Dead Echo

by C.G. Banks

  Chapter 32: Note to Self

  I decided to write this down a couple of hours ago. I been thinking a long time and now I don’t know what else to do. I haven’t written nothing since school and I never liked it then and I don’t know what good its gonna do now, but anyway here goes. I have to. He came to me just like I knew it. We sat right here where I’m writing and talked. For hours we just talked. I watched his mouth as he went on, I watched his face. Most of the time I heard what he was saying but others I just watched. And thought.

  I thought a lot about Terri, a little about John. He seems farther gone now but there’s no sense saying any diffrent. Not to myself. I don’t guess it much matters. I see her when I’m sleeping, her little dresses, the toys she used to play with. Sometimes I think my hearts gonna bust. Sometimes I want to just take the gun and put it in my mouth and finish this hole goddam mess but I don’t. It seems like now I don’t know if I can finish it. Somehow I think that would be doing her memry harm. I think a lot about the old days, those shitty days with grandma an I just want to rip it all out and start over, but theres no starting over. I’m old enough to know that now. I see that road in my mind and I see the tire let go of the truck, spinning out towards us. I remember trying to reach the wheel and jerk it the other direction but it didn’t do no good. Every time there’s just the smell of smoke and tires shreding. The smell of the grass I was laying in by the side of the road. The sound of cars stopin and sirens. And the wurst is her shoe laying in the road with the car burning off to the side. I thought at first somehow I’d manage to shuvel it out of my life, but that ain’t gonna happen. I know that now. Seems like now that I can’t do nothing all this shit’s hanging over my head and it won’t ever go anywhere but inside me.

  There’s been nothing for over two weeks. I lay in bed waiting for the attic ladder to slam down in the hall but it don’t come. I wait for the sound of the girls playing up there but it don’t come either. Nothing does. Except the dreams. All my dreams of her. She’s laughing, playing, asking questions that I never could anser. I knew from the start she was a gift because it wasn’t like John had all that much in the brains department either but now it’s just terrable memrys. Makes me wish Ida spent more time listening in church but I know that’s no dam good either. Listening don’t make things real, beleving don’t much either. I see that now.

  And now he’s come. He says he can help. What I got to lose? I knew something was werd, strange that day in the hardware store but never did I figur it to be anything like this. This is against everything I know, everything I ever thought. Everything I ever learned. But it don’t matter. Most of that turned out to be nothing but bullshit anyway. I ain’t smart and never have been. I dropped out a school, got lucky when I found John and it still didnt save me. Now I think I’m past all that. But it don’t change my mind. I think every nite what would you do to have her back and there ain’t nothing really. There ain’t nothing.

  This is what he said. He could get her for me. He talked like he knew her, like everything I been going through was on the tip a his tongue. And that made me beleve him. What else is there? All the things I did beleve ain’t helped. And he says he can get her. Tole me stuff about what he done. What can I do? He axed me that same question what would I do to have her back and I looked him straht in the eye and said there wasn’t nothing. He just nodded his head and smiled. Reached over and took my hand. Made like we was in it together. I didnt even care.

  I know Terri’s here. I seen her. I damn near had my hands on her up there in the attic, I wasn’t but ten feet or so away. And he says he can get her. That’s all. He started off with this mumbo jumbo shit about California and some kinda cult-sounding bullshit and I wasn’t even listening. I just watched his mouth and his eyes. I always been able to tell when a mans lying to me. Don’t mean I ever did much a shit about it but I always been able to tell. Billy in the back seat a his dad’s car that first time, sweating with his pants down around his knees, hanging over me like some kinda dog or something. Telling me he loved me, that he just wanted to put it in a little way. I could see it then but it didnt mean much cause it was better than being at that goddam trailer. Having him spunk all over me was still better than that even though I could see his eyes was lying.

  It was different with Lorca. I still can’t bring myself to think a him by his first name. He ain’t clean enough with all his talk a killing and devils. But I let him talk talk talk, thinking he was pulling me in like everyother Dick and Harry done over the years. Until John. But now he don’t matter. He ain’t been back and I ain’t coming. He was like a vacation away from the bullshit but vacations always end. But I can’t quit Terri. I don’t know now if its cause I been seeing her or what but I don’t think so. I was thinking about killing myself way before that and if theres one thing I do know is now I’m not. Almost like I got something to live for. Almost like this house is part a my life now. Almost like it always has been.

  But I looked him in the eye while he was talking and searched him out. Around all his bullshit he does aim to get her back I know that. Not exatly how but I do know he aims to try. And that’s about all I got. There ain’t nothing more except the bullets in that gun and I won’t try that until I know for sure. It wouldn’t do her rite if I didn’t. So now it almost seems funny, me beleving all them years God was gonna make everything alright regardless and never seeing nothing happen. Hell, right now it even makes a little bit a sense that I ought to give the devil a shot.

  If that’s what it is then that’s what it is…