Jim blinked at the cold familiarity of those words. God, he had been a dick at that age. Luckily, the baby wasn’t very heavy, and Jim managed not to drop him. “What am I supposed to do with him?”
“You’re the oldest now — you figure it out.” Twenty-four- year-old patted the pockets of his cutoffs and fished out a lighter and a crushed pack of cigarettes.
“Hey, I quit,” Jim said, nodding toward the cigarette.
Twenty-four-year-old flicked, puffed, and took a long, deep breath. “When you were thirty.” The cigarette bobbed between his lips as he spoke. “Too bad for you.”
Jim could have strangled him then, if he wasn’t, if they weren’t, well, if things were different.
Jim looked over at the thirteen-year-old boy who paced at their maximum distance from each other — about four feet. He was mohawked and studded, chains connecting distant body parts. One look brought back the pain, the itch — worse — the snags and embarrassing rips.
Six-year-old Jimmy stood next to Jim and stared at him with a thoughtful expression.
“So this is me — I mean us?” Jim asked Twenty-four-year-old. Talking made his head hurt. They’d said something about a car, but Jim couldn’t remember anything before the last few hours when he’d opened his eyes and realized he was sitting out here on the grass median in front of the hospital, surrounded by the four of them.
“That’s right,” Twenty-four-year-old said around the cigarette. “You catch on quick for an old guy.” He walked a short distance away and sat on the fake boulder in front of the Mercy General sign.
The baby in Jim’s hands squirmed. Jim looked down at him. Man, he was an ugly kid. Yellow skin, yellow eyes and a head shaped like a number two potato. Jaundice — that’s what it was called, a failing of the liver that’s usually taken care of with sun lamps and fluids. Had he had a serious case of it when he was born? Jim tried to remember if his mom had ever mentioned it. His thoughts hit a slick wall, and he gave up trying.
Baby made a sour face. He looked like he was going to cry or puke, but instead stared, glassy-eyed, over Jim’s shoulder. He seemed awfully calm. Maybe being dead did that to a kid.
“You okay?” Jim jiggled him, but the baby just stared.
“Of course he’s not okay, he’s dead,” the thirteen-year-old said.
Jim managed to tuck the baby up against one shoulder. “Hey, Kid. Since you know so much, how about giving me a hand with the baby?”
Thirteen-year-old stopped pacing. His shoulders hunched in the loose black t-shirt, then he slowly turned, all attitude and hypo-allergenic steel. Black streaks ran down his cheeks from the inmost corner of his eyes, and Jim tried to remember why he’d done the Alice Cooper look. “The name’s Fly,” he said.
Jim laughed. He’d forgotten about that.
Fly flipped him off and went back to pacing.
Which left six-year-old Jimmy.
“He’s okay,” Jimmy said. “I watched baby before Fly came, and he watched him until he,” he nodded toward Twenty-four-year-old, “got here. It’s not hard. You just have to carry him. He doesn’t eat or mess his diapers, you know.”
Jim didn’t know, but it made sense, if any of this did. “So you’re the smart guy, huh? Do you have any idea why we’re here, all of us — I mean me — broken apart like this, or what we’re waiting around for?”
Jimmy’s brown eyes lost their shine, and his mouth turned down. Six. The year Dad had flown to London and stayed there. The year he’d caught pneumonia so bad he passed out when he tried to stand. His first ambulance ride, his first breathing tube. Six came rushing back to Jim in a way he hadn’t wanted to feel, taste, or remember in years.
“We’re not dead enough. Part of us is still alive in there.” Jimmy pointed toward the hospital, and the room Jim vaguely remembered. Surgery? Had his heart cashed in on its cholesterol count? No, an accident. Car. Head on. Fifty miles an hour around the curve from the airport bar. Driving hard. Driving away from Lucy.
“Jeezus,” Jim said.
“It’s pretty boring most of the time,” Jimmy said. “I kinda hoped we’d die in the car wreck, but we got you instead.”
“Thanks,” Jim drawled.
Fly scoffed.
Jimmy tipped his head to the side. “Sorry,” he said. “It hurt a lot, didn’t it?”
