by Kage Baker
Tia Adela, dozing in her chair, started awake. The young man was sitting up in bed, staring at the window. Without even looking back at the girl, he slipped out of bed and drew on the clothes she had laid out for him, the wool and linen that was yellowed but none the worse for having spent a half-century packed in a trunk. He opened the window and drew in a deep breath of sea air.
Turning, he walked out of the bedroom. Tia Adela followed him as far as the front door. He gave her an apologetic grin as he slipped out, ran lightly down the steps. A pink quarter-moon hung low in the west, sending a faint track across the water. He paced down the walk as far as her front gate. But, extending his hand to open it, he faltered; drew back. Two or three tries he made, and couldn’t seem to reach it.
He looked down at the trail of white stuff that crossed his path. He began to walk along it, seeking a way through, and followed its unbroken line all around the house, dodging through her garden, stumbling around behind the woodshed and the blackberry hedge, before he arrived at the front walk again.
He turned to look up, pleading silently with Tia Adela. She shook her head. Shoulders sagging, he came back up the walk and climbed the steps. He collapsed into a chair. She brought the wine and poured out a glass for him. He drank it down. It seemed to make him feel better.
In the morning he went out and spaded up her vegetable garden, whistling to himself in silence. She watched him from the window. Now and again she raised her head to look at the sky, where far to the north a thin silver wall of cloud was advancing. The sea was growing rough; it had turned a milky and ominous green, mottled here and there with purple weed.
* * *
“The glass is falling,” stated the other old woman. Nobody paid any attention to her except Margaret Mary, who came to look at the barometer. Margaret Mary wore glasses, braces, had frizzy hair and freckles. She was the sort of girl who would be genuinely interested in barometer readings.
“Somebody ought to go,” Rosalie was insisting. “She could be lying dead up there, for all anybody knows. Maybe she’s had a stroke or something, and the man is some hobo who’s just moved in. Maybe he’s stealing from her.”
“I guess we ought to be sure she’s okay,” Celia said, glancing uneasily at her own mother.
“Don’t you think somebody needs to check on her, Nana Amelia?” Rosalie demanded. “And if she’s okay, well, that gives you an opportunity to talk about leaving the house to Jerry and me.”
Nana Amelia gave her a dark look. “It’s not a lucky house,” she said.
“Why don’t we all go?” suggested Celia. “That way, if he’s trouble, we can send Margaret Mary for the cops.”
“Okay!” said Margaret Mary.
Nana Amelia sighed, but she drew on her shawl.
They set off up the street. The three women walked in close formation, arms crossed tightly under their breasts. Margaret Mary followed behind, hands thrust into the pockets of her school sweater, staring up at the clouds and therefore stumbling occasionally.
“Those are cumulonimbuses,” she said. “And, uh, stratocumuluses. I think we’re going to get a heck of a storm.”
Nana Amelia nodded grimly.
They came to the front gate and looked up. The house was tidy, trim as a ship, with its new coat of paint. The doorknob and the brass lamp had been polished until they gleamed. The weeds had been cleared from either side of the walkway and the chrysanthemums staked up, watered, all swelling buds and yellow stars.
The women stared. As they stood there, Tia Adela came around the side of the house, carrying a basketful of apples. She halted when she saw them; but the young man who followed her did not seem to see. He simply stepped around her, and proceeded up the steps. He was carrying a dusty box full of mason jars and lids. He went into the house.
“What do you want?” said Tia Adela.
“We came up to see if you were all right,” said Celia reproachfully. “Tia Adela, who’s that boy?”
Tia Adela looked at her sister.
“You really shouldn’t have strangers up here, Tia Adela,” said Rosalie. “We were thinking, maybe you shouldn’t live all alone nowadays, you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Tia Adela. “I thought so too.”
“And I was looking in the phone book, and there’s this nice place called Wyndham Manor in San Luis, where they’d take—”
“You have offended God!” shouted Nana Amelia hoarsely. She was trembling.
Celia and Rosalie turned to gape at her.
