Ash Wednesday (4 page)

"He an
atheist
?" Al's eyes got big.

"No!" Brad replied. "I didn't say that. He just doesn't
think
about it much." He spotted a bottle cap on the sidewalk and they shuffle-kicked it back and forth for a while until Al missed and it went into the gutter. "I wonder if he
did
go to heaven," Brad said.

"Sure. What would God send a little kid to hell for?
Cheatin
' at box hockey?"

"Andy didn't cheat—he was just good."

"You're not supposed to block the puck with your knuckle."

"Ah, you're just too scared of getting hurt to do it."

"So are you," Al shot back, and it was true. Brad had always admired the nonchalant way Andy
Koser
had taken the sharp raps of the rough wooden puck on his knuckles without complaint. He'd once asked Andy if it didn't hurt.
Andy'd
grinned and said, "Sure, but if you
wanta
win, you
gotta
get your knuckles stung." Brad didn't think winning was worth that.

"I wonder," mused Al, "how he . . . uh . . . how he looks. You know?"

Brad nodded.

"I mean, how long before he . . . before bodies start to rot?"

"Pretty fast."

"Yeah, I guess. You think he'll have those white worms—what are they?"

"Maggots?"

"Yeah, that's them. Like in that Edgar Allan Poe movie. You think he'll have them?"

"
Dunno
," said Brad. "Probably not. I don't think you get them when you're embalmed."

"They got tighter coffins today too, huh?"

"Oh, yeah." They walked on. Brad didn't know what was in Al's head, but in his own there were things he hoped he could forget about before he went to bed that night. Things like losing his balance and falling, the same kind of feeling as when the Comet at Dobbs's Park went over the first ridge, dropping the coaster down that long chute so that you seemed to fall forever. But there you never hit bottom—there the pavement never came up smack against your head. To kill you.

Kill you. Brad tried to imagine what being dead was like, but couldn't. He could only think of it as a long sleep from which you'd never wake up. In his heart he really couldn't conceive of heaven, of a place with clouds and harps and wings and white robes and everybody flying around and singing all day about how great God was. It just didn't seem right. He tried, but he just couldn't make himself believe it. Then that worried him, because in the back of his mind he did believe in hell. Or at least in punishment. Now he tried to picture Andy
Koser
in heaven and found the spectacle ludicrous. Andy
Koser
, with his turned-up nose and those
Dumbo
ears that stuck out way past the limits of his butch cut, sitting on a cloud with King David and Moses and George Washington, and all of them singing hymns. . . . If they didn't have box hockey and baseball cards in heaven, Andy was going to be pretty bored. "You think," he asked Al, "they got baseball cards in heaven?"

"You nuts?" Al answered, giving him a funny look. "C'mon, we better run. Gettin' late."

They ran, and made it to school on time. Mrs. Wrigley, the principal, told their class about Andy being killed, and added that any children who wanted to donate money toward a "floral memory" could leave it with their teacher. Some of the girls cried, and so did one or two of the boys, though they bit their lips and jammed their fists in their eyes to stop themselves. Scott Jones, who knew Andy better than most of them in fourth grade, snapped the pencil he was holding in two when he heard Mrs. Wrigley's announcement, then looked at it stupidly as though wondering why he'd done it.

The day went as slowly as any before, and Brad thought and thought about Andy, about his grandmother, about death. At home that night neither his mother nor his father mentioned the subject, although when his father tucked him in he asked if there was anything bothering Brad, anything he wanted to talk about. Brad told him there wasn't, so his father said goodnight and left the boy alone.

He lay there in his bed in the dark, listening to his parents' footsteps as they went back downstairs, the low hum of their voices talking softly so that he could make out only the inflections, not the words themselves, then silence, broken in a minute by the muffled roar of the TV set, of dimly heard lines and the audience's laughter.

He lay there listening to himself breathing, putting his hand on his heart to feel the low but distinct pounding beneath his flesh and bone. Andy's heart isn't pounding, he thought. Andy's heart isn't doing anything.

He put his hand at his side and stared up at the black ceiling, frighteningly aware of the rise and fall of his chest under the bedclothes, going up and down, up and down, unlike Andy's chest that was now so still, and would never rise or fall again. And then thoughts came that had never come before—questions, concerns:

What makes me breathe?

What if I forget?

What if I fall asleep and I forget to breathe? Would I wake up or would I just die in my sleep?

What if my heart stops beating and I was asleep? How would I know to get it started again?

He lay there, afraid to go to sleep, afraid to trust his heart and lungs to keep working without his conscious supervision. And as he lay wondering and worrying, he started to think about swallowing his tongue when he slept and choking on it, of turning his head in a dream so that his nose pressed against the pillow, smothering him, of half a dozen other ways that death could come upon him in the night, quietly, unexpectedly. He had never been afraid before tonight, had never asked for a nightlight or used the feeble excuses most children do to avoid being taken from their parents' side and thrust into the
Night
, the
Dark
, where the shadows wait. But now he was afraid to sleep, afraid even to close his eyes.

