Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  Sol rubbed a hand across his face, in need of a shave. Maybe he’d grow a beard again, except a beard made everyone say he looked like he came from the bayou, which meant he looked like his father and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. “He said that you’re a goddamn menace behind the wheel and that I shouldn’t let you get a stupid-ass haircut, that’s what.”

  “He didn’t say that,” Baz protested without heat.

  “You have the forms? Are they releasing his body to the funeral home?”

  Baz allowed himself to be steered from his original question and handed over a sheaf of papers. “Yeah. I told them to go ahead and cremate.” He grew quiet again and Sol looked up from the paper—all standard forms, ruled a train accident, but at least they’d associated a name with the body. That seemed right.

  “What?” Sol prodded after a minute of silence.

  Baz scanned the street. “We don’t have to stay in this goddamn place, do we?”

  Sol started the truck. “We have to stay here. I’ll go down to the tracks tonight.” He paused, resisting the urge to involve Baz. But didn’t Baz have the right to be there, when it was his own father? Screw that, didn’t Baz have an obligation? Why did it always fall to Sol to clean things up? You always fixed things for him. There was no fixing this, though. “It matters more where he died, not where his remains are. I gotta go there, where he died. It don’t matter about his body.” Only to the living, anyway.

  “He’ll be there?” Still, after all these years, the wonder. Baz had a way of looking pleasantly surprised, no matter the subject.

  Sol spared him a glance. “Yeah, he’ll be there.” He checked his blind spot before pulling the Wagoneer into non-existent traffic. “You could come. If you want.” Never mind what he wanted, because when had that mattered? Baz looked stunned, then perplexed, then scared, and when he said ‘sure’, Sol couldn’t name what slid into place.

  Baz wasn’t going to ask, because he already knew the answer. It would be the same answer Aurie had given him his whole life—well, no, not your whole life, Basile, you didn’t first ask until you were nine years old, you didn’t need an answer until then.

  No. That would be the answer.

  True, Sol wasn’t Aurie, but sometimes that was easy to forget. Sol had the same way of not saying what was on his mind, just letting you guess, usually wrong. Every once in a while, Sol would look at a spot behind Baz, fix on it and go still, just like their father did. It made you feel like they weren’t quite right in the head, and Baz knew he wasn’t the only one who noticed. There’d been that spate of school psychologists wanting to test Sol, once, before Aurie had moved them to Denver.

  So Baz wasn’t going to bring up Mom, or Lutie, not when the answer was a foregone ‘no’. Lutie has a right to know her father’s dead. That had been almost his first thought after Marianne had hung up the phone in Colorado Springs. He’d worried it, worried the phrasing of his question, all the way to Denver, sitting on an inter-city bus that reeked of urine and potato chips. Worried it as he paid for the cab to Robbie’s place from the wad of bills Marianne had forced into his hand as he left—you stay safe, okay, baby?—and lost all will to voice it when Robbie answered his knock, that dumb dog running around his legs and barking like he was the meat fairy making a delivery.

  He wouldn’t have gotten a straight answer from Sol last night, anyway, none that Baz would have been able to hold him to in the morning. The best Baz could do was to keep Robbie calm, because Sol was the center of her universe even when their father hadn’t unexpectedly died and Sol wasn’t stone drunk. Baz had asked for a haircut, but only after they’d put Sol to bed and finished the bottle of rum; the haircut was an easy target for his brother’s ridicule, took Sol’s mind off the dark places.

  None of it meant Baz had worked up the nerve to ask about Lutie. He couldn’t even begin to think of asking about their mother. Sol didn’t talk about her, not ever.

  North Platte was big enough to support a number of identical chain motels, generic as suburban paint. Sol selected one seemingly at random, discerned beige from beige, could have closed his eyes and pointed for all it mattered. They both slept away the late afternoon—musician hours, Baz had joked. Paramedic hours, Sol replied, not joking. They rose with the moon. People’ll think we’re vampires, Baz said. No such thing, Sol answered back, taking the first shower and leaving Baz alone to think about what he knew was real and what was fairy tale in their screwed-up world.

