by Max McCoy
It was useless to ask them direct questions. They were all stuck in their own unfinished business, and would be until that business was somehow resolved. The sad part was, they didn’t know they were ghosts.
Then the thought occurred to me: Have I become a ghost?
“Ophie, you’re not a ghost,” a familiar voice said.
You can hear me think?
“You’re not exactly thinking or exactly talking, my dear.”
Well, Paschal, am I exactly dead?
“You are in between.”
Purgatory, then. Are you my Virgil?
“Never. I was too weak.”
I’m sorry, Paschal. You were weak and I was . . . desperate.
“Ophie, you’re going to have to pull yourself together.”
Can I talk to Jonathan now? Jonathan, where are you?
“Don’t think about Jonathan.”
How I long to talk to Jonathan. You promised, Paschal.
“Please, Ophie. Concentrate.”
I never received any message, Paschal. It was all a lie. There is death.
“Of course, death is real. But what comes after is real, too. It’s not life, but it’s not nothing.”
Death is real.
“Ophie, listen to me.”
Wait a minute. How can we have this conversation? Ghosts don’t answer direct questions.
“I’m not exactly a ghost, Ophie.”
There you go using that word “exactly” again.
“I can’t explain it any better.”
Well, if you’re not a ghost, and you’re answering direct questions, that means you’re a demon. Well, are you?
“Of course not.”
A demon answers direct questions, but those answers might be lies.
“That’s true.”
Unless—unless what? How am I supposed to ask to know the truth?
“I don’t know, Ophie.”
Yes, you do. You taught me in New Orleans, so long ago, before that morning when you chased me to Jackson Square in the rain. What was the rule? Why can’t I think of it now?
“Because you’ve lost your soul shadow.”
Right. Malleus. He took it. He’s far below the Arkansas now. That’s how the cowboys say it around here—“far below the Arkansas.” Like they were describing the underworld.
“Don’t die without your aura, Ophie.”
I still have my soul.
“But not your soul’s complement. You’re just half yourself.”
This is confusing, Paschal.
“You have a choice to make.”
Perhaps I should just go ahead and cross over.
“No.”
I hate you.
“I know.”
Then why should I listen to you?
“Because right now, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”
Why should you even care?
“Let’s just say, you’re my unfinished business.”
Now, that sounds ghostly.
“You’ve got work to do, Ophie.”
What work?
“First you have to find your aura.”
But how?
“That is for you to work out.”
And then?
“Your life will have purpose, if you choose it.”
What kind of purpose?
“You have a gift, Ophie. You’ve always had the gift.”
But why can I hear them now?
“You’ve had the intense shock required to break the grip your senses had on illusory reality. You’ve reconnected with your childhood gift. And you could use this gift to help people, instead of taking out your frustration over Jonathan on the gullible and the greedy.”
I don’t think that’s what I’ve been doing, exactly.
“There’s proof you’re not dead yet. You’re lying, and the dead don’t lie.”
It’s kind of peaceful here. What if I choose not to go back?
“Then you become just another ghost of Boot Hill.”
I’ve been here too long. I’m surely dead.
“You have to choose.”
But I don’t have enough information. If you’re a demon, you might be lying to me, or you might not be. This would not be the first time you’ve led me down the path to damnation.
“Choose, Ophie.”
If I pass over now, will I see Jonathan?
No response.
“In a moment, you’re going to see a light. It’s going to be dim at first, and then it will grow stronger. In that light, you’re going to see people—relatives and friends, mostly—whom you have not seen in a long time. You might see other beings, too—not human beings, but entities that perhaps you’ve doubted these many long years.”
You’re talking in riddles, Paschal. Be clear.
“The light will be warm and loving and you’re going to want to go toward it.”
And Jonathan will be there?
“No.”
Why not?
Off in the distance, where there was no distance, a glow appeared. It was shimmering white and came gradually closer. It was a little like the reflection of the full moon when you see it rippling on the surface of the Mississippi, a little like seeing daylight at the end of a long train tunnel, and a lot like looking up at the sky from the bottom of a well. But all at once.
Is my Tanté Marie there?
“No.”
There were figures moving in the light.
All right, Paschal. I’ve decided.
“Don’t tell me. I don’t have the power. Tell her.”
Stepping out of the light was a shimmering figure in white, the most beautiful woman—and yet not a woman—I’ve ever seen. The angel was smiling and she held out her hands to me. The love I felt coming from her overwhelmed me. I felt clean, as if I’d never had a trouble in the world, as if I had been forgiven for every wrong thing I’d ever done. I wanted to throw myself into those loving arms and leave everything behind.
Then, behind me, I heard a pitiful voice calling softly, “Who is there? Andrei?”
Take her, too. Please.
We cannot.
“Look, I have the pearly button I tore from your pocket. Let me sew it back on for you. I’m sorry I ruined your favorite shirt.”
She’s not ready.
That doesn’t seem fair.
It’s not about fairness.
