How Best to Avoid Dying (6 page)

“I guess not,” I say. Her hand kind of touches mine, just the fingers. A wind comes by and a few leaves float down.

“So, you want to pray?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. We bow our heads and our faces kind of get close, real close, touching and…I don't know. We just start making out. Like totally making out, tongues going all over the place and hands under clothes and yeah, Jesus sees, but I'm like, yeah, look at this Jesus, this is a tit, Jesus, and my hand is on it. And she's touching my hair and my arms and my legs and between my legs and it's like praying but faster and more heat and she's touching my zipper and I'm touching her zipper and there might be a billion shooting stars but I don't care. Then Rich shows up with his flashlight and catches us. Pricilla starts buttoning up real fast and I'm trying to hide the bulge in my jeans.

“Sweet Jesus,” Rich says.

I'm staring at the wall in Rich's office. He has a picture of every summer staff since 1970 and above them a wooden plaque that says, “The harvest is rich but the workers are few.”

Rich isn't saying anything yet. He's just rubbing his eyes. He already talked to Pricilla. I waited outside. I heard her crying. Rich looks real tired.

“You know the rules, I know you do.”

I nod. My throat feels full, like it's packed with wet sand.

“You left your kids unattended. They were worried, you know. They came and found me. I was worried. Then I find you and Pricilla. On a day like this, too.”

I try and say something but I can't talk.

“I'm sending you home, okay. I'm sending you home tomorrow and I don't think you should come back next summer.”

I think I'm going to bawl, I mean just wail. But I don't. I get cold.

I walk back to the cabin. A couple of kids are sitting on the porch. They don't look me in the face when I tell them to hit the sack. They just mumble and stay where they are. I walk inside and lie down on my bunk.

I can still hear them talking on the porch, but I can't tell what they're saying. I lay awake for an hour or two till everyone is sleeping and breathing heavy. The cabin smells like cedar and sweaty laundry. I've always loved the smell. It smells safe. But now the smell makes me feel ashamed. Everything does. Shame like a real hard blush, like a blush that's going to stain my skin. Then I think about Pricilla and her hands and I immediately pop a woody, then a lot more shame. So to
stop the woody I think about my mother. Then I think about Kent's mother. She sent that care package with the Rice Krispies treats. When I close my eyes I see Kent. He's at the bottom of the cliff all bent up and in his Speedos and there's no blood, but his skin looks funny and you can tell he's dead. Bastard. So I imagine myself down there instead. I imagine the falling and the landing and the cracking. Then the woody starts to come back, which is weird, so I get up and go out on the porch.

I look out on the dining hall, the volleyball/basketball court, the crafts store, saying little goodbyes to everything. I see a few kids sitting in the cigarette pit. It's way past curfew, almost morning, so I head over there to tell them to go back to their cabins, and they all look a little green, a little fuzzy, even their cigarette smoke is green and fuzzy. I recognize Will first. Then David and Crick, and Becky and last of all, Kent, still in his Speedos, still smelling like chlorine and baby oil. All just standing around, smoking. Sitting behind them, lighting one cigarette from the end of another is Jesus. He looks totally different than in the movies, shorter, kind of dirty, but you can tell it's him. You just know.

“Hey, guys,” I say, and I'm breathing fast. They don't look at me. Just sit and smoke.

Kent says, without looking up, “Turns out we're wrong about the whole Jesus thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus doesn't save,” Becky says, still sounding like she's got a doughnut in her throat.

“He doesn't?” I look over at Jesus, who just shrugs.

“Maybe Buddha does,” Crick says. “Or Shiva.”

“My money's on Zoroaster,” Becky says.

“I've never even heard of Zoroaster.”

“Narrow is the way,” Jesus says with a shake of his head and a chuckle. “Want a smoke?”

Oh God, Jesus is talking to me. Looking at me. Jesus is asking if I want a cigarette. This is everything. Jesus is hanging out with all these guys, awarding their devotion, like he hung out with Peter and John and James, making them fish for breakfast.

“Can I stay here?” I ask. “Can I stay with you guys?”

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Kent says.

“You…” I point at Kent. Sitting there all smug and bruised, just a few feet from Jesus. “You stole my place, Kent. That's my place.”

“You want it? Come and take it.”

I run at him. He doesn't move, just takes another drag on his cigarette. I slam into him, only it's more slamming through him and for a second my stomach drops and knots, like I'm standing on the edge of a canyon. Below me are miles of nothing. Then I'm past him and I smack into a pole.

When I open my eyes I see Jesus. He's looking down at me, and he looks sad. Disappointed, I guess. Me trying to fight Kent's ghost, me and Pricilla. All these thoughts I'm not supposed to have. He died for me and this is how I thank him?

“Jesus,” I say, “I'm sorry.”

He looks so sad.

“Jesus, please forgive me.”

He smiles. His teeth are black. “No,” he says.

“I have to ride that fucking waterslide a hundred times a day,” Kent mumbles. “Ungrateful bastard. A hundred times a day.”

As he's speaking the clouds begin to go pink and their green bodies start fading.

“Jesus?” I say, getting to my feet. But Jesus is making eyes at Becky. “Jesus!” They fade away as he scoots over to light her cigarette. The green flame is the last I see of them.

I'm still standing there when Rich comes out of his office, same clothes as the night before and his eyes red like he hasn't slept a wink.

“Grab your stuff. We're leaving in five minutes.”

Pricilla and I sit in the back of the camp van as Rich maneuvers the windy road with the mountain slanting up on one side and cutting down on the other. As we pass the sign that says G
O WITH
G
OD
, Pricilla starts to weep a little. I take her hand.

