Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day(23)
“Remember the rats,” says Brenda. “Everything that lives can die, and everything that dies can leave a ghost behind.”
Her meaning catches like fire, immolating me as I stand, wide-eyed from the possibilities. Ghosts of stately old trees lining the coast. Ghosts of whales sounding in the deep water. Even ghosts of mosquitoes, landing on human skin, sipping minutes along with blood, disappearing into eternity before they could be slapped away. And before them, the ghosts of bacteria, of protozoa, of the single-celled swimmers in the primordial sea. The world was a haunted house long before people came along to rattle their chains and wear their winding shrouds.
I ask the only question I can think of, under the circumstances: “Are there dinosaur ghosts?”
Brenda laughs. I slant a glance at her, sure that she’s not making fun of me, and she smiles. “I asked the same question, after the corn started talking to me,” she says. “My gran was a cotton witch. She didn’t know the ways of silk and stalk, but she knew what it was when the fields called you home, and she’d been waiting for a while for me to find my calling. She said there were dinosaur ghosts, once, before people got all scientific about it. Started trying to put names and labels on them, instead of just respecting them as the restless dead. So all the dinos pulled in their remaining years a few centuries ago, and left this world for the next one. Pity. I’d have loved to have seen one.”
“Wow,” I say.
“But we’re off the point,” says Brenda, smile fading. “As near as I can tell, you and Delia are the last human ghosts on the island of Manhattan, and that means she needs to stay here, lock the door, and keep herself safe until the city can make itself a few more nails.”
That isn’t as heartless as it sounds. People die in New York every day. Not just people, either. Pigeons and cats and Sophie’s beloved rats. Knowing what I know now, even the cockroaches count. Manhattan would have more nails in short order and be better anchored for having them.
But old ghosts are stronger than new ghosts. They have more practice at moving time from one place to another, channeling the needs of the world through themselves. Delia will still need to stay here. A thousand cockroach ghosts wouldn’t equal one of her. I can tell myself that they would be enough, but I’d just be lying to myself and delaying the inevitable. Delia has to stay.
I’ve always been the one who runs. Maybe it’s time I started running for home.
“It’s a long way to Mill Hollow,” I say.
Brenda nods understanding. “I’ll drive.”
9: Home Again
Brenda drives a pickup truck the color of bleached corn husks, where it isn’t the color of the virulent rust that’s eaten through half the frame. She drives like the highway is another rutted dirt road in the middle of Indiana: no haste, no hurry, and yet somehow, no problems. The traffic melts away at our approach, leaving us with a clear bead on the horizon. The speed is enough of a surprise that I don’t object when she takes as many surface streets and back roads as the route allows, driving past family farms and through fields of things I can’t identify.
“It’s been a hard season,” she says, eyes on the road, trees rustling around us. We’re back on the main road for a while, making the transition between states. “Not enough rain, not enough water, not enough love to fold back into the soil. Some of these folks are on the verge of losing their farms. Some of them have already lost; they’re just hanging on and hoping the banks don’t notice for a couple years more. Everything’s a haunted house in today’s America. Everything’s in need of an exorcism.”
“The world’s changed,” I say, uncomfortable, not sure what she’s trying to tell me.
Brenda sighs. “I know. I guess I don’t always make sense to you, and I’m sorry for that. You’re a lot younger than I am.”
“Always will be, I guess, unless my dying day says I was supposed to be a great-grandmother when I went.”
“Age isn’t the same as getting older,” says Brenda. “You can be here for a thousand years, and you’ll still never be as old as I am. Be grateful for that. There’s a lot of mourning to be had when you’ve been alive as long as someone like me. I remember when this land was all about the farms, and the fields went on this side of forever. These days, everyone wants to eat, but no one wants to take the time and care needed to coax the land into giving up its glories. People don’t change. We’re always selfish, and we’re always hungry. We’ve just gotten better at looking at greed and saying ‘Oh, that’s self-interest, that’s all right.’ We’ve forgotten the way the word ‘enough’ feels on the tongue.”
“Oh.” There isn’t a place for me in this conversation: Brenda may leave pauses, but they’re just breaks in a wall she built years ago, maybe before I was even born. I don’t have the strength or the knowledge to get through to her, and so I do the only thing I can, and change the topic. “Have you ever been to Kentucky before?”
“Not in decades.”
“Same here.” But I can taste it on the back of my tongue, humidity like fine wine, the unique blend of coal and ash and soft green moss that saw me through my childhood, anchored and cushioned me through the blows of my living days. Kentucky is the sound of dogs baying outside the window, the buzz of crickets, and the sweet comfort of Patty’s lips against my forehead, kissing my nightmares away. Kentucky is water and soil and doing for ourselves, even when people say things are easier in the cities, that we could have leisure and peace and silence if we were willing to slice ourselves off at the roots and turn into American tumbleweeds, rolling across the plains, looking for a place to grow. Maybe those people are right. Maybe if we’d moved, Patty would have lived, and if Patty had lived, I would have lived too. We could have grown old together instead of rotting away in matching graves.