Suitable Precautions (16 page)

Out of the disorienting eddy of blood and dirt and shells and fucks and oh shits, God managed not only to hear Conway's obscenity-laden prayer, but also to answer it and save his life. Nothing could be done about the arm. God is a miracle-worker, not a magician. At least Conway still had his life, thanks to God. No other explanation for it, really, the medical men said. A goddamn miracle.

So Franklin Murdoch prayed in his own little hour of need. He was hopeful and his cell was quiet: there wasn't nearly as much noise to filter out as there had been when Conway was calling Jesus a motherfucker. Franklin reasoned that his prayer was probably going straight through to God,
loud and clear. Plus, a ribbon, or a medal, whatever it was, should count for something, too. And the fact that he didn't use foul language, that should also help his cause, Franklin thought.

“Sincerely, your humble servant, Franklin Murdoch.”

With two thousand, seven hundred and fourteen seconds to go, Franklin opened his eyes, looked down, and saw between his feet a Chinese fortune cookie.

It was an impossibility. It had no business being in the spartan cell, yet it was there. It was a beautiful tawny half-moon of salvation. Franklin instantly forgot about the cigarettes and the bottle of brandy. He turned away from his last meal of dry potatoes and lumpy gravy. The fortune cookie had appeared to him in that desert of deserts, appeared out of nothing as a sign. It was a one hundred percent, reliable, certifiable, goddamn miracle.

Franklin gently picked up his crunchy, sugary little marvel, cradling it in both hands as though it was a little piece of God, Himself.

“Thank you, God,” Franklin said, and then he cracked open the cookie to read aloud its message of deliverance.

“Confucius say: Never eats an any thing bigger than you head.”

He now had two thousand, six hundred and seven seconds left, and in the passing of that one minute and forty-seven seconds, Franklin Murdoch, if he was paying attention, had learned this: God was letting a lot of things slide, including the quality of English language translations from the Wong Phat Fortune Cookie Company of Qinghai, China.

 

Tick Tick

POOR FRANKLIN. It really is a shame, if you stand back and take in the whole picture. He is tall and still, his face and hands very white and almost waxy. Except for the bloated clouds of condensation coming out of his mouth as he sings the last few notes, you'd think he was dead, or at least that he was an escapee from Madame Tussaud's. But that is not the case. We already know what kind of escapee Franklin is.

My goodness, though, doesn't he look waxy? Those men holding the guns should save their bullets and just put a wick in Franklin and let him quietly burn himself out. But then where would the fun be in that? And those gun-holding men do look awfully smart in their uniforms; too bad Franklin is blindfolded. Someone is whispering orders and the men are raising their rifles. Their mothers, I'm sure, are very proud.

Maybe Franklin's skin just knows that he is going to die in about five seconds, and it's trying the whole “death thing” out, seeing if it can play the part convincingly. That way, when it comes time to turn Franklin's story into a summer blockbuster, Skin can play Itself and make enough money to officially retire from the daily sweating-stinking-breathing-shedding-healing-containing that is its nine-to-five (and to-nine-again) job.

Or maybe Franklin is already dead—the life sucked out of him by something other than a speeding bullet. In case you haven't guessed, Franklin is no Superman. He is very, very average. One can safely assume that his hands are rife with bacteria.

There's nothing I can do. I'm only following orders.

I was very clear on that.

If I could be responsible for Franklin, I'd treat him right. I'd send him on a Carnival Cruise until his nerves settled, and maybe give him a week or so at Disneyland. There ain't
nothin' that cures the blues better than a few trips around Space Mountain. I'd let him drive fast cars and get him even faster women. I'd let him fuck them on the first date and not even make him pay for dinner. I'd give him a job as a proofreader at a publishing house. Imagine it: each day Franklin loses himself in any number of fictional worlds, looking for errors. If he finds any, he fixes them. Those worlds become error-free.

