The Gunners. Rebecca Kauffman
gratitude for the gesture.
Mikey did not tell his friends that he might be going blind and was mining childhood relics, yearbooks and journals and stacks of Polaroid photographs rubber-banded together, searching for pictures of his friends and meditating on them, knowing that these dear faces might one day elude him.
In early January, the city of Buffalo was fossilized beneath three feet of hard gray snow, the air bitterly cold and humid. People moved slowly, like cogs in an old machine, muscles hard, cold licking at their faces. Pipes had burst at General Mills, and Mikey was working twelve-hour days. Mikey’s thirtieth birthday came and went, with a text from Alice and a generic card from HR in his work mailbox, the typeface meant to resemble actual handwriting, acknowledging him as a valued employee and wishing him a special day.
It was a week after Mikey’s birthday that he received word of Sally’s death.
The news came from a colleague, someone who had attended Mikey’s high school but who was several years younger than Mikey. The colleague had not known Sally, but news of a former student’s suicide had reached him through the local news. Her body was found in the Buffalo River, less than a quarter mile downstream from the Buffalo Skyway. Her car was parked just off the entrance to the Skyway, an elevated steel bridge that soared one hundred feet over the water beneath. Her mother had reported her missing late the night before. Although there was no note, it appeared to be a straightforward suicide. Her mother confirmed her struggle with depression. Video surveillance from the bridge showed that she acted alone, just after midnight. Mikey’s colleague realized that Sally would have been about Mikey’s age, and he asked Mikey about it at work, wondering if Mikey had heard the news about his classmate, wondering if Mikey had known or would even remember the girl. Her name was Sally, the guy said to Mikey. Did you know a Sally?
Funeral arrangements were announced—it would take place in two weeks at St. Mary’s, the church nearest Sally’s mother’s home, just six blocks off Ingram.
Mikey was broken, muddled, distracted. He could think of nothing else, yet no matter how long and hard he thought on Sally, he could never reach her center. Furthermore, as he tried to recall memories of her, he realized he could never reach his own center—he could never reach something that felt entirely real, or true. He began to wonder if he had no center. A hollow man.
Mikey was in touch with Alice, Jimmy, Sam, and Lynn to make sure the news had reached them. They all planned to come to town for the service.
Knowing that he would see the four of them brought Mikey some measure of solace as well as nervous anticipation. Adulthood and years of living alone had taken a toll on his confidence. He wanted to believe that he would still be able to relate to his friends face-to-face, would still genuinely interest them, could offer comfort and share a laugh. But in pessimistic moments, he feared uneasiness between them brought on simply by the passage of time, too much life lived apart.
In the days leading up to Sally’s funeral, Mikey got a haircut and shoveled snow and vacuumed up Friday’s hair. He often found himself short of breath, even when he had barely stirred.
He avoided the Skyway, taking the long and indirect route north on Niagara Street instead.
Several days before the funeral, Mikey received a call from Jimmy inviting him to a catered dinner following the funeral service at the lakeside vacation home not far from Lackawanna that Jimmy had purchased years earlier for his family. Jimmy said he would be inviting Alice, Lynn, and Sam as well. Jimmy said there were enough beds for everyone, and all were welcome to spend the night.
Mikey thanked Jimmy for the invite and said, “Can I bring something?”
“Oh God, no.” Jimmy laughed bleakly. “Zeppelli’s catering the thing. There’ll be enough for an army.”
Mikey said, “How are you holding up, bud?”
Jimmy said, “I just can’t believe she’s gone. Again.” It was quiet for a bit, then Jimmy said in a strange voice, “I can’t stop wondering . . . Well, do you know anything, Mikey?”
Mikey’s head felt way too heavy for his neck, not right at all. His heart was loud. He had the strangest sensation, as if he were being pulled at, as if he were in someone else’s dream.
He stared out his window and saw that an enormous flock of grackles—there had to be a thousand of them, maybe ten thousand—had come to rest in the row of diseased-looking maple trees just on the other side of the street.
Mikey got up, phone still at his ear, walked to his door, opened it, and stepped out into the snow.
The air was thunderous, full and alive with the clamorous chatter and vibration of the birds. But moments later, when Mikey closed the door behind him, some of the birds nearest him were startled by the sound and took flight. Others followed. More. Mikey exhaled a white cloud, and his empty lungs tickled with cold. He coughed and watched the birds as they lifted off the trees in a magnificent ripple. It wasn’t long at all until the entire flock had departed in a huge spinning black cone, leaving only a blank and depleted void in their wake. An after sound. A holy, yearning silence, like a prayer that was too sad and too deeply felt to be spoken aloud.
Mikey still held his phone at his ear, his lips now paralyzed by the cold, and Jimmy said, “Mikey? You there?”
Mikey finally said, “I don’t know.” As these words slid out of his mouth, they felt long and cool, like snakes.
Chapter 3
When Mikey started kindergarten, he was a shy boy who sat by himself on the bus while other children hollered and clapped and traded jokes and insults and items from their lunch boxes. Mikey watched out the window in the morning as other children were picked up from his street, and in the afternoon as they were dropped off. The Italian kid with eyes the color of a swimming pool who hung out with the chubby, blond, pink-faced kid whose r’s came out like w’s, the two of them always talking football, drawing out plays with smelly black markers, X’s and swooping lines in a notebook. The tall, black-eyed girl with broad, high cheeks who ordered everyone else around, working in as many curse words and creative insults as possible. Butt-slug! Ass-face-mouth-breather! The freckled girl with the curly red hair who skipped recess to practice the piano in the music room. The slim, silver-haired girl who lived several doors up from Mikey. Usually, like him, she waited for the bus alone, but on rare occasion, her slim, silver-haired mother waited by her side. She typically sat by herself on the bus, too. Often, she sat in the seat directly behind Mikey, and sometimes he could hear her singing quietly to herself.
One morning, this girl sat down directly next to him.
As she sank into the seat, she said with low eyes, as though issuing an apology, “There are no more empty ones.”
She smelled very clean. She wore a green headband. Up close, Mikey could see that her hair was not actually silver, but the whitest blond he had ever seen, so white that it took on the hue of other colors and lights around them. Her face was as pretty and delicate as lace. She arranged her backpack beneath her little legs.
Mikey said, “It’s okay.”
The girl sighed and touched the ends of her hair.
He said, “What’s your name?”
“Sally.”
“I’m Mikey.”
“You’re a kindergartner?”
He nodded. “What grade are you in?”
“First.”
“Do you know how to read?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I don’t yet.”
“That’s okay,” Sally said. “Is that your daddy who was soaping up the car?”
“What?”
“I saw a guy soaping up a car in your driveway the other day. A big old white car.”
“Oh, yes,” Mikey said. “That’s