The Guardians

His face clouded over. 'Al of them. Except one.'

'A bad apple.'

'There's bad. Then there's worth.'

'Worth? Worth in what?'

'Worse. Worse! ' He fought to get this out, leaving his chin white with spit. 'There's always something worse than you think. Closer than you think.'

That was about it. One by one my friends excused themselves to visit the men's room and didn't come back. Until only I was left.

'It's been good to meet you, Mr. Schantz,' I said, backing toward the door. 'And I hope we can bring the cup home this year, just like—'

'There's some places you should never go.'

It was a strange thing to say, if in fact he said it. But I remember the moment not for the words I thought I heard him mumble, but for the look on the old man's face.

A kind of insane clarity.

He was talking about the Thurman house. I couldn't say why I was so sure, other than the look of him. He'd been just this withered stranger, his legs painful- looking sticks on the footrests, yet now he was sitting forward, his eyes alive and searching.

Then he colapsed back into his wheelchair. I was wrong: he wasn't reading my mind. As I slipped out, I heard him mutter, 'Sometimes I wet my back.'

I bet, I thought as I made my way toward Ben, Randy and Carl, who stood waiting at the end of the hal. Doesn't mean I have to be there the next time you do.

But before I reached them, I heard the old man's words a different way.

Sometimes the dead come back.

I already mentioned that my father worked for the utilities commission. A union rep with his own office in the basement of Municipal Hal, back in the days when offices had ashtrays and a bottle of whisky in the bottom drawer and windowless doors that could lock shut. He didn't work too hard.

But he often brought stories home with him. Juicy stuff, as far as Grimshaw went. Battles between neighbours over the staking of property lines. The mayor owing five grand in parking tickets. Noise complaints against an apartment behind Roma Pizza, from which a woman's shrieking orgasms (or what my dad caled 'the sounds of a cat in heat') awakened dozens in the night.

Because they shared a filing system, police gossip would also flow through the basement of Municipal Hal. Usualy, this side of my father's nightly news was sad more than thriling. Domestic knockabouts, drunk-driving charges, old people discovered a few days dead on their linoleum floors.

Yet that night, I could tel my father had a scoop when he took his place at the head of the kitchen table. Hands placed on either side of his dinner plate, staring down at what my mother had spooned out of the casserole dish with the sombre look of a judge reading a jury's verdict to himself before announcing it to the court.

'Langham,' he said finaly. 'She's a teacher of yours, right? The pretty one?'

'Music,' I said.

'She wasn't at school today.'

'No.'

I watched him use his knife to buldoze food onto the back of his fork. Slip it into his mouth. Chew.

'What about her?' I asked once he'd swalowed.

'They're looking for her.'

'They?'

'It'l be in the paper in the morning.'

'She's not just sick or something?'

'That's what I'm hearing. The cops. Asking if anyone's seen her.'

'The police think she's a missing person after one day? Don't they usualy wait seventy-two hours or something?'

'They've got information. Suspicions.' My father raised his hands, palms out. A gesture to signal the limits of his insider's knowledge.

'Do they think she's al right?'

My father lowered his fork. Pretty. That's what his eyes said to me, man to man across the table. I don't blame you.

'My guess?' he said. 'She found some fela and got the hel out of here. Struck me as a sensible sort of girl.'

Then he told my mother this might be her best shepherd's pie ever.

After hockey practice that night, we gathered at Ben's house. Sitting on the mouldy pilows and atop the books that towered around his bed. And on it, cross-legged, was Ben himself. I remember he wasn't wearing shoes or socks. His feet oversized, patchy with hair. Nasty feet for such a slight, dream-prone boy.

I had told them earlier what my dad had said. We were lacing our skates in the dressing room, and I had to whisper to keep from being overheard by any of the other players. Once I finished, there wasn't a chance to hear