Sol realized that he had never searched for deaths in houses, only railyard-related deaths. I need to widen the search. A furrow creased Sol’s forehead and the blue plate came. He bought more internet time.
Half an hour later, he’d plotted suspicious deaths on a map, noting the dates. This ghost is moving west. Were the Hursts the most recent deaths? If he kept checking west, would he find anything more? A few more keystrokes and he turned up another murder, this time in Ogallala, less than an hour west of where he sat. Only the day before yesterday. Except the police weren’t calling it a murder, had already ruled it accidental, a guy dead in his garden which happened to abut the tracks. Someone who had fallen off his porch and landed headfirst on an unspecified blunt object.
Aurie had taught Sol a couple of things, and one of which was how to second-guess a newsclipping: Local man dies tragically in his yard. The railway went right through the backyard. According to the news story, the victim’s house had been left wide open the night he died, and a neighbor said she’d seen him running out the front door. Not suicidal, the article went on, the man was a respected lawyer about to embark on a trek to Nepal the next day, had everything to live for. No mention of what the blunt object was. No mention of why he’d run out of the house.
He was onto something, Sol felt it. How many more between Ogallala and Bailey Yard?
A couple of phone calls, and a number of online community newspapers yielded more results. Three suspicious death clusters, a total of seven people with heads cracked open, blunt force, no weapon found. One a murder, one called murder-suicide like the Hursts, and the third ruled accidental, another railway mishap. According to the town directories, all these people lived along the rail line that stretched from Bailey Yard through to Ogallala and points further west. According to friends and families, all of them had been planning trips or moves.
It didn’t matter that the victims were lawyers or accountants, librarians or teachers. If you were about to leave it all behind, if you were thinking of putting your feet on the road and seeing where it took you, then this ghost was going to find you.
Sol pushed away his plate, the grease congealed, mashed potatoes a shade of vague gray, same viscosity as spackling paste. He needed to find out who this ghost had been when it had been alive, how it had died. Where it had died. West of here, he thought.
If he pushed it, he could drive to Ogallala, investigate the deaths there, stay overnight and talk to people when offices opened Monday morning. He could make it back to Denver in time for his evening shift. He looked at his watch, sighed. Just enough daylight left to do this, because the ghost wasn’t stopping, wasn’t even slowing down.
He still had no idea about how or if a devil figured in this, he only knew ghosts, knew how they operated. It would have to be enough.
He settled with the waitress and gassed up the Wagoneer. The lawyer’s death in Ogallala was recent, day before yesterday, and if it was a ghost hunting drifters and those looking to catch out, Sol knew where to start.
Cold scoured the sky blue, shiny as a pot in the sink worked over with steel wool. Into this sky, the chapel’s spire quested heavenward, and Lutie wondered if this was a good sign, as if the spire was a not-so-secret signal, alerting angels to their presence.
Mireille had been devout, had said rosaries, repented for sins unnamable and manifold, always hovering on the edge of churches and temples, never braving the doors. Her deviations were perhaps too unforgivable for easy entry. Mireille’s approach to religion had been wholly different than the McGregors’. Hers had been about guilt, not love.
Baz met them at the church door, dressed cleanly but not much more than that. Plain black button-up shirt, jeans, a scruffy khaki-colored canvas coat, he wasn’t out of place in a prairie army base, not by much. In the brutal light of a flatland winter’s morning, his eyes glittered like bus shelter glass broken by a vandal, and he grinned as they came up the swept walk, was formally introduced to Marshall and Bree as the Major led them in. The Major was not giving any sermon this morning, was leading no readings. He’d made alternative arrangements, wanting to simply be with his family, this the first Sunday after Christmas, with God’s light illuminating their lives in all their complex and strange rhythms.
Lutie stopped Baz as they entered, one hand on the sleeve of his pearl-button shirt, and he pulled up, eyebrows climbing incrementally. “When was the last time you were in church?” she asked.
He shrugged. “A friend’s wedding. Maybe.”
“How religious are you?”
His hand waggled, equivocating. “Not very. Raised Catholic, to a point. Why?”
