Unbury Carol(5)

And John Bowie’s more abstract slant:

If you accept the falling as normal, it can become its own solid ground.

But John was drunk when he said it. And John had never been to Howltown.

Unless, Carol thought, Howltown is like being dead and being dead is like Howltown.

The feeling, the falling, would last until she woke, it always did, until her feet found solid ground in the form of opening her eyes, as her heart resumed its natural beat, as her lips parted and she could speak once again. But it was always a very long time till then.

Dwight’s the only one who knows.

Thoughts were indistinguishable from speech in the coma. Thoughts were as loud as the voices of others. And this particular thought wasn’t entirely true. James Moxie knew. It was why he’d run from her so long ago. And yet what good was it, Moxie knowing? How would he, a person glued firmly to her past, ever learn of her being in trouble, if into trouble she ever fell?

Stop worrying. Please. You’ll land in a few days. Like always.

She heard the familiar labored breathing, the hoarse wheeze Hattie told her must be her own. Carol had heard it faintly all day. But it was more definitive now. Just as the color black itself was more complete than her memory of it; as if a child had colored a whole piece of paper, colored it…

All black…

Carol thought of Farrah’s expression just as the last ripple hit, the anticipation of a secret about to be shared. Over the duration of Farrah’s employ, Carol had gone under twice, and with each turn Dwight had asked for privacy as his lady had taken ill. But as good a man as any of the staff thought him to be, they also knew he was no doctor. Farrah and the other employees of the house had their questions as to what was wrong with Carol Evers. And the rumor mills never pumped so furiously as they did in the kitchens and gardens of finer homes.

The hoarse breathing continued steadily, and Carol thought of John Bowie. As if, in death, he had access to the coma. As if she could hear his lifeless lungs continuing to pump air to his lifeless body.

John!

John used to brainstorm solid surfaces Carol might be able to hang on to in the coma. Reach out, if you can, as you fall. If you sense anything against your fingertips, anything at all…grab it.

Over drinks in the parlor it was an exciting idea. And yet, once inside, once falling, Carol couldn’t move at all. The only motion she felt came from the falling itself.

The cold wind against her.

Still, Carol tried. The image of the threshold still vivid in her memory and mind’s eye.

The sound of breathing continued; the slow steady rumble that reminded Carol of her grandfather’s wheezing. And just beyond it, between inhales and exhales, Carol heard familiar voices: the vague distant syllables of Dwight and Farrah talking.

Carol always heard the external world while inside the coma. But it was an unstable version of that world, as if the individual tones and timbres of the voices were amplified. The emotions behind them, too.

Dwight must be explaining her secret to Farrah, Carol thought. Calming the girl down.

Yet as the words sharpened, at times clearer, at others distorted, Carol heard Dwight speaking like the grievers at Bowie’s funeral. His words came flat and final. There was resignation in his voice. As if Carol had in fact died this time.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling, Carol tried to listen harder, but the wind of falling wouldn’t let her.

Hattie used to simulate this very thing by flapping papers close to Carol’s ears as Carol sat in a chair in the workroom. Hattie would ask her to listen past the papers, to the other rooms of the house. At first it was difficult for an eight-year-old Carol to grasp. But one afternoon, through the crinkling, she heard the voice of a neighbor calling for the family dog, and Carol understood how it was done.

Three decades later Carol understood there were moments, while falling, that concentration could not penetrate. But there were also moments that it could.

John Bowie was long fascinated by the fact that Carol could hear while inside the coma. Once she had shared her secret, he’d sit beside her and read, talk, joke, as Carol fell blind through the coma. Dwight didn’t like it. He said he was partial to her remaining calm and unbothered when she slipped into her deathlike trances. But Carol enjoyed it deeply when John’s comforting singsongy voice danced throughout her personal darkness. As he did magic tricks for her that she could not see.

She longed for his voice now. The words of that wonderful man.

But it was Dwight whom she heard instead.

“We must carry her upstairs.”

Carol imagined him kneeling beside her inert body, which must have been half in, half out of the house.

“Should I call a doctor?” Farrah asked, her voice bright, edged with hysteria.

“No,” Dwight said and Carol believed the explanation was coming. The revelation of her condition. But what Dwight said instead, what Carol thought she heard, turned the winds in the coma to ice. “She’s dead, Farrah.”

The words were so wrong to Carol, so untrue, that she imagined she’d heard them wrong. After all, how often had she truly heard the world beyond those crinkling papers?

“Dead?” Farrah asked, the single syllable erupting like thunder in Howltown.

Is there a difference? John once mused, folded upon that wicker chair on the porch. Between Howltown and Death? And if so, how would you know what it was?