Since his dad and I checked out, Eddie has added considerable mileage to his running and biking routines. A pounding heart has become the different drumbeat to which he marches. (Death brings out the lyricist in me. I know words I never heard. In every language.) For one thing, in his mind my evil twin has a harder time keeping up with him if he’s on the move, and he can think better, which is about all he’s doing these days. Since he’s not talking, he’s not a lot of fun to hang around with, and he was never all that sociable anyway, so it’s not like kids are lining up to be his good buddy. He tends to shoot from the lip with them as much as with adults. Apart from his dad and my dad, I was about the only person who understood him.
I could bump him on these runs because he leaves all kinds of avenues open, but I’m not ready to take the chance of running him off the road. He’s wondering today why he’s so mad at me. It’s not the haunting, he thinks. That’s not even real. It couldn’t be. But I’m mad. I’m mad all the time. Billy gets killed, and then I’m mad at him. That’s harsh. But if he were here, I’d punch him. I would. I’d punch him. I mean, how dumb was it to kick a stack of Sheetrock that weighs twice as much as you do and then turn your back on it? Why couldn’t you of just paid attention, Billy? Nothin’s ever gonna be the same. Nothin’. He quickens his pace.
Once you’re dead you know everything turns out okay—in the way long run—and I’d like to tell him that, but it’s not my place. And the anger has a purpose; to keep the sadness at bay.
His mind bounces to Tarter. Man, I am headed for SO much trouble. No single kid ever took him on and lived to tell about it. That’s why I need Billy. If he was here I wouldn’t be wimping out getting baptized, ’cause he wouldn’t be FREAKING ME OUT ALL OVER THE PLACE. I mean, what if it doesn’t even work? What if I go givin’ my life to Jesus and Jesus knows I’m just doing it to not be scared? If there’s a Jesus, he probably doesn’t fall for stuff. I hate it that God and him can get inside your head. Like how are you s’posed to get any privacy?
He runs harder and lets his mind run blank, but Tarter reappears. If he were thinking straight, he’d be way more afraid of Tarter than my silly apparition. I won’t talk yet, Eddie thinks. I’ll make him give me more time to think.
The incident that cranked up Eddie and me happened in sixth grade, when we heard Tarter made Albert Redmond stand in front of the class with his arms extended for chewing gum (second offense) and every time Albert complained, Tarter put a book in his hand and then taunted him about not being strong enough to accept the consequences of his actions. When Albert called Tarter a name that rhymes with Albert’s father’s job driving eighteen-wheelers over the nation’s highways, Tarter got him suspended for three weeks and wouldn’t let him back until he apologized in front of the entire class for exposing them to “the language of the ignorant and obscene.”
Albert’s parents lodged a complaint, but Tarter pulled out his ace in the hole, which was really two aces in the hole, which was really two aces on the school board, which was really two aces on the school board who were also aces on the Red Brick Church board. These days he has three aces. Albert went ahead with the apology, but each time he finished, Tarter told him it wasn’t “sincere” enough, and after the third time Albert came unglued and screamed the same name he’d called Tarter before, over and over and over again until it became clear to all that Albert Redmond wasn’t mentally stable enough to stay in school. Albert works at the sawmill now.
My father told me the day of Albert’s expulsion to steer clear of Tarter when I got to high school, but Eddie and I decided we’d make it our mission to get even for all the Albert Redmonds, past and future. We didn’t know him very well, but you had to feel bad for Albert because he was one of those guys who can almost completely disappear right in front of your eyes.
We planned to hit Tarter where it hurt. We would keep ourselves out of the kind of trouble Eddie was famous for—shouting out answers and asking questions that had no answers—and challenge Tarter any time he stepped on our rights. I even went so far as to dust off the dog collar to put around Eddie’s leg. Eddie was the one we knew Tarter would go after, because he already had a history from Sunday school.
