Shadows & Tall Trees 7

by Michael Kelly

  They never answered Mr. Warner about what happens with the collections, what they do with the collections, but I don’t want to find out this year, not yet, not me in the bags, not yet.

  Briefly: At the meeting, Mr. Warner was not satisfied with their answers. That honeyed, naive first year, when we were all adapting. Most people put out whatever they could. Not much different from the weekly trash collection. We had no idea of the consequences, just that it was mandatory. They called it a Pilot.

  Mr. Warner, who had asked so many questions, lodged a small protest that first year. He simply put out nothing.

  The second year, when Mr. Warner again put out nothing, they came on the third Saturday. I watched it all.

  They came from a long car. Two men got out and came to his porch and talked to Mr. Warner for a few minutes. Then another man in a green suit emerged from the long car and walked to the porch, past Mr. Warner and straight into his house. Five minutes later the green man came back out, arm in arm with Mr. Warner’s wife. She was wearing a floral dress. Everyone but Mr. Warner got into the long car and it drove away. Since then, Mr. Warner brings out the bags.

  When I’m asleep I have plenty I could take out. When I’m asleep, often I have an entire wing or floor of a house that I inhabit. A wing or floor I’m just discovering. Sometimes three vast floors of well-organized belongings, or furniture, or boating equipment. Things that I have no use for, nor attachment to, not even, in particular, my things. Maybe I should go to sleep now. If I could have one of those dreams now, it would be grand, because I could stuff into a bag and drag any number of things to the curb, and wouldn’t Mr. Warner be shocked and possibly impressed, come morning? A dream of an unencountered wing, tonight, would certainly save my life.

  Just now I thought I heard something clunk in the west part of the attic. It could be anything; my imagination has whole warehouses of question marks stored inside. It’s full of those clunks that happen whenever you aren’t looking, whenever you stop listening. Just now it sounded like ice, like being trapped somewhere cold like inside a chunk of ice and that makes me think of Perry again, poor Perry. It’s been a lifetime since he sang anything. After Perry died, my father froze him. My grandmother’s bird.

  Father got Perry for Grandmother, to cheer her in the final months. She named the bird for that man who used to sing even and steady, nothing upsetting or foul in his songs, just beautiful, bland, scrap-less notes. The bird sang in the cage by her bed in the dining room after she couldn’t manage the stairs, and then sang in the cage in the hospital when she went there. I never heard him sing in the hospital. I never saw her dining room bed. I was not around until after she died. Too far away, or something. From Father I inherited Grandmother’s house, full of her items, his items, scraps that keep the wind outside. From Father I inherited Mother. Everything was frozen by time, in that way we are all of us covered and surrounded by frozen things—a chair made seventy years ago, a piece of sheet music, They go wild, simply wild, over me, sang my aged aunt, Grandmother’s younger sister, recalling the days when she was a flapper. The manic face on the man on the wild, simply wild, sheet music that now hangs on my wall is a bit like the face on my father. They go wild (simply wild) over me is a bit like the bird in the cage in the hospital, doing the only thing it really knows how to do. I inherited a frozen song.

  Perry in a layer of ice in a plastic bag must be in the freezer, still. No cage now except death and that ice. I am going to walk down to the freezer and look. I am. It might be possible to make my quota if I can find the dead bird that should have been buried years ago. And maybe they won’t notice I’ve included an item that breaks the rules—no carcasses. They are a little vague on the rules, but I’ve always assumed that meant nothing you’ve eaten the best of, leg of lamb and so on. Nothing gnawed. Frozen canary might fly, as it were, especially if I wait until the first stretch of morning and Perry stays frozen.

  Light will arrive soon. I can make it, if I stay awake long enough to chip away the ice that has certainly grown around the plastic bag that holds the songbird … maybe it’s just as well he’s no longer alive and singing. Grandmother died long ago and can no longer hear the thing warble in that soothing, uncontroversial way, and maybe Perry can help me now.

  The ice will help, more bulk.