Unfair, what she was going to ask. She caught her foster father’s eye, and he drew close enough to hear. “Well, you know what would be great? If you’d sing something. Wouldn’t that be great?” She looked at the Major, who wasn’t committing. “He’s an amazing singer, Dad. You should hear him.” She paused, didn’t know if she was inviting mayhem, but she had to know. She wasn’t crazy. “It’s one of things I remember.”
Her brother’s expression was guarded and it didn’t suit him; she could see the swallow he took. Him, a professional musician and she could swear he was nervous. He doesn’t sing so much anymore, he’d said. There must be a reason for that. The Major stared hard at Baz. Not much got past him.
“We’d be delighted,” the Major said, offering both a way in and way out.
Baz didn’t take his eyes off Lutie. “Vraiment?” he asked, chewing the inside of his mouth. “Really? You want this?”
She nodded. I’m not crazy. I remember what I remember.
It was arranged quickly—a guitar instead of a piano, the other musician a soldier just back from Afghanistan. Song ideas were bandied about: Baz came up with “When the Man Comes Around” or maybe “Ring of Fire”, and Lutie knew for sure then that he’d not seen much of a church’s interior. In the end they decided on the one that everyone could agree on—of course he knew “Amazing Grace”, who didn’t. The young gunner, a corporal, was originally from Baie Comeau, and Baz said he’d alternate verses in French and English, if that was okay. The guitarist smiled widely—yes, that would be okay.
Lutie saw the joy this gave and wondered if it would be all right, asking this, because the thought of Baz singing filled her with a certain dread. She’d picked that awful bar last night because it had been the site of a manslaughter in the summer, and she’d guessed right about there being a ghost hanging around. It had hovered in the corners, checking patrons out, and Baz hadn’t noticed at all.
Maybe she was crazy, after all, just like her mother. Maybe ghosts were something beyond her, beyond the ability of medicine and talk therapy to fix. We’ll see about that.
Inside the church, the late morning light was far from muted; it reflected from the burnished oak beams and pews, from modern stained glass cut and layered to form suns and stars and bursts of light. It was always hard to see ghosts in bright light, Lutie knew, so she tried to peer in the corners where shadows lingered, but she saw nothing. Maybe this was not a place for ghosts, this home of light. She’d never seen a ghost inside a church, but that didn’t mean anything, she didn’t think.
Beside her, Baz sat straight-backed, nervous, eyes darting across the crowded room. Some of the troops were home, a reason to be thankful, a reason to ask for forgiveness. One of the inter-denominational reverends gave a sermon about finding grace, but Lutie didn’t pay attention to it; she was staring into shadows and hoping she didn’t look too weird. She was good at it, disguising the tendency to look weird, had to be.
On her other side, the Major rose, leaned over her to Baz, “If you want to sing, now’s the time,” he said, honorable refusal still possible. Baz flicked a glance to Lutie and she knew he didn’t want to do it, that he was doing it solely because she’d asked. Really? his eyebrows asked. Is this what she wanted?
Yes, because she’d felt unhinged and different for as long as she could remember and here was the one th
ing that might provide proof. He could give that to her, at least.
So Baz went to the front, waved away a microphone because he wouldn’t need one, Lutie remembered, that you didn’t need to amplify a voice like his in a quiet church. He bent for a moment to the corporal, said something and the young gunner grinned wide, delighted, and Lutie remembered this, too, that Baz made people smile. A trick, or a talent? Had time to think: gift, then she had no time to consider the many talents or sins that Baz made manifest, because he was singing, starting in French. The crowd hushed, and then stilled, the words lifting around them, drawing eyes up to the light-filled apse where winter’s harsh glare was re-made into sanctuary.
Peace. A harbor from the flood, a blessing, a kiss from above.
Lutie did not let herself be drawn into that, no matter how the song—the voice—begged her for it. She had not been misremembering anything: her brother could sing. And there, when she turned and looked back through the double-wide entry into the lobby, a fleeting figure, gray against the gloom where the light did not quite reach.
