tim!: I Would Actually, In a Second 2007 Not sure what made me think of this. It must have been after a dream or something that I thought about as I awoke in the middle of the night. This happened a long time ago, almost to the point where I'm not sure if it was even me, or just a story I heard once, a movie maybe.
In the seventh grade I was in what we called a gang, but not of the kind that committed crimes or did anything really destructive or anything like that - more of the sort that hung around together in that two or three hours after school got out and before our parents got back from work. Which seems to have taken on a negative aspect now in terms of leaving your kid alone at age twelve to wander about the neighborhood, but I think it's a good idea. Better maybe than other things your kids could be doing, safely tucked away inside of the house. We grew up in middle-class homes in a small town. The kind of town with one grade school, one middle school and one high school. A total in-town population of say twenty thousand people. Seemed big at the time.
There were five of us in this gang and we had been going out during this interim afternoon time for the previous summer and into the first months of the fall. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but it was around this time of year - early November. Everyone was basically the same age, same grade in school, same socioeconomic background. Our parents all knew each other and played cards on a rotating basis at each others' houses throughout the year. Pinochle was the game they played, which I've never quite gotten the gist of except that it is a trump/partner sort of game like bridge is, only nowhere near as complex as bridge. When they played at our house my brother and I were impounded to the upstairs with the 13 inch black and white TV and left to our own devices. Every now and then there would be a burst of laughter to some change in the cards or in response to an adult joke that we didn't get. There were always exotic snacks that could be pilfered on the way through to the kitchen for more ginger ale. Variations of nuts in bowls only seen during parties and holidays. The smell of alcohol in the air.
The gang couldn't do much past this time of year because we lived in Northern Michigan, and by Thanksgiving there might be snow on the ground or at least the expectation of snow. Our habit was to walk around the neighborhood and see what was new. Maybe we threw a few rocks, got baseball cards and crappy gum. There were a lot of alleys that divided the blocks in this area of town, which was our normal mode of getting from one place to another. It seemed like we were hiding, plus in alleys you have a better chance at finding something that no one else has yet, which is exactly what happened.
We came out of a backyard and someone saw a shoe sticking out from under a bush. No big deal, a shoe. But then once we start to pass it, we saw that it's not just a shoe, it is a shoe attached to a pants leg. Now we stop. Kind of just looked at it for a minute, because you know what it is, but it takes a minute for the image to register in your head as to what you are actually seeing. By the time this connection has been made, one of the guys is already poking at it with a stick. No movement. He keeps poking as half of us are staring at the leg and the other half are looking around to see if anyone else is walking by or in their back yards, like we already had the feeling of having done something wrong. Somebody says to pull it out and time is spent deciding who is this person who will actually be the one to touch the leg with their hand and pull out what is known to be a dead person from its hiding place. One kid is chosen and reluctantly starts to pull on the shoe, which then comes off of the dead foot. He falls to the ground on his ass with the shoe still in his hands. There is some talk at this point as to maybe this is an adult body and how long has it been there and what condition might it be in, generally speaking.
I was the only one of the five who had been in close proximity to a dead body, and that was at a funeral, so not quite the same thing. I say it's no big deal, it will basically look just like a real person, only they won't be moving, they'll look like they are asleep or holding their breath. This seems like an acceptable answer to most of us, and we now proceed to pull on the pants leg, two of us, to uncover the body. I'm not sure why we didn't just move the bush aside. We had started down the course or pulling the body out, and had no other options that seemed as good at the time. The body is heavy and two of us pull it out and it is face down in the middle of the alley. Two more roll it over, thinking that they will see this sleeping, non breathing adult before them, but what we really see is a dead body that has been lying there for what must have been two days. The face is the only visible flesh part which is a pale white color and kind of puffy.
The general rule when you are scared as a kid is to A) run away, or B) do the opposite and do something so ballsy that you don't really know why you are doing it, only that it is better than running away. Not having been taught how to deal with these specific circumstances, I offer to bite the arm of the dead body for all of the money on hand. And I realize that I've said the actual words before I understand what it is I have committed myself to. Of course an offer such as this would not go by the wayside, and the money is out and collected and presented to me just at the moment when I start to wonder what will this feel like. Sure, I've bitten people up until this point, lots of times, who hasn't? But a breathing person has that warmth of thirty-seven degrees C that is unmistakable as life that as it turns out, a dead body does not possess. Such a simple thing whose absence is immediately recognizable. But at this one moment, I do not know this. I know a statement has been made, apparently by me, and that money is visible, and all I have to do is bite this guy's arm who is probably just either asleep or drunk and passed out and he might even wake up and then all I've done is bite a sleeping old guy and really did him a favor because this is early November in Michigan at 4:30 p.m. and it is like 30 degrees outside and only going to get colder in the next few hours.
