Totentanz Page 11

  With a groan he pushed himself over to the small mirror on the wall of his trailer. He did this each time he got up, and the shock was always the same. In the glass he saw his face but not his face. The features were all there, the weak jaw, the strong, straight nose, the high cheekbones that almost made his face gaunt, the curly mass of boyish red-brown hair thicker on top than on the sides. But the eyes he could not see. However hard he stared at himself, he could not look into his own eyes. They were there, and they were the right shade of light blue, but he just couldn't look into himself. He'd always faced himself this way in the morning, taking stock and getting the day's duties straight in his mind; it had always been his way of waking up. And now he was awake, or something like it, and it was impossible to do this thing. He had once asked Ash about it, and Ash had only laughed, and he hadn't asked again.

  The bones in his neck creaking painfully, he surveyed the rest of the room. It was little better than the army tent he had lived in for three years during the war. But that was fine with him. A small wooden table next to his bunk, a couple of books—mostly picked up secondhand or at library sales—on a makeshift shelf over the tidy dresser. On top of the dresser, just one thing. In the old days, a couple of pictures would have been there: a sepia print of his mother and a black-and-white photograph that Matthew Brady himself had taken of him and his buddies in the 14th Infantry, looking in the crackly print like old men around a dead campfire. A hairbrush, bone-handled, that his father had given him on his twelfth birthday. The Bible that Lucius had given him on that same day, when the two of them, his father and Lucius, decided for some reason that he was a man.

  The only thing there now was a Bible; not the same one, but another that originally had belonged to a fourth grader at St. Catherine's school in a suburb of Chicago. He'd picked it up for fifty cents. When he had put his hand on it at the rummage sale, he had expected something momentous to happen, like lightning whipping out of the sky, or at least that the old leather cover would burn his hand, making him let go (after all, I'm dead!). But nothing of the kind had happened. That was another reason he liked to think of himself as Frankenstein, because the monster would have been a reader had he had the chance. There was a scene in the movie where Frankenstein came across a blind man who recited scripture to him over tea. It was probably the most touching part of the movie. The monster, even with his cursed deviate's brain, was obviously moved. No taint of evil lurked in him, only around him, in that situation.

  Each day he read from the Bible, just as he had in the army. He'd started at the beginning, with Genesis, but had soon given that up. There was much more that interested him in the New Testament than in the Old. He found himself going over Revelation again and again, looking for some hint of comfort, and had discovered that whatever comfort he did gain from the book centered on Matthew's gospel. Matthew could write; he was not a blind lunatic like the other three gospel writers. He had a keen eye for detail and seemed to cut to the bone of the matter without embellishing it. And in that there was a stark poetry that made his account all the more believable. Jeff wanted very much now, much more than, well, before, to believe in all of it, the Resurrection and especially what came after it. The Second Coming was something he wanted desperately to believe in because, he thought, might it not hold out hope for himself? He was a changed man, much more cynical than he had been before, but also different in other ways. He thought things through now, and he wanted to understand his situation. He thought he had come to understand revenge, and he wanted no part of it.

  But he also felt more powerless than he ever had before.

  After all, sixty years ago I was dead.

  He gave a harsh, grunting laugh at the thought, flipping the Bible open with one hand to choose a random passage.

  The door behind him opened, then closed, slamming shut like a screen door. Jeff felt the peculiar mix of revulsion, fear and renewal that he always did when Ash was nearby.

  "Let me pick a verse for you," Ash said. "How about this? `Fear not, for I am with thee.' Genesis. Like it?"

  "Go away, Ash."

  "But why? I've come to summon you, dear boy. For as the Bard says, to quote from another and much finer work than the one you hold there. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our venture.' "

  Jeff could barely move. A cold spot started way down in his stomach and blossomed to till his body. He felt drained, frozen.

  "Amusement time," Ash said. "Actually, you won't be needed much for a while, except to calm Lucius. I really do regret having him around. He makes everyone nervous. Continually wringing his hands and moaning, uttering cries to heaven, all that. Do something about him before I do."

