I See You So Close

by M Dressler

  “I’d like to tell you my story, Su.” A skinny man with a long face comes forward from the meeting. “When I first came to the Bar, I was horribly down on my luck. I’d just lost my job. My whole company went robot-automated. I found myself out on the street, after twenty years of labor, no offer of help, not even an apology, no severance, nothing. Taken out like the trash. God, I was so embarrassed to know it. I tried to drink myself to death and bankruptcy. I was headed to the casinos to do just that. But then I stopped here at the café, and I admitted to Bill, ‘I’m hungry, I’m sad,’ and Bill said, ‘If you’re sad and hungry, stay here and we’ll feed you.’ You made a big lunch for me, Bill, and you said, ‘No charge, I can see you need it’—do you remember that? And Mary and John—I think you called them, didn’t you, Bill?—they invited me to stay at their place, and all they asked in return was that I help them with a little cleaning and polishing. The mayor came by the next day, and she asked who I was and where I came from and what my story was, and I told her I was a groundskeeper, and she said to me, you know, there would be nothing nicer than having a maintenance and plowing service right here, and not over at Dutch Gap. Martha said the old gold might be gone from this place, but there’s new gold here, and we’ll help you find it. And the next thing I knew, I was made so welcome you wouldn’t believe—although maybe you would, now you’ve been here a while. Then, after I’d been here a bit, I got the sense, I don’t know, I just knew, there was something more going on. I could see it in everyone’s faces, that there was something deeper giving them, everyone you see here, something special, a real sense of purpose and reason and easiness, like they were connected to something that kept them going even when everything else was going to hell. They had something I didn’t. I could just taste it. And I know you’ve felt that too, Su. Well, I wanted it, whatever it was. I told Martha I wanted to be part of the Bar in every way there was to be a part of it, and she took it to the town council and everybody you see here, and she made my case, and I was finally introduced to the bargain. And the bargain changed my life. To know that I’m a guardian of life and death. Me, Pete Collier. Who nobody ever heard of. Me, I have a sacred responsibility, more powerful than the whole world would ever guess.”

  “Imagine that, Su,” Mary says beside him. “That’s what the bargain is. It goes back to the 1850s. Our town fathers agreed to give the schoolhouse ghosts a place to bide in, if they agreed to make no trouble and let us keep our town peaceful and happy. The bargain is that we will keep them all safe and hidden from the world, as long as they do as they’re told. We won’t be afraid of them as long as they don’t make us afraid; and they don’t have to be afraid of us as long as they don’t make any trouble. All they have to do is keep inside the place that was built for them after they died. The schoolhouse on the Knob will never be torn down. It’s their home, since, you see, every ghost needs a home. But they can’t allow themselves to be seen by anyone. If they do, if they get out of line, then they’re finished. Then the schoolhouse is razed. There have to be parameters, as with any arrangement. If they get out of line, there must be consequences. Am I leaving anything out, John?”

  “You hit it all,” the old man barks, satisfied.

  Walk the earth a hundred years, I think, and you’ll never see the end of how pleased with itself cruelty can be.

  “Any of us who are let into the bargain,” Harold says proudly, “is a privileged member, and has to keep the responsibility sacred and protected and hidden, or else be haunted and hounded and punished. And then of course these days if you know about and don’t report a ghost, you also go to jail. So that’s why even when people have left the Bar, they’ve respected the bargain and don’t say anything. And neither will you, now—am I right, Su?”

  Su nods, quickly.

  “Of course,” Mary adds, “not everyone can manage such responsibility, or should. So we’re careful. And we’ve never had any trouble at all until now. Certainly not with the schoolhouse ghosts. Only a few others, strays. It will be a hundred and seventy-three anniversaries of the bargain next week. Think of that. We’ve kept it going no matter what kind of problems there have ever been in this town. Because a promise is a bargain, and a bargain is a promise. Isn’t that right, everyone?” she calls to the room. “And here we are, and here you are, Su, all these years later, let into the special trust of it.”