A ghost. Up against the space between the staircase and the cloakroom, leaning forward, and expression of rapt transport on its thin face, listening as though its heart might break. As Baz switched into English for the next verse, the Major dropped his head down, watching Lutie. She shifted in her seat, stared forward. Unafraid of the high notes, Baz embraced them, and not for a minute did Lutie imagine he couldn’t hit anything he was aiming for. She looked to the first story windows, northern exposure, hard against the community center, not much light even at noon. Through the amber pane, a pale face, watery, young. Yearning for what was happening inside.
Maybe a church’s holy ground did make a difference; the ghosts could not come too near.
Baz let the guitarist have a gentle solo, smiled at him as he took up the next verse, again in French. Behind her, Lutie heard a sniffle, someone crying. It was bound to have this sort of effect, given where and when they were. She thought it was probably a good thing, the sort of release that made someone feel better afterwards.
And then, at the top of the apse, where the stained glass came to a peak above the altar, a cloud must have moved away from obscuring the sun, because a beam of light lit Baz like he was under a spotlight at a concert, and the congregation murmured, but that didn’t stop Baz from singing. In fact, Lutie could almost say the light came from Baz, or was reflected by him, and it made her heart stop for one breathless moment.
Then Baz finished, and the guitar’s last chords lofted into the silent chapel as the sun’s light dulled and faded behind another wandering cloud outside. Lutie counted five ghosts, here in the middle of blank Manitoba prairie, hovering by the staircase, at the windows, near the doorways. Those were just the ones she could see. Bending down, Baz put one hand on the gunner’s shoulder, thanking him with a wide smile and the gunner seemed dazed, eyes blue and glowing even from the fourth row, where Lutie watched carefully.
Baz didn’t seem to take any notice of the ghosts, which even now lingered, perhaps expecting more, hoping for more, in any case. To her surprise, the Major took her hand, something that he rarely did nowadays, and turned it over in his broader one. Her family stood to let Baz back in the row, and as he passed, the Major shook Baz’s hand and Lutie knew that her life was changing, and that these changes were irrevocable.
Turning to him, one hand still in her foster father’s, Lutie raised her chin so she could look her brother in the eye.
“Is it what you wanted?” Baz asked, troubled, but not angry. A little scared, maybe knowing what he’d done, and guessing what she’d seen as a result.
Which meant it was all true, and this was the gift that Baz could give to her today.
Lutie remembered it like a scene from a movie, colors saturated: a cemetery and Baz, so hot they could have fried an egg on any one of those crypts. Singing, wanting him to sing, because it brought them to her and kept them there. He couldn’t see the ghosts, she’d known it then and knew it now, but they could see him, hear him. There was only one reason to gather ghosts and lull them into a dream state: so you could catch one.
Mireille had had hers, tucked inside, only let out when her mother had loosened the bindings that kept it there. A kept ghost was enormously helpful in telling the fortunes of others, the very best of the psychics and fortunetellers always had one, but Lutie knew it was dangerous, her mother had told her that repeatedly. It was why they had left Papa and the boys, because Aurie wouldn’t have approved. To him, ghosts were something to be shunned, to get rid of, he didn’t see their use.
It was either him, or my ghost, Mireille had offered as explanation. Having your own ghost must be damn fine, to choose as she had. Aurèle, he would have gotten rid of it, would have left me. Would have left us.
Well, he was dead, wasn’t he? And Lutie wasn’t sure she could catch a ghost, but she’d feel better about doing it with Baz at her side. She wasn’t crazy, or if she was, her whole family was crazy right along with her. Baz had sought her out; she had been found. Compromise—I let you in, you let me in.
And compromise was another of those ten-letter words.
SIX
PHONE HOME
Corrugated iron, loaded garbage bags, mangled grocery carts, a tatty boxspring set on end. A group of ragged men with wild eyes, off meds, about as calm and collected as feral cats. These weren’t the kind of tramps who asked for handouts, they were the kind that found them. On the outskirts of Ogallala, where a shantyville occupied the dip under the highway bridge, the tracks running close and inexorable as God, a small group of displaced men, of misplaced men, made a kind of home.