“I don’t care,” said Tia Adela. “And He has said nothing. But she’s angry, oh, yes.” And she nodded out at the sea, wild and sullen under slaty cloud.
“Mama, what’s going on?” said Celia.
Nana Amelia pointed up at the window. The young man was standing behind it, gazing out at the dark sea with an expression of heartbreaking longing.
“That is her husband,” she said.
There was a moment’s stunned silence, and then Celia said, very gently: “Mama, Tio Benedito has been dead since before I was born. Remember? I think we’d better go home now, okay?”
Her mother gave her such a look of outrage that she drew back involuntarily.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Nana Amelia. She stormed forward and up the steps, and Celia and Rosalie ran after her, protesting. Tia Adela shrugged and followed slowly. Margaret Mary came with her.
The young man at the window didn’t seem to notice the women bursting into the room. Nana Amelia went straight to the wedding photograph on the wall, grabbed it down and thrust it in Celia’s face.
“There! Her Bento. See? Dead as a stone. He went out past Cortes Shoals after rockfish, too late in the year. A lot of fools went out. The Adelita, the Meiga, the Luisa all went down in the gale, even the big Dunbarton! So many dead washed up on the beach, they loaded them on a mule wagon. Bento, they didn’t find. The sea kept him. And she never forgave God!” Nana Amelia turned in wrath to her sister, who had come in now and set her basket of apples on the table.
Celia, who had taken up the photograph, looked from it to the young man by the window. Rosalie peered over her shoulder.
“Mama, this is crazy,” said Celia. “Things like this don’t happen.”
“So… he’s a ghost?” said Margaret Mary, peering at Bento. “And he’s come back to her? Just like he was? Wow! Only…” She looked sadly at her great-aunt. “Only, you’re old, Tia Adela.”
Tia Adela folded her arms defiantly. “I know,” she said. “But I have him back. She can call him, she can beat herself white on the rocks, but she can’t climb up here. He and I will stay safe in my house, let her gale blow hard as it will.”
“Who is this other lady she’s talking about?” Rosalie murmured to her mother.
“Adela, don’t be stupid!” said Nana Amelia. “You know what will happen.”
“This Wyndham Manor you called, how much does it cost?” Celia inquired of her daughter sotto voce.
“Look, whoever you are, you’d better go now,” Rosalie said, turning to Bento. “Do you hear me? Go back to St. Vincent’s or wherever she hired you from.”
He made no reply. She strode across the room to him. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
She grabbed him by the arm and then she screamed, and staggered back. Celia was beside her at once, catching her before she fell. Bento had not moved, had not even turned his head.
“Honey, sweetie, what is it?” Celia cried.
Rosalie was gulping for breath, her eyes wide with horror. She was holding her hand out stiffly. Her mother closed her own hand around it and recoiled; for Rosalie’s hand was as cold as though she’d been holding a block of ice, and as wet, and gritty with sand.
* * *
“Should I go get Father Halloway?” asked Margaret Mary.
“No,” said the women in unison.
“I don’t see why you’re all so mad, anyhow,” said Margaret Mary. “I think it’s neat. If we can really bring the dead back, so we won’t be l
onely—well—wouldn’t that be great? You could still have Grandpa to talk to, Nana! How’d you do it, Tia Adela?”
Tia Adela said nothing, watching Bento. He was pacing back and forth before the window.
“She made a Soul Feast,” said Nana Amelia. “Didn’t you, Adela?”
“You mean she just cooked some food?” Margaret Mary cried. “Is that all it takes? Can anybody do that?”
“Not everybody,” said Tia Adela, curling her lip. “And food is not enough. There must be love that is stronger than death.”
“Oh,” said Margaret Mary.
“It’s wrong, child,” said Nana Amelia. “The dead don’t belong to us! And they want their rest. Look at him, Adela, does he look happy? You have to let him go.”
“How are you keeping him here?” asked Rosalie in a little voice, the first time she had spoken since she’d learned the truth. Celia, sitting with her arm around her, shook her head.
“Sweetie, don’t ask—”
“Borax,” said Tia Adela.
“What?”
