Live it Again (7 page)

Let’s see someone find that one.

He’d probably forget it was there himself
in a few months. He found a permanent black marker in his desk and wrote them
on the window sill.

8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36

The numbers were already memorized, chances
were that he would always remember them, but he wanted to sure. He printed out
a final set on the right edge of the desk where he could see them every time he
sat down.

After another hour of cleaning and
reminiscing, Hugh was ready to call it a night. He went downstairs and gave his
mom a hug and kiss goodnight. She was pleasantly surprised and squeezed him
back. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you today, but I like it.”

He grunted goodnight to Gordo from the
kitchen. The older boy said nothing. He was too involved with his fourth or fifth
hour of television to pay any attention. Heather was on the phone with a friend
so he gave her a friendly wave on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

When he got back to his room, Hugh pulled
the chair up to his window and watched the stars twinkle through the screen. How
many times had he sat there in the evening and stared out to the west? He wanted
another cigarette. He considered sneaking outside after everyone had gone to
bed.

 
You don’t need to do that
.
You’re
not physically addicted to them anymore.

That wasn’t the main reason for staying
inside. It was a long way to the dugout in the dark. Who knew what could be
lurking in the shadows?

Childish fears…like the McFarlane house.

He couldn’t escape those childish fears; he
was
ten years old again. Tomorrow morning he decided, right after
breakfast. No sense pushing his luck so soon.

He pulled off his clothes and crawled under
the blankets. The bed squeaked and sagged in the middle. It was another
hand-me-down from Heather’s, and it had been Donald’s before her.

After half an hour of restlessness he threw
the sheets back and let the breeze from outside wash over him. He pictured his
family so far away in the future, his mom wasting away in a personal care home,
his father long gone. Donald and Gordo had families of their own, and Heather
still alone, waitressing well into her early fifties. He could see Cathy, and
Dana, and Julie. He tried to imagine Colton’s face, but all he saw was his own,
reflected in the bathroom mirror of 1974. He wondered what color his son’s eyes
were, mild panic rose in his chest.

Blue… of course they’re blue
…
like mine, like Cathy’s.

Where are they?

“I want to go back,” he whispered into the
black, hoping for an answer from the brown.

The muffled sound of the television
downstairs answered him. A new episode of The Waltons was on.

Hugh went to Braedon on Saturday with his
mother for her weekly shopping run. She picked up a huge load of groceries for
less than forty dollars at Nelson’s, and the young boy helped her pack it away
into the back of the station wagon. The sour old bastard hadn’t said a word to
her about his attempted tobacco purchase the day before.

“Are we going home now?” He had ninety
cents to spend, forty cents left from yesterday, and fifty cents his mother had
given him that morning.

She fished around in her purse and gave him
three crisp one-dollar bills. “I’ll give you your work allowance a few days
early.” Hugh looked around, gave her a quick hug and headed for the pharmacy. “You
have to work for that,” she called out after him.

He couldn’t buy the comic books he wanted,
his funds were limited, so Hugh settled on the idea of buying two copies of
each title he knew would be worth a lot in the future. One copy he would keep
as a gentle reader, the other would be stored away safely, only to be brought
out again to sell decades later. It wouldn’t make him fabulously wealthy, but
it was a healthy little investment, one that he would enjoy.

He smiled politely at Mrs. McDonald and the
middle-aged woman scowled in return. He went to the back of the store and
carefully picked out his treasures. He settled for two of the fat, 100 page
World’s
Finest
books, two
Spider-Man
, two
X-Men
, two
Tales of the
Unexpected
, and two copies of
Batman
. He had thirty cents left over.
Normally he would’ve spent the extra on bubblegum or a roll of candy, but Hugh
shoved the change back into his pocket. That could be put toward another book
next week. He met his mom back at the car and gently placed the books on his
lap, mindful not to smudge the covers with his fingers.

“Did you spend all of that money on comic
books?”

Hugh got immediately defensive. “It’s
better than junk food, isn’t it?” Was she going to control what he spent his
money on every week? Would he have to hide his purchases from her, too?

She smiled and pulled the car out onto the
road. “It’s your money dear—you can spend it however you want. I was just
hoping you might be sensible and try to save some.”

“Comic books are a great investment, mom. They’re
just as good as buying gold.”

“I’ll take your word for it, since I don’t
have any money to spend on gold.”

And that was that. The rest of Hugh’s first
full day as a ten-year-old went just as a ten-tear-olds day should go. In the
early afternoon he looked over his new comics and listened to Heather play her
favorite songs from the seventies over and over again on the record player in
her room. Those songs were new, he realized. This
was
the seventies.