Aside from his short haircut and morning shower, Sol knew he wasn’t so different from them. An army surplus parka and denim covered him; boots once good now near the end of their usefulness kept his feet reasonably warm. Mostly, though, they shared an expression in their eyes: Don’t fence me in.
He approached the small fire, things used as fuel that most people wouldn’t think of as fuel: abandoned furniture, found wood from crates and pallets. Cooking and eating things most people wouldn’t consider food, either.
He’d brought a pouch of tobacco, which he handed over wordlessly, and was offered a cup of coffee that he didn’t refuse. He’d had worse, and recently. They made small talk for a bit, smoking. Drinking. Staring out at the horizon, at the fire, at their feet, anywhere but at each other.
“You guys have any trouble lately?” Sol asked after hearing about rail traffic and other realities, one guy going off about religion and another about his ex, the bitch. “Aside from God and women?”
Two drifters deigned to talk to him in a manner that approached organized. A skinny black-and-tan dog nosed around, licked the older tramp’s fingers. The tramp had introduced himself as Claude, his friend Tomson. The dog was Sparky.
Claude rolled a cigarette in hands that might have been a hundred years old, fingers the color of old cinders, a thousand campfires, roast sausages almost burned beyond edible. “You’re not one of those assholes from social services, are you?”
Sol laughed, low and in his throat. “Do I look like I’m with social services?”
Claude considered him. Finally, he shook his head and Tomson—a slightly younger man with a beard to rival any Civil War general’s—laughed loudly. “Hell, no.”
Sol kept his silence, wondering if Claude would circle back to the question.
After a moment, he did. “Nah, the cops don’t bother us much. It’s the damn ministry that really pisses me off.” And that started them off about church ladies and soup kitchens and how sleeping under a roof was just about the same as being incarcerated and all of them went on at length about that.
Sol commiserated, joined in, rolled his own smokes. Dad wouldn’t recognize me. He shook his head. Maybe he would.
“You still ride some?” he asked, pointing with his nose to the nearby tracks.
Claude chuckled, rubbed Sparky behind the ear, s
moke trailing from his nostrils like some kind of dragon. “Nah, not for years. They just barrel on through now, barely even slowing down for crossings. And the yards around here. The bulls have radios and the crews, well, they’re too scared to help us out, usually.”
Tomson rolled another cigarette, fingerless gloves unraveled like moss hanging from a plantation tree, a fire hazard, the mechanics of lighting the damp smoke without setting his hands on fire a distraction to Sol. Once lit, almost no difference between the muddy brown of the knit glove and the sepia fingertips, Tomson smacked his lips, revealed stumpy gray teeth. “Bailey’s always a good bet; Ogallala yard’s fine, too, if you’re scouting around. The bulls are the bulls, eh, they check, and you take a beating, but mostly you get where you’re goin’.”
They talked about riding for a bit, about keeping warm on open boxcars, about avoiding the tankers filled with toxic crap. About how to ride between the car and the wheels, about shifting cargo killing people they knew. About the inclines once you hit California, about the valleys so green they hurt your eyes, about smelling salt on the air like the answer to a prayer.
Tomson sucked the cigarette right down to the end, squished it in his fingers, then put it in a hinged tin that he kept in one of his outer pockets.
“The bulls just think us guys are lazy. They don’t get it. Not at all,” and Tomson spat to the side.
“What don’t they get?” Sol asked finally, throwing the dregs of the coffee into the bushes beside the track, wiping the handle-less cup out with his gloves and handing it back to Claude with a nod of thanks.
“Don’t get it at all,” Tomson repeated, then eyed Sol again as though he’d just appeared.
But Sol did get it. He did understand. “The cops, people in houses. They think you’re just out here, sucking off society, right? Maybe it wasn’t a choice so much, at first. But you don’t go back.” Something shifted inside him as he said it, and he didn’t know if it was something sliding out of his grasp, or something coming home to roost. Tomson nodded, however, so then Sol finally asked if they’d seen anything weird lately, anything that was beyond normal. Something in his manner or his look, Sol didn’t know which, maybe the fact he could roll his own and spoke with the soft cadences of the swamp, but Claude blinked rheumy eyes and muttered. Tomson was the one who spoke up.
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