School of the Dead

For Vicki and Steve Palmquist

T
he first time Uncle Charlie came to live with us he was alive. The second time he came, he was dead.

Uncle Charlie was my mother's uncle, an eighty-something bachelor who I saw only at Baltimore family gatherings: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. The men wore suits, button-down shirts, and ties. Uncle Charlie always came wearing a frayed checkered shirt, red suspenders, khakis, and worn loafers with tassels. What's more, his clothing was generally rumpled, and not very clean.

A small guy with a lean face, pug nose, and gloomy eyes, he didn't exactly party. More often than not, he sat alone in a corner, listening intently to the chatter while clasping and unclasping his small, bony hands, but not saying much. When people asked him how he was doing, he'd talk vaguely about some group he'd just joined or the strange book he'd recently read, like
Anglo-Saxon Magic
or
The Egyptian Art of Death.
People tended to leave him alone.

When he did
not
show up at those outings, I'd hear adults
saying, “Any news about Uncle Charlie?”

“Don't ask” was the usual reply, along with a shaking of heads, smirks, and a rolling of eyes.

In other words, compared to the rest of my family, Uncle Charlie was different. Maybe that's why I always sensed that there was stuff going on inside him—you know, locked-up, secretive stuff. Not that I ever saw him
do
anything unusual.

Though my cousins and I kept our distance, at some point one of us would usually whisper, “What's the deal with Uncle Charlie?”

Took a while, but I found out.

It all began during a family Christmas gathering. After the big dinner, with people hanging around doing not much, I noticed Uncle Charlie, as usual, sitting off by himself. Except he was staring at me. I had no idea why. Then I realized he was beckoning me over.

Puzzled—we rarely talked—I went up to him.

At first, all he did was gaze intently at me with his unhappy eyes until, in a croaky voice, he said, “You're Tony, right? Ellie's son.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Glad to see you.” He held out a small hand, the narrow fingers crooked and sort of clawlike. Not knowing what else
to do, I shook. He was kind of weak.

“What grade are you in?” he asked.

“Sixth.”

“Perfect,” he said, some light coming to his eyes, along with a sly smile. Not only was it rare for Uncle Charlie to smile, but this was an
I know something you don't know
smile. Having no idea what it meant, or how to respond, I backed away. Even so, during the next few hours he kept glancing at me. It made me uncomfortable.

Why should Uncle Charlie care about me?

It was during our long drive back home to Connecticut that I said to my parents, “How come Uncle Charlie is so weird?”

Dad snorted. “Every family has at least one weird uncle.”

My parents exchanged looks, and then Mom said, “You might as well know: He's moving in with us.”

“You're kidding. Uncle Charlie?
Why?
”

Mom said, “He lost his apartment, his health is poor—he has a heart problem—and he's old. He needs to be with family.”

“What happened to his apartment?”

“Evicted,” said Dad.

Mom shot a sharp look at Dad, as if saying
You weren't supposed to say that
, but I caught it and said, “How come he was evicted?”

Dad, warned, said only, “It's not clear.”

“Okay, but why is he coming to
us
?”

“We had a family meeting,” Mom explained. “You know, your uncles, aunts, adult cousins. Since your dad and I have jobs that keep us late so often, meaning you're home so much alone, the idea is that it might be good for you—and him—if he moved in with us.”

Dad said, “We do have that spare bedroom at the back of our house.”

Mom added, “He's actually fairly well off, has his own car and health insurance. To be brutally honest, Tony, I don't think Uncle Charlie has long to live. That heart. The main point: He
is
family. Inviting him to move in is the decent thing to do. It's hard to be old and facing death alone.”

I worried about what it was going to be like having Uncle Charlie live with us. Would I have to take care of him? Why had he been so curious about me? What was that secretive smile all about? And . . . what was it like for him to be facing death?

A couple of weeks later, Uncle Charlie moved in.

