TREVOR COPP

Justin Incarnate

By Trevor Copp

 

I

 

Most people I know don’t believe in God, but I had no choice. I spent the summer of my eighth grade taking care of one.

 

The first thing that hit me when I showed up at their door was that their house had no corners. There was clearly a floor, somewhat clearly; but as you approached the wall the detritus - solo act socks, aerosol hair spray from the 80s, plastic mall swag, scribbly hair clods - made the transition from floor to wall parabolic. There was clearly a floor then a wall but it was unclear exactly when one became the other. All four of their kids ate in every room and at all hours, slept wherever when they were tired, and showered in the middle of the night or day or not at all. The hum of low-key chaos made it easy for middle children like Justin and I to spend the entire summer basically doing whatever we felt like.

 

I was a mess during the interviews. Everything on my resumé after my name and phone number was total fabrication. Not my fault; you had to have job experience to get a job but you could only get job experience if you know what I mean. My friend had a really good Mom voice so I put her down as a reference for a dog walking job, kind of true since I have walked her dog. She paid in brownies.

 

I needed a job to buy my first dog, which was complicated by the fact that I hadn't kept a pet of any description alive since I was born. I spent much of grade 7 saving up for a komodo dragon that died of some foreign disease that made it smell terrible and its feet rotted into blackish stumps the same month I bought it. My parents said that it must be because it was so foreign that every disease here was foreign to it so it wasn't my fault. They also told me that it wasn't a real komodo dragon after all, just a bearded dragon, so it wasn't even really all that foreign so in the end I didn't know what to think. I had personally presided over the deaths of 2 hamsters, 6 fish (freshwater and saltwater), a venus fly trap, an entire ant farm, a budgie boy and girl, and a family of crayfish I got from the creek. So while I doubted with every bit of my 95 pounds that any living thing placed in my care would remain among the living for long, Justin's parents had no problem giving me free rein over Justin everyday, all summer long. Their faith in me was confounding, but a completely falsified resume can do that to people.

 

Justin’s parents warned that he had obsessive behaviours. I imagined a long summer of restraining him so he didn't bash in his head or pick at a scab. "He's very big on the local housing market for one.” Mrs. Spencer said. She never knew where to look during a conversation, so she stared at my kneecaps. That felt odd because she was already a head taller than me. "He'll check the numbers all day if you let him.” My ankles.  “Anything with elevators or parking lots he loves.” My toes. “Especially both.”

 

Of course she was right. Justin spoke with a plaintive trombone sound that leaned into a full brass section when he saw ‘For Sale’ signs and parking lots. He kept a news channel on the TV in his room - one with banners with shifting real estate numbers buzzing across the screen. I thought it was just noise and made the mistake of switching the channel once. The news was about a meteor shower coming next week named after someone who first squinted at them a hundred years ago, and then Justin came in and saw that the channel was changed. I never did that again.

 

I was supposed to lead him on walks but in truth I led nothing. Justin had a preternatural sense of where properties in the neighbourhood were up for sale and dragged me around accordingly. We never went far as Justin's walk allowed for little actual locomotion. He walked like someone made it up from scratch with every step. I tried to show him how to even it all out, but his hip appeared fused on one side and detached on the other, like his bones just didn’t quite fit together, producing a rolling jutting strut that always seemed to teeter on the edge of collapse. I eventually understood that, even though each step seemed totally unlike each other step he took, he was completely in command of it. Any attempt to physically intervene was met with a burst of fury that hurt him more than it ever did me. I ditched the disciplined reactions that my two-week part-time certification training instilled in me. Standing back without intervention became my standard, even as passing strangers judged me mercilessly.

 

We saw someone with a ‘For Sale’ sign on their front lawn putting a 'Sold' sign over it and so I asked her much it went for. When she told me they settled for $1.11 million Justin was ecstatic in ways I hadn't seen. Every part swung of his body went into these whooping swings, which lifted him clear off the ground. I had to join in. The home seller, bewildered, joined in as well. Every time one of us got tired the other two infected them all over again.  None one of us had the slightest idea why the others were jumping at all. It signalled a shift in the summer, a new way forward where I went from being the annoying kid with zero real estate acumen that Justin had to tote around to a person of actual value to him. For weeks we’d practically camp out on lawns with SOLD signs until someone emerged with the sacred selling price, and when they said the number the great whooping dance set off again.

 

 

II

 

We’d bus out to the airport for a special treat; he didn't care about airplanes but the undulating tar of 8 stories of parking lots suspended him in a jelly of awe. We were eating lunch in front of the electronic counter that told you how many parking spots were still available when Justin imploded. One moment he was laughing because a tomato slice landed on my lap when I took a bite and then he started to twist. His neck and stomach and shoulders went past where a body should be able to twist and kept twisting.

