Creeps (25 page)

There's a sun—although it's not giving off much heat—and the kind of chill that finds its way through layers, skin … bone.

She looks at him. “I was sure it was you. Because of what I said about being a black hole and how we were better off on our own, and I thought, He's gone and done it on account of me.”

He goes to speak, but she beats him to it—

“So I needed to be sure because I wasn't about Dad and then they buried him so it was too late.”

Quiet for a long time. Then a butchered version of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” filters past the stained-glass windows and neither can keep from smiling.

“The funeral's sad enough,” Wayne says.

Marjorie sort of laughs and so does Wayne and then they stop and stand facing each other. Marjorie says, “He had a lot of friends.”

Wayne nods.

Then Kenny's just up the road and he's smoking and his sports coat is hanging open and his tie is loose and his hair's in his face. They all catch each other's eyes and, for a minute, it looks as if Kenny might take off, but then he flicks his smoke into the air and comes forward.

“Let's go,” Wayne says.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

They start walking, meeting Kenny halfway. No one says anything.

Wayne looks up and sees Kenny's almost healed split lip and can't help thinking that the guy responsible is just up the street in a casket.

At last, Kenny says, “He didn't look the same.”

Neither Wayne nor Marjorie speaks.

“They inject you full of shit so that you don't look anything like yourself.” Kenny pauses. Brushes the hair out of his eyes and glances at Marjorie and says, “You okay?”

Marjorie stays quiet.

“I'm sorry.” Then, “I've been longing to say that.”

Marjorie holds Kenny's gaze. He looks away and says, “I had no idea. Swear to God.” He reaches inside his sports coat for another smoke. “Stole these off my old man. He'd have a conniption.”

A cloud moves in front of the sun and the morning suddenly darkens.

Kenny buttons his coat. “It's gotten colder again.”

They stand there like strangers as the last tortured lines of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” are carried on the wind.

A hearse drives past and they watch it slow down and make a right into the St. Paul's parking lot.

After a long time, Kenny says, “I keep thinking how cold the water must have been.”

No one speaks.

More church bells. Another hymn, and it's better, not so disjointed, the choir actually on key.

“What I don't understand is how he could keep himself under, you know. I mean … he must have wanted to come up.”

The church doors open and the priest's there. Then the casket. Carried by the wrestling team and they're wearing white gloves.

“How can he be in there?” Kenny says.

Pete's family is trailing the coffin. Behind them is the rest of the congregation, many of them clinging to shoulders and elbows and hands.

Kenny turns away and Wayne thinks he's crying, but when Kenny looks back his eyes are dry. “He was more fucked up than I thought, but he was my friend and now he's gone, so …”

Pete's loaded into the idling hearse and the
priest waits for the mourners to gather and then raises his Bible and says a prayer and one of the wrestlers closes the back of the hearse and it pulls out of the lot and makes a left and drives past Wayne and Kenny and Marjorie, the smell of its exhaust somehow mixing with the odour of things too late to fix.

Marjorie grabs Wayne's hand. “Take me somewhere.”

“Where?” says Wayne.

“Anywhere.”

They start walking, leaving Kenny alone on the sidewalk.

TWELVE

He thinks he might be holding her hand too tightly and taking the more troublesome route, but she's said nothing. Teenagers playing street hockey make obscene gestures with their sticks when they pass and, farther along, a Dutch shepherd gives chase, but its owner calls it and the dog retreats happily, its brindle tail wagging. Two ladies in headscarves tell them to get off the sidewalk if they're going to run, while an old man in a tweed cap shakes his fist in the air because Marjorie and Wayne have scared away the squirrels he was feeding.

A quick cut to the left behind the houses on Alcott Street, then across the intersection where Gower connects to Mills Crescent, past the Two Seasons Inn and the Ultramar and the Kentucky Fried Chicken with the big rock-like hole in its
bucket, and past the soccer field and the hospital and the recreation centre and into the woods.

“How do you know this way?” she says, and he doesn't answer her because he has no idea how, just that he does.

Upwards now, and it's harder going, but he doesn't slow down or let go of her hand, and she's right behind him and he likes the feeling of having her close like a blanket or extra sweater. Then the trail levels out again and they run a ways farther and then emerge into a clearing. They stand there catching their breath. Then, without prompting, he's heading towards the steel ladder and he's climbing and not looking down and she's right there and it's he who helps her over this time. And they walk to the centre of the water tower and lie flat on their backs and stare up at the sky and it's a little warmer now from all the walking and climbing and the clouds have moved on, so the sun's helping.

The sounds of each other's breathing and birds and the train—loaded down with iron ore pellets— passing through. And he feels fingertips on his palm and he looks over at her and her eyes are wet but she's smiling so he shimmies closer and so does she and they're holding each other. Kissing's next and then her hand's on him and his is on her and he's not sure what he's doing only that he's doing it and she doesn't seem to be minding. And the wind whistles
in their ears and she moves against his fingers and he's suddenly shivering but he's not cold and she makes a sound like there's pain but when he opens his eyes pain's not on her face.

Just lying there afterwards.

No one speaks for ages. Then at last, he says, “I thought it was you, too.”

She rests her head on his chest. “You're not a black hole. I shouldn't have said that.”

“It's okay.”

“You're my only friend.”

He looks at the sky. “You're my only friend, too.”

Church bells in the distance.

Birds fly across the sun.

“Has it ever crossed your mind?”

She takes a moment, then nods. “But I wouldn't.”

“Me neither.”

“Big difference between thinking and
doing
.”

“Yeah.”

Quiet.

“Can I ask you something?” Wayne says.

“Okay.”

It takes him forever, but at last he says, “Was it here? Your dad?”

