To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis

by Watkins, Andra

  He stepped up with his hand outstretched and waited for her to take it, like some kind of damn king. “My name is Garren. Garren Teed. Country music promoter extraordinaire. Mighty pleased to meet you, young lady.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  I leaned forward from the back of Mister Teed’s sports car to stretch my legs. Because of the angle of the back window, I had to scrunch up so that I couldn’t feel my feet. He looked in the rearview mirror and winked at me, and I winked back. Mommy was right. It was easy to get men to give a girl what she wanted. She just had to know how to work them.

  Country music twanged through Mister Teed’s speakers, and it reminded me of Miss Leslie. I had a nightmare about her in the truck. She came back to life and met us in Nashville instead of Daddy, and she wouldn’t tell me where he was because we ran away and left her like we did. When I woke up, I told myself we had to leave her there to get away from the Judge.

  Would anybody find her?

  Merry didn’t talk much to Mister Teed. Instead, he stared out the window. Pouting. Every time I opened my mouth, he twisted his head back and glared at me long enough to remind me to keep quiet. At first, I felt bad about letting Mister Teed talk without answering him, because it was rude, but I guess it didn’t matter to him. He talked enough for all of us, and he asked all kinds of questions.

  “Where are you from? You couldn’t have been born in Nashville.”

  I bit my lips together to keep from telling him, and Merry stared straight ahead.

  “What do you think of the music city, then?”

  I looked at the heavy gold ring on his third finger, the one with the green stone. It made pretty light when it caught the sun. I wondered whether it had special powers of some kind, like my Wonder Twins. Merry still looked out the window and tapped his finger on the armrest.

  Mister Teed tried again. “Have you listened to much country music? It’s the sound of the goddamn gods, you know.”

  “I love Willie Nelson,” I blurted before Merry silenced me with one swift look.

  Mister Teed reached under the seat and pulled out an 8-track tape. A white case with no label. He shoved it in the player, and Willie Nelson vibrated through the speakers all around me. He pulled down his glasses and caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “One of my favorites, too.” When we came to a stop sign, he pushed his glasses up his nose and shifted his eyes to Merry, sort of puffed up in the chest. “Do you know who I am, Son?”

  Merry cut his eyes sideways. “Something about you is familiar, Teed, but then, you are such a...colorful character. The problem with colorful characters is they tend to be gaudy. Too over the top.”

  Mister Teed was speechless as he revved the engine and plowed through the stop sign, while I stared at the knobs on the console and tried to memorize the phrase “colorful character.” I’d never heard it before, but I was sure I’d known a lot of them.

  I closed my eyes and imagined what the end of the Natchez Trace would look like. Maybe it would be like everything else Merry and I had seen on our long journey. Dirt and grass and weeds, dead leaves and trees and sometimes water. If we were in New Orleans, I knew where Daddy might go, but Nashville wasn’t the same. How would I ever find him in such a place?

  “Merry?”

  “Ssshhh.”

  “Will we be able to find Daddy in Nashville?”

  Mister Teed turned around and looked right at me from the driver’s seat. “Who’s your daddy, young lady?”

  The car bumped over grass when he ran off the road, and Merry twisted his arm back to steady me. I put my fingers over my eyes and watched a telephone pole get bigger through the cracks, but Mister Teed swerved to miss it, cursing Merry the whole way. Words I was too young to remember, let alone repeat. When he had us back on the road, he smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “So, who is he? I might know him, because I know everybody who’s anybody in Nashville.”

  I looked between him and Merry, trying to settle on an answer that wouldn’t get me in trouble again. I let out a breath and said, “You must be really big, if you know that many people.”

  “I know everybody worth knowing, that’s for goddamn sure. If you’re going to be in Nashville a while, maybe I’ll introduce you to some of them. I been on the hunt for a child star to represent, and you’re pretty enough. Doesn’t matter whether you can sing. We can always fix that in the studio.”

  “I can sing. I get my voice from my daddy.”

  Merry groaned. “Em, stop talking. Now.”