  They won’t notice the debatable carcass. Perry is not really what I think of as a carcass, anyway. Such a light thing, even with the ice, a thing of so little substance. A song gone on the wind. Mr. Warner can whistle and carry to the curb all he wants. I have Perry. I know I’ll find him there in the cold; I know I’ll have time to chip it all away if I start now.

  ENGINES OF THE OCEAN

  Christopher Slatsky

  CORA, DEAREST…

  On first receiving the letter, Cordelia chalked it up to a simple postal error. Her father had died long ago, and the note she’d sent thanking him for the birthday present had no reason to come back to her decades later. There wasn’t an explanation as to why the envelope had been opened then sealed shut again.

  Whoever had resealed the flap had done so quite expertly, the intrusion nearly undetectable. Cordelia would have blamed the odd occurrence on a postal employee’s curiosity, then subsequent attempt to cover their act, if she hadn’t seen written in blue ink at the bottom of the paper beneath a fold-crease now loosely held together by fibers:

  Cora dearest, I still have your salt in my hair.

  She wasn’t sure how to proceed, if at all, until recognizing the swooping curves and loops of the letters as her father’s handwriting.

  The forgery was perfect. Why anyone decided to make such an effort and follow through on the hoax all these years later was baffling. And how had the sender known to perfume the paper with the moist, salty scent of her father’s private room?

  That room in the basement. The stuff of childhood terrors. She’d never actually entered it, only glimpsed the brick-lined interior on those rare occasions the door had been left ajar. The unpleasant scent of the space was forever in her memory. A sweaty residue—or was it more like the ocean?

  The room had always been off-limits. It was where her father wrote his ideas down, sketching various machine designs as a hobby. A frustrated engineer, relegated to a field service technician position for the city’s water department, she’d never seen any of his finished projects actually operating. The weird machines of unknown function never made it from the page to fruition, and nothing ever led to a promotion or increased income.

  While Cordelia’s mother had always been the doting, familial type, her father was a loner. Always hidden behind that door in his study, working at all hours so frequently that Cordelia and her brothers made jokes about him being a serial killer. The secret room became an abattoir where he disposed of his victims. Or maybe he was a mad scientist, building underground engines to take over the world. The children’s gruesome imaginations ran rampant.

  But Cordelia knew better. She remembered her father spending time with her, playing tag in the yard, listening to him read her favorite books. Their frequent trips to the beach were particularly memorable. She’d been awed by the power and immensity of the ocean. The mind was an unreliable thing, all too often preserving dark moments while neglecting the joyful. There was some light in between the cracks of a dreary childhood, and most were illuminated by their adventures at the ocean.

  Cordelia decided to take the long drive back to her old home to satiate her curiosity. Maybe this would quell any remaining vestiges of childhood nostalgia. She didn’t expect to find anything of consequence, much less evidence of ghosts writing letters from beyond the grave. But it was as good an excuse as any to visit the neighborhood she hadn’t seen in so long.

  The 10-hour drive to Oak Field was uneventful. The town had been hard hit by the recession. All of the shops she drove past were empty. Blank windows with the occasional FOR LEASE sign interrupted the monotony.

  She passed the Klein Theater where she’d seen her first film
unaccompanied by any adult. The front of the building was boarded up, the side appeared to have collapsed due to fire damage. The small parking lot was weed covered, parking lines faded and barely distinguishable.

  But she was surprised to see that the corner grocery story was still operating. The front door was open, screen door shut with a handwritten OPEN sign taped to it from the inside. Cordelia had spent many an afternoon loitering here, drinking Cherry Cokes and dropping quarters into the Meteor Madness video game that was obsolete even when she was a teenager.

  Nobody greeted her on entering. The cash register was unattended. A curtained off area behind the counter led to the employee’s break room.

