• by Jess Mowry
THE RESURRECTION
It had been raining for several days, the kind of dreary, drenching rain that finds every leak in rotten old roofs, traps careless rats in flooded basements, and drowns the small and helpless. The time was only around five o’clock, but the clouds hung low in the late March sky, and it seemed as dark as midnight.
The old bus’s ceiling lights were dead, and its ailing heater just fogged up the windows while actually chilling the air. The driver wore gloves and a black hooded parka, a faceless shadow barely seen in the dim greenish glow of the instrument lamps.
Corey was the last soul aboard as the bus rumbled over some railroad tracks to splash its way through narrow streets, past rows of decaying Victorian houses, truck garages, container yards, and rusty piles of jagged junk, its wipers slapping monotonously while the rain rattled down on its roof.
Corey was thirteen and deep, dusky black. He was soaking wet from his walk from school and a half-hour wait at the unsheltered stop. His bushy Afro was coldly dripping, his old sagger jeans felt as heavy as lead, and his big battered sneaks were like water-filled coffins that leaked little rivers across the floor. His ragged puff-coat, a childhood relic, couldn’t be zipped above his chest, where his sodden white T-shirt was clinging like paint.
“Coal Street,” murmured the driver, bringing the bus to a hissing halt that sent a wave of gutter water rushing over the sidewalk. But he turned to smile at Corey, his face still hidden beneath his hood revealing nothing but shadows and teeth. “Y’all hurry home, son, you’ll catch your death.”
“Or maybe somebody else’s,” said Corey, his sneakers making squishy sounds as he shouldered his pack and descended the steps to pause at the edge of a murky stream. “What you got for me today?”
The driver glanced out at the gloomy evening. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“An’ then you put your black shades on. See you tomorrow, Louis.”
Mist was creeping in from the bay through the swirling shroud of falling rain, and the feeble streetlights were ringed with gold. The gutter drains were choked with trash, and Corey splashed through oily lakes of swampy-smelling water. Like many West Oakland neighborhoods, his was mostly Victorian houses that looked like miniature haunted mansions, each with a scraggly patch of yard and some with gap-toothed fences. Corey’s house was three stories tall and higher than it was wide. It seemed to lean over the sidewalk a little, especially at night, and looked about ready to topple right now as Corey climbed the creaky steps to its high and unlit porch.
“Yo,” said a husky voice in the dark.
Corey tensed for fight or flight, expecting a crackhead or some sort of zombie sheltering there from the rain. His hand shot down for his box-cutter blade, but then he relaxed as a small, slim shape materialized out of the shadows. “S’up, Sniffles?” he asked.
“I’m cold. Can I come in?”
Corey smiled at the younger boy, who was almost eleven, as black as himself, and as lean as a coyote he’d seen on TV. The kid was clad in ragged jeans that puddled over his worn-out sneaks and dragged behind on the ground. He was shirtless beneath an army jacket of sandy desert camouflage, a veteran of an endless war, that nearly reached his feet. Its sleeves hung down cartoonishly to well below his knees, while a tattered Oakland Raiders cap adorned his nappy hair.
“Sure, dawg,” said Corey. He heard an eerie chattering and realized it was Sniffles’s teeth. “Damn, Sniff, you’re wetter than me! You wanna catch your death, fool?”
“I’m hungry,” said Sniffles, as if that explained everything.
Corey lifted the bill of Sniffles’s cap to see at least a part of his face. “Let’s go dig somethin’ up.”
“P-pizza, m-maybe?”
“Dream on, little man, as long as you can.” Corey pulled out a big brass skeleton key that hung around his neck on a shoelace and unlocked the house’s front door. The hinges made a spooky sound as Corey pushed the door open, revealing a foyer dimly lit by a twenty-watt bulb on the ceiling. The house contained three apartments, but no one seemed to be home right now, and the only sound was the rustle of rain. The boys ascended a squeaky staircase, dripping trails of water, their breaths puffing ghostly smoke in the air, to reach the third-floor landing. The bulb was out in the hallway again, and Corey groped his way to his door with the smaller boy clutching his hand.