God, Jim thought, how did a sweet little kid like that turn into thirteen-year-old rivet-face over there? That thought made Jim think Twenty-four-year-old probably wondered how come he had to end up forty pounds overweight and saddled to a go-nowhere mail-clerk job.
“I don’t remember the pain much,” Jim said to Jimmy. Not the pain from the accident. Strangely, the pain he remembered was Lucy’s handshake, her tears, her good-bye that ended a five year relationship. A relationship he’d hoped would last forever.
Jimmy nodded, an ancient six-year-old pro at all this.
“She was neat,” he said softly.
“Lucy?” Jim asked, surprised Jimmy knew what he was thinking.
“Yeah. Why didn’t you just give her the ring?”
“People change,” Jim said, done talking to the sweet little kid now.
“Hey, Smokes,” Jim called to Twenty-four-year old. “What are we doing here?”
Twenty-four-year-old got to his feet with a smooth motion Jim had given up thirty pounds ago. “Let me go through this once.” He walked close enough that Jim should be able to smell the cigarette smoke, but no matter how hard he inhaled, he couldn’t smell anything.
“We’re dead. Can’t eat, piss or bleed. We can’t get any farther away than about four feet from each other, and have to stay within a couple blocks of our real body — the living us — him.” He nodded toward the hospital and took a drag off the cigarette. “My guess is we’re stuck this way until the living us — him — dies for good.”
“So why aren’t we in there?” Jim asked.
“I hate hospitals,” Twenty-four-year-old said. He gave Jim a look that said you should know, you should remember.
“I don’t care,” Jim said, “I’m not just going to wait out here until I — we — die. I want to go in. I want to see me — us — him with my own eyes.”
“Weren’t you listening? We can’t go anywhere unless we go together, and I’m not going in there.”
Jim opened his mouth to tell him exactly where he could stick his attitude when Jimmy spoke up.
“Something’s wrong with Baby.”
“What?” Jim shifted the baby down from his shoulder and held him out along his hand and arm again.
Baby was still yellow, but his eyes were shut, and he seemed even more still than he had been. Jim shook him gently.
“Hey, guy. Wake up.”
Baby jiggled, but his eyes stayed shut, his chest still. Jim felt a chill wash over his skin. Baby wasn’t breathing.
“Oh man,” Fly said, his voice cracking.
“Jeezus,” Twenty-four-year-old exhaled.
“Is he . . .are we . . .?” Fly said.
Jim took a breath, held it a minute, trying hard to feel Baby’s heartbeat, and not sure that he’d had one before.
Baby began to fade, the edges first, wisping away like fog before a wind, fingers, arms, feet and legs.
“This hasn’t happened before,” Twenty-four-year-old told Jim, eye to eye, man to man. He tried to look like he could handle it, but he was scared out of his skin and Jim knew it.
“What are we going to do? What’s happening to us?” Fly had worked himself up into a scream, and his eyes were suddenly as young as Jimmy’s.
Thirteen. The year he’d found Mom’s body. The year he’d realized how little justice was in the justice system. The year he’d washed a bottle of Sleepeeze down with two bottles of Nyquil and woke up for the stomach pump.
Jim could taste the charcoal in his throat, the greasy grit against the back of his lips, coating his tongue. He suddenly realized the charcoal streaks down Fly’s cheeks weren’t mascara.
Fly’
s hands shook, the chain between his eyebrow and bottom lip trembled. It looked like he was ready to run. Fact was, Jim wanted to run too. Turn his back on all this, on all of them, and just get the hell away from here.
Jimmy’s small hand touched Jim’s free hand. “Are we dying now?”
The last bit of Baby, his chest and stomach, faded from Jim’s left hand and forearm. Jim stared at where Baby had been only a moment before, and felt the dull ping of something deep within himself falling away. Emotional vertigo. He shook his head to clear it, to deny reality, then gave up and let his arm drop.
“Maybe this is the way it works.” Jim used his calm voice for Fly and Jimmy, the voice even Lucy believed. “Maybe we’ll go one at a time, and that’s okay. I mean, Baby lasted thirty-eight years, right?”
