The Gone Dead

by Chanelle Benz

  Epigraph

  . . . che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno

  —PETRARCH

  Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

  —LANGSTON HUGHES

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Billie

  Lola

  Billie

  Hopsen

  Billie

  Lola

  Billie

  Avalon

  Billie

  Lola

  Billie

  Harlan

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Billie

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Billie

  Carlotta

  Billie

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Billie

  Jim McGee

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Billie

  Jim McGee

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Billie

  Carlotta

  Lola

  Dr. Melvin Hurley

  Hopsen

  Billie

  Jim McGee

  Harlan

  Billie

  Carlotta

  Billie

  Dee

  Billie

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Chanelle Benz

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Billie

  2003

  IT IS NOT EXACTLY AS SHE WAS PICTURING. THE HOUSE WHERE HER father once lived. But she remembers it or feels like she does. She puts the car back in gear and turns off the main road, bumping down the gravel drive toward it.

  Billie parks and Rufus pops up in the back, his head veering between the driver and passenger seats, nosing her arm. Her hands stretch across the top of the wheel, palms thick and tingling from the long drive. She gets out and opens the back door. The dog bounds to the front porch, sniffs, and pees on the corner of the battered wooden steps.

  “Thanks,” she says as he gallops across the overgrown yard.

  Her father’s house squats above the ground on concrete blocks, its chipped wooden boards holding on for dear life to flaking white paint. There are two front doors and two front windows, a sloping screenless porch, and a rusting tin roof. She takes out the key her uncle sent and unlocks the door on the right, walking into a living room littered with broken chunks of filthy tile and the corpse of a brown carpet. There’s a fireplace on her left with a broken space heater inside and an old Christmas bow hanging off the mantel. The planks of the ceiling are mismatched and one has even fallen halfway loose in the middle of the room, but the doorframes look new and the air is sweet with the smell of fresh-cut wood, her uncle’s doing.

  She walks into her father’s bedroom. Or his thirty years ago. In the dust over the mirror above the mantel, she traces the ghost of her face, then walks the circumference of the room, a hand dragging along the wall. What of him is there in the spattered remains of floral wallpaper? Can she absorb it? Is it drawn to her skin?

  The second door in the bedroom takes her into the back of the house, where the light is weak and the ceiling low. This is where she slept when she visited. Her father put the card table on the front porch and set up her cot with the purple-pink sheets. But she would sneak into his bed when she got scared. Even if Daddy wasn’t there.

  A trail of old newspapers and dead crickets leads her into the kitchen. The back wall of the house is in bad shape, buckling like the sides of a sunken ship. There’s a pair of torn curtains in the sink. Looks like her uncle definitely didn’t get around to cleaning. She unlocks the back door and steps onto a small, raised porch without a railing. Rufus is shopping a collection of perished things for something to chew: old tires, a love seat, a broken fan, bloated bits of cardboard used to cover the windows during winter.

  “Rufus, come.”

  He turns and trots into the woods behind the house. Dammit. It was probably unwise to let him off leash.

  “Stay out of the road!” says the woman who hasn’t owned a living thing since a goldfish called Nameles, which took three days to float to the top of its bowl. She was ten and her mother had been studying medieval hunting guides.

  Billie sits on the porch and stretches her legs across the wood, trying to touch her toes. It’s still freezing back home in Philly. The guy at the local gas station said it would get cold tonight. A cold snap he called it. She closes her eyes, turning her face toward the dogged southern sun, almost melting into sleep.

  She had forgotten about this house, figured it’d been knocked down forever ago. But apparently it had been waiting for her: passing from her father to her mother, then to her mother’s mother, and now that Gran has passed, to her. It’s all she owns until she’s done making payments on the car.

  Inside, she rolls up the old carpet, tossing it into the backyard, then she sweeps and wipes down every surface. It gets holy—the scratch of the broom, the T-shirt stuck to the bottom of her back, the raw corners of her fingers beginning to bleed. The rain wakes her from her trance and she goes onto the front porch, where Rufus is gnashing the vines curling off the side of the house. He looks at her, then bounds up the porch steps.

