Edie hung her head sheepishly, lifted her eyes up to him—my God, was she flirting? “I don’t really know anything about it,” she said with a smile. She was flirting! How swift the shifting tides of her emotions! “I only learned the whole deal this morning.”
“You learned this morning that your family is black?”
“I saw a bear for the first time, too.”
“And you met me,” Michael said, as he turned toward his car. Then he looked back over his shoulder and smiled.
Was he flirting?
“If you see a lost dog,” she called out, too loud, “she’s mine.”
“Okay,” Michael called back.
Why were they shouting? They weren’t so far apart.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Michael said more quietly. “I have your number,” he added.
He was flirting, Edie thought. Wasn’t he?
SOON MICHAEL WOULD BE on his computer reading Edie’s blog; and Edie would be on her computer reading his.
MY NEW APPA-LATCH-IAN HOME, BLOG POST, JUNE 19, 2015
Wood rot is a good home for some. As is the human carapace better known as your skin. But what is a good home for a human?
Some would argue a good home is big, but they would be wrong. Most people, it turns out, don’t know what’s best for them. Not even close.
That is my opinion.
Anyway, my new home is . . . here!
For those of you who didn’t know, I graduated last month, and now I have gone south to take care of my grandmother and work on a project for Half-Earth. (More on that later.)
The bad news is my dog, Trixie (I got a dog!) ran away. I am trying to believe she’ll be home soon.
Coffinman, blog post, June 10, 2015
When you work with the dead, you sometimes forget they were once alive, though just for a moment, and then you call yourself back, and you say a little prayer to the universe and the family:
sorry
sorry
sorry
sorry.
When you work with the dead, you learn to be less afraid, because almost always, with rare exception, the faces of the dead are at worst neutral and at best happy. You learn that the brain, if it gets the chance, floods the body with euphoria at the moment of death. And that is the most comforting thing you ever learn about anything ever. Except it was rarely true in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan they taught us to make sure the bodies didn’t look too alive—it was worse for the families if the bodies looked too alive.
MY NEW APPA-LATCH-IAN HOME, JUNE 21, 2015
My grandmother and I don’t exactly know what to do with each other. Most of the time, when I’m not outside, I code and 3D model and dream of streams of animals crisscrossing the country in corridors of protected habitat all linked together. That is what Half-Earth is! Corridors of connected habitat. And I am making a virtual version to promote the real thing. Or, rather, I am making the Appalachian Valley corridor virtual; and some other good citizens are doing the other bits. And we are going to make an awesome website and an app and maybe even a game to sell. And for this I get paid a paltry sum of money but it feels good. I am not a sell-out! (yet)
I still can’t find Trixie. I put flyers everywhere—the woods, the mountains, the country club, the gas station, even a few abandoned outhouses. If only she could read!
I keep joking about Trixie, but I feel awful.
Coffinman, June 23, 2015
I always hated that saying—the eyes are the window to the soul. But you know freaking what, the eyes are THE way to know that someone has passed. They aren’t just the window to the soul, they are the soul lens, the soul camera, the soul mirror. Which is not to say blind people look dead—they just have a different-looking lens.
Nobody died today. I am a little worried about the money.
Does this blog seem cold to you? Because I am going for irreverent but respectful—that’s a thing, right? I am definitely not going for cold or cruel or uncaring. Tell me the truth, please.
That is, if anybody is even reading. Anybody?
AND SO EDIE LEFT A COMMENT, Anonymous, that said simply: I’m reading. Thank you for sharing. Later she noticed a bunch of people who were obviously his friends also commented and she felt silly for believing he was alone.
ON SATURDAYS, Edie called her mother and her sister; on Sundays, she called her father. She worked seven days a week, went to bed early, and got up even earlier. Sometimes she heard from people who had come across her flyers and claimed to have seen a stray dog back behind the old Food Lion, or a stray dog up on the old buffalo trail, or a stray dog drinking out of a trough of dirty water by the entrance to the old mine. But nothing ever came of it.