But I'm already helping Franklin out. Without me, he wouldn't even have been resurrected for these thirteen seconds. And he knew right from the beginning what he was getting himself into. No matter what, though, I'm still not responsible for all of this. It's no mistake that Franklin is standing here as the sun shines, struggling now to come out from behind leaden clouds and a black shroud of mist—it's his own fault he's here, blindfolded; that's what the Field General Courts-Martial concluded.

Don't shoot the messenger.

 

Tick Tick

 

FIVE MILLION, three hundred and ninety-nine thousand, one hundred and fourteen seconds ago, Franklin Murdoch was somewhere else entirely. I can't tell you where, exactly—that is Classified Information. I know that's frustrating, but believe me, it's an absolutely vital matter of National Security. Plus, if I tell you anything more, it won't get through the censors, and who knows what will happen to me if I try? He was walking, I can tell you that, but I can't tell you where from, or where to.

He was imagining a huge meal—a plate of bloody roast beef dripping in gravy, caressed by mashed potatoes, kissed
lightly by green peas. He saw squash blushing an embarrassed orange as he brought it to his glistening lips. Pink filling from a strawberry-rhubarb pie, steaming, oozed onto the delicate white plate. It was a meal, Gentle Reader, that was obviously much bigger than his head. In that moment the foodstuffs in Franklin's mind were so real, he felt that he could taste them with the whole of his skinny, sagging, painful, sorry being.

Franklin stopped walking. He looked down at his hands, which were downright filthy. He unshouldered his gun and placed it carefully on the ground. He wiped his hands on his pants. Then, very slowly, he turned around and started walking in the opposite direction.

I can't tell you which direction that was either (see above), but believe me, it was a dangerous direction—more dangerous than the original direction, even considering that the original direction had far more bullets and explosions and scared and angry people than the one Franklin actually chose. Again, I can't tell you exactly where the new direction took him, but I can tell you this: the new direction led exactly to where he is now.

 

Tick

 

FICTION does funny things to people. People like you and me, for example. If we met in real life, we'd chat over coffee and have ourselves a perfectly charming afternoon. But since we're meeting on the page, things are different. We are implied. I am the implied author and you are the implied reader. We have been transformed into narrative masks. Franklin wears a mask—a blindfold. I bet you a dollar that he doesn't give a damn about any mask other than that one.

I know I can come on a bit strong. You can feel me everywhere in this story; I refuse to blend into the background, or hide behind a coat rack, or a flower arrangement, or a post stuck in the ground, or a little circular piece of white paper, for that matter. So out of fairness, I figure if you can feel me, I should let Franklin feel me, too. Give him a good feel of a real red-blooded girl before these next seconds pass. Franklin is an okay guy. You'd know that if I had told you more about him. Who knows? Maybe I'd have let him get more than just a feel, if things had been different. I'm a sucker for a man in uniform. And I think it's important to support the troops.

I'm sorry if you haven't had fun. I know that a good story is supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This story only has thirteen seconds. It's also well known that if a story is to be a tragedy, it must be of a certain amplitude. Very shortly, Franklin will have no amplitude. He will be flatline. Besides, a tragedy must represent something that is worthy of our serious attention as readers, and let's be honest: no one cares about Franklin, and this story is about handwashing, large meals, time, and waxiness.

But time marches on, and everybody loves a parade. Franklin has a few seconds left. That should be enough. You came here to be entertained, and there is a spectacle to see. It was nice to meet you. Open your eyes.

 

Tick

 

Tick

“
D
EATH IS A GREEDY THING,” Uncle Joseph said,”like a cat starving its way through winter. It don't need your help to kill you.” Luke sat cross-legged on the floor in his best pair of corduroys and took a drink of the warm Coke Aunt Louise had poured for him. The Vaseline from his fat lip left a trail of slime on the rim of the glass. He already knew that death could sneak up at any moment, like it did to the Guitar boys, their pink lungs filling with black pond water in the thaw just before Christmas. The paper had put their school pictures on the front page and Luke's mother had cut out the clipping and Scotch-taped it to the fridge, saying, “You hold onto that railing, Luke. Things happen just like that.” She snapped her fingers and Luke had felt them pinching at his heart.

“You hearing me, Luke?”

