by Kit Duncan
There was a slight chill in the air, and I shivered as I walked back toward the house. Silas and Sallie were sitting in well worn faded green overstuffed chairs in the living room. Silas had changed clothes and was wearing a clean but very faded set of overalls with a little less faded blue shirt underneath. He was reading Catcher in the Rye, and Sallie was darning the elbow of his sweater.
They both looked up and smiled when I walked in.
"Have a nice nap, Sweetie?" Sallie asked as I sat down on the couch.
"Yes," I said politely. "I didn't realize I was so tired."
"Well," she turned the sweater's sleeve around, bit off the thread, folded it, and set it gently on the table next to her. "There," she said to Silas. "And would you quit wearing your good clothes in the meadow?"
"Yes, Dear," he smiled, not looking up from his book. "Just wanted to get all slickered up to welcome the Newbie."
Sallie ignored Silas and looked back at me. "Well, I ain't surprised, anyhow," she said. "I'm exhausted every time I get back. I don't last a whole day 'fore I gotta lie down. You've been going for hours. You always have so much energy when you get back to eternity?"
"I'm not sure," I said, puzzled. "I've never been back before."
"Sure you have!" Silas looked up from his book. "According to your packet, this is your seventh trip back."
"Eighth," Sallie corrected.
"Eighth," Silas repeated.
Sallie reached on the floor behind her chair and picked up her new teal yarn and a crochet needle. Silas turned the page. I blinked three or four times in a row real fast, the way folks do sometimes when they're confused, as if fast blinking will bring about clarity.
"Eighth?" I asked.
In a chorus, they both said, without looking up, "Eighth."
I could see they were engrossed in their projects. Silas giggled a little as he read a passage, and Sallie had begun crocheting. Still, I was too curious to remain silent for long.
"Uh…" I hesitated.
"Yes?" Sallie answered, without looking up.
"Just curious," I said in a faltering voice.
"Yes?" Sallie answered again, acting mesmerized with her afghan. A very tiny curl edged up the corners of her lips.
"Oh, shoot, Woman," Silas laughed. "Quit teasing the poor Newbie. Just tell her!"
"Tell me what?"
"Well, alright then," Sallie pushed her yarn aside. "I know you won't remember everything for about another year and it's going to drive you nuts till you do, and you're going to drive everyone 'round you nuts till you do, so I may as well go on and tell you."
"Tell me what?" I repeated.
"Well, you just finished up your eighth lifetime, Honey, that's all. Nothing big about it, very natural, happens to most of us eventually. But it takes a year or so for everything to catch up with you. Most everything catches up with you eventually. Don't know why it takes so long, though. You know why that is, Silas?"
"No."
"Well, neither do I."
"Why what is?" I asked.
"Oh," she said, "the delay. Works kind of the opposite as when you're born."
I was more confused than ever. Silas peered at Sallie over his glasses. "Sugar Plumb," he said. "Just tell her."
"Okay," Sallie said, and she clasped her hands together and set forward on her overstuffed chair. She cleared her throat, and I perked my left ear, which hears a bit better than my right one, toward her. I was certain I didn't want to miss anything of what she was about to say.
"Let's start with when we're born, it's easier that'a way."
"Okay," I said, out of politeness more than agreement.
"Now then, usually when a baby is born it has all the knowledge and memories of every life it's ever lived. Unless it reincarnates right after it gets to eternity, because…"
"Because it takes about a year to remember everything," I finished for her.
"Right!" Sallie looked at Silas and said, "My, this one's a fast study." Silas just grunted.
"But as time goes on," Sallie continued, "those memories start to kinda get foggy, like the way it is when you wake up from a dream. If you think real good about a dream right at first you're liable to remember it longer, but you don't think about it much and in quick order it just flits away like a butterfly, and there's no catching it back. Right?"
"That's true," I said.
"Well, sir," she said, "the problem is, by the time the baby's old enough to talk about its previous lives and eternities, the memories have already disappeared. After that, only way you can recollect those earlier times while you're still alive is through a little déjà vu, maybe a dream ever now and then, maybe a little premonition, little patches of feeling like you've known someone before but can't quite place 'em. You understand?"
"Not entirely," I said. "But I think I know what you're talking about. It's like, you dream you're someplace back in time, and the dream is so real, not like a regular dream at all. Very spooky, very unnerving."
"Well, you're only scared of what you don't know," Silas said as he turned a page.
Sallie looked at him, back at me, and then continued. "So while you're alive, you never know for a certainty about your past lives, not real clearly anyway. Oh, some folks might get close to it with channeling, hypnosis, that sort of thing, but to be honest with you, I'm not sure how reliable most of that is. Maybe some of it, I don't know for certain. But for most of us, no, we don't remember too well anything before the time we're maybe three or four in our present lives, do we?"
"I don't think so," I agreed.
"Exactly," she nodded. "But now, on this side of life, after you die, it's the opposite. You get here and right away you remember 'most everything about your most recent life. But in a little while things start seeping through and a year, thereabouts, down the road, it just starts pouring in, and first thing you know you remember you were one of the Pharaoh's handmaidens!"
"Now you're just showing off!" Silas scolded good naturedly. He placed his book on his lap and looked at me. "A little notoriety is a dangerous thing, Newbie."