  “Only now the bargain’s in danger,” Mayor Martha says, leaning in, “and we have to respond as one. So we’re having this meeting, and sharing all this with you. We’re terribly sorry about poor Ruth and her son . . . but we have to do something about this, though it’s breaking our hearts. And yours, too, I’m certain, now that we’ve shared everything with you.”

  I’m watching Su. Su, who was strong enough to bend metal.

  She turns to the room.

  “I want to thank you all for your honesty,” she says, in her clear voice. “I understand what you’ve said to me. And I’ll add just one more thing, if it’s all right. If the spirits are out of line now, it might be because of the tram in the meadow. The Bar tried to build something on the very site of their suffering, didn’t it? I’m thinking maybe that wasn’t a good idea?”

  A woman calls from the back, angrily, “Well we have to eat. They don’t.”

  “Understood.” Su nods her long hair. “But they do need respect. I know that from personal experience, with a dead uncle I had.” I think and want to scream: Uncle Bao, she’s using you now, forgetting everything she said to me about you. “You have to give them respect, if you want to keep them in line.”

  So quickly can a heart turn. It takes all my soul has, sometimes, not to despair.

  “But you’re the one who’s been digging things up around there!” the same woman objects.

  Su stares at her. “And how could I know any better? If you didn’t tell me there were ghosts here?”

  Bill jumps in. “It’s all right, Su’s right. All the digging and disruption out there might have done it. And maybe one of them took it out on our poor Ruth.”

  “If that’s so,” Mary Berringer says, rising, “I think we can give one of them up to this hunter, this—what is his name? What did you get out of that miserable Seth?” She turns to Bill.

  “Philip Pratt.”

  “Philip Pratt. One ghost should satisfy him, and send him away, while at the same time teaching a lesson to the others, to keep order.”

  “But what about Ruth?” Martha says. “She’s going to tell anyone who asks that there’s more than one.”

  “Well, we’ll have to explain to the cleaner she isn’t in her right mind. She’s hallucinating. That will be our first step. We have to protect what’s ours.”

  “And Ruth’s boy?”

  “We’ll take care of him.”

  “What about Rose?” Bill asks. “We’ve probably frightened her. But we shouldn’t let her get away . . . should we?”

  As if you could keep me.

  Mary commands, “Martha, go check your place for her. Harold, do a little search of town. And Su, if she comes to you—we know she trusts you—you bring her to us.”

  “All right, but don’t count her out yet, okay?” Su urges. “Rose is really cool. She’s been through a lot of the same things we have, and worse, I think. I think she’ll want to stay on and serve the future of this place. I really do feel that.”

  Oh, you can be sure, Su, Mary, Bill, all of you, that I will find a way to serve this place.

  “In any case”—Mary buttons her coat—“Rose doesn’t have a car, so she won’t have gotten very far, not with this storm beating down. Bill, you stay here to deal with Seth. John and I will prepare to manage the cleaner when he arrives. Everyone else, just go about your business. Act normally. Are you all right, Su, dear?”

  “I’m just amazed, that’s all. This has been so . . . amazing.”

  “Everything’s going to be easy now,” the old woman says warmly. “We’re very resourceful here, and always have been so. Call
when you find Rose. I’m sure she’s close by.”

  I am. So close, old woman, that I brush you and your hood falls and seems to squeeze your neck, tightening for an instant. Yet you don’t notice, or cry out. Because a cry comes from deep inside where feelings, a decent conscience, should be. Instead, you walk out the door, silent, with all the others.

  But it’s Su I’ll deal with first, and who I follow.

  15

  She tucks her long hair under her colorful scarf and tightens her coat. She walks around the edge of the lamplit square with her shoulders lifted against the howling wind and snow. She looks neither to her right nor to her left. The wind chimes at her gallery door batter madly. She imagines it’s only the wind raking its nails across them.

  With me invisible at her shoulder, Su Kwon lets herself inside and throws off her coat. She takes her glowing telephone from her pocket and presses it, quickly.

  “Mama. It’s me.”