Later in the afternoon he choked back his
second cigarette of the day down by the dugout. He walked through the fields
with Colonel by his side, and explored through many of the bluffs scattered
about the home quarter. Gordo took some time out of his busy television
schedule to kick a soccer ball around the front yard with him. Hugh found it a
bit boring and oddly embarrassing, but his young body was filled with excess
energy that demanded to be burnt off. It was a wonderful feeling, being able to
throw his body to the ground without any fear of inflicting serious damage. They
took turns standing against the side of the work shed wall; each boy would take
ten shots and then switch positions. They were tied after four rounds so Gordo
decided the winner could only be decided by a wrestling match. Gordo won.

In the evening, Hugh watched the sun set
over the dugout and puffed on another stolen cigarette. He really had to give
it up, he thought, as he flicked the butt into the water. Later that night he
pictured Cathy and the kids in his mind as he tried to settle into bed. He
cried himself to sleep.

Sunday wasn’t much different than Saturday.
There was little to do but wait. Wait until he grew up again to reclaim his
first life. There were no big concerns a ten-year-old had to dwell on. No taxes
to pay, no dead-end job to drag himself to five days a week, no one but him to
take care of.

He watched the stars come out in the west
from his bedroom window for the third night in a row. What could he have done
to avoid this? Was this really a second chance, or was he being punished for
making such a mess of things? Had time carried on since his body was sliced in
half? Had there been a funeral? Did his family miss him as much as he missed
them?

Did he still exist? Maybe all of this was
just his dying brain’s last moments, a final electrical re-run in his mind of
sights and sounds as the synapses shut down. He’d seen that on a documentary
once. It made a lot of sense, and it had scared the hell out of him.

No.

He could smell the tobacco on his fingers;
he could hear the chirr of crickets, the buzz of mosquitoes beyond the screen
window. He could see the faint glitter of fireflies lighting up and winking out
around the fir trees.

This is as real as it gets.

Thirty plus years was a long time to
wait…doubting his very existence would make it unbearable.

8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36

That would make the wait easier.

Something
to look forward to.

***

Watching Fabian take a beating on Monday had
definitely been something worth looking forward to. A tight ring of school
children surrounded the spectacle; Hugh stood closer than any of them, encouraging
his brother with each mean fist that pummeled the fat bully’s head into the
ground. It was hard to feel sorry for the kid. In a few more years the town
would discover that he was sexually molesting his little sister and torturing
neighborhood cats and dogs. He was a whole mess of social fuck-up, headed down
a road of hurt for anyone that got in his way. Let Gordo pound the tar out of
him, maybe it would knock some of that bad shit out early.

“Your brother’s a goddamn liar! I never
said nothin’ about you!” Fabian’s bloodied mouth spat the words out, it sounded
more like:
yer brover’s a goddab lia! I neva sai nuffin bou you!
He shot
a terrified glance at Hugh just as another blow landed on his forehead.

The one-sided fight would’ve lasted the
remainder of the noon hour if Principal Davidson didn’t step in to break it up.
He pulled Gordo off effortlessly by the collar of his shirt with a fist the
size of a soccer ball, just like Bobby McBee, Hugh marveled. The circle of kids
watching fell back in a wave; a super nova of scattering limbs and dissipating
blood-lust energy rippled away. The show was over and it was best to get the
hell out of range before the black hole of Fabian Bren, Gordon Nance and Reggie
Davidson sucked them all in. Hugh followed the three back into school at a safe
distance and he listened outside the principal’s office as the punishment was
handed down. He could hear Fabian crying, his stuttering voice explaining
between wails how he’d been jumped. He exited the office a minute later,
holding a handful of tissue paper to his bleeding nose and mouth. He made a
bee-line for the washroom to clean up and shot Hugh a terrified look on the
way. Fabian no longer posed a threat to him. Maybe a call to his parents would
save his sister a whole lot of pain and suffering, too.

There was a minute of anxious silence as
Hugh waited to hear what would happen to his brother behind the closed door. A
loud smack made him jump; a quick yelp of pain from inside made him wince. He’d
never gotten the strap himself and he never intended to. Fortunately that kind
of discipline would be banned in all public schools in a year or two’s time.
There was another smack, louder this time, but no yelp. Hugh could picture
Gordo’s face tightened up into a red mask of agony and humiliation. There was a
third smack, and a fourth. After number six Hugh heard the sound of a drawer
being closed. That big prick, Davidson was finished. The door opened and Gordo
stepped out. His face was redder than Hugh had imagined. Tears were leaking
down the sides of his face and his mouth was set in a grim line of restraint.
He looked at Hugh and winked.

He had to give his older brother credit.
The little bastard was as tough as nails. He’d beaten Bren and taken the strap
more for himself than Hugh, but Hugh couldn’t help but feel proud.

8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36

Hugh printed the numbers on his home room desk.

