A Matter of Life and Death or Something (5 page)

The way it all came to exist can be very clearly explained, these days, in our infinite wisdom. (It's simple, really):

Everything in the universe just exploded from some cold and random point, at some random time before “time,” for a random reason before reasons. Before this, there was nothing. An inconceivable black nothingness filled every corner of nothing, except that there were no corners, and there was no “black.” Then suddenly, out of this non-situation, this absolute nothing, before a “thing” was even imaginable in any terms, suddenly everything burst forth. A non-existing pin pricked through the enormous tension of the nothing, and all the matter banged through the massive void, tearing the nothing wide open, erupting into existence. In a fraction of a tiny fraction of time, nothing became everything. This was not a miracle.

Massive planets and balls of burning gas were hurled from this exploding point. They bumped into one another, socialized, flirted, split up, ran away, kept moving; they were thrown far far far into an emptiness out of which they carved space for themselves, and to this day they continue along these same paths. No force propels them, other than the initial bang, which was of course not a miracle.

The waitress just called me “honey.” When I came in she acted like she knew me, like we were pals. It's kind of nice, actually, they're starting to know me here. In the kitchen they're laughing about how I'm wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The crazy guy in white clothes who gets nine hundred coffees and sits scrawling in his little book until close. That's funny—I just noticed everyone in here is eating alone. It's so quiet. Where else would we all go on a day like today? Off topic.

The matter fell into groups along the way. Some of the planets found other planets and stuck together for a time, since they were headed the same way anyway. Some of the luckier groups found great glowing suns. They were pulled from their drifting, and were slowly reeled in. They were spun around and warmed, drawn close to new caretakers.

On one of these lucky rocks, an even luckier thing was about to take place. The planet happened to be held a certain distance from its sun, and happened to contain all the necessary ingredients so that, when held there, and with enough time, the perfect energy from the planet's sun allowed something to emerge—something which would later call itself “Life.” And so it did emerge. First, in a tiny but enormously consequential way—similar to the initial bang, and most things—in little groupings of molecules that did something when they merged, something foreign and cyclical and self-perpetuating. This something they did continued and continued, and Life spread its way around the planet timidly but unquestionably. It was wiped out and it began again. It kept on. The details were a bit fuzzy (unlike all the details previous to this point) but this something became dinosaurs, became nothing, became amoebas again, became fish, became crawling fish, became billions of other animals, became almost-monkeys, then monkeys, then a-bit-more-than-monkeys, then humans.

It stopped at humans, because the humans told it to.

(The humans wrote a book about this whole process a while after it happened, and they wrote it in the proper order, and they had fun writing it, and they called it Genesis. But the book was a bad book, and eventually everyone hated it, because although it had the order basically right, it forgot about the dinosaurs, and it played around too much, and it used silly characters and metaphors that weren't necessary to the central plot, so it lacked sense.)

Oh I think they're closing in like fifteen minutes. Shit.

The humans were now conscious of what had happened. They put their penises inside their vaginas and created more and more Life. They talked about Life, often. For a while it was all they talked about, because it was all that was worth talking about, even though it was truly so bland. It was merely the luck of the cosmic draw. After all, any other planet in the universe which was positioned the proper distance from its sun, and which housed a similar system of proper elements, could also create Life. The odds had nothing to do with it, even though they were incredibly rare (some humans calculated less than a 0.01% chance over a span of four billion years) because Life was simply the exception to the universal rule—special, but not
that
special. And it wasn't a
miracle,
because a miracle had to both happen, and not make sense. And although all of this happened, it, of course, made perfect sense.

FINALLY I had it. What I would do was I would do an investigation. I would just go around and ask the neighbours a few questions. Our neighbourhood was pretty big, but there weren't actually that many people in it, and I'd just check out all the neighbours' houses and see if anyone knew anything about someone named Phil. If something like that really happened, people would know about it. Unless they were complete idiots. I would make sure to check every single house in the neighbourhood and try to figure out where it came from and whose it was and if I could give it back. And if no one on the whole street knew anything well then I'd have to figure out a bigger investigation, or if I absolutely had to I might get a grown-up to do something, but only if I tried
everything
and it was still impossible.

I opened my closet door and dragged out this cork bulletin board I had but had never used yet. Then I took some scrap sheets of paper and tore them very carefully into a couple different-sized pieces. I wrote a fact on each piece, and a title for the list on the biggest one. It wasn't
really
helpful, but it was just a start:

CLUES:

– It was in the woods.

– It must have been there a while.

– Because of the mud and water and rust.

– From the bent tree you take five steps away from the river and one sideways towards the house.

– Someone named Phil.

And I would keep adding more and more pieces every time I found a clue, and keep the clues organized in alphabetical order, or in order of hardest to discover to easiest, or in order of how true I thought they were, or a better system I would figure out later, and I would think hard about all the clues and rearrange them and come up with theories and illustrations and explanations et cetera and eventually get to the bottom of it.