 

He made no sound. His eyes were still, but his limbs had reimagined their arrangement in improbable terms. Waves of frisson shivered through him as his muscles grinded like he was trying to crush himself from the inside.

 

The same thing happening to his body happened to my mind. I hadn’t heard anything about seizures or episodes with Justin, I didn’t have an Epipen or CPR or anything like that. I had no skills at all; I was young enough to be happy about getting minimum wage but old enough to know that this is why I was hired. This was completely different than an animal dying, this was a a person; so I shoved my panic back down my throat and went out to the middle of the road to wave down cars so an adult with the unknowable things adults knew could take over and Justin would stop twisting. That panic feeling converted into fuel for me to yell for someone to help Justin. And then for anything to help me. I couldn’t believe it was going to happen again, but this time-

 

“Are you alright?” Someone said as if they were right beside me, but no one was there. No one on the road or near the parking entrance at all and no car had stopped. It was still just Justin and I, and I don’t believe in God. I do believe in adults, they kind of insist on it. So I shouted:

“No! we need a hospital or something, I don’t know CPR! Not really! I just said I did! look at him” at the sky, and the road, at anything. There was no one.

“Are you in pain?” it said.

“Not me, it’s Justin, I’m supposed to be in charge of him, look!” and I did.

“It will pass,” that calm edvoice said. That was possible, but where I heard it wasn’t. That voice, that sound from the bottom of a silent sea, was coming from Justin.

 

Perhaps I shouldn’t say Justin, but I don’t have another name for the voice that came through him. I mean that quite precisely – his whole body became a vessel, a shell the way a violin can only sound through its hollowness - whenever Justin spoke. This Justin seemed so much older, and like it knew many, many things. Its muscles strained like a demented yogi while this incongruously seraphic voice emerged from it. I think that the calm coming out of him when his body was still in some kind of internal renovation project scared me more than if he just screamed.

 

“I don't know if you need band aid or a tourniquet, if you die it'll be the worst thing ever - can you just at least stop twisting for a second”

 

It placed its hands around my neck. Not to squeeze, nothing like that, it was like it wanted to feel my breathe or something. Justin had never touched me, ever, not once. Then I was clam, sort of against my will, like it could vacuum out my nerves through its fingers.

 

“Why did you pick me? I’m useless here, what should I do?”

 

“I did(n't) pick you, you were(n't) picked, you are(n't) here” it said, impossibly. My face advertised the supreme uselessness of that reply. It tried again, “Everything was (will be) picked, every possibility was (will be) chosen eons ago (from now).”

 

“That isn’t any better.” I couldn't decide if I should scream or cry, but I was too calm to do either. I surprised myself by putting my hands on his face, which I would have never done with Justin. “Usually you can’t say your own name, I have to peel bananas for you, so what’s going on?”

 

He explained and explained for a long time, in his impossible everything-and-nothing-at-once-way, and I thought I understood three things, just in flashes. I got that this voice I was hearing was the part of Justin that had survived so many reincarnations that it couldn’t list all the names they had once used. I also got that it had specifically chosen to incarnate as Justin for reasons I couldn’t understand while I was still alive. Last it said something about how Justin’s experiences were sacred, and above all I must not interfere. It said it was trapped in a ring of living and dying, and somehow Justin was the way to break through. Breaking through to what, I didn’t understand.

 

I couldn’t follow anymore because it said it all at once. I couldn’t cry or yell because I was too calm. I couldn’t do anything, so I took off my hands and looked at them. Justin re-warped himself into a new shape where every limb faced a different direction and said: “I can (un)show you what I mean, none(all) of this happens(doesn’t) in words very(not) well.”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

“You won't remember it afterwards(beforehand). It is(not) something you can(not) accept while you are still alive. It will(not) remain with you only as a blank(full) space inside of you.”

 

“Show me.”

 

He reached out and made a sharp incision into the space between us - I mean he cut into the air itself, his fingernail tore into the empty space like a shroud. The space warped open in the way that space doesn't and he put his fingers into the crack and he tore it wide open and there was this light, but light on top of the light, first a little beam then supernovas shooting through each other and then he opened it wide and there was so much light there was the light ygodthelight mygodthelightIthereIwasIlightsomuchsoImuchIsoImuIIchlightIIthereIIwaIIssoIImIuchIIoIfIIlIghtIIIanIdIlIIIighIItIIIigIIIIghtIIIliIIgIhtIIIlIIiiIIIghIItIIIIlIIIIIIiIIIgIIIIIIIIIhIIIIIIIIIIIIIItIIIIIIIIsIIIIIIIIIIIIoIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIImIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIuIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIcIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII          I           IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII             I           IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII             I           IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIII IIII II I   I       I            I woke up like someone who had been unplugged and plugged in again. I could hear Justin whooping and jumping over by the parking entrance. He was fine. Nothing broken, nothing even bruised. Me, I wasn’t sure.