“I’m scared of the dark,” whispered Sniffles, as if afraid of awakening something. He clung to Corey, squeezing his coat, which spattered the floor like a soggy sponge.
Corey felt for the lock and inserted his key. “You keep runnin’ around all wet in the rain, you better get used to the dark, man, ’cause there’s no light where it’s always night.”
“What you sayin’?” demanded Sniffles.
“Nothin’, dawg. Bad joke. Forget it.”
A streetlamp’s glow through the living-room window cast rippling patterns across the floor as rain poured off the house’s eaves to rattle the lids of garbage cans and drum on a Dumpster below. Corey let Sniffles enter first, then pushed a switch on the wall. A gold-shaded lamp came on by a couch that was slowly bleeding cotton. Rainwater dripped from the lofty ceiling, plunking into pots and pans all close to overflowing. Corey locked the door, wiggled out of his pack, then went to light the little gas fire that crouched on clawed feet in a corner. He shed his coat and peeled off his shirt, revealing more muscles than actual mass, his chest jutting out like a small pair of bricks, his biceps round as river rocks, while his stomach seemed armored by ebony stone. Even his V-jawed face looked hard, with a wide but snubby bridgeless nose and cheekbones high and fierce.
“Get out them wet clothes,” he said to the smaller, shivering boy. “I’ma get somethin’ to dry you off.”
Sniffles sat bare by the hissing flames, his knees drawn up to his tight little chest and his hair dripping glittering jewels on the floor, as Corey returned with a blanket and towel. “Stand up, little guy, let’s get you dry. . . . Damn, you smell like a wet puppy dog.”
“Is that bad?” chattered Sniffles as Corey went to work with the towel.
“Probably not to another dog, but a hot bath wouldn’t kill you.”
“Later, okay? I’m hungry now.”
“I’ll check what’s in the kitchen. But it probably won’t be pizza.” Corey gave Sniffles the blanket. “Wrap yourself up an’ go in the bathroom. You know how to work the water?”
“’Course. We used to have a tub.”
“Then fill it up an’ get your ass in.”
“Aight.”
The apartment was starting to warm up a little as Corey got out of his wet shoes and socks, stripped off his jeans, peeled off his boxers, then emptied the brimming pots and pans by dumping them out the window. He went to the tiny kitchen, lit the stove to make coffee, then checked the contents of the wheezy old fridge: half a bowl of mac-and-cheese, a garden salad from Safeway, and most of a gallon jug of milk.
Sniffles appeared in the doorway, robed like a miniature monk in the blanket. “No pizza, huh?”
“Pizza lives in a land faraway, little man, where chocolate cats eat marshmallow rats an’ all the happy kids are fat.”
Sniffles giggled as if Corey had drawn him a funny picture. “Where’s your dad?”
“Workin’ the graveyard again. They do most of the diggin’ at night anyway so it don’t freak out the visitors. If we’re lucky, we’ll make the rent this month. . . . An’ why ain’t you takin’ a bath?”
“I’m hungry, dammit.”
“Get in the tub an’ start to scrub. I’ll bring in the food when it’s ready.”
“Can you eat in the tub?”
“On a night like this you can. I am. Might even do my homework in there.”
Sniffles giggled again. “Aight.”
Corey woke up around midnight to find Sniffles hugging him skin to skin as if he was some sort of blankie. It was obvious from the smaller boy’s breathing that he was coming down with a cold and might be going to share it. Corey almost pushed him away, but then gently disentangled himself and quietly slipped out of bed. It seemed a little late to worry about catching Sniffles’s sniffles. The boy almost always had them, which was naturally how he’d gotten his name. Happily, he smelled better now, after Corey had scrubbed him with hard-water soap and washed his hair with lice shampoo so it fluffed like an Afro explosion. He still resembled a scruffy rat with fingernails like weapons, but at least he was clean for a change.
