Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“All I have is my mom,” Will said with a sudden vision of her throwing back the covers of his cot to find the unwashed clothes he’d bundled there and dying of fright. “I used to have an uncle,” he added proudly. “But he’s dead.”

Jonah nodded again and tucked his chin to his chest. “Look, another reason I came to get you is because I need to say sorry. Remember how that wolf went after this backpack?” Jonah said, pulling at the straps with his thumbs. “Well, it was Marcus who gave it to me to watch over.”

“Angela said you guys used to be friends?”

“Yeah, he taught me to skateboard when he first came to Thunder Bay. He was the best skateboarder I’ve ever seen outside of Thrasher . Smooth as water flowing. But he quit because he broke his board and couldn’t afford another one. Then he got into what he called exploring . Which meant going into all the places he wasn’t supposed to. Abandoned buildings. Culverts. Old mines. He’d find all sorts of things.

“Then a while back he showed up at my house really late. He was shaking, and his face was white. First time that kid actually looked scared. Said he wanted me to hold on to his backpack. He had something important in there. A piece of paper. Figured it would be safe with me because of my brothers. I didn’t want to do it, but his being scared scared me. So I said okay.”

“Who was he hiding the paper from?” Will said, remembering again how Marcus hid that day in his yard, and maybe not just because he was stealing garden hoses.

Jonah stopped, squared off, and leaned into Will, his close breath dragging a carbonated tingle up Will’s spine. “I think it was Butler,” hushed Jonah, “ the Butler. My brothers used to run booze from his stills up to the dry reserves up north. They quit because an old lady, an elder, got struck blind drinking it, and no money was worth poisoning our people like that. But even my brothers are scared of the Butler. After the elevators shut down, he hired every desperate dockworker and hard-ass former railway man down there. Plus he breeds wolves. Keeps them with him always. Kids around here say you should never forget anything in the woods. Once the Butler’s wolves get your scent, they’ll follow you all the way into your bedroom.” For a moment Will’s mind flashed to the Helmet he’d left behind beside the creek. “The thing is,” Jonah said, “I think he sent that wolf to get Marcus, and it picked up his scent on this backpack. Would’ve got me if you hadn’t body-checked it like a true Canadian hero.”

“Jonah,” Will said. “I saw someone when that wolf was on top of me. A bald guy. In the woods. Short and stocky.”

“Hmm,” Jonah said. “Not the Butler. He’s got a full head of hair, all electrocuted and snow white. Probably one of his men.”

Will inflated with pride at his genius contribution and fought to contain his beaming as they scuffed their feet into the hushed night. After the wolf attack, his mother had ordered him new boots with grips like dirt-bike treads, even more acutely embarrassing now with the snow essentially gone. Will was suddenly aware he had to pee. To his horror there were no bathrooms Outside at night. Anywhere. He hoped dearly there would be one wherever Marcus was.

Jonah clattered his skateboard to the ground and hopped upon it, all regal grace and fluidity, zipping ahead under the propulsion of his left leg. He rolled through a temple of yellow streetlight, his hands open and searching, as though feeling the pavement’s texture as it passed. Then he crouched, frozen like a cat stalking a robin, before cracking the rear of the board down, rocketing himself upward with the apparatus clinging impossibly to his feet like a burr. After this, the silence of flight but for the sibilance of wheels spinning, then a growling return to the asphalt and his lackadaisical ride-away.

This tidy morsel of magic that Jonah had performed seemed almost another trap to test Will’s gullibility, another shaken pop can or match bomb, but Will couldn’t resist.

“What was that?” he said reverently, when Jonah button-hooked back.

“What?” said Jonah.

“What you just did.”

“That? It’s called an ollie.”

“But how do you make it jump like that?”

“I don’t really know,” he said, smoothing back his bangs. Will wondered if his brothers cut his hair like that, or if he did it himself. “It just works. I taught myself by reading Thrasher and watching Marcus. You jump and slide your front foot and it happens. I don’t even understand it. It’s better that way.”

“Do it again.”

As Jonah cracked off a series of identically lofty hops over manholes and storm drains, equal measures of recognition and rapture struck Will like sheet lightning. It was an act of such miraculousness that Will felt unworthy of it. Every dance performance and action movie and Destructivity Experiment he’d ever known seemed to be contained in this one gesture, this ollie . Will’s legs itched to try, but somehow he understood the sacrilege of asking for a turn on Jonah’s board. Plus, he had to take it easy on his heart.

“How long have you been … doing that?” Will asked.

“A few years. My brothers pitched in and bought me a board. Believe me, I’m not that good.”

“Looks like you were born on it.”

Jonah let go a rare laugh. His teeth were crooked, cool crooked. “My brothers were always shoulder-checking me, tripping me down, shoving snow in my face. You get good at staying on your feet.”

Then, as though to contradict him, a grinding sounded from beneath him, and Jonah was hurled to the half-frozen pavement with a naked thwack of palm and hip.

“Jonah!” Will said rushing to his side. “Can you hear me? Are you okay? Do you want an ambulance?”

“I’m fine, Will,” Jonah said through pain-gritted teeth while rolling over, then lifting himself incredibly into a sitting position on the ground. He kicked away the small pink stone that had thwarted his wheel.

“Don’t get up,” cautioned Will. “You may have a spinal. Or a concussion.”

“Chill out ,” Jonah said, laughing, as Will was casting about for a phone booth.

Will fell silent as Jonah rose and they resumed walking, quietly loathing his mother and the Black Lagoon for so thoroughly screwing his understanding of what constituted a catastrophe.

“Why don’t you talk at school?” said Will, hoping Jonah wouldn’t stop talking all over again.

“They expect Indians not to,” he said. “So I don’t want to disappoint them. Talking only digs you deeper in that place. They handcuff you with your own words. You ever say anything that brought you good there?” Jonah asked.

Will remembered describing the visualization blueprint he’d drawn on his first day and shook his head.

“I talk all the time,” said Jonah, his limp diluting with every step. “I talk to myself. I talk to my brothers. I’m talking to you. I talk when I want. But when I’m there, I keep my mouth shut, do my schoolwork, and go home.”

Will noted they were nearing the path to the culvert. “So where’s Marcus?”

“He left me a note written in blood on birchbark. Said he wanted to meet. Typical Marcus. I heard he was living on his own in the woods, stealing things for the Butler to make money.”

“Garden hoses, right? You guys use the match bombs as a diversion while Marcus steals the hoses from the backyard.”

Jonah did a little palm-clap. “Very good. But I only taught them how to make those bombs. That was it. I don’t need money. My brothers are working at the call center now. Anyway, you can’t buy your way out of Thunder Bay. I’m leaving my own way.” Will was about to ask how when the mouth of the culvert yawned before them, black as deep space, and a force overtook him, denying the obedience of his legs. He watched Jonah plunge into the soupy dark. Will’s heart was double-bumping lethally, but more than his nascent Outside bravery, it was the mounting distress in his bladder — now a stingy jellyfish spreading its tentacles across his pelvis — and the prospect of relief that pressed him into the eeriness of the tunnel. The dark was pure as the linen closet in London with the door shut, and Will’s eyes gulped it greedily, the borders of his body lost to him. He put one foot in front of the other, and the opposite opening approached like an inhospitable planet.