Ajax
wasn’t afraid of his own death; it was the heat death of the universe. “I’ll be
fine if I know the universe will go on. But if it ends...” He didn’t tell us
what would happen if it ended. He just slurped his fruity Crayola-red smoothie
through a straw.
This
was before he knew he was allergic to gluten. And milk.
This
was before the heat death.
His
parents named him after the Shakespearean Ajax, but he liked the Iliad ones
better. The one he liked best of all was “Ajax the Lesser”, the son of King
Oileus of Locris and a nymph named Rhene. They called him lesser because he
wasn’t Ajax the Great, the heroic Ajax.
He was
the swiftest of the Greeks, other than Achilles, of course, and he was great
with a spear. The goddess Athena tried to kill him in a shipwreck, but he
managed to survive by holding onto a rock. Then he got cocky and said even the
gods couldn’t kill him. That pissed off Poseidon, who split the rock in half
with his trident. Ajax the Lesser drowned. This was after he led forty Locrian
ships against the Trojans in the war.
It was
all foolishness, but it made us laugh for some reason. Ajax the Lesser was a
dick. He was accused of raping the priestess Cassandra (which is why Athena was
mad at him), but he took an oath of innocence and hid in a temple, so they let
him live because they didn’t want to destroy the temple and have two immortal
beings mad at them, instead of just the one.
They
said after he died, his spirit hung out in the island of Leuce and he was
worshiped as a hero. They even put him on some coins. Not too bad for a pompous
ass.
“Of
course, it’s not supposed to happen for a few billion years.” He adjusted his
sunglasses. He always wore them inside, even in the mall.
“You’ll
be dead before then,” I said. He nodded and swiveled his stool. We were sitting
at the ‘bar’, where you can overlook the generic Chinese food take-out, right
next to the generic greasy, diner-style hole in the wall. Generic, but they
were ours.
We
were still teenagers. We thought sunglasses indoors made you cool, especially
when coupled with long rock star hair and a stonewashed leather jacket. Ajax
was all that. He was Ajax the Lesser incarnate: a badass, god-dissing local
hero.
“So
what is heat death?” Only Max would ask. Me and Corey, well, we just liked to
be with Ajax; we didn’t care what he was talking about, as long as he was
talking to us. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether he was or not.
Those
midnight sunglasses hid his eyes, adding mystery to the cool factor. He’d been
places, man, seen things. Or so we imagined. We had no idea where he came from,
just that he appeared in our class one day. He was in and out of detention,
left a trail of girls in his wake, and showed up at school when he felt like
it. The epitome of cool.
He
also smoked, and I don’t mean cigarettes. He never charged us for it; he wasn’t
a dealer. He threw house parties that his mom came to, which was fine with us
because she had him when she was sixteen and she was hilarious when she got
high (“I didn't really name him after Shakespeare, you know. I named him after
the cleaning stuff.”). She was hilarious when she was sober too, but more in an
Ajax-get-yer-arse-outta-bed-and-help-me-find-my-pantyhose kind of way.
“Heat
death is what’ll happen when the universe reaches entropy.” No one knew what
the hell he was talking about, but we listened eagerly. He laughed at our blank
faces and leaned in, as if we were ten years old and he was telling a ghost
story at a sleepover, all of us under a blanket with a flashlight shining up past
his chin to distort his features. I
imagined him with sunglasses even in that situation.
“Eventually,
it’ll reach a point where all the reactions that can happen will have happened,
and all that'll be left is the heat from the reactions. What’ll kill everything
off will be that nothing’s happening. Literally.” He clasped his hands behind
his head. “All the energy will have spread itself out equally. It’ll be a
perfect balance. So perfect that the universe stops. The end.”
“That
doesn’t make sense.” Max was a chubby little kid, but we let him hang out with
us. He wasn’t really a kid any more than the rest of us, but we always called
him that. He was the youngest in our grade, which seemed like a big deal at the
time.
Ajax
shrugged. “Let’s go check out the X-Store.”
