The Body of Christopher Creed

  "Your mom's here," she said. "Your dad, too. We're getting you help, okay? Torey, what happened? What is that terrible smell?"

  I just gripped her around the neck, saying, "I've just been in hell..."

  Twenty-two

  Yellow fuzz glitters dropped down the backs of my eyelids, following a bezillion yellow fuzz glitters. Boring. But opening my eyes would be a bad thing. They would know I was awake. Time to torture the kid again.... Son! Are you in pain? Do you remember?...

  Decision made: Nameless. Legless. Clueless. Ageless. Me. Like when I used to sit with my big-buttoned tape deck between my Velcro Keds. Four years old, and there was nothing except the music. The brown warthog song.

  Four brown warthogs sleeping in the wood.

  One beard buzzing ... and up he stood.

  A tread got near, and a mild crash. Dishes, followed by the voice of authority. "Mr. Adams, we know you're awake. You have to eat this time."

  Caught himself a dragonfly.... MMmmMM good.

  Nurse Ratched. The carnivore. The suppository rapist. She had wanted me to choose between food and a feeding tube for our next bout with reality.

  "Mr. Adams, I can see your eyelids moving."

  She didn't like me. Thought maybe I committed a murder, something like that. Something like, I went back to get a body found and broke my leg so people would feel sympathy for me instead of revulsion. Some people were thinking that. Sometimes I could hear voices echoing out in the hall. I opened one eye a slit to see if my mother was in the room with that George friend of hers. George was supposed to be my attorney. He had on an olive green suit last time he was in here. Olive green was the hot new color for suits. I'm glad I'm not a grown-up.

  The only one in slit range was Nurse Omnipresent. She was like God. Knew your thoughts by the slit in your eye.

  "You're not allowed any visitors. Not until you eat something, drink something, and say something to Dr. Fahdi. He's a very expensive psychotherapist, and your parents are not paying him to watch your eyelids dance. And your leg will not heal on mere inhalation. Do you understand?"

  The bed was moving. The top of it, at least. I was bending at the waist, coming up to meet a bowl of off-white barf. The nurse grabbed my arm and forced it toward the spoon. It made me think she was planning to push my face into this oatmeal, and I had other ideas.

  "Before you get violent, think of who my mother is," I muttered, swallowing the razor blades in my throat. I could feel her glaring like four brown warthogs. She thought I committed a murder, something like that.

  "Your mother is not here. Nor will she be here until you eat. So, you can rot here alone, or—"

  "Fuck off."

  I shut my eyes again, wondering if she planned to dump my head in this bowl. I heard her pick up the phone and punch in numbers. They told me I hadn't eaten in five days, but I knew they were lying. Five days, I would be completely and totally starving and not able to resist. She could bite me.

  "Dr. Fahdi? It's Carol Flannery. He just spoke ... Yes, I'm quite certain...'Fuck off.'"

  Three brown warthogs sleeping in the wood.

  One heard buzzing ... and up he stood.

  Caught himself a dragonfly....MMmmMM good!

  "Oh, and before that he threatened me. No, not my life, my bank account."

  Two brown warthogs sleeping in the wood....

  "He still won't eat, and I think he knows I'm ready to drop the diplomacy tactics. Sure. Whatever you say."

  She hung up. "He's coming right down. And if you're eating when he comes in, you'll probably see your family. If you give the profanity a test."

  She left, and I sat staring at this bowl of mush until it became two bowls. All food smelled burny, like burning flesh. There was a lemon slice beside the iced tea. I picked it up and brought it dangerously close to my nose. Deep-fried, barbecued lemon. I am not dreaming this, I am not.

  I flung the lemon, and it landed on my cast and stuck there. I stared, feeling the hot juices eat away at my cast, right through to eating my ankle out from underneath it.

  Dr. Fahdi came through the door, and I pointed. "Get it off! Hurry!"

  He took his time, studied it like it was oh-so-interesting. "It's just a lemon."

  "It's burning my skin. Get it off!"

