Lights Out

by Douglas Clegg

  Jeannie Stamp came out from the washroom and leaned over the counter, nodding when Irene sat on the stool.

  “It’s dying, all my business is gone, just about,” Jeannie said as she poured out the coffee, “Black, you like it? I told that old fart Harry to make sure the county money got thrown our way, but he said wait, and look what’s happened now we been waiting long enough, we ain’t even on the map. Used to be, ten, twelve people in here by noon, and now, just you and me, Renie.”

  Jeannie never looked at her directly, either, but Jeannie was always nicer than the rest of the village. Irene had been to school with Jeannie, and had never thought in all her youth that she would ever depend upon her for friendship, but it was the best that was offered these days.

  “I’m going to the school,” Irene told her, leaning her elbows on the counter, sipping her coffee. It was lukewarm and smelled like dirty socks, but this was the only place to get coffee in town since the trouble when they’d burned down the ice cream shop. It was the older kids, just going crazy and setting fire to things. Even the teenagers knew when something was wrong, when things needed to be torn down. Maybe the whole village will go. If I can’t leave, maybe it will leave me.

  “You think that’s a smart move?”

  Irene shrugged. “What’s smart?”

  “School. All those kids I heard about the other day. What happened.”

  “Almost happened, almost.”

  “Well, it could.”

  “Yes, hon, it could,” Irene set the half-empty cup down and could not decide if she should go out in the summer heat again and face Gretchen’s husband, or if she should wait another fifteen minutes.

  The children would be in the playground soon, and if she didn’t see them today, it would be tomorrow, and if it didn’t happen today, they might get used to her presence and never do what she knew they wanted to, never be free to be children, just be children. Less than twenty children left in the village at all.

  “Preacher’s talked about the Lord in our lives,” Jeannie said. “He says we should be grateful, that God shines His light on us, even here, to the lowliest.”

  I am so tired of this fundamentalist town, Irene felt a headache coming on, and all her pills were back at the house, so the headache would just have to hammer away at her. Gretchen and I should’ve left long ago, back when we had choices, back when we wanted to get out in the world. I should’ve learned to drive when I was in my twenties. Not wait until I was forty-six and in a stick shift with a sixteen year old. But they would’ve laughed at me. Luke was the only one who could teach me, the only one I could trust not to tell William, or even Gretchen. They would’ve laughed, and then he would’ve wondered why I wanted to leave so badly, and he would’ve stopped it. He did stop it. And I should never have been pulled from the car. Not back to this godforsaken place. “If that’s true, Jeannie, about God, what about Luke?”

  Jeannie looked like a girl who had been scolded. “That’s different. Preacher says God helps those He chooses.”

  “Who chooses? God, or the preacher?”

  “Preacher don’t have a choice, way I see it. He just got the gift. Always been miracles, always will be. Ain’t you happy, being so special and all?”

  Irene put two quarters on the counter. “Look me in the eye and ask me that.”

  “Oh,” Jeannie said, “you know I can’t do that. You know what happens. You don’t want it to happen, do you?”

  Irene waved to William as she came back out, into the sunlight.

  No one else was on the street, and there he was with his grin, his hopeful grin, like a dog waiting to be kicked. He had that charm, which she found so dull. But in a village like this, he would be king. He would be adored. So he had come here and found Gretchen.

  He was the big fish in the small pond.

  He was Preacher, and this was his Flock.

  Irene had once liked him, a little, but not at all since the accident. She had not even been feeling kindly towards her sister. “I don’t understand you,” she’d told Gretchen, “why do you even want me here? Isn’t it painful?” But Gretchen was so brainwashed by this William person, by his laying on of hands and speaking in tongues, that she was not really the same girl that Irene had grown up with. Gretchen could not see her way out of things, never had been able to; for Gretchen, things were the way they were. Only once had Gretchen asked her about that day, about what happened. And Irene had pretended to have forgotten, as if the accident and the darkness had wiped it away.

  “Irene,” William called out, his hands tucked almost sheepishly in his pockets; he was rocking back and forth on his heels, “I was afraid I’d lost you.”

  He stepped into the street and crossed over to her. He walked like a boy, all bounce and uncertainty.

  “I’m going to see the children.”

  “I’d like to come along.”

  “Do what you like,” she closed her eyes and he touched her elbow with his hand. The bone was broken there, and had not healed where it poked out from her skin. She could move it fine, but she didn’t like to be reminded of it.

  She wondered how he could touch her the way he did; she sensed his discomfort each time he was close, but now, this day, he seemed more relaxed, as if he were no longer fearful of what had happened to her body. She often wondered: Do you like what you see? Does it please you to be so close to this monster? Do you love life this much, even when it looks this way? But she had never been beautiful; Gretchen was always the pretty one, which bothered her until the accident, because afterwards, Irene was happy with Gretchen’s beauty. She felt her little sister should be the lovely one, the one whose flesh was pleasant and fragrant and satisfying. Irene needed no beauty, she needed nothing.

