Come to Dust

by Bracken MacLeod

  She shrugged.

  “You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head. “I ‘member. It was nofing.” Despite her precocious emotional maturity—what his mother used to refer to as being an “old soul”—she still couldn’t pronounce TH, saying it like an F like some London child. The sound pierced him. She’d barely spoken since their reunion, and her voice was as welcome and familiar as a favorite song once forgotten. Then, the content of her answer dawned on him. Nothing. It reminded him of being wheeled into surgery for an emergency appendectomy when he was fifteen. The anesthesia nurse asked him to count backwards from a hundred, and he remembered getting to maybe eighty-nine before the next thing he knew he was waking up in post-op with a completely different nurse checking on him and a profound sense of weakness. The space in between eighty-nine and opening his eyes was a perfect void. No dreams, no consciousness, no memory of anything other than the moment before and that there was a blank space in between where, if the universe existed, he wasn’t a conscious part of it. The thought of that moment of oblivion had both comforted and terrified him for years afterward.

  “You remember... nothing? Like, being nothing?”

  “Uh huh. Kinda.”

  “Were you scared?”

  She shook her head and laughed once, the first such sound she’d made since dying. “Nofing can’t be scared, silly. Nofing’s nofing.”

  He felt his chest tighten and his eyes blurred with tears. “Are you happy to be back?” She nuzzled closer and made a contented sound he’d never heard her utter before. It was and wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for. If she wasn't content to be in the body she inhabited, he hoped maybe she was happy enough with him. He could live with that for now. But her non-answer weighed on him. His heart ached and he cried, powerful hitching sobs no one had ever seen him cry, until her little hand caressed his cheek and he heard her shushing and whispering, “‘T’s okay,” and he finally realized that the intersection of the life he had and the life he wanted was right here. Now. He was something and so was she. All he wanted was to be the two of them together, because, together, they were something worth being.

  The chair by the door screeched as it slid forward on the hardwood floor. The door closed, and the seat slid and fell with a terrible crash that made Mitch’s heart thunder. He scooted Sophie off his lap and scrambled to stand, but his legs were weak and unwilling. Clutching the girl, he pushed onto his knees and prepared to scoop her up and run for the back door. There was no easy exit from the postage stamp back yard, except to return to the front walk between their house and Faye’s—the back was only an escape from fire. A James Whale scene of pitchforks and torches appeared in his mind, and he thought fire was a clear possibility. “Sophie,” he whispered. “Go wait for me in your room.” She whined, and he told her more forcefully, “Go. Now!”

  The door hit the end of its chain and banged again. A woman’s voice called out: “Michel! Are you in there?”

  26

  Liana lay curled on the living room sofa, clutching a fleece blanket close like the chill of a winter storm was blowing in through the gaps in the window frames. In the kitchen, Mike wiped the sweat off his brow and twisted the string around the sodden teabag and spoon, forcing out the last drops of Earl Grey into the cup below. He’d turned off the air conditioning, and the temperature in his condo, while tolerable, was starting to rise as the afternoon sun shone through the west-facing windows. He set the mug on a coaster on the coffee table and asked if she needed anything else. She shook her head, pulling the blanket higher up over her shoulders. He crouched in front of her and put a hand to her forehead. She flinched at his touch and he jerked his hand away as if she’d burned it.

  “What?” he said.

  “Your hands are cold.”

  Eyes darting toward the steaming mug he’d just been holding, he flexed his fingers and frowned. They were anything but. “Li, I’m giving you the rest of the week off.”

  She pushed herself up on the sofa, and pulled the blanket tighter. “I can’t afford to take a week of sick time.”