Most days Edie went into the hills. She climbed trees, swam in the creeks, she saw one snake chase another, she watched a single ant pioneer up a blade of grass, she imagined the world underneath her and the world underwater, she put her face or her camera anywhere they would fit, and she kept an eye out and an ear open for Trixie—and for bears. She flew her drone where she couldn’t go, and back home she watched the footage on her computer. Each day Edie learned more of the hills, and each night she built more of Virtual Valley.
Edie had spent half her childhood inside video games; she knew they could be as magical as the real world. (Once her mother, coming across her immersed in some computer simulation, had said, “Go outside,” and Edie had replied, “I am outside” without even a thought.) Every piece of wonder Edie found in the mountains, she put into Virtual Valley.
She showed Mrs. Coxe her progress, and Mrs. Coxe praised her like a good grandmother.
Do you love me? Edie sometimes thought. But who asks a question like that? And why?
“WHAT CAN DO I FOR YOU?” Edie asked her grandmother each morning.
“Not a thing,” her grandmother said.
Those were the early days.
FOUR YEARS AGO Edie had been on a drunken visit to New Orleans, an experiment in bad behavior that fortunately had no lasting consequences
three years ago she had been in bed naked for the first time, with the boy who would become her boyfriend, sex preceding love, but giving way to it, sex as a step toward love, toward closeness, why couldn’t it be
two years ago, she had been the only woman in the advanced coding class, other than her professor, and for the first time she had a mentor, a real role model
one year ago, she thought she had it, the future wrapped: she would marry, have babies, make millions, stir revolution, code for good, code for money, code for fun, love her boyfriend forever and ever, be loved by her boyfriend forever and ever
Now she just thought: What happened?
And occasionally: What will?
EDIE AND MICHAEL met again when Michael came upon her lying on the mountain ground: eyes closed, arms out, crucifixion-style, though that wasn’t how she meant it.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Her eyes flew open and the truth came out: “Opening my heart,” she said.
“Is it working?” he asked, dropping down beside her.
“Hard to say.”
And then he lay down and spread his arms, so close to her he first brushed her shoulder and had to scoot more to the side, to spread his arms wider.
Edie popped right up to her feet, but Michael didn’t seem to notice; his eyes were closed.
“I like it,” he said after a while.
“I’m supposed to be taking videos,” Edie said, and when Michael opened his eyes and saw her standing, he stood, too. He picked up her drone, which had been lying next to her on the ground.
“With this?”
Edie nodded.
“Can I try it?”
Edie nodded again.
For God’s sake, what was wrong with her? Couldn’t she speak?
He flew the drone awhile, both of them watching it go, not talking, until eventually it crashed and he ran to retrieve it. (Later Edie used the video of the crash for an eagle�
�s-eye view of dying midflight.)
“Is this for Half-Earth?” Michael asked when he returned with the drone, which was really nothing more than a fancy remote-controlled helicopter. Half-Earth, he said, as if it was perfectly normal for him to know! “I read your blog,” he said when she looked surprised. So open! No shame! No sneaking! What she should have said was “I read yours, too,” but what she actually said was “Wow, thank you. I mean, not thank you, I guess thank you for being interested.” She paused. “If you were interested. Anyway. Thank you for reading it.”
“Could I buy you a coffee? Sometime?” Michael asked.
“Sure, I’d like that,” Edie replied.
Only later did she wonder what he was doing there. Was he looking for her?
Coffinman, July 12, 2015
It’s nice to be home. I would fight for this landscape, these hills; I think most troops would. Maybe the military ought to be in charge of Environmental Protection. Just a thought.
People want to look at Appalachia like it’s outsider art. Kinda crazy and kinda cool, a world created by an angry child. Maybe if the Appalachian Mountains had been painted the way the Adirondacks were we’d be seen differently. Luminous instead of ominous.
You could say this place is dying; but maybe it’s just changing, maybe that doesn’t have to be such a bad thing. Even at its worst, this has always been a second-chance landscape, adaptable. Reforested and rebuilt and rebirthed. Not all bad anyway.
“WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?” Edie asked her grandmother.
“Not a thing,” her grandmother said.
MY NEW APPA-LATCH-IAN HOME, JULY 14, 2015
Did you know Virginia has fifty-five types of salamanders?
Lately I’ve been reading about trees and looking at trees and identifying trees—growing trees in Virtual Valley. Let me tell you. There are a lot of trees. Every bit of the world has been named and labeled it seems. Except it hasn’t . . .
I always thought my grandmother lived in the middle of nowhere. Turns out she lives in the middle of everything. People of the north: beware your smug superiority!
Can be lonely though.
FOR YEARS, EDIE’S LIFE had been a steady progression away from family—a natural part of growing up, she assumed. But since moving, she almost never talked to her friends; she talked only to her family. She had let go of her recent past—most of it, anyway—with shocking ease. It was her former vision of her future that she found harder to release. Like one long and ugly afternoon when she coded her unexpected ex into Virtual Valley, creating his and hers avatars, rubbing them up against each other like Ken and Barbie, then birthing three beautiful babies in a house that dwarfed the animal corridor. Trixie Belden lived there, too. All wrongs righted. Everybody with a private bath. Fantasyland. Edie had to force herself to get out of bed and delete it that night.
WEEKENDS, EDIE TOOK her grandmother on a round of (sad?) good-byes to various friends and neighbors. Edie didn’t stay herself; it didn’t seem right. Instead she dropped her grandmother off and picked her up, as if Mrs. Coxe were a preteen, dating but too young to drive.
“I’ve never been so popular,” Mrs. Coxe said, cheerful enough.
SOMETIMES MICHAEL TEXTED:
Do you think animals feel joy, the way we do, on a beautiful day?
A lot of them do; I’m certain of it.
Or Edie texted him:
Do you think an apology means anything if the person apologizing wouldn’t do the thing they apologized for differently a second time around?
Yes.
I don’t think it does.
It does. It just doesn’t mean what you want it to mean.
Sometimes Michael teased:
You know you wouldn’t have been friends with me back when you were just a white girl.
She refused to joke about it; she always answered indignantly.
But were they friends?
He never mentioned having that coffee. And neither did she.
VIRTUAL VALLEY GREW BIGGER and Mrs. Coxe grew stranger. She was losing vision in one eye, which made it hard for her to tell the space between things. She’d walk with her arm out and smack right into Edie if Edie wasn’t watching. Her moods were variable, as was her lucidity. As was Edie’s patience. Sometimes Edie spent long hours away from the house even though she knew she shouldn’t.
Then one morning, Edie glanced out the window and saw her grandmother at the end of the driveway, looking out. Ahead of her was a green expanse of weedy fields and then the woods. Mrs. Coxe wasn’t moving, but still Edie slammed the front door open, ran down the driveway barefoot, and grabbed her grandmother by the arm as if she’d snatched her from the road. They were both in their pajamas.
“What are you doing?” Edie asked, trying to calm herself.
“Just looking,” Mrs. Coxe said. Then she turned toward Edie, teetering a little. “Can you give me something to look forward to?” she asked, and Edie nearly cried out in surprise.
“Of course,” Edie said. “Of course I will.”
“Right away,” she added, though she had no idea how.
WHO WAS THE GRANDMOTHER Edie remembered? An irregular visitor Edie loved largely by default, which didn’t make that love any less large. A regular gift giver, but of items obviously recommended by Edie’s father, who was himself getting recommendations from Edie’s mother, so that Mrs. Coxe became a purveyor of lip gloss, pocketbooks, and clothing that was just a little too young. It was inevitable, post-divorce, when Edie saw her father less, that she saw her grandparents less as well.
Before June, Edie had never even been to Virginia.
Her time with Mrs. Coxe was obviously a gift—anybody would say so. But nothing short of saving her grandmother’s life could really feel like enough.
Every week Edie’s father asked, how is she, and Edie said, the same.
