FSF, May-June 2010

by Spilogale Authors

  Her dad had something to do with hedge funds; she isn't clear on what. Or, when it comes down to it, what the heck hedge funds are.

  "It was me who found him. I didn't even know we owned a gun. He was in the kitchen. Then my mother. Upstairs. I thought she was napping. You're with your parents every day, you think you know them...."

  Kev wants to say something meaningful. His brain stalls at “Yeah.” What was it about the dark and campfires that caused folk to bare their souls? Then again, up here, he almost laughs, souls don't need much help.

  "Right away, you know, people started talking, going on about me being the one who had done it. The police too; you wouldn't believe their questions. The looks I got. It seems a lot of kids kill their parents in Connecticut."

  Kev has never been to Connecticut. New Brunswick once. New Hampshire a bunch of times for ball games. A couple of school trips to Boston. The Aquarium. IMAX.

  "What about your grandfather?” she asks. “Is it true, what you said?"

  "He'd always wanted to die up here, you know, since it was good enough for...well...."

  "God?"

  He shrugs.

  "My dad's dad—I never knew him—he killed himself too. I didn't know until I came to Gideon. Aunt Penny told me. I think she thought knowing would make me feel better. Like suicide is a family tradition. You know, like gift-giving on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day?"

  He pokes at the fire. “Do you ever feel guilty about stuff you had nothing to do with?"

  "Sure,” she says, relieved the boy has finally generated conversation. His tall, dark, and silent routine was wearing thin. “Sometimes more than the stuff I had lots to do with."

  He reaches for an Oreo. Twists the cookie into opposing halves.

  "You know, Kevin, you didn't have to try so hard. I liked you the first time I saw you. You could have just asked me out. It's why I came over to you that day. All I wanted was for you to say something to me. Anything. And then, well, telling a girl you know where God is, it's not the best pickup line ever.” She realizes the irony. “Not that it didn't work, I guess."

  She gathers the sleeping bag from her legs and drapes it over their shoulders, snuggles under beside him. His arm has nowhere to go but around her.

  He wrestles with the dilemma. Is it okay to kiss a girl whose mother is not yet twenty-four hours dead? Or are there rules about such things? Like is forty-eight hours all right? Or seventy-two? Or does there need to be a funeral first? And is there one set of rules for kissing and another for feeling-up?

  Sara answers for him.

  The girl knows how to kiss. And where. Boy, does she ever. His earlobes. His neck. Kev follows her lead, doing to her whatever she does to him. And he is getting the hang of it real quick too. He's a natural, by golly. Of course, it isn't like he'd never picked up a Maxim or, when given the opportunity, surfed for porn. And how many times has he experienced the same through others’ eyes? Too many to count, for sure. Yeah, he's seen more than his fair share of just about everything and anything. Including a goodly amount he wishes to hell would fade from memory.

  Sometimes you go looking for stuff. Sometimes stuff comes looking for you. A Katakani cry in the night, that's what it is. Not loud. Just loud enough. An owl scooping up a shrew. Or your rock-a-bye baby cut loose from a treetop. Mindset means everything.

  Sara raises her head. He wagers she'll guess wind, though crickets, bobcat, or raccoon are possibilities. Right on cue, she ventures softly, “Wind?"

  "Yeah,” he says, primed to return to the business at hand. But what comes next is plain on her face and he knows full well there'll be no stopping the aural onslaught.

  A busted siren of a wail, it is, overdubbed in no less than six-part harmony. Twenty miles offshore one instant, filling your head cheek to cheek and chin to scalp the next. Oscillating like late-night radio from Fort Wayne or Corpus Christi or Onlygodknowswhere, as it scores the chalkboard of your brain.

  So many times before he'd heard it. After his mother died, when his grandfather had spilled the beans on God, showed him the grave and told him the story, and drilled him hard on the merits of keeping his big trap shut. After his grandfather died and he came alone. And while Miss Eggleton of English Composition (and abuse) has oft decried the boy's severely limited imagination, Kev's reality more than compensates. Nope, there is nothing limited about the images and sounds kicking round his head. He shouldn't have stalled. Should've filled her in right off, no matter how whacked the story would've sounded. Wiser yet, all he had to do was pitch camp beyond the graveside. Back up near the Thumb, for instance. But this. Them just sitting here. Doing nothing. He knew better. Way better. The Dead don't take kindly to teasing.