On Tuesday, Hugh went down to the river
after school with a group of friends. Heather had stayed in town to try on
shoes for her upcoming graduation. Their mom had arranged to pick them both up
at five. Hugh watched as Caroline Sterling, Billy Parton, Bob Richards, and
Mandy Wood all took turns skipping stones across the slow moving water. It wasn’t
a big river, thirty feet across at its widest point, and some of the better
thrown rocks made it all the way to the other side. Hugh sat down on the bank
and etched the lottery numbers into the damp gravel and sand with a stick.

“Come on Hugh,” Mandy yelled at him. “Let’s
see what you’ve got!” He watched her throw another flat stone effortlessly
across the water. It skipped two, three, four, five times and finally rolled up
to a stop on the other side. There was a collective gasp from the other kids. Mandy
was one of Bob’s first girlfriends, and arguably the cutest. Even at age ten,
she was way out of Hugh’s league. Her auburn hair bounced off her shoulders as
she spun around and flicked another rock into the air. Her dark, brown eyes glittered
in the sunlight.

“Nah, you guys go ahead,” he called back. Bob
would love to see him get shown up by a girl.

Billy came and sat beside him, wiping a
nose full of snot off on his freckled arm. He always had a runny nose and his
eyes always seemed to be watery, as if his entire head were ready to burst with
leaking fluids. “What do those numbers mean?”

Hugh ran the end of the stick through them.
“Just trying to figure out a math problem.”

Billy laughed and his nose bubbled, but he
didn’t bother wiping it away this time. “You skipped half a day of school last
week, now you’re doing homework in the sand. What’s gotten into you, man?”

Not what, Hugh thought... who.

He looked out past his friends to the line
of tents and campers set up in the park further down the river. Braedon Park
would be lucky to have that many visitors for an entire summer in the twenty
first century. Billy was still grinning at him. There were flakes of dead skin
peeling away on the bridge of his recently burnt nose. “What do you want to be
when you grow up?” Hugh asked. He couldn’t help but wonder what the boy might
have been had he the chance.

“Are you for real?”

Hugh nodded.

“I dunno for sure,” Billy said all
seriously. He watched the other kids play for a few moments before continuing. “Dad
will probably expect me to take over the farm, I guess.”

You can’t be indecisive about this, Hugh
wanted to scream out. You’re going to die on the farm. “Don’t do it buddy, you
can be whatever you want if you put your mind to it.”

Billy chuckled. “Is that why you’re doing
school work out here? You wanna better yourself for the future? Shit, were only
ten, there are years and years before we have to start worrying about all that
junk.”

With that, the boy destined to be crushed
by a grain truck stood up and went back to throw a few more stones. If Billy
didn’t give a damn about his own future, Hugh would have to take care of it for
him. He had the urge to run up and hug him, tell him how much he’d missed him
over the years. He wouldn’t let it happen.

The small group slowly made their way back
to town and Hugh found his mother and sister waiting impatiently in front of
Braedon’s sole clothing store. Heather was especially annoyed since she ended
up with mustard colored high heels that were a few shades darker than her grad
dress.

“You should be grateful they even had
anything that fit,” his mother told her on the way home. Heather remained
sullen and quiet. Hugh didn’t blame her. He knew how important graduation was
to kids, especially girls. Cathy had already begun to plan what Dana would wear
to hers, and she’d just turned sixteen.
Was
sixteen, he thought, now
sullen himself.

After supper was done, and after Donald
left immediately before the dishes were cleared from the table, the telephone
rang. Gordo picked it up and beamed with excitement as he recognized his father’s
voice on the other end. Heather grabbed the phone away from him thirty seconds
later, and their mother got in line for her turn.

Hugh stood back, unwilling to take part. His
father was dead, or had been dead to him at least for the last nineteen years. It
wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak to him; it was just that Hugh was still riddled
with guilt from the last time they’d spoken.

Barely spoken, he recalled.

It had been a cold, winter night the week
before Christmas in 1992 when his mother had called to say his father needed
help moving his oxygen tank. Steve Nance had worked his entire life in various
dusts and toxic chemicals. Grain dust, saw dust, asbestos, lead, and a dozen
other deadly agents associated with farming and carpentry had taken its toll on
his lungs. He’d also smoked two packs of cigarettes a day since the forties, so
it came as no surprise when he developed a serious case of emphysema. He’d done
well to even make it to his mid-seventies. Hugh had driven out in the freezing
dark, complaining all the way. He lived in a small, two-bedroom house in
Braedon with Cathy, and sometimes wondered why he had moved out of the
farmhouse in the first place. It seemed he spent more time running errands for
the old man than he did living his own life. His dad was always grateful for
the help, and Hugh loved him, but that night he felt more frustrated than usual.
It had been too goddamned cold to be out.