The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier Read Free Book Online Page A

his front door, for a million hours of sitting alone in his office piecing together the next day’s copy. He had taken it for granted that the community of the dead, and earlier the community of the living, would always be there, waiting just outside, and so he had neglected it, choosing to watch and listen from the periphery rather than actually participate in it. He ought to have set his notebook down, gone to one of the bars, and sought out a few drinking buddies. He ought to have fallen in love with somebody, or at least tried.
    There were so many things he ought to have done, but he hadn’t, and now it was too late.
    He decided to add the comma to the “and,” and then he moved on to the next sentence, and before long he had lost himself in the story he was telling.
    He must have been working for half an hour before something finally snatched his attention. He lifted his head.
    For just a moment he was sure that he had heard a tapping noise. He set his paper aside and listened.
    There it was again, the same tapping noise, like a tree limb brushing against a street sign. The sound seemed to be coming from down on the street. When he went to the window and looked outside, he saw the flag end of a coat disappearing around the corner.
Holy, holy, holy
. He kept repeating the word, first in his head and then out loud. It was a broken-off exclamation of surprise, something he was hardly even aware of thinking until he heard his own voice.
    He bounded out of the office and took the stairs at a gallop. The street directly in front of the building was deserted, but he knew which way the coat had gone. He followed after it. He felt the kind of rolling surge of high energy he had sometimes felt as a teenager, when he would have to stop whatever he was doing to rush into the field behind his house and hurl a softball or a tennis ball as hard as he could, then push off from the grass to chase it down. He smacked a parking meter with his hand as he rounded the corner of the sidewalk. At the end of the block, he saw the coat vanishing behind the shining silver window of a building, the polished black heel of a shoe flashing in its wake. He redoubled his speed.
    “Wait!” he shouted. “Hold up!”
    He was halfway down the street before the figure in the coat reappeared, taking two steps away from the corner of the building. He stood there with all the calm of a street sign, the wind parting slowly around him. Something about the way he held his arm extended toward the brick wall, like a diver keeping his line in reach, told Luka that the man was blind, though he was not wearing dark glasses or carrying a cane. The tapping noise Luka had heard from his office must have been the sound of his shoes striking the sidewalk.
    Luka slowed to a jog as he closed the gap. “Hey.” He was still breathing hard from his run down the stairs. “Hey, I’m—” He gasped. “I’m Luka—” Another gasp. “Luka Sims.”
    The blind man cocked his head to one side. “Are you real?” He placed a peculiar stress on the word “real.”
    It felt so satisfying to be talking to somebody that Luka found himself letting out a noise: a quick gust of genuine laughter. “Are
you
?” he said.
    Something tightened inside the blind man’s face. “It’s been a long time since I could say so with any certainty.”
    “Here,” Luka said. “Take my hand,” and cautiously the blind man reached for it. The hand he gave Luka was dry and callused, particularly at the fingertips, and it twitched when Luka squeezed it. “There,” Luka said. “I’m as real as that. That’s about all I can guarantee.”
    The blind man nodded as if to say
Close enough,
then withdrew his hand.
    “I didn’t think there was anybody else left around here,” Luka admitted, though it seemed ridiculous now, like a nightmare that had lost all its power as soon as the sun rose.
    After a moment, the blind man asked, “What’s happened? Can you tell me?”
    “All I can give