And now, all of these years later, Patrick found himself wondering if he’d been wrong to dismiss the lessons that his great-uncle had taught him. He couldn’t help thinking about the last day that they’d spent together, and the things that the old man had told him that day, twenty-five years earlier . . .
Patrick was certain that the dead man had been staring at him.
As he hurried through the streets of Little Kovoko, eyes on the pavement in front of his feet and clutching his knapsack to his chest, Patrick tried his best not to cry. But while he successfully managed to stifle his sobs, he could still feel hot tears streaking down his cheeks. Already he burned with embarrassment at the thought that he might run into one of the older kids in the neighborhood, who routinely teased him mercilessly for being so much younger than the rest of his cousins. The fact that he was short for his age, nearly half a foot shorter than the rest of the sixth graders at Powell Middle School, only made matters worse. The other kids would call him much worse than the usual “Shrimp” or “Rugrat” if they were to catch him crying like a baby.
But Patrick couldn’t help himself.
It wasn’t the idea of death that had him so unsettled. He had seen dead things before. Once he’d come across a dog in a vacant lot, lying on its side in the tall grasses, and couldn’t figure out what he was smelling until he saw the maggots wriggling and writhing in the gash in the dog’s side where a car had struck it. He’d seen birds mangled and half-eaten by alley cats, left to desiccate in the sun. Once at the Founder’s Day Parade he’d seen a horse fall down dead in the street, struck by a sudden heart attack. And each experience might have left him uneasy, or sick to his stomach, or simply sad, but never as upset as he was now.
And it wasn’t that he hadn’t encountered a dead person before. He had seen images of dead people in magazines and newspapers, or on the TV news of course. But the closest he had been to a dead body in person had been his Aunt Winnie’s open casket funeral the summer before, and she had looked more like one of the statues in the Recondito Waxworks museum than the woman Patrick had known all of his life.
Before today, he had never looked death squarely in the face. Much less had death stare right back at him.
“Finished already?”
Patrick looked up, startled, nearly colliding with the old man in front of him.
“Better start watching where you’re going, boy, or you’re liable to run into someone who . . .” The old man broke off when he saw Patrick’s face, the red eyes, the tear tracks down his cheeks. “What’s wrong, Patrick?”
Patrick’s eyes welled as he took a ragged breath and stifled a sob. Then he dropped his knapsack on the sidewalk and lunged forward to wrap his arms around his great-uncle’s waist.
“Uncle Alf, there’s a . . . a . . .” He choked on the word, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “In the alley . . .” The tears flowed faster, soaking into the fabric of the old man’s denim overalls, and he began to sob.
The old man rested a hand on Patrick’s back, patting lightly. “Come on, grab your bag and you can show me.”
Patrick walked back the way he had come, clutching his knapsack to his chest, while his Uncle Alf followed along behind him, hands tucked into the front pocket of his overalls. Neither spoke a word, their only sound being Patrick’s occasional ragged sob and the slap of the old man’s sandals against the pavement with each passing step.
Finally, they came to the mouth of the alley that ran between two row houses facing in either direction.
Patrick’s great-uncle turned to look down at him. “You were out this way, heading to check on the Kururangi house?”
Patrick managed a nod. Like most Saturdays, he’d spent the afternoon ranging all over the neighborhood, checking on the old man’s marks.
“And that’s when you found . . . ?” The old man trailed off, turning from Patrick back to the alleyway before them.
“Him,” Patrick said, pointing a trembling finger toward the shadows ahead.
The old man nodded once, then stood silently, considering the matter. Then he ran a wrinkled hand across his forehead, brushing the ragged fringe of white hair to one side, and started to walk toward the dead man. “Come on, then. We can’t just leave him lying there.”
Patrick stood in the sunlight, at the edge of the shadows, afraid to venture any closer. “But Uncle Alf . . . ?” He paused, swallowing hard. “Shouldn’t we . . . I mean, couldn’t we just tell the police or something?”
The old man barked a laugh. “Of course we tell the police.” He looked back at Patrick with lopsided grin on his face. “What do you think, boy, I want to bury some vagrant’s body my own self? Find his people, let them know he’s gone? From the looks of him, he probably drank himself to death, and that’s a sadness, but we have our own people to look after. Which is why we can’t just leave the body untended in the meantime. It’s not safe.” He glanced up at the sky, and then back down to the dead man. “Especially not so close to sundown.”
Patrick hugged his knapsack tighter to his chest, and tried not to look at the wide-open eyes of the dead man.
“He was looking at me, Uncle Alf,” he said, sniffling. “Right