“Borax,” Tia Adela repeated, with a certain satisfaction. “I poured a line of it all along the fence, and he can’t cross it.”
“Jesus Christ, Tia Adela, you put down borax powder for ants, not ghosts!” yelled Celia.
“It’s alkali, isn’t it?” said Tia Adela. “The opposite of salt. So it breaks the spell of the sea.”
“Urn… but alkali isn’t the opposite of salt, Tia Adela,” said Margaret Mary, wringing her hands. “It’s the opposite of acid. We learned that in Chemistry class.”
Tia Adela shrugged. “It still works, doesn’t it?”
A gust of wind hit the windows, whirling brown leaves. A gull swept in close, hung for a moment motionless at eye level before gliding away downwind. Rosalie shivered.
“No, I’m not letting him go,” Tia Adela went on, in a harder voice. “Fifty years I’ve sat up here, and I got old, yes, and she’s still beautiful. Is that fair?”
“There will be a price to pay,” said Nana Amelia.
Tia Adela did not reply. Bento sighed, making no sound, but far out and high up a gull mourned.
“Go away now,” said Tia Adela. “I’ve got his dinner to fix.”
* * *
Rain advanced like a white curtain. The leaden sea turned silver before it vanished in the squall. One by one the trawlers came in, fleeing for their lives, ramming the pier in their haste to moor. The crews scrambled ashore dripping, dodging the waves that were breaking over the pier. A police cruiser pulled up to the mole with its red light flashing, and cops in black slickers set sawhorses across the walkway.
Nobody was fool enough to go out there, though. The harbormaster sighed, looking at the moored sailboats; half of them would be on the beach, or matchwood, by morning.
The cars were pulling up now to the foot of the pier, and women and old men were getting out, squinting into the flying rain, leaning over as they walked into the wind. Soaked before they reached the harbormaster’s office, they came one after another and asked: Was there news of the Medford? Was there news of the Virginia Marie?
They came away with faces like stone, and went back to their cars and sat, steaming up the windows, except for a couple of the old men, who splashed away through puddles to the Mahogany Bar and could be glimpsed thereafter at the window, looking like fish in a lit aquarium, drinking steadily as they waited.
Night closed down. One by one the headlights came on, pointed out to sea. When the waves began to break over the edge of the parking lot, the cops came and made the cars move back; but they did not leave, and they did not turn out the headlights.
Then there was a confusion of shouting, of horns and red lights, and Margaret Mary started awake as the car doors were flung open. She had to wipe her steamed glasses clear before she could see her mother and father hurrying through the rain, splashing through the long beams of light, calling after Rosalie who was sprinting ahead as fast as she had ever gone in her life.
And beyond her—Margaret Mary took her glasses off, wiped them again and stared openmouthed. Impossibly huge, bizarrely out of context with her prow almost on the asphalt, the Virginia Marie lay beached and rolling. Men clung to her, shouting, staring at the solid world of automobiles and houses and warmth, just within reach and terrible yards away, as the black water, the white water kept breaking over them, and the rain glittered and ran.
Sirens howled; a big ambulance pulled up, and another police car. People were crowding too close for Margaret Mary to see much, until the ropes were rigged and the rescued began to arrive on shore, huddled at once in blankets.
The crowd parted. Mary Margaret saw a blanketed man with his wet hair plastered down, and he was talking earnestly to Rosalie. She put her hands to her face and screamed. She just kept screaming, until at last John lifted her in his arms and dragged her back to the car, with Celia running after, weeping. Margaret Mary wept too, withdrawing into her seat. Through her tears she mumbled the Our Father; though a cold, adult voice in her head told her it was a little late for that.
“Daddy, what happened?” she begged, as he thrust Rosalie into the back seat beside her and slammed the door. For all anybody noticed her or answered, she might have been a ghost. Celia reached into the back and gripped Rosalie’s hands, and held on to them all the way up the hill to the house.
It was an hour later before she heard the story from her father, as he sat in the kitchen in his bathrobe, over strong coffee with whiskey in it: how the Virginia Marie’s radio mast had gone by the board, how she had been making her way back, how they had come upon the Medford taking on water and listing, how they had managed to take her crew off; and how Jerry had just gotten the last man aboard and was pulling in the lifeline when he had fallen, and dropped between the two hulls like a stone.