“CAN YOU PUT ME IN YOUR GAME?” Mrs. Coxe said one morning as Edie worked at her computer.
“It’s not exactly a game,” Edie said. “It’s more like a simulation.”
“Can you put me in it?”
“A version of you? Living out in the woods?”
“Yeah, maybe you could build me a little house.”
“Okay,” Edie said; then she smiled. “I think you’ll like it there.”
“I’m sure I will,” her grandmother said. “Something to look forward to,” she said, and Edie jumped at the reminder.
It was soon after that Edie ordered the DNA kit. She had the idea to give her grandmother, with her limited future, the gift of understanding her past. When the kit came, Mrs. Coxe allowed herself to be swabbed with very little complaint.
THEN ONE DAY, there was Michael, at the house when Edie came home, sitting on the couch while Mrs. Coxe stood in front of him.
“Your grandmother wants to be buried at People’s Burial Ground,” he said as Edie walked in the door. Edie’s face, which had lifted into a broad smile, stiffened. Edie didn’t know what People’s Burial Ground was, but clearly Michael didn’t approve.
“Don’t you want to be buried with Grandpa?” Edie asked her grandmother. “Where is he?”
Mrs. Coxe pointed dramatically across the room, and Edie, much to her embarrassment, gave a small scream, before she turned to follow Mrs. Coxe’s finger, which was directed at a wooden box on the mantel.
It didn’t help—or maybe it did—that Michael started to laugh and couldn’t stop.
“I won’t be there long,” Mrs. Coxe insisted. “It only takes fifty years for a body to rot. Grandpa can come with me.”
“Okay,” Edie said, turning to Michael. “Can’t we get her a plot?”
That seemed to sober him up. “Historically, People’s Burial Ground has been for blacks,” he said.
“Discrimination,” Mrs. Coxe said.
“Oh my God,” Edie said, glancing perilously at Michael, but his expression was somewhere between serious and amused. “Isn’t there somewhere else you could be buried, Grandma? Why do you want to
be buried there?”
“I can walk there,” Mrs. Coxe said. And maybe because they’d spent so much time together, just the two of them, Edie felt she understood. Who wouldn’t want to be buried close to home. In these woods. On this land.
Edie turned to Michael, “We are . . .” she started, but stopped when Michael tilted his head and stared at her. She started again: “When you say historically it’s been for blacks, does that mean nobody else can be buried there?”
“I can refund your money if you want,” Michael said. “I’m sure someone else can help you do whatever you want.”
“But my family’s been here a hundred years,” Edie said. “And we’re Melungeon.” She said the word tentatively.
Was she fighting him? Why was she fighting him?
“You’ve mentioned that,” Michael said. He was not one to make speeches.
“I just want to make my grandmother happy,” Edie said softly.
The impulse to please the dying was a strong one.
Michael shook his head. “It’s not just a place to be buried. People who spent most of their lives . . .” He paused, then started again: “People who had to fight . . . that’s their land. The only thing they ever owned was that plot of land. I won’t do it.” Then he stood and turned toward the door. “I can refund your money if you want,” he said.
“No,” Edie said, calling him back. “That’s not what we want.”
The impulse to please him was strong, too.
COULD YOU TAKE ME THERE? Edie texted Michael that night.
??
People’s Burial Ground.
I guess so.
But he didn’t offer a time or a day and Edie didn’t ask.
THREE DAYS LATER she was out in the valley when the text came in: Tomorrow, 10:30?
Perfect, she texted back.
IT WAS A SMALL PLOT—maybe a dozen gravestones, most leaning over and hard to read. Indeed not a long walk from her grandmother’s house; yet Edie had never found it in her exploring. There were weeping willows all about, and Edie couldn’t help but picture the bodies underground with the trees’ roots reaching toward them, for them. As much as Edie sought comfort from the image—bodies merged into nature—she couldn’t find it. This felt like a battleground, and death like something far more wet, and alive, than dust to dust had ever called to mind.
The Trojan War Museum Page 7