Days of Little Texas

by R. A. Nelson

  “Well, how old are you?” I say.

  I’m sorry the minute the words are out of my mouth. Lucy looks up in the air, eyes flicking all around. Searching. Like she’s trying to remember. Remember who she used to be.

  She looks straight at me. “It’s not important.”

  “Are you—are you a ghost?”

  She shows that little grin that’s almost not a grin. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, Ronald Earl?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know what you are.”

  She leans to one side on her hand, like she’s getting comfortable.

  “Hasn’t anybody ever told you there’s no such thing as ghosts?”

  I put my weight on my back foot, the one closest to the door.

  “Oh. So you’re a devil. Like in the Bible.”

  “Hey, you’re shivering. Why don’t you come over here and get dressed?”

  She glances at my clothes hanging on the chair and pats the bed.

  “That’s all right,” I say.

  “Afraid I might bite?”

  I watch her, still not really sure I’m believing any of this. A girl. In my bedroom. A dead girl.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I say.

  “You didn’t ask one. You said, ‘So you’re a devil.’ Maybe I am. Does that bother you?”

  “How could you not know what you are?”

  Lucy sighs. “Believe it or not, you don’t instantly get all the answers over here.”

  “After—after you’re …”

  “Dead?” Lucy says. “Okay. Might as well get it out of your system. You want to know what it’s like, don’t you?”

  Her eyes make it hard to think. I finally manage to nod.

  “All right,” Lucy says. “You know all those TV shows, the ones where somebody pretends to be talking to spirits in the afterlife?”

  “Yes. Me and Certain Certain were just watching an episode of Crossing Over where—”

  “That’s bullshit….”

  I wait, looking at her.

  “Does swearing bother you?” Lucy says. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know if we should be talking like this. Seeing how you’re a devil.”

  “Because only devils curse?”

  “No. I reckon plenty of folks curse.”

  She smiles again. “Won’t the Lord protect you?”

  “Don’t make fun. It’s not right. It’s just—why would a ghost need to swear?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” She smiles a big smile. It looks real this time. “I’m sorry. I’m teasing you, okay? What else would you like to know?”

  I think about ways I could ask it, decide there aren’t any good ones.

  “How come—why do you move so funny sometimes? And your voice—”

  “Because it’s so hard, Ronald Earl.”

  “What is?”

  She moves her head, jerking it side to side like she’s studying the room. “Being here. This place. You can’t imagine. I don’t know—I don’t know if I can explain it.”

  “Try.”

  She looks at me awhile. “Have you ever—when you were a little kid—did you ever crawl up inside some place that was really tight? Where you could barely move?”

  “I guess so. Certain Certain has this place up above the truck cab where he sleeps—it’s not so bad, but behind it there’s this tiny little space for storage. When I was little, I loved climbing in that space. I had to make myself as little as I could, squeeze myself in where I couldn’t move a lick. Then we’d fly on down the highway, me balled up in there—”

  “That’s what it’s like,” Lucy says. “Being here. Except it’s not just the feeling of being cramped into a space—it’s like you’re cramped into a world. A whole world that is nothing but small, cramped-up places. Slow. Everything is so slow. It’s hard to—to make anything work. Do you understand?”

  “Is that why you couldn’t speak before? At the motel? And the drive-in theater? Last night?”

  “Exactly! I wanted to talk to you so bad….”

  “So how can you now? What happened?”

  “You. You did it.”

  “You set me free,” Lucy says.

  I feel my skin go all over with gooseflesh, and back away from her.

  “Are you talking about my prayer?” I say. “Where I asked Jesus to set you free? How could you know about that?”

  “I was there.”

  “Inside my head?”

  “Yep. I’m there now. You talk about cramped.”

  “That’s not funny. Don’t you make fun of me.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say. I was just suddenly there, inside your dream. It wasn’t something I had any control over. I didn’t do it. You did it. You brought me here.”

  I realize my hand is on the knife again. I slide it away, but keep it close. I raise my voice, cocking my head toward the hall.

  “Maybe you’re just trying to trick me,” I say.

  Lucy smiles. “They can’t hear you. Yell your head off if you like.”

  I already know it’s true. I can feel what I felt before—like a mixing bowl has been set down over the room.

  “Are you magic?” I say.

  Lucy shifts to leaning on the other hand.

  “Are you still hung up on that devil thing?” she says.

  “Bible says there will be signs and wonders. In Matthew. ‘For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.’”

  Lucy looks mock-serious. “So which am I? A sign or a wonder?”

  “Depends, I guess … on why you are here.”

  “You,” she says. “I came because of you. I told you. You brought me here.”

  “How could I do that?”

  “You don’t have to know you are doing it. You just have to do it.”

  “But what did I do? I didn’t do anything!”

  Lucy’s shattered eyes get bigger. “We all do something, Ronald Earl. You’ve been doing a lot of something lately.”

  No. No. She can’t mean that. She can’t know about that. She can’t. How bad I really am. How evil I am becoming.

  “What’s wrong?” she says. “Come on, talk to me.”