This
we understood. We slumped off our stools and sauntered over. Of course, what we
were really interested in was the corner of the store that sold sex stuff. Not
porn, nothing like that. You had to go downtown for that. But lots of stupid
toys and games and explicit mugs with dicks and boobs on them. Candy panties
and all that.
Eventually,
we graduated – or, well, some of us did. Ajax decided at some point that school
was a waste of time, and then he did become a dealer, but still not to us. We
were his friends; our highs were free. So were his mom's, I guess, since she
let him grow it in the basement and never said a word as long as she could have
a taste every now and then.
I went
to university. I was the only one who did out of the four of us. I got into Dal
and my parents helped me get a student loan, so I moved to Nova Scotia. I
didn’t have a clue what I was studying or what I wanted to be, but it seemed
like the thing to do. My sister was going to MUN to learn business, and now it
was my turn to make something of myself.
I came
home at Christmas, and the morning after I arrived, my feet hit the frozen dew
in the schoolyard beside my house. I flipped open my cellphone and called Ajax.
I wanted to get together with the gang.
“Come
over to my place tomorrow afternoon,” Ajax said. “I’ve got a homecoming present
for you.”
Dinner
with my folks was as you’d expect: good food, lots of questions about school,
lots of gossip about my mom and dad’s friends, people I hardly knew but sort of
remembered. We laughed and talked, and it was a good time all around. My sister
broke out the wine to celebrate, and it was good to be home, but I really
wanted to see Ajax and Max. Corey had sort of drifted off to Alberta by now.
I
picked up Max in my parents’ silver Subaru Legacy. He’d thinned out, but still
had that pasty blond look. His hair stuck to his hood. I cranked up the radio,
even though we were listening to the two o'clock weather report.
Ajax
still lived with his mom in their cranky pink jellybean house just up the hill
from the harbour. We drove around for
twenty minutes looking for a place to park.
“Just
park here,” Max kept saying, pointing out every illegal parking spot downtown.
Ajax's
mom was passed out on the couch, wrapped in her tattered blue housecoat. We let
ourselves in, since the door was open, but our boy was nowhere to be found. We
sat at the table, passing a joint back and forth, but when he hadn’t shown up
for two hours, I got bored and woke up his mother.
“Hey,
Mom.” We all called her Mom. “Where's Ajax to?”
Her
blurry eyes settled on me and she sat up, coughed once, and spread her arms.
“Give me a hug. How's our college boy doing?” I obliged and sat on the couch
beside her.
Ajax
never came home. We waited all evening, but his mom wasn't worried. “He'll be
around, you'll see.” But he wasn't.
The
cops came by around eight o'clock. They found Ajax at one of the big houses up
along Rennie's River. He broke in and took a dip in the hot tub. They said he
was on some drug, so he never noticed a thing. He fell asleep but he never
drowned. It was hyperthermia, they said.
“What's
that?” Max asked.
“His
body overheated,” they said.
Ajax’s
mom cried. Who am I kidding; we all did. His funeral was a mess. Only a few of
us showed up but the ones who did loved him like crazy. We cried during the
ceremony and then at the grave-site, and then again on the sofa at his house.
Another
version of Ajax the Lesser’s death said he was killed by Athena with a flash of
fire to the chest. It was still during a shipwreck, but in this story, the
Greek hero was raised up on a whirlwind, blasted with fire, and then slammed
into some sharp rocks. The Locrians, who lived on the island of Leuce where his
spirit was worshiped after he died, always left a place open in their military
ranks because they believed that Ajax the Lesser was fighting with them, even
though they couldn’t see him.
“He wasn't scared of dying,” Max said. “At
least the universe goes on, right?”
I
stared at him. It took me a long time to figure out what the hell he was
talking about, but when I did, I started to laugh. I laughed and cried and
laughed and choked. He pounded me on the back, which only made it worse, and
then I lay down on the couch and sobbed for Ajax, but really for us, the ones
left behind.