  He held up a pinched thumb and forefinger and said, “Zippit! You just relax and try to feel better. Don’t worry about sick time; I’ve got you covered. Your job today is to try to feel better. We’ll talk more about it later when I get back.” The way he looked at her, Liana didn’t need a mirror to know she didn’t look like herself. She’d spent the better part of the day staring at her new gray hairs and the small wrinkles around her eyes. She looked maybe ten years older than she had last week. Though that meant she looked closer to her actual age instead of forever young, the change coming so suddenly, and coupled with a profound inner chill, made her feel afraid and lonely. Mike stood. She almost reached out to stop him, but she knew “having her covered” meant that he had to go to work, if for no other reason to stamp her timecard in and out again at the end of the day.

  “I promise, I’ll only be a day or two,” she said. “Mitch needs time to get settled.”

  Mike smiled and tilted his head, giving her the kind of sympathetic look you give a person with a hangover. You’re hurting, it said, but you just have to ride what you did to yourself out. “Stay as long as you need,” he said, pointing at her. She thanked him and watched as he gathered his things together and left for work. She closed her eyes and tried not to dream of being alone on Arctic landscapes.

  • • •

  After a short, fruitless attempt at a nap, she sat up again and tried to find something to occupy her restless mind. She turned on Mike’s big screen LCD TV more to get rid of the reflection in the blank screen than out of any interest in watching something. If she had her druthers, she’d read and listen to her records, but she wasn’t home and didn’t have her druthers. Mike wasn’t much of a reader and his music collection wasn’t anything she’d wish on an enemy. So, television it was. She surfed away from the game show on the local channel and searched for something that wouldn’t make her head hurt. Easier said than done. The news stations were still in a twenty-four-hour resurrection of the dead cycle, saying nothing at all and adding even less understanding to what was happening, but damned certain to cover every single minute with punditry and conjecture. Even a minute of it made the fear and panic come surging back. She clicked over to a nature show that somehow made astrophysics seem as shallow as celebrity gossip, but with pretty animations. She tuned out Michio Kaku talking about black holes like they were walking the red carpet at the Oscars and tucked her legs up under her, hoping to warm her feet a little under the blanket. Looking around to see if Mike had another fleece tossed over a chair somewhere, her gaze rested on his stove. Atop it sat the kettle he’d warmed her tea in, and under that glowed a light blue flame from the gas range, still lit and on low. Downing the last of the tepid tea from her cup, she got up to make another.

  Her knees ached from being folded underneath her. She could feel the cold floor through her socks and slippers as she shuffled into the kitchen. The teapot radiated heat and she held her hands around it, feeling the light warmth rising from the brushed aluminum. She dropped a fresh bag in her cup, pouring steaming hot water over it before returning the pot to the stove. The smell of tea reminded her of her Gran. When she left Atlanta to come stay with her cousin Rawndell in Dorchester, the old woman had said, “I hear those winters up there in New England can get real cold. Take warmth.” She’d pressed into her hand a small lacquered pin depicting an open Bible below a single flame like a candle: the fire of the Holy Spirit. Back then, Liana had laughed at the idea of being able to take warmth with her. “It’s not something you can pack, Gran.” Now that no matter what she did she couldn’t find any relief from the cold infecting her, she dwelled upon her Gran’s gift. Liana wasn’t religious anymore, but she could use some of that Holy Ghost heat now. She tried to imagine herself back down South, sweating in a room with a slow-moving fan, waving a butterfly-shaped piece of cardstock stapled to a wooden handle under her face while listening to the preacher. I
n those moments, she’d ignored the sermons and daydreamed of living somewhere cool. Not knowing what real coldness was like. Not until now.

  You don’t know what you have in life until… it’s taken from you. That’s it. Sophie took something from me and she left some cold, dead hole in its place. And now I’m frozen like Dante’s Devil in his lake without even a single sinner to chew on to stay warm.

  She turned the oven dial to BROIL and knelt in front of it, waiting. After a few minutes, she opened the door, and a wave of heat washed over her like sinking into a warm tub. Of course, she’d already tried that. The comfort of scalding hot water only lasted a few seconds before it became unbearably cold. The water heater had been unable to keep up with her demand.