And my investigation would start that very afternoon, right after algebra.

SO THEN LATER I was sitting in the woods on that mossy sea turtle rock, right before I went to check out the first house. I was thinking about Phil's UNIVERSE. It was the middle of a grey Thursday afternoon, and I was sitting there thinking about it and adding my own parts in my head:

(Only, a few of the humans weren't sure exactly which penis had been placed into exactly which vagina, and exactly which vagina they crawled out of. The universe, or whatever, had tossed them to somebody else, just to mix things up. The universe
loved
to mix things up.)

I kept drawing all the nothing in my sketchbook by pencilling the whole page black, and then I flipped my pencil around to the eraser side and erased the everything into it. I erased one tiny little explosion for the big bang, then the suns, the stars, the planets, including Saturn which is my favourite, Earth, the UFOs, the faraway galaxies, the penises and the vaginas, and everything else.

It didn't make sense though.

I mean, how can a universe of nothing just turn into everything all the sudden? And if there is everything now, how could there have ever been
nothing?
This was a thing that I thought about quite often, to be honest with you, and sometimes I talked to people about it, like Finch, and smarter people, and it seemed like no one really knew what to say about it. Obviously no one knew what to say. But I mean I never even heard anyone with any really good ideas about it. No one even cared.

So I drew it in my sketchbook like I said, and I tried to imagine it that way, but no matter how I imagined it, I couldn't imagine it. Between the nothing and the everything must be something else. Like, what was around before the big bang? There had to be
something,
or else how could the big bang have even happened? If there was nothing, that meant there was no sketchbook first of all, and no eraser, and no me. If there was no eraser and no page and no me, then how did the erasing happen?

If all that existed was a big, like,
void
or something, like a big black page, then that means there's nothing different outside the page that could turn into the everything. Because
everything
is nothing. But if there was a something extra separate from the void, a little atom or something, it was still just as confusing because you can't ask where
it
came from, or else you're just asking the same question all over again.

So: there was either nothing and then suddenly everything—which just doesn't make sense—or there was nothing, plus another something that must have just been around
forever,
before the everything, before the nothing, and it was just always around. That didn't make a lot of sense either, but maybe a
little
more sense.

I decided that it was the guy with the eraser who was the thing that was around since forever. Most people just called the erasing guy “God,” I think, because what the heck else are you supposed to call something like that, and so I guessed I usually did too. But I also realized that no one could know for sure about anything before the big bang, and it was really too scary to look back farther than that, which made me kind of angry and sad at the same time, especially because what if it was a question that made me angry and sad for the rest of my entire life?

After I erased the universe I made the page black again a few times and I kept thinking about the questions without answers, and eventually my page started to get all messy. It started to look kind of like the cover of Phil's notebook, just white and black splotches all over.

Then I swept the eraser shavings off of the edge of the messy universe and they fell and bounced off of the crinkly leaves on the forest floor. Where did the shavings fit into the puzzle? They were the rubber that was used to create everything from nothing. I thought hard. Maybe they were dreams? I didn't want to even start to wonder where they went after slipping through the cracks between the dead leaves and into the soil.

So I slapped myself in the face pretty hard. I looked at my watch, and was shocked. It was almost 5:00 PM already, and it was time to stop thinking. I had a house to check out.

I snapped my sketchbook shut and headed out of the woods and had supper with Simon. It was nothing special, it was the usual: meat, potatoes, carrots, green beans and white milk. I finished my milk, shaved my moustache, and asked to be excused.

“Where are you rushing off to?”

“Frankly,” I said, “I've still got a lot of work to do in the woods,” but obviously I was lying because where I was rushing off to was actually the beginning of my investigation.

“Alright, I guess. Be home before dark though, Arthur?”

“Yup!” I slid off my chair.

“Oh, Arthur, will you change those sheets, please?” Simon said for the nine-thousandth time.

“Dooon't wooorrryyy,” I crooned while heading for the door.

I picked up my backpack from the floor near the hallway and shoved my arms through the straps. Phil was in there.

I shut the front door behind me, dropped off the porch and headed up the street. It was still grey outside, and kinda damp from the rain the day before. There were shrivelling worms on the side of the road every once in a while, who had evacuated their burrows when the flood had started, but then didn't make it back home afterwards. Aha! They had transmigrated, in the first meaning of the word. And maybe in the second meaning too. Two or three of them were still moist and slimy though, so those ones I picked up and put in the grass on the side, where they had probably come from. Then I kept walking.