  She bends to stroke his dark wet head. “Am I going to become one of those people who talks too much to their pet?”

  He used to be Gran’s. Billie has gotten this dog, this shack, and five thousand dollars from her grandmother, a woman she barely knew because even after her mother died, she always spent holidays with her mother’s best friend, Jude.

  The dog follows her into the bedroom, where she dries his paws with the towel from the backseat of the car. She tosses it in the corner and strips off her shirt. Nobody will see—two trucks have driven by here in the last three hours. She drags her suitcase to the bedroom closet, the only one in the house. There’s a calendar on the top shelf, the Kennedy brothers dreamed onto a defiantly serene MLK. JFK looks somber and regal, but Robert Kennedy looks so sad he might cry, his eyes an unreal Caribbean blue. She hangs it up on an old nail left in the middle of the living room wall.

  Hurrying before it gets dark, Billie takes a fading trail to the creek that runs through the woods behind the house. Rufus circles her, diving in and out of the brush. At the bank, the muddy water crashes slowly into itself. Behind her, the sun is scarring the sky pink, turning the tops of the trees black.

  Her cousins tried to teach her to fish in this creek. They teased her when she wouldn’t get in because soft things were always gliding by—that and the feel of mud moving between her toes like it was alive. But they always let her tag along, even though she was the baby and everyone said she was spoiled.

  The dog barks from somewhere. “Rufus?” She pulls a handful of treats from her pocket. “Rufus, come!” She waits but he doesn’t reappear. It is dark when she walks back, keeping an eye out for poison ivy, even though she doesn’t remember what it looks like.

  At the house, all of the lights are out. She stops, then walks around to the front. The driveway is empty except for her car. The flat blue fields along the main road are still. She knows she left at least one light on—the porch, the living room, something—and her uncle said he’d be working. The damn dog is nowhere to be seen. She slips the keys between her fingers for potential gouging. It could be nothing. Maybe the wiring is so old that a fuse blew.

  She kicks the mud off the heels of her combat boots and rushes up the porch, unlocking the door and throwing it open so that it slams the wall behind. She waits. Nothing in the night but frogs and ghosts. Her ghosts. She walks through the house deliberately measured, snapping on every light.

  In the bedroom, her wallet is still on top of the sweatpants she wore to clean the house. So, if som
eone did come in, they just turned off the lights. Unless she turned off the lights. She must’ve turned off the lights.

  She unzips her suitcase and takes the gun out of a men’s white sock. She checks the safety and tucks it in the back of her pants. All right, cowboy, that’s pretty uncomfortable. She takes it out and stuffs it back in the sock. She’s being silly. It’s just an old house. Except for temporarily losing the dog to the Delta, everything is fine, right? But she takes the sock into the living room, where she pulls off her boots, putting them on the mantel to dry despite there being no source of heat. The guy at the gas station was right, it’s getting chilly. She grabs a sweatshirt and unfolds the plastic deck chair she brought and sits. Rufus strolls through the open door.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  He flops down at her feet. She brushes the grass off his back and shuts the door. Something falls outside. Rufus barks, and she jumps. “Jesus! We both need to get used to noises, okay?”

  Half an hour later, wrapped in her sleeping bag, cold but feeling brave, Billie drags the plastic chair onto the porch and sets the gun sock underneath. Rufus follows. “You can only come out if you lie down.” He jumps off the porch. “For fuck’s sake.” He jumps back up. “C’mon, dog, give a girl a break.”

  In the field across the road is what’s left of a barn. One night in southern Utah, she went camping with her mom and Jude in a ghost town. It had been a railroad town until the trains stopped coming through. Its roofless buildings and rusting cars seemed to be waiting for someone to tell them that they could stop holding on, that no one was coming back, that they could give in to that sweet final collapse.

