Live it Again (14 page)

“Guess I found a pair of balls during the
night.”

Hugh looked over his shoulder and realized
they weren’t on top of the bridge. They were sitting on a three foot ledge of
iron, the underside of the main track. Another service ladder extended six feet
above their heads to the top. Billy pointed to the bottom end of it. “Look
there, you’re sitting on the service hatch. Looks like it was welded shut years
ago.”

“To stop idiots like us from climbing up
onto the track.”

A hand suddenly appeared on the ledge
between them. Nelson was preparing to pull himself up. The two shuffled away in
opposite directions, speedily standing to their feet, keeping their backs
pressed up to the wall. Billy started on the last section of ladder and Hugh
danced along the ledge, avoiding the clutching fingers. A second hand appeared,
and he knew the murderer’s bald head would be coming soon after.

He had the urge to stomp on the fingers, to
send Nelson flying out with the birds. He deserved no better. Hugh reached for
the ladder instead; there had been enough death already. Nelson could answer to
the police, Hugh, to his own conscience.

He found Billy on top of the track,
flattened out on his stomach, kissing one of the steel rails. “Never thought I’d
get off that damn ladder in one piece.”

“We won’t get off this bridge alive if we
don’t get moving.”

Billy crawled carefully over to the ladder
and looked over. Nelson was swinging himself up onto the ledge. Hugh wrapped
both arms around the boy’s waist and pulled him to his feet. “Seriously, we
have to go.”

“Bob would still be with us if it wasn’t
for him.” There was a serious look behind the boy’s thick lenses that worried
Hugh.

“I’m not sticking around here…not taking
him on if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Billy hesitated; tears welled up in his
eyes. Hugh tugged at his arm one final time, and the two set off running. They
headed south, along the shortest span of bridge, away from Braedon.

“We’re going the wrong way!” Billy shouted.

“Too late for that,” Hugh said. Nelson was
climbing out onto the rail and had already spotted them. “We have to keep going
this way.” They reached the end of the bridge and ran into a thicket of bushes
at the bottom of a steep incline to the west. The bush turned into heavy forest
and a thick carpet of freshly fallen leaves crushed noisily beneath their feet
as they ran. Hugh looked back over his shoulder and fell to his knees. Billy
helped him back up. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Not a good time for a
nap.”

Hugh giggled. “How the hell can we find any
of this funny?”

Billy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I
always crack up at funerals… maybe it’s a stress reliever.”

There was a cracking sound behind them and
they started running again, deeper into the woods. It was a long time before
they stopped to rest again. Billy wiped the lenses of his glasses against his
shirt and looked back over the terrain they’d just covered. “Can’t see him, can’t
hear nothing either.”

“Doesn’t mean he still isn’t after us.
Maybe he’s flanking us like they do in those old war movies.”

“This isn’t a movie.”

Hugh started to walk in the direction of
the setting sun. Its red beams sliced through the openings among the poplar
branches. “No, it’s not a movie, but it sure feels like one sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hugh didn’t answer. He continued to plod
through the forest and Billy followed. They eventually came into a clearing and
followed a barbed wire fence line.

“This is a good sign, hey, Hugh? We must be
close to somebody’s farm now.”

“Take another look,” Hugh said. He pulled
on a strand of rusty, loose wire. “This fence hasn’t been fixed in years.”

“Well maybe if we work our way back towards
the river we can head back to town that way.”

“Where the hell is that? We don’t even know
where the valley is anymore.”

They continued west, beside the old fence
and into the red sun.

“So why did Nelson kill McDonald?” Billy
asked after ten minutes of silence.

“You seriously don’t know? I thought
everyone knew he was screwing around with McDonald’s wife.”

“Get outta here!” The boy’s face lit up
despite their predicament. Nothing could lift a person’s spirits like a bit of
good gossip. “How long has that been going on?”

“How should I know? They never asked me to
watch.”

Billy laughed so hard he had to stop
walking to catch his breath. When he was finished he wiped the tears from his
eyes and rubbed his stomach. “God, I’m hungry.”

“Me, too.” Hugh felt his own gut. The few
mouthfuls of cold scrambled eggs earlier in the afternoon had been the only
thing he’d eaten in almost twenty hours. Puking up everything during the night
hadn’t made things any better. Dehydration could become a serious problem.

