Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

me standing in the base of a huge tree, our backs against limbs so big that they could have been trees themselves.
My father’s visits were never as dramatic, nothing fantastic ever happened. He was just there. I can say that there was never any bad feelings around him. He was the embodiment of calm. He seemed at peace with himself and his environment. I could relax in his presence. He calmed me, especially if I had a rough day. He always seemed to appear after a rough day. I never imagined the staff requested his presence after such a day. His presence was like a sedative.
He visited after the mother of such days. It was Halloween. Leading up to the grand morning, the staff insisted over and over that I help prepare for the upcoming party. “Fuck no,” I answered. “I’m not a third-grader. Ask the other Speds. Leave me the hell alone!” Everyday, some staff person would invite me to help. Everyday, I’d tell them to shove it.
I was certain that the nurses and their aides were out to drive me insane. They were doing a good job. “Goddamn it! I’m not helping. I’m not a Sped and this is a Sped thing to do!”
The morning before Halloween, a cute nurse that I had a crush on pressed me. “Quit being such a party-pooper. Why don’t you join the fun?”
“I swear, if anyone asks me again, I’m going to piss on someone’s cornflakes.” A scattering of patients in the dayroom chuckled.
“You wouldn’t do that now, would you?” the nurse asked.
“Of course I won’t do it now. But when there’s cornflakes I will.” For the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of the meal served in the morning.
“Hey Jimmy,” a wise-ass patient called. “You going help us set up the party tomorrow?” Everyone laughed.
The next morning, Halloween morning, as we gathered for the morning meal, my memory didn’t leave me down. I snuck behind the wise-ass and as he was about to enjoy his cereal, I unleashed myself into his bowl.
“JESUS H CHRIST!” The wise-ass backed away from the table.
“Don’t call me Jimmy you asswipe! My name is James!”
Groans and laughter filled the dayroom.
“Don’t fuck with me. I mean what I say, I say what I mean, I mean it! Count on it!”
All day I was bothered by my words. Later that evening I questioned my father, “today, when I told everyone they could count on it, something clicked, but I’m not sure what it was. I don’t know why. Would you know why?”
“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask,” my father said. “But Shannie’s coming tonight. Ask her.”
“Shay-knee,” I repeated. I liked how the syllables rolled off my tongue. “You think she’d know?” I asked.
“She’ll have an idea.” My father patted my hand.
I studied her photograph.

Shannie walked into my room wearing seriousness on her face and a jacket over her shoulder. After small talk my father excused himself. “Don’t forget son.”
“Don’t forget what?”
“Something I said today,” I paused, struggling to remember the details.
“What did you say today?” Shannie asked.
I told her about the cornflakes. “You didn’t!” She laughed pushing my hair from my face.
I mentioned something clicking when I said, “count on it!”
She sat in the chair next to me. “What do you think it means?” Shannie clenched her jaw.
“I’m not sure.” I looked away from her, frustrated that I couldn’t get my thoughts together. Speaking to the wall I soldiered on. “I have this feeling like, that, that if I can figure this out, that, that I’ll like remember who I am. Like I know my name is James. I think my last name is Morrison. But, like, I, I’ll, ah, know, like, what my life was, ah, was all about, b-before the accident.”
Shannie remained silent.
“You know,” I turned to her. “You know who I am. You know what my life was like. You know what, what, what I said, what it means, don’t you?”
Shannie nodded her head.
“Tell me. Please. Tell me what it means.”
Shannie looked away and then back at me and away again. The corner of her mouth twitched, like when I first woke up in the hospital. Her eyes welled with tears and then she sighed.
“What? What is it?”
“Tell me what you know?” Shannie said.
“Goddamn it! Why can’t you just tell me?” I pounded the bed with both fists.
Shannie rose. “I’ll be right back.” Her eyes held mine.
“Don’t leave me?”
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“Should I trust you?”
“If you know what’s good for you,” she said.
“I don’t know who I am, how am I suppose to know what’s good for me?”
“Figure it out.”
“Are you serious? I can’t figure out shit, I’m almost a Sped.”
“I’m serious as a heart attack.” She paused. Leaning into me, she said: “If you ever call yourself a Sped again, I’ll beat you with a stick.” She disappeared. I heard her voice over the hallway’s din but couldn’t make out her words. It was a while before she returned. Stepping into the room, she said: “Tomorrow you and I are taking a ride.”
“What the fuck for?” Inside I rejoiced.
She leaned over me. “I don’t care how pissy you get. You don’t talk to me like that. Got it?”
My heart raced as I watched her hair dangle about her face.
“Got it?” she insisted. When I refused to answer she continued, “Listen James, I’m not here for my health - I love you. But if you’re gonna be an asshole, that’s fine with me, I’ll go home and you can spend tomorrow sitting in the dayroom watching the world go by.” She knew what strings to pull.
“Got it,” I whispered.
“Tomorrow you’re getting a crash course on James Morrison.”
I tossed and turned all night. I was horrified. I stared at the ceiling wondering what kind of person I was and the life I lived. Rediscovering truths about oneself is terrifying. I wasn’t totally clueless, but there were too many mysteries. I viewed my life like a nervous driver viewing a foggy, vaguely familiar road.
When morning came, Shannie and I set off on our mission of rediscovery. Despite being a threatening gray day, the first rays of hope burnt away the shroud of fog encasing me. It would be sometime before my fog would lift, but for the first time since the accident, I felt grounded.
“Take me to the picture,” I told Shannie as she drove from the rehab’s parking lot.
“What?” Shannie asked.
“Take me,” I paused, frustrated that I could not give more details. “Take me to the place in the picture.”
“What picture?” Shannie asked.
“The one on my TV. The one of you. You, you’re sitting against that build, building thing.”
“The arch? The arch in Valley Forge?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
The GTI crawled slowly over the cobblestones surrounding the arch. From the passenger seat I read aloud the quote which haunted me since first seeing it. Slowly, pronouncing each syllable I read aloud George Washington’s words: “We can not ad-mire e-nough the brav-er-y and fi-del, del-I-ty of the a-a-mer-I-can s-sol-dier-y.”
Shannie watched me.
“I don’t know why,” I faced Shannie. “But, that means something. It’s like if I can figure it out, I’ll be able to remember a lot about myself.”
Shannie’s lip twitched, the answers to all my questions wanted to rush from her. Remembering how headstrong she was, I didn’t ask her to tell. I’d save us the aggravation. I looked across the rolling fields, at lines of cannon, and the bare trees climbing the hills beyond. “I wasn’t a soldier was I? I mean I don’t think I was.”
“You weren’t. Two people very close to you were.”
“Really?” I asked, my voice rising.
“They’re both dead.” Shannie’s eyes held mine.
“Oh.” I looked across the field at the cannons.