“Or there can only be four of us at a time,” Twenty-four-year-old said. “Maximum spirit capacity, or some such shit.”
Jim voiced a much darker thought. “Maybe something is happening to the living us. A stroke, brain damage, heart attack.”
“Fuck,” Fly said. He really looked like he needed a smoke.
“Smokes,” Jim said, but Twenty-four-year-old was already handing Fly his cigarette. Fly took a couple deep puffs and tried to pull himself together.
“Thanks,” Jim said.
Twenty-four-year-old nodded. “Now what?”
Jim could feel Fly glance over at him. Jimmy squeezed Jim’s hand.
Twenty-four-year-old didn’t break eye contact. He tipped his head toward the hospital. He looked calm and together about it on the outside, even though Jim had a pretty good idea what he felt on the inside.
Jim looked away from him and forced a cheerful note in his voice. “Time to pay ourself a visit, boys.” He could tell not even Jimmy bought it.
The three stayed close to Jim. They crossed the thin grassy strip between the parking lot and ER driveway. Their feet made no noise over the grass or the pavement. At the door to ER, Jim put his free hand out to push the door open.
“You don’t —” Jimmy said, and then he realized he didn’t — didn’t have to put his hand out, didn’t have to brace for anything — because he was through the glass doors without opening them. He looked over his shoulder and shook his head. Zero sensation. No heat, cold, or anything that indicated they’d just passed through something solid.
“Is it always like that?” Jim asked.
Fly shrugged. “What did you expect?”
They walked through the hospital, and Jim had the strange feeling that the building moved around them more than they moved through it. After a few floors, he got used to the way it worked, and then it felt predictable, if not exactly normal. Except for having no need to open doors, they navigated the hospital like living people, hallways and doors, white signs with arrows and names. Jim took his time, trying to think.
Why hadn’t he just died like he’d always thought he would — in one piece, at one time — at least as one person for Godsake. Was he afraid to die? Despite Fly’s reaction, he’d never really been afraid of death, had long ago accepted its inevitability. What then? Why was he becoming ghosts of himself?
Fifth floor. Jim could feel a difference here, and knew without looking at the sign-in board that his living self must be close. He made his way down the hall, and took the turn to the left. Outside a plain blonde wood door, he paused.
His heart, which he hadn’t noticed during the walk, the stairs, or any other time, suddenly squeezed tight, like the stress-attacks he used to get.
“Damn,” he whispered.
Fly nodded, and Twenty-four-year-old said, “Did I mention it hurts?”
Jimmy’s hand seemed lighter all of a sudden.
Jim looked down at him, and Jimmy tipped his head up and smiled. Jim swore he could see the shine of the floor through his face.
“I’m okay,” Jimmy said.
Did he seem more pale than he had been moments before, his skin translucent? Jim hesitated.
“Listen,” Twenty-four-year-old said, “Either get this over with now, or we’re getting the hell out of here.”
Jim suddenly remembered Twenty-four. The year he’d gone fishing with the guys on the North Santiam. The year the air was filled with a mother’s scream and a little girl slipped through the rapids. He had jumped. A face flashed by, then the orange of a life jacket. Jim grabbed. The girl slipped from his grip, and he was pulled under into cold blackness. Two months later he woke up in the hospital. He’d missed the girl’s funeral, and spent his last year of college learning to walk again.
Twenty-four-year-old exhaled, long and slow, like he didn’t know what Jim was remembering. “Well?” Twenty-four-year-old asked.
Jim took a deep breath. This was like that jump, except there was no way he could guess at the dangers beyond the door. He tightened his grip on Jimmy’s hand and walked through.
All the things he’d expected to be in the room were there. The bland wallpaper, the dull glossed floor, the I.V. stand, the bed. And in the bed, a man.
Jim stared across the room at himself. The pain in his chest tightened. He felt too hot, too cold, and sick enough to puke. He had accepted that he wasn’t alive, but to see himself lying there, bandaged, tubed, but breathing, and so utterly alive — it all seemed wrong.
This, this . . . imposter was going to finish his life, make his decisions, do the things he’d put off for later, or worse, never do them at all.
