even if only for those three or four minutes. He said they
were the longest, interminable three or four minutes he’d
known. Once, it took me almost a half hour. Fluke thing,
but Lem was clean out of his mind, running back and
forth, pulling his hair out in clumps.
When he was nine, Lem fell down the stairs some-
thing terrible, broke his neck right clean. Lucky Mom
and Dad weren’t home, he said, or they would have
caught a bad scare.
How long were you out? I asked.
I don’t know, dummy, he said. Time want on my
mind.
Must have been long, I said, wondering.
Must have, he said.
And how long until the bark?
Next day.
Why do you even call it bark?
What else you wanna call it, dummy.
I don’t know.
I don’t know either.
I guess because it was brownish and sort of looked
like bark, it was alright to call it bark, though it felt like
something else. Like cork, maybe.
My first death, then, was by hanging, because the
weather was nice, and it was fast and only took jump-
ing from a rickety chair we put underneath a tree. The
chair we scraped from the barn, the tree was an old oak,
crooked and knobbly.
I can’t believe it, I said afterward, massaging my
neck.
See? Lem asked.
I can’t believe it, said I.
Lem wonked me in the back of the head, but we were
both laughing so hard I wasn’t mad at him. Hurt like a
mother, though, next morning.
I waited for the bark all next day, and the day after,
but none appeared.
Huh, said Lem. That’s strange.
Strange, I repeated. Maybe I did sumpin wrong.
You can’t be doing anything wrong, dummy. Not
with this. You wake up, you did fine. Just wait, it’ll come.
And it did, though not in the same way that it hap-
pened to Lem. With Lem, it was just there, no questions
asked. In my case, there were birthing pains or some-
thing. It started during US history. Roanoke and the
missing settlers. I’ll always remember. This itch started
up, only it wasn’t like a real itch, which is on the skin.
This was deeper, but also like it might not be there at all.
Might I be going crazy? I wondered.
Should I run to Doctor Burton’s? I asked Lem, sort
of worried.
He did this thing he does, where you think he had
a stroke or something, but he’s only laughing, silently.
This is it, Danny, he cried.
What’s what? I asked, bewildered but happy that he’d
used, for the first time in what felt like several years, or
ever, my name, instead of calling me dummy, or dunce,
or idiot.
You’ve done it, he said now.
I don’t get it. Do I got the measles?
No, you don’t got the measles, dummy. You got bark.
I smiled, crookedly.
I do?
Well, let’s see. Pull up your shirt.
But I didn’t want to. Not like this. Not here, and not
with Lem watching, in case I was making a fool out of
myself and there wasn’t anything there at all.
Ok, ok, said Lem. Suit yourself. See you at home.
And off he went, back to class.
I was late, too, but couldn’t resist. The second
he was gone, I was groping underneath my shirt for
the telltale feel of the bark. At first, I found nothing,
but then, almost giving up, I gave out a tiny whoop
of j oy.
I had bark.
It was the tiniest piece, and if you didn’t know
what to look for, you’d have missed it. But I knew.
With a grin, I walked back to Mrs. Johnson’s class,
taking in stride the scolding and the threat to call
my parents, should it happen again.
We had a little celebration that day, just Lem
and I. We couldn’t very well tell anyone, but even
so, it was the biggest day of my life.
From now on, said Lem, we’ll up the ante. You
die once a week.
Ok, I said, and alright.
I knew that Lem died at least once every day, often
when I wasn’t around. But once a week was totally fine
with me. Lem knew best, and I trusted him with my
life. His bark was almost a half inch across, by that time,My first death, then, was by hanging,
because the weather was nice, and it was
fast and only took jumping from a rickety
chair we put underneath a tree.We had a little
celebration
that day, just
Lem and I.
We couldn’t
very well tell
anyone, but
even so, it was
the biggest day
of my life.WORLDLIT.ORG 29