IGMS Issue 22 (16 page)

Adam glanced aside with a frown. "What for?"

"I dunno. Just to be different, I guess."

"You're different enough for both of us, spaz," Adam replied, bouncing the ball to Henry. "Just ask your Old Man."

"I'm serious. Let's follow the creek back. We can play Lewis and Clarke."

"Too buggy down there this time of night. Besides, it's getting too dark to see. Come home with me for dinner. Mom's making Chef Boyardee pizzas."

Henry wanted to protest further, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. There seemed to be a sort of inertia in the air, an invisible force pushing events forward, unwinding the past according to its own unforgiving plan. The two boys skirted around the park and followed an alley back to the Town Hall. Adam talked as they went, bouncing the ball back and forth, and it was both horrible and wonderful. Henry had forgotten how good it could be with a really excellent friend. And yet the knowledge of what was about to happen grew heavier and surer with every passing minute.

They turned back onto Main Street, and Henry lagged back, holding onto the basketball.

"What the heck is wrong with you, Hank?" Adam turned back and flapped his hands for the ball. "Come on, already!"

"I -- I don't want to," Henry replied. He stubbornly stood his ground in the shadow of the Town Hall. "I can't. Please, Adam. Let's take the long way home."

Adam stared at his friend. Finally, he lowered his arms to his sides, but he didn't move from where he stood.

"Come on, Henry," he said calmly. "Just walk with me. Bounce the ball with me. Let's talk. All right?"

Henry
. Adam had called him Henry, not Hank. The change was subtle, but important. Henry tried not to obey, but his ten year old body took over. He walked forward, and bounced the ball to his friend.

Adam caught it and nodded. "Come on," he said, and turned. They began to walk along Main Street again, more slowly now.

"What do you think of the new art teacher?" Adam asked. "You think she's a fox?"

"Adam," Henry began, but his voice was suddenly dry. It came out as a hoarse rasp. Adam didn't seem to notice.

"I was planning to marry her someday," he said thoughtfully, holding the basketball to his chest and looking up at the lowering night sky. "I knew it was silly even then. I mean, I was just a kid. She was, what, twenty-five? But dang, she was such a fox. And not in a slutty way or anything. She was pretty. I wanted to climb mountains for her, cross oceans for her. I thought I could win her, if she'd just wait for me to get a little older and bigger." He laughed, not at all bitterly.

"Adam," Henry said again. "Let's turn here. We can cut through the alley next to the Five and Dime."

Adam bounced the ball to Henry, who caught it.

"I never did get any older and bigger though, Henry," he said solemnly. "You and I both know that. This was as far as I got. That's okay, though. What I had was pretty dang good, you know? It's better for life to end when it's good than for life to keep on going and going way after it stops being worth living. Don't you think?"

Henry stopped again, clutching the old basketball. "Adam, stop. I can't . . . It's . . . we can do it different this time."

"
What
time, Henry?" Adam asked, stopping and looking back at his friend. "This isn't another chance. It's not take two or anything, you spaz. This is just a replay. You can't change it."

Henry shook his head speechlessly. He
could
change it. He
had
to. That was why all this was happening, wasn't it?

Adam spoke again. "Do you remember what happened after I died?"

Henry shook his head again, more adamantly this time. He didn't remember. He didn't want to.

"I do," Adam said softly. "Being dead lets somebody see lots and lots of stuff. I saw how totally bummed out you were. And I saw what your dad did about it."

Henry clutched the basketball so hard that his fingers ached. He hadn't just been bummed out. He'd been completely devastated. His best friend, his refuge and soul mate, had been killed right in front of him, and it had been his fault. He had been in shock for days, and the shock had turned into nearly infantile bouts of weeping. Henry's father had been dismayed at first, and then, helplessly, his dismay had turned to anger. He simply did not know what to do with this sobbing, blubbering boy.

So he tried to whip him into shape. He forced the boy to stop crying, demanded that he pick himself up, clean himself off, get a grip, and move on with his life. He'd been harsh about it, harsher than he'd ever been before, and Henry had been too cowed, too miserable and emptied, to resist. He had gone along with his father's demands. Forcing himself to stop thinking about his dead best friend. He threw himself into sports, realizing that his Old Man was all he had left, and sports was a way to earn the Old Man's respect.

But even then, the respect had never come. As soon as he could, Henry went to work at the same place as his father. They walked to work together each morning and back each night. Henry even accompanied his father to the Clyde Piper sometimes. Still, the best Henry had ever received was a sort of grudging tolerance, a grunting indifference.

But by then Henry himself barely noticed it. Even then, Henry was turning into his father himself. It was unavoidable, and he didn't even realize it enough to hate himself for it.

"He crushed it out of you," Adam said, stepping back toward Henry, his face grave. "You used to be different. You had imagination, and heart, and dreams. But all the best of you, he smashed. Your Old Man stomped it all down until it was dead." He moved another step closer and looked into Henry's eyes. "But you
let
him do it, Henry. He couldn't have done it without your permission."

"I didn't
want
it to happen, Adam," Henry said thickly. "He was all I had left."

