Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 16

Electrocution, she thought. That was after, recalling. There'd been sudden vibrations that climbed her hand and arm. Like that one day she'd accidentally grabbed the bare p.r.o.ngs of a light cord. Him pa.s.sing through was like that, she thought later, but the haunt's tingle was everywhere, a buzz that washed her deep. Her vision flickered, her teeth chattered. Every joint felt like exercise in Physical Culture cla.s.s. Rafe's ghost-goodness, call it what it is!-never paused inside, but pa.s.sed without effort. Melissa was transparent to him, a clear, clean window. He left a lingering of cinnamon, of cinnamon and c.u.min. Just that. No! Cinnamon, c.u.min and a whiff of chicory. The dry, ground, roasted root of the blue flower and, unaccountably, a whiff of charred cotton and other burnt up things.

Ghosts, call it that, spooks were unfinished business, life left over, never to be lived. She knew that at least. "What're you seeing?" she whispered.

At the wall of the shack, the thing seemed to climb a short set of stairs and sifted into the wood and daub. It stood a long moment, half in half out, drifted apart, drew together. Turned, seemed to look out, over Melissa's head.

She was less and less chilled by the old and impotent thing. She wanted to reach out, speak to this remnant of dead Rafe ("...a uniform of clothes, not even his!"), speak to what a fool boy he'd been, tell him... tell him that, well, life is for the living! That was it, the old thing! He ought to get on out of it. Life would go on without him and his old burnt up suit of clothes. Oh, yes, Melissa was curious, curious about After. Curious and, now she thought of it, relieved. There was something after. Maybe not a bright and golden place, no music and angels (which, to be honest, she'd always dreaded), but maybe Forever was not fire and torment nor awful cold and distant echoes either. Surely, though, there was a place where she would go when it was her time, a place in which she would be, for goodness sakes. Death would not be forever nothing, eternity, not a vast empty hole. The minute she died, she would not stop. Nor would death take her to some far-off Kafiristan or backside of the moon (or was it the dark side? She never could... Oh for goodness sake). Forever would not be a place she had never seen, never could see and about which, upon arrival at the Great Final Time, she might not approve. No, eternity would be a place like home.

Melissa turned to silly, pretty, sleeping B.A. Melissa was about to say, "Look, cousin. There's your brother, in his spirit world." She never said it. Squatting on B.A.'s cheek, breathing in that way they had, was a tickly crawly... Oh, for heaven's sake, call it what it is, she thought, a spider, wolf spider, the spit and image of that long-ago ground up soul-catcher. Why, every now and then, M'lissa Trish still saw that one peering with its thousand eyes bright in coal oil light, peering from the Sears book or scrabbling in the marble mortar. Now here, on cousin B.A.'s face, it was.

Melissa, out of bed in a shot. Chills climbed her tingles. The Awesome Forever was one thing. Spiders another.

Half-in, half-out, and half-up the wall of the Boy's Room, the ghost had stopped. There was a moment between them, Melissa felt, a moment when she looked at the old thing, then down at her cousin, spider and all, then back at the ghost. Melissa reached across B.A., reached to touch the brightness hanging above the floor. As she did, it reached down for her. They never touched. Too darn far. Just so, Melissa was comforted. The worlds might touch, she thought. She had feared that to be a ghost (and she smiled at how silly was the thought), she'd thought that to be a ghost would be like being the only person in a crowded room, someone always alone. Cousin Rafe's wander, him still aware, able to reach out to her, and her for him, comforted Melissa more than any minister's presumption of angels and song. The ghostly presence, there in the Boy's Room, was a guarantee of... well, of something after life.

A consolation she'd keep inside herself. She'd share it with B.A. later, when the hard immediacy of her brother's death had softened. Next time she came visiting, she'd tell.

Life grabbed Melissa. Nothing much happened. For a time, Melissa remembered the haunting as having been shared, that she and B.A. had both been pa.s.sed through by the ghost, Rafe trapped by their spider, his spirit left to wander Tozier land for his sins. She remembered clearly (and falsely) a phantom truth, that she and Barbary Ann had hugged each other through that scary bright night in the Boy's Room. She remembered the hug, the talk of ghosts and whispered stories of lives that had had left too much undone in the world at death to go to heaven, h.e.l.l or anyplace. She was comforted by these memories, however imperfect.