  Jeff Scott turned, trying to control the roiling within him.

  "I want no part of this."

  Ash smiled, making his face look like a sack of flour with a deep red gash in it. He produced one of his cigarettes and took his time in lighting it, carelessly dropping the still-lit match on the rough wooden floor of the trailer. "This is all for you. Jeff."

  "Tell me exactly who you are, Ash."

  Jeff felt as he never had before, both feverish and elated. The chill in him dispersed; he felt lighter, less sluggish, than he had in months.

  "You were saying?" Ash replied, ignoring the change that had come over Jeff Scott.

  "Tell me all about yourself," Jeff said, laughing. He felt almost powerful. His nostrils flared, as if he were a famished animal smelling meat. "What are you afraid of, Ash? Deep down, I know, I can sense, that there's something, or someone, you're terrified of. Is it me?"

  Ash threw down his cigarette. For a moment Jeff thought he would storm out, short coat snapping theatrically behind him. But he only stared at Jeff. In an instant Jeff felt his elation evaporate. "I'm extremely frightened of you, boy," Ash said. Jeff felt as if someone were scooping out his insides with a trowel. He gagged, collapsing to his knees and holding his stomach—he was afraid that if he let go, everything in it would spill out.

  “Do you really think this is all only for you?" Ash spat. "Did you really believe me when I said that? Did you believe me whenever I spoke?" A look Jeff had never seen before possessed Ash's non-face.

  Now Jeff felt as though he had been doused with gasoline and lit. He looked up and saw nothing but blackness. Ash had disappeared; so had his room, the trailer, everything. There was only the horrible burning of his skin, both outside and inside. He could not even work his mouth to scream. He felt for the floor, thinking that perhaps he would find coolness there, but there was no floor. He was in empty space. Then the fire abated and a curtain was drawn aside, and he had a vision, a remembrance of the kind he had when he "dreamed."

  He was back on his daddy's farm. It was a glaring, bright day; the sky was so full of daylight it hurt his eyes. He looked down and saw that the brightness was reflected off the ground, which was covered deep in virgin snow. The sky was the kind of deep sapphire it was after a good strong snow storm. There was a sheen of thin, icy crust on the snow, as though it had partially melted at the height of day and now was freezing again. It was late afternoon, by the sun.

  The oak in the front yard, ponderously tall even when denuded of leaves, held a thin white frosting along the top of its gray branches. For a moment it was like a perfect color snapshot, the kind they printed in the issues of Life magazine that he had picked up a couple of times—and then, as if someone had thrown a switch, things began to move. The top limbs of the tree soughed gently in the near-still breeze; some of the powder drifted off and fell lazily, like the snow in one of those snow globes imported from Europe that you shook upside down. Off behind the barn, a cow mooed sleepily. The door to the house slammed open and then shut. It seemed to spit a hooting figure out onto the porch, bearing something nearly too heavy for it to carry.

  "Jeff! Jeff!" the figure whooped, and as it came closer, Jeff saw that its burden was a long wooden toboggan. The figure was his brother Tom. He was dressed in heavy boots and a bright-colo
red knitted muffler and a buff-colored coat that was too big for him. There was a smile a mile wide on his face. He suddenly threw the sled down and grabbed Jeff.

  There were tears in Jeff's eyes. He looked at him- self and discovered he was dressed in heavy mittens and hand-me-down boots, and, his brother, who had not been alive to him since 1861—his brother, who was a hundred and twenty years dead, speared through the heart by a Confederate bayonet—was standing before him, shouting into his face and grinning as if it were yesterday. He knew this day; he knew something momentous had happened on this day, but he did not remember what. And as he remembered these things, he found that he was more six years old than long-dead, and that he was grinning back at twelve-year-old Tom and nodding at everything he said, worshiping him as always.

  "I can't believe Pa let us outa the rest of our chores," Tom said. "What are you standing there for? If we don't go now, he'll change his mind!"

