by Amy Harmon
“So your family is Levan royalty, then?” Moses had teased.
“Yes. We Shepherds rule this town,” I replied.
“Who has PO Box number 1?” he inquired immediately.
“God,” I said, not missing a beat.
“And box number 2?” He was laughing as he asked.
“Pam Jackman.”
“From down the street?”
“Yes. She’s like one of the Kennedys.”
“She drives the bus, right?” he asked.
“Yes. Bus driver is a highly lauded position in our community.” I didn’t even crack a smile.
“So boxes 3 and 4?”
“They are empty now. They are waiting for the heirs to come of age before they inherit their mailboxes. My son will someday inherit PO Box #5. It will be a proud day for all Shepherds.”
“Your son? What if you have a daughter?” His eyes got that flinty look that made my stomach feel swishy. Talking about having children made me think about making babies. With Moses.
“She’s going to be the first female bull-rider who wins the national title. She won’t be living in Levan most of the time. Her brothers will have to look after the family name and the Shepherd line . . . and our post office box,” I said, trying not to think about how much I would enjoy making little bull-riders with Moses.
When Mom delivered my letter, her eyes got tight and I could tell she wished she could just toss it and keep Moses away for good. But she didn’t. She brought it to my room, set it softly on my dresser, and left without comment. The best part of opening any highly-anticipated letter or package is the moment before you know what it is. Or what it says. And I had been waiting for something from Moses for months, praying for something. I knew as soon as I opened it I would either be filled with hope or crushed beyond repair. And I was too worn out for either at the moment.
I ended up going for a long ride, taking the letter along, tucking it inside my coat so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. It was February and we’d finally gotten a snow storm after a very cold, dry, couple of months. Rumor was that they’d found Molly Taggert’s remains near the overpass where Moses had painted her picture. People were talking again and people were staring at me too, all the while trying to pretend they weren’t staring. The lack of snow had made it possible for the dogs to work, to find her, but I was glad the dry spell was finally broken.
The empty white world was welcome, and when Sackett and I were far away from everything and everyone, I pulled the letter out and carefully opened it, as if I might inadvertently tear away something important. Maybe my own dry spell was finally broken. I pulled out a folded piece of thick drawing paper and carefully opened it, tucking the envelope back inside my coat. With shaking hands I studied the picture in my hands. I didn’t know what to make of it.
It was beautiful, but more abstract than I would have hoped. I wanted concrete. I wanted words. I wanted him to tell me that he was coming back for me. That he couldn’t stand being apart. But I didn’t get concrete. I got a picture. How very Moses.
It was a woman, but she could be any woman. There was a child, and it could almost be any child. The woman was created from swirls and suggestions, breasts, hips, embracing arms and folded legs, all enclosing a small child with a brief sweep of dark hair. I looked at it for a long time, not knowing what to make of it.
Was it symbolic? Was it pointed? Was he making a statement about the loss of his grandmother? Was he trying to tell me he understood what I was going through? I didn’t know how he could. And so I stared at the lovely, confusing bit of correspondence from the boy who had kept me guessing from the beginning. After a while, my hands grew cold and Sackett grew restless, and I headed back for home.
I framed the picture and hung it on my wall, determined to get some sense of peace from it, from the fact Moses had thought of me at all. But mostly I felt afraid and unequipped to tackle the days ahead, still unable to completely give up on Moses Wright. Mom had taken one look at the picture and turned away, and Dad just shook his head and sighed. And I settled in for a long wait.
Moses
IN A SHALLOW GRAVE piled high with rocks and debris, fifty yards from where I’d painted her smiling face, the remains of Molly Taggert were uncovered. Tag said the truck stop nearby was called Circle A. The neon sign that marked the establishment was a red A inside a circle—just like at the top of Molly’s math page. I’d never noticed it at all in my travels back and forth across the ridge between Levan and Nephi. I’d driven by that truck stop a hundred times and never made the connection. Too lost in my own head, definitely not Sherlock Holmes. The back of the truck stop butted up to a stretch of field that led into the little hills that rose into the mountain ridge that stretched along the east part of town and continued south for hundreds of miles. A golf course was wedged between those hills, and every year fireworks were launched from the first tee around the fourth of July. The red A and the fireworks were both easily visible from the overpass where I’d painted Molly’s image, marking her resting place and not even knowing it.
Tag had cried when he told me. Big, wracking sobs that made his shoulders shake and my stomach tighten painfully, the way it had the night Georgia had told me she loved me. “I think you do love me, Moses,” she’d said, tears coating her throat. “And I love you too.” I didn’t do well with tears. I didn’t cry, so I didn’t know why other people did. And Tag cried for his sister the way I imagined I should have cried for Gi. But I didn’t cry, so I just waited until the storm passed, and Tag mopped up the tears on his cheeks and finished telling me the rest.
Tag had told his father about me. And for whatever reason—desperation, despondency, or maybe just a desire to placate his adamant son—David Taggert Sr. hired a man and his dogs to cover the area Tag had described. They’d caught her scent quickly, and they found her remains. Just like that. The police were called in and before too long, the police came to the loony bin, looking for me. I’d been questioned about Molly Taggert before, but now they had a body. A body that was found eerily close to my dramatic display.