  What she longed for was death, truly, and in death, an escape from this ravaged flesh.

  “You’re beautiful in God’s eyes,” he said, his breath like a warm humid wind along her neck.

  “You should have left me.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “The children, the ones in the ice cream shop. Told me.”

  “Liars.”

  “You let him die.”

  “Those children are liars.”

  “Your own son.”

  “God called me to you. To save you.”

  “But Luke was still alive. You could’ve saved him.” She felt exasperated. He was so dense, so stupid. He only saw what he wanted to see. She moaned in frustration, wanting to hit him as hard as she could. “I was dead. Why can’t you just let me go?”

  The schoolyard was empty, and she went to sit on a swing. He followed her, but didn’t speak again for awhile, so she acted as if he were not there.

  This would be a place for miracles.

  She saw their faces in the school windows, staring and pointing, some calling. She knew their parents.

  Places like this, you know everyone, you had no secrets.

  “It could happen again,” William said.

  She tried to wish him away.

  “You should come home with me now,” he said.

  When she didn’t respond, he added, “You want it to happen, don’t you?”

  Irene watched the children in the windows: some of them had been at the ice cream shop when the car had smashed into the truck, and the fire had started.

  She remembered their faces, fascinated, their screaming, excited voices, as they watched the burning wreck. Her last sight had been of them holding their ice cream cones, and she had felt a peace, even in the pain of death, the numbing cold of fire, a peace from those lovely faces, knowing that the world would pass on without her there, that she would leave them, and they would still eat ice cream, and still talk out of turn, and still grow up into the world without some woman they barely knew by sight named Irene Hart who had stayed her whole dull life in the village.

  Her last thought had been, children.

  It had been a death she enjoyed, and the suffering had only come when she was pulled from the darkness, and op
ened her eyes to hear him, this man that Gretchen had married, saying, “And as Christ brought Lazarus from the dead, so I call His servant, Irene Hart, come, come to us, live again in the flesh with us.”

  Irene sat on the swing and began crying. She felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

  She could not help herself, and in spite of her repulsion at his touch, she asked, “Children are closer to God, aren’t they? Closer than us? ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’, isn’t that the quote?”

  “God is close to all of us. All who believe, anyway.”

  “Oh,” she stopped crying and laughed. He came and stood in front of her. She hadn’t laughed in ages, and he smiled, probably thinking he was finally seeing the light within her. “Oh, that explains it, that’s it. It’s not God who lifted me up from the burning car, it’s something else entirely. It was Luke who God took care of, not me. I get it now, oh, William, you should’ve told me at the time. It was Luke that God loved, not me.”

  “Irene, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Well, if it’s not true, why didn’t you save your son? Why did you raise me up?”

  William looked her in the eye, and she almost fainted because no one had done that since the accident.

  He whispered something, but she knew it before he whispered it, and she wanted to stop up his mouth before the words had formed, “Because I love you,” and she knew he was ashamed and humiliated to have to say it in a schoolyard, in the light of day. “Ever since I saw you, I loved you. I want to be near you. I never want to let you go.”

  So that was it.

  Love.

  “You go home now,” she said softly.

  She turned away from him, swinging to the side, her heels scraping the dirt, happy that he had let that awful feeling out, what he called love, out to evaporate in the shimmering heat of August. It had burned all these years within him, and she had been singed by his fire. She had not known what to call it, and she knew that it was not love, not love at all, but desire.

  Had it been only his desire that had brought her back from the dead? Well, she thought, let desire die, then, and let it have no resurrection.

  “I’ll see you at supper,” he said, and she heard his footsteps on the soft grass as he headed back to the street.

  The swing sagged beneath her weight: it was made for a child and I am not meant to be here. The children will know, too, she thought.

  The bell rang, and the children poured out onto the playground, and some saw her and some were involved in their games.

  Children like golden light on the grassy field, coming slowly, curiously towards her. They called her the names she knew children called, their small, delicate hands, and their wondrous faces, their perfect thoughts.

  She had come before, and they had been close to it, but they had not done what they longed to do.

  Their hands, their eyes, their instinct so much a part of their flesh.

  But today.

  Today.

  One of the little boys was bold, she thought he must be twelve, and he came up and stared at her fiercely.

  “You’re ugly,” he said. “My daddy said you should be dead. You look dead. You even smell dead.”

  She looked him in the eye, and did not even flinch.

  One of the children behind this boy picked up a small stone and threw it at her, hitting her just above her left eye. Irene smiled, the children know what to do, they are closer to things, to nature.

  She felt another stone, this one larger, hit the back of her head, and then she was surrounded by beautiful, joyful children.

  Irene waited for the darkness as they looked her in the eye and knew what she was.

  It was later, when she thought the Kingdom was opening for her that she regained sight, and she welcomed whatever Kingdom there was, whatever light seemed to grow in the dark as the place where she belonged, but it was nothing other than the beam of a flashlight, and the lid of a coffin opening, and a madman above her who had scrambled in the earth to dig up a grave, only to say, “Come to us, live again in the flesh with us!”