  Sol had good wire-cutters in the back of the Wagoneer, along with a first aid kit better than those found in most ambulances. They parked on a secluded side road running parallel to the main tracks and Sol cut a hole in the fence. He’d already warned Baz to be careful, that the trains moved fast and they didn’t brake for musicians with stupid haircuts. Company security patrolled the area at all hours, looking for railriders and other trespassers, and those jerks wouldn’t think twice about hauling their trespassing asses down to the station, or inflicting a beating.

  Baz followed his brother at a discreet distance, hands deep in his pockets, ears almost numb but not quite enough. The night was moon-bright and the snow turned it to near day. Easy to see the parked rail-cars, the switching tracks, the crossbuck signs. Baz had the feeling that Sol wasn’t even looking at the same things he was, because he occasionally cocked his head to one side, all in black, just a smudge against the gray gravel, snow swept away by the wind. He walked hunched over, alert, like he was listening to something Baz couldn’t hear.

  It didn’t creep Baz out, not anymore. It’s just what they did, his dad and Sol. Dad had done a whole lot more than just see ghosts, of course. Baz was less sure of Sol’s calling, but despite his brother’s lights-and-siren job and settled home life, this kind of traiteur work didn’t wiggle its way out of your blood. At least, that’s what Baz thought. Finally, Sol crossed the tracks, motioned with a jerk of his chin for Baz to follow, and stepped down into a hollow between the fence and rail. Sol slowed, then stopped.

  Baz, at his shoulder, could see nothing other than the dim smear of fenceline, the splotched gray of gravel and snow. He was shivering, so cold now that he could barely breathe; his lungs ached with it. It hadn’t been this cold by the truck, and that’s when Baz knew. No matter how many times he’d been in similar circumstances, waiting for ghosts to arrive, he felt exposed, visible. This was unnatural, in the most basic sense of the word. His breath came out in an unsteady stream. “Sol?” he asked, not really knowing what he was asking.

  Beside him, half a head shorter, more sturdily built and safely solid, Sol didn’t move, not even as he said, “Shh.” It was gentle, though, a reassurance.

  Baz waited, and he wasn’t good at that, fidgeted, played with the coins in his pocket, turning them over like good luck charms. After a moment, Sol took one step forward, hesitated, and then bent down to a crouch. He took the glove off his right hand and dropped it to the gravel before spreading his fingers wide and settling his hand among the rocks. Baz had seen their father do this any number of times, and watched as Sol dipped his head as though trying to remember something important.

  Sol’s head came up with a snap, and from his crouched position said, “Ta gueule, Dad. You don’t have the right to say that.”

  Great. They were going to fight. From beyond the grave, they were going to go at it.

  “Is he here?” Baz asked his brother, more to get in the middle than anything else, to remind Sol why they’d come. His brother slowly rose, and by the moonlight, he was pale, dark eyes and dark chin. Baz remembered their father saying that you didn’t get into conversations with ghosts, you just sent them on their way, because they were messed up, weren’t like you anymore.

  Apparently, Sol hadn’t taken this lesson to heart. “This isn’t your show. He’s here if I say so.” Not talking to Baz, obviously. Talking about him instead.

  This was by far the weirdest conversation Baz had ever listened in on: his older brother arguing with his dead father’s g
host about whether or not Baz should be present when the ghost was laid to rest. He could almost hear his Dad’s soft burr. He tried to match his stare to Sol’s, tried to will himself into the conversation. “Hé, Papa,” he said quietly, and heard the quick inhalation Sol took beside him. “You should get some rest, Dad. You deserve it.”

  One ear to Baz, Sol turned away at these words, perhaps to hear the spirit’s response. It was still and quiet, and if their father’s ghost said something to Baz, he couldn’t hear it, not at all. His breath was white in the winter air, and eddies whirled within it as though something moved through, close enough to touch, and Baz stepped back, startled.

  A few feet away, Sol stumbled, caught himself, straightened, his hands balling into fists at his side. “Leave him alone.” Two steps towards Baz, Sol’s eyes rimmed white, looking at what Baz could not see. “Non, Papa. Je lui dis pas. No way.”