Sheriff Dawson came with another man, a round, pasty-faced, red-haired deputy that couldn’t have been much older than me. The younger man sneered at me, clearly playing the part of the nasty sidekick on his favorite cop show. With his powdery complexion and his flaming hair, he reminded me of a scowling jelly donut.
Sheriff Dawson asked me all the same questions and a few new ones. He knew David Taggert was a patient at the institution where I was housed. He also knew what Tag had told his father and what his father had then relayed to the search team. And he knew it had all come from me. But when it was all said and done, Molly Taggert had been missing since July of 2005. In July of 2005, I’d been living in California with my uncle and his unhappy wife and their very spoiled children. In July of 2005, I served the entire month in a juvenile detention facility for gang related activities. And that was indisputable. As far as alibis go, mine was pretty airtight. Sheriff already knew that, from our conversation back in October, when I’d painted Molly’s face on the overpass and got hauled in for questioning. But I had known it wouldn’t stop him, or anyone else in law enforcement, from believing I was guilty of something. I’d told Tag as much.
“You had any further contact with Georgia Shepherd?” Sheriff Dawson asked as he closed his file and prepared to leave. The question felt a little strange at the tail end of all the questions about Molly Taggert.
“No,” I said. The sheriff didn’t meet my gaze but continued rifling through the thick pages in front of him. With his head tilted down and his hat removed, I could see his pink scalp through his pale hair.
“You and she were friends, if I remember right.” He kept his head down and turned another page.
“Not really.”
He glanced up. “No?”
“No.”
Sheriff Dawson shot a look at the pudgy deputy. The deputy smirked. Heat rose in my chest, and I wanted to pop his fat face in. I didn’t un
derstand the look, but there was something ugly behind it.
“Hmm. But you were there the night she was attacked at the Stampede, right? You took her home, made sure she was all right.”
I waited, the heat in my chest spreading to my ears. He already knew all this.
“We never really figured out what happened that night.”
He paused again and suddenly slapped the file shut. “So you haven’t had any visions about what might have happened there, have you? Maybe painted a mug shot or a finger print on the side of some barn? You know, something we can use to hunt the bastard down? We don’t especially like people hurtin’ our girls. So it sure would be nice to bring justice to whoever hurt Georgia.”
I said nothing. I had hurt Georgia. I was sure that was what he was getting at. After all, she was the one who called the cops the morning Gi died. She was the one who stood outside and waited for the ambulance. She was the one who found out where I’d been committed and made a wasted effort to see me. But I didn’t think that was what the sheriff was referring to. He obviously thought I’d tied her up too, psycho that I am.
But I hadn’t tied her up. And I hadn’t had any “visions” about who had. So I stayed silent and seated as he rose, along with Deputy Jelly Donut, and headed for the door.
“Moses?” The younger man exited, but Sheriff Dawson paused, his hand on the knob as he placed his cowboy hat back over his thinning hair. “I hear you’re gonna be released in the next few days.”
I nodded slightly, acknowledging that I was. He nodded too and pursed his lips, considering me.
“Well, good. That’s good. Everybody deserves a fresh start. But I don’t think you should come back to Levan, Moses,” he said, stepping into the hall. “We’re all out of fresh starts and second chances.” He let the door fall closed between us as he walked away.
Moses
THEY TOOK US BOTH OFF ISOLATION, and much to my surprise, Tag and I fell into a sort of friendship. Maybe it was our youth. Maybe it was Molly, maybe it was the fact that we were both in a psychiatric facility and neither of us especially wanted to leave—or as Tag put it, “rock bottom with no desire to climb higher”—or maybe it was just that Tag reminded me a little of Georgia with his twang and his humor and his cowboy persona. He was nothing like me, and they would have hit it off, I was sure of it. The thought made me strangely jealous, and I was struck again that she’d ever wanted me at all.
Tag was usually quick to smile, quick to anger, quick to forgive, quick to pull the trigger. He didn’t do anything in half measures and I wondered sometimes if the facility wasn’t the best place for him, just to keep him contained. But he had a maudlin side too. And one night after lights out, he came and found me, creeping down the hall undetected, the way he always did, seeking answers that none of the staff could give him, answers he thought I had.
Tag said I was aptly named. “Wasn’t Moses a prophet or something?”
I just rolled my eyes. At least we weren’t talking about the fact that I’d been found in a basket.
“MO-SES!” Tag said my name in a deep, echoing “God voice,” reminiscent of the old Charlton Heston movie, The Ten Commandments. Gigi had loved Charlton Heston. I’d spent an Easter with her the year I was twelve and we’d had a Charlton Heston marathon that made me want to smear red paint above everybody’s door and burn all the bushes in Levan. Come to think of it, I had smeared paint all over Levan, many times. It was all Charlton Heston’s fault.
Tag laughed when I told him that. But the laughter faded, and he slumped back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Then he looked at me, measuring me. “If I die, what will happen to me?”
“Why do you think you’re going to die?” I asked, sounding like Dr. Andelin.
“I’m here because I tried to kill myself several times, Moses.”