It doesn’t seem just.
It is not for us to decide.
Isn’t there any justice on the other side?
There is only perfect truth and perfect peace.
No fairness or justice?
Justice is up to the living.
“Andy! Why have you left me?” the Russian girl cried out once more.
Choose.
I’m not ready. There are things left undone.
25
Suddenly shot back into my body, I vibrated with only one thought: to breathe. My lungs burned for air and my brain felt as if it would burst, and I felt the burlap sack being jerked up and out of the grave. Then there was the sound of a blade cutting the rope and slitting the sack, and the night air brushed my cheeks.
A dark figure stood over me, knife in hand.
I pleaded with wide eyes.
Jack Calder threw the knife into the ground and knelt. He placed one hand behind my head, while he hooked a finger in my mouth and dislodged a clump of dirt and sand.
“Breathe,” he said. “Breathe!”
Then he pushed me forward and slapped me between the shoulder blades so hard that I thought my ribs would break. Still, I could not force air into my lungs. Blotches of red and black and brown stained my vision.
“Damn it,” Calder said. “I will not lose you.”
He pulled me back, put his left arm beneath me, took a great gulp of air, and then put his mouth on mine. As he forced his breath into me, I could feel his chin stubble bruising my jaw, smell the sweat that stained his collar, and taste the coffee and cigar he’d had not long before.
Then my
lungs fluttered and trembled. When his lips released mine, I greedily sucked in air, but I could not seem to get enough. I gasped and coughed and shook for more as Calder held my shoulders.
“Slow down,” he said. “You can’t drink in the whole night sky at once.”
Then he picked me up and carried me down from Boot Hill into town, along North Front, where the cowboys and gamblers and whores gave way for us, and to the door of City Drug. He kicked the door so hard that it splintered the bottom hinges.
“Who the hell is breaking down my door?” Doc McCarty called from the back room.
“We need you, Doc.”
Calder carried me into the room and put me down on the same table that Shadrach had died on. Doc emerged from the back, pulling up his suspenders and holding a coal oil lamp.
“Tell me, quick.”
Doc was leaning down and was lifting each of my eyelids with his thumb while shining the lamplight in my eyes.
“That damn fool Murdock threw her in the open grave on Boot Hill.”
“Just threw her in?”
“And buried her.”
“How long was she under?”
“Couldn’t have been very long,” Calder said. “A few minutes, maybe.”
No, I tried to say. It was much longer than a few minutes. All night, it seemed. But Doc was now looking down my throat and examining my nose and ears.
“I met Murdock and two new friends on Tin Pot Alley, and one of them had a shovel slung over his shoulder,” Calder said. “I had seen Miss Wylde earlier at the Saratoga. But before I knew it, she had slipped out. I had a bad feeling something like this was going to happen, Doc.”
“And you just knew what Murdock had done?”
“He told me after I beat him with the shovel.”
“How bad did you hurt him?”
“Pay attention to the patient in front of you, Doc.”
McCarty frowned, but he leaned over and spoke in my face.
“Do you know your name, dear?”
I didn’t answer right away.
After a few minutes, he asked again.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Want me to spell it, too? It has a Y in there.”
Up like thunder, my mind was back.
“She’s all right.”
“How do you know I’m all right? You haven’t looked at me for thirty seconds. There could be all sorts of things wrong with me from being at the bottom of a grave. Just the grave air alone might have given me something.”
“You have some dirt packed in your nose and ears,” McCarty said. “That’s all. Your eyes react to light well, nothing appears broken, and your mind is obviously intact. Your coastal defenses are manned and ready, as usual.”
I paused.
“Was it awful?” McCarty asked.
“Doc,” I said, “I was scared witless.”
“It was a cruel thing to do,” McCarty said. “And likely fatal, if Jack Calder hadn’t been watching out for you.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“Anybody would have dug you out.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, watch out for me.”
Calder shrugged.
“I don’t know, either,” I said.
McCarty had pulled on his shirt now, and he was gathering up some things in a little satchel.
“Where’s Murdock?”
“Still on the alley off Chestnut, I reckon.”
“Then I guess I’d better go have a look,” McCarty said. “Jack, the old days of the Vigilance Committee are over. You can’t just go around beating confessions out of people. You’ll wind up with a murder charge yourself.”
“Are you saying I should have let her die?”
“I’m rather glad you didn’t,” McCarty said, and winked at me.
“Doc,” I said.
“Yes?”
“It was fearful, at first. Voices. But there was something else. Something peaceful. It wasn’t Summerland. But it was . . . something good. Angelic, even. A part of me was sad to come back.”
McCarty thought for a moment.
“If I were of a judgmental nature,” he said, “I might say that sounds like humbug to me—childish, as you told me not long ago. Or, if I were strictly a man of science, I might say that during suffocation one blacks out and is prone to fantasies. But I am just a man.”
“Then what do you say as just a man, Doc?”