She told the story several times over the years, always with a laugh, at least with a smile, sometimes with a drink. Eventually, she buried the tale and refused to think it to life. Every few years, something in the senses, the smell of cinnamon, a shadow on the ceiling, a whiff of cotton scorched by a too-hot iron, brought a notion of wandering spirits to mind. Comforted, Melissa waited for life to happen.

After a few decades, she no longer smiled at the memory. She remembered the Boy's Room chill, the tingle as the spirit pa.s.sed through her and beloved Barbary Ann. She remembered a lost spirit on its way. Its way where?

She didn't know.

She never spoke of it in middle-age. That's a lie. She spoke sparingly. A friend once asked if she believed in the supernatural. She asked over coffee and more or less to make conversation after a movie or reading a book. Mel thought, then told the story, now quite a bit different.

The friend c.o.c.ked her head, looked surprised.

"That's the south," Mel said. "Magic."

"I'm amazed at you," the friend said, shaking her head.

Mel also told her a.n.a.lyst. He was neither amazed nor surprised. He asked what she made of it, the "ghost."

"Oh, I don't know," Melissa said. "Maybe there's a place somewhere in the world for me. Maybe I'll be able to reach out, touch someone sometime. You think?" She smiled. So did the a.n.a.lyst.

She was an old woman the next time she came south. Tozier land had long gone from Tozier hands. The family had spread, dissolved. By then, the town of Monocle had bulldozed itself all the way to the peeling Tozier house, gone through it and beyond. Brick buildings stretched along Roosevelt Avenue, the old Bay St. Louis ca.n.a.l road. By then, Miss Melissa Tozier was a woman grown old on a diet of deep fear, dark secret, and tiny sin. When she thought of it, she prayed; mostly, she did not. But there was Afterlife. She held that fact like she did the knowledge of her own heart's being. There was a future Forever.

By the time she stepped carefully from the bus at Monocle Station, she prayed only to be a quiet story with a happy ending. She'd come back because. Well, because she remembered being a little girl here and how wonderful it was to have been a little girl here, a woman child, a white girl in the south, such a one not expected to accomplish, not expected to be of much significance, content to be the pretty creature she'd one day surely become.

Mel had lived that expectation. Her day had come, gone, and now it was late. She barely remembered being silly M'lissa Trish, who'd held her cousin in the long ghostly night, her life still ahead. She remembered perfectly, her first fright and final contentment, seeing ghostly... Was it Rafe? All the pacing, the anger at an unlived life. She remembered the spirit's long looks, its climb up the wall, its descent, its climb again. The spirit she'd caught for vengeance-sake in that old mashed spider, angry at her, angry at the world.

Served it right, she thought. Lock her in dark, stink and fear. Is that spook still here? she wondered. Sixty years was nothing to a ghost.

The cab stopped at the heart of a black business district, long past its prime. The driver, a black man, sixty (More? Who could tell?), guaranteed, here'd been the junction of the old road and ca.n.a.l.

Nothing remained to remind.

The cab chugged at the curb. A few shops crammed together, a music store with noise, a burnt out sh.e.l.l next to it, then a frock shop also charred dead and gone.

"Yes, ma'am," the driver said. "That ol' ca.n.a.l bridge was somewhere, there." He pointed across the wide street. "B'yond, I remember. Bridge fell down, aw, must be thirty years ago. Ca.n.a.l's a sewer now. Cemented over."

Melissa stood washed in the smells of the neighborhood. She hugged herself despite the heat. The cab's idling engine tap-tap-tapped above a running cough. Hot oil reeked from under the hood. Cab wanted to go.

The driver seemed to know the city, been a boy here, he said, a boy during the War (Older than he looks, who can tell?).

Melissa embraced the sun and heat, didn't mind heat these days, even fierce southern summer. She peeled dollars from her wallet, all the while looking for the place in moonlight, in her past. She looked back toward where the scabby old painted wooden house must have been.