  I rolled over onto my back and put my feet up on the slanting window glass. The sun was setting, and the sky was pink and orange and yellow and purple.

  Merry lowered his voice but I still heard him. “Look, Teed, stop filling her head full of nonsense and keep your eyes on the road.”

  “It ain’t goddamn nonsense, Son. I am the most powerful country music producer in Nashville, which means the most powerful one in the world, to translate for stupid people like you. I hope I’m not going to be late for my appointment because of all this horse shit.” I felt the car speed up underneath me, and my head bobbed this way and that as Mister Teed zipped through traffic. “I got a big singer on the hook at the moment. He’s going to be a sensation. I’m meeting him after I drop you off.” The more he talked about singers and bands and the famous people he knew, the more reckless he drove, until I hung onto Merry’s seat with both hands to keep from rolling all over the back compartment. I bit my lips together so I wouldn’t scream, but I think a little one came out anyway.

  When Mister Teed turned around to look at me, the wheel jerked in his hands. Trees rotated outside the windows as the car merry-go-rounded across the road, and I smelled the sour stink of burning rubber, right before we bumped over the sidewalk into a star dusted slice of heaven.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The trees stopped moving. No crunching sounds or jolts of impact like when Merry wrecked the truck. Mister Teed let out a ragged exhale and rested his head on the steering wheel. He muttered under his breath and kept sitting like that.

  When I poked my head out of the back, we were in a parking lot at the end of an open space lit by Christmas lights.

  Merry reached back and pulled me into his lap in the front seat.

  “Are you okay, Em?”

  I wiggled a little to test everything out, but I was determined to meet Daddy, even if I was dead. “It’s getting dark. We need to go.”

  Mister Teed dragged his head away from the wheel and fixed his sunglasses. His voice sounded a lot less inflated when he spoke. “End of the Trace is just there. Beyond that building a couple of blocks.”

  I turned my head and gasped. I knew where we were, only it wasn’t in the right place. Marching rows of columns and a ginormous roof and the whole thing lit by twinkling lights. Grass stretched in front of it, with paths that were constellations on the ground. It was the Parthenon, not a ruin in Greece like the picture in my World Book Encyclopedia, but the whole building.

  “Kind of magical, isn’t it, young lady? Be thankful I can drive. Unlike some people.”

  I clawed at the door handle and strained to get out of the car, but Merry pulled me back.

  “Em, wait.”

  “Oh, horse shit, Son. Let her go. It looks like she’s got a date to keep.” He took my hand in his. “I’m Garren Teed. You remember that.”

  Crickets chirped somewhere close, and Merry opened the door. “Say thank you to Mister Teed here for bringing us all this way.”

  I tried to be still and breathed thank you thank you thank you into Mister Teed’s sad face, and he handed me a white card. “If you’re ever inclined, young lady, use this card to look me up.”

  Merry slammed the car door and leaned into the open window. “Thanks. In spite of yourself, you’ve already done more for her than you know.”

  When Merry took my hand, I pulled on it, trying to mak
e him run with me through the parking lot, but he held me back. Until the end, he would tell me to be careful. He would always protect me.

  A sidewalk ran in front of a green park sloping all the way to the Parthenon. “Isn’t it beautiful, Merry?”

  “I prefer the ruin myself. The one in Greece. This is a bit pretentious for my taste.”

  I could see the charge in the air. “Daddy is here. Right this very minute. Let’s go find him.”

  I tried to tug Merry across the grass, but he wouldn’t go any faster. Impatient, I let go of him and darted ahead, along the dirt path to the fairy-tale building. We were at the end of the Natchez Trace, and we were in Nashville, and Daddy was in Nashville. I had to get to him.

  Two solid hands grabbed my shoulders. When I turned around, Merry was there. He kneeled in front of me, holding me still. The whites of his eyes were red, and his lips shook a little when he tried to smile.

  “I want to make sure I get to say a proper goodbye, Em. Just in case—ah—just in case you don’t see me again.”