They carried on for another fifteen minutes
until the fence ended. A final, moss-ridden post stuck out of the weeds and
wild grass at a forty-five degree angle. Ahead of them was an abandoned
farmyard. Billy pumped his fist into the air. “Yes! Finally!”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Nobody lives
here.”

They approached slowly. It became apparent
no one had lived there in a long time. The glass had been smashed from all the
window frames of the single story house, the front and back doors were gone
altogether. They went inside and had to be careful where they stepped. The
ground was littered with broken glass, rusted nails and bird poop. An ancient
washing machine here, a chesterfield box spring there, and everywhere there was
sheets of broken tile and lathe and plaster where the ceiling had fallen in.
Hugh looked out one of the windows into the backyard. There was an old car that
probably dated back to the forties; the flat rubber tires turned a light grey
and cracked throughout with age.

“Maybe we could drive back to Braedon,”
Billy offered.

Hugh felt sorry for him. Every step of the
way he’d tried to make a joke out of the whole thing. There was a barn with a
sagging roof fifty yards to the east. “We’ll sleep there tonight.”

“You really don’t think we can find our way
back to town?”

Hugh shook his head.

“Why can’t we sleep in the house? There’ll
be rats in the barn.”

“There will be rats in the house, too.”
Hugh started to crawl out through the window. It was safer than going back
across the floor of rubble. “I’ll feel safer in the barn. If Nelson is still
after us, he’ll check it out last. We’ll be able to see him coming from the
loft window.”

“Okay, but you go first. The rats and mice
can have a go at you before me. I don’t wanna get any goddamned scabies.”

“Do you mean rabies?”

“You know what I mean, that disease where
you go crazy, frothing at the mouth, pissing your pants and stuff like that.”

Hugh laughed and put an arm around his
skinny friend’s shoulders. They set off for the barn, the sky behind its black
form now a dark, indigo-blue. He could think of no one he’d rather spend the
night with.

The boys did have a good view of the house
from the barn’s loft window. They watched as evening slipped into night, the
colors stolen slowly from the western sky. The only light after a while was
cast down from the stars overhead and the rising harvest moon.

Hugh wondered who had lived in the old
farmhouse. He estimated that it had last been a home less than twenty years
before. Where once there was a family, now there was rubble, grown over with
thistle and weed. How quickly time covered its tracks. Had children played in
the front yard? Had they gathered eggs from chickens and fed horses? All that
remained was silent, dark ruin. Where had they gone? Were any of them still
alive? Was there some middle-aged man or woman staring out over a city
landscape recalling the good old days growing up on this very acreage?

It had taken less than twenty years. Hugh
had been displaced in time almost twice that long. He thought of Cathy, Dana,
Julie, and Colton. Had time erased them as quickly? No, they lived on in his
mind, in his heart. He performed mental exercises that kept their faces, their
voices, their smells alive inside of him.

What was Colton’s favorite sports team?
What brand name of jeans did Dana always insist on buying? What was the name of
that internet chat site Julie was always on? How long was Cathy’s hair?

Toronto Maple Leafs. Hugh was positive his
son’s favorite hockey team was the Leafs. He could picture Dana in her faded
designer jeans, but he no longer remembered the company name. He never could
recall the internet site that Julie visited when he was with them so he didn’t
beat himself up too badly about that one. But what
had
Cathy’s last
hairstyle been? She’d changed it so often. How could he be expected to recall
something so trivial? He remembered it had been shoulder length and straight at
their wedding. Her bangs had curled in at the bottom, and she had told him
repeatedly during the day how the ends rubbed against her neck, tickling the
skin there, driving her crazy to the point of forgetting her vows.

Or had it been one of the brides maids with
the turned in bangs? Maybe it had been Heather? And hadn’t he been the one that
almost forgot the wedding vows? Had time found the secret hiding place in his
brain where he stored all those important memories? It had been the same way
with Ben. After he was gone, the memories of his young life started to fade.
Small things at first went missing. There was a funny way he used to eat
soft-boiled eggs, but neither he nor Cathy could remember what it was after
half a year. All they could remember was the mess it always left behind, how it
made them laugh until they almost cried. He’d had a favorite blanket, blue and
fuzzy, but he couldn’t recall the pattern unless it was right under his nose.

