Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

That's what we see in each other's eyes, what we silently share in the pause between recognition and brotherly embrace.

I see it got you too .

"Wel," Randy says, slapping both of my shoulders. "We're here."

"Yes, we goddamn are."

"Have you been around town yet? It's like a time capsule. The world's most pointless time capsule."

"Can't wait to see al the sights."

"I guess Ben's the only one who could have brought us back."

"Ben's the only one who could have got us to do a whole lot of things."

I was referring only to harmless stuff, of how Ben could talk us into goofing around with a Ouija board or playing Dungeons & Dragons, but as soon as it was out, I heard how it could seem that I was speaking of something else.

"You know what's funny?" Randy announces finaly. "The last time I was in the Queen's, it was with Tina Uxbridge."

"Todd Flanagan's girlfriend?"

"It was her idea, swear to God. I liked Todd. But I liked Tina more."

"She had his kid, didn't she? In grade twelve or something?" And then: "Jesus, Randy. Maybe it was yours."

"Not mine. Trust me, I checked the calendar."

"Wait. I'm stil a little dizzy here. You slept with Tina Uxbridge? "

"Just down the hal."

"You amaze me, Randy."

"And she amazed me."

I look around the room, checking the corners.

"I tried," Randy says. "Folowed up again on every number Carl ever gave me. Nobody knows where he is."

"He ought to be here."

"Did you ever talk to him?"

"Not much the last few years."

"So you never saw him after things got bad."

The two of us stil standing in the room's entryway. I should move aside, give us some space. But I need to hear what Randy is now obliged to tel me.

"He was using, Trev."

"Did you—I don't know—confront him?"

"Confront Carl ?"

"No. I wouldn't have either."

"He caled every once in a while. Then, maybe two years ago, even the cals stopped."

"He never caled me."

"He was ashamed ," Randy says. "He looked up to you more than any of us."

"He did?"

"The best hockey player. Successful businessman. You were steady."

I'd been standing with my arms crossed over my chest. Now I release them, hold them out in front of me and let them shake. "Who's steady now?"

It's meant as a joke, but it only makes Randy uncomfortable. I step aside to let him into the room. He goes and stands at the window. Speaking against the glass.

"I visited Mrs. McAuliffe this morning," he says. "Apparently Ben had a wil. And he named you executor of his estate."

"What estate?"

"You mean aside from some hockey cards and a jar of dimes? Not much."

The room closes in on us, stifling even the idea of speech. It's not that we've so quickly run out of things to say, but that there's too much.

Randy turns to face me. "What are we going to do?" "In Grimshaw? At three-thirty on a Thursday afternoon?" I shuffle over to Randy and deliver a smart smack to the side of his face. "Let's get a drink."

MEMORY DIARY

Entry No. 5

We were sitting in music class on a Tuesday morning in early February, waiting for Miss Langham to walk in and give us one of her let's-get-started smiles, when Ben turned around in his chair to face me and whispered, "I had the most fucked-up dream last night."

There was nothing unusual in this. Miss Langham was often a minute or two late for us, her first class of the day. She had a gift for comic entrances. We never laughed at Miss Langham, though. We were too busy fixing her quirks into our memory: the sound of her footsteps scuffing hurriedly down the hal and— slap!— a dropped textbook on the floor, folowed by a Girl Scout cuss that we held our breath in order to hear.

Butternuts!

Frick !

Then her hand gripped on the doorframe, spinning her into the room. Her flushed apology. The wisp of hair that had come loose and she now curled her lower lip to blow out of her eyes. The later she was, the better we behaved.

As for Ben, he was always having dreams. Surreal, circular narratives he would begin relating to me as we waited for Miss Langham, laying his flute on his lap and leaning back, making sure we weren't being overheard, as though the latest clip from his subconscious was something others were eager to monitor, to use.

Ben's dreams were a little strange. What was stranger was when he saw people who weren't there: A man with goat horns, standing at the top of his attic stairs.

A boy with one arm freshly cut off and waving wildly with the other, as though to a departing ship, standing in Ben's backyard when he looked up while mowing the lawn.

An old woman who might have been his grandmother if she hadn't died the year before, looking out from his bedroom closet, red scars in place of eyes.

On this Tuesday, waiting for Miss Langham's arrival, what was a little out of the ordinary wasn't Ben teling me he'd had another weird dream the night before, but how he looked when he did. His skin showing tiny blue veins, as it did after he'd sat, unplayed, for a couple of hours in a freezing-cold ice rink.

"I'm not even sure it was a dream," he said.

"What was it about?"

"Me, looking out my bedroom window. Everything like the way it is when I'm awake. The one streetlight that works, the one that doesn't. The trees, the houses.

Nothing happening. I'm almost faling asleep—like a kind of double sleep, because it's a dream, right? And then, there's . . . something."

"Something?"

"I don't even realy see it. I just notice that something is different. Something that's moving."

"What was it?"

"I told you, I didn't realy see it."

"The thing you didn't see. What'd it look like?"

"Like the shadow of a tree, maybe. But not."

"So it had feet? This tree?"

"It wasn't a tree."

"A person, then."

"I guess."

I looked to the door. I was more than ready for Miss Langham.

"I don't think it was alone," Ben said.

"There were two people?"

"I got the idea it was holding on to someone."

"And where'd it take them?"

"Round the side of the Thurman house. It was scary, Trev. Seriously."

"Good thing it was just a dream."

"I told you. I'm not sure it was."

"What's wrong with you? You okay?"

"I... I think . . . you . . ."

"You look like you're going to puke."

I remember puling my feet out from under his chair ,just in case.

Ben took a deep breath. Swalowed. "You need to hear the fucked-up part."

"Okay."

"Like I said, I couldn't realy see. But I could feel who it was. The person it was carrying into the house."

"Into the house? I thought you said it just went round—"

"Good mor- ning !"

Not Heather. A buxom lady in support hose writing her name on the blackboard. We'd seen her before, doing the same thing at the front of our math, geography, history classes.

"Where's Miss Langham?" I asked without raising my hand. Then, after not getting an answer: "Where's Heather?"

The supply teacher kept writing her name. In fact, she slowed down to buy the extra second required to come up with an answer to the question she knew was coming next. A question that came from Randy.

"Is she okay?"

The supply teacher put down her chalk. Thumbed her glasses back up the slippery bridge of her nose.

"Miss Langham is unavailable at this time," she said.

And before we could ask anything else, she was tapping her baton and teling us to open our sheet music to "The Maple Leaf Forever."

Something else was worth noting from later that afternoon. A good deed.