“Yeah. I know.” I pointed at the long scar on his arm. “And I’m here because I paint dead people and scare the livin’ shit out of everyone I come in contact with.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I know.” But his smile faded immediately. “When I’m not drinking, life just grinds me down until I can’t see straight. It wasn’t always that way. But it is now. Life sucks pretty bad, Moses.”
I nodded, but found myself smiling a little as I remembered how Georgia had lectured me every time I said something similar.
“Georgia’s laugh, Georgia’s hair, Georgia’s kisses, Georgia’s wit, Georgia’s long, long legs,” I murmured. I’d gotten comfortable with Tag and I repeated the list out loud, much to my embarrassment.
“What?”
I felt stupid but I answered him honestly. “Five greats. I was listing five greats. Just something someone used to do whenever I complained about how bad life was.”
“Georgia?”
“Yeah.”
“She your girl?” he asked.
“She wanted to be,” I admitted, but wouldn’t admit how I had wanted her.
“And you didn’t want that? Not even with her hair, her kisses, and her long, long legs?” He smiled, and I liked him, in spite of myself. But I didn’t say anything more about Georgia.
“You still want to die?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Depends. What comes next?” “More,” I answered simply. “There’s more. That’s all I can tell you. It doesn’t end.”
“And you can see what comes next?”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t see the future, if that’s what he meant.
“Can you see the other side?”
“No. I only see what they want me to see,” I said.
“They? They who?”
“Whoever comes through.” I shrugged.
“Do they whisper to you? Do they talk?” Tag was whispering too, as if the subject were sacred.
“No. They never say anything at all. They just show me things.”
Tag shivered and rubbed the back of his neck, like he was trying to rub away the goose flesh that had crept up his back.
“So how do you know what they want?” he asked.
“They all want the same thing.” And strangely, they did.
“What? What do they want?”
“They want to speak. They want to be heard.” I hadn’t ever put it into words, but the answer felt right.
“So they don’t speak but they want to speak?”
I nodded once, affirming that Tag was correct.
“Why do they want to speak?”“Because that’s what they used to do . . .” I hesitated.
“That’s what they used to do, when they were alive?” Tag finished for me. “Yeah.”
“So how do they communicate?”“Thoughts don’t require flesh and bone.”
“You hear their thoughts?” he asked, incredulous.
“No. I see their memories in my thoughts.” I supposed that was even more bizarre, but it was the truth.
“You see their memories? All of them? Do you see everything? Their whole lives?”
“Sometimes it feels like that. It can be a flood of color and thought, and I can only pick up random things because it’s coming at me so fast. And I can only really see what I understand. I’m sure they would like me to see more. But it isn’t that easy. It’s subjective. I usually see pieces and parts. Never the whole picture. But I’ve gotten better at filtering, and as I’ve gotten better, it feels more like remembering and less like being possessed.” I smiled in spite of myself, and Tag shook his head in wonder.
“Are there any dead people here now?” Tag swiveled around looking right and left as if maybe, if he turned fast enough, he could catch a ghost unaware.
“Definitely,” I lied. There was no one nearby, nothing to mar the quiet or the space except the branch outside my window that tapped and scratched against the glass and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes against the linoleum as someone hurried past my door.
Tag’s brows shot up, and he waited for me to tell him more.
“Marilyn Monroe thinks you’re hot. She’s blowing in your ear right now
.”
Tag’s finger immediately filled his ear canal as if a bug had flown in and was buzzing incessantly, trying to get out.
I laughed, surprising myself, surprising Tag. He was usually the one to tease, not me.
“You’re shittin’ me, right?” Tag laughed. “You are! Damn. I wouldn’t mind it if Marilyn really did want to hang around.”
“Yeah. It doesn’t really work that way. I only see people who have a connection to someone I’m in contact with, or someone I’ve been in contact with. I don’t see random dead people.”
“So when you told Chaz that his grandfather had left something for him, did his grandfather show you the will?”
“He showed me a picture of his reflection, walking into the bank . . . the way he saw it as he approached. Then he showed me the safe deposit box.” I liked Chaz. He was muscle around the place—unfailingly cheerful, always singing, and always dependable. He worked with some very violent people day in and day out and never seemed to lose his good will or his cool.
When his grandfather kept trying to come through, I’d resisted. I liked Chaz and didn’t need ammo against him. I had no desire to hurt him. Since I’d been admitted, I’d gotten better at keeping the walls of water around me. I’d had nothing to do but practice and go to endless counseling sessions that didn’t especially apply, although surprisingly, they hadn’t hurt. But my constant contact with Chaz seemed to strengthen his grandfather’s connection with me, and I could feel him on the other side, waiting to wade across. So I let him, just him, raising the walls just a bit, just enough.
Chaz’s grandfather had loved him. So I told Chaz what I saw, what his grandfather kept showing me. And Chaz had listened, his eyes huge in his black face. The next day he didn’t come to work. But the day after that he’d found me and thanked me. And he cried when he did. He was a big, black, mountain of a man, bigger than I was. Stronger than I was. But he wept like a child, and he hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. And I realized it didn’t always have to be a weapon. What I could do didn’t have to hurt people.