  She held her hands out like it was a roaring hearth at Christmas; the air in front of the open appliance wavered with distortion, but she barely felt it. A chill still resided in her body like she’d been the one rescued off the slab. Leaning forward into the box, ignoring the smell of her singeing hair as it brushed the top, she took a deep breath, hoping it would help to have warm air inside as well as out. It still felt like the chill was beating back the heat, pushing it away. She touched the tip of a finger to the rack. A pleasant sensation of thawing spread up to her second knuckle.

  Then the unbidden thought came, I could climb in.

  Gripping the rack with both hands, she pulled it out and tossed it aside. The hot metal tore away from her searing palms, filling her nostrils with the stench of burning flesh. It clattered in the corner smoking and stinking of her skin and scorching the floorboards. She didn’t care. It had felt good to touch it.

  She reached out and put her hands on the hot surface inside. The smell and smoke rising from her blistering flesh threatened to choke her, but it just felt like the hot water closing around her—like climbing back into the womb. The cold was retreating, so she leaned in further.

  Take warmth, she thought.

  27

  Violette stood in the open doorway looking like an entirely different person than when she’d skipped out on her daughter. Mitch almost didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t the jam band groupie dressed in a halter top and a knit Rasta tam who’d left for “a couple of weeks” more than a year ago. She’d cut off her dreadlocks and wore a long cotton skirt with a loose, button up blouse that covered the tattoos on her shoulders. “Can I come in?” Mitch held the door, resentment tickling at the back of his skull. He wanted to question what right she had to just show up after more than a year away with no word, no calls asking how Sophie was doing, not even a postcard to let them know she was all right. No. You cannot, he wanted to say. He let go of the door and stepped back from the threshold.

  “I suppose so. It’s… your house.”

  “What’s this?” She swiped a finger down the paper and glue residue from the eviction sticker. He ignored the question, knowing there’d be plenty of time to discuss how badly he’d stumbled trying to preserve the life she’d abandoned.

  “You just dropping in or are you back for good?”

  “I’m back. You should, um, know I brought somebody with me.”

  Mitch sighed. “Did they kick whatshisname out of the band?”

  Violette shook her head and said, “I’m not with him anymore.” Before Mitch could snark about whether it was too hard on his other girlfriends to have a band wife along, she turned and waved her hand at the car parked across the street. Out of it climbed Junior Wilson. Sophie’s father. The man Mitch had put in the hospital, who’d put him in prison in return.

  “Oh no. You can’t—”

  “We’ve reconciled, Michel. Junior and I got married six months ago.” She held up her hand to show him a plain gold band around her third finger. “We’ve been working hard to make up for our past sins and live a life in grace. We have a new place to live and we’re part of a community and... we’re here to pick up our daughter.”

  Mitch’s vision darkened and Violette’s last words seemed spoken through a long tunnel. They were faint, but they echoed in his head as he tried to make sense of the man climbing the front steps. He’d also changed his appearance. Instead of the Southie hoodrat baggy shorts and oversized Celtics jersey that had been his constant uniform, Junior wore a pair of tan slacks and a white golf shirt. The only hint of his tough guy past was a pair of unblemished tan Timberland work boots. His face was how Mitch remembered it, though. His nose was crushed and one eyelid drooped from nerve damage where Mitch had broken his supraorbital margin—that’s what the medical expert had called it at trial. His jaw had healed nicely though. Junior smiled asymmetrically; his dental implants looked like the real thing. His eyelid dropped a little more until it almost looked like he was winking.

  I did that.

  “Can we come in, Mitch? There’s a lot we’d like to talk about,” he said.

  The terms of his parole fired in Mitch’s head like cannon blasts. You shall not come within one thousand feet of your victim, James Michael Wilson Jr., for any reason whatsoever. You shall not associate with persons who have a criminal record without the permission of your Supervision Officer. You shall make a diligent effort to satisfy the restitution order of the Court that has been imposed. Failure to abide by these conditions shall result in a resumption of your sentence for the duration of your remaining sentence, plus any additional time deemed appropriate by a court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Junior’s presence was a very present testament to the many reasons why Mitch would likely end up back in prison before the order of eviction stuck to the door could be executed.