Marjorie lifts her head and sits up and straightens her dress and Wayne sits up too and straightens his shirt.

They look out over Canning.

“Some sadness can't be fixed,” Marjorie says.

Wayne looks across at her. Sees the man with the smile that had no happiness in it and Pete with the bad beginning and hears The Meat's second dad saying
Hug your kids tonight
. What must have gone through Pete's mind in his final moments, Wayne wonders, or perhaps nothing had.

“I picture him
alive
here,” Marjorie says, “sitting like you and me. I don't understand graveyards.”

After a while Wayne says, “You upset the play was cancelled?”

“A little.”

“Do you think we could have won?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“So much for St. John's.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“You would have got best actor.” It dawns on Wayne then that, for the first time, he can't see the iron ore cloud and he thinks about asking Marjorie if she can, but he changes his mind because he often misses what's right in front of him.

More church bells.

A dog barks.

“I saw your mom in church,” Wayne says.

“Out of her bathrobe; can you believe it?”

“She looked nice.”

“They've upped her dosage. She's a little better.”

He thinks of Pete The Meat and the wrestling team's white gloves and the hearse pulling away and how, in the end, Pete got a ride in a trunk of his own.

They tilt their heads back, allowing the spring sun to warm their faces.

Then Wayne pulls out an envelope.

“What's that?” she says.

“I'd intended to put it in your mailbox.” He hands it to her.

She takes it.

“I've never actually given one to anybody before.”

“What is it, a letter?”

He nods. “Read it later.”

“I want to now.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

“That's not how I planned it.”

“What odds if I read it now or alone, they're still going to be your words, right?”

He shrugs. “I suppose.”

She rips an end and blows into it and tips it over and the letter falls out and the wind almost takes it but she snatches it up just in time.

He looks away.

She unfolds it. Scans the page for ages, then hands it to Wayne and says, “You read it.”

“What?”

“I'd like
you
to.”

“No, I couldn't.”

“Why not, Wayne Pumphrey?”

“I don't know. I'd be embarrassed, I think.”

“Read, Wayne Pumphrey. I won't look at you.”

“Promise.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I promise.”

He pauses. “Okay then.”

Marjorie turns away.

Wayne looks down at the letter, at the handwriting that suddenly seems unfamiliar, wishing the sentences could somehow lift themselves from the page and get tossed in the wind, but then Wanda's in his ears and she's right:
No point if no one reads it
. Sometimes letters
need
to be sent, he supposes.

He breathes in and exhales and goes to start but can't, so he tries again and his voice is there and the letter goes something like this:

“Dear Marjorie,

“I'm sitting here at the kitchen table waiting to go to Pete's funeral while Wanda puts the finishing touches on Mom's hair, although I don't know why all the fuss over hair when we're off to see a coffin which has a boy inside it.

“Dad's sitting in the living room in his good suit reading that book and, although he walks around the
house like his dog has died, it seems to be working because he hasn't touched a drop in ages.

“I'm not sure if you'll be there today (I'd certainly understand if you weren't) but I just wanted to say that maybe you spend too much time with Thom Yorke after all. He's an amazing songwriter, I know, but if you keep saying you're creepy and weird and asking yourself why you're here because you shouldn't be, you'll never be okay anywhere and what kind of life will that be?

“We spend so much time wishing we were somewhere else but shouldn't there be room for weirdos and creeps and anyone else, too? I mean, how many trains can we hop on and how many water towers can we climb?

“It's hard to imagine that you lived up the road from me all this time and it's only now that I'm getting to know you and I read somewhere, or maybe someone told me, that everything happens when it's supposed to—”

Wayne looks up. “You said you wouldn't watch.”

Marjorie turns away. “Sorry.”

“Are you mad I said that about Thom Yorke?” She shakes her head. “Is there more?”

Wayne nods. “But I don't think I can read the rest.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't stop, Wayne Pumphrey.”

He pauses. “Okay, but just to warn you, the rest came out without me thinking about it.”

“
Read,
Wayne Pumphrey.”

He clears his throat. “I'll take it back a bit since the last line is tied in with what comes next.”

Marjorie nods.

“No looking.”

She turns away.

Wayne reads:

“It's hard to imagine that you lived up the road from me all this time and it's only now that I'm getting to know you and I read somewhere, or maybe someone told me, that everything happens when it's supposed to so maybe we can't help being in each other's lives and if that's the case then it's all right by me 'cause without you I'm roast beef without gravy and tea without sugar and an ocean without a beach and I guess what I'm trying to say is: you make everything better, because before you I was alone and now I hardly ever feel that way and I wonder if it's the same with you?

“You saved me that day with Pete, Marjorie Pope, but you also saved me in another way and I hope I might have saved you, too. And Mr. Rollie was right, high school won't last forever, and soon enough we'll be grown and gone from here and doing God knows what

but I'll always remember you and I hope you will me …”

Wayne looks up and Marjorie's staring right at him and there are tears in her eyes and she's smiling but he doesn't tell her to look away.

He swallows and takes a deep breath and reads:

“I hadn't expected YOU, so it's funny how things turn out, and I just want you to know that I'm proud to be me and I hope you're proud to be you too, 'cause for a couple of creeps we're doing all right.

“Your friend who thinks that, for a couple of creeps, we're doing all right,

“Wayne Pumphrey”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My agent, Hilary McMahon, thank you for believing in and fighting for this book. Deepest appreciation to my sensitive and meticulous editor, Lynne Missen. Thank you for improving my sentences, Karen Alliston. Liza Morrison, I appreciate you making me laugh. Thank you, David Ross and everyone at Penguin, for making me feel welcome and supported.