  Her voice is small and tight.

  “I know, I know. It’s been a while. How’s Dad? No, don’t ask him. I need to talk to you. I miss you, Mom. I miss you so, so, so much.”

  She leans her cheek against the screen as though it might soothe her.

  But nothing will save you now.

  “No, I don’t think it’ll all work out eventually, somehow. That’s not why I’m calling. Something’s . . . happened here. No, work is fine. It’s something else. Nothing I can talk about, really, without . . . I don’t want to drag you into anything, is the thing. So let’s just call it a local problem. Something I have to decide how I’m going to handle, and decide quick. I need your help with one small piece of it. I’m going to text you a phone number to a little restaurant, a café, and I want you to call it and ask for someone named Seth. On the other end, someone’s either going to say Seth’s not there, or they have no idea who Seth is. I want you to say you’re his boss and you can’t reach him on his cell and you know he’s there, at the White Bar Café. Then hang up. That’s all you have to do. Why? Because you’re letting someone know that someone knows and cares about this Seth guy. No, I can’t tell you any more. Just stay light on your feet like you always do. No, you’re not getting this Seth in trouble, the reverse, in fact. No, Jesus, I don’t like him and he’s not good-looking, Ma. What I like—and you can tell Dad this—is doing the right thing when you know it’s the right thing. You and me, Ma, we listen to our guts, right? I know I sound serious. I am serious. But you’ll do what I asked you? Thanks. The rest I have to try to handle on my own. It’s delicate. Okay. You are amazing. I love you. I’m sending the number now. Bye.”

  She taps and sets the telephone down, and covers her sharp face with both hands. She doesn’t know I’m standing right beside her.

  I’m judging you.

  She drops her hands. “Well.” She looks at the twisted metal tongues on the walls around her. “So I guess this little piece of paradise turned out to be, yeah, not so much.”

  Around her eyes is the amazed look a face wears when it can’t quite believe a thing. The look Pratt’s face wore when I managed to escape him. The way my eyes must have started and stared when I knew I was going to sink to the bottom of the sea. Surely, the amazed look says, I didn’t make so grave a mistake.

  This time I want to have been wrong. But am I?

  Su says aloud, “Rose, wherever you’ve gone, I hope you are far, far away from here and all this shit.” She paces her gallery.

  Then stops.

  “I could tell them,” she frets to herself, “that I’ve looked for Rose and can’t find her anywhere. But she could still come back, before I get a chance to tell her about . . . And shit, what do they do to people who say no? Put them in the freezer?”

  She stops, frightened. She understands.

  There aren’t just ghosts in this town. There are the dangerous living.

  “All right.” She gives herself a little shake. “I’ll manage this. Figure it out. And keep Rose out of it—if she hasn’t already cleared out. She doesn’t need this. What do I need?” She lifts up her device again. “A lawyer, probably. Say nothing about all this, and I’m involved in crimes. Say something, and the ghosts are offed by the hunter that’s coming. Okay. Concentrate. What needs doing first?”

  She closes her eyes.

  “Trust. Get them to trust you.” She keeps them shut. “Who? Everyone. Keep the town trusting me. Get the hunter to trust me, too. That nets me the most options, the most time. Anything difficult takes finesse. If you can’t get rid of the knives, then it’s who you hand them to that matters, right, Ma? What?”

  She turns, jumping.

  I just tried to reach out and touch her. It’s not the same without a body, a hand that can stroke. I need to feel her, to be sure.

  Is she too good to be true? Is this, at last, real goodness? Or am I making another mistake?

  She goes to the snow-filled windows.

  “It’s really blowing, now. Maybe the passes will close. Just enough to stop the cleaner, whoever he is.”

  I want to fold her in my arms.

  Which arms?

  I have none. They’re in the bitter cold, where I left them.

  So unexpected and confusing it is, trying to be free and flesh, both.

  Hurry. Hurry, now, Emma Rose.