  “What do you want?” I say quietly.

  “Did you find it? What I left for you the last time?”

  “The piece of brick you wrote on?”

  Lucy’s head flops up and down.

  “That’s why—that’s why I’m here,” she says. “I’m here for you. I’m here because I want to be here. I couldn’t be here without you.”

  I swallow, feeling something in my chest. I make the mistake of looking straight into her face. When she’s this still, it’s hard to think someone is actually inside those eyes-inside whatever she is.

  “Are you all right?” Lucy says.

  “Not exactly,” I say, hoping she doesn’t notice my hands shaking.

  “You’re cold.”

  She levers her skinny arms like a puppet and slides stiffly off the bed. Her little shoes thump the oak floor. She stands there, hands at her sides, watching me. Now she looks like the girl I saw at the drive-in movie theater. Alive, but somehow not alive. My heart shinnies up my throat.

  “Do you believe in me?” she says.

  “I reckon I have to,” I say, gulping the words.

  “Then you have to believe in other things, too, Ronald Earl. You have to start thinking. Thinking with a new mind.”

  “All I’ve got’s the old one.”

  She smiles. “Since you’re a preacher and all, I didn’t think you’d be—”

  “Didn’t think I’d be what?”

  “Funny.”

  Lucy turns to the chair, reaches her hand out to my shirt—she puts her hand on it, then looks hard at her hand, like she doesn’t remember how a person picks something up. Finally her thin fingers pinch together like a dying spider,
and she lifts the shirt up. It takes her just as long to get the pants with the other hand.

  “Here,” she says, turning and holding them out to me.

  “That’s all right,” I say.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. Please take them.”

  “No.”

  Her arms still standing straight out, she begins to glide toward me. Glide. Her feet—they aren’t even touching the floor. But the worst is her legs….

  They’re not moving.

  I put my hand on the handle of the knife and back a couple of steps into the flickering light of the hall.

  “That’s enough,” I say, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. “Don’t come any closer.”

  She keeps coming. I jerk the door shut, stepping away from it. I wait a little while, watching the door. Finally I take hold of the knob. Jerk my hand away again. The doorknob is wet. I brush my hand on my drawers, feeling my Adam’s apple bob up and down. I touch the knob again, turning it with only the tips of my fingers. Give a gentle push, and the door swings open….

  A gush of mist rolls out from inside the room and a smell of damp. Lucy is sitting on the bed again, hands folded in her lap. My clothes are on the floor. She looks up at me, head snapping up so sudden I almost think I hear her backbone pop.

  “I’m glad you didn’t go,” she says.

  I pick up the clothes and pull them on. They feel clammy.

  “I can’t stay much longer,” Lucy says, watching me. “When you left, I almost got pulled away. I’m … tired.”

  Something about the way she says it stings my heart. She doesn’t look as scary sitting there with her feet dangling. She looks like a sad little girl.

  I move toward the chair. Lucy tilts her head, curious. Lord, in this light—her eyes don’t look like they have any pupils.

  I sit down in the chair. She looks at me a long time. This is the closest we’ve been since I woke up with her sitting on the bed.

  “So how did I set you free?” I say finally.

  “Something was holding me,” Lucy says slowly.

  I remember the monster that was chasing her in my dream. “Who? The devil?”

  “You. You were.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  Lucy shifts on the bed again, slouching.

  “You had to believe,” she says, “in me. At first you didn’t.

  Not all the way. So I had to keep trying to come through until you did.”

  “So you can’t come around unless I believe in you?”

  “Yep. Something like that. The more you believe, the more you let me through. It’s like you kind of create me.”

  “That’s blasphemy. Only the Lord can create a person.”

  Lucy shakes her head. Shakes it so slow, I can barely tell what she’s doing.

  “No. I don’t mean it like that,” she says. “We’re all creators. That’s what we do. But what we create is our own reality.” She lifts a weary arm and waves it around the room. “I couldn’t be,” she says, “without your need. Your need made it possible for you to believe. You believed, so you set me free.”

  “What’s my need, then?”

  She struggles to smile. “Those dreams? The white room?”

  She knows, I think. It’s too much—too much to even think about. I feel so—

  “Come on, don’t be ashamed,” Lucy says. “Please. Because we’re here to help each other. Right? I have a need, too. They—they know I can’t do it on my own.”

  My heart draws up.

  “Can’t do what? Who is ‘they’?”

  Lucy starts to speak, mouth going, but no sound comes out. She holds up her hands, takes the thumb and index finger of one hand and puts them round the wrist of the other. Like a bracelet.

  “Them,” she says, jaw clopping. She jiggles the fingers holding her wrist.

  “A bracelet? Is that what you’re trying to show me, Lucy?”

  She bows her head. Bows it so low, you’d think she was bearing up under a heavy weight.

  “Don’t be thick,” she says slowly. “You almost sent me away again. I don’t know who they are. Not yet. That’s what we’re here to find out. They’re showing me … they want me—they want us—to find them. Something is holding them here.”

  “Here at Vanderloo?”