  Sara, on the other hand, is intimate with similes and metaphors, knows how to spell onomatopoeia and hyperbole. To top it off, she'd spent the better part of two summers with her mom in Galway. Plainly, it is nighttime and the banshees have come out to play.

  A mawkish mewling picks up as the wailing recedes. An otherworldly caterwaul that overlaps then overpowers, dull blade dissecting skull, before it too diminishes, one more disembodied chorus to serenade the dead of night.

  The crackle of their fire.

  The ocean beyond and below.

  Mosquitoes. Black flies. Crickets.

  A rustle of this. A skitter of that.

  And just when you think the curtain is coming down, a phantom soloist takes to the mike, soprano no less, tone deaf and hopelessly asthmatic. Three bars in, scrabbling for the melody of what Kev assumes to be Toora Loora Loora or perhaps Suo Gan, clear favorites of the dearly departed, she gets the hook. God, they love their lullabies, they do!

  "Feral cats, they're everywhere up here,” Kev suggests, giving voice to the least threatening scenario.

  She rolls her eyes. For a country boy, his guess is lame, no matter how hot and horny he surely is. She rises to her knees, scopes out the dark, seeking a glimpse of whatever is out there. “I've seen this movie,” she says.

  Hell, Kev has seen the movie too. Knows the script by heart. Kiss, kiss. Scream, scream. Slash, slash. Kiss, kiss. So why wasn't the girl huddled in his arms by now, all terrorized and tender? “You know what they say, if you leave things alone, things'll leave you alone."

  "Don't you believe it,” Sara shoots back, and before he can catch her, she springs to her feet, tears from the firelight, and scrambles to the top of God's tombstone. “Jimmy, Gully,” she calls out, “if that's you, you bastards—"

  Kev charges after her. Seven, eight, nine strides. And Sara slams right back into him. Collapses against him. Grabs on, holds on. Breathless. Shaken. “Que raio é que aconteceu?” she cries. “What the hell was that?"

  He can spell it out or cop out. “What do you think it was?"

  "I'm speaking Portuguese, for God's sake. I don't speak Portuguese. Não falo português."

  On the upside, she is finally in his arms. He pulls her closer, inhales the florals of her hair. Jesus, talk about your one-track mind! Life, the universe, and God stripped naked before them, and his hormones are still running the show.

  "À quanto tempo não estou cá? Tell me that. Please. How long was I gone?"

  "Not as long as you think,” he says.

  * * * *

  Best they can tell from the trajectory of Artie D'Angelo's flashlight, his head has ricocheted off a tree. The moon may be fulsome and bright somewhere over the Katakani, but down on the forest floor, you might as well be in a root cellar.

  Just what Gil needs. Great. Just great. Hell, the guy knew better than to chase after his dogs. He wasn't at ease with this nighttime business from the outset. “We're blind men out here,” he'd said so many times, Gil finally had to tell him to shut the hell up.

  Deputy Fritshaw is five weeks up on an eight-week First Response certificate. He's been begging for on-the-job experience. Now he's got Artie.

  The Gullickson kid steadies the beam while the deputy examines the dog handler. His nose is
busted, that much is evident. The blood soaking Artie's shirt and pants is another matter; Fritshaw can't say where the heck it's all coming from.

  "Is he dead?” Gil asks.

  "Don't think so, Chief.” Fritshaw gropes for a pulse. “I'm thinking maybe I should tie a tourniquet or two."

  Gil grunts, sizes up Jimmy and Gully, his lantern swaying at their noses. He backs the pair against the tree that took out D'Angelo. “Looks like it's down to us,” he says, discarding what remains of his better judgment. “You're my deputies now. But don't let it go to your head. You step out of line, you or you, and there's going to be a real tragic shooting mishap on the mountain tonight."