  She’s missed traveling. After her father left them to become a bachelor poet, they moved to London for a year, then New Orleans, then to a shared apartment in Boston while her mother got her degrees, and in between they stayed with Jude in Utah, camped, or slept in the back of their blue pickup truck, the one with the white stripe and bad transmission. Sometimes her mother homeschooled her or sometimes she was enrolled in a school where new friends would say: Is that your mom? She’s so young. She’s so pretty. She doesn’t look like you. And new bullies would say: Is your dad black? Like black was a bad dirty thing. And her mother would say: They’re just jealous. You are beautiful. Like moms do.

  Billie never knew that they were struggling because poor meant hungry and she was never hungry; she didn’t know her beloved bike or clothes came from the Salvation Army. She thought her erudite mother just didn’t believe in cable TV, or the Brownies, or the beauty of Leif Garrett, not that they didn’t have the money. Then finally her mother landed a job as a medievalist in Philly and Billie started at Temple University, and one month into her freshman year they found out what the bleeding meant. Her mother was sick. Work, work now, oh dearly beloved, work all that thou canst. For thou knowest not when thou shalt die, nor what shall happen unto thee after death. Her mother taped these words to the wall above her desk.

  Her phone rings.

  “You settling in all right?” It’s her uncle, her father’s younger brother. His voice is tired but melodic, like he’s been singing too long.

  “Yeah, thanks for setting up the electricity.” She kicks at the herd of mosquitoes congregating above her ankles. “Hey, did you stop by?”

  “When?”

  “Today—tonight.” She yanks the sleeping bag over her feet.

  “Nope. I’m on the road.”

  “You don’t think anyone would come out here to steal something, do you?”

  “Someone out there bothering you?”

  “No, it’s— No, no one’s out here.” She pulls the sleeping bag to her chin. “I’m used to the city, I guess.”

  “You get you a gun like I told you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like I know how to use it.” Wind chimes sound from a distant porch, though she can’t see any other houses. Rufus sways up from the floor, creaking across the loose planks, and rests his soft black head on her toes.

  “And let your water faucets drip tonight so the pipes don’t freeze. I heard there’s a frost on.”

  “I bought a handgun. Should I have bought a shotgun?”

  “You planning on hunting?”

  “No way.” But maybe her uncle hunts. “I’m not saying I’m against it. If it’s done properly.” She waits, but he says nothing. “So, I’ll see you when you get back in town?”

  “You gonna come over Friday night, right?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m looking forward to it. Okay, safe travels then.”

  But her uncle doesn’t hang up. “There could be someone out there.”

  “Uncle Dee—what do you mean?”

  “Drugs are a problem in Greendale cause they ain’t no jobs. Gangs are everywhere nowadays. Could be some crackhead looking for something to sell.”

  “Well, I don’t have anything. I don’t even have a TV. I need a break from the news anyway.” She decides against asking what he thinks of the Iraq war. It’s a bit early in their relationship to get into politics.

  “Now your closest neighbor is Jim McGee. If there’s a problem, you go over and tell him you are Cliff’s daughter. He’ll scare off any suspicious characters.”

  “I don’t know that anyone’s actually out here. Also, wouldn’t I call the police?”

  He snorts. “Up to you.” He takes a drag off of his cigarette. “It’d be good for Jim to know you out there.”

  “Who’s Jim?”

  “I told you, Jimmy McGee, he the closest house to you.”

  “I mean, is he anyone to me?”

  “He knew your daddy.” Her uncle covers the phone for a second, mumbling something to somebody. “At one time, the McGees owned all that land round there. We worked for them.”

  “Did you tell him I was coming?”

  “Ain’t spoken to Jim in twenty years.”

  “And you’re sure he’s the guy I want to go to?”

  “They known our family a long time. He’ll help you if there’s trouble.”

  “I’m fine, really. I just got spooked.”

  She gets off the phone with her uncle, then takes the gun from under the chair. A stupid buy. The chances of her defending herself during a home invasion are statistically abysmal. But that night she sleeps with the dog and the sock by her bed.

