Without a second of reflection, I explode on him, driving with my legs, reaching out with both hands to shove Nick off the cliff.

And I’m airborne. Out eight, ten feet from the face of the cliff, I’m falling, my hands are out in front of me, my ears pounding with the whistling wind. I stare at the biggest jagged granite chunk, growing before my eyes, and I blow out my lungs in a scream that makes no sound.

They know, the dead folks do. Nick said that would end it, and it ended it. I lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling, my hands folded gently across my chest, and I am rested for the first time in a week. Nick doesn’t come and see me anymore, even though whole crowds of other people file by.

Good-bye is good-bye, Nicky.

Y
OU WERE NOT BORN
into physical greatness and all the love and worship and happiness that are guaranteed with it. But fortunately you were born American. So you can
buy
into it.

You have Paul Molitor’s special rookie card from 1978. Who knew he’d be such a monster when he got to be thirty-seven years old? Alan Trammell’s on the same card. Again, who knew? Those two could just as easily have wound up like the other two rookie shortstops on the card, U. L. Washington and Mickey Klutts. Mickey Klutts? Was he a decoy? A you-can-do-it-too inspiration for the world’s millions of Mickey Kluttses.

So nobody knew, which is good for you. You got it at a yard sale along with a thousand other cards that some scary old lady was dumping. Her scary old man died. As far as she was concerned, he took all the cards’ value with him. She didn’t know. Bet there was a lot more she didn’t know.

You have complete sets of National Hockey League cards from everybody for the last three seasons. Fleer, Topps, O-Pee-Chee, Pinnacle, Leaf, and Upper Deck.
Two
sets of each, in fact, one that you open and look at, one that stays sealed in the closet to retain its value because you’re not stupid. You’re a lot of things, but you’re not stupid. Hockey, understand, is the wave. That’s where it’s at for the future, collectibles-wise.

Anything that has Eric Lindros’s picture on it, or his signature, or his footprint, you own it. Big ol’ Eric Lindros. You own him.

Ditto Frank Thomas. Big ol’ Frank Thomas. You own him.

You just don’t own you. Because you’re not going to be on any card. Because you have to be on a team first, and you’re not going to be on any team, are you? Six inches. You were so close. “You’re a good kid, boy, and you busted your ass harder than anybody who’s ever tried out for me, no lie. If you were just six inches taller, you’d have made that final cut for the J.V.”

You’re six feet six inches tall. Thanks, Coach.

When you’re six feet six inches tall, everybody asks you. “You playin’ any ball, kid?” If you cannot answer yes to that question, looking the way you do, then you let everybody down. It’s like asking an old man, “So how’ve you been?” and he answers, “No good. Prostate’s blown to hell. Incontinent. Impotent. Death’s door.” You bring everybody down.

You can’t do that. Bring everybody down. Because even though they don’t know it, when you bring them down, you bring you down. Only lower. You always go lower down than everybody else. Where no one else goes, where no one else knows. So you learn. You go around the whole thing.

“So, you playing any hoops?” your uncle asks when he comes by to take his brother, your father, to the Celtics-Knicks game. You don’t answer yes, you don’t answer no. You smile sagely, nod, and hold up a wait-right-here finger to your uncle with the beer and the electric green satin Celtics jacket. You go to your room and come back with a ball. The ball is a regular twenty-dollar basketball with a two-hundred-ninety-five-dollar Bill Russell autograph on it.