List of the Lost (6 page)

Knees pumped a canine scamper as yet another Tuesday had Ezra hotfoot ahead, passing on that in-the-saddle baton to Nails, who pedaled with both feet to an outstretched Harri. “Sko!” called Justy, “Sko! Sko! Sko!” his economic version of “Let's go!”, and the stumps stirred further and further. Commentary in college newsletters repeatedly warned of this very locomotion machine whose bolt had been logged and filmed and photographed for every enviable stubby pumpkin in every corpulent Pepsi-cola tank town from South Succotash to the boondock boonies beyond so that they might rightfully shrink with unmerry-go-round doubt at the mighty Priorswood. Soon shall be the finish of that final competing moment when landsmen and compadre were no more; their killer instincts killed, their do-or-die done. Mumblings of a new dark-horse shadow ghost from Philadelphia raised a tribal alarm squawk here and there, but rarely here and infrequently there since there wasn't sufficient soul to statistically pitch battle against the tight mob-ring of campesino Priorswood. The anger of straggling teams pitched their bitchery and cried into their rolled towels, but only Ezra's famiglia had the unfortunate tiger by the unfortunate tail, and any hurt vanity would not be Ezra's. Scoreboard summaries listed student stats fairly – and with stethoscope intimacy as medical charts were watched with nitpicker's fussiness lest whispers of 'roid rage (the excitable mania produced by pancake layers of steroids) sleazed up the reputation of any team peppy enough to sniff victory in advance.

Away from the track Ezra and Eliza were, by now, compatible enough to ignore the very worst of each other's habits. Their names were now so tightly super-glued that toastmasters began to joke with some seriousness about marital union (“please make the same mistake that we did, so that we shan't feel so patsy-pigeoned” ) – so frothy and pawed and finely tuned were the doves. By now, Ezra would head up the mountain at will, whilst Eliza was always quite happy with bed and breakfast. Eliza was a fierce grabber, which was another first for Ezra, who had only known gentle intention. Eliza barged in intemperately, kicking up heels and kicking up a racket, and even here, now, Ezra secured a particular teamwork – all meat and potatoes, nuts and bolts. Eliza drove with no brakes, as if supplies were dwindling, as if the seven-year-old within couldn't quite believe what it was that lay beside her, or how much happiness she brought to his eyes by doing what she thought to be nothing at all. The locked position when Ezra rubbed as far as he could go; the hump and bump of injection as his eyes met hers in equal swirl – guts and innards finally melting with intellect as jets of Ezra would cut in and then cut off at that moment when all of the body is felt from tip to toe; the inside works just as well as the outside. With playful nastiness, Eliza twists her entire body as she pulls away, knowing that this will cause neatly burning pain to Ezra – which amuses her because it brings to Ezra's face a new expression, like inhaling a cigarette, that face … that landscape … how could he see his own reflection every single day and not feel blessed? Eliza's sudden twist is an awakening hurt unlike their earlier tit-for-tat punch-ups, after which Ezra falls flatly on his front – pinned on the rack like a sailor receiving the lash with a wordless intoxication as a light wave of the hand gives Eliza the all-passions-spent tip-off. She could, of course, make further demands, but enough has taken place. The mutual head-rush struck both of them at the same time, as a man-and-woman lightning bolt that meant they could now lounge together at the end of it, yet saying nothing, because the air around their silence crashed and gargled with so much meaning. The sight of her discarded shoes by the end of the bed caused the fire in his belly to burn up; yes, just something that simple, a frenzied symbol of all cylinders burning, and all clocks ticking in his favour. Likewise, as he walked away from the bed, Eliza would examine the braced-up rhythm of Ezra's muscled back, arms and legs, as the entire V man assaulted all of her sensibilities, for here it now was – nailed down and won, as love takes its unquestioned and dignified place, and long years of spiral-notebook aloneness are suddenly difficult to recall as the bewail of virginity now seemed like harmless comedy – but only because it had ceased, replaced by such knowing airs.