“I had a dream about Kent,” she whispers. “He was smiling and flying. He had this white robe and was so happy.” She smiles. “And we were singing, him and me. We were singing ‘Jesus Loves Me.'”

I think of telling her about green Jesus and the smoking and the canyon feeling inside Kent. But why? It won't make her happier. Doesn't make me happier. And maybe it never happened. Maybe I dreamt it all. And Jesus is just as he has always been. Loving me. Watching over me. Maybe this is real faith, believing when you know it's not true.

Rich's head bobs to the side just a little as she and I start softly singing.

“Jesus loves us, this we know…”

I see Rich's head bow and I think he's praying. Then the van drifts and hits some small pines on the side of the road. Rich jerks up and pulls on the wheel and we're skidding. Pricilla squeezes my hand. A wheel catches the edge and the van
tilts so hard I hit the ceiling. Through the windshield I can the see the valley and the trees and some sky, and we're falling and turning and we're floating inside the van, like the inside of Kent. Just before we hit, I swear I hear Pricilla whimper, “Save us Zoroaster.”

TONIGHT AT NOON

Mingus is no good for hangovers. You want something softer. Bill Evans or Chet Baker. But I like Mingus, even if he hurts my head, so I flip on the stereo and let him play.

It's noon. Already hot, sunlight sneering through the blinds. Jenny's not in bed. She's always up before me. On the speaker by the door, there's a roach bouncing to the music. I've got to get more roach bait, though Jenny hates the stuff. She hates roaches too but thinks the bait boxes are cruel tricks, unfair fighting.

There's a smell in the hallway. A bad smell. Like the toilet's backed up.

I find her in the kitchen. She's naked and on the floor. Eyes open. I fall down beside her and say her name. I shake her. I check her pulse, but I know. Her skin feels like damp rubber. Not quite cold, but not alive. My knees are wet. I gag. I don't yell. She has a piece of paper taped to her belly.

Don't tell anyone what I did. Tell them I went to Mexico. Love Jenny

I look around the kitchen for the cordless phone. I don't see it. I run into the living room.

I find the phone on the receiver. There's a note taped to it as well.

Please

I put the phone down and walk back to Jenny.

Don't tell anyone what I did. Tell them I went to Mexico. Love Jenny

Jenny left the comma out after
Love
, so it's not so much a signing off as a command.
Love Jenny
. I laugh. Then I feel sick.

She's small. Long fair hair that she'd forget to wash. The note is taped to the pooch under her belly.

No blood. Maybe there's a mouthful of bleach missing from under the sink. Maybe there's an empty bottle of sleeping pills in the trash. Maybe something else happened. Was she alive when I went to sleep?

I sit on the floor and look at her. My hand hurts because I'm biting it.

I get up, close the blinds, pull the curtains, and make sure the doors are locked. Then I sit and watch her some more. Mingus is still playing.

She looks wrong on the kitchen floor.

I towel her dry and sit her on the couch. She's stiff and smells. Not like rot. It's a different smell. It's the smell under the bleachy smell in hospitals. She looks better on the couch. More comfortable. I try to cross her legs. Her legs used to be so ticklish. Just a touch and she'd start kicking and squealing.

“I'm going to peeeeeee,” she'd say.

She's wearing that leather wristband I got her on South Congress. Just a leather strap, like a belt for her wrist. Seventy dollars. Seventy dollars, but she just had to have it. That was Jenny. Just HAD to have it. Just HAD to do it. As if nothing was a choice, all things were inescapable. Just HAD to die.

I should cry and yell. I don't feel like crying. Her corpse is on the couch looking at me. Mingus is still playing. It's
Mingus Ah Um
. Maybe his best. Most people say
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
is his best, and it's good. But
Ah Um
is going for more. It hurts more. Lives more. Jenny is dead.

I need coffee. That will help me think. A slow cup. I make enough for two out of habit. Jenny likes hers Miles Davis black. I add milk to mine until it passes Coltrane. Then some honey to get the color of Mingus. Almost yellow. Name a race and Mingus had the blood. Black, white, Indian, Chinese. A Klan man's treasure chest. Kill half a dozen races with one rope.

I place the cups down on the coffee table and sit across from her.

Jenny had been with me for three months. Ninety-two days. She moved in a week after I met her. She came over one
night and never left. I liked watching nature documentaries with her, liked the way she made the sheets smell, liked drinking Lone Star on the porch with her, liked how she rubbed my neck with her chin, liked how she bit my nipples at odd times like breakfast. I loved taking care of her.

“What would you do if I died?” she once asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Cry, I guess.”

“But what would you do with the body?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on. Let's say you found me and I was still warm.”

“That's sick.”

“Not for two consenting adults. Don't be such a prude.”

“I'd call 911,” I said.

“So they could rush me to the morgue before I got deader?”

“Why do you keep asking?”

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“I just met you.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I'm going to ask for a favor.”

She was alive when I went to sleep. I'm almost sure. I sip my coffee.

When I was nine a friend told me that a scorpion would rather kill itself than touch fire. I didn't believe him. “Animals don't do suicide,” I told him. We got a can of lighter fluid from his garage, trapped a scorpion under a paper cup and made a foot-wide circle of lighter fluid around it. We lit the circle and lifted the cup. The scorpion snapped its claws at the fire, scurried
to one side, scurried to the other, returned to the center and in quick jabs, bent its tale and stung its back over and over. Its body twitched a little, then went stiff as the flames died out.

“See,” my friend smirked. “I told you.”

Jenny loved this story.

“That sting always hovering,” she'd say, “like holding a gun to your temple twenty-four hours a day.”