“That the wise among us know where the limits of their wisdom stop,” he said. “It seems you have found yours. Welcome back to the race of human animals, Miss Wylde.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“A long, hot bath—that’s what I recommend,” McCarty said. Then he frowned as he slid past the broken door. “Did you have to kick it in, Jack? You know where the key is.”
“I was in a hurry,” Calder said.
“Well, you’re going to have to pay to get it fixed.”
McCarty left.
“Let’s find you a bath,” Calder said.
“Where?” I asked. “It must be three o’clock in the morning. The Dodge House has long since closed the bathing rooms.”
“You can get a bath twenty-four hours a day here during cattle drive season,” Calder said. “There are two or three bathhouses down on South Front, and two of them are in tents.”
“It doesn’t sound very private.”
“It is, if you’re willing to pay,” Calder said. “I’ll come with you.”
“I think not.”
“I meant that I would stand guard outside.”
Calder propped the door of the City Drug back in its frame and locked it with a key he took from the nearest rain barrel. He shoved on the door, and it only gave a little toward the bottom. He pronounced it good enough for now.
We walked across the tracks to South Front, where we found a big canvas concern that was all lit up from the inside. There were plenty of tubs inside and water being heated over fires, and a dozen cowboys or so were sitting in tubs in the main part, soaking off the trail dust. Most were smoking cigars or leisurely sipping whiskey. A few of them had girls in little or no clothing helping to scrub.
For three bucks, we got a private tub in the back, with a canvas partition. It didn’t take long to fill the tub with hot water, and Calder grabbed a stool and sat outside while I undressed.
“If you slide those clothes out under the tarp,” Calder said, “we can get them washed.”
“Now?”
“Where you have hot water, you have a laundry,” he said. “They won’t be dry until morning, but we can find something for you to wear back to the Dodge House.”
I came to the tarp and passed my filthy clothes beneath it. I was aware that the lamp near the tub was throwing my shadow on the canvas. I didn’t mean to be provocative; I was just bone-tired. I nodded toward modesty, however, by keeping my arms folded and my legs together.
I slid into the tub. It felt so good that I closed my eyes and emitted a slight moan.
“You want a cigar?” Calder asked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “And you’ve apparently already had one tonight.”
“How did you—”
“I tasted it.”
“I like to smoke in the evenings,” he said. “It’s relaxing.”
“It’s a filthy habit,” I said.
But it didn’t seem so filthy when I imagined Calder smoking.
“It is somewhat less filthy,” he said, “compared to many other vices.”
“True,” I said, scrubbing my left arm.
“Mrs. Wylde,” Calder said. “May I ask—”
“You have earned the right to call me Ophelia, I think.”
“Ophelia,” he said, “what you told Doc about the angel or whatever . . .”
“Yes?”
“Is that true?”
“It wasn’t part of my act, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.
“That’s not it,” he said. “I was curious as to whether
any revelations accompanied the angelic visitation.”
There was something, wasn’t there? I tried to remember.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “No, wait. There were a lot of voices. There was a girl, speaking Russian.”
“Russian?”
“Yes, the dead girl. She talked about her throat being cut. There were also a gambler and buffalo hunters. They talked about a cyprian called Captain Drew. Was there ever such a woman by that name here?”
“There was, years ago,” Calder said. “Jessie Drew. They called her ‘Captain Drew’ because she bossed all the other whores around. She moved on a couple of years ago. Went to New Mexico, I think.”
I vigorously used a brush to dislodge the dirt from my fingernails.
“Is there anybody who speaks Russian in Kansas?”
“There are the Russian Mennonites up the Santa Fe tracks around Newton,” Calder said. “A town called Alexanderwohl. Thousands of them came over three years ago from the Crimea, to avoid military service in the czar’s army. They are pacifists, apparently, and wheat farmers.”
“But why Kansas?”
“The climate’s about the same as the Crimea, and the Santa Fe sold them thousands of acres to grow their wheat. Nobody gave them a chance in hell of making it, but they have this hard winter strain they brought with them, something called Turkey Red, which seems to be working.”
“But we’re a long way from Newton, right?”
“Two hundred miles, give or take. But that’s only five hours by train.”
“Strange how distance is relative, now,” I said. “Five hours back east to Newton. But if you walk north or south out of Dodge, you’re what—only five miles outside of town in five hours?”
“Or twenty miles on horseback,” Calder said. “No, the railroad means money. Dodge City wouldn’t be going like hot peanuts if it wasn’t for the railroad. Cattle, hides . . .”
I thought of the wagon caravan of hides.
“What do they do with all those hides, anyway?”
“They cut them up to make belts to drive machinery back East. Whether it’s steam power or water power, the power has to be transmitted to the pulleys somehow, and buffalo hide is cheap and wears well. Also, the bones can be ground into fertilizer.”
“So the buffalo are being turned into the very things that hasten their demise—fertilizer for farmland and pulleys to drive machinery that produces everything from guns to barbed wire.”