My stomach felt a little funny, I don't know why. I pictured the potatoes in there with all the carrots and the steak and the milk. The mashed potatoes trying to calm everyone else down. One thing I like about potatoes, now that I think about it, is I like how when potatoes sit on your counter and get old they just grow more eyes. I like how they're called “eyes,” and not warts or lumps or chicken pox or anything stupid. It would be nice if by the time I was twenty I would have another eye grow somewhere, like on the back of my hand, or right above my belly button. I would cut holes in the belly of all my shirts so I could look around with that eye too, and check out things without anyone noticing, like secretly check the soles of their shoes to draw their footprints if I was investigating them or something. Then I'd keep growing more eyes every couple of years, and the older I got the more directions I could see in, and by the time I was eighty I'd be
covered.
All over my arms and legs and everywhere. I would have so many eyes that if I rolled them backwards far enough I could see everything inside all of me. And when I blinked them all it would make a sound like someone jumping up and clacking their shoes together at the heels, and sometimes, obviously, I would actually do that at the same time as I blinked. And my clothes would look like moths had eaten holes through every inch of them, but really it was because I was getting so old that I could see in all directions at once and never miss anything.

I'd decided to use the most obvious system, which was beginning at the houses closest to my own house, and working my way farther and farther up the street. So, going by this plan, the first house I'd check out would be the house of these people called the Beckhams. There was actually a house before them, but no one lived there 'cause it was for sale, then Finch's was next, but I wasn't going to put Finch's or Victoria's houses on the list of houses I had to check, obviously, because if Finch's parents or Victoria's dad actually read any of Phil they might think I was being a weirdo, and they might call Simon on the phone or something. Then next I would check the house that said “PETERSON” on the mailbox, and then, if I absolutely
had
to, the hermit's.

When I got to the Beckhams' driveway, I stood on the seam between the old dusty grey pavement of our street and their fresh black tar. I think that they had the only driveway on our street that wasn't gravel. Maybe it would be less noisy to walk on. I stood there for a while and observed the scene. There were no cars in the yard, the garage was closed, and the lawn was a bit tall.

“Maybe no one is home,” I said out loud by accident.

I tried to think of the last time I'd actually
seen
the Beckhams. All I could come up with was a time where I walked along the side of the road and they drove past me and smiled and waved. I felt like that happened often. I tried to think of a time other than those times when I had seen the Beckhams, and I couldn't. I could barely even picture them, except that I thought Mrs. Beckham had blond hair.

I started to wobble back and forth on my feet and kick rocks.

“Ahh, who cares about Phil,” one of the voices inside my brain said.

I turned around to leave.

“Wait, I do,” the other voice said.

I turned around again.

In the cartoon of myself standing almost in the driveway, there was an angel on one of my shoulders and a devil on the other. In the cartoon, I looked at the devil, he smiled and winked, or something, and then I looked at the angel. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly. I knew that what I should do was I should pick the angel, and walk up to the Beckhams' and ring the doorbell and try to find out clues about Phil. Because in the cartoon of my life, if I picked the devil, I might have an easier day, but I might also get flattened by a steamroller, or exploded by dynamite, or accordioned by a giant anvil.

“Excuse me?” said someone. Mrs. Beckham was on her doorstep, with the door open behind her.

I stared at her, trying to think of what to say.

“Yes,” I said.

She did have blond hair. It was straight, a bit longer than most moms', and looked dry. I couldn't tell if it was real blond or fake blond. She was wearing a yellow apron that looked like it was too small, tied right overtop of a navy blue business-man suit.

“Sorry?” she said.

“Yes!” I said again but I didn't know why.

“Yes, what?”

I tried to do some unboggling of my mind for a moment but it was hard work.

“What's that?” she said, pointing at me.

“Huh?” I thought, it's
me,
obviously. I walked slowly up the quiet new pavement.

“What's that on your shoulder?” she said as I got to the doorway. I wondered if it was the angel or the devil. But it was just a leaf.

“Oh, it's a leaf there,” she said.

I said nothing.

“A leaf there, just there on your shoulder,” she said in a jumpy way. She was almost singing. “Did you need something, honey?”

I took the leaf off my shoulder.

“Uhhhm, I'm kind of investigating,” I said, giving myself away right at the start.

“Oooh, investigating me?”

“No. No. I was just wanting to talk to you, though.”

After a second, she said “Sure!” and invited me inside.

It was really weird to go into someone-I-didn't-know's house by myself, and I felt like I was a house intruder even though I was invited. I took off my red rubber boots and left my backpack on. She walked through a doorway on the left and into the white kitchen, and she offered me a chocolate chip cookie. I accepted, obviously. I sat at the kitchen table, even though I might as well have been sitting on a chair alone in the corner, or behind a big brick wall or inside a jail cell or something, because the table was
covered
in stuff. It piled up over my head. Laundry baskets, a couple dishes, a stapler, a ball of yarn, plastic bags of things, other things on top of more things, a roll of masking tape, a vase of flowers, and everything else, covered the table. The wall of stuff was so tall that I couldn't even really see Mrs. Beckham on the other side of the kitchen. I felt like I was a prisoner in sanitary confinement. On one side the mess spilled onto the floor. I looked around. The whole house was like that: walls of stuff.