He came toBear Street , then to the Ho Chi Minh Trail He walked slowly down it, his head still lowered, so that he looked like a scholar with his mind on some immense problem. The Ho Chi Minh hadn’t been his and Brian s exclusive property, lots of kids ordinarily used it on their way to and from school, but no one had been on it that warm fall afternoon; it seemed to have been cleared especially for him. Halfway to the clearing he spotted a 3 Musketeers candy bar wrapper and picked it up. It was the only kind of candy bar Brian would eat—he called them 3 Muskies—and David had no doubt that Brian had dropped this one beside the path a day or two before the accident. Not that Brian was ordinarily a litterbug sort of guy; he’d stuff the wrapper in his pocket, under ordinary circumstances. But— But
maybe something made him drop it. Something that knew I’d come along after that car hit him and threw him and broke his head on the bricks, something that knew I’d find it and remember him.
He told himself that was crazy, absolutely nutzoid, but maybe the nuttiest thing of all was that he didn’t really think it was. Perhaps it would sound nutty if spoken aloud, but inside his head, it seemed perfectly logical.
With no thought of what he was doing, David stuck the red-and-silver wrapper into his mouth and sucked the little bits of sweet chocolate off the inside. He did this with his eyes closed and fresh tears squeezing out from under the lids. When the chocolate was all gone and there was nothing left but the taste of wet paper, he spat the wrapper out and went on his way.
At the east edge of the clearing was an oak with two thick branches spreading out in a V about twenty feet up. The boys hadn’t quite dared to go whole hog and build a treehouse in this beckoning fork—someone might notice and make them tear it down again—but they had brought boards, hammers, and nails down here one summer day a year ago and made a platform that still remained. David and Brian knew that the high school kids sometimes used it (they had found cigarette butts and beer-cans on the weather-darkened old boards from time to time, and once a pair of pantyhose), but never until after dark, it seemed, and the idea of big kids using something they had made was actually sort of flattering.
Also, the first handholds you had to grab in order to make the climb were high enough to discourage the little kids.
David went up, cheeks wet, eyes swollen, still tasting chocolate and wet paper in his mouth, still hearing the gasp of the accordion-thing in his ears. He felt he would find some other sign of Brian on the platform, like the 3 Musketeers wrapper on the path, but there was nothing. Just the sign nailed to the tree, the one that said V1ET CONG LOOKOUT, which they had put up a couple of weeks after completing the platform. The inspiration for that (and for the name they’d given the path) was some old movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, David didn’t remember the name. He kept expecting to come up here someday and find that the big kids had pulled the sign down or spray-painted something like SUCK MY
DICK on it, but none ever had. He guessed they must like it, too.
A breeze soughed through the trees, cooling his hot skin. Any other day and Brian would have been sharing that breeze with him. They would have been dangling their feet, talking, laughing. David started to cry again.
Why am I here?
No answer.,
Why did I come? Did something make me come?
No answer.
If anyone‘s there, please answer!
No answer for a long time . .. and then one did come, and he didn’t think he was just talking to himself inside his own head, then fooling himself about what he was doing in order to gain a little comfort. As when he had stood over Brian, the thought which came seemed in no way his own.
Yes, this voice had said. I’m here.
Who are you?
Who I am, the voice said, and then fell silent, as if that actually explained something.
David crossed his legs, sitting tailor-fashion in the middle of the platform, and closed his eyes. He cupped his knees in his palms and opened his mind as best he could. He had no idea what else to do. In this fashion he waited for an unknown length of time, hearing the distant voices of the home-going children, aware of shifting red and black shapes on the insides of his eyelids as the breeze moved the branches above him and dapples of sun-light slipped back and forth on his face.
Tell me what you want, he asked the voice.
No answer. The voice didn’t seem to want anything.
Tell me what to do, then.
No answer from the voice.
Distant, distant, he heard the sound of the firehouse whistle over on Columbus Broad. It wasfive o’clock
. He had been sitting up on the platform with his eyes closed for at least an hour, probably more like two.
His mom and dad would have noticed he was no longer in the driveway, would have seen the ball lying in the grass, would be worried. He loved them and didn’t want to worry them—on some level he understood that Brian’s impending death had struck at them as hard as it had struck at him—but he couldn’t go home yet. Because he wasn’t done yet.
Do you want me to pray? he asked the voice. I’ll try if you want me to, but I don ‘t know how we don
‘t go to church, and—
The voice overrode his, not angry, not amused, not impatient, not anything he could read.
You’re praying already, it said.
What should I pray for?
Oh shit, the mummy’s after us, the voice said. Let’s all walk a little fluster.
I don‘t know what that means.
Yes you do.
No I don’t!
“Yes I do,” he said, almost moaned. “Yes I do, it means ask for what none of them dare to ask for, pray for what none of them dare to pray for. Is that it?”
No answer from the voice.
David opened his eyes and the afternoon bombed him with late light, the red-gold glow of November.
His legs were numb from the knees down, and he felt as if he had just awakened from a deep sleep. The day’s simple unzipped loveliness stunned him, and for a moment he was very aware of himself as a part of something whole— a cell on the living skin of the world. He lifted his hands from his knees, turned them over, and held them out.
“Make him better,” he said. “God, make him better. If you do, I’ll do something for you.
I’ll listen for what you want, and then I’ll do it. I promise.
He didn’t close his eyes but listened carefully, waiting to see if the voice had anything more to say. At first it seemed it did not. He lowered his hands, started to stand up, then winced at the burst of pins and needles that went whooshing up his legs from the balls of his feet. He even laughed a little. He grabbed a branch to steady himself, and as he was doing this, the voice did speak again.
David listened, head cocked, still holding the branch, still feeling his muscles tingle crazily as the blood worked its way back into them. Then he nodded. They had put three nails into the trunk of the tree to hold the VIET CONG LOOKOUT sign. The wood had shrunk and warped since then, and the rusty heads of the nails stuck out. David took the blue pass with EXCUSED EARLY printed on it from his shirt pocket and poked it onto one of the nailheads. That done, he marched in place until the tingling in his legs began to subside and he trusted himself to climb back down the tree.
He went home. He hadn’t even gotten to the driveway
before his parents were out the kitchen door. Ellen Carver stood on the stoop, hand raised to her forehead to shade her eyes, while Ralph almost ran down to the sidewalk to meet him and grab him by the shoulders.
“Where were you? Where in hell were you, David?”
“I went for a walk. Into theBear Street Woods. I was thinking about Brian.”
“Well, you scared the devil out of us,” his mom said. Kirsten joined her on the stoop. She was eating a bowl of Jell-O and had her favorite doll, Melissa Sweetheart tucked under her arm. “Even Kirstie was worried, weren’t you?”
“Nope,” Pie said, and went on eating her JELL-O.