Now, I have to admit that once Uncle Charlie was around, my feelings about him changed. Because he had changed. He was clean, neat, wore regular clothing. He smiled, had energy, and was happy to talk about lots of things, interesting things.

I did
not
have to take care of him. Just the opposite. Within a month of his coming, I stopped minding that my parents worked late so often. When it happened, I went to Uncle Charlie for what I needed: driving me places, getting things. I listened to his stories and his jokes, which he told a lot. I got the dinners
I
wanted—mac and cheese, pizza, hamburgers, fries, ice cream. If I needed advice—school, friends—Uncle Charlie gave it. In other words, he turned out to be a cool guy. Of course, sometimes when we'd go somewhere, he'd suddenly stand very still and gasp, “Hold it!” trying to catch his breath. When he finally did, he'd just grin and say, “Not dead yet.”

When I asked him, “Uncle Charlie, how come you're so different from the way you used to be?”

“Tony,” he said, “it meant a lot that your folks invited me here. At my age, it isn't fun being alone. But you know what the best thing about living here is?
You.
I love being with kids. You, most of all. For an old guy like me, it's like having a new life.”

Okay, life. But the thing was, it hadn't taken long for me to realize that it wasn't
this
life that interested Uncle Charlie. What fascinated him was the
next
life, what he called “the other side.”

As we got to know each other, Uncle Charlie told me wild
stories about things that had happened to him, stories not even my mom—his niece—knew. How he had traveled to out-of-the-way places like Nepal, Tasmania, and Chiapas, where he'd had bizarre adventures living with mystics, fakirs, and shamans. He told me about near-death experiences. Talking to spirits. “Of course,” he added, “things can get a bit out of control. Neighbors complain.”

“Is that how come you got evicted?”

“Who told you about that?” he asked, slipping in that sly smile of his.

I grinned.

“Oh,” he said, “some friends and I were trying to talk to . . . the other side. Our meeting became a little—what do you kids say?—rowdy. No big deal.”

If there was one thing in the world I hated, it was
fake
. High on my hate list were adults who faked enjoying doing kids' stuff. But Uncle Charlie
loved
kids' stuff. He and I spent hours playing video games filled with wizards, vampires, and warlocks. We watched TV shows about ghosts and phantoms. He read me spooky stories by Poe, Stevenson, and Lovecraft, his croaky voice making them really eerie.

When I got home from school, we might even go to the shabby theater he'd somehow discovered, which showed old black-and-white movies about the supernatural, like
Night of
the Living Dead
. After those films, we'd go to what became Uncle Charlie's favorite store, the Witch's Basement. I had no idea how he'd found it, but the store was packed with fantasy books, games, and costumes—Halloween every day of the year.

It was fun.

One day Uncle Charlie said, “Tony, when I die, I really want you to
join
me.” His eyes brightened when he said it, and he had that sly look I'd come to love, which I took to mean he was just joking.

Without much thought, I said, “Sure.”

In fact, the more he talked about ghosts and supernatural stuff, the more ordinary they seemed. For instance: When my friends came around, Uncle Charlie asked them about their relatives—if they were about to die, or, if they had died, how and when, natural causes or accidents.

“How come he talks about death all the time?” my friend Mike asked. “It's odd.”

“He knows that he's going to die soon,” I told Mike. “So he likes to joke that he's just going to move somewhere else.”

I told Uncle Charlie, “Mike thinks you're odd.”

Uncle Charlie laughed and said, “He's right. But I never get even. I get odder.”

That made me laugh.

Then my friend Bill came over, and when Uncle Charlie learned that Bill's aunt had recently died, he decided we should go to “the other side” and talk to her spirit. He darkened his room, burned incense, played eerie music, made us hold hands, and spoke strange words. In the middle of it, Uncle Charlie got all gaspy and out of breath. It was bad, as if he was really about to go to the other side right then. So of course we never talked to Bill's aunt.

Even so, Mom got a call from Bill's mother.