  * * * *

  Sara's tongue has run away with her brain. Can hardly believe the voice is her own. She's never been the sort to chatter. Has no patience for those who do. But chattering she is. Cannot stop. The memories are too fresh, too vivid. And Kevin, too invested. All ears, all empathy, he sits by the fire as she recounts the details of a life as if it were her own. From her birth in Salema in 1922 to her death in Salema in 1933. From what? Diarrhea. “I'm playing on the beach one second and can't stay on my feet the next. I'm yelling at me, ‘Get up! Get up!’ But I can't hear me. I can't save me. A bad stomach and I'm dead? Who dies like that?"

  "Cholera."

  "Cholera? You know about cholera?"

  "Nothing you could have done. You can't change a life already lived."

  "I was there. Every moment. My mother. My father. My brothers. I had four brothers, Kevin. It was my life, it was."

  "No. It wasn't."

  "Onze anos. Ela tinha apenas onze anos de idade. Eleven years old, that's all I was."

  "And your name? Tell me that."

  She begins to answer. Tries again. An M. It started with an M. Or was it an N? Thinks she is going to be sick. Not as sick as she'd been on the beach at Sa—Sa—Sa—Salema. Jesus, she'd almost lost the name of her village too. She wraps her arms about her knees and presses them to her belly. “I can't believe this.” She did not cry. She would not start now.

  "The names fade first,” he says.

  She raises her fists, throws herself at him. “What did you give me?” she shouts, tears breaking. “X? Crank? What, you bastard?"

  He holds her wrists, talks her down. Strokes her hair, her cheeks. “That girl, Sara, she's you right now, but not for long. You're already losing her. Soon, you won't even know she's gone. Except every now and then, she'll surprise you, come back in unexpected ways. Something she did or said. The house she lived in. A face she knew. A few words in a language you're not supposed to know. You'll smile or feel sad maybe. It can be the worst sort of feeling, a longing for something you can't quite place. It's there and then it's not."

  "It felt so real, but now...."

  "Yeah. Like a dream."

  "You wake up, remember every detail, and by breakfast not a thing."

  "Unless. Unless you dream it again and again. You take on the same soul, three, four times, you hang on to a whole lot. Ask me about the Merchant Marine and the war and I can tell you more than you'd ever want to know. And Woody Guthrie, I can sing you songs no one's heard for seventy years. My grandpa, he served with him. Bunkmates."

  She lies warm against him, her heart racing, wondering if any of this day and this night are real and she isn't lying in a hospital bed in Portland or Darien thrashing through drugs and coma. “You don't even sound like you anymore. Cholera. The Marines. I mean, you're the boy who couldn't string two words together...."

  "I never had anybody to share the words with, I guess. You and your Portuguese—if you tried learning the language right now, you'd pick it up so fast it wouldn't even be funny. You end up knowing stuff you don't even know you know. Stuff comes up all the time and suddenly you're this brainiac."

  "It's reincarnation then?"

  "It's about past lives. Just not ours."

  "I was there, Kevin. I was that little girl."

  "Look, you turn around right now, go up on the rock, I promise, you'll be back here in a flash, dead certain you've been gone another lifetime. And maybe you'll be speaking Arab or German or Chinese next. And maybe you'll be babbling on about your mother and father and brothers and sisters. Heck, your husband and kids too. Your grandkids. You'll even know what you had for breakfast on the day you died, Sara, but it won't be your life you'll be remembering. All that wailing and carrying on from before, it'll be one of theirs."

  "Right. Of course.” She casts an eye to the dark and the vicinity of the rock. “Souls."

  "Spirits, ghosts, whatever you want. It's all the same. And the noises they were making, well, it was just them trying to find our frequencies, get inside our heads so they could live their lives again. Once a soul hitches a ride inside your brain, you've got no choice but to go along. Tonight, some dead kid from Portugal got to you, next it could be your mom or dad or, I dunno, Heath Ledger, if you want. The Dead don't have much else to do, God being dead now and all."

  "The god your grandfather buried?"

  "Not the god, Sara. He buried God.” She's a bright girl. Way brighter than any living soul he's ever met. But stubborn, jeez! Why is this so hard for her? From the moment his grandpa told him and he'd climbed onto that rock and seen what he'd seen, he needed no convincing. But Sara, it isn't so much she doesn't trust him; she doesn't trust herself. And where he's headed now, he expects the notion will take an even bigger blow.