Certain that he was alone in the house, Harri wearily lumbered down the stairs wearing only his white briefs as he squinted from the dazzle of an overdone 9 a.m. sun that cut through the house wherever it could. By now his mother would have left for her Tuesday morning custodial charity stint at a local hostel, where best wishes and the squarest of meals would always do for those in embarrassing circumstances. Mother was a forgotten saint of indestructibly strong core, ready for any sudden stirring to help the hopeless, psychologizing over vats of spaghetti and the donated suits of the war dead, monastically freezing concentrated facial expressions as she endured pointless chats with the socially disconnected whose lives had all but exhausted them out of existence. We hear so often of smiling prosperity and plentiful gains, yet it is thought unwise to mention the other America, even though the truth of it all crouches disjointedly in the hidden America and not at all in the inherently unstable pious vision of plenty. Harri's mother was drawn to those who carried their small lives in small bags, for everyone was there to be saved, no matter how diminished their will. On this very morning, Harri floated into the kitchen, where what at first seemed like assembled rags lay muddled and messy beneath the kitchen table. What on earth was mother collecting now? A terrible darkness of great depth and sweep executed Harri's body as what lay ruffled before him regi­stered. He softly placed his right palm across his mother's head – she now so cold and absented. A secret of nature spoke, and he knew, and he gently knelt before the un-returning. Instantly he was no longer as he had ever been, for the voice of love had gone – fired away to the inescapable suffering. Still kneeling, Harri travelled speedily through time – his time, his mother's time, and as he looked at love he saw the cruelty that must always make the final claim, and he looked into the oblivion that no one gives any heed to until it wins their final breath. Immobil­ized by physical pain, Harri's body shivered and shuddered as the minutes passed like hours; see the hands he knew as well as his own, see the first he knew of touch and sound, and the soothing patterns of her carefully chosen clothes. Immortal, indestructible mother is dead. This moment is too delicate to infringe upon, to pass over to know-all medics who examine insurance policies more thoroughly than they examine the recumbent victim … in the land of the brave and the home of the free. Too fragile a moment to rush through and blot over with police reports and a chapter-and-verse blow-by-blow of what's what and where it's at, the size of it and the straight of it all jotted down so desultorily and indifferently by the kitchen police. This moment is far too strong to articulate, being beyond the capacity of feeling and language, and no no no no no, it is not happening, it is not happening, and mother dear, I cannot put your beloved body into the hands of bossy interference. Though gone from daylight, she whose happiness had always been his happiness, here was still their last moment together.

Winter atmosphere now fogged its way through the house, for the house had held mother's soul and was now inhospitable without that soul, falling back into darkness as if infected by rage at the loss of its keeper. Now, the house was nothing at all, frozen by helium blast. The secret heart asked mother one final question: how do I now get close to you? But the question is too pitiful or just too late. Ah, but mother dear, I shall be the prop of your old age, and let it fall squarely on my shoulders for there is far too much for you to feel responsible for … as units of time become units of distance and mother mutates into memory, and oh, so many questions I had wanted to ask you, and oh, so many new things that I can't wait to tell you … but cannot. Sunny-natured, I shall take your arm, and together we shall always punch aside hastening death. There would always be time, and death has already taken so many others that it cannot possibly need you. There would always be time. But now Harri felt a pain that others could only guess at, and here was the very first day of his life that would not pass as all other days had. Here was his first moment of aloneness, no longer someone's son, no longer someone's baby, and although a new wisdom shook his brain it was a wisdom that he had no wish for, as horror itself went insane. Gazing into hell he saw the thin line between suffering and mental deficiency, and only darkness could be a relief from such unimaginable rapids of fastid­ious torment. Unversed in practicalities, Harri very slowly telephoned the elderly lady who lived next door, and he explained the inexplicable to Margo in a voice sounding nothing like his own, and somehow not believing the words being skewered out of his own mouth. Margo knew that people are allowed to be dead, and she had seen many a sudden and surprise ending. Calmly, and with that independent technique of a world long gone, Margo assured Harri that she could call all necessary signals and take control, and her eighty-four years rolled into motion like a rocket-fueled missile, fully resourceful on a day when life rotted. “It's very hard to accept that your powers are limited,” she later explained to Harri, and the sun struck at a certain angle like a hint from nature that there would certainly be another tomorrow, and that it ought to be lived.

Harri declined to attend his mother's funeral because he felt that he had already done so during the hours that he sat on the kitchen floor with her dry, organic remains, with all of its requirements and grasping insistence of control over conflict, control of explosion … the body against the soul … the limited against the boundless. He wanted people to know how much he was suffering at the loss of his mother, yet his shaky duty was to hide it from them.

“There was only she and I,” he softly explained to Ezra at Ledger's Bar, the voice consistently croaking a half-crack, “and the life she led was the life I led. What makes tomorrow worth anything?”

“Me!” shouted Ezra. “Everything we've worked for these last eighteen months! She would want you winning … not sick with grief. I loved your mother, too. But we need you …” His voice trailed away unconvincingly, knowing that Harri was neither listen-ing nor captive. The week worsened as weakly Harri sat alone at Ledger's Bar. He is now slipping away, yet he has adjusted to the sensation of feeling worn, for there is not a single kind thought within him and he could accommodate no more of the inherently decent advice that spun his way from caring friends. Margo had been genuinely good, caring and accommodating without self-interest. Even though Harri didn't actually know her very well, she had discreetly assisted as much as she could with the house, offering soothing aromas of wood crackling warmth and confidence and cooking that might renew Harri moment by moment, preventing him from sliding into further dramatic shock. Margo attempted to spruce and brighten the big icy blackness of the now deadly sealed rooms. Small touches here and there worked miracles: the warming smells of home cooking, quietly soothing classical radio, decency and empathy from the frame of this small woman who quietly replicated mother's habits of lighted candles and neat bedding and laundered towels spelling out peace preserved and motivated only by love. As noble as Margo's efforts were, she didn't know Harri well enough to become a powerful authority in his life, and, although genial to the last, she could only manage some light housework. Margo had seen a body die and then had witnessed a spirit die, and the former was easier to deal with. Gallantly, she would fall asleep on a downstairs recliner so that Harri might sleep an untroubled sleep assured that the heart of a civilizing influence occupied the room below, and that he was not quite so adrift.

