by Michael McSweeney
The moth is dead at the center of my pillow, brown wings folded, little legs curled like plastic straws. I bend down and touch one of its wings. For a few uneasy minutes I wonder if the moth died in mid-air and fell, if moths become ghosts when they die or if people become moths when they die. Then I decide there's no way I can sleep in my bed tonight. A light breeze wanders in through the open window. It's always breezy here in Fallston. I sit on the edge of the bed and pray the moth goes to Heaven, and for me to find some rest somehow because it's past 2 a.m. and I'm tired, broke and desperate for temporary closure until the unoiled engine of my life starts up again.
Then, an orange flash, and a hot boom that shakes the building. I crawl to the window. Smoke coils from the door of the Avenue B laundromat across the street. Inside, a fire alarm whoops and strobes a frantic pulse of white. A nearby minivan yowls and its headlights blink with terror. Driven by onlooker instinct I tug on my shoes and rush downstairs, then out the front door to Avenue B. The air stinks. Old eggs, burnt rubber, gasoline, enough to make me sick. I puke on the wet grass and watch as someone tumbles out of the smoke-choked laundromat door. It's Charlie McDonough carrying a big change machine.
Give me a hand, Charlie shouts.
He runs over and pushes half the change machine into my hands. Its busted metal edges cut my palms. But I keep it steady and together we run frog-legged up the street, away from the smoke. A firetruck crows to life on the other side of town. We cross empty Main Street beneath a leering yellow light, then jog uphill along Avenue C past a dark-windowed law office and a restaurant that sells $20 breakfast plates.
Charlie and I graduated from high school together. Sometimes I see him at the Ice House or in the drive-thrus on Friday nights while we each chase fast food delivery tips around the valley. He scares me. Last month we played a deer hunting video game at the Ice House and Charlie got so mad after losing he smashed the plastic rifle against the side of the game machine. He kept hitting the machine even after the gun fell to pieces until Old Jake kicked him out, and after a few minutes I went outside and found Charlie picking cigarette butts out of the cracks in the sidewalk. Then he reared back and yelled Motherfucker! over and over until someone living above the Ice House opened their window and threatened to call the cops. Charlie yelled Motherfucker! again and the guy threw a liquor bottle at him, but he missed and the bottle clattered unbroken into the road. Charlie stopped long enough for the guy to slam his window shut, and then I watched Charlie smoke a few centimeters of paper and rotten tobacco. I was scared about what might happen but I decided to stay and be Charlie's friend because people without friends die alone and dying alone is the worst thing there is, and because even people like Charlie who chase others away with their ugly loneliness don't deserve to die alone, and because maybe one day I'll be alone and will suffer enough to believe the terrible lie that a lonely death can be good.
We run around the side of the Fallston youth center beneath the glare of an LED light, past an empty bulletin board, then into a gravel backyard where we hide in the shadow of a dumpster. Charlie and I lower the change machine to the ground. I wipe sweat from my eyes. Charlie bites a knuckle and jiggles a lever on the change machine.
Fucking thing won't open, he says.
We can't stay here, I tell him.
No shit, dumbass, says Charlie.
We squat and listen as police sirens cry and multiply. Firetruck horns, too, crowding the air, coming closer with each passing second. I wonder if the fire has spread, if the whole neighborhood is gone, if I'll ever see my little room again. I've never been an accomplice and I don't know the first thing about being a criminal. But I do know that the most important thing is to escape.
I have an idea, I tell Charlie.
What? he asks.
A good place to hide, I tell him.
I climb over a fence behind the dumpster and together Charlie and I ease the change machine over it. We cross several yards in the direction of the canal. The C— River passes through Fallston, and a hundred years ago people built a paper mill that now sits dead on a strip of land between the river and the canal. The canal flows like a pebbly dream through reeds and bird nests until it pushes the turbines of a power station. If we can climb into the water, then we'll just float until the cops give up.
We twist through unlit streets until the final quarter-mile sprint to a rusty bridge beside the mill, which meets the road down from the piney mountain separating Fallston and the highway north to Vermont. A dull lantern casts a long orange oval across the bridge.
Tires squeal behind us and I learn a new kind of fear, one with walls and chains, and Charlie and I streak across the bridge. The crash and shared panic of our steps echo on the water. Blue lights flare over the top of the mountain.
We're fucked, says Charlie.
A low stone wall faces the river just out of view of the road, one we can hide behind until the cops go by. Charlie sees it, too, and we break into a sprint. The change machine rattles between us. We reach the wall and jump over and fall through a hurricane dark, a thirty-foot spin, long enough to scream and draw a breath as Charlie thrashes and wails beside me until a spasm of red and nothingness.
Then, I feel cold, the cold of nearby water, then pain, pain everywhere. Legs. I can feel my legs. I push myself upright, left arm numb, right arm hot and hollow. Head throbbing, heart shaking. For a few moments I can't remember Charlie's name.
Then I say, Charlie, Charlie.
He's facedown in the water, body bent like a worn-out paper clip, change machine smashed apart beside him. Against all the pain I drag Charlie back to the shore and roll him onto his back. His breath is slow and thick, and blood trickles from his ears. I rest a hand on his shoulder and squeeze.
Charlie, I tell him.
Police lights smear the side of the mill above us and voices echo down the long drop. We're hidden in darkness but out on the river there's moonlight, a silver shudder beautiful and lonely across the faces of a hundred coins in the low and rocky water. I want to move and take one. But then the cops will see us, and then that's it: arrest, jail, the end. If I stay, Charlie will die.
But he won't die alone. God help me, he won't die alone.
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Michael McSweeney
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