I am informed that the money is only going to be given over after I have made contact with the body, as witnessed by all four of the other gang members who will be watching at ground level for any signs of fraudulent behavior on my part. This of course leads to a new round of discussion from me as to well, how can I trust them that once I have actually bitten the arm, how do I know you assholes won't run off with the money after I have sealed my end of the agreement? This is something I know is within them to do. There is some excited banter and yelling and somehow within five minutes time it is decided that I will get half of the money up front as a sign of good faith on the parts of the four observers (approximately one dollar and twenty-five cents), and the other half upon completion of the act. The caveat to this arrangement being that if I chicken out and run with the good faith, pre-act loot in hand, that I will be summarily chased down and beaten by the other four and left in a similar condition as the body on display. In fact, if I were to chicken out and run and drop the money on the ground, the same fate would apply. It is decided that an inspection of the arm will be done initially in order to determine the tone of the skin and to define the area which will be subject to the bite. Also, to make sure that there are no other marks on the skin that could be mistaken later as a bite. So I say ok, and they say ok, let's do this and get the hell out of here.
I put the first installment of the bet into my pocket and get down on the ground in front of the dead arm. Someone removes the glove and pulls up the shirt sleeve, exposing the arm. I am trying to focus only on the arm and not look into the face. The other four positioned around the body are staring at the two inch by two inch area that has been defined as the acceptable location for the bite. Silence descends. I grab the arm like an ear of corn and it is heavy. I lean over and bite down onto it and the sensation of having this cold flesh in my mouth is instantly not right. I panic. I bite down more. Now I feel that I may have bitten through the skin. Not because I can tell one way or another, but because of how hard I am biting, I must have broken through the skin. All of this is happening in the space of less than ten seconds, maybe less than five. Apparently I did break the skin. I don't let my mouth open as I pull back, I just want to get away from this arm and stand up. So I do. I stand up and back away from the body but with my mouth still closed around the arm. The weaker connection between arm and skin and mouth and skin is going to give first, and this turns out to be arm and skin. I must have pulled back quickly because when I stood up, I had a piece of the skin hanging off of my lower lip, part of which I am still clenching onto when I look at the four guys standing in front of me.
Within seconds they are screaming and pointing at my face and I don't really know what they are saying but I spit out the piece of skin and look at the red mark on the dead arm. I don't say anything. I don't know if I was upset and in shock or just outside of it. Maybe they are the same thing. Either way, I have won. They are beside themselves in part disgust and part amazement and awe. The four of them are all jumping up and down, looking back and forth between me and the body. It is as if each one of them is never in the air or on the ground at the same time as any of the other three, like some sort of human replica of a four cylinder engine. Amazement and awe triumph and calls and dares are made for more. Blood has been drawn. Fortunately no one has any more money and it is late enough and dark enough and cold enough to go. I spit out what saliva I have in my mouth and rub dirt into my gums and onto my tongue more as a show than anything. I really don't remember tasting anything bad, no blood taste. Maybe I was just washing my mouth out with dirt because that's what I thought I should do in this situation.
In the end it almost seems like it was a good thing having bitten a piece off of this dead guy's arm. One kid went home and told his sister what we found, minus the biting part. And his sister being six years old tells his parents at dinner what she heard, and the police are called and the body is discovered that night. The guy was eighty something years old and had had a heart attack while outside raking leaves. He could have been there for a long time before being noticed. I still feel a little bad about it, but I figure it's a small price to pay to have your body found before the first snow falls. The police thought some animal bit the body.
We still had our gang after this, and the story of the arm biting kind of grew to epic proportions with each iteration more fantastic than the last, to the point where other kids weren't quite sure if they believed in any one word of it or not. But it sounded plausible, like it could be true, and also absurd enough that it might all just be made up. Or maybe they just wanted to believe it. I can't say. I was there, I know that. Besides, would I lie to you good people of the world?