  The interior was a relic from a bygone age: cereal boxes with mascots retired from the company’s marketing were still on the shelves. All of the magazines on the rack were dated 30-years ago. Even the old Meteor Madness video game was in the corner, the screen flickering with pixelated chaos. Flavors of sodas that were no longer bottled filled the refrigerator in the back. The store was immaculate, free of dust or grime. A cold bottle of Cherry Coke in hand, she headed to the front to pay.

  She rang the silver bell on the counter next to a jar of pickled eggs. She didn’t want to think about how long the rubbery snacks must have been soaking in there.

  Minutes later, she rang again. Something made a noise in the back, but it must have been the refrigerator’s fan turning on. “Hello?” Cordelia called out anyway.

  Nobody answered behind the curtain. Resigned, she left the correct amount of cash on the counter, dropped the drink into her purse, and left. As she reached the car, her phone rang.

  The number was from a lifetime ago.

  She’d called it countless times from school to let her father know she was ready to be picked up after volleyball practice. Called it more times than she could remember from Janice’s house, to ask her parents if she could stay the night.

  She touched IGNORE. She’d only imagined the call was from her old home. She’d transposed the numbers, shuffled them around from disparate particles of memories. A wrong number.

  Walking to the house from the convenience store would have been a nice nostalgic stroll, but was also out of the question—the sun was setting and the streetlights weren’t on yet. The sidewalk held too many shadows, offering the potential to hide someone. The nearby houses didn’t have any lights on either, though people had to be home since most had cars parked in front.

  An unusual white crust on their hoods and wheels made Cordelia suspect the vehicles hadn’t been driven in quite some time. Opening her own car door, she felt crystals scrape against fingertips. It was too gloomy to make out what it was, but the substance was granular and rough. Tentatively, she touched her tongue.

  She tasted salt.

  Everything was layered in a fine dusting of the mineral. Something to do with the soil salinity, flushed out by neglected sewage systems, or improper irrigation perhaps? She took a long drink of her Cherry Coke, rinsed her mouth out, spat the liquid on the asphalt. Cordelia imagined she heard a rumbling, as if great engines under the earth’s salted crust were churning to life.

  She drove down the darkening street to her childhood residence.

  Pulling up to the curb, she noticed an unusual atmospheric phenomena playing out in the sky. Bloated sheets of silver mist rolled overhead like a brackish spill. The house was coated in a white rime, though it was far too warm for ice to have formed.

  The home still looked like a cream-colored layer cake, the crown molding a delicate filigree like piped frosting. The colors were vivid, and there was no weathering damage visible. Someone must have bought the place after her father died—she wasn’t sure about the details.

  It looked as if nobody had lived here in the years since; while the house had been maintained, the driveway was pitted, and the weeds jutting from the cracks made her doubt anyone had parked here in quite some time. A house left vacant for decades made little sense.

  The sun had lowered further, but the streetlights were still dead. Their malfunction emphasized the emptiness of the neighborhood. Cordelia couldn’t hear any traffic from the main road two streets over. It used to be so loud when she’d play in the front yard as a kid.

  The lawn was low dry yellow grass, speckled with tiny white bits. A rectangle of blackness caught her attention. The concrete lid covering the water meter was gone.

  Those meters terrified her as far back as she could remember. The purpose of those clockwork machines in the ground eluded any rational explanation—or so 6-year old Cordelia insisted. She’d been absolutely certain the meters were buried on the lawns so they would be easier to access from below. Her mother’s explanation that they were how the city determined water usage and billed accordingly had never been an acceptable answer.

  Their subterraneous purpose was a mystery. Her father’s playful claim that meters monitored the neighborhood criss-crossed with catacombs filled her with anxiety. He’d said this with a wink, but simply entertaining the possibility that devices worked their oily machinations at all hours to measure the rising waters and their mysterious tides was traumatizing.

  She once lifted the concrete lid of a meter and bashed a brick against the glass cover inside. The glass shattered, the meter buzzed angrily, but the dials continued to turn, documenting their strange unfathomable course. She was certain that vandalizing the machine meant the equipment beneath would fail, allowing the oceans to rise, the gutters to overflow with water. Her neighborhood submerged in vast seas.

