Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

Will pulled a can of coconut milk and another of beets from his bag and set them beside the bed, vaguely regretting that it was food he wouldn’t dream of eating himself. He placed the bag of dry oatmeal on a nearby table.

“How salubrious,” the Wheezing Man said, leaning over to tuck the oatmeal into a drawer, shutting it carefully.

Will passed him a hunk of his mother’s bread, which, even though it was stale, Will hoped was his most appetizing offering. The Wheezing Man took a bite and shut his eyes. A look of contentment overcame him, and Will worried he’d dropped to sleep.

Will took a deep breath. “It was you who grabbed me that night in the woods, wasn’t it?”

His breathing quieted down. “I was fixed to warn Aurelius, but I couldn’t pinpoint him,” he said after a while. “Luckily the old man’s wolves missed too.”

“Why’s he called the Butler?” Will asked.

“He’s the worst version,” he said, chewing. “Only assists himself. But he used to be a bona fide man. University man. Escaped Thunder Bay for two years at Queen’s but had to boomerang back to care for his simpleton sister. Came back quoting Wordsworth and all things. Worked in a white coat checking grain boats for weevils and worms. Until he took a loading boom to his head and surrendered half of himself.”

“What half?” Will said.

“The good one,” he said.

“I once perpetrated for him,” he added, finishing his bread. “Squirreling out good grain from this old hulk for his Neverclear.”

“And you and Marcus were getting hoses for him, right? For his gas tanks?”

“Principally,” he said. “Then young Aurelius went and nosedived into a volcano.”

“He stole the Butler’s map, right? To make money? But what if I can get it back? Would the Butler leave him alone?”

Dismay crossed the man’s face. “Wouldn’t account much,” he said. “The Butler’s already brewing up more of that coffin varnish to satiate his clientele.”

“What was Marcus planning to do with the money?”

“He was itching to flee this latitude. Dreamt of a little sloop. A one-hander he could wind himself.”

“You mean a boat?”

“A cabin. A little outboard. Said it was a habitat he could cart with him. Like a turtle. Never again get lodged anyplace he didn’t care for.”

“Do you think he did it?” Will asked. “Made it out?”

“Not yet,” he said, pulling at his beard.

Every day that week, Jonah and Will ditched school to trudge through the fresh-fallen snow to the harbor with cans and food scraps for the man, who said his name was Titus. Will was astonished by how much it took to sustain him, the sheer weight of it. Jonah contributed some sausages that his brothers had made from a bull moose they’d brought down last spring, and the boys had to convince Titus not to eat them raw.

After all those years caring for his mother Inside, Will slipped effortlessly into the caretaker role — fetching food and “unblighted” water, filling the voids in his faltered abilities — and was warmed by that old thrill of domestic usefulness that sustained him for so long Inside. Will felt oddly at ease with Titus, despite everything. He was more like his mother than anyone he’d met Outside, probably attributable to their mutual craziness.

That Saturday Will coaxed Jonah into redressing Titus’s legs, which now bore long scabs, black as slugs. More worrisome, though, was how both his calves were hot to the touch, swollen tight as Jonah’s moose sausages.

“Erythromycin,” Jonah said, tossing onto the table the rattling vial he’d fetched, his cheeks pulsing after a breathless run up to County Park in the frigid air. “Two times daily with food. My brother Gideon got them after a tattoo of his got infected. Expired two years ago, but they’ll have some fight left in them.”

Apart from the possibility that Marcus would reappear at Pool 6 and the opportunity for Jonah to practice his medical skills, the snowfall was how Will had convinced Jonah to frequent the elevator. Will’s second winter Outside had been nothing like his first. Gone were the thrills of exploration and novelty. This time it was all drab light and frozen-footed walks down to the harbor. Because skateboards required dry pavement, winter for an obsessed skateboarder was a time of despair and unimaginable yearning. Will secured Titus’s blessing to build some skateboard ramps in the large room where they’d found him beaten, the Distribution Floor, he called it. They extrapolated the design from Thrasher : ribs placed laterally, curving upward on a template, bent plywood surfaces screwed down over those. The wood they found in abundance around the harbor, two-by-fours used as concrete forms, tool sheds, and old beached dories they busted up. It took them a week to sweep up the bird droppings, and Jonah launched ten sagging garbage bags’ worth out onto the lake ice, where they sat like periods.

Jonah had Enoch write him another note, and after years of signing his mother’s checks, Will found forging his own a cinch. While their classmates sat deadened in their desks, the boys rode their ramps each day, high above the lake, threading their way between pillars and hoppers and conveyance vents, back and forth at breakneck speeds, grain dust gummy in their eyes. There they withstood unplanned splits, shinners, debilitating knee whacks, wrist tweaks, bent fingers, hippers, elbow bashings, back scrapes, rolled ankles, and chin abrasions. Despite the injuries, or perhaps because of them, Will’s skateboarding was further improving. His new favorite trick was the “disaster,” which entailed ollieing 180 degrees while on a ramp, then, instead of landing safely back in the curved transition, hooking his rear wheels on the lip. Only through a finicky rocking motion executed immediately could he escape being hurled to the concrete floor. It was like picking a lock, pure joy when it worked, pure mayhem when it didn’t. After trekking back up the creekside, Will would return home, stinking of pigeons and wheat, hacking up dollops of grain dust like little uncooked loaves, spitting them with delight into the sink in Venice.

“So what are you Icaruses training for? A tournament?” Titus said, after dragging himself from the workhouse over the high bridge to the Distribution Floor for the first time to look on. His antibiotics were nearly done, and his infection was improving. Lately he’d been calling them “Icarus Number One” and “Icarus Number Two,” for reasons they didn’t grasp.

“No tournament,” said Will.

“So what’s the schedule then, the import-export?” said Titus.

“Just to do it,” said Will. “To get good at it.”

“I can’t help but sustain that you boys should’ve been wagering your necks down here in another epoch: unblocking grain bins, leaping between freights, doing a usefulness, rather than bleeding for no account whatever. But very least you’re putting this old maid to use with your roller toys,” Titus said, patting the bricks. His beard split with a smile. “That’s a sunshine.”

“They aren’t toys,” Jonah said.

“What’s their frequency, then, Icarus Number Two?”

“Skateboards are … they’re like … tools,” Will said.

“For what career description?” Titus replied skeptically.

Will took a moment to think. Unable to find the right words, he blurted the first thing in his mind. “For falling,” he said.

“Well,” Titus said, shaking his head. “Every youth needs a war. I found mine. This constitutes yours. But don’t overshoot it. Smashing through those windows will earn you a two-hundred-and-twenty-foot blitzkrieg to the wharf.”

Later that day, as though on cue, Jonah careened off the edge of the ramp and sunk some ragged metal in his palm. “We’ll see what we can accomplish,” Titus said, holding up a pair of needle-nosed pliers he’d boiled in a pot on the woodstove. Jonah, mute with pain, surrendered his bloody hand to Titus, while Will fetched the serrated knife from his backpack and stood beside them, just to be safe. Titus dug with the pliers, and for a moment it seemed like he was torturing Jonah, and Will was trying to imagine attacking when Titus backed off. “The woodland only hurts you because it loves you,” he said, flicking the shard at the wall.