We were champions of the underdog, Eddie and I, and now Eddie has to go it alone. Only he’s enrolled in baptism classes, waving his white flag. But he’s not seeing my twisted face and body as much, and he’s been sleeping better, so the trade-off seems worth it. I’m staying out of his Twilight Zone until I can find a way to not add to the trauma. Under any circumstances, he’s got to figure this one out alone.
So today Eddie runs and he thinks and he runs and he thinks and then he gets his bike and rides and thinks and rides and thinks until he looks at his watch and realizes he is about to be late for his first baptism class, which could add brute strength to his shoulders because you have to hold your arms out one minute for every minute you’re late. All of a sudden he remembers nothing of what he thought when he was running and riding and just pedals like a wild man. He arrives at the Red Brick Church gasping for air, with forty-five seconds to spare.
The reverend starts the session introducing Eddie and mildly embarrassing him, asking if he’s going to “grace them with words.” He reminds Eddie that before he can actually be baptized he must testify and that will require use of his vocal chords. Eddie smiles and the class is off and running.
Then Tarter throws him a curve ball Eddie totally can’t hit. He backtracks to Genesis, to the story of Adam and Eve’s kids, Cain and Abel. It’s one of those mom-and-dad-liked-you-best stories, which ends with Cain killing Abel out of jealousy. Supposedly God put a mark on Cain because of it.
So what? Eddie thinks. Bible says there were only four people on earth, whittled down to three because Abel got whacked. Adam and Eve knew who did it (not exactly Law & Order detective work), and unless I don’t know my history, mirrors weren’t invented yet. So what’s the point of a mark? Everyone who could see it already knew.
Sean Evans, one of the other, younger kids in the class, wants to know what the mark looked like. “Like was it a mole, or a birthmark? A tattoo?”
“No,” Tarter says, “none of those things. It’s a more significant mark than that.”
“Like a mask?” Sean asks.
“Sean, this is a mark that must last through the ages. You want to remember that everyone who could see the mark on Cain already knew what Cain did. What would be the point of that?”
That answers Eddie’s original question, but this is beginning to sound like one of those points his dad and Tarter might have hotly discussed on the island of the service station while John Proffit gassed up Tarter’s car.
Sean says, “So what was it?”
“It’s dark skin,” Tarter says. “African Americans wear the mark of Cain.”
WHOA! Only there is no whoa! because Eddie’s brain does a giddyap. Instantly he knows he is going to be terrorized by my smiling, decaying mug for the rest of his life because Tarter has crossed a line. Bear Creek is—well, there’s no political correctness out here in the universe, so—full of white folks. Eddie knows very few people who aren’t. But he is a smart kid, moved by both history and literature. Just because he doesn’t stay on one subject very long doesn’t mean he doesn’t learn it. His favorite book in seventh grade was The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963. It’s a funny, tragic, magical book based on a real-life church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 in which four little black girls were killed. The bombing was in response to a huge civil rights movement that rocked the entire country at the time. Eddie was so moved by the story, when he discovered it was true, that he researched the entire civil rights movement, and had he had the attention span to actually write about it, he would have become an instant intellectual celebrity in our school. What he walked away from his research believing was that if you convince yourself someone is less than you, you can treat them any way you want. You can even kill their children. He wished he could be in a room sometime when Tarter informed
Michael Jordan about ol’ Cain.
Eddie gets up.
Tarter says, “Eddie?”
Eddie looks right in his eyes, smiles sadly, and walks out of the room.
As he walks down the road toward home, Eddie Proffit tells himself he’s just going to have to figure out some other way to deal with his terror, because if the Red Brickers got that wrong, no way could he trust their God to bail him out of his current hell. He’s furious at Tarter, but even madder at me, because if I would just quit haunting him all the time, he wouldn’t be in this spot. At the same time, because this is the way his mind works, he’s thanking me, because he would never have heard Tarter say it if he hadn’t gone to those classes, and he might have been sucked in. His mind bounces all over that Bible story.