A run-down gla.s.s and aluminum-sided elementary school shimmered in the right direction, at about the right distance. The other way, where fields had stretched unexplored beyond Tozier land, a fast food parking lot roiled in waves of grease. Other smells came and went. The cab pulled hot air around her in its wake.

On the sidewalk, alone now in this strange town and time, Melissa turned. A squall approached, a cl.u.s.ter of boys, African American boys. They came with such loose purpose (she had no idea what) along the street (Tozier land, once). The boys were loud, they overlapped, hardly listened to each other. She cleared their sidewalk, fled three steps up to the door of the music shop.

For goodness! She's been around black people all her life, around them as equals.

They pa.s.sed, laughing, spoke roughly, every other word, that word, they ignored, didn't see her. Didn't see her.

From the stoop she got her bearings. If there-she looked toward the restaurant-if there was the land beyond Tozier's, her head turned, why there must have been the outhouse. She chuckled at the memory. She paced mentally, from there to...

Then realized where she stood. She stood where the Boy's Room had been. She stood where old Lady Ophelia had lived, conjured and died, where cousin Rafe spent nights, his last night a free boy, a living boy, staring at the ceiling where he'd doubtless been the night she'd trammeled up his spirit in the spider. She turned to look where it had been again. What did I do with that spirit? she wondered and laughed again. Then stopped. An old white woman laughing on the street in the Negro part of town, heavens...

She stood, perhaps, in the very place, sixty years along, stood, yes, above where she and now-gone cousin Barbary Ann had slept that last cool night of their lives, their lives together. She descended to the sidewalk, took a few steps toward the burned out frock shop. She stepped in s.p.a.ce, crossed time, felt a sudden rush, a rush and tingle such as she'd never, well almost never, never except for once, once before in her life, felt. A tingle as if electricity moved through her. It chattered her blood. The tingle made every joint quiver like (oh, G.o.d) like her body tingled in Physical Culture cla.s.s at school. And on the steps of the frock shop, a scent of burnt cotton embraced and entered her, a smell of old flames and...

Melissa Patricia Tozier stood three steps above the sidewalk. She looked back from where she had come. Wind whipped her hair, billowed around her face, whipped her eyes. A white ghost flickered in the breeze. Her. Her hair, body, an old, white presence in her own long-gone past.

Melissa looked down. Her cousin had slept by her side, a spider on her cheek. She had risen from the bed to stare at the spook. Now, she stood alone and looked down where they had been. No. Where both had been alone. Separate. Along the street stood the back house where she'd caught the spider. She (almost) saw the place, transparent, as though in a lifting fog. She could not see cousin Barbary sleeping alone in the night dark but she knew she was there. Their ghosts.

A cinder poked her eye. Melissa c.o.c.ked her head, wiped her eyelid, blinked. She staggered painfully against the doorway. The ghost she now was felt solid. M'lissa Trish Tozier from the Land of Lincoln: a thing caught and captured, spelled by her own self, a spider-spell she'd spoken in another century. She felt the living thing scrabble on her hand, heard it in the can, tick, tick, tick.

Now was the day that was supposed to be, the day poor stupid cousin Barbary Ann said to hope for, "a happy end to some happy, happy day."

The tale was winding down, not happy, not sad. It led from the back house beyond the Boy's Room, ran a circle and back through her. Went nowhere. She reached to touch the face she'd once been, glowing below her in sunlight. She could not touch it. Could not see it clearly. Could not be it, call it back, could not live it. Not ever again. Not ever forever.

LITTLE GIRL DOWN THE WAY.

Erin was dead; dead, and her little body buried in the narrow alley where the rainspout spilled dirty water over the new concrete. The burial hadn't been a good job.