The streetlamp’s glimmer shone in through the window, bathing Corey’s little room with a softly sulfurous glow. The apartment was comfortably warm now, and the patter of rain was soothing. Corey found he wasn’t sleepy and considered doing the rest of his schoolwork. His dad would be home in an hour or so, and it would be cool to see him . . . something that didn’t happen enough since the man was working double shifts. Corey stood for a moment, enjoying the gentle drumming of rain and its watery splash as it poured off the roof. Rain was cool when you were dry and safe inside somewhere.
He glanced at Sniffles resting in peace, then padded to the window. Rainwater trickled down the glass, gleaming like gold in the yellowish light. Droplets clung to a spiderweb, making a necklace of amber sparks. A car rolled past in the flooded street, pushing a wave that swept the sidewalks—a long, ancient car like a black station wagon and almost as big as a truck. A chill ran suddenly down Corey’s spine when he saw it was a hearse! The house next door was a funeral home, a rotting Victorian twin to his own, except for a small weathered sign on its porch. But the place had been closed before Corey was born, its windows boarded, its yard a jungle, its paint peeling off in dirty gray scabs. The hearse swung into its buckled driveway, nosing through weeds and years of trash as if death had been taking a long vacation.
Corey eyed the grim vehicle through the wavering curtain of rain and mist. A tall slender figure, dressed all in black, emerged and seemed to scope out the ’hood. It was too dark to see many details, but the shape was clad in a long leather coat and was almost too slim for its height. Corey couldn’t see a face, which must have been the color of night beneath a bristle of short dreadlocks. The shadowy movements were masculine, though graceful somehow and suggestive of youth. Casually parting the waist-high weeds, the ebony figure walked to the house, climbed the steps to its high front porch, and vanished into darkness.
“Corey?”
Corey opened his eyes to see his father stripped to the waist and shiny with rain. He glanced at the clock atop the TV, which showed the time as 3:13. His father’s old coat and blue work shirt were hung on a hook above the fire, stained with mud, softly dripping, and sending up spirals of earth-scented steam.
“Why ain’t you in bed, son?”
Corey found himself sprawled on the shabby old couch in only his skin and without a clue. He dimly remembered the ancient hearse and wondered if he’d dreamed it. Rain still drummed on the roof overhead, and water still rushed off the eaves. Droplets plunked in the pots and pans, while the garbage cans rattled below. He noticed his history book beside him. “Guess I musta fell asleep. We got a big test on Friday.”
“All the more reason you need your rest. Nobody got time to be stupid ’round here.” The man frowned a little, hearing a cough from Corey’s room. “I been in to see him. Boy got a fever. . . . Son, we gotta do somethin’ ’bout him. He been homeless since his aunt passed on, an’ he won’t axe nobody for help.”
“He always axin’ me,” said Corey.
“That ain’t what I meant.”
“He’s scared of the cops ’cause they beat him up. Can’t he stay here for a while?”
The man sat down beside Corey. “You can’t get him shots an’ buy him a license. Besides, it ain’t fair to him. He should be in school an’ learnin’ things. We best call Social Services.”
“He don’t eat much,” said Corey, before realizing how stupid that sounded. “But they’ll lock him up,” he added, hoping that made more sense. “At least for a while, an’ he’s scared of that.”
“I’m a lot more scared of what’s gonna happen if he keeps livin’ out there on them streets.”
“But . . . can’t he stay here for a while, Dad? Specially since he gots a cold . . . Um, maybe we could adopt him?”
The big man sighed. “There’s a whole lot more to raisin’ a boy than just how much he eat, son. An’ I’m just too tired to explain it now.”
“I guess it’s hard diggin’ holes in the rain.”
