SO MANY YEARS HAVE PASSED. I sit out there with the oak tree not far away, my chair creaking on the old porch, and I light my pipe filled with cherry tobacco, the scent of which reminds me of Mr. Pelle and playing baseball and being a boy. Dusk is my favorite time of day, especially during the summer when it stretches long and lazy and the stars whisper to each other in the heat. Before coming outside, I opened all the windows on the main level, something that took me a bit of time to do, but the house needs to breathe at the end of a long summer day. I will spend the rest of the evening here on the porch, watching the fireflies blink and the day fade to black.
So many years have passed.
Tonight, as I walk through the screen door, I realize Boy is sitting on my porch roof, his legs dangling down. He surely hears me come outside but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t pull his legs up, so he must not be hiding. I guess he’s waiting for me to say the first word. Two can play at this little game, and I can guarantee you that an old man can outlast a boy when it comes to waiting. I’ve been waiting for decades longer than he’s been in existence. Waiting for what? I’m not sure. But I’m good at it.
As I sit in the chair, I sigh with relief and pull my pipe and tobacco out of my pocket. I slowly go about packing the leaves into the pipe with my finger, the nail of which is stained brown along the edges from so many nights. I pull out a stainless steel lighter with the engraved letters SC on the front and spin the wheel. The flame dances into being. I hold it over the pipe and puff until it comes alive.
He makes me smile, this boy and his antics. I remember climbing up on that very roof when I was a boy, and I remember feeling bigger than everything, bigger than the world. There’s something about climbing, something about the possibility of falling, that takes your breath away.
I become so engrossed in my nightly routine that I nearly forget about the boy, his feet dangling down from the sky.
“You know smoking is bad for you, right?” he says.
“Zat so,” I say, inhaling, then sighing the smoke into the night. Sweet relief.
“Yep. Gives you cancer.”
“Huh,” I say. “So if I smoke, I might die of cancer before I can live a long, full life?”
He doesn’t respond to that. He climbs down one of the decorative iron rails that prop up the front porch and sits on the step in front of me, keeping his face toward the night. Now that he’s up close I notice for the first time that he’s a rather small boy, not frail but wiry. When he talks it’s like he’s playing a chess match, not moving unless he can predict his opponent’s next move. He doesn’t say anything open-ended, anything that might lead the conversation in a way he cannot predict. It’s a rather intriguing trait for such a young boy, this measured way of talking. His hair is curly and unruly, and his nose is round. When he looks at me over his shoulder, his green eyes flash in the light coming through the screen door.
“I guess you know why I’m here,” he says in a glum voice. His eyes dart up and meet mine, then he turns again to face the darkness.
I lay the pipe down on the arm of the wooden rocking chair and shake my head. “No, I guess I don’t.”
He looks at me with surprise. “Thought my dad came by here today,” he says. “Didn’t he tell you?”
I shrug. “Let me ask you something before you get into all that.”
“Okay.”
“Do you like hot chocolate?”
“Hot chocolate?” His eyes light up, but he recovers his defenses and tamps down his happiness. “In the middle of the summer? Don’t you have any ice cream?”
Kids these days. They don’t know nothing about nothing.
“I guess I do,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth. “But I’ve only got vanilla. I’m not much for all of these newfangled flavors with the fixin’s already inside.”
“I only ever eat vanilla,” he said in a determined voice, as if it was a sore temptation to eat all the other delicious flavors and it was only by a supernatural feat of self-discipline that he managed to remain unswerving in his devotion to that plainest of ice cream.
“Well, then, vanilla ice cream it is.”
I stand up and walk back inside, leaving my pipe on the arm of the rocking chair. A thin wraith of smoke rises out of it. At first I’m not sure if he will come inside with me, but I go into the kitchen anyway and take down two bowls. I open the freezer and find the ice cream, and by the time I’m closing the freezer door, Boy has come inside and made himself at home in the kitchen.
“Sure does smell funny in here,” he says.
“It’s because I’m old,” I reply. These things don’t bother me anymore. “You’ll smell funny too when you’re my age.”
I bring two bowls of plain vanilla ice cream over to the table and set one down in front of Boy.
“I guess I have something to say before I eat your ice cream,” he states in the same voice he used to proclaim his undying love for vanilla.
“I guess you’d better say it and get it over with before this melts.”
He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks the words come out much quicker than usual. “I’m-sorry-for-the-smoke-bombs-even-though-I-saw-you-kick-the-cat-and-you-kind-of-deserved-it.”
I try hard to keep from laughing. “Boy, did anyone ever tell you that you’re incorrigible?”
He shakes his head.
“Well, you are. I kick cats sometimes because I hate cats, but it’s a mean, nasty habit, and all it does is show that I’ve got some meanness stuck inside me. I’ll try to do better.”
He nods.
“That is,” I say, glaring at him, “if you agree to stop hitting me with corncobs.”
He nods again and takes a big bite of ice cream. Through the cold whiteness he murmurs, “I guess I have some meanness stuck in me too.”
We eat quietly.
“I hear your friend is dead,” he says. It’s hard to get used to, the unrelenting nature of his words, the way they dart out of nowhere and stick you in the most sensitive places.
I take a deep breath, nod, and sigh. “Yes, indeed. My friend is dead.”
It sounds rather bleak when I say it that way and not in the normal past tense: My friend died. It’s much more polite to talk about death in the past tense, and it doesn’t feel as bad.
But it’s true all the same, I think. She is dead.
“Was she nice?” he asks.
I nod again. I feel the need to do something physical like nod or sigh before saying words to this boy. I feel the need to create space between the sentences.
“The nicest of all.”
“When are they going to bury her?”
“The funeral is in a couple of days,” I say, shrugging.
“Are you worried about it?” he asks, and I wish he would focus on his ice cream.
“I’ve been to many funerals in my life,” I say. “I suppose one more won’t hurt.”
“But she’s your last friend.”
I look up at him and chuckle, because if I don’t I might cry. “Where in the world did you hear that?”
“My mom told my dad.”
I shake my head the way a boxer shakes his head after taking an uppercut to the jaw. “Yes, she was my last friend.”
Outside, the crickets have begun to chirp and some other noisy bugs have started up alongside them. I’m hoping Boy leaves soon so I can return to my pipe. Conversations tend to exhaust me. I’m not used to them anymore. I’m not used to sharing the inside of my brain with someone else.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I ask.
“Caleb,” he says.
“Really? Caleb?”
This boy is full of surprises.
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh, I had a friend named Caleb when I was a boy.”
“What happened to him?”
“What happened to Caleb?” I ask myself. “What happened to Caleb? That’s the question, isn’t it. What happened to Caleb.”
I remember Caleb Tennin lying on the forest floor. I remember the way the rain sounded coming through the trees and the sound it made falling on the Amarok right there beside me. I remember how the Tree of Life shimmered behind me like a mirage.
Caleb, where did you go?