  He picked it up and laid it on the table next to where my mother used to sit. I heaved in breaths, trying to decide if the burning had stopped. I decided it had. I looked at him suspiciously, wondering why he looked so pleased.

  Oh yeah. I had planned on never talking again. The doctor had screwed me over, sent that acid-infested lemon in here on purpose. Now he could gloat.

  He pulled the chair up close to my bed and sat in it. I could feel him staring at me. I just couldn't get focused on anything but this burnt, scorchy food. It was alive.

  "Your mother spoke to me," he said quietly. "There's been an autopsy. Finally."

  I couldn't remember what an autopsy was. Had something to do with my mom's tax returns.

  "But I'll let your mother tell you about that." He was watching me. Watching and watching, so much so that I was expecting him to bring a bag of popcorn out from under his seat and start munching. Yo, a movie costs seven-bucks. Cough it up, Dr. Make-me-puke. I didn't like the look about him. His expression showed too much concern. Pity. Deep, deep, terrible pity.

  "There must be something you'd like to talk about," he said.

  Not with this mountain of barbecued, smoked oatmeal winking at me.

  "Get the food away ... It smells." I tried not to breathe until after he moved the tray. He put it on the floor, but I knew it was down there.

  "What does it smell like, Torey?"

  Gobs and gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts

  Concentrated monkey meat, tantalizing birdies' feet

  "Like ... stuff."

  All in jars of pinkish purple porpoise pus—

  "What kind of stuff?"

  I would hurl, I knew, if I talked about this smell. It doesn't make much sense that I wouldn't care if I died but I would care if I hurled. So much for logic. Well, everyone's screwing logic these days, logic and Mrs. McDermott.

  "Where's AH?" I asked suddenly. I couldn't believe I had forgotten about Ali.

  "She's outside," he said, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Something had made me think maybe Ali was gone to a spa in Florida.

  "I want to see her."

  "She's with your family. They're waiting for you to eat."

  Well, Ali was okay. Then I was okay. I cast a sideways glance at this shrink, wondering in a haze what sort of bargaining power I could come up with. My head got flooded with thoughts. I spat them out.

  "Did you know that Christ died naked?"

  "Yes. I've heard that."

  "So, how come he's always wearing a loincloth?"

  "You mean ... in the artistic renderings?"

  I nodded, wondering why this shrink dude didn't look confused by the idea. Fahdi. Maybe he was Muslim or something. He spoke with an accent. Yeah, well, ain't his religion, why should he care?

  "Do they bother you, the artistic renderings?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why?"

  Why? Did your mother die in a blond wig? "Because it's not the truth."

  "Would you prefer to see the truth?"

  He had his legs crossed like a girl. Guys my age didn't sit like that unless they were secretly itching. I wondered if something happened to guys, maybe when they graduate from college. If they decide to go on to medical school or grad school or law school, they also decide it's okay to sit like a girl. Something like that. If you're a construction worker in the end you never sit like a girl.

  "What, you think I'm some sort of a pervert?"

  "No," he said too calmly. "I'm trying to figure out where you're going with your thought."

  Better you than me, Dr. Zen Buddhism. "I don't know."

  "But it bothers you."

  I cast a suspicious glance over the bed bars and noticed that no green steam came
rising off the tray. Dead hand bone kicked over and evaporated.

  "Jesus was supposed to be an innocent dude. You see all these pictures. And he's, all, got his hands nailed down by the palms. And there's this crown of thorns on his head. And there's all blood running down all over the place in some of those pictures."

  "Yes."

  "I even saw one where his eyes are rolled up backwards. I mean, I just don't understand how people can show all the violence. But they single out the nudity. Nudity is a problem, but all the violence isn't. I don't understand people."

  He nodded, biting his pencil. I couldn't see any teeth marks. He'd been biting this pencil on and off since he came in here, but there were no teeth marks. The man had disgusting self-control.

  "We live in a culture that has definite quirks about both sex and violence," he told me.

