That Godamm Dead Boy At My Window

 By Tim W. Burke

             I hit “return” to post the Godzilla DVDs on eBay, when beside me at my dining room window, someone rapped. I crept to my back door. I shouted into the dark, windy street.

            “Who’s there, dammit!”

            A boy staggered against the wind and onto my steps. He seemed about six years old, but he had a large head and tattered clothes hung on his spindly body. His skin was wrinkled and brown like a mummy.

            Twine was tied around his waist and trailed behind him.  A folded paper fluttered in his hand.

            His voice rasped, barely heard over the wind, “A message from the land of the dead.”

            “What’s-- what?”

            “I bring a message from the land of the dead.”

            It made sense. The kid looked undead.

            “A message from the dead? Geez! Is it from my father?”

            I snatched the paper and unfolded it.

            “’Dear Uncle Bruce?’ Wait a minute. Who the hell’s ‘Uncle Bruce?’”

            His brow crinkled, audibly, “Does it matter? It’s the truest love that outlives memory. The most generous love needs no names.”

            “I’m touched. Who the hell’s ‘Uncle Bruce?’”

            “The dead do not remember the names of their loved ones. Try this note.”

            This one had pictograms or something.

“What language is this in? Is this Chinese?”

            “The dead do not remember their homes.”

            I stared at him, shaking my head.

Finally he coughed, “Do you have a letter to give to your loved one?”

            “My father! Yes!”

I spun and went back into the kitchen. I rummaged through my junk drawer looking for a pen.

“I have so much to…wait.”

Sagging, I went back to the door, “Is he going to get this note?”

            “The dead seldom remember the names they had in life.”

            “So my message to my father is going to some random jackass instead?”

            “Who also needs love.”

            “Which defeats the purpose of me writing a specific note. If I wanted to help random strangers, I’d check off ‘Any’ on the Christian Childrens’ Fund.”

            The dead boy looked behind him at the neighbors’ houses, “No one else has ever had a problem with this. The lady next door was weeping when I left.”

            I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, a habit from my father. I ushered the dead boy into my kitchen.

            “Look. You need to get yourself organized. Just take a photo of me and wave it around until Dad says ‘I told him he’d go bald.’ I got an old digital camera. For Dad’s sake, you can have it.”

            I rummaged in a cardboard box in my living room until I found the camera. There was some battery power left, so I held it out and grinned out a picture with me and the dead boy. I slinged it around his neck and he bent under the weight, he was so frail.

            “In fact, why don’t you do that with all your messages? Take some pictures, say ‘This guy sent this note for his uncle’, whatever?”

            “The dead would enjoy seeing pictures of life,” he conceded.

            “That’s the spirit. Sorry, figure of speech.”

            I helped him along out my back door.

            “You seem to have a lock on this transportation route. Why don’t you do a delivery service?

            “What?”

            “Trinkets. Tokens of affection. Like the pictures. You could charge a good price. The dead will love it.”

            “I could never profit from helping the dead.”

            “Yeah, but you know, you could hire some temp revenants and expand. The living have muoy dinero.”

            He rubbed his chin, “The dead miss clothes.”

            “Dad liked tube socks.”

            He said, “I must put myself at the mercy of the wind and fly back to the land of the dead.”

            With duct tape, I secured three pair of tube socks evenly along his twine behind him so that they would help him keep balance in the air.

            We went back outside. I helped him slip a stick through the sleeves of his shirt until he looked like a kite. He tottered down the dark street to a crowd of kids in white t-shirts at the corner, the tube socks bumping along behind him.

            He called, “These children will help me. Children? Could you run and pull my twine until I catch the wind?”

            “Uh,” I held up a finger, “Dunno if those are the kids you want to…. Hey kid! Put that Zippo away!”

            The dead boy thumped against a couple of houses, but he did struggle to a good altitude. The children frolicked after him, laughing at the flaming bundles of tube socks dangling under the receding form.

            “Good luck to you!” I waved.

            The next morning, the News-Journal had a piece abut the dead boy. The wind hadn’t been too merciful and carried him over the White House with a camera and “an incendiary device.” Homeland Security also suspected him of being a courier for unidentified foreign nationals.

            I tut-tutted, Geez, and he’s brown-skinned too.

            My front door burst open, “Freeze! FBI!”        

            The dead boy had my picture. But it was good that I forgot the note. Next cell over, the weepy neighbor lady was weeping even more explaining why she took a letter from somebody she didn’t know, conveyed by a suspicious boy whose very Krebs Cycle was in question.

            Being incommunicado for months in a bright solitary cell, you can miss big developments in the outside world. One day, while thinking up synonyms for “orange” and “jumpsuit”, an unaddressed postcard was delivered. On the front was a picture of a gray waste superimposed with garish script: “Greetings from The Land of the Dead!”

            In small print on the back was “Copyright Haliburton Post-Mortum Communications.”

            The postcard read, in familiar handwriting, “I miss you too. Quit making a fuss about it.”

            Remember: when you do a good deed, don’t leave a document trail.

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