Read Online A Matter of Life and Death or Something by Ben Stephenson - Free Book Online

pavement.
    â€œWhat’s that on your shoulder?” she said as I got to the doorway. I wondered if it was the angel or the devil. But it was just a leaf.
    â€œOh, it’s a leaf there,” she said.
    I said nothing.
    â€œA leaf there, just there on your shoulder,” she said in a jumpy way. She was almost singing. “Did you need something, honey?”
    I took the leaf off my shoulder.
    â€œUhhhm, I’m kind of investigating,” I said, giving myself away right at the start.
    â€œOooh, investigating me?”
    â€œNo. No. I was just wanting to talk to you, though.”
    After a second, she said “Sure!” and invited me inside.
    It was really weird to go into someone-I-didn’t-know’s house by myself, and I felt like I was a house intruder even though I was invited. I took off my red rubber boots and left my backpack on. She walked through a doorway on the left and into the white kitchen, and she offered me a chocolate chip cookie. I accepted, obviously. I sat at the kitchen table, even though I might as well have been sitting on a chair alone in the corner, or behind a big brick wall or inside a jail cell or something, because the table was covered in stuff. It piled up over my head. Laundry baskets, a couple dishes, a stapler, a ball of yarn, plastic bags of things, other things on top of more things, a roll of masking tape, a vase of flowers, and everything else, covered the table. The wall of stuff was so tall that I couldn’t even really see Mrs. Beckham on the other side of the kitchen. I felt like I was a prisoner in sanitary confinement. On one side the mess spilled onto the floor. I looked around. The whole house was like that: walls of stuff.
    I took the little black tape recorder that Simon gave me for my birthday out of my backpack and put it on top of a book called Basic Gardening.
    â€œHow professional!” said Mrs. Beckham when she saw my tape recorder.
    I pushed RECORD.
    â€œSo, Mrs. Beckham—”
    â€œBrenda.”
    â€œSo Brenda. What are you doing this evening?”
    â€œArthur, right?”
    â€œArthur Williams.”
    â€œWell Arthur, I took the day off of work. I called in sick. I told them I was up to my neck in mucus and I might be back tomorrow. Really, I wanted to dig up my garden.”
    â€œSpring fever,” I said cleverly.
    She laughed. “Certainly!”
    â€œIsn’t it too early for that still?”
    â€œWell maybe,” she said. “Who knows.”
    I knew. The ground was probably still frozen solid. But that wasn’t the point so I kept interviewing.
    â€œWhere is everybody else?”
    â€œSam’s at work still. He works late. The kids are all moved out of course, well you know that. Yup, too many cowboys and not enough Indians, as they say.”
    â€œNative Americans,” I said.
    â€œHmm?”
    â€œIt’s ‘too many cowboys and not enough Native Americans.’”
    â€œOh yes, yes of course.”
    â€œAlso First Nations.”
    My brain started to boggle itself. It was a good thing she was a good talker, because I was not a good interviewer. It was really hard to figure out what we were talking about, so I didn’t even know which questions to ask. But she was kind of interviewing herself anyway.
    â€œSo, I’ve just had my fingers in all the pies this afternoon—cleaning the house, reading, doing this and that, well you can probably tell.”
    I couldn’t tell.
    â€œâ€”And I haven’t even got to the garden yet! But you know, a stitch in time saves nine.”
    I nodded.
    â€œUmm, so what do you need all this stuff for?” I asked.
    â€œWhich stuff?”
    â€œI mean, well, nevermind.”
    I wanted to get the heck out of there. Mrs. Beckham had sat down on a chair across the table and across the fort made of stuff, and I peeped over the top, between a checkery shirt and the edge of a DVD case. She was giving me a funny