Erin stayed in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the same bas.e.m.e.nt she'd lived in the last years of her life. Mommy loved her. That's why Erin was here, because Mommy loved her, always loved her. Must have been her bad Dwarves, Erin knew, because day after day, all days alike, Erin slipped back into this small place in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Day after day, all alike, she flopped face first into a growling rock grinder of lumpy pain; each day she fell, plop, into a sea of boiling do-do, got flushed, was snuffed and smothered, drowned in thick pee-pee, stinky diarrhea pumping up her nose. Every day she got tossed, heaved onto the broken c.o.kebottle rocks of sharp light that caught, hooked and hung her, held her dangling, slipping by her gently tearing flesh, rip, rip, rrrrip, over the blazing hole of always.

That was just eye-openers and she was already dead.

She tried to cry. She couldn't. The dead cannot. Every day, all days the same, her eyes had no wet for it, chest hurt too much to heave, crying.

Even dead, she was hungry. Hunger made her stomach puff. Every now and then she caught something, something dead that scrambled across her face or arms in the cellar dark, scrabbled up her legs. Caught 'em, sucked 'em down, slurp, the dead things fed her. Good the dead could feed the dead. Mmm.

Unless she puked, Mommy wouldn't know.

Right now, she had mice chunks and a hundred squirts of oozy bug in her belly. There was also most of a sock down there. There it had been, a long stretch outside her dog cage. It must have been from a time ago, something dropped in a corner, then, one day, kicked and left near enough for her to reach it.

She'd reached and reached and reached then taken it. It was small, so very small. Oh, maybe it had been her brother's oh, ohhh, ohhhhhhh, Baby's. She held it for a while, loving it, touching her face with it. Finally, hunger took her and she took it, a few threads at a time soaked in her nose blood. She let the strands trickle down her throat until: allllll gone.

That was long ago. And in truth she couldn't remember if that was when she was alive or not. There were other things, a few dirty things, down inside her, but not a lot, not so much that Mommy'd care.

What she fed on, she slurped. Jaw wouldn't let her chew. When she'd been alive, Jaw wouldn't let her cry, either. When she tried, Jaw made her feel like she was chewing sharp pieces of herself. Jaw was-she counted with her tongue-one, two, three, four-four places Jaw was broken. Tongue could touch and gently shift the broken ends, the bone beneath the skin; ear could hear it grate, grate, grate and make the shivering hot chill chatter all through her head. When she did, when she moved her bones like that, her shattered teeth bit, bit, bit, the swelling lips, shredded cheeks, and gnawed-on tongue.

Jaw minded her for Mommy. Mommy had made Jaw from her mouth. Wham, wham, wham, wham and there was Jaw.

That'll show me, she'd say to herself as Jaw snapped gnyang, gnyang, gnyang, down hard and pointy on all the soft places in her mouth. That'll show me, Mommy, she'd say as each bite slammed a hammerfall of agony against the back of her eyeb.a.l.l.s! See, Mommy? she'd say very, very quietly and very, very fast. That'll show me! That'll show me! She whispered it aloud; maybe Mommy'd hear and like her more. She'd think it to herself, and maybe Mommy wouldn't hear and wouldn't hate her more. Jaw watched and minded for Mommy. Even when she died, Jaw watched Erin for Mommy.

None of it-pain, fear, missing her Mommy-helped her cry, though. She was dead. The dead don't cry.

Except for not being able to cry, being dead wasn't so bad. She'd hung on so to being alive! Mommy was right, she was a stupid b.i.t.c.h. And when it finally swallowed her, death was just the same as life. Same bas.e.m.e.nt. Same Mommy. Same pain. What had she been so scared of? She was still safe down there. She just hadn't known.

When she'd been alive, she couldn't eat. Not the last few weeks. Once, when the cellar window had been left open in a dark wind, just to air the stink out of the G.o.dd.a.m.ned place for Jesus's sake, and the rains had splashed down so hard, the mud had spattered and flowed thick dribbles down the wall, she'd caught some and sucked it down. The mud was cool on her lips, gritty. She could swallow it so smooth and it felt full and heavy in her tummy.

Mommy didn't like that! She found out and she didn't like that!

