He pushed out against the dead man and rolled off the body, banging his head into one of the rear tires of the pickup. It took him a few seconds before he could breath normally, but every breath brought in both the putrid smell of the dead man and the awful smell of his own vomit.
He was wedged in solid between the dead man and the rear wheel of the pickup. He choked back a scream. He was too fat to wiggle out between the bottom of the truck and the curb. There was only one way out, the way he’d come in. He would have to slide over the body.
But his child’s mind screamed, no, not that. So he rolled over, putting his back against the tire, pushing against the body with his feet, but he only moved it a few inches, not enough to squeeze by. He moved away from the tire, closer to the body and tried pushing some more, but without the tire for support, he only pushed himself backwards.
He was frustrated, exhausted and inhaling stink. He lashed out with his arms against it, scraping his right hand on the pavement. He felt it, but it didn’t hurt. Then he curled his feet into his chest and started kicking at it, and with each kick the heavy corpse of Seymour Oxlade moved away from the pickup. After a few seconds, that seemed like forever, Arty was able to squeeze between the body and the back of the truck. He slithered back onto the sidewalk and rolled away from the dead man as fast as his hands could push his body around.
He kept rolling until something thudded against his back and banged against his head. He wanted to rest, but he wanted to be as far away from the dead man as he could get. He rolled onto his stomach to push himself up and came face to face with the terror stricken, dead eyes of his father.
Arty, on his stomach, slapped both hands on the sidewalk and tried to push himself up, but he only succeeded in forming an arch with his body, hands and feet on the sidewalk, buttocks in the air, before his left foot slipped out from under himself. He didn’t have enough strength in his right leg to keep himself suspended or to push himself up. His right foot slipped and he fell, slapping the cement with his stomach and slapping his father’s face with his own.
He felt the cold of the dead face as the two-day-old, dead stubble dug into his cheek, hurting like a hundred pin pricks. The clammy wetness of the dead skin felt like the dead fish in the frozen foods section of the Safeway. He clamped his mouth shut to keep from upchucking the remainder of his dinner onto his father’s face, but he lost the battle, and he sprayed the dead eyes with more of the red-yellow vomit.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve when he was finished, and backed away from the two dead bodies. He wanted to run away, get away home as fast as his feet could pound the sidewalk, get away and never come back, but he was covered in vomit and stink and didn’t want to bring that into his house.
Fortunately, because of his early morning paper route, he was used to the night. He roamed freely in it. He often used the hose on a front lawn for a drink of water, something he would never do during daylight hours, at least without asking, but the night was his, so he crossed the front lawn, turned on the water and hosed himself down. He wound up sopping wet and chilly cold, but he decided he would rather take a chance of freezing, than spend one more second with that vomit on him.
He was tired, wet. His ribs ached. His hand was bleeding where he skinned it. His head hurt, he was sick to his stomach and felt like he might vomit again, but he didn’t think there was anything left to come up, and he still had papers to deliver.
There were still people counting on him and he wasn’t going to let them down. So without a backwards glance, he started back on his journey home as lightning cracked the sky, followed by the booming of thunder and cascading rain.
An hour and a half later, he coasted his bike around the corner onto Lark Lane and tossed a paper from the center of the street, grinning with an archer’s satisfaction as he watched it sail, like an arrow bound for the bull’s- eye. He stiffened his right leg, forcing the pedal back and locked the brake. The back tire skidded and whipped around to the right. Arty dropped his left foot onto the street and brought the bike to a dead halt, before the paper hit the porch with that beautiful popping sound he had grown to love.
He threw his leg over the bike and put down the kickstand. He tried to act normal as he stole a glance at the two police cars and the milk truck down the block. They would be waiting for him, he knew. But first things first, he reached into his bag of papers and withdrew one.
Miss Spencer had arthritis and couldn’t bend down far enough to reach a paper lying flat on the porch, so she’d asked him to set it on a table she had by the front door. An interesting target from the street, he thought, because if he wasn’t right on target, the paper would go sailing into a fragile wind chime. So he walked the paper to the porch every morning, and she rewarded him every month with a twenty dollar tip, and lots of times she let him eat for free in the diner she owned across the way in Tampico. Miss Spencer was an alright lady.
He glanced sideways as he walked up the driveway, four policemen along with Harry Lightfoot. The whole police force was there, but nobody else was up. He was glad. He didn’t want Carolina to see his father dead in the street.
He felt their eyes on him as he went up the porch steps. Of course they’d be watching, he thought, setting the paper on the table. Then he tinkled the wind chime, like he did every morning, turned, hopped down the steps, like he weighed a fraction of what he did, and started back toward his bike.
He sailed five more papers onto five more porches, before he reached the five living and two dead men that were waiting for him. He dismounted and listened to Harry Lightfoot tell him about his father and a man named Seymour Oxlade, with only a single glance to the bumps under the blanket that had been his father.
The four policemen stood silent as Harry Lightfoot told Arty what had happened, like he was an adult. And Arty accepted the news like the grown-up he was being forced to be. He showed no surprise, felt no remorse and demonstrated no grief. It was a small town, everybody knew what Bill Gibson was. He wouldn’t be missed.
“ Do you want me to take you home or would you rather go with them?” Harry asked, nodding toward the policemen.
“ I gotta finish my paper route,” Arty said. The police figured he was a boy in shock, but Harry knew better.
“ Folks will understand if they don’t get their paper today,” Officer Harrison Harpine, said.
“ I only got a block left to do, less than five minutes. Then I’ll go home.”
“ Do you want to meet me there, so we can tell your mom together?” Harry asked. The officers were more than willing to let Harry break the news. Nobody wanted to tell someone their husband was dead.
“ No, that’s okay, I’ll do it. Besides she’s still asleep.” He was shuffling his feet back and forth as he talked, but he kept his eyes locked onto Harry’s. He liked Harry and he knew Harry understood.
“ You’re sure you don’t want someone to go home with you?” Ray Harpine’s father asked, wanting to make sure.
“ Yes, sir, I’m sure. I can handle it.”
“ The boy will be fine,” Harry told the cops. Then he turned to Arty, “Why don’t you finish your paper route. I think the police can take care of everything here.”
“ How long before they take him away?” Arty asked. He didn’t care if his father lay across the sidewalk forever, till his skin rotted off, till buzzards ripped him apart, till his bones bleached in the sun, till hell froze over, but he didn’t want Carolina to see.
“ Doc Willets is on the way now,” Harry Lightfoot said. “Your father will be in the mortuary before sunrise.”
“ Thank you,” Arty said, turning and walking back toward his bike.
“ Hey Arty,” Harry said in a smooth even voice, “Wait up a second.” Arty stopped at the bike and waited, while Harry approached.
“ I’m okay, Harry,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. The officers couldn’t hear.
“ You really don’t care about your father, do you?” Harry whispered, putting his hand on Arty’s shoulder.
“ No.”
“ You’re not going to miss him?”
“ No.”
“ So why do you care how long he’ll be out in the cold?”
“ I don’t want Carolina to see,” he told Harry the truth, because everybody knew you couldn’t lie to Harry.