  Fries With That?

  When we got interviewed by People magazine, Maggy said that I’d always known about my talent, but that isn’t true.

  She didn’t say it to the guy interviewing us, just to me in private. She told him that the gun had felt good and warm in her hand.

  “Like a kiss,” she said. “Every time I took a shot.”

  Mags doesn’t tell the truth in interviews.

  The truth is, I never really knew about my talent much until things started to happen over a long period of time. My gramma didn’t even know for sure, at first, at least not till I told her. Now, I wish I had listened to that old woman. She knew how bad it could get.

  My mom should’ve known, too, after that cat. But she didn’t catch on too quick, and now, look at the mess. Sure, we could hire good lawyers because of how much both my mom and dad make, and who my dad knows, and we did what we could for Maggy. She’s not mad at me or anything, but every now and then she gives me that glare.

  But gramma knew, once I told her about the cat and other things. She told me without really telling me about how bad it could get.

  Mags said it would’ve happened anyway, what she did.

  I have to admit, it was fun going on television, and meeting big celebrities like Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey.

  They were all nice and really sweet. I thought I looked ugly in that white dress my dad made me wear. He told me that young ladies going on television should look virginal, as if this has ever been a problem for me.

  Maggy only wore her usual black, from head to toe. I call it her witch phase, although she thinks she looks thinner like that. She doesn’t like me calling her a witch or a bitch, mainly because she’s both—she hasn’t been to church since confirmation, and the bitch part…well, if you saw her on television, you’d understand.

  When she started yelling back at the studio audience on Jerry Springer, I just about died.

  But it figures. She was up there flailing her arms around and cursing and I know her grandmother just about had a cow watching on the old RCA back at the trailer park.

  Maggy doesn’t like being called trailer trash either, but that’s really what started it all when she and I were showering off after field hockey (which is neither, since we have to play it on what might best be referred to as a gravel pit, and our team has always been lame).

  It was before fourth period, and Alison Gall had stolen Maggy’s clothes.

  Alison, who is the kind of bitch that no one ever calls bitch, is not exactly the cheerleader type even though she made the squad finally after years of trying. It was her mother pushing her that made her crack the squad, and ever since then she’s just been looking for scapegoats for unresolved anger all the time.

  So she calls Mags a trailer trash dyke, and Mags throws her against the tiles. And Mags, sounding like some otherworldly monster, says, “I’m gonna kill you someday, Alison, and when I do, you’re gonna wish you’d never been born.”

  Alison picked on a lot of girls, but mainly Mags.

  Maggy is a good scapegoat since she doesn’t quite fit into Glasgow High (named for a famous writer, like I want to be someday soon).

  Maggy is not exactly Glasgow material. She smokes too much, tells everyone but me to fuck off, and sometimes me, and she has what Mr. Herlihy writes on her report card all the time.

  “An unusual sense of justice.” Mr. Herlihy’s easy going, which is why we like him. But Mr. Green always writes, “Margaret has trouble forming bonds with other students due to issues.”

  Issues.

  Such crap.

  All of this was read aloud on those talk shows, and then some gooney psychotherapist came out and told Mags what was wrong with her.

  Besides which, Maggy and I formed a bond in third grade when she was the kick-ass new girl who talked back to old Mrs. Burley.

  And Mr. Green, or anyone for
that matter, calling her Margaret when in fact she was christened Maggy Mae after an old song…Nowhere on her birth certificate is the word, “Margaret.” And that word would not describe Mags anyway (I can call her Mags. I’ve earned the right over all these years. You, and others, cannot.)

  In third grade, she was just this dark thing. That’s all I can tell you. I was of course that whole blond blue eyes ribbon in her hair kind of nice little girl who laughed at boys’ jokes as if I knew what the hell they were talking about. But Mags, she was already taller then the tallest kid, long dark hair that obscured most of her face, what I like to call cigarette lips—big pouty pillows right under her nose. Back in those early days, I thought she looked like not a nice girl. She looked like trouble and trash, but I got over it fast. I went out to clap the erasers for Mrs. Burley, and there Mags was, behind the dumpster, smoking a Camel.

  “What the fuck are you staring at?” she asked. I had never before heard a girl use the F word. She had a dark voice. Everything about her back in third grade was dark.

  I was too scared to say anything. Truth be told, I peed my panties right there. I thought she was going to eat me or something. She just sucked back that cigarette till there was nothing but ash, and eyed me with those dark eyes.

  “I asked you a goddamned question,” she said.

  “I’m…not staring…I’m really not,” I said.

  She shook her head in disgust. I saw the rest of her face for the first time when she pulled back her hair a little. She had a tattoo on her left cheek, just next to her earlobe. Just a small star. “Like it?” she asked, when she caught me staring.

  “Not really,” I said. Back then I had a mouse squeak voice. I was pretty much a little nothing who had pretty handwriting and a yes’m attitude. Just a little pleasing machine. But I did not like dark thoughts or tattoos. Yet.