No wonder my dad fought with Tarter. If Tarter’s God made Cain black because he committed fratricide—and Eddie is plenty smart enough to know that word—He must have meant the mark to embarrass anybody who wore it all down through eternity, which goes to at least now. Like, “Here’s the deal, Cain, since you offed your brother and I can’t put you in jail because we don’t have those, everyone down your line of the family is going to have to eat dooky because of what you did. Perfectly good and innocent people will live their lives with this mark, which if you have it, by the way, you will look way better than people without it. I mean, face it, white people are pasty. And if Tarter was right and there are still black people, which there obviously are, then it means God is still mad at them for a crime some guy who lived, like, seven thousand years ago committed. And Cain only murdered his brother. There was this guy a few years back, Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed a bunch of people and ate them. What color mark did he deserve, and why didn’t he get one? And what about the Green River Killer? That guy killed so many people his kids should be rainbows.
My man Eddie is seriously worked up.
I’ll bet that’s how white people let themselves have slaves. His mind rants on. I’ll bet that’s why they wouldn’t let black people eat at lunch counters with them or pee in the same public restrooms or swim in the same swimming pools. A clarity moves into his mind. People can make excuses for anything, he thinks. Anything.
In his anger, Eddie almost nearly forgets I’m dead and before he knows it, he’s standing in front of my dad’s house, wishing he could unload all this on me—the real me, not the zombie—get me into serious strategy sessions to bring the reverend down. Eddie wants an all-out assault. He stands on the porch with tears running down his face because there’s no one to talk to, no one to tell. He turns around and walks toward the porch steps.
“Eddie?”
My dad’s in the doorway.
“You okay, guy?”
Eddie shakes his head.
“Me either,” Dad says. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll buy you a Coke.”
Eddie walks back toward my dad and suddenly caves in. “I miss him so much,” he says, sobbing. “I need him to talk to. I quit talking because there’s no one to talk to.” And then he unloads the events of the evening on my father right there on the porch. “Tarter is a pig,” he says through gritted teeth when he’s finished.
“Can I assume you’ve resumed oral communication?” my dad says. He’s smiling.
Eddie looks around the porch, suddenly aware he’s uttered his first words in months.
“Only to you,” he says. “I’m not ready to talk to anyone else. Only to you, okay? Don’t tell.”
My dad raises his hands in mock surrender. “Wild horses…” he says. “You didn’t actually tell Tarter you were quitting the classes, right? You didn’t speak.”
“Naw, I just got up and left.”
“Look, I know you and Billy were planning—”
“How did you know that?”
“Billy told me. I went to Bear Creek High School, too, you know. Tarter’s first year teaching was my junior year. I hated him and he hated me. He didn’t have any power when I applied for the maintenance job, or you sure wouldn’t see me pushing brooms through the halls.”
“I don’t get it how somebody who thinks like that can get away with being a teacher.”
“There are good teachers and bad teachers, bud.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a bad teacher.”
“You won’t get any argument with me, but you can’t say that out loud.”
“No kidding.”
“I went to his church when I was in high school, you know.”
“I thought you said you hated each other.”
“I did say that,” Dad says, “but I’ve always loved espionage, read spy novels from junior high on, and the one thing I’m sure of is you always want to know your enemy.”
“What are you saying?”
“Pretend you left because you weren’t feeling well and go back. Don’t talk. Just listen. You might learn something you can use later. You have the whole year with him in front of you. You don’t have Billy…” and then he gets quiet. “Sorry, Eddie. I get hit sometimes. I can’t believe…” He looks Eddie in the eye. “Look, buddy, I can’t take the place of your dad and you can’t take the place of Billy, but I know you’re not making such a go of it with your mom, and I miss Billy like crazy. We can’t replace them, but we can stand in.”
Eddie feels a rush of relief.