  Mitch felt like chances were equal that if he tried to speak, he might vomit as likely as utter a word. He cleared his dry throat and said, “I’m not allowed to be anywhere near you.” His voice was a croak and he thought maybe only half the words were audible.

  Junior held up his hands in a what-can-you-do kind of gesture and said, “I came to you. No one can hold that against you, can they?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Despite not wanting to let either of them in, Mitch gestured into the house. If Braddock and Dixon spotted Junior on the front porch that could be the end of everything, right then and there. Maybe Junior was right. That he had brought himself to Mitch’s doorstep seemed like something a reasonable judge wouldn’t hold against him. But then, a reasonable judge had ignored Mitch’s plea for leniency when he asserted that he’d been misled into believing that Junior was beating Violette. Mitch’s old “friend” Sully knew exactly how to pull the trigger on his violent temper. A few glasses of whiskey, but not so many he couldn’t stand and swing a fist, and then a story convincing enough to a drunk man to get him to get up off the barstool and walk out with a bullshit story ringing in his ears and dark intentions growing in his head.

  That wasn’t to say Junior had been wholly innocent; he was into Sully deep for an Oxy habit he didn’t want to pay for. Mitch wasn’t an enforcer; he was, however, a talented amateur boxer with a bright future, a trusting naïveté, and a short fuse when it came to family. Why wouldn’t he believe Sully when he said Junior had been tuning up Violette? Junior was a pill snorter who’d let his habit get ahead of his ability to pay. That didn’t mean he deserved to get beaten so badly he couldn’t smile without almost closing an eye, or speak clearly. But that’s what he’d gotten from Mitch. And the judge hadn’t cared that he’d done it for his sister. “Did you ever think there might be a way to help Violette without destroying another man’s life?” No. Mitch hadn’t ever thought of that. People like him didn’t possess a receiver attuned to those possibilities. Until prison, he was exactly what you would expect from a man raised by wolves. He’d been that man right up until prison broke him, and Sophie domesticated him.

  Mitch closed the door and put the chain back on. He led his sister and her husband toward the sofa and asked if they’d like some coffee. He didn’t have any left, but the offer sounded like the sort of thing civilized people did, and he was civilized now. Junior shook his head an
d politely declined. Violette looked around the house at the debris of life with a child. The clutter wasn’t as bad as it had been when Sophie was better and Mitch was working, yet it was there: toys randomly abandoned in the course of seeking other toys; pajamas discarded in the middle of the room because it was easier to dress her in front of the TV than in her room; a snack bowl filled with uneaten Cheerios going soft from humidity and stale with time.

  “Where is she?” Violette asked.

  Mitch nodded toward the rear of the house. “In her room.” Violette stood up and started back. Mitch put a hand up. She stopped. “Vee, there’s something we should talk about first,” he said.

  “I want to see my child.”

  “I’m not kidding. I think you need to know what’s happened since you’ve been gone. Things are... different.” Junior stepped in between them. Mitch faced the man he’d put in the hospital. Time had been good to Junior. Not only did he look like he’d kicked the junk habit, he appeared to have been working out. He had muscles he didn’t possess before, and a new confidence that was pushing against Mitch’s desire to remain civilized. He told himself, it’s not his fault. He didn’t do anything. Still, he wondered what the next few seconds would bring, waiting to hear the ring of the bell from his corner.

  “I want you to know we forgive you,” Junior said. Mitch blinked repeatedly, trying to decide for what transgression he deserved to be absolved. “I actually owe you for what you did. You put me in the hospital, and they gave me that good stuff that I really loved. Morphine is fiiiine, man. And when I got out, I cleaned up enough to help put you away, and then I went chasing after it hard. I chased all the way down to rock bottom. And when I got there, he lifted me up.”