 

Justin ran to the sign and pointed: a car had entered the parking lot, so the number of empty spots had changed to 111. Justin loved repetitive numbers.  If he wondered why I didn’t whoop and jump with him I couldn’t tell.

 

 

III

 

I sat with Justin for a long time after that and waited. I figured I would know what I was waiting for when I saw it, but I never did. No sign of that voice that came through and explained things showed up again. Not that I didn’t try.

 

I stared at his face all week. When he got excited, like when the market closed on a repetitive number his face would roll with delight and I thought I saw it again, the face of Justin who had that voice, and I would wait for more. It was like waiting for flames to flicker more slowly. Then I thought he was making fun of me. I shouted and shouted, and so Justin started flailing his arms and I slapped him and he slapped me back and we both cried.

 

I tried taking him back to the airport, to the exact spot we were when it happened. I tried making the voice sound. Justin laughed. Another plane climbed into the sky. Another car out of the lot. It flew by and I let it go, I let it all go. Hurray I thought, hurray. 121 spots left. Not 111, but close enough. We went home.

 

 

IV

 

Justin’s parents were having friends over for the meteor shower viewing, under the debris that was the garage they had a telescope that actually worked even though no one really understood what they were looking at. The stars were supposed to all look so different, the planets from the faraway ones were supposed to flicker or be blue or red but they didn’t look any different to me. The adults didn’t last long with the telescope and ended up standing around in circles and talking like they always do. Justin stayed with me, off in the freshly ignored dark part of the backyard, peering into the telescope.

 

I felt the voice coming before it arrived. Justin kept an eye fixed to the telescope, but I could see the other eye expand into that fugue state again. The rest of his body pretzeled itself around the telescope. With each breath his shoulder blades sheathed and unsheathed, his neck trying to snap itself.

 

I knew not to interfere. I knew I should do something. I didn’t know anything.

“Please stop please please stop” I said.

“The stopping has(will) begun(ended). Goodbye. I return(leave), one last(first) time.” The voice said.

“You’re leaving?”

“We(I) are leaving(arriving)” Justin’s body began to uncoil from the telescope.

“Where you are going?” I said.

 “Where the blazing(shadows) darken(brightly). Into the (un)ending resplendent we(I) return.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“And you will(not). Not ever(yet).” Justin went limp. He and the telescope crashed into the ground.

 

The adults came crushing in like I’d fumbled a ball. Justin remained wide-eyed with his hands on the tube of the telescope when his heart gave out, taking in that old light until his went out. When walking, eating, and putting on his own socks was such an effort for him it was strange that dying happened so easily. The parents-cum-bad-medics tried, phones were yelled at, then the actual medics tried. It made no difference. Justin looked wide-eyed at the stars. And the stars blinked back.

 

Right when the medics stopped trying, when they nodded at each other and turned to Justin’s parents to use their sympathy training on them, right then the stars looked back hard. Meteorologists would later describe the unprecedented cosmic splendour of three slivers of meteor peeling off the shower and firing directly towards the Earth, like synchronized high divers free falling into oblivion in perfect parallel form, creating the perfect image in the sky: 111. The national news said it was best observed from our province. The local news said that it was best observed from our exact area. And I knew that the very best place to see it was from that backyard, through that particular telescope, on the particular moment that Justin died.

 

 

V

 

The medics had a lot of questions about everything, but I was smart enough to know not to try to say anything about that voice that came through Justin. Maybe they thought I was too devastated to speak. I was. Maybe they thought I was still in shock. I was. Maybe they thought that I understood something that they did not. I didn’t.

 

They asked me to speak at Justin’s funeral, and I tried to talk about the things I learned from being together that summer. I talked about how things live and die, and that should be ok, even if it feels like it isn’t. I talked about trying to take care of others, even if you fail spectacularly, like I did. I lied as brazenly as I did on my resume, but only because I didn’t think they could accept what I had really learned that summer.

 

Justin wasn’t there for me to learn anything at all. He was in the world for his own purposes, and he left this world for reasons I would never understand. Not while I was still alive anyway.