Another night passed at Ledger's Bar as a small, ageless figure ripe from the underground spoke cautiously to Harri. “I've got what you want,” it said.

“You … what?” asked Harri, looking down from his barstool.

“Horse, snow, white sugar, brown sugar, aitch, Mexican mud, Chinese red … black Russian, blond Lebanese …” The little mud puppy squirreled on.

There came a thoughtful pause as Harri examined this running dog, a twirl of a scag-trade pharmacy. “But do you have enough?” asked Harri, somehow done with it all. The toad of hell smiled a persuader's smile as the rag-mop transaction took place, during which Harri caught a shadowed sight of the man's face in the awkwardly dull lighting of Ledger's Bar. Dummied and tight-lipped, the face was empty of meaning, yet the savage granite expression aroused a certain tension. What was it? The inscrutable glacial coldness of the mega-gnarly cave-dweller had brought to mind the snot-nosed wretch that the boys had left to the woods. But this could only be irrelevant coincidence – or, to the esoteric world, not coincidence at all. As if it were his life's worth, Harri took care not to slip on the stairs as he climbed for the final time towards his childhood bedroom, a friendly room of trophies and teenboy artifacts that foolishly become souvenirs of scuzzed-up years. Harri slumped to the floor heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, striving to conclude the day with a certain patience and wisdom. He shall travel this path without the strength to cope with anything else, no longer likely to explode from this intensity, yet ready to fuse the physical with the spiritual and to accept that the next moment will be unlike any other. Life had become much too burdensome, and the repulsive vision of his mother's cashed-in body and soul all alone under soil caused a brittle left-to-right cluster headache each time its flash-photography image tasered his brain. Here was a point of control whereby you are your own witness, and all that happens is made by you and does not need further clarification. Let the minutes spin as a tankard of vodka is clouded by a heavy overjolt of brown and white powder, both of which submerge like falling snow as they enjoy one another and whisper, I'm the right friend for you. Harri lies back in order to wait – on this very bed, bought so early in his teens, of nights that brought him a little of everything that over-active fantasy and imagination could possibly muster, and that were now only important as quaint flickers of flashing recall. Were you ever really that small, that trusting … that raucous tweenager? So loud! So loud! A flight of stairs with two leaps! Now, each fast gulp of the cloudy cocktail spared nothing, and three fierce swigs empties the tankard with an earth-rattling speed – even now, allowing contemplation no access. A sleepiness demanded further sleep. “I lived – here's proof,” he said, smiling as he raised a boyhood pewter trophy before him to lovingly inspect, yet now realizing that he could no longer control the body that had earned it. In endless fidget he had shed all responsibility without losing trust in his own intuition, and for once he had no right to expect his body to behave well, for … why should it? There came a nobility to his expression as his head sunk further back into the built-up pillows, yet a loud and unpleasant ringing had begun in both ears. There was no way to get out of it now. The pulp of his hands were the pals of the dying, and suddenly his face was wet as his lower abdomen felt the punch of a fierce doubled-up bolt and a grinding, knotted twist. He was aware of the pain but also of its completeness and necessity. It was at once inhospitable yet he felt immune to enemy fire, because the now-rising screech in his head humanized him as his eyes closed like a book and he accepted that he was now behind it or beyond it and there was no need to think further on the matter and he was a child again on a bed of cast iron and there were waiting rooms of doctors and an elderly lady in black who was neatly dressed as she leaned over his bed and asked “Are you ready now? Are you ready to go now?” and he saw himself unborn and he whispered “Yes, thank you,” with an infant's sigh, and there were no longer uncertainties about whatever was right or wrong as his eyes began to swell and something stronger than himself took charge, arranging him to a nothingness of abnormal heart rhythms and voluntary unconsciousness in which the mind's eye saw a Sunday in a simplified life, always restless and full of fun, yet this woman in volcanic black returned unexpectedly with “Are you ready now?” and he remembered that he had already told her that he was, and the taste of the blood in his mouth only made him smile for he knew there would be no bouncing back like late-night waves unseen from the beach yet sounding as if all around, because, as the brain began to vomit, he was quickly beginning to die.