  “We have to work … together, you and me. Find out what is holding them and help break them free. We were brought together to do this, okay?”

  “Why? Why … us?”

  “I don’t know all the reasons yet. Just the most important one.”

  “Which is?”

  “Because I love you, Ronald Earl.”

  We sit there looking at each other. Lucy asks the question for me.

  “How could I, right? That’s what you’re thinking. When I don’t even know you? But I do. I’ve always known you. Inside.” She points at my chest, making me lean back a little. “I couldn’t be here if I didn’t. Not like … this.” She touches her arm. “You understand?”

  “Solid?” I say, finally able to speak again. “You couldn’t be solid?”

  She smiles. “You’ve got a brain in there … after all. I … have to go.”

  “Wait,” I say. “There are so many things I want to ask—”

  “I’ll come again. We’ll start.”

  “But what about—what about the drum? Why did you do that? You scared me half to death.”

  The powdery eyes bore into me. “Ronald Earl. Don’t be so afraid. There is no such thing … as death.”

  “But you …” I don’t know how to say it.

  “Me? Yeah. I pretty much died. That’s not what I mean. Death is different from … dying. Death has no meaning. It’s not real.”

  “But you gave me that article. About the boy with the burst appendix. You gave it to me at the drive-in theater. Now I know why. You were trying to tell me, weren’t you? You were trying to tell me that’s how you died.”

  Lucy looks at me, slumping a little more.

  “But—you’re in a better place now,” I say. “Sitting beside our Lord. Waiting on the Judgment. Aren’t you?”

  Lucy shakes her head slowly, hitching and jerking. “You have to change. The way you think.”

  “But it’s what I believe. It’s the truth. The only truth there is. Anything else … puts your eternal soul in danger of the fires of hell.”

  “But I’m here now. And you have to believe … bigger. That’s all. The truth is not that… small.”

  She reaches out to me. “Give me your hand.”

  I don’t want to touch her, but I’m scared not to. I hold my hand up, trembling a little, and Lucy seizes at it so hard, my heart misses a beat. Her fingers are burning. She leans her head toward me, looks like she’s trying to whisper.

  “The drum. That wasn’t me” she says.

  The lightbulb in the lamp sputters and pops. I can’t feel her hand anymore. Then the light flares up bright again; Lucy has vanished.

  When I finally get up the grit to climb into the empty bed, the sheets are burning hot.

  Back in bed, staring at the ceiling, I feel like I’ve been split right down the middle. Everything that was in me has been taken out. Then cold, clean water was rushed through all the scooped-out places.

  It’s like being born again. Only this time the old parts of me can’t match up with the new. I don’t know if I feel good or bad or crazy or all three. I talked with her.

  “The truth is not that small.”

  But how can any truth be bigger than His truth? Isn’t His the only one?

  After a while the sun is coming off the lake. I lay here, spread open, and it fills me up with light. She’s real, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

  On this very first day of my new life, I step out of bed, and the first thing I see is a big gold key laying right in the middle of the floor. It’s heavy and cold in my palm, with a big loop on one end and teeth you fit in the lock on the other.

  She must’ve left it for me.
What does it fit into? “They want us to find them,” that’s what she said. “We have to work together.” I slide it into my suitcase and zip it shut. Say my morning prayers, then head on down for breakfast.

  Most of the others are gone by the time I get to the table. Faye Barlow is sitting there in jeans that come just past her knees, a yellow shirt, and a big floppy hat. She swirls milk into her coffee.

  “Well, good morning, Ronald Earl,” she says, face opening up when she sees who it is. She gives me a squeeze and a peck on the cheek that smells of orange juice. “I hope you slept well?”

  “Mostly,” I say, not wanting to lie.

  I put my fingers on the brick piece in my pocket and eat while holding it.

  “So what are your plans for the day?” Faye says.

  “I’m thinking maybe I’ll do a little exploring on the island.”

  She frowns.

  “Is there anything wrong?” I say.

  “Oh, I’m just a worrier. Ask my husband.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “Feelings. I get these feelings.”

  Faye comes over and drapes her arms around me from behind, locking her fingers in front of my throat. Her hands are wet. Settles her mouth on top of my head. I can feel the heat of her breath on my scalp.

  “I’ve got a few things to do here, but I might join y’all later,” she says into my hair. It feels funny being held this way. She turns me loose, and I slide my chair back.

  “Be safe,” Faye says.

  Outside, the morning is warm, and close by the house there’s a white oak full of blackbirds squawking back and forth. I walk toward the dock till I come to a little stand of cedars. It looks dark and cool in there. I step inside it, where I can’t be seen, and finger Lucy’s brick and close my eyes.

  “Lucy?” I call out.

  Nothing but a bobwhite singing in the distance. I open my eyes, and a long ways off I can see that same red-tailed hawk making a big turn over the sunny water. Devil Hill has a little bit of mist around its belly.

  “Lucy?” I say again. “Are you there? Please say something if you are there.”

  Maybe ghosts can’t come out in the daylight? “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said. I put the brick away and head down to the boat.