  Tom picked up the toboggan, grunting, and heaved it onto his back; and then Jeff was trotting along, half beside and half behind him, holding an edge and at least pretending that he was helping. They passed the white-coated carousel, dead for the winter, its horses wearing snow caps, and in a few minutes they had left the farm behind and were making the long, slow climb up the shallow hill, way off at the far edge of their land, that led to the real hill where sledding was done. Before long they were both puffing heavily, and they stopped, dropping the toboggan on the ground, where it made fine cracks in the crusty top layer of snow. They looked back at their father's house and, before them, the town of Montvale. Then they looked at their own breath-and the smoke that it made in the air.

  "Pa said I could order those stamps from New York next month," Tom said. Jeff smiled, not really knowing what stamps were except that they were little square things that Tom pasted, using little tongs, in a book. He wanted some himself and knew that he would have them when he started getting an allowance too. Right now he got a penny every now and then from Tom, sometimes two pennies from Pa when they went into town to the general store with its candy jars. He never had such fine days as those. Except maybe for this one.

  Tom said, "Can't wait for those stamps," and there was a dreamy look to him, and then they hauled the sled up again and continued on their way.

  It wasn't long before they reached the sledding hill, high and curved like a C around the churchyard. There was a rickety fence separating the sledding track from the cemetery. The same fence failed to separate the boys from the cemetery in October around Halloween or sometimes when the older boys drank in the summer and made dares on one another. Now the old chipped fence posts stood up like long teeth, crooked and sharp at the end, and you had to be careful you didn't bash into them because one of the teeth might come down on you, or even give way and send you right into a headstone.

  There was a group already making use of the track, taking turns one after another like a neat, segmented snake, and Jeff saw a couple of tar torches already lit at the top and bottom of the hill so that the sledding could go on after dark. Laughter, swirling and then borne away by the strengthening wind, reached them, and suddenly they were at the top.

  " 'Lo, Tom, Jeff," said Petey Graham, who was making a bench of his sled off to the side of the starting patch. It looked like he was carving something; as far as Jeff could remember, he had never seen Petey Graham go down the sled track once the whole winter.

  "Hi, Pete," Tom answered for both of them. Jeff knew that Petey was someone they were not supposed to spend much time with; he was said to be slow-witted. They passed him, lugging the sled another twenty feet to where a small group of five or six sat huddled around a pile of sticks. In the darkening afternoon Jeff recognized one or two of the faces turned his way: the parson's boy; John Major and his brother Henry; the mayor's daughter Melissa. As they drew closer, the others turned as well. William Gantry, Tom's best friend, was there, as were the Becker sisters and the blacksmith's apprentice, Pod Williamson.

  There were greetings all around, and Jeff found himself seated on the end of the toboggan while they waited for the fire to be brought to life. He could not understand why they were bothering with this now, since there was still a good hour of daylight left. He thought of asking Tom about this, but he saw that Tom was busy with Melissa Poundridge, seating her on the toboggan, showing her how to make some sort of knot. Jeff was nearly crowded off the end of the sled, and almost said something, but he thought better of it; when Tom was in this mood, there was little he wanted to hear about anything. Now Jeff was getting cold. But then Bill Gantry had set a spark going with his flint and the small fire was sputtering to flame.

  Jeff wanted to get to the sledding part, but he knew he had to wait for Tom. He had to wait for Tom for everything, but that never bothered him because Tom was his brother and always looked out for him. Tom had fought for him many times when the odds were unfair; one time he had thrashed Henry Major when that boy, three years older than Jeff, had taken one of his licorice whips right on the street in front of the general store just after Jeff had bought it. Henry had begun to strut away when suddenly Torn came out of nowhere, threw him to the ground and pounded the tar out of him—and retrieved the candy, whole and clean. Tom had taken a licking himself for that one when the rest of the Major clan—John and his older brother Jim—had ganged up on him in the schoolyard, but he had never said a word about it. A word never had to be said.

