Free The Last New Year by Kevin Norris

The
car screeches to a halt.
    I stand there, a response dying on my lips. The car idles,
then tires squeal and it peels off. A very old black man is behind the wheel,
and I see the car weaving side to side as it continues down the street, past
Zee, who doesn't react.
    I think for a moment that this guy probably shouldn't be driving
at his age, but then my mind clicks back on to the present situation and I'm
running. I nearly trip and fall as my foot comes down from the curb but I right
myself and in a few seconds I'm standing over Zee. I scratch the back of my
neck, feeling helpless. What do I do? What the FUCK do I do?
    I kneel down. "Zee!" I
shout. He doesn't move. I don't try to move him. I don't think I'm supposed to
move him because he might have a spinal injury. His face is bleeding and his
left arm is bent awkwardly behind his head.
    "Zee!" I shout again.
"Are you ok?"
    His eyes flutter open, he looks at
me and grins lopsidedly through the blood.
    "No, mate," he says, and dies.

 
     
     
     
    I kneel there for about five minutes until I realize he's
not going to get up and I should probably do something. Absently, I dial 9-1-1,
trying to ignore the fact that it's my best friend cooling on the ground in
front of me.
    A ring, a half a ring and a click. A tired voice says, "Yeah?"
    I am not prepared for this. Stupidly, I say, "Is this
9-1-1?"
    "Yeah." A long, drawn out
sigh on the other end.
    "Ok," I say. "My friend got hit by a car. I'm
pretty sure he's dead." For some reason this reminds me of a joke and I smile.
I immediately feel guilty for the smile but then I realize that Zee would have
liked the joke if he hadn't heard it before and wasn't dead.
    A pause, then a sad chuckle. "Well first off, let's make sure he's dead." A
pause. Then I hear a click and a loud BLAM! on the other end of the line and the sound of a body slumping forward and a
headset sliding away from deaf ears. I hang up the phone, a little shocked but
mostly annoyed.
    That isn't how the joke is supposed to go.
    I stand up. Obviously no one is going to come help me deal
with this. The sky has turned very gray, and it looks like perhaps it will snow
after all. This cheers me up, slightly, so I decide on a course of action. I
grab Zee by the shoulders (after moving his arm to its original angle—crackly
bone against bone sounds turn my stomach) and drag him to the sidewalk. I prop
him up against a the front of the building. His eyes
are closed, but he doesn't look like he's sleeping. He looks dead. Like a dead
Pakistani boy, frowning slightly as if annoyed by this turn of events.
    I look both ways, fetch his shoe from the street, and place
it next to him. I don't put it on his foot because it doesn't seem right
somehow to go to the trouble. I realize as I'm standing there, looking down at
my friend, that I've been crying for the past five minutes. After all the death
of the day, this is finally what gets me. It makes perfect sense but it still
makes me ruminate on the calluses that develop on all our hearts when we are
remote from suffering.
    I laugh, suddenly, at my own bullshit, and know that Zee
would have poured a beer on my head for even entertaining such thoughts. He's
done it before, after all. A sob escapes me at the memory but then it's all
dried up and I'm ok to continue I think.
    There's only one thing to do, and that's to do what I set
out to do. It sucks that this had to happen, and it certainly doesn't portend
well for the rest of the quest, but since I don't believe in portents I guess
that doesn't matter. We were going to split off when we got to road the liquor
store is on anyway, this was just a little earlier and more violent. And it
feels more final, even though any parting at this point is probably the last.
    But none of that matters. I have to go on. Zee would want it
that way.
    "No I wouldn't, you cunt," I hear Zee say
sarcastically in my head. "I'd want you to sit here and cry over a pile of
meat. Get moving."
    I get moving.
    I