  “Tell me what?” Baz asked, confused. He’d seen ghosts move things, and he thought that his father’s ghost had just shoved Sol, hard. It had sometimes gotten physical between these two. Why would death change anything?

  The newly dead, and the angry ones, those ghosts were the easiest to find, Baz knew, and Aurèle Sarrazin was both.

  Sol’s eyes were focused on a spot just to Baz’s left and Baz looked. “He wants you to sing.” Sol shook his head. “The bastard wants a song.”

  Baz swallowed. Crazy damn ghosts, because his whole life, Aurie had told Baz ‘ta gueule’, shut up, no singing. Play the fiddle if you have to, but no damn singing, except maybe in the car, but nowhere else. And now, now when it was so damn late in the day, when things had already crossed over, or were crossing, now the man wanted a song?

  “What,” Baz whispered, cold and truly scared. “What should I do?”

  A spasm crossed Sol’s face, anger maybe or something deeper—loss—and he wiped one hand across the landscape as though erasing something. “Comment est-ce que tu peux demander ça?” he asked thin air. “What right do you have, to ask that?” Not talking to Baz, not with that voice.

  More in French that Baz didn’t understand; Sol had been older when they’d left Louisiana, and had more of Maman’s time, more of Papa’s. More of everything, both good and bad.

  It was a last request from his father and it was the one thing Aurie and Baz had always shared, maybe the only way in which they were alike: a love of music. So Baz called up what he knew, what he remembered. An old song that his mother had sung. He didn’t know all the words, or didn’t remember them. “J’ai passé devant ta porte,” he sang, remembering, and then worrying it was their mother’s song, and that maybe it would further infuriate Aurie’s ghost. Still, it was what had come.

  Beside him, he saw Sol stiffen, turn toward him, mouth open a little. Horrified that Baz was doing it, was doing as their father had requested.

  Despite his father’s encouragement in other musical directions, Baz knew he could sing. Aurie hadn’t told him to shut up because he couldn’t hold a tune. As much a part of him as anything else, his voice was true, especially on a cold night, prairie wind the only accompaniment, that and his brother’s uneasy sigh.

  “Assez,” Baz heard his brother say under his breath then, at volume: “C’est assez!”

  Baz stopped, because Sol didn’t yell often and not like that. He wondered, briefly, if his father’s ghost was cowed. Probably not.

  Into this silence, Baz whispered what his brother had shouted: “That’s enough.” Nothing moved. “Both of you.” He turned to Sol, who was not looking at him, was not moving in the slightest. Baz knew that bandages were best taken off at speed, but he was reluctant to tell Sol what to do. There wasn’t much precedence. “Send him on his way,” he begged, softly. “Please.”

  Baz realized that Sol’s eyes were full, were brimming in the cold, cold night. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, Sol wouldn’t look at him. Sol shook his head, his stare on something—someone—Baz couldn’t see. “I can’t,” Sol said and Baz had to reach for the words they were so soft.

  Baz reached out with one hand, drew Sol into a tight embrace, whispered into his ear. “You have to. There’s no one else.” Then, laughing. “Vraiment? You want him dropping by your place all the time?” Baz had already said his goodbyes at the morgue, he realized. His father was gone. This was just a ghost his brother was seeing. Easy to believe that, just slightly-cracked Sol seeing things that weren’t there.

  Sol pulled away, one hand, the bare one, wiping his face. “You don’t understand.” And he looked over the empty tracks, eyes hollow in the night. “There’s so many.”

  Baz swallowed, looked in spite of himself. So many? “You only have to get rid of the one.”

  “The one?” Sol repeated, chuckling without warmth. Then he shrugged with one shoulder, bent down again, looked out into the emptiness that was not, not to him. “D’accord,” he agreed quietly.

  He stretched out his hand, buried it in the frozen gravel, and said some words so low that Baz didn’t even know which language he was speaking. After a few minutes, still like this, Sol brought his hand up to his chest, unzipped his parka, and pushed his hand under his sweater and his shirt, hand against heart for a moment only, then to his lips, a word muttered, then to the ground again. He glanced up, and his eyes were swimming, reflecting light, and he tapped the ground with his fingertips, three times in closure.

  He stayed like that for a long time.