“You shut your mouth, Joseph,” Louise said. “We don't need more talk.”

Luke was pretty sure that Aunt Louise knew a thing or two about death, but she was a little fragile now, his mother
said. One day Uncle Maurice was baiting the traps with horse meat, and the next he was lying in a box wearing a tie, bought special. Louise had nearly gone deaf from the shock of it all. Luke remembered that when the news came she had asked the person on the other end to repeat himself before letting out a little cry, one like the minks sometimes made when the metal door slammed, and then her mouth had gone slack and she had hit the receiver with the heel of her hand. “Believe this, Ferne? Phone's busted again,” she said, her lips still moving after the end of the words. She had held the phone out even as Luke heard the chief of police shouting, “Lou, are you still there, did you hear me? I'm sorry.”

His mother explained that it was just nature's way. “People can go a bit loopy when bad things happen,” she said. “It's normal.”

Louise had kissed the cheek of her dead husband at the funeral, her new hearing aids buzzing the whole time, and the powder blush had stuck to her lipstick, making her look like she'd eaten a pink sugar donut. Uncle Maurice was the first dead body Luke had ever seen and he had been afraid to do what the men did, what his father did: stand solemnly at the casket and put one warm, live hand on top of Maurice's white, dead one. “It's just a hand,” his mother said in an irritated voice, loud enough for Father Richard to hear.

But Luke was older now and he knew better than to act like a baby at these things, especially now that Shel was here, testing the open bottles on the tables and stealing swigs from the ones with little bits left. It didn't look like Cynthia was coming and Shel was worse without her. Luke had to be careful.

He took a sip of his Coke and wished it were cold so he could press it against his lip; his mother said that would take down the bruise, even after the fact. Luke looked around the room for her. Mr. Ducharme was saying that his gravel business was going to make him rich in five years, and Mrs. Robichaud smoked a cigarette, telling people between puffs to shut their yaps so she could hear the baby crying. Luke wanted to go home.

“You staying out of trouble there, tough guy?” Doris Charette was old and smelled like rotten cherries and baby powder, but Luke liked her anyway. His dad said that Doris had a head stuffed full of nothing but air and the recipe for Jell-O, but she was the only person who didn't mind if Luke used swear words or ran around in the cold without his jacket, trying to catch his death. If he wanted an answer, Doris might give him one, even though he knew it was a mistake to keep asking. His father had said as much when Luke tried him, sitting on his parents' bed and watching him curse at his tie. “You ask again, Luke, and you'll feel a bit a hell from me,” he had said.

“You get something to eat, Lukie?”

“Doris,” he said, “is Martin going to hell?”

“Jesus, Luke.” Her eyes went over him like a garden rake. She didn't say anything else as she sat down beside him and took a sip from his glass.

“It's warm,” she said. “And flat.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You been talking to Shel and them?”

“No,” Luke lied.

“Well don't,” Doris said. “He's thirteen going on idiot.”

She took another sip as Paul Cowley came down the stairs and the room got quiet with trailed-off conversation.
Mr. Cowley slowed as he waded through people's stares. Luke looked at the floor but worried that might be impolite. Where was his mother?

Mr. Cowley's eyes were red from crying, but they tended to be red anyway, or at least pink most of the time. He was allergic to dust and pollen and all sorts of things—shellfish, Luke thought, and maybe peanuts, too—and sometimes in the spring, right around the time when the fiddleheads were out, he wore goggles around town, and thin cotton gloves. Once Luke had seen him in the window of The Waterside having a beer after work and looking like a starving robot with metallic eyes and harsh cheekbones. The hands of a ghost.

Mr. Cowley and Luke's father both worked in heating and cooling, and so sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Cowley came over for dinner. Martin was in high school, old enough to stay home alone. Luke was allowed to eat in the basement and watch a movie, something that wasn't too violent and didn't show bare breasts or use the f-word, not that anyone came down to check. His mother was too busy fretting about the dinner, even though she almost always served Shake 'n Bake chicken, and that was hard to screw up. It wasn't fancy, she said, but it was safe. Nobody was allergic to Shake'n Bake.