“Just keep them grades up an’ you’ll never find out.” The man sighed again and rubbed his eyes, reddened from too little sleep. “All right, Corey. Till he get better.” He pulled out a sad-looking wallet. “Go to the store in the mornin’. Get some chicken-noodle soup an’ a quart of orange juice. An’ fix him some honey-lemon tea like I done for you last year.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Corey hugged his father, all stony muscle and cold from the rain, smelling of wet dirt and sweat.
“Lord,” said the man, rising and stretching. “No rest for the wicked on this earth, boy.”
Corey laughed. “You ain’t wicked.”
“Musta done somethin’ wicked sometime, but damn if I know what it was. Y’all get a blanket an’ sleep out here. Nobody got time for bein’ sick. . . . How’s them grades?”
“I let you know on Friday. ’Night, Dad.”
“’Night, son.” The man started for his room.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you see a hearse out there, comin’ home?”
“Matter of fact. Maybe that death house back in business.” The man studied his hands for a moment, as if noting their muddy fingernails. “Never no shortage of customers.”
“Coal Street.”
“Huh?” Corey opened his eyes and blinked, surprised to see the sun shining in through the bus’s grimy windshield, although it was low in the west. It had also been beaming brightly that morning when Corey had woken up on the couch to hear Sniffles cough in his room. His dad had already left for work, and Corey had gone to the corner market to get the soup and orange juice. The air had smelled clean and fresh for a change; the flooded streets were beginning to dry, and even the ramshackle houses looked better, their faded paint cleansed of city soot.
“You all right, son?” asked the driver, minus his gloves and parka today, and turning to look back at Corey.
“Yeah. Just a little tired is all. No rest for the wicked, I guess.”
The man laughed. “Not on this side of the grave anyway.”
“Or on this side of them railroad tracks.”
The driver glanced at Corey’s pack, which was stuffed to bursting with books. “Got me a feelin’ you’ll be crossin’ over. Dyin’ is easy, livin’ is hard. But where there’s life, there’s always hope.”
“’Long as you stay away from dope.” Corey shouldered his pack and descended the steps. “See you tomorrow, Louis.”
The evening air was pleasantly warm with maybe a flavor of oncoming spring. Corey peeled off his tight T-shirt, like shedding a worn-out skin . . . he really needed some new ones. The same went for his faded saggers, which couldn’t be buttoned all the way. The last rosy rays of the setting sun felt good on his ebony body. He let his jeans slip to dangerous lows and started walking casually home, noting new grass in the sidewalk cracks and a hopeful green in neglected yards, even if they were only weeds. But then he remembered Sniffles and quickened his pace to a trot.
A few minutes later, back on his block, he saw the ancient truck-size hearse parked in the funeral home’s driveway. It looked more funny than frightening now, with its bulbous fenders, tons of chrome, and old-fashioned whitewall tires.
Somebody was cutting the weeds in the yard, a slashing shadow as dark as death that swung a savage machete. It was a boy around seventeen. He wore only jeans and big battered sneaks, his long body shining with silvery sweat as if someone had polished a midnight. Despite his slimness, his muscles were hard, though showing less starkly than Corey’s. His face was almost more pretty than handsome, with gentle cheekbones, a small snub nose, and full lips at rest in a half-open pout. His hair was a crown of short spiky locks, while his hands and feet looked a little too large, though there was nothing awkward about him. He moved like a stalking cat or a dancer, reaping a harvest of dead yellow thistles with every bright sweep of his glittering blade. He was clearly the long-coated, leather-clad shape who’d arrived in the hearse last night.
If not for Corey’s concern about Sniffles, he might have gone over to meet the dude and ask what was up with the old funeral home. The boy seemed too young for an undertaker, but Corey didn’t have time for questions.
Sniffles lay wrapped in a blanket, curled up on the couch and watching cartoons as Corey unlocked the apartment door.
“Yo, Sniff, how you feelin’?” asked Corey, dropping his pack on the floor.
The smaller boy coughed. “Aight, I guess.”
Corey felt Sniffles’s forehead. “You still got a fever. I make you some soup.”
“No pizza, huh?”