There had been no sign of him, in the rain and the night, and he might have answered their calls—one crewman swore he had heard him answer, and thrown out a life preserver in that direction—but the wind was so loud they couldn’t be certain. Then suddenly the Virginia Marie had her own problems, and no man aboard had thought to come home again. Yet—
“Only Jerry was lost,” said her father, and had a gulp of his coffee. “Can you beat that?”
“But he might have made it,” Margaret Mary protested. “Maybe he caught the life preserver. Maybe they’ll find him tomorrow when it’s light!”
“Yeah,” said John wearily. “Sure, honey.”
Margaret Mary looked out between the curtains, up through the night at the warm light glowing in Tia Adela’s window.
* * *
She slept on the couch in her clothes, because they had put Rosalie to sleep in her bed. Just after seven she rose, put on her glasses and stood at the front window, blinking out at the day. The rain had stopped, the wind dropped, though it was still gusting cold fitfully. The Virginia Marie was breaking apart fast, and there was a big crack in the parking lot where her prow had acted like a wedge on the asphalt. More yellow sawhorses blocked it off. Sailboats were lying all along the tideline, and one actually had come to rest on the boardwalk.
Turning, slipping off her glasses to rub her gritty eyes, she heard sudden footsteps from the hall.
Rosalie was up and dressed, pulling on one of her father’s coats. Nana Amelia was right behind her, looking unstoppable. After them Celia came, hopping as she tried to put on her shoes while following.
“Sweetie, you need to stay here and rest—” she entreated, but Rosalie ignored her mother.
“Where are you going?” asked Margaret Mary.
“Where do you think?” said Rosalie, in a furious voice, flinging open the door and marching out, as Nana Amelia pulled on her shawl.
Margaret Mary stuck her feet in her saddle oxfords and clumped hurriedly along after them, running to catch up.
The rain had packed down the line of borax before Tia Adela’s gate, but had not washed it away. Tia Adela and her husband were out in the garden. She had
filled another basket with windfall apples, and he was sawing loose a bough that had been broken by the storm. He did not look up as Rosalie threw the gate wide and shrieked:
“Let him go!”
Tia Adela lifted her head, gazed at them. She looked down at the harbor, where the Virginia Marie wallowed broken in the surf.
“This has come of your wickedness, you see?” Nana Amelia told her sternly. “And her child needs a father, Adela.”
“Please, Tia Adela! For the baby’s sake!” Celia implored.
Tia Adela looked hard at Rosalie, who was scuffing through the line of borax with all her might. She grimaced, looking for a long moment as though she’d tasted poison.
“That won’t do it,” she sighed. She went to the shed and got a broom. Casting a long regretful look over her shoulder at Bento, she walked to the front gate.
“Stand back,” she said. They shuffled out of her way and she swept the borax aside, in a white fan like a bird’s wing.
The sun broke through, a long beam brilliant and white, whiter still for the seabirds that rose in a circling cloud through it, crying and calling.
“Look at the rainbow!” cried Margaret Mary, and they all looked up at the great arch that spanned the harbor, in colors so intense they nearly hurt the eye.
When they looked down again, they saw the car pulling up.
It was black, and long, and so, so expensive. The dashboard was inlaid with patterns in mother-of-pearl, all shells and mermaids and scalloped waves; the upholstery was sea-green brocade. The chrome gleamed as though it were wet.
And she who sat at the wheel was exquisitely dressed, tapping with her ivory fingers on the wheel, just a little impatient. Though her face was that of a skull, her very bones were so beautiful, so elegant, as to inspire self-loathing in any woman with a face of flesh (too fat!).
She hit the horn. It sounded like a foghorn.
The mortal women heard the quick footsteps behind them, felt the ice-cold touch as Bento shoved through them in his haste to go. He was smiling wide as he got into the car, didn’t so much as look back once. He closed the door. The car glided away down the hill without making a sound. The women stood there, looking after it.