Today Erin puked a little snot and ooooo that hurt. The hundred Nasty Dwarves she knew were in her, inside her everywhere, started sc.r.a.ping, ruff, ruff, ruff, like that and got to kicking, kicking her with hard, sharp feet, wham, wham, wham, wham like that. They grabbed parts of her insides, her heart, her tummy, lungs, bones, and throat. They pulled and bent and hung, they stretched and bit and tore and made her hurt like she couldn't believe. They jabbed with knives and touched with fire and ran electric all through her. She'd hated the numb chatters of electric, how it made her go loose and p.o.o.py when Mommy'd run it through her, hated the way it made her slam, go whack onto the floor or against the wall, her head going boom, boom, boom. The Dwarves that lived in her had it all-fire, knife, and electric pain.

When Erin yelled, it was a tiny silent scream. She could hear it and that's what counted. Her broken bits poked her here, there, everywhere, tore out her cheek, her side, her arm. b.l.o.o.d.y stuff ran out her p.o.o.py hole, but she screeched it to herself. She knew how much Mommy hated, just hated, that-when the bones showed, sticking out. But she couldn't, really, really couldn't shove the bloodred pointy things back inside, not again, not and keep the screaming to her-G.o.dd.a.m.n-self.

So there she sat: forcing stillness, forcing her mouth to stop; Erin made it stop working against the jagged bony things that stuck out of her face the last couple of weeks, months, years.

She was dead and still she sat still. She remembered: Mommy didn't like a noise from her, mornings. She forced the silence of the grave over everything, willing herself to be dead again today as she had every day for days, weeks, months, years.

Even dead, she needed to breathe. Short pants did it. Deep breath hurt too much, made funny cracking pains inside. Little breaths-a lot of them-worked almost as good and didn't hurt as much. She took her first little sniffs of the day.

That accomplished, morning was underway.

Every now and then she knew a little light. Haze drifted through her like white air. Light hurt different than memory of life and the reality of this place, this Heaven, was it?

In the silent place she kept around her, she still stank. In the thank-the-Jesus dark, she still stank while she waited to be all the way dead again later, later-at night, maybe it was, when she was really dead. Like being asleep when she'd been alive. But when she was awake, she stank.

She felt the stinky dress still on her. Aw, it was still there. She still wore the dress she'd worn for weeks, months, years. The dress Mommy'd given her. The same old new dress from Sears that she wore forever, that her body was buried in out where the dirty water washed the crumbling concrete.

She remembered. Remembered the time when Mommy had come to see her and seen "what the f.u.c.k you done to that!" Mommy had seen the "Jesus Christ I paid good G.o.dd.a.m.ned money for and look what you done to it now" dress.

Now and then a living person would come, come to the bas.e.m.e.nt, would turn on the light from upstairs and Erin would squint against the screaming shards the hanging bulb sprayed through her like spitting grease from a hot stove. That hurt, light did, but different from the day-by-day whap, bam, bong Mommy'd bring by later.

The person would move across the bas.e.m.e.nt, do those things the living did. And when the person left, sometimes he'd leave the bulb on and the brightness would boil her away, day and night, until someone turned it off.

Sometimes, the living person would sniff, as though he smelled her stinky self all the way from the grave down by the rainspout. When this happened, the live one would shiver, hug himself, move quickly, finish in a rush what had to be done, trot up the steps, slam the door, and leave a silent chill behind as the lamp swung back and forth in the dark.

It was hard to see the living-they were little more than vapor-and even though their light and mist brought pain, Erin liked the times they came. Hard to see, impossible to touch. She could barely tell if these living ones were boys or girls, big people or kids. She had no idea what the living did, why they did it. Even when she'd been alive, she didn't know. Now...?

Every now and then, one of them walked right through her and dragged a little piece of her upstairs, stuck to their shoe maybe or soaked into the hem of a skirt or caught like a burr on a pants leg. That little piece of Erin would move with the living, up in the day and light. She'd feel the outside day, just a little, like a splendid single note of a really pretty song. Then the note faded, whitened, died, and then the missing part crawled back to her, dirty dark and stinky, while she slept. When she woke another day, that little piece of her was sticking out, just a morsel of that day's pain.

That's how she thought of it anyway.

Every now and then something would scream past the high narrow window that looked outside, something so alive, something with small legs and shrill voices. Kids. Like Baby brother had been. As with all the living, she could hardly see these children, but they made her bas.e.m.e.nt vibrate. What they did... they made her remember.

