The City Still Breathing by Matthew Heiti Page B

pushes the kid’s hand back and tries to smile, but it hurts. He turns and heads back out, trying not to look at the kid – the blood from his nose matching Gordon’s own. He shuts the door as softly as he can and walks off, the cooling slag closing the night in around him. You can’t save anyone. Not even yourself.
    It’s only when he climbs the stairs to his room, key in lock, that he remembers the wallet he forgot, the five maybe ten dollars inside.
    Hell, let him have something. Pushing through to the roar of the empty space beyond.

10
    N ormando is sinking into the flowered chesterfield, sucking on a bowl of stewed prunes, the television strobe lighting up the room. Randolph Scott is coming through a canyon, white cowboy hat pushed back as he speeches at Joel McCrea about poor men. McCrea’s cradling a rifle like a baby and he looks off into the great blue yonder and Normando pulls himself out of the swamp of the chesterfield, dialling the volume up until the speakers rattle so he can hear this. Hear him say it. Almost chokes on a prune straining to hear it.
    â€˜All I want is to enter my house justified.’
    Pat steps in front of the set.
    â€˜Norm – Norm, can you turn that down? Turn it down, Norm.’ She doesn’t wait, yanking the plug out. ‘Need you to come look at my pee, Norm – it’s got a funny colour. Can you come look at my pee, Norm?’
    Normando struggles out of the chesterfield, making the move to plug the set back in.
    â€˜You’ve already seen that one, Norm. Can you just take a blue minute here and look at my pee?’
    â€˜Pat, I don’t need to see yer goddamned pee.’
    â€˜Well, you just go ahead and write that on my gravestone, Norm.’ Pat turning away, turning back. ‘What’re you doing moping about in here with the lights out?’
    â€˜Lights weren’t out – watching the TV .’
    â€˜Always moping about, you. You just haven’t been the same, Norm. No sir.’ She lets the words hang, incomplete, her face all pinched up as she walks out of the room. Not since you retired – but she doesn’t say it, and her not saying it lets the words become something else. Something that reaches back farther. Not since the mine. Not since the boy. Not since ever.
    She chirps up again from the other room. ‘You hear bout that boy they found out on the highway?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜What d’you think about that then?’
    And he doesn’t answer, because you don’t talk about the damned dead. They’re gone and that’s that. Let em have their peace.
    â€˜This came for you today – first one.’ Scurrying back in, she shoves an envelope into his hand – plastic crinkle of a government window and his name typed in. ‘You’re an old man now.’
    She leaves him alone to fumble with the plug, to curse, to sit back and be silent in the dark of the living room.

11
    E milia first mentions something about a body after they crawl under the wooden fort. The thump thump of the other kids running around above them, laughing like a bunch of dorks. Emilia Zanetti and Elwy Zott side by side down here in the dark with their plastic ninjas and the last of the earwigs.
    â€˜And my dad said they don’t even know his name , isn’t that nuts?’ Emilia always asking her questions twice. ‘Isn’t it?’ But she never really needs an answer, so Elwy doesn’t say anything. Instead he tries to whistle. Because he’s nervous. And he can make great whistling faces but he can’t make great whistling sounds. Or any whistling sounds. It’s what Emilia calls his ghost whistle. Under the fort, Elwy purses his lips and makes strange breathing noises.
    â€˜Quit ghost whistling, El, this is serious.’
    Elwy stops making strange breathing noises and concentrates on not being nervous. It’s hard because thinking about dead bodies is