As we crossed the Schuylkill River Bridge into Beyford recognition flooded over me like forgotten scenes of a favorite movie. JD’s tavern, Borough Hall, Wally’s, the blind black man walking down the street - all beguiled me. But nothing evoked a similar reaction to the glare of headlights from an approaching train. I watched the gates drop as Shannie climbed Main Street. Something about the train held the secret of who I had been.
Shannie turned right and then a left at the next street. Above the intersection a street sign read Cemetery Street. I stared out the window as we passed the Junior High School and then the old piano factory. My mind was alive with images, as if I was watching ghosts walking up and down the street. At the corner of Bainbridge and Cemetery Street, I saw the ghosts of a younger Shannie and myself standing on the corner, their attention captured by the shout of a familiar voice escaping a passing car.
As Shannie crossed the intersection, I cried: “That’s your house. I remember! I fucking remember! My house, it’s, it’s right next to yours on that side of the street!” I pointed to our left. “There it is!” I jumped up and down in my seat as the old Dutch Colonial came into view. Shannie downshifted as she guided the GTI over the curb cut and to a rest in the driveway.
“Welcome home Just James,” Shannie said – her smile all things bittersweet.
I struggled with the seatbelt before freeing myself. Climbing out of the GTI I was greeted by the echo of the freight train’s horn. I looked around, barely able to contain myself. Across Shannie’s yard, past the line of trees the tombstones in Fernwood stood at attention. Even the sky, glorious in its raw, damp grayness welcomed me home.
“Where are you going?” Shannie called after me as I waddled towards my house. From inside, a chorus of ecstatic barks cried out. I waddled faster.
“Your dad’s at work; no one’s home,” Shannie’s voice bled through Ellie’s barks.
“Silly Shannie,” I smiled over my shoulder. “I am.”
Inside, Ellie, whom for the longest while I insisted on calling Elsie, greeted me by jumping up and knocking me over. Ellie tried drowning me with her slobber as she licked my face. “GEEZUS PETE!” Shannie screamed seeing me supine on the floor. “Are you okay? ELLIE, STOP IT! COME ON, GET AWAY FROM HIM!”
“It’s okay,” I laughed.
“No it’s not! You’re hurt. You can’t be rough housing.”
“Who’s rough housing?” I hugged my other favorite blonde.
“Stop it,” Shannie grabbed Ellie’s collar and pulled her away. Ellie wheeled up on her hind legs from the force of Shannie’s tug. Women – they don’t understand the love between a boy and his dog.

“What his name?” I asked Shannie. I was sitting in my perch watching the stationary parade of tombstones. Each row aligned like a well-honed marching band.
“Whose name?” Shannie asked from my bed where she sat Indian style flipping through a magazine.
“The big kid,” I said tapping a finger against the windowpane, its hollow rap knocking on the door of concealed memories. “You know, the kid who lived in the house in the cemetery. I think his name was Larry Lighter or something like that.”
“Leroy Lightman,” Shannie answered.
I stared across the cemetery at the old converted church.
“Do you remember what we used to call him?” Shannie asked. A stuffy silence filled the air as I tried to remember. “Come on, let’s take a walk,” Shannie said. “He was a soldier,” Shannie told me as the three of us trudged into the cemetery. The smell of burning leaves hung in the air as Ellie sniffed about a tombstone.
“Count!” I nearly shouted. “We called him Count! He broke a kid’s leg once