  The lock on the side door to the garage was corroded, the wood frame soft with age. A heavy shove and it swung open and she was inside the old place. The garage was empty, but the door leading to the living room was unlocked.

  Little had changed inside. The exact same wallpaper pattern that always made her think of fluttering eyelashes. The very sofa in which she’d spent many a Saturday morning watching cartoons. The ancient TV was still on the same nightstand, though the crack in its screen meant it was probably no longer working, even if the electricity were operational. The curtains were the same fabric and color, the carpet powdered with salt but recognizably original. Even the rotary dial phone was intact. The receiver was on the hook, though it wasn’t possible to tell if anyone had touched it to call her. Everything was preserved.

  Hadn’t her mother taken the furniture with them when they’d moved? It was so long ago and she was so little when everything happened the memories were conflicted and fragmentary. Cordelia couldn’t fathom why so many of the house’s old trappings remained.

  A thin covering of fine salt particulates on the coffee table quivered from air currents as she moved. Flecks of pale grit on the walls, furniture, and floor sparkled. The air was soupy like brine.

  Cordelia looked into each room, closet, and entryway. Of course there was nobody here. For one brief moment she thought she’d best call her brother in case anything happened here, even though ghosts weren’t real. And if there existed anything that deserved to be called such, they’d be insubstantial, composed of enough matter for light to bounce off of, but little else. A phantom wouldn’t be able to touch, strangle or make a phone call. Spirits were just history projected against nostalgia.

  Entering her old bedroom, she found it empty. The wallpaper near the defunct light switch was peeling at chest level. Beneath a layer of white powder was written CORA age 6. A dash mark showed her height at the time. She pulled away the curling flakes to reveal a series of numbers and marks descending down the wall to the age of 2. The only reminder of who she used to be.

  A short flight of steps crunchy with white granules led down to the basement. She faced the door to her father’s study. The door was covered in powdery splotches that may have been hand prints if she wasn’t certain the place was uninhabited. The knob turned freely, but the door was jammed, or something was blocking it on the other side.

  She remembered her mother telling her that dad wasn’t well, and prolonged care after brain death w
asn’t in his best interest. At the time, Cordelia was so young she didn’t fully understand why her parent was essentially no longer her father. The thought bothered her so much she refused to visit him in the hospital, throwing such a fierce tantrum in the lobby a nurse said she’d watch her while the rest of the family went in. It was long ago, and any repercussions from her absence had dissipated like ripples from a single grain thrown into the ocean.

  Cordelia explained away her shame over the years: he’d fallen into a coma; her visiting would have been all but meaningless even if he could have comprehended his daughter’s presence. A contraption pointlessly functioning because nobody had the courage to switch it off. When he did pass away, he took any and all reasons as to why he’d decided to retreat to his private room on feeling the stirrings of a blood clot in his head.

  And Cordelia was certain he’d made that choice. He may have died from a stroke, but she’d no doubts he’d felt that black eyed dog nipping at his heels while retreating into his personal space for the last time. Returning to the scene of her father’s tragedy should have been emotionally resonant, but she felt only a flake of the guilt she’d expected.

  After heading back upstairs, she walked into the dining room. A pristine picture of the house formed in her mind, but long ago, when everything was bright and immaculate from her mother’s persistent housekeeping. She’d always cherished talking to her parents here at the table. They’d discuss school; what she wanted for dinner; their favorite TV shows; made the same silly jokes they’d always made to each other. All while sitting at that familiar antique oak dining room table shipped from Poland at great expense.

  If she closed her eyes, Cordelia could see them again. She gazed at their faces lovingly, marveled at the familiarity of their presence. The way her father moved his hands when talking, the way her mother’s gray hair curled at the temples. If she concentrated, she could hear the parakeet they kept in a small blue cage in the living room, chirping and fluttering in its confines. She smelled potpourri bundled in a wooden bowl and a lavender scent blown in on a breeze through an open window.