Voices Read online

  “What?"

  “His grandmother's dead. She'll show him around."

  “Around? Around where?"

  “How the hell should I know?” Crocker said. “Heaven, probably."

  “You got to be kidding.” I couldn't help but laugh. “You're making that stuff up.” But somehow I really wanted to believe it.

  “I thought you said you saw something,” Crocker said, hanging his head. “And I believed you.... I wanted to know what you saw—"

  “I said I thought I saw something.” I punched him hard on the arm to make him feel better. “And it wasn't nothing but a glowing like a teevee tube when you turn it off."

  “I never saw that."

  “Now tell me what else did Matt say?” I asked.

  “He hates Bill Haley, but we got Jackie Williams right."

  “Uh, huh,” I said.

  “Well, that's what I thought I heard,” Crocker said.

  “Why'd you say ‘cool'?” I asked.

  “Whaddyamean?"

  “When you were looking up in the air, you said, ‘Cool.’ Don't you remember?"

  “Yeah."

  “Well?"

  And Crocker started laughing. It was like he couldn't stop. He kept leaning forward and stumbling and then laughing even louder. I couldn't help but smile, and I kept knuckling his arm until he told me.

  “He said he was going to visit the Big Bopper."

  “What?"

  “That's what he said. And Ritchie Valens."

  “You're so full of crap,” I said.

  But now I couldn't stop laughing either.

  “Then maybe dying's not so bad,” I said; and we fell down right there on the sidewalk on Ackley Avenue in front of a brown, shingled house that belonged to Mrs. Campbell, my third grade teacher.

  I don't know what it was, but I just couldn't stop laughing and crying.

  Neither could Crocker.

  And who knows, maybe I really did see something flickering in the air above Matt's dead body while he was floating around in Heaven somewhere meeting his grandmother.

  And maybe he did get to see the Big Bopper.

  Just like the Big Bopper probably got to see Valens and Holly ... and probably Mozart and Beethoven, too.

  And maybe the Big Bopper also got to meet my Dad.

  Why not? Dad would be there, standing right on line; he always liked to play the piano, all that beebop and boogie-woogie stuff. So maybe he became a musician, just like all the others.

  Now that would be something...

  * * *

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