“I once saw a pizza, it said, ‘Pleased to meet ya, but you gotta buy me before you can try me.’”
Sniffles managed the ghost of a giggle.
“You drink lots of orange juice today?” Corey asked.
“Yeah. The whole thing.”
“Cool. You be better in no time, man.”
“Then what?”
“Huh?” asked Corey, pausing on his way to the kitchen.
Sniffles coughed and pointed to the window, darkening now as night settled in. “Then I gotta go back out there, huh?”
Corey returned to the couch, hesitated a moment, then took Sniffles’s hand. “I’ll think of somethin’. Don’t I always? Just get better. Okay?”
“Sometimes I wish I was dead.”
Corey grabbed the younger boy’s shoulders. “Don’t you NEVER say nothin’ like that, fool!”
Tears squeezed out of Sniffles’s eyes. “Well, I do.”
Corey almost shook the boy, but then ruffled his bushy hair instead. He came pretty close to hugging the kid, but his own body seemed too unforgiving, like it should have been softer somehow. “Look, little man, where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“Who told you that?”
“A magic bus driver.” Corey knelt down and met Sniffles’s eyes. “I’ll think of somethin’. I promise. Aight?”
“. . . Aight.”
“Now blow your nose an’ wipe your face. Nobody got time for cryin’ ’round here.”
Corey finished his homework around ten o’clock, clad only in jeans at the kitchen table, then went to his room for a peep at Sniffles. The boy was asleep, but his breathing was stuffy. His forehead felt hotter, too. “Damn!” muttered Corey. “You ain’t gettin’ outta here that easy, man!” He tucked the blankets a little tighter, then remembered something his father had done when he’d had a cold the year before. He checked his pockets for lunch money: seven dollars and forty-eight cents, supposed to last until Friday. Then he slipped on his sneaks and went out.
He found a jar of Vicks VapoRub at the little corner market . . . he’d massage the stuff onto Sniffles’s chest, and that would make him better.
The funeral-home boy must have worked all evening, Corey thought as he hurried past; the weeds were gone from the little front yard and the boards removed from the house’s windows. The power must have been restored, and dim light shone through a wine-red curtain. Corey noticed a slim dark shape at rest on the shadowy porch. The boy was still shirtless in nothing but jeans and seemed to be sipping a forty-ounce. Corey wished he could join him.
“Corey?”
Corey woke up on the couch. It was close to 3:00 A.M. The air was scented with VapoRub, but it hadn’t helped Sniffles’s cough.
“Son,” said Corey’s father. “If he ain’t better tomorrow, we got to call Social Services.”
Corey listened to Sniffles’s breathing. There was something very lonely about a child’s cough in the night. “Yeah, Dad. I know. . . . But maybe he be okay by then. Like, where there’s life, there’s hope.”
“There ain’t no hope in a grave, son. I’ma be home at six tomorrow, ’fore I start the other shift.”
Corey sighed. “Aight.”
“Coal Street . . . Feelin’ better ’bout life today?” asked Louis, swinging the bus to the curb.
Corey glanced out at the evening sunlight: The shabby neighborhood yards were greener, lawns were making a pretense of life, and little wildflowers were budding in trash. But his stomach grumbled from lack of lunch, and he scowled while snagging his pack. “Just keep gettin’ worse.”
“Look for the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Corey shrugged. “With my luck, it just be a train. See you tomorrow, Louis.”
He didn’t stop to take off his shirt but ran home as fast as he could. He arrived out of breath, his chest muscles heaving, which finally burst the worn-out cotton as if he’d been slashed with a knife. “Damn!” he muttered, yanking out his skeleton key and jamming it into the lock. In spite of his rush, he paused in the doorway, seeing the ancient hearse roll up and silently stop in the funeral home’s drive. The boy must have spent the day planting roses, which seemed to be blooming all over the yard. Corey recalled the savage figure swinging his long deadly blade: It was funny to think of him planting flowers.