Then the bigger things started to go. What
shade of blue were his eyes? Were they set wider apart like his own, or closer
together like Cathy’s? Photographs answered questions like that easily enough,
but it was hard to even look at them after he died. It had been just too damned
painful. What had his voice sounded like? There were plenty of home videos, but
like the photos, they were best left put away. He wished now that he’d looked
at those pictures more often. Even they were gone. Only his memory remained,
and that he feared, was fading as well.

Hugh watched as the orange moon rise behind
the house and through the shelterbelt of trees beyond. “Elephants and
chimpanzees.”

“What?” Billy asked.

He looked over at his friend leaning up
against the straw chute’s frame. His face bathed in a dull peach light from the
moon. “A blanket. It had elephants and chimpanzees on it.”

Billy stretched his cramped legs and
sighed. “Do you think they found Bob’s body yet?”

It had been the fourth time he’d asked in
two hours. It reminded Hugh of a kid in the backseat of a car.
Are we there
yet?
“Yeah, they’ve found him. The bridge would be one of the first places
our parents would think to check.”

“Won’t be long then. They’ll find us soon.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. We’re miles from
where we started out.” Hugh rubbed his temples with cold fingers. A splitting
headache had set in with the freezing temperatures and darkness. His tongue
felt swollen and dry and it was difficult to control his shaking body. That
only made the headache worse. He was becoming severely dehydrated.

As if sensing his thoughts, Billy placed a
comforting hand on his shoulder. “You want me to go out there and see if there’s
any water sitting around?”

“Too risky, I’ll be fine.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes
until an owl hooted off in the distance. Billy yawned. “So are you Hank?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Hank, from your time travel
story last night. Are you the guy that came back?”

“Why would you think that?”

“I dunno…just this feeling I got. You’ve
been acting weird for a long time and sometimes it seems like you’re hiding
some kind of dark secret.”

Hugh tucked his hands into his armpits in
an attempt to control the shaking. “Remember the time your dad gave you a
licking for spitting on the cars at my sister’s graduation?”

“How could I forget that? I think there are
still burn marks on my neck where he almost choked me. Sure was happy when your
dad punched him.” He paused for a moment and looked down at the rotting
floorboards. “I’m still ashamed of my dad though. You know, for how he turtled.”

“It should never have happened that way. I
was the one that should’ve got in trouble that night, not you. If I hadn’t
interfered, if I just let things happen the way they were meant to…I still feel
bad about it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was probably one of the best
things that ever happened to our family. Dad quit drinking after that night,
and he hasn’t laid a finger on me or mom since. Sure, all he talks about now is
Jesus and God, but it’s a lot better than it used to be. At least I’m not
scared of getting the shit kicked out of me all the time.”

Hugh nodded, thankful to have had a
positive influence on someone’s life. He certainly hadn’t had a good one on
Herbert McDonald. Or Bob Richards. “Don’t knock his religion. I wish I’d gone
to church more in my first life.”

“So what? You reincarnated or something? Is
that what the camping trip was all about?”

The cold must have been affecting Hugh’s
better judgment. “I planned the whole thing because I knew Nelson was going to
try and murder Mr. McDonald, or at least I thought he was going to murder him.
It was never actually proven, just a lot of gossip, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. What are you talking
about? You think it’s funny that Bob died?”

“I-I had to know for sure, had to stick my nose
in and play hero. I never thought--never imagined Bob would pay for it. He
would’ve been my boss.”

“Your boss? Like in the future? What do you
guys do, I mean what did you do? Ahh shit, I guess I want to say what
will
you do?”

“Confusing, isn’t it? Try living it. We
worked in a grocery store down town.”

“The corner store across from the theatre?”

“No, a bigger one, sort of a super-market.
It won’t even be built until 1980, and the theatre will be turned into a
parking lot.”

“Hey, I’ve heard my parents talking about
some big new store coming to town. Mom’s even thinking of putting her name in
for work.”

Hugh nodded. He wasn’t sure if Billy
actually believed a word he was saying and it didn’t really matter. It felt good
to get it all off his chest, to say it out loud to another person. “Bob was the
manager, and I was well, I’m not even sure what I did anymore. It wasn’t very
important, that much I know.”

“That’s too bad,” Billy said around another
wide-mouthed yawn. “I always figured you’d be some famous politician or
something, you know, because you like to shoot your mouth off a lot.”

“I think that’s what my problem was. Always
being such a smart ass that I never amounted to anything.”

It was silent for a full minute, and Hugh
had a good idea what Billy would ask next.