“When you come across something that seems to need a dad, run it by me. When I come up with something that needs a son, I’ll do the same. I won’t boss you around and you don’t get all kidlike and rebellious on me, and we might just be able to help each other out.”
So my dad and my best friend form a clandestine alliance to help them limp through their lives without people they love.
“You want to stay mute as long as you’re in the classes,” Dad says. “I know you, Eddie Proffit, and if you’re talking at all, you’re talking all the time. Tarter would smoke you out in a minute. He’ll bring up the mark of Cain—or wait till you hear what God did to Abraham and Isaac—and you’ll be all over him. You and I can have a time every day—alone time—and you can talk all you want…well, not all you want, but enough.”
Eddie nods.
“The way Tarter sees the mark of Cain,” Dad tells him, “is an old Mormon belief. I don’t know if they still believe it, but Tarter started out in their church back in his day; got too conservative even for them. He must have brought that little gem with him when he broke off and started this Red Brick thing. He probably doesn’t run into much conflict with it because there are no black people here.”
I’m going to catch up with Eddie in his crossover time tonight; not talk, but just be there. I think if I show up enough times in a row and don’t push it, he’ll figure out it’s not quite a dream and he can quit seeing me like Jason or Freddy. See, when I’m bumping him, or if I’m just following closely, I see what he sees, through his eyes. I can do that with anyone, even you. Since us dead guys aren’t judgmental and we couldn’t embarrass you even if we were, it’s okay. Anyway, I’m tired of seeing myself through Eddie’s eyes, all crunched by that Sheetrock. Even the mortician had me looking better than that.
6
WINTER IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER
“So tell me again why you wanted to get baptized?” I’m standing on the sledding hill again, next to Eddie. He thinks it’s a dream because it’s winter in the middle of summer and because we start our conversations in the middle, like we’ve been talking all along. I’ve been slowly working my way in, just like I said I would, disguising my “voice” so he doesn’t hear what he heard under the tree and freak himself awake.
“To make you stop haunting me.”
“I’m not haunting you. What’s the matter with you? I’m your best friend.”
“Oh, yeah? Then who’s that staring through my bedroom window in the middle of the night, or rooting around in my closet? And who told me to get out from under the lightning?”
“I didn’t tell you, I asked what you thought would happen if you didn’t.”
“Yeah,
but you said it in a voice. Like now, only I wasn’t dreaming. And besides, I wouldn’t have been out there if you hadn’t terrorized me into running into the middle of the street in my bare feet.”
I say, “Wasn’t me.”
“Whaddaya think? I did that by myself? Why would I do that?”
“Why would I do it?”
“You tell me.”
“We gonna go down this hill?”
“And how come you always meet me here? It’s the middle of the summer and all of a sudden there’s snow all over everything and everybody’s acting like that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“This is where we had some of our best times. I just thought it was a good place. Want me to meet you somewhere else?”
“Naw,” he says. “You’re right. This is fine. We did have a lot of fun here.” I watch a dark sadness sweep over him. “I really miss you, man.”
“I’m right here.”
“Yeah, but you’re not real.”
“Don’t be so sure. So, about the baptism.”
“You know, I’m scared all the time.”
“Are you sure you need to be?”
He says, “Are you sure I don’t?”
I am but don’t say it. “Look, I gotta let you figure things out for yourself mostly, What good is being scared doing you?”
“What are you, out of your mind?
“Yeah, and my body. If it’s not doing you any good, why don’t you quit it?”
“Believe me, if I could I would.”
“If that were true,” I say, “you would have quit already.”
“Man, you are bugging me. This is a dream, you know. I can run us into traffic and scare you back. It’s my dream, so I wake up on impact. Who knows what happens to you?”
“Turn into the slide, buddy. You can get rid of the fear by remembering what you’ve always known. What you’ve always known better than any of us.”
“Turn into the slide? Turn into the slide? I did that. If you’re really dead, you know that. I don’t get it.”