  Maybe. Except this has been going on for centuries. It's not cultural, it's universal. This picking of truths, like you're picking melons at Superfresh.

  "Have I been hit in the head?" I asked him.

  He just blinked at me. "Not to our knowledge. Your leg was broken and ... you've had emotional trauma."

  "Yeah. Well..." I wondered if emotional trauma can change the way your brain works. I wondered if it can make you a mean person instead of a nice person. I felt like I had been a nice person, once.

  "I want to see Ali," I told him.

  He looked down at his feet, and I knew he was looking at the food tray. He was playing games with me. They all were.

  "Torey"—he sat forward—"we need you to eat. You can see your friends and family. All you have to do is eat. That's the plan for the moment. I agree with it."

  "You don't understand," I muttered.

  He looked like he thought he did understand. He sat there staring at me with this I-know-something-you-don't-know ha-ha look that I couldn't tolerate. Whatever. He didn't understand what it was like to be so sure of something. So sure you would stand on a rock and tell yourself your hope was complete. Chris Creed is alive. You can find him. You can help him, do something nice for him. He did not disappear to die; he disappeared to live.

  He didn't understand what it was like to have your truths turn to crispy critters in stinking, rotting laughing that smelled like something you could never, ever describe, yet never, ever forget. Flaming pickled cow's ass would not do that smell one-tenth of a hair of justice. You would smell it until you died.

  "You don't understand," I told him. "You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever understand. Do you understand me?"

  He stayed quiet. He stared at me until I was gone again—daydreaming about warthogs, fighting actual sleep due to mortal fear of the sneak attack of the lemons.

  When perfect lives come crashing down, some people say they come down with a vengeance. The more perfect the life, the more complete the destruction. I've heard that. I can't remember the few places I'd heard it before my ten days in the Atlantic City Medical Center, but one place I seem to remember that from is church. I seem to remember this theory that we're all dealt fifty-two cards by the end of our lives. If you get all aces in the beginning, you have a greater chance of getting your twos and threes in rapid succession later. And when we die (the dying part makes me think that the Church had something to do with this lesson), we stand up in front of God, sort of realizing that there are no greater lives, only greater beginnings, middles, or ends. And greater depths under lesser appearances.

  For sixteen years I had a perfect life. I got my share of twos and threes in the weeks following the corpse. My head started to clear, and I kept waiting to get arrested. One of the threes was not getting to go home after being released from the hospital. I got transported to a mental health facility up near Camden, which specializes in several things, one of which is post-traumatic stress disorder. I was convinced, when I first found out, that it was some maneuver of my mom's to put off my getting arrested. I call it a three because a two would have been getting arrested in the hospital.

  A two was that this mental health facility also specializes in eating disorders, and there were actually twin sisters from my high school admitted there for treatment. They were cheerleaders, Leeza and Arial Cortez, and I felt kind of surprised, because they were beautiful girls who weren't, like, skin and bones. I guess they recognized me, too.

  You might think that people in mental health would be very sympathetic toward another person in mental health. I was in a haze the first three weeks but got the gist somehow. I think they were very embarrassed to see someone they knew, and they went to town making sure the other patients knew that my situation was a lot worse than theirs. They would whisper to other patients, and I had the pleasure of overhearing them a couple times. "...helped kill that Chris Creed kid out in the woods, just hasn't gotten arrested yet ... did something with the body ... made him crazy..." A definite two, especially during those first three weeks, when the truth about what actually happened hadn't sunk in yet.

  Probably the biggest ace I received is that particular truth. It's the hardest thing for me to talk about, even still. It takes me back to that ten-day stay in the medical center, which I have almost completely blocked out, except for me regressing to nursery rhymes. I don't like to think about it or tell it. But it's the tail end of my saga, so I'm letting fly.

  My mom came in the same day I first talked to Dr. Fahdi, despite Nurse Flannery's bigmouthed threats.

  My mom said, "There's been an autopsy. I'm going to tell you about it."