Adam shook his head impatiently. "That's a lie. You still had you. You could've hung onto that. It was easier when I was around, because you were like me. We sort of held each other up. Without me, I know it was harder. But you could've done it. I wish you had. Instead, you gave up
you
and became
him
. You turned into what you hated. That's why you got divorced, isn't it?"

Henry turned away. He didn't want to hear this. He had come here to save his best friend, and now his best friend was turning on him, forcing him to look at things he had tried so hard to bury.

But Adam was right. Steph hadn't left Henry because she had stopped loving him. She had left him because he had begun to abuse her with his words. It was just as Adam said: Henry had become his father. It was so much easier before he had known this.

"Why are you doing this?" Henry exclaimed, throwing the basketball at Adam. "Why is any of this happening at all? What's the point?"

Adam caught the ball again.

"Because you're still alive," he answered. "You can still do stuff. Not like this, here, because this is the past. The past is dead, just like me. But in the now, where stuff really matters, you can change things."

"What?" Henry demanded. "What can I do? I'm completely stuck! I'm just an old bum with a dead end job, an ex-wife who's better off without me, and a son who's so damned moody, so silent and sensitive that I . . . I . . ."

He stopped as the realization struck him like an ocean breaker crashing against a cliff. His son was just like he was when he was ten years old: sensitive, artistic, imaginative. He didn't understand it because he wasn't like that anymore. For the first time Henry realized that he was no longer Jake's father.

He was his Old Man.

"Fathers are like vampires, Henry," Adam said with a small, crooked smile. "They almost always end up passing on their fangs. Don't be too hard on yourself, though. It's the curse. But you can stop it, if you want to. You don't have to pass the curse on to Jake."

Henry shook his head, still refusing to meet his friend's eyes. "I don't know how. I don't know what to do. And they're leaving, anyway. What am I supposed to do?"

Adam heaved the ball back at Henry, so fiercely that it bounced off his shoulder and knocked him off balance.

"You can
remember
, you dumb spaz!" Adam declared, and there was real anger in his voice. "Remember who you used to be! It's all still there! It's been dead for decades, but you can bring it back! At least a little! Or are you afraid to try? Are you just a big baby, Henry? Are you chicken?"

"I may be chicken," Henry muttered, watching the basketball bounce back toward his friend, "but you're chicken shit."

Adam squatted down and collected the basketball again. When he stood up, his eyes had softened.

"Try to do it, Henry," he said. "Remember how we used to be. It isn't too late yet. Not for you and not for Jake. You have to at least try."

Henry nodded miserably. He didn't even know what Adam meant, and yet he sensed the truth of it.

"What about you, Adam?"

Adam shrugged. "My story's done. I'm kaput. I'm not even here. But you are. Go on. Go home, Hank."

He bounced the ball to him again. Henry caught it and looked at his friend.

"All right," he said. He sighed deeply and it turned into a shudder. "See ya 'round, Adam."

"Not if I see you first," Adam grinned. He held out his hands once more, motioning for the ball.

Henry bounced it to him. Adam caught it easily, winked at Henry, and then turned. As he walked away, he began bouncing the ball on the sidewalk. Willy followed, not looking back.

Henry watched for a minute. The streetlights buzzed faintly along the length of Main Street. Finally, Henry turned away. He couldn't watch. Not again.

He walked back the way they had come, wandering into the warren of streets behind Town Hall.

Try to remember
, Adam had told him. But how? How does anyone find that deep core of who they were back when they were still new? When the grime of life hadn't collected in so many layers that you forgot there had ever been anything
but
grime?

Soon enough, the quiet backyards of Clyde gave way to the crowded residential streets of Buena Vista. Henry walked on. It was full dark now. The moon was a high sickle at the crown of the sky. Henry stared at it. It was the same moon he had watched when he was a kid, when he and Adam had dreamed of becoming starship captains and exploring new galaxies.

Eventually, Henry made his way back to Twenty-Third Street. The lights were off in the old house. Sig was lying on the porch with his muzzle on his paws. His leash still trailed from his neck. Apparently he had found his own way home. Tomorrow, even the dog would be gone.

Henry plopped down on the edge of the porch next to the big dog. Sig raised his head and rested it on Henry's thigh. Henry petted him absently.

After a long moment, Henry's lips trembled. He hadn't cried in years, maybe decades, but there were tears in his eyes, blurring his vision. He let them come. He didn't care anymore. He lowered his chin to his chest, closed his eyes, and let the tears drip from his nose. They dotted his old tee shirt. His shoulders hitched.

A minute later, the door opened behind him. Someone was home after all. Henry didn't look up; he was too ashamed to show his tears. He leaned forward and cradled his face in his hands.

Light footsteps creaked on the porch floor behind him. There was a pause, and then someone sat down on his right side. Henry could tell by the way the person moved that it was Jake.

Henry swiped uselessly at his eyes with the heel of one hand. He tried to compose his voice. "I . . . thought you'd already gone," he said quietly.

Jake just sat for a moment, listening to the chirr of the crickets and the whisper of the wind in the trees.

And then, not at all awkwardly, he put his arm around his weeping father.

"Daddy," he said.

"Friday at last." Peter stretched out across the bus seat as his friend Joey got up to leave. "I thought it would never come."