  “But we already talked about this, Merry. You said you wouldn’t leave me until we found Daddy. And he’s here. Well, somewhere. In Nashville. And you have to stay with me ’til we find him because you have to meet him. I know he’ll want to thank you.”

  “Em, I don’t think—”

  But I couldn’t wait for Merry anymore. Daddy was there. I could feel it. The two-dollar bill said Wednesday, and I knew he would find me. I left Merry on the grass. Through the starry paths. To the big steps. I was panting by the time I stood under the roof of the Parthenon.

  Alone.

  The columns were giant poles, and rough—they scratched my fingers when I touched them. From the bottom, they reached all the way to heaven. My voice was a scary echo when I called out, “Daddy?”

  I looked down the avenue of columns and waited for him to step out from behind one of them and fling his arms open, a picture of me in one hand and tears streaming down his happy face. Instead of moving, I clamped my eyes together, as tight as I could, until I saw stars, and I wished for Daddy to be there when I opened them.

  The stars went away and my eyes adjusted. Still, nobody.

  I shivered and turned to walk the long side of the building. My steps sounded hollow, just like I felt inside. There were benches between the columns and each time I got close to one, I expected to see Daddy sitting there. I tried to imagine him. Did he buy a special outfit to meet me? What did he think when he got my message on the two-dollar bill? Would he look the way I remembered him? Grown-ups didn’t change as fast as kids. I worried that he wouldn’t recognize me, because I was a different person than when he last saw me. Outside and in.

  Because of Merry. He inspired me to do things I’d never do on my own. Without him, I never would’ve gotten out of New Orleans. I certainly wouldn’t have survived the Natchez Trace. He made me look hard at who I was, and he challenged me to explore who I wanted to be.

  By the time I got to the end of the building, I was breathing hard. I walked all that way, and still no Daddy. He wasn’t anywhere. Around the corner I found a short walkway that led up to a gigantic door. Light streamed out of it. I never understood why artists painted God like rays of light.

  With a quick prayer that these light beams were different, I walked up the steps and went inside. The ceiling was as tall as outside, and it reminded me of a spilled box of crayons. Everything was empty and quiet, except for a giant pair of eyes that stared back at me from the face of a frozen woman. I almost screamed, until I realized she was just a statue in the middle of the room.

  “This room must be for you.” I waved my arms around the space and whispered, but she didn’t blink or nod her head or anything.

  Her robes reminded me of the cypress trees in the swamp, and her crown was thick and spiky. For some reason, she had another face stuck in the center of her chest, its mouth open in a round O, like it was trying to say O, how did I wind up here? An angel fluttered in one of her hands. Everything about her was white. I tiptoed around the outside of the gate that kept people from getting too close, and her eyes followed me, even when I was behind her.

  My legs shook a little. The air was empty of everything, and the world stopped while she looked at me. “Are you God?”

  My whisper firecrackered through the empty space. When she didn’t answer, I crept closer, until I had to tilt my head so far back that it hurt my neck just to see her face. “If you are God, can you please show me where Daddy is? And make him and Merry be friends? Let them both always be in my life, forever?”

  I closed my eyes and bowed my head to seal my wish. When I turned to go back outside, a shadow blocked the doorway.

  I only had time to scream.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “Daddy!”

  “Emmaline!”

  He ran up to me and picked me up in his strong arms, and we spun around and around in front of the statue. I cried, and he cried with me, tears that feathered out into the fine lines around his blue eyes. I touched them, because they were new. “Oh, Daddy, I knew you’d come. I knew it.”

  Daddy held my chin in his shaking hand. “Nothing, and I mean nothing, would’ve kept me from being here.”

  “Did you get my message?”

  “It really did come from you.” His fingers brushed against my cheek. “My friends told me I was an idiot. Wishful thinking. Too much of a coincidence. Well, we showed them, didn’t we?” He reached into the pocket of his black jeans and pulled out my crumpled two dollars. I spread it flat and read my message again. It wasn’t faded or anything. It was like I just wrote it.