She remembered, back to before she'd come here, remembered when Baby So Sweet had first come home. Not like her. No. She'd seen Baby sleeping dearly, all the world quiet around him he slept so sweet. She went on tippytoes to Baby brother. She leaned over and kissed. Kissed his cheek. He smelled like milk. His cheek was warm and soft, something she wanted to taste, like something she'd remembered from long ago and she wanted now to taste him but all she did, all she ever did, was kiss his head and kiss his nose and kiss his cheek.

Then Mommy grabbed her arm and swung her around and around and smacked her on the wall, picked her up and told her good thing she come before she'd dropped Baby, told her good thing or she'd go out with the trash.

Even though Erin promised, promised Mommy never to come near Baby ever, never again, that was it, Mommy had had it with her. Mommy WAS planning to send her to school that year, Mommy said. But now? Not on her life. She WAS going to let her outside. But not now. She WAS going to let her have friends. But not not not not NOW. And she whomped her again on the wall and her arm bone, sharp and white, came through her skin and made a mess a G.o.dd.a.m.ned mess.

Then she went to live in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

It was a long time till she saw Baby again. She almost didn't know him. He was almost as big as she was and he flickered by the window. His little legs flew by, a flickered blur of bright and shadow, but somehow she felt him pa.s.s. She shoved as close to the light as the dog cage let her. Squeezing her face against the cold metal, she could see one piece of sky and part of the wall of the house next door. The day was bright. A puddle of light soaked the floor and caught the corner of her cage. The heat of the beam licked her face.

Then the legs thudded past again and she almost felt the wind of their going. Like thunder. Like pounding pain, they ran.

After a silence, and all of a sudden, there was a face. It flashed into a corner of the window, clipping off her measure of sky. Her brother's face blocked most of the light and his shadow fell across her. She felt the cool of his shadow and could almost smell the memory of his cheek. But he was soooo big now. She stared at the giant Baby and his eyes, oh his eyes, were so black in his big round head, his eyes got sooooo wide and he shaded them with both his sweet little hands.

She stunk.

He yelled and yelled and in a moment he was whipped up and out of the frame.

Then there was Mommy, and Erin skittered into the dark corner of the cage and no, no, no, no, she knew she'd hurt. She knew she wouldn't know why f.u.c.king Jesus f.u.c.king Christ why was she so G.o.dd.a.m.ned bad? Why was she so...? She could feel it now...

This was when she was still alive, when she was the rat in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Mommy told her that was what she was. To her, to Baby: the big, bad rat in the bas.e.m.e.nt. What Baby'd called her.

Even after Mommy'd punished her for letting Baby see her, she'd remembered when Baby had first come home and she had touched him with her lips. She remembered the time when she had first, and for the only time, felt the cool life of his shadow across her eyes.

Ever after, once a week maybe, just once a week, she'd touch her own hand to her lip and close her eye for a moment, trying to imagine it was Baby's hand she kissed.

A long, long time later, the door to the cellar opened and it wasn't Mommy.

She'd been sitting. That's what she did most days. Then the cellar door opened and she scooted to the cagedoor so Mommy didn't have to get down and crawl to catch hold of her for Jesus's sake.

The cellar door opened and nothing happened.

A foot sounded on the stair but the light didn't come. In a little while the foot stepped on the squeaky tread. It didn't squeak like when Mommy stepped on it, no, it squeaked different.

It was gray outside and the world didn't make much light around her, but in the shadow on the stairs there was a small person. She had never seen a small person and she covered herself with her piece of blanket.

"Come out," the voice of the small person said. "I see you. You come out."

She peeked. The small person was near the cage. He was bigger than she was, but she knew he was Baby. Baby alone. She slipped her head out of the blanket and looked at him.

A beam of yellow light smacked her dead on the eyeb.a.l.l.s. It felt like toothache exploding in her face. She screamed and her own voice scared her. It was like nothing she'd ever heard. It was just her but it was a ghost, a monster, a rat, yes a rat in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and she was screaming from fear of herself.