“Tony's great-uncle,” she said, “really upset Bill by trying to talk to his late aunt.”

I heard Mom—who knew nothing about it—say, “My old uncle Charlie is with us because he has health problems. The good thing is, with my husband's and my work schedules, he does look after Tony. And Tony really enjoys his company.”

Trouble was, Bill and Mike—and other friends—stopped coming over because of Uncle Charlie. They said he was too creepy. When I told my friends about things he had done, they started calling
me
“weirdo.” Hating that, I hung out just with Uncle Charlie more than ever.

In April, when I turned twelve, Uncle Charlie gave me the coolest birthday present: a red Gibbon slackline.

A slackline is a nylon tape, two inches wide, stretched some distance, not quite like a tightrope but bowed. You get on it—not easy—and set one foot before the other. You stand on it, trying to keep your balance, swaying, adjusting, and trying to find your center. Then you try to move forward, or back—if you can.

He also gave me a book called
Walk the Line.
On the first page it read:

           
WARNING.

           
Take responsibility for your own actions as they pertain to slackline. Slackline can be dangerous, resulting in injury or possibly death.

The guy who wrote the book, Scott Balcom, did some insane walks across canyons, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.

My parents would never have given me a slackline—too risky.

Uncle Charlie was enthusiastic. “When you walk the slackline, you're not in the air; you're not on the ground. Sort of half alive, half dead. Good practice for being a ghost.”

I said, “I don't believe in ghosts.”

He laughed. “You will, someday.”

“Someday?”

“When people say
someday
, it's like making a wish.”

All I can say is that when I was on the slackline, I didn't think about ghosts. I just loved trying to walk it.

After Uncle Charlie had been living with us for a few months, he came up with a huge idea: we should all move to San Francisco, where he grew up. Seems he wanted me to go to the Penda School, a private K–8 school he went to when he was a kid. “Tony will get a better education than he gets here,” he told us.

My parents, who had become bored with their jobs—Mom in marketing, Dad a civil engineer—talked about moving. Dad said, “Who wouldn't want to live in San Francisco?” And Mom wanted more challenging work. I reminded them that I had stopped liking my school. And Uncle Charlie kept talking about how great the Penda School was.

In the end, my folks decided that if they found better positions out there, we could go. It took a while, but then they announced that both of them had landed great jobs in San Francisco. We would move early October.

Uncle Charlie was thrilled. “Now,” he said, “we just have to get you into Penda.”

Mom got in touch with the Penda School, only to be told
that it was full. Still, they said I'd be wait-listed because there could always be a change.

Wanting to get to a place where I could make new friends, I was disappointed. Dad said, “I'm sure San Francisco has lots of good schools.”

And Uncle Charlie—sly smile in place—said, “Maybe I can help.”

The very next night—my folks were working late again—Uncle Charlie said something new to me.

“Know why I was willing to move here?”

“So you wouldn't be alone.”

“Nope. I wanted to get to know
you
. And because I wanted you to go to the Penda School.”

“What's so special about it?”

He thought a moment and then said, “Kindergarten to eighth grade. And it's . . . full of life.”

I thought of asking him, Which life? This one or the next? I didn't.

I should have.

Two weeks after my parents decided we would all move to San Francisco, Uncle Charlie became ill. Feverish. Weak. Numbness in his hands. So right after school I would zip on home, measure out his meds, do his errands, and sometimes
feed him. I even helped him get into his blue pajamas and to bed in his room.

Then this awful thing happened.

It was a warm night in late June. My folks were working late, so I was alone with Uncle Charlie. Telling me he had painful tightness in his chest and a general chill, he took to bed. I sat in a chair by his side. After a while, the book he had been reading,
Cults of the Caribbean
, fell to the floor. Gradually, his eyes closed.

Not sure if he was sleeping, I stayed put. The increasing humidity made my skin feel crawly. Outside, the wind began to whip and whistle. Treetops started to sway. The air became heavy, the room dim. Window curtains fluttered.