Screw that.
Shock gave way to anger.
Jim strode forward. The pain in his chest tightened the nearer he came to his living self.
He leaned over the bed, his hands extended. He didn’t know exactly what he was planning to do — maybe shake him, maybe choke the life out of him.
Just before his fingers touched his living flesh he heard Twenty-four-year-old say, “Do it.”
Fly said, “Shit,” and Jimmy whispered, “Oh, no.”
Jim did it anyway. His hands sank into his living chest. A hot electric wave crashed down over him. There was a slippery moment of vertigo while he fell and fell, too far, out to the edge of a shocking coldness. Then he turned and willed himself up, to the heat, to the electric pulse and buzz of blood and cell, to the cluttered, noisy thoughts, the pain, the breath. To living.
Jim took a breath. It was harsh, dry. He coughed and tasted the stale breeze from the oxygen tube. The machine beep was suddenly loud, the bed beneath him hard, the stiff sheets rough against his skin, skin that felt wrong, too heavy, too hot.
Was he alive? He opened his eyes. The ghosts were there, Fly and Twenty-four-year-old and Jimmy, leaning down over him. They were real enough he could see the surprise in Jimmy’s eyes.
“Wow,” Jimmy mouthed.
Jim tried to speak. Don’t leave, he tried to say, to think, to make them understand, but his throat was raw, his tongue swollen. Exhaustion tugged at his mind, and he felt sleep sliding inexorably closer.
Twenty-four-year-old raised an eyebrow and looked at Fly.
Did they hear him? Jim tried again to speak, but not even a moan made it past his lips.
The ghosts leaned down over him, so close they seemed to blend into one person, a mix of piercing and innocence and calm eyes.
Don’t go, Jim tried to say, but his mouth filled with the taste of charcoal and the oxygen tube smelled like smoke. He thought he heard a baby cry and Jimmy laugh, then sleep welled over him and took him down into darkness.
“So, can I go home yet?” Jim asked. He’d already spent a week sleeping and recovering. Today he felt more whole than he had in a long time.
The doctor looked up from the clipboard and smiled. “Not yet, but sooner than you think. How does day after tomorrow sound to you?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Jim said.
“Good.” The doctor turned to the door. “Just call the nurses if you need anything — and Jim, stick to the speed limit from now on.” The doctor stepped out of the room.
Jim nodded. There were a lot of things h
e planned on doing better. He picked up the pen and pad of paper next to his bed and wrote the numbers one through twenty down one side of the page. He penned: “Call Lucy” after number five.
He still had the ring at home on his dresser. He would ask her. Not this week, but not never either. First they would have to really get to know each other again. He had a feeling she’d be surprised at how much he’d changed.
Before that though, he wanted to try for a better position at work, or maybe do a little traveling.
Jim moved the pen between one and five, letting his thoughts wander. Should he start his own business? Buy a house?
He rested the pen against his lips, and re-read his list.
A chill washed over his skin. Written neatly after number one, two and three were the words: Finish college, Pierce ear, Eat ice cream.
Jim glanced up at the mirror across the room. He saw four much younger versions of himself, layered within his reflection.
“How about ice cream first?” he said. And all of Jim grinned.
The Wordos writers group occasionally threw down the gauntlet and challenged each other to write to a specific theme. One such challenge was themed “junkyard planet.” That was the spark for this story of freedom, hope, and love thriving in a world filled with ugliness and danger.
FALLING WITH WINGS
My eldest uncle, Setham, said he usually had to dig for the babies, but when he found me I was mostly on top of the muck and staring up at the sky from where I’d fallen. He said I never cried.
Before he turned me over to the raising girls — aunties and sisters and nieces — he stopped by the pipe that stuck out of the piles of broken concrete and washed me off. Then he slathered a thick coat of grease over me from the plastic jug he keeps in his pack. Blessed me and tucked me in a sling against his chest while he took me back to the blocks. Walked the whole way because, even then, Setham didn’t have wings.
The raising girls thought it beyond thoughtful of him to bring me in clean and greased thick enough the flies wouldn’t bite my tender skin.