He lay there.

He lay there listening to the cars pass outside, listening to the TV below, listening as his parents finally climbed the stairs, ran the water in the bathroom, walked down the short hall to their own room, clicked the light switch so that the bright crack under his door died, drowned in darkness. The whole house was dark now, and soon the house would be asleep.

It was not until he heard his father snoring that he started to worry about his parents. They were older than he was, closer to Grandma's age, and he remembered Mel
Rickert's
dad dying last year of a heart attack in his sleep. He felt suddenly chilled, listening to his father's rumbling snores. He should listen for
him
too—stay awake to make sure he was all right. And his mother as well.

He slipped out of bed and opened his door, then stepped across the hall and went into his parents' room. His father's snores were louder now, but he could not hear his mother breathing. He tiptoed to her side and leaned down over her. It was too dark to see her covers rise and fall, but he heard a soft hissing and knew she was all right, she was alive.

He knelt by her side then, and finally lay down next to the big double bed, his head against the thinning carpet. It was hard beneath him, and he was glad, because he knew the discomfort would keep him awake. So he lay listening to their breaths, listening for his own, until sleep finally claimed him just before midnight.

His mother's cry woke him the next morning. "Brad!" she said. "Honey? What are you doing?"

"
Whazzat
?" His father's voice,
phlegmy
and thick.

Brad groaned as he moved, feeling as though all his muscles had been tied in knots. "I . . . uh . . . I got lonely.”

“Lonely?" She giggled, not understanding.

"
F'pete's
sake," his father said. "You been there all night?"

Brad shrugged. "I
dunno
. I . . . I woke up . . . had a bad dream. I didn't . . . I didn't want to wake you up."

"Oh, boy." His father sat on the side of the bed and stretched. "Well, you got another hour before you have to get up for school, so why not sleep in a bed, huh? Come on."

"I'll make breakfast," his mother said, and disappeared. Brad's father ruffled his hair and walked him back to his room. "
Whatcher
pillow on the floor for?" he asked.

"Guess I knocked it down while I was
dreamin
'.”

“Rough dream?" He put the pillow back on the bed. Brad lay back against it.

"Uh-huh."

"Anything to do with . . . what happened the other day?”

“Huh?"

"With your friend Andy?"

Brad looked away from his father's face and down at the paisley pattern of his
tentlike
pajamas. "Yeah," he whispered. Then he started to cry.

"Hey, hey, what's the matter?" His father held him against his thick chest.

"I . . . I don't
wanta
die, Dad!" He was barely able to get the words out.

"Aw, aw, c'mon, sport," said his father, holding him clumsily. ."Don't cry now, you're not gonna die . . . leastways not for a long, long time. C'mon, hey, don't be a baby."

"I don't
wanta
die at
all
. And I don't want you to die neither. Or Mom."

"Everybody dies, Brad. But you won't die for a long time. Not for years and years."

"What about you?"

"Me neither."

"How
d'ya
know
?" he wailed.

"Hey, I just
know
, okay? Trust me. I'm not gonna die for a long time."

"Andy
Koser
didn't think he was gonna die either. But he did!"

His father frowned. "Sometimes things like that happen. But not often. Not often enough to worry about. So just forget it."

"I
can't!
"

"Look," his father said, "nobody knows when they're gonna die, so it don't do you any good to worry about it. So just forget it." He stood up. "I
gotta
get dressed, I'll be late." Leaning down, he patted Brad's shoulder. "Don't worry," he said, and left.

Brad had never felt more alone. He sat up in bed and waited for his alarm clock to go off. When it did, he dressed, ate breakfast silently, his mother puttering too busily around him, and went to school.

He slept little the following few days, but when he discovered that a week had gone by without any deaths by suffocation, he gradually forgot his fears, and even became less careful on stairs until eventually he reverted back to his old self.

Almost.

"Andy
Koser
," Brad whispered in awe.

"What?" Christine's voice was muffled by the bedclothes over her head. "
What
did you
say
?" She was near hysteria.

"Come here," he said. She didn't move. "I said come
here
."

"No . . . Why?"

"I want you to see something." He crossed to the bed. "No . . ." She was crying when he pulled the covers off of her. "Please, Brad,
please
, don't
make
me!"

He dug a hand into her armpit and hauled her from the bed. She staggered, but remained erect, and he dragged her to the window.

"No," she blubbered, starting to thrash about in an effort to break his hold. "
Nooo
. . ."

He smacked her across the cheek with his open hand, his fingers stinging from the contact. "Shut up," he said quietly, without malice. "I want you to see something."