  Lola

  LOLA HAS COME DOWN FROM MEMPHIS TO VISIT NANA AND IT MUST BE fate. She is sitting on Nana’s blue armchair, her favorite since she can remember, indulging in a can of Coke—she don’t keep this sugary shit at home. Didn’t she just have her teeth bleached? There goes $400. Cause it’s cigarettes, Coke, and BBQ once she’s back in the Delta. This is why her mother never comes back down here except for Christmas. Says it’s small-minded and broken, and that everyone who could fix it leaves, herself included. But for Lola, the stillness of the fields, the folks out on their porches, Nana’s crooked voice drowning out the radio, pretending like every black woman can sing, is love.

  Lola swivels the chair to the small kitchen where Nana is cooking in her housecoat. “How long has Billie been here?”

  Nana looks at her, a spatula in one hand. “Who told you that?”

  “Junior.”

  “That boy can’t keep a thing to himself.” Nana turns the burner low and lifts the pan, pushing scrambled eggs onto a plate. “I was told she got in yesterday.”

  “And nobody gone to see her?”

  “Nobody supposed to according to your cousin Dee.”

  “Why y’all listening to that joker?” Lola comes to the counter, taking her plate of bacon and eggs back to the blue chair. “What kind of family is Billie gonna think we are?”

  Nana cracks another egg in the pan, turning the burner back up. “Dee has his reasons.”

  “You think that’s what her daddy would want?”

  “Child, the dead don’t get what they want.”

  Lola picks out the most burned piece of bacon, then takes a bite of eggs. Only Nana’s chickens lay them
this fresh. “It don’t sound like you, Nana, not to be welcoming somebody.”

  “Them folks always brought trouble on themselves and can’t nobody help them out of it. That’s the way your granddaddy’s side is.”

  Maybe Nana doesn’t have the energy to get involved. She’s definitely moving slower this year. But where’s the drama in saying hello?

  “Your teeth look good, baby.”

  Lola smiles wide for her. “Thank you, Nana.”

  “Your young man pay for it?”

  “Yeah.” Lola puts her fork down.

  “Pick up that bottom lip and finish your eggs.”

  “I’m full.”

  “Oh my goodness”—Nana turns back to the pan—“there’s nothing wrong with having a good man take care of you.”

  “It was a birthday present.”

  “A good man gives you walking-around money.”

  “You sound like something out of The Godfather.” Lola puts her plate down on the TV tray. “I hate to think of Billie out there on her own.”

  “She’s a grown woman. Let her make peace with her daddy’s ghost and move on.” Nana slips a fried egg onto a plate and turns off the stove, carrying the plate into the living room. “Get your behind up off my good chair.”

  Lola stands. “I’m gonna go get a Coke.”

  “What’s wrong with the Coke in the fridge?”

  “I drank it all.”

  LOLA WALKS DOWN THE BUSTED SIDEWALK, PICKING HER WAY through the glass and trash gnarled around weeds. A column of smoke is pouring up into the sky; somebody burning leaves. The street looks wild and broken. Maybe it was always this broken, but now it looks like it has given up. She goes to the corner store, where she can smoke. Nana still doesn’t know. Doesn’t think it’s ladylike. Something she must have been told when she was a housekeeper for a rich white lady across the tracks because as far as Lola’s concerned if you’re black in the Delta you do whatever you can to make life sweet.

  She leans against the side of the store and lights a cigarette. Back when she was a kid and came down to visit, people used to be out. They’d be playing tag and kickball while folks sat on their porches gossiping. Now the neighborhood looks like everybody left and a few survivors of whatever apocalypse wander out every once in a while down the middle of the road wearing backpacks carrying everything they own. Maybe it’s foolish to want this place to be like it was, as if the past was better when as a kid she really just didn’t know all that was going on. But back then there was no minimum mandatory, no crack, more jobs, and not one of her cousins was in jail. Her uncles say that back then you always had a little money in your pocket. Now they barely got money for gas and the nearest catfish farm is an hour-and-a-half drive. She takes a last drag, then puts her cigarette out on the wall and pockets it.