He watched the tall slim shape emerge like a shadow defying the daylight. The boy was wearing his long leather coat, but shed it now to reveal he was shirtless. Then he opened the hearse’s big back door. Corey saw it was full of more flowers . . . and something else.
A coffin!
Corey suddenly shivered, even though he was shiny with sweat. The coffin was “classically” shaped, he supposed . . . his father called them “toe-pinchers.” It was made of beautiful ebony wood with gleaming brass handles and polished fittings, though it looked disturbingly small.
For all his willowy slenderness, the funeral-home boy seemed surprisingly strong, hefting the coffin onto his shoulder and bearing it into the house. He almost lost his jeans on the way, but that didn’t seem funny because of his burden. Corey shivered again as the boy disappeared. He remembered something he’d read in a book, about somebody walking over your grave.
He studied the funeral home once more: Its yard looked pretty with all the new flowers, and the boy had started to paint the front. It would soon be the best-looking house in the ‘hood, though its customers probably wouldn’t care . . . at least not the ones who would ride in the hearse. Corey thought of the ebony coffin: Did the boy have some business already? Or was it just a sample? Maybe that’s why it was small?
He expected Sniffles to be on the couch, but the kid wasn’t there, and the TV was dead. Running into his room, Corey found the bed empty . . . and Sniffles’s raggedy clothes were gone.
“Damn you!” yelled Corey, clenching his fists, punching the pillow, and kicking the bed for no logical reason. Then he heard footsteps climbing the stairs. “Sniffles?”
But his father appeared in the doorway. “What’s up, son?”
“He’s gone!” bawled Corey. “Damn little fool! Maybe he heard us talkin’ last night?”
The man looked troubled. “He ain’t in no shape to be out on them streets. . . . What happened to your shirt?”
Corey glanced down at his chest. “It was old an’ wore out . . . like everything else!” He ripped off his shirt and flung it away. “I know where Sniffles cribbed sometimes.” He started for the staircase, almost pushing past his father.
The big man sighed and glanced at his watch, a cheap and childish plastic thing. “Call me at work if you find him.”
“Coal Street . . . So, how y’all feelin’ ’bout life these days?”
It was raining again and dark as night. The bus’s windows were all steamed up, and Corey had been gazing at nothing. He shrugged as he picked up his backpack, a book poking out through a rip in a seam as if it was seeking escape. “Life sucks.”
Louis paused before opening the doors. “What’s the alternative, son?”
“I ain’t even sure. . . . You believe in heaven or somethin’ like that? With harps an’ wings, an’ streets made of gold?”
Louis smiled beneath his dark hood, flipping the door switch several times before it finally worked. “Maybe they got better buses up there. But you gotta believe in somethin’, son. If you don’t, then there ain’t no alternative.” He reached out to touch Corey’s arm. “Still ain’t found your little homey? I been keepin’ my eye out every day.”
“No, an’ it been a whole week.” Corey looked out at the pattering rain. “An’ he was real sick when he left.”
“I been watchin’ the paper,” said Louis. “In case . . . you know?”
“Yeah. I been checkin’ the news on TV. But they might not even say nothin’. Not for a little rag-ass like him.”
“Tomorrow’s always a brand-new day.”
Corey tried to smile. “An’ April showers bring flowers in May. See you tomorrow, Louis.”
Corey was already soaking wet, so there wasn’t any reason to hurry. He trudged along, splashing through puddles, and finally arrived on his block. Mist was creeping in from the bay, and the dim streetlamps wore halos again as he passed the ancient funeral home. He hadn’t been paying much attention—not this week, out looking for Sniffles before and after school every day—but the long-dead lawn had been reborn, and the old house shone with a new coat of paint. Rosebushes lined the cracked sidewalk and bloomed in beds along the porch, while a white picket fence had been erected, and climbing vines were checking it out. In a way it seemed almost funny, but a few other people along the street had also been raising up new lawns and even planting flowers.
