Free Cataract City by Craig Davidson Page B

through the dead man’s pockets? A series of loud pops, like shots from a cap gun, fired quickly. I wondered if it was the trapped air popping between the knobs of Mahoney’s spinal cord.
    That sound opened a hidden trap door in my head and quite suddenly I was staring at my own body in a coffin, my face propped up by a shiny satin pillow. I lay in a parlour with stained-glass windows; “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was playing. My father and mother were there, plus a few of my teachers and some aunts and uncles I hardly ever saw. My face was yellow from that chemical they pump into your veins to replace your blood—the same stuff our science teacher used to preserve dissected frogs. Stitches circled my head; the undertaker had brushed my bangs down to cover them, but not totally. I wondered if they had taken my brain out and if so, why? Maybe evil aliens had stolen it, like the ones in that television show Dunk and I watched late one night:
Invasion of the Brain Snatchers
. If my brain was gone, what was inside my head now? Packing peanuts like the ones that Dad’s hi-fi equipment had come in? Some balled-up pages out of the
Niagara Falls Pennysaver
?
    Staring at my own dead face didn’t fill me with horror or sadness or much of anything, probably because I couldn’t really
imagine
being dead. The whole scene felt like a joke—and then my dad began to bawl hysterically, soaking a platter of cucumber sandwiches with his tears, and the daydream fell apart.
    Dunk came out of the tent with Mahoney’s gun and knife and laid them on the driver’s seat.
    “Want a piece of gum?”
    “Where did you get it?” I asked.
    “You want it or not?”
    We chewed gum. Dunk pulled the van’s key out of his pocket and slid it into the ignition. The motor went
whirr-whirr-whirr
. Dunk popped the hood—it shocked me that he knew how—and peered into the engine compartment.
    “It’s fried,” he said, and spat in the dirt.
    Tracks of crushed grass ran out behind the van’s tires. I didn’t know how long we’d driven off the road, but it hadn’t seemed all that far last night.
    “Can we follow them out?” I said.
    “Or wait here for someone to find us.”
    “Do you think anyone’s looking?” My eyes drifted to the tent. Mahoney was laid out on his frayed sleeping bag, eyes open, dentures poking past his ashy lips. I was terrified he’d sit up. “Let’s go, Dunk.”
    We found an old backpack in the van. Also a few cans of Coke, half a bag of barbecue chips, a Three Musketeers bar, some rags and a bottle of vitamin caplets big enough to choke an elephant. Glossy magazines with pictures of muscled-up men; other magazines of naked ladies—Dunk put one of those in the pack. We left the pills and empty beer bottles.
    Dunk found a box of bullets in the glovebox and fiddled with the pistol. I was afraid it’d go off accidentally, leaving a smoking ring in his forehead. The cylinder fell open. Dunk picked out the spent cartridges, slotted in fresh ones and thumbed the safety. He put it in the backpack and gave the Buck knife to me.
    What about the tent? We could burn it, or leave it open for theanimals to find Bruiser. He had dragged us out here, got drunk, gone mad and died. What did we owe him?
    “We could … roll him up in the tent? Put some stones on to hold it down.”
    Dunk sawed his arm across his nose. “He’s just worm food now, anyway.”
    The stones were still warm from the fire. We rolled the biggest ones to the tent. Dunk kicked the tent poles away. It collapsed with an outrush of foul air as the canvas sagged over Mahoney’s body. I could make out his face where the material lay across the hawklike bridge of his nose.
    We heaped stones on the tent’s edges. Dunk lifted the biggest one, cradled it to his gut, and dropped it. Mahoney’s body bent at the waist—heels raising up, nose straining against the canvas—then lay flat.
    Dunk shrugged the pack onto his shoulders and we followed the tire tracks out