  Finally, Baz bent down beside him, drew him up, but Sol came up quickly then, pushed Baz to the side, and said more words, one word, actually, and Baz recognized it: Dégagez! What his mother had said among the crypts, fifteen years ago, the day she had left them. Maybe she was talking to me, Baz thought. Go away.

  Sol stood shaking for a few moments, and Baz didn’t know what he was seeing, what he was watching, but he could guess: ghosts, fleeing from him, because he could send them on their way and the confused ones were scared of Sol, and the angry ones simply hated him.

  * * *

  They went back to the motel, but the room was too small, and Sol knew he’d go nuts if he stayed there with Baz’s quizzical brows and his thoughtful words and more thoughtful silences. He said he was going for a walk but Baz wouldn’t let him go alone and that was almost the same as him saying that Sol was a child that needed looking after.

  They crossed the street to a bar instead, a cheap kind of place where the light came from brewery neon and plastic faux-Tiffany pool table lamps. Baz stood out like a peacock in a henhouse. In a way, Sol wished one of the burly railworkers slouched over the beery tables would start a fight, make some comment about the pierced eyebrow, or nose, or ears. Even about the mauvais haircut.

  As always, Baz grinned through everything, and had the bartender joking within seconds. Sol sat back on a bench, ordered a Beam while Baz babbled innocuously to a complete stranger on the other side of the room.

  There had to have been at least ten or twelve ghosts tonight. At least. Old, new. Pissed off, most of them. All there because Baz was singing, and Aurie had wanted Sol to see that, damn him. The song had been a lesson, for Sol’s edification. Reminding Sol of what Baz could do, as if Sol could ever forget.

  You look out for him. Aurie’s ghost had repeated itself, smile sitting sad on a grizzled face, head not so fucked up by the train accident this appearance, thank God. Listening to Baz sing, to his beautiful voice, transported, at peace. Then said, last words to his son, What are you doing, gars, having a conversation with a goddamn ghost? What the hell did I teach you?

  In the end, as Sol had opened a pathway shining in the night, tear-blinded, he recognized the longing in his father’s eyes, listening to Baz. Not wanting to go anywhere. Mangled body coming together at last, straightening and unfolding and becoming and Sol thought that maybe that was what had been hardest, seeing his father as he should have been—whole and happy, before Mireille had left, before exile, before incarceration.

  Shouldn’t that make me feel better? But it
all came down to what had never been, and what was and what was left, which was fuck-all.

  Sol had another bourbon, a double, making a bee-line toward oblivion. Baz was still yabbering at the bar, a couple of girls there now with their witless boyfriends. Better that kind of attention. Better than all those ghosts, transfixed by his brother’s voice, from the first fucking note. Sol rubbed his face with one hand, felt the walls like a vise, wanted the open road keenly as a drug, as a woman. Wanted the thrill of being in the cab of the ambulance with life or death in the headlights. Wanted to feel alive.

  Instead of this.

  He should have been more alert, more aware, but after the performance down by the tracks, Baz was shaky inside and needed the warmth of company, the bub of low chat, interest in the eyes of others. He needed to be seen by living things and Sol didn’t count. It was only a couple of minutes, and then it was an hour, and then he realized that it wasn’t a night for leaving Sol alone, that it was already too late.

  From across the room, Baz heard Sol’s voice raised in discord, flinging abuse with all the abandon of an inmate at a monkey house, the object of his tirade a man roughly twice his size. Baz eased away from his new friends, walked over, sat with Sol, laid one hand on his sleeve. Sol jerked his arm away, and wouldn’t meet Baz’s eyes. “This trou d’cul,” he started, and Baz smiled, turned to the bigger man, who glowered in return, recognizing the word ‘asshole’ in any language. Not as much liquor as Sol, Baz guessed. Still able to hit edit. “He can ’brasse mon cul.”

  “He’s had a rough night,” Baz explained to the stranger. “He doesn’t mean—”

  “I fucking mean every fucking word,” Sol complained and Baz hated the sound of alcohol, wearing away his brother’s more reasonable lines.

  “You don’t,” Baz replied firmly. “And we got a long drive tomorrow, and—”