Corey hadn’t had the time to meet his dark new neighbor. The dude seemed to rise with the sun every morning, clad in nothing but jeans and sneaks while resurrecting the ramshackle house. He’d taken the faded old sign off the door, and except for his ominous ride out front, no one would have guessed that he lived with death.
Rain rattled down on the night-colored hearse, while its chrome glittered bright in a streetlamp’s glow. PACKARD was spelled on its grinning grillwork, though Corey had never heard that name and thought it might be Japanese.
Despite the rain, Corey paused for a moment to study the tall, narrow house. It was dark except for one rear window, a feeble light glowing behind somber drapes. Corey pictured the slender boy, a near-naked savage when swinging his blade, a little bit scary when toting a coffin, and yet he seemed gentle somehow. It showed in his delicate face when he smiled, and in his large and long-fingered hands when he smoothed the earth in his new flower beds.
Corey hadn’t thought of it, but he should have asked the boy about Sniffles—after all, he’d been working outside and might have noticed the kid. The one lonely light decided his move: Corey walked to the house past the white picket fence and the nodding rows of rain-sparkled roses. Climbing the steps to the shadowy porch, he softly knocked on the door.
To his surprise, it swung open a little. He almost expected a hair-raising creak, but the boy had probably oiled the hinges. A funeral home shouldn’t have spooky doors, but the ‘hood was no place to leave one unlocked.
“Um, hello?” he called.
There was only the steady drumming of rain and its trickling splash from the roof. Maybe the boy was taking a nap? As hard as Corey had seen him work, he probably slept like the dead.
“Yo!” called Corey, louder this time. “Your door was unlocked!”
Still no reply. Corey stood there, unsure what to do, while his sodden coat dripped on the new doormat, which logically didn’t say welcome. Heavy curtains shrouded the windows, and Corey could see almost nothing inside, except for the shape of a pale chandelier that hung from a vaulted ceiling. But there was probably nothing to see—the house had been empty for decades. The air smelled musty, of dry rot, dust, and free-roaming rats. Of course, the boy had been here a week and might have brought in furniture; but the house FELT empty, and Corey’s voice echoed.
Now what, thought Corey? He noticed the door had an old-fashioned lock, and his skeleton key might fit. Should he do the dude a favor?
But what if he wasn’t home right now and Corey locked him out? Yeah, the hearse was in the driveway, but the boy might be clubbing with friends . . . you wouldn’t go cruising around in a hearse.
“Well, damn,” muttered Corey. He remembered something Louis had said: “No good deed ever goes unpunished.” He hoped it was a joke.
He peered around in the silent darkness and saw a faint glow across the room. It looked like a light at the end of a hall, maybe the one he’d seen from outside.
“Hello?” he called again.
Corey waited another minute, then made his decision and moved toward the light, his steps slow and careful, a hand stretched out. This was a damn good way to get shot! He stopped, glancing back at the half-open door, and wondered if he should leave while he could.
But then he continued across the room, which seemed to be totally empty. A curtain in shreds concealed a doorway, and the glow leaked out through its rips and holes. Corey parted the rotting cloth: Beyond was a hall with doors on each side that ran all the way to the back of the house. It seemed like a strange arrangement, until he remembered where he was. Those were probably viewing rooms. All the doors were closed except one, down at the end of the hall. The dim light shone from there.
Corey wondered again if he should leave before the dark boy capped his ass, but he tugged his pack a little tighter and moved toward the light anyhow. “Yo, man?” he called softly. “I live next door.” . . . As if that gave him privileges.
He waited a minute, but nobody answered. Reaching the doorway, he peered inside. There was the coffin! He almost bolted in shock. . . . But maybe it wasn’t occupied? The lid was off, though Corey could see only ruby-red silk, which looked disturbingly comfortable. The coffin sat on a rough wooden stand, which probably would have been buried in flowers had there been a body to view. Crimson candles in tall silver holders were burning beside the ebony box.