“So what about me? What am I going to be?

Hugh shrugged his shoulders and hoped he
wouldn’t ask again.

“Am I going to stay in Braedon? My parents
are pressuring me to take some dumb agricultural program in college. They want
me to carry on with the farm I guess.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Hell no! Don’t laugh, but I kind of
picture myself travelling around the world for a while after I graduate. I’d
like to see some shit before settling down. Maybe backpack across Europe, see
the pyramids, hitchhike all the way to China.”

Hugh knew the boy would be dead in less
than two years if he didn’t do anything about it. But how could he interfere
without making things worse? Billy had already received the beating of his life
thanks to him.

There’s nothing worse than dying.

“You should travel, Billy, nothing funny
about that. Maybe I’ll join you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. What
happens to me?”

“Whatever you want to happen. It’s
completely up to you.”

“I don’t much like the sound of that.”

Hugh’s headache was intensifying. “Give me
a break will you? I’m not a goddamned fortune teller, so quit asking questions
I don’t have answers for.”

“So it was just a bullshit story!” Even in
the gloom, Hugh could see the triumph painted on the boy’s face.

“Yeah, just a bunch of bullshit.”

They watched their breath rise out across
the face of the moon. “So what’s with those numbers you keep repeating under
your breath when you think nobody’s listening?” Billy asked through chattering
teeth.

“You’ve heard that?”

“Everyone hears you saying them. Eight,
twelve, twenty, and all the rest. What do they mean?”

“Just more bullshit, kind of a mantra
thing.”

“Well I think it’s kinda creepy.”

Hugh wished he had the lottery newsletter to
look at. He kept it tucked safely beneath a floorboard in his bedroom and never
took it out of the house. It was his only link to that other life, that fading,
dreamlike memory of a life.

It wasn’t a dream.

Billy stood up and stretched. He staggered
toward the window and Hugh reached out quickly to steady him. “Thanks, I think
my ass fell asleep, starting to sting like a bugger. I gotta get some sleep.
Wake me up as soon as you hear them coming. I got a feeling my dad might want
to smack the crap out of me after all this, and I want to be ready to run.”

“I bet he’ll just be happy to see you’re
okay.”

He listened as the boy settled into a pile
of moldy old straw in one corner. It wouldn’t offer much warmth, probably more
mouse turd and bird shit than hay, but Hugh wasn’t going to say anything. It
was better than sleeping outside. He was snoring ten minutes later.

Hugh’s head
ached and his stomach grumbled. He felt far too sick to sleep. He decided he
would remain awake until his father found him. He would need the time to figure
out how to tell everyone what had happened. He closed his eyes and tried to
relax his headache out of existence.

***

Billy’s snoring had turned into sneezing. At
least that’s what it sounded like to Hugh as he sat up and rubbed his swollen
eyes. He must have dozed off quickly. Luckily he’d lain down to one side instead
of toppling out face first through the chute window. He fumbled for the button
on his watch to see the time. It was 1:15 in the morning. Billy continued to
make his strange sneezing noises. Was he having an asthma attack? He heard the
boy’s feet begin to thrash in the damp, dirty straw.

“Billy! Are you alright?”

A deep voice, shaking with unbridled hatred
answered him. “Shut your mouth, kid. I’ll get to you as soon as I’m done with
your faggot friend.”

Hugh jumped to his feet quickly, scraping
slivers into his back along the dry wood of the straw chute. He barely felt it.
How had Nelson gotten up into the loft without making a noise? Dehydration must
have been taking a toll on Hugh’s system. His energy was almost completely
drained. Even this teenage body has its limits, he thought, as he listened to
his friend struggle in the corner. The choking sounds which he had mistaken for
sneezing were getting weaker, his kicking less spasmodic.

Hugh lunged into the darkness toward the
sound. He ran into Nelson’s sweaty back sooner than he expected and crashed
back down to the loft floor. He bit the side of his tongue as he landed, the
pain consumed him, angered him back to his feet in an instant. He grabbed a
handful of grimy hay and jumped onto the man’s back. He wrapped his free arm
around the Nelson’s neck and yanked back with all of his strength.

“Get off of me, you little bastard!” He
kept his hands locked around Billy’s throat, but Hugh managed to shove a good
amount of shit-ridden hay into his mouth. Nelson finally released his victim
and reached back for Hugh.