The Secret of Life

Chapter 7:

Wednesday, September 11, 1963 Zzt-bing-boinggg.“And now the WAKY weather report, September 11, 1963. Carol?”

Rrrrwwaaafzz. “Thank you, Chuck. We’re expecting more of the same today, with late-evening thundershowers and possible—”

Conrad turned off the clock-radio and sat up. It was barely light out. FiveA.M. No time to lose. He got dressed and took the cream pie off the kitchen counter. It had defrosted nicely overnight. Hank was leaving today. High school was all over.

Hank was out in his backyard, by his ham-radio ante

The idea had been that instead of saying goodbye, they’d push pies into each other’s faces. But now, at five in the morning, they just stood there, the two of them, holding their sad, flat frozen pies.

“Have fun at Columbia, Hank. Look out for the dipshits.”

“You think you’ll make it down here at Christmas?”

“I hope so.” Conrad’s parents were about to move to northern Virginia. Moving and college, this was really the end. “It’s been great, Hank, all these years.” “Right.” Hank’s face was stiff and tight, the way it always got when he was upset. “Goodbye, Conrad buddy. I’ll never forget any of it.”

Just yesterday, he and Hank had had a last talk about it. Hank was half-inclined to believe his old friend’s claims—the problem was why Conrad was not, in fact, able to give a demonstration. “Maybe it’s a kind of vestigial survival mechanism,” Hank had suggested, drawing on their common store of science-fiction wisdom. “Maybe, in ancient times, some races could fly, but it was eventually bred out. Say that the flying-genes happened to crop up again for you, Conrad, but you can only be sure of flying when it’s a matter of life and death. We could test it by going downtown and having you jump off the Heyburn Building!”

Instead of that, they’d settled for having Conrad jump out of a tree, but the catch was that unless there was a real chance of dying, then the power wouldn’t necessarily cut in ... and Conrad wasn’t willing to take a real chance at dying. After a while they’d given up on the project and gone to a movie instead.

And now it was over, and Hank was gone, and Conrad’s parents were moving, and he had to go college, and ... He went back to bed and slept till his mother woke him by coming in and shaking his foot.

“Get up, lazybones. It’s twelve o’clock!”

“Aw, Mom ...”

“You have to help get ready for the movers. Your closet is arats’ nest .” Conrad’s mother always used idioms like “rats’ nest” with a special gusto. She thought language was fu

“I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to do anything.”

“Poor Conrad. Aren’t you glad to be going to Swarthmore next week?”

“I’m scared.”

“Eat something and you’ll feel better.” Another shake of his foot. “And then I want you to go through your junk and decide what to keep. I have a cardboard box for you.”

After some milk and a bologna sandwich, Conrad got to work sorting his stuff: the shell collection, the butterfly collection, the fossil collection—all worthless garbage now—the school papers (going back to sixth grade), his recent poems, the letters from girls (Linda, Dee, and even Sue Pohlboggen), the model rockets, the photographs, the Gilbert chemistry set, the Electroman electricity set, the Brainiac computer set, the Walt Disney comics, the old schoolbooks with their enigmatic graffiti, the lenses and knives and coins and combs and pencils and matchbooks and pieces of wax. Too much. He drifted down to the basement to paunch out.

His big brother Caldwell’s room was down here. Caldwell had been off in the army since last summer.

He’d gotten kicked out of college after freshman year, and Big Caldwell had made him join the army. He was stationed in Germany. Caldwell’s empty basement pad was a pleasant place on a hot day. He had interesting college books, and a full two years’ run of theEvergreen Review . Conrad picked up an issue and turned to a sex-poem he remembered seeing: two lovers sleeping, with spit-out watermelon seeds on the floor, and

“the mixed fluids slowly drying on their skin.” The mixed fluids. Conrad jacked off on that, and then started going through Caldwell’s desk.

Conrad took out one of the little pistols and looked it over. It was a one-shot .22 caliber derringer, with a fat, short barrel, and a nicely rounded little wooden stock. There were bullets in the case as well. On an impulse, Conrad pocketed the pistol and a bunch of bullets.In case anyone gives me a hard time.

He had a date that night, with an eleventh-grader called Taffy Sinclair. They’d met about a week after Dee left town and had been going out ever since. Taffy’s father was a psychiatrist. He didn’t like Conrad.

On the way to pick up Taffy, Conrad stopped by Tad’s Liquor Store and got a half-pint of gin. If Tad was in the right mood, he’d sell to anyone. Gordon’s gin, with that red boar’s head on the yellow label.

It was still a little early to pick up Taffy. Conrad took a back road down to the river, to play with Caldwell’s pistol. You had to load it one bullet at a time. Conrad fired it out over the water, missed seeing the bullet splash, and tried again.There , right out in the middle, halfway to Indiana. He reloaded and shot a tree trunk from point-blank range. The little bullet bored right in.

Imagine shooting yourself, Conrad thought. He took out the empty cartridge, made double-sure the gun was empty, and put it to his head.What if I were going to kill myself right now? He psyched himself up into half believing it and pulled the trigger.

Click.

The dry little sound made Conrad shudder. Idon’t want that. I may be miserable, but at least I’m alive. But with the click had come a sudden feeling like a muscle unclenching at the center of his brain.He could fly. He’d tricked his survival mechanism! Right now, for the first time, he was going to be able to fly as well as he wanted!

Conrad pocketed Caldwell’s gun and angled out over the river. Twenty feet, thirty ... He was out over the real current now, looking back at his VW on shore. Somehow it felt very natural.

But then, all at once, the power was gone. Conrad plummeted into the brown Ohio. It took a few minutes of real struggle to get back to shore. Good thing he hadn’t flown up higher—though if he’d been higher, then maybe the power wouldn’t have dared to cut off.

Fortunately, Conrad’s mother had left a load of clothes for the cleaners in the backseat. Conrad got into a dry outfit and sat there thinking.Why me? What makes me so special?

He wondered if he should open up the gin. Better not yet. Mr. Sinclair would meet him at Taffy’s door and try to smell his breath. A few weeks ago, Conrad had made the mistake of trying to talk to Mr.

Sinclair when he was drunk. “Everything’s meaningless,” Conrad had slobbered. “God is dead.” The line usually went over great with girls, but Mr. Sinclair took it too seriously. “You’re suffering from extreme depression, Conrad.” Conrad was lucky that Taffy was still allowed to go out with him.

Tonight they were going downtown to seeTo Kill a Mockingbird . Taffy looked great, tan and blonde in a spaghetti-strap blue dress. She had a solid little figure and pink bubblegum lips. She liked to talk about her horse, Tabor. Thinking about his plunge into the river, Conrad hardly knew what he was saying.

“Do you ever get hot, Taffy, bouncing on that horse?” “Oh, Conrad.”

There was a weird preacher outside the movie theater. A pale, wild-eyed Negro with big freckles splotched on his papery skin. He had some red-and-yellow signboards about the end of the world, and he was passing out gospel tracts. Conrad stood in front of him for a minute, soaking it up, and thinking,I can fly . “Yoube lookin’ for meaning and the words fall away! TheSon don’t come in time till time runout . These are the last times, my friend.”