Then Corey saw the slender boy asleep in an old velvet chair. He was clad in only his earth-blackened jeans, and his long-fingered hands lay curled on his stomach like peaceful ebony spiders. His legs were stretched out, and his big bare feet were resting atop a cobwebby box that bore the word FORMALDEHYDE. On another such box beside the chair were Church’s Chicken remains. Corey noted the long leather coat was draped on a hook in a corner.
Corey stood for a moment surveying the room. He recalled a picture he’d seen in a book of someone “sitting up” with a corpse, maybe in case it came back to life. But the only body in here was the boy’s—at least what Corey could see from the doorway—his slim chest rising with slow even breaths. The candle glow softly defined his muscles and darkly highlighted his fine-boned face. He was beautiful yet masculine, and that made Corey afraid. He told himself to get out of here . . . the boy had a right to rest, didn’t he?
And yet he felt a need to see . . . maybe he’d rest a lot better himself if he knew for sure that coffin was empty? Glancing again at the sleeping boy, Corey crept up to the coffin, wincing at every squish of his shoes.
Another shock ripped through his body, freezing him there for a second. Maybe somehow he’d expected this?
Sniffles was lying inside. Dimly seen in the candlelight, he looked so cared for and clean. Not at all how he’d looked when alive. His hair had been tamed, and sparkled with oil. His fingernails were neatly trimmed, his hands crossed over his childish chest. He was dressed in new clothes: bad-looking saggers, asskickin’ sneaks, and a black T-shirt that reached his knees. And now he had his very own crib, soft, satin-lined, and just the right size to peacefully rest in forever.
Tears brimmed up in Corey’s eyes, blurring his sight in the candle glow. Turning away from the coffin, he studied the boy in the chair again. You’d have to be gentle to deal with the dead. After all, they were helpless.
He had no right to be here, he thought. He couldn’t help Sniffles anymore, and maybe he’d even betrayed the kid by fronting hope in a hopeless place. He quietly started to leave, but his book fell out though the rip in his pack and hit the floor with a thud. He froze again, not quite in fear, as the slender boy opened his eyes.
“. . . Um,” said Corey. “I live next door. I wasn’t stealin’ nothin’.”
The boy only smiled. “I seen you, man. An’ Sniffles said you were cool.”
“No, I ain’t.” Corey looked back at the coffin. “I couldn’t do nothin’ to help him.”
“You done all you could.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“It was more than most people would do.”
“Like, there’s such a thing as ‘a little bit dead’?”
“Ain’t seen that yet,” said the boy. “An’ I been around death all my life, man. But a lotta folks only a little alive, an’ they ain’t helpin’ nobody.”
“Neither did I.” Corey turned for the door. “Sorry to wake you up.”
The slender boy stretched like a casual cat, then dropped his bare feet from the box and rose. “Just takin’ a nap before supper. Y’all wanna stay for a spell? You can sit in this chair if you want. Furniture won’t be here till next week. That’s when my mom an’ pops be comin’. We from Mississippi.”
“Oh,” said Corey, wiping his face and hoping the raindrops were hiding his tears. “That’s why you work so hard.”
“Wanna go out for some pizza? If y’all don’t mind the ride?”
“Thanks, but I ain’t very hungry.” Corey returned to the coffin. “Pizza was always his favorite food. So, I guess you . . . um, fixed him up yourself?”
“It was a pretty bad cold, but he’s all over it now.”
“Yeah,” said Corey, fighting more tears. “You done a good job. That’s how he always shoulda looked.”
The boy came over, glanced in the coffin, then studied Corey and suddenly grinned. “Maybe I keep him around for a while an’ you can come over an’ see him.”
“That ain’t funny!” Corey snapped back.
But the boy only laughed. “Careful, dawg, you’ll wake the dead.” Then he reached into the long black box.
Corey stared in something like horror. “The hell you doin’ . . . ?”
“Sometimes you can tickle ‘em back to life. Then take ‘em out for pizza.”
A giggle broke out of the coffin.