Bruce Holland Rogers
THE DEAD BOY AT YOUR WINDOW
In a distant country where the towns had improbable names, a woman
looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see
what the midwife saw. This was her son. She had brought him forth in
agony, and now he must suck. She pressed his lips to her breast.
"But he is dead!" said the midwife.
"No," his mother lied. "I felt him suck just now." Her lie was as milk to
the baby, who really was dead but who now opened his dead eyes and
began to kick his dead legs. "There, do you see?" And she made the
midwife call the father in to know his son.
The dead boy never did suck at his mother's breast. He sipped no water,
never took food of any kind, so of course he never grew. But his father,
who was handy with all things mechanical, built a rack for stretching
him so that, year by year, he could be as tall as the other children. When
he had seen six winters, his parents sent him to school. Though he was
as tall as the other students, the dead boy was strange to look upon. His
bald head was almost the right size, but the rest of him was thin as a
piece of leather and dry as a stick. He tried to make up for his ugliness
with diligence, and every night he was up late practicing his letters and
numbers. His voice was like the rasping of dry leaves. Because it was so
hard to hear him, the teacher made all the other students hold their
breaths when he gave an answer. She called on him often, and he was
always right.
Naturally, the other children despised him. The bullies sometimes waited
for him after school, but beating him, even with sticks, did him no
harm. He wouldn't even cry out.
One windy day, the bullies stole a ball of twine from their teacher's
desk, and after school, they held the dead boy on the ground with his
arms out so that he took the shape of a cross. They ran a stick in
through his left shirt sleeve and out through the right. They stretched his
shirt tails down to his ankles, tied everything in place, fastened the ball
of twine to a buttonhole, and launched him. To their delight, the dead
boy made an excellent kite. It only added to their pleasure to see that
owing to the weight of his head, he flew upside down.
When they were bored with watching the dead boy fly, they let go of
the string. The dead boy did not drift back to earth, as any ordinary kite
would do. He glided. He could steer a little, though he was mostly at the
mercy of the winds. And he could not come down. Indeed, the wind
blew him higher and higher.
The sun set, and still the dead boy rode the wind. The moon rose and by
its glow he saw the fields and forests drifting by. He saw mountain
ranges pass beneath him, and oceans and continents. At last the winds
gentled, then ceased, and he glided down to the ground in a strange
country. The ground was bare. The moon and stars had vanished from
the sky. The air seemed gray and shrouded. The dead boy leaned to one
side and shook himself until the stick fell from his shirt. He wound up
the twine that had trailed behind him and waited for the sun to rise. Hour
after long hour, there was only the same grayness. So he began to
wander.
He encountered a man who looked much like himself, a bald head atop
leathery limbs. "Where am I?" the dead boy asked.
The man looked at the grayness all around. "Where?" the man said. His
voice, like the dead boy's, sounded like the whisper of dead leaves
stirring.
A woman emerged from the grayness. Her head was bald, too, and her
body dried out. "This!" she rasped, touching the dead boy's shirt. "I
remember this!" She tugged on the dead boy's sleeve. "I had a thing like
this!"
"Clothes?" said the dead boy.
"Clothes!" the woman cried. "That's what it is called!"
More shriveled people came out of the grayness. They crowded close to
see the strange dead boy who wore clothes. Now the dead boy knew
where he was. "This is the land of the dead."
"Why do you have clothes?" asked the dead woman. "We came here
with nothing! Why do you have clothes?"
"I have always been dead," said the dead boy, "but I spent six years
among the living."
"Six years!" said one of the dead. "And you have only just now come to
us?"
"Did you know my wife?" asked a dead man. "Is she still among the
living?"
"Give me news of my son!"
"What about my sister?"
The dead people crowded closer.
The dead boy said, "What is your sister's name?" But the dead could not
remember the names of their loved ones. They did not even remember
their own names. Likewise, the names of the places where they had
lived, the numbers given to their years, the manners or fashions of their
times, all of these they had forgotten.
"Well," said the dead boy, "in the town where I was born, there was a
widow. Maybe she was your wife. I knew a boy whose mother had
died, and an old woman who might have been your sister."
"Are you going back?"
"Of course not," said another dead person. "No one ever goes back."
"I think I might," the dead boy said. He explained about his flying.
"When next the wind blows...."
"The wind never blows here," said a man so newly dead that he
remembered wind.
"Then you could run with my string."
"Would that work?"
"Take a message to my husband!" said a dead woman.
"Tell my wife that I miss her!" said a dead man.
"Let my sister know I haven't forgotten her!"
"Say to my lover that I love him still!"
They gave him their messages, not knowing whether or not their loved
ones were themselves long dead. Indeed, dead lovers might well be
standing next to one another in the land of the dead, giving messages for
each other to the dead boy. Still, he memorized them all. Then the dead
put the stick back inside his shirt sleeves, tied everything in place, and
unwound his string. Running as fast as their leathery legs could manage,
they pulled the dead boy back into the sky, let go of the string, and
watched with their dead eyes as he glided away.
He glided a long time over the gray stillness of death until at last a puff
of wind blew him higher, until a breath of wind took him higher still,
until a gust of wind carried him up above the grayness to where he
could see the moon and the stars. Below he saw moonlight reflected in
the ocean. In the distance rose mountain peaks. The dead boy came to
earth in a little village.
He knew no one here, but he went to the first house he came to and
rapped on the bedroom shutters. To the woman who answered, he said,
"A message from the land of the dead," and gave her one of the
messages. The woman wept, and gave him a message in return.
House by house, he delivered the messages. House by house, he
collected messages for the dead. In the morning, he found some boys to
fly him, to give him back to the wind's mercy so he could carry these
new messages back to the land of the dead.
So it has been ever since. On any night, head full of messages, he may
rap upon any window to remind someone - to remind you, perhaps - of
love that outlives memory, of love that needs no names.
Copyright 1998 Bruce Holland Rogers