  He wades in with what he thinks is caution. “The night before your dad...your mom.... They'd been arguing, right?"

  She stares him down. Incredulous. Violated. “What about it?” she says, her stomach turning.

  "It was a terrible fight. Worst ever. And in the morning, your dad was at the kitchen table waiting for you. The gun, right in front of him."

  "You're creeping me out. You're some kind of stalker, you know that?"

  "Then you tell me."

  "It's none of your damn business."

  "You asked him what was going on—"

  "Fine. You want to hear it from me? Fine. He told me he was going to blow his brains out. Okay? As soon as he finished his coffee, he was going to blow his brains out. Okay? Satisfied? Jesus, Kevin, how could you?"

  "That day you came to my locker. There was something about you—"

  "So you lived my—my father's life?"

  "Only enough times to remember. No more. Honest."

  "Then you know what I did."

  "You took the gun."

  "I was stupid. My fingerprints were all over it. Daddy didn't even try to stop me. Didn't even blink."

  "But then you went and handed it back. You looked him in the eye and handed it back. Like you were daring him."

  "He was always going on about killing himself. I never thought...."

  "Then you took your lunch from the fridge, put your books in your pack, and walked out the door like it was nothing. Nothing."

  "And all the way to school, you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking how nice it would be if it were just Mom and me. So there. Now you know. I'm a horrible person, okay?” He moves to pull her closer, but she wants none of it.

  "Your dad was pretty screwed up, Sara. He did some bad stuff. It's not a life I'd go through again. When the guilt caught up with him—"

  "You're like some kind of ghoul. Listen to yourself. You check out friends by hanging out with their dead families—"

  "Once you start,” he says quietly, “it's hard to stop. Besides, we're all they got now."

  "What about my mother? You trying her next?"

  "The freshly dead have a tough time connecting with strangers. You could if you want, but it'll be easier if you go with people you don't know so well the first few tries."

  "Jesus, Kevin!"

  "Yeah, I've tried to hook up with Him too. After Grandpa told me about God, I thought I'd switch my prayers to Him, thinking He took over Heaven same way Casey Bibber took over Bibber Ford after his dad got creamed by the F-150. But Casey could never make
a go of it, and it wasn't like I was ever much into praying anyhow."

  She smiles. Doesn't want to. Can't help herself. “You've got all the bases covered, don't you?” One second, she's hating him more than she's hated anyone since, well, her dad, and next she's ready to bear his firstborn.

  "There's nothing harder for people to believe than the truth,” he says, and she knows exactly where he's coming from. Even after she'd fessed up to the cops about Dad, breakfast, and his gun and they'd let her go, she wasn't off the hook. Even in Gideon. Jimmy had told her how, before she showed up, the Chief of Police himself had told her uncle to lock up his guns and her aunt to keep the Henckels out of reach. “Don't mean to alarm you none, but who's to say for certain what this girl has or hasn't done?"

  Kev stirs the fire, a beacon of hope perhaps for the souls queuing up. “Ecclesiastes 12:7. It's the only verse of the Bible I know by heart."

  "You're one up on me then,” she says, uneasy as to where this might be going. She doesn't mind The Good Book so much, just the good folk compelled to quote it.

  ” ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ That pretty much explains it, I think."

  "Aunt Penny, she's always going on about going back to God. So this is it then?"

  "Everybody who's lived and died, they're all here on the Katakani—the ones since God died, anyhow. I don't know about the souls from before. But the rest.... And as long as people keep dying.... You and me too, some day."

  "Who would have guessed—Heaven a mountaintop in Maine?"

  "Grandpa likened it to a bunch of planes stacked up over Logan. They never get the go-ahead to land and they don't have enough fuel to fly someplace better."

  "But wait, if God is dead like you say, where do new souls come from? Yours. Mine. Who made us? That's the flaw, don't you see? Without God—"

  "Thomas Edison is dead too. But they're still making light bulbs."

  "And to think that bitch Eggleton said you had no imagination."