  I fly from Su’s gallery. On the café’s false roof from under the thick snow I lift up the body I left and cloak myself in it. Here are muscles, crevices, arms, fingers, real bone. In the pocket of the mayor’s coat I find Longhurst’s letter. I take out the sheets, and the snowflakes fall across these palms and the letter both, brushing, touching.

  Yes. It’s just as I remembered. Ola is as Longhurst described, slow and sturdy. Anton was the son of the woman who came pleading to the Huellet brothers for help. Jack was the bruised boy Longhurst spoke to Caleb Huellet about. Addy and Will would be the ghosts that appeared to me at the hotel, holding hands. It’s not just one ghost that’s left the schoolhouse. It might be all of them, loose, disturbed, angry. Rightfully so. But dangerous to each other, I worry. To all of us.

  I come to the end of the letter and also find, strangely, more sheets than there were. In the same hand, the same faded, wild, blotted ink, I discover words that are new yet somehow already old.

  Something strange and unexpected, diary . . . as a diary this now clearly is.

  I had a visitor at the schoolhouse this evening. A rather pleasant one. I was just sitting down to my desk when she appeared at the schoolhouse door, a strange woman in strange clothing. We have so many foreigners here who hail from all corners of the earth, I first thought she might be a Chilean, and that this would account for her dark cast and strange dress. But when she spoke it was in a brusque, Gaelic manner. She asked about the school. She seemed interested to know about my pupils. I had the impression, while we spoke, that she was taking my measure (even as I was taking hers). Since we were strangers to each other, man and woman, I maintained a good distance and decorum. In fact, after a short span of minutes I hinted she should go, not because I wanted her to—I didn’t—but because her staying much longer might give rise to talk among the people in town—though no doubt such talk would have done me good in the eyes of men like Jack Granger.

  She went. I was sorry to see her go, and to be left to my cold walk back to my lodging. I have no idea where she might be lodging or what her business might be in town. It occurred to me she might be the schoolmistress that had been sent for months ago and failed to arrive—perhaps she was only now arriving, and came to assess whether she could still have her place?—but for some reason I feel this is unlikely. By no sign or word did she indicate she wanted to stand in my shoes. She seemed curious about the future and well-being of my pupils. When the truth is, by God, I know as little about anyone’s future as I do my own. The children sometimes frighten me, when I look at them. They are by turns helpless and stern. They sometimes—Ola, especially—stare at me as though I am insufficient to their needs, as though they see through
my ragged coat, my scholarly pretenses, and find me wanting.

  I felt, I feel, unutterably lonely now. And yet not entirely alone. I saw in the stranger’s eyes, too, the eyes of a wanderer come to a rough place. But that might simply be my fancy speaking. It’s late, and the lantern sputters. I’m going to bed.

  I don’t understand.

  What if you can’t change the past, I wonder, only be more tightly bound to it?

  As if in answer, below me a car engine announces itself with a rough hum under the wind. It wends its way slowly toward the square, through the storm. It shines its yellow lights, crawling, inching around the statue of the Prospector. Snow has crusted over its windshield, leaving only two wiped half circles, dark, like black eyes.

  My soul knows what’s arrived.

  It’s Philip Pratt.

  The car edges up to a buried curb and stops. Pratt’s bulk squeezes out of the door. Even in his long coat, I know him. He’s grown heavier. He leans, then straightens, with a small bag in his hand, and starts with a slight limp toward the hotel.

  It matters not at all to me that he was wounded when he tried to put me down. There are those who deserve compassion, and those who deserve understanding, and those who deserve no space in the heart at all, because their hearts are missing the door that would open into another’s.

  There are so many reasons I have to rage at this man, yet I must keep calm and invisible, or be discovered.

  Yet such a sharp, hot pain I feel, knowing I’ll have to hide from him this body, these arms, this precious skin that I’ve claimed and felt the world through and lived in all these months since I last faced him. Because he’ll recognize it.

  The mayor is coming out to greet him, beckoning him inside. He nods and follows her.

  I must leave this body again, on another, higher roof now. The snow will keep it safe, even as my spirit throws itself toward danger.

  16