Sallie shot a mock frown at him, and he returned it, and then they both laughed.
"You're just jealous," she teased him. "Best you did was work at the Globe."
"Hey!" Silas said. "I was a fine, fine actor. Taming of the Shrew would never have gone on that first night if it hadn't been for me. And let me tell you," he tossed a quick wink at me, "I know a thing or two about taming shrews!"
They laughed again.
"So," I wasn't sure if I was allowed to know yet, but I thought I'd ask anyway. "Who was I? I mean, before?"
Silas and Sallie looked at each other. Silas raised his thick white eyebrows a little bit and shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he said, "Ain't no law against telling. You'll start to figure it out in a little while anyway, 'specially once your box gets here."
"Besides," Sallie added before I could ask what box she was talking about, "if it'll help you sleep better tonight. I know I'm always crazy with curiosity whenever I first get back."
Silas stood up, walked to the cluttered desk, fumbled through a stack of papers. "Oh, here you are," he said, and took a large white envelope with him back to his chair. "Now," he added, "Let's take a look here."
He adjusted his glasses a little and flipped through a few pages, murmured to himself, whistled once, then said, "Ah, yes, here it is." He whistled again, then looked at me.
"You're younger than you look," he said.
"I'm nearly sixty," I said, and was suddenly embarrassed. He wasn’t talking about my physical age at all.
"Says here you've only been in existence since 1532. Eight lives in less than six centuries. That's pushing it. You must really enjoy living!"
"What's that got to do with it?" I asked.
"Well," Sallie explained. "Unless you're waiting for someone, or an Open House, people who really love to be alive do tend to reincarnate real quick like. What's it say, Silas?"
"Let's see," he studied the pages again
before continuing. "You incarnated only forty nine years after you were born here. In 1581 you were born into a Pueblo tribe." He stopped reading, looked up at me, and said, "Ouch. Don't reckon you care much for heights, huh?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Slipped off the side of a cliff in your teens."
"No," I said. "Scared to death of anything over three feet high."
"I can see why," Sallie said. "What else, Silas?"
"Early sixteen hundreds, looks like you were in Japan. Impressive." He looked at Sallie. "Samurai."
"Hmmmm," she said approvingly.
"Oh, oh," Silas said. "Didn't do so well in that line of work, either. Dead by your early thirties."
"Sword fight?" I asked.
"Snake bite."
"Not much honor there," Sallie said, then added quickly. "'Course, there's no disgrace either! But snakes do have such a bad reputation, 'specially in these parts."
"And then, in 1649," Silas continued. "No, didn't do well there, either."
"What?"
"African tribe, west coast. Died crossing over on a slave ship. What a pity."
I was becoming impatient. So far, I had heard nothing to suggest I could possibly have enjoyed any of my lives very much.
"What else?" I asked sullenly.
Silas studied some more. "Oh, now this is interesting." He looked up at me. "Looks like you lived in New Zealand for, let's see," he counted on his fingers, "Almost seventy years. That takes us up to the seventeen hundreds."
"How'd I die? In New Zealand?"
"Yes."
He read from the packet again. "Not good." He looked at me and grinned an evil grin. "You old dog!"
"What?"
"Killed by a spear at the hands of a jealous husband. Naughty."
Sallie giggled. "Go on," she said. "What's next?"
"Well, here in 1794 you show up…. Well. Son of a gun."
"What?"
"Pirate."
"You're kidding!" Sallie said. "Let me see that!" She took the packet from Silas' hands and read silently, then handed it back to him and looked at me. "And not too good a pirate, I'm afraid," she shook her head.
"What? Gang plank?"
"Worse. Dysentery."
"Crap!" I muttered.
"Exactly," Silas said. "Let's move on. Now, then, here we are in the eighteen hundreds. Oh, this is good. Married, good wife, nine children, and in your mid forties mustered out of…. Wait. No. Never mind."
"Mustered?"
"Michigan, 17th. Left in April 1862, killed near Jackson TN 11 October 1862."
"You were wearing the wrong color, Sweetheart," Sallie said sadly, then laughed. "Oh, well, my Uncle Nolan fought on the wrong side hisself. I still loved the old rascal."
Silas laughed with her.
"What's next?" Sallie asked.
"Well, late 1800's looks like you were born in Ireland, wound up dancing in a burlesque show in New York City. Hmmm."
"What?" Sallie and I asked at the same time.
"Busted during Prohibition. Knocked out a cop, did a little time, got mixed up with more bootlegging after you got out. No, I take that back. After you escaped. But during the Depression looks like you went to a Normal School, became a high school English teacher, married some fellow, had two kids, and died just before the second world war. No, wait. The two kids were before you got married, while you were still living in New York."
"How?"
"How'd you have kids?"
"How'd I die?"
"Hit by a pig truck just outside Hoboken."
"Not very dignified, is it?" Sallie observed.
"Uh uh," Silas agreed. "But it's no worse than when you were trampled by that little …."
"Oh, she doesn't want to hear that silly old story!" Sallie interrupted him.
"Lamb," Silas finished his sentence.
"It was a ram," Sallie corrected him. "And it was huge. And it ran faster than I did."
"Well, you shouldn't have been messing with it to begin with," Silas scolded.
CHAPTER NINE
