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Authors: Jess Walter
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and he threw both his hands in the air to indicate that the match was over. Then he bent his knees and pointed both hands at Mr. Gibbons’s class. They had won. He stood there for the longest time, both his hands pointed to his right, panting, a half-smile on his face. Then he straightened up, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and looked from one side to the other, shyly, as if asking, Did you see what I just did?
Everyone let go of the rope, the teachers blew their whistles, and we were escorted back to our classrooms to wait for the bus to take us home for the summer. No one said a thing to Eli; he simply curled up on himself again, slinking away before the moment could be taken from him.
7 | I’VE BEEN THINKING
I ’ve been thinking about the purpose of a statement such as this. It is intended as a confession, obviously, something of a legal document (even scrawled on yellow pad, like some manic trial note). And yet this statement also has more than a whiff of memoir, of the commission of my death to paper. After all, who writes a memoir but the man whose life is over? The memoirist believes that he will live on in transcription, but in fact he is describing a life rather than living one, abandoning the visceral for the verbal. It is a kind of surrender.
I am finished. All the pretty detectives in the world can’t change that. There is only one ending to a story like mine. And before I get on with that long and unforgettable summer of 1975, before I finish telling how Eli saved my life, and how I conspired to commit a murder twenty-five years later, I will reveal that ending—not just the ending of my own story, but the ending of all stories. It is this:
I died alone.
Now perhaps I should have confined myself to a strict legal document, wherefore and in furtherance and the like. But such a document could never begin to convey the depths of my misdeeds, nor of my contrition; there are facts here that simply do not adhere to the rigid structure of the Revised Legal Codes of Washington State.
Take the summer, for instance. What statute covers the feel of the sun that summer, its immediacy and grace, its heat on my browned forearms, on the tanned skin of my neck and shoulders? How can a lawyer explain the rush of pavement beneath my bicycle tires or the defiance of gravity committed by my tennis shoes? Perhaps you remember the length of your own July days, the endless possibilities that existed from the seat of a Schwinn, the swagger of boys moving down a suburban street with the streetlights beginning to hum and spark, the fearless poise of it all. The longing.
That summer, days lasted forever. Somewhere a scientist is proving thattime is bent and yawned by the forces of childhood and summer, and the jury awaits his inevitable arrival in Stockholm open armed, individual jurists sobbing because this temporal genius has finally proven that our childhoods are longer than our adult lives, and that time is not a line, as they have been trying to deceive us into believing, but a slope, picking up speed and danger as it goes on.
For myself, in that long June of 1975 I rose early and patted my long, thick hair rather than comb it. I fought with my brother and sisters over the last bowl of Cocoa Puffs or Super Sugar Crisp or King Vitamin; no matter what kind of processed, sugared cereal we ate, my mother bought only last bowls of the stuff. We planted ourselves in front of the TV with zealous punctuality, and yet we never so much as smiled at the crap that played before us: Underdog and Dick Tracy and the Go Go Gophers and Mr. Peabody and Klondike Cat (“Savoir Faire has stolen my cheeses!”). The point of cartoons is not enjoyment. Check the faces of any kid planted in front of the tube. It’s not fun. It’s a business. They don’t like cartoons any more than we like work; it’s what they do.
By ten each morning, I was on my bike. I’d ride down to Everson’s house and we’d pretend to have karate fights or
Everyone let go of the rope, the teachers blew their whistles, and we were escorted back to our classrooms to wait for the bus to take us home for the summer. No one said a thing to Eli; he simply curled up on himself again, slinking away before the moment could be taken from him.
7 | I’VE BEEN THINKING
I ’ve been thinking about the purpose of a statement such as this. It is intended as a confession, obviously, something of a legal document (even scrawled on yellow pad, like some manic trial note). And yet this statement also has more than a whiff of memoir, of the commission of my death to paper. After all, who writes a memoir but the man whose life is over? The memoirist believes that he will live on in transcription, but in fact he is describing a life rather than living one, abandoning the visceral for the verbal. It is a kind of surrender.
I am finished. All the pretty detectives in the world can’t change that. There is only one ending to a story like mine. And before I get on with that long and unforgettable summer of 1975, before I finish telling how Eli saved my life, and how I conspired to commit a murder twenty-five years later, I will reveal that ending—not just the ending of my own story, but the ending of all stories. It is this:
I died alone.
Now perhaps I should have confined myself to a strict legal document, wherefore and in furtherance and the like. But such a document could never begin to convey the depths of my misdeeds, nor of my contrition; there are facts here that simply do not adhere to the rigid structure of the Revised Legal Codes of Washington State.
Take the summer, for instance. What statute covers the feel of the sun that summer, its immediacy and grace, its heat on my browned forearms, on the tanned skin of my neck and shoulders? How can a lawyer explain the rush of pavement beneath my bicycle tires or the defiance of gravity committed by my tennis shoes? Perhaps you remember the length of your own July days, the endless possibilities that existed from the seat of a Schwinn, the swagger of boys moving down a suburban street with the streetlights beginning to hum and spark, the fearless poise of it all. The longing.
That summer, days lasted forever. Somewhere a scientist is proving thattime is bent and yawned by the forces of childhood and summer, and the jury awaits his inevitable arrival in Stockholm open armed, individual jurists sobbing because this temporal genius has finally proven that our childhoods are longer than our adult lives, and that time is not a line, as they have been trying to deceive us into believing, but a slope, picking up speed and danger as it goes on.
For myself, in that long June of 1975 I rose early and patted my long, thick hair rather than comb it. I fought with my brother and sisters over the last bowl of Cocoa Puffs or Super Sugar Crisp or King Vitamin; no matter what kind of processed, sugared cereal we ate, my mother bought only last bowls of the stuff. We planted ourselves in front of the TV with zealous punctuality, and yet we never so much as smiled at the crap that played before us: Underdog and Dick Tracy and the Go Go Gophers and Mr. Peabody and Klondike Cat (“Savoir Faire has stolen my cheeses!”). The point of cartoons is not enjoyment. Check the faces of any kid planted in front of the tube. It’s not fun. It’s a business. They don’t like cartoons any more than we like work; it’s what they do.
By ten each morning, I was on my bike. I’d ride down to Everson’s house and we’d pretend to have karate fights or
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