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‘What?’
‘If we ever get rich,’ said Martinez, softly, ‘it’ll be kind of sad. Then we’ll all have suits. And there won’t be no more nights like tonight. It’ll break up the old gang. It’ll never be the same after that.’
The men lay thinking of what had just been said.
Gomez nodded, gently.
‘Yeah … it’ll never be the same … after that.’
Martinez lay down on his blanket. In darkness, with the others, he faced the middle of the roof and the dummy, which was the centre of their lives.
And their eyes were bright, shining, and good to see in the dark as the neon lights from nearby buildings flicked on, flicked off, flicked on, flicked off, revealing and then vanishing, revealing and then vanishing, their wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit.
Fever Dream
THEY put him between fresh, clean, laundered sheets and there was always a newly squeezed glass of thick orange juice on the table under the dim pink lamp. All Charles had to do was call and Mom or Dad would stick their heads into his room to see how sick he was. The acoustics of the room were fine; you could hear the toilet gargling its porcelain throat of mornings, you could hear rain tap the roof or sly mice run in the secret walls, the canary singing in its cage downstairs. If you were very alert, sickness wasn’t too bad.
He was fifteen, Charles was. It was mid September, with the land beginning to burn with autumn. He lay in the bed for three days before the terror overcame him.
His hand began to change. His right hand. He looked at it and it was hot and sweating there on the counterpane, alone. It fluttered, it moved a bit. Then it lay there, changing colour.
That afternoon the doctor came again and tapped his thin chest like a little drum. ‘How are you?’ asked the doctor, smiling. ‘I know, don’t tell me: “My cold is fine, Doctor, but I feel lousy!” Ha!’ He laughed at his own oft-repeated joke.
Charles lay there and for him that terrible and ancient jest was becoming a reality. The joke fixed itself in his mind. His mind touched and drew away from it in a pale terror. The doctor did not know how cruel he was with his jokes! ‘Doctor,’ whispered Charles, lying flat and colourless. ‘My hand, it doesn’t belong to me any more. This morning it changed into something else. I want you to change it back, Doctor, Doctor!’
The doctor showed his teeth and patted his hand. ‘It looks fine to me, son. You just had a little fever dream.’
‘But it changed, Doctor, oh, Doctor,’ cried Charles, pitifully holding up his pale wild hand. ‘It did !’
The doctor winked. ‘I’ll give you a pink pill for that.’ He popped a tablet on to Charles’s tongue. ‘Swallow!’
‘Will it make my hand change back and become me, again?’
‘Yes, yes.’
The house was silent when the doctor drove off down the road in his carriage under the quiet, blue September sky. A clock ticked far below in the kitchen world. Charles lay looking at his hand.
It did not chan
ge back. It was still – something else.
The wind blew outside. Leaves fell against the cool window.
At four o’clock his other hand changed. It seemed almost to become a fever, a chemical, a virus. It pulsed and shifted, cell by cell. It beat like a warm heart. The fingernails turned blue and then red. It took about an hour for it to change and when it was finished, it looked just like any ordinary hand. But it was not ordinary. It no longer was him any more. He lay in a fascinated horror and then fell into an exhausted sleep.
Mother brought the soup up at six. He wouldn’t touch it. ‘I haven’t any hands,’ he said, eyes shut.
‘Your hands are perfectly good,’ said Mother.
‘No,’ he wailed. ‘My hands are gone. I feel like I have stumps. Oh, Mama, Mama, hold me, hold me, I’m scared!’
She had to feed him herself.
‘Mama,’ he said, ‘get the doctor, please, again, I’m so sick.’
‘The doctor’ll be here tonight at eight,’ she said, and went out.
At seven, with night dark and close around the house, Charles was sitting up in bed when he felt the thing happening to first one leg then the other. ‘Mama! Come quick!’ he screamed.
