Deathman, Do Not Follow Me

(Originally published 3/16/14)

In an eighth grade "Language Arts" course, my classmates and I were required to do a book report-oral presentation combo. We could select a book of our own choosing, but it had to be approved by our teacher, Ms. Hunt. We were permitted to pair up, too, and so my friend Manny and I opted to read a YA entitled Deathman, Do Not Follow Me by Jay Bennett. I don’t remember much about the book, except that I—as a thirteen-year-old—really liked it and a kid by the name of Danny Morgan was the main protagonist. He was daydreaming in history class at some point in the yarn and, if memory serves, Danny inadvertently got entangled with some shady sorts— art thieves, I think. 

Anyway, Manny and I made the equivalent of an abridged book-on-tape. We were trailblazers here. This would be the presentation part. Anything to avoid doing it live.  As fate would have it, we didn’t ever go public with the tape. The reason why escapes me, but it certainly redounded in our favor. For starters, nobody would have understood what was going on in the recording. And we flubbed our lines on occasion as well. In the role of narrator, Manny meant to say "art exhibition" but said "art expedition" instead.

What made me resurrect Deathman, Do Not Follow Me after all these years is a recent encounter I had with a passerby. I saw this man coming toward me who uncannily resembled someone I once knew—a fellow named Jerry, who has been dead for thirteen years. What hurtled through my mind as the distance that separated us narrowed—and he looked more and more, and not less and less, like Jerry—was: What if he said hello to me as if it was him? What if it was akin to the occasional meetings we experienced for so many years—we lived in the same neighborhood—where we would briefly chat about nothing especially important, like his desiring a move to Reno, Nevada, a "great walking town." After all, if he’s standing there as Jerry in the flesh and knows me by name, I couldn’t very well tell him that he’s deceased and that I attended both his wake and funeral mass. This potential scenario quite literally played in my brain in the several seconds leading up to us passing one another. He was a dead ringer for Jerry all right, but Jerry is still among the dead.

Had it been Jerry, what would I have done? Would I have turned around and gone home, presuming I had either lost my marbles or was still in bed dreaming? Or would have I continued running my errands, believing that maybe—just maybe—I’d entered the Twilight Zone—the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. You know the place between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. Afterwards, yes, I kind of wished it really was old Jerry that I spied on the street. Upon further reflection, though, I'm grateful that it wasn't and that I wasn't cast in a "Nothing in the Dark" remake with yours truly in the Gladys Cooper role.