  Finally they were going to sled. This happened only after Melissa Poundridge and the other girls decided there was something they had to do off by themselves for a while. The sky was turning blue-black by then, and when Tom said for him to get on the toboggan behind him and hold tight, he did so with a yell and they were off almost before he was seated. The icy snow glared bluish as it rushed past, and they came close to the fence once. But almost before he knew what had happened, they were at the bottom of the hill, flying past the lit torches and coming to an abrupt stop at the raised mound of snow another twenty feet on.

  "Wheeee!" Jeff said, and he thought he had never been happier in his life when Tom turned around and said "Wheeee!" too. They turned the sled sideways and then Tom got it up on his back, this time gently pushing Jeff away when he tried to hold on. "Let me do it, pal," he said, and when they got to the top, Jeff saw that Melissa was waiting for them.

  There followed another boring time on the sled in front of the modest fire, and Jeff grew impatient.

  "Can't we go again, Tom?" he asked, and when he got no definitive answer, he asked, "Can I go by myself, then?"

  Tom turned around and stared at him.

  "No," he said. There was a look on his face that Jeff didn't like, and Jeff liked it even less when Tom turned his back on him to face Melissa again. He sat still for a few minutes, trying hard to interest himself in John Major's story about how he had pulled Bessy McAllister's pigtail in class that morning, then turned back to his primer before Mr. Glass could react, thereby getting away with it; and then Jeff asked Tom again:

  "Why can't I go by myself?"

  Tom tried to ignore him, but Melissa said in a petulant voice, "Why don't you let him, Tom? Get him out of here."

  Suddenly Tom turned toward him. "All right, little kid," he said. Jeff never liked it when he was called "little kid."

  "Go on down, but hold on tight."

  Instantly Jeff was up, laying his hands on the toboggan. And instantly he regretted what he had asked for. Torn, he saw, had turned back to the girl, but Bill Gantry was eyeing him in a way that he disliked. He saw Bill nudge Tom, asking him something, but Torn shrugged him off. Because Jeff couldn't lift the sled the way Tom had, he had to pull it by the rope attached to the front. The sled was long, and even then he had trouble in hauling it in his wake. He turned around to see Bill Gantry get up, but at that moment Melissa said, "Aw, let him go on himself," and Bill sat down again. John and Henry Major turned their turtle eyes on him, grinning stupidly in the firelight, and then turned back to their friends. Jeff was suddenly alon
e.

  Resolutely he pulled the toboggan forward. Before he knew it, he was at the top of the course. The sky was black now; he could see the first faint points of the evening stars. There would be a moon later, but now the only light he had to guide him came from the two flickering torches to either side of the starting point and, far below, the two tiny spots of orange that marked the other torches. In the dimness he could make out the blue-white track of snow he was to follow. It seemed much steeper and more treacherous than it had before. He shivered. He turned to look back at the warm fire, to listen to the laughing voices behind him, and knew that it was too late to retreat.

  As if to fire his resolve, he heard Henry Major call out, "What's the matter—you scared?" and the rippling, if not unanimous, chorus of laughter that followed tightened him. For all he knew, his brother, along with this girl he seemed so mysteriously interested in, was laughing at him too. And that would be too much to bear.

  He straightened the sled in the track and sat down on it. He realized how empty it was without a second rider. He had never even ridden in the front before. Without the extra weight of his brother, he feared he might take off like some huge bird, to crash somewhere in the unknown distance below. His boots fit snugly under the front curve of the toboggan. As he sat waiting for a push that would never come, tears filled his eyes and he began to shiver.

  He wanted to cry out for Tom to come and help him like he always had, but he knew it would not happen this time. An invisible space had opened up between them, between him and his childhood. He felt trapped. He heard another snort of rude laughter, muffled, behind him. He imagined the Major boys snickering at him again. Why didn't Tom stand up to them this time? He felt that space widen even more. He had feared the time might come when Tom was not there to fight his big battles for him, and this was it. Though he understood, he could not help hating Tom for it. Why did this have to happen? Why did Tom have to abandon him now?