Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  She crouched beside him, hand exposed to the cold. He took her right hand in his left, covered it, held it to the ground. His hand was warm on hers, and through it she felt a tremor. “Maybe you shut your eyes, chère, maybe that’s easiest.” She did and his voice, divorced from image, wasn’t so hard, or remote. It was like a humid day in August.

  On top, his warm living hand, below, the stirrings of the earth, the humus of leaf and worm and bacteria, teeming life, all connected. A flash, a moment of that, and then her brother’s slow voice, lazy almost. “You got it? You keep that, that’s what ties you here, ’cause next you gotta send it out. You look,” and she opened her eyes and he took his right hand, placed it to his chest, under his shirt, skin to skin, nearest to his heart. “One hand to the ground, make the connection, keep it here inside you. Then send it out, from your heart, to your mouth, your breath is life, right? You take it, all that life, and you send it out…”

  And he moved his right hand from his heart, made a circle with his fingers to his lips, breathed out and uncurled his fingers, and she saw the distortion in the air like gas fumes disrupting light’s straight lines. He’d made something that hung in the air for a moment, then he took his hand again, cut glance to her—do you see?—and tapped the ground three times. The distortion, the malfunction of light, sparkled, fled, disappeared.

  “When you make that, and there’s a ghost near, you try to slide it their way. They see it, or sense it, or whatever they do, and that’s where they want to be if they’re just the confused kind, the ones looking for a road home. It comes to them, like…” he let her hand go, pushed his fingers together, apart, “…like magnets, hé? Like that.”

  Lutie cleared her throat. “So, where do they go, this road home? Is it a good place, where they go?”

  Sol put one hand down, then reached for the bench to pull himself up and Lutie remembered the horrific bruise on his hip where the ghost had kicked him yesterday. She took his elbow, but then he made a stuttering hiss and it was his damaged shoulder and side, and Lutie just backed off so he could do it himself.

  He stood, one hand to his ribs, then he said, “I don’t know where they end up. But it’s gotta be better than sticking around here. Even those guys who were good people when they were alive, they go crazy after hanging around between for too long.”

  “Have you seen a lot of people die, in your work?”

  That earned her a laugh, under his breath as he scanned the park, as he looked over to the diner, but Baz was still working away. “I try not to let them die, that’s kinda the point of my line of work.” Lutie scowled, and that made him laugh again. “Yeah, I seen my share.”

  “Is it why you chose it?” He stared at her. “To be a paramedic? So you could make sure ghosts got to where they were supposed to go? Doesn’t it drive you mental?”

  Too many questions all