  I hugged him again and squeezed him as hard as I could. “You have to tell me how you got it, Daddy. Don’t leave anything out.”

  With a teary smile, he pushed a strand of hair out of my face. I watched his mouth move while he told the story, and I couldn’t stop kissing his face. He had a break between sets at a country bar, and he always allowed himself one drink. When he took his change, my two dollars was right on top of the stack, message side up. He touched the purple ink and called off the rest of his set, because he knew it was from me.

  People laughed at him when he told them the two dollars was a message from his little girl. A couple even called him crazy, because there had to be a lot of girls named Emmaline in the world.

  But he was convinced. When he showed one of my letters to his friend Big Rosie and they compared the handwriting, she agreed with him.

  “But if Big Rosie hadn’t seen the likeness, I still would’ve come, you know. I knew. I just knew.”

  Daddy waited for me all day. He showed people my picture and asked them if they’d seen a little girl that looked like me. When he got hungry, Big Rosie brought him lunch, fried chicken. He ate sitting on one of the benches outside. He even missed an audition, forgot to let the man know he wasn’t coming.

  “I’ll probably be ruined in this town because of it, but I don’t care. When I heard your mother had died, I packed up to go back to New Orleans to look for you. I mean, I didn’t know where you were or anything. Nadine made sure of that, but still, I didn’t want her to end up the way she did. Anyway. That gig last night was my final one before I was set to leave town. But now you’re here, and with Nadine gone, nobody can take you away from me.”

  “Except me.”

  When Daddy spun us around, the Judge filled the doorway, a bent cigar burning between his bloody lips and the pistol that killed Miss Leslie in his scratched hand. The door scraped along the floor and closed with a boom behind him. He raised an arm, slow like it hurt, and pointed the gun at us.

  “Put her down now, and back away.”

  Daddy’s arms tightened around me. “Emmaline is mine.”

  The Judge’s eyes were glassy with tears, and the gun shook in his hand. “I don’t understand, little beauty. After all these years, these decades, I’ve
spent looking. Longing. Everything I’ve done to be with my Ann. Don’t you feel anything for me, deep down inside?”

  My stomach flip-flopped. Nothing could ever make me leave Daddy’s side. I opened my mouth to tell the Judge, but the door screeched open and Merry screamed into the room and tackled the Judge. They rolled around on the floor, and Merry yelled, “That person is gone, Wilkinson. Dead. Your wife is dead.”

  Merry swept the Judge’s body along the floor, his arms locked under the Judge’s armpits. The Judge’s face was red, but he grunted really loud when he kicked at Merry’s legs. Merry’s hands went wide, and he toppled to the floor. When he rolled over on his side, the Judge’s hand shook with the weight of the gun. It clicked, and Daddy’s arms tensed around me. Merry scissored his legs in the air, and the gun flew out of the Judge’s hands at the moment he fired.

  Daddy groaned. When he fell to his knees, he took me with him. Along his side, a big red stain spread on his shirt. His blue eyes glistened and turned white. His head thunked on the stone floor.

  “Merry! Daddy’s hurt!” My throat hurt from shouting, but when I looked over at Merry, the Judge sat on top of him. His hands squeezed Merry’s neck hard enough to snap it. Merry’s face was almost as blue as his eyes.

  Merry kicked his legs, and the Judge’s spine crunched when he fell backwards. Merry rolled along the floor toward Daddy and me. He coughed air back into his lungs, and one of his hands was electric when it brushed my arm. The Judge lumbered to his feet and looked at me, almost like he could see all the way inside me, to the very middle of my soul. I couldn’t look away. Instead, I held my breath and waited. The Judge’s chin wagged when he opened his mouth, but he made no sound when he turned and limped to the door. He looked back at me one last time and was swallowed by night.

  Merry moaned when he sat up and ripped the side of Daddy’s shirt away. His eyes frowned at the blood, and he pressed on Daddy’s skin. “It’s just a flesh wound. Grazed him but didn’t enter the body.”