Life According to the Dead

Jim

I was six years old the first time I met a dead person.

Looking back, I think I was pretty lucky under the circumstances, at least as far as things like this go. It wasn't a howling, blood-soaked ghoul or anything really disturbing like that. I think I actually had it pretty good. I was on a field trip with my kindergarten class in downtown Meadford when it happened, and we were all standing around on the sidewalk, shivering in the pouring rain while we waited for the bus to come and pick us up.

My teacher, Mrs. Murphy, was a shriveled little woman with earrings like pointy purple bouncy balls and a surly, irritable disposition. She wasn't the kind of person you'd expect to make a living teaching little kids the alphabet, but there you have it. She kept snapping at everyone to stay together or we would get lost, and swearing under her breath and checking her watch because the lousy bus was already about ten minutes late. Anna-Claire James, of course, was the only kid in the whole class who had thought to bring an umbrella, and the rest of us were getting quickly drenched in the downpour.

We were going by the buddy system, you know, the one where you stick with your buddy and do not separate No Matter What. My buddy was Tony Rodriguez, which was hardly surprising – back then the two of us were as good as glued to each other. I wanted to walk around the fountain and all of the shops downtown, but Tony was against it.

"We're supposed to stay and wait for the bus," he said.

"Rules were made to be broken." It was my signature argument.

"But Mrs. Murphy said–"

"Tony," I broke in, rounding on him, "don't you want to get ice cream? There's an ice cream shop right there."

He bit his lip. I could practically see the chocolate and vanilla swirling in his eyes beneath lashes flecked by raindrops.

Before he got a chance to answer, Anna-Claire tapped him on the shoulder. "You can't just walk around," she said, perfectly matter-of-fact as she adjusted the end of her umbrella against one shoulder. "The bus will be here any minute."

Tony shoved his hands into his pockets, still indecisive. He squinted at me through the rain.

"Oh, I don't know–"

"Look," Anna-Claire interrupted, pointing a triumphant finger toward the road. "Here it is now." Sure enough, the mustard-yellow bus was rounding a nearby corner and slowing down as it approached us, its wheels churning up puddles in the gutter. My shoulders slumped in disappointment.

"Excuse me?"

At first I didn't think the woman was talking to me, and only after she repeated herself did I turn around in puzzlement. She stood with a somewhat crooked posture, hunched over but with her feet still firmly planted on the ground, her stocking-wrapped legs sticking out from under a hand-stitched grey skirt. In my eyes, she was ancient, probably in her eighties or nineties. Her skin folded over and creased in on itself in countless wrinkles, and her hair was the color of off-white parchment, like the pages of a decrepit book. In addition to the skirt, she was wearing a scratchy-looking pink sweater with a stripy pattern that featured a bunch of different terriers. And she was looking straight at me.

"Uh, hi," I said.

Tony nudged me. "Who are you talking to?"

"The old lady."