  I couldn't remember what an autopsy was, and I don't think she really expected me to comprehend it all. I'd say she wanted to tell it, just so it would be out there and I could chew on it when I felt like it.

  "The truth is what we suspected all along, but I didn't want to bring it up to you until we were sure. To backtrack, if we had been wrong somehow, would have been ..." She eased down in the chair beside me, so I could see only the top of her head. "I can't begin to imagine what you must have gone through in that cave. Torey, I've known you since before you were born. And you are the last person in the world who should have seen that ... well, the geologists from Stockton are calling it 'immaculate decomposition.' Not a legal term, so I'm not treading on familiar ground here."

  She pulled her foot out from under her and replaced it with the other, so she bobbed up for a minute and I saw her face. She looked deathly tired. Her exhausted voice went on. '"Immaculate decomposition' is what happens when oxygen strikes a body that has been ... well, that has been, um, dead. For some time. The, um. The cave you entered was air sealed. First by the Lenape Indians. They considered those little caves sacred. Actually they're not even caves, did you know that? They're cavities in enormous chunks of limestone that lie buried about six to twenty feet under the ground along the coast here. Since there are no cracks per se, like in a regular cave, they can be airtight if a stone is rolled in front of them in just the right way. Generally the Lenapes buried their dead in the ground, just like we do. But if they found one of these limestone cavities, they would use them to bury Indian chiefs and their family members. I don't know who those particular Lenapes were, exactly, but we think they must be a chief and two other family members."

  I saw her head bob up a little again, like she was shifting around in the chair. She wasn't looking at me. She didn't expect me to say anything, because she went right on.

  "I've talked to the Stockton geologists. They were there for the next two days. They were very nice. Left me a number of messages on our answering machine. I think they heard what ... happened to you. And it was important to them ... that you understand. If you want to. If you can. When you moved the stone, a strong gust of wind must have sent a rush of oxygen into the cave. Apparently the, um, the body had been decaying without oxygen, which is a strange phenomenon. At first sight the body will appear to be almost warm to the touch. But if someone were to touch it, it would feel like ... a bag of leaves. Something like that. With the first strikes of oxygen, the outer layers begin to, you
know, peel away.

  "Torey, the psychiatrist mentioned that you've been smelling burning smells and have a scorchy taste in your, um, your mouth. Something like that. I just want you to know that, well, the body never caught fire. There was no fire, Torey. It just sounded like that, and maybe had given every impression. You were not in hell, Torey."

  The silence was long, and I was staring at the ceiling trying to grip hold of some thought that would keep me from hearing this. I didn't want to hear it, not really. It was interesting; it was attracting me somehow. But it didn't change what really mattered.

  "Chris..." I muttered. "Bo and I would never have hurt Chris like that. The truth ... you need to make people believe the truth."

  "Yes." She stood up, and I could see her face clearly and wished I couldn't. Her eyes looked like shattered glass with foaming rims. She had been crying a lot. But somehow she looked relieved. She had ahold of my hand, and I could feel it shaking.

  "Bo is free. Mrs. Creed has quieted down these past few days. I'm not sure how long it will last, but this autopsy would silence anybody. You don't have to be worried about getting in any trouble over this. Torey, the body you found was not Chris Creed. The body belonged to Bob Haines."

  It took me a minute to remember who Bob Haines was. That domineering father of Digger Haines's. My mother had said he was probably a businessman selling art in Los Angeles. I could feel the mattress, like, sinking into the floor. I could feel this enormous band around my chest loosen. My back loosened, my legs loosened, my cheeks loosened.

  Seeing a body decompose right in front of you is not something you get over in an hour. And hearing that I hadn't seen Chris Creed was like hearing the sky was purple. It never, ever occurred to me that I wasn't looking at Chris Creed in the dim glow of my flashlight—Creed with a thick, black, bloody mask over his face. Half the reason I ended up in mental health was that it took me two or three weeks to believe that. I would think my mom was lying to make me feel better, or she was trying to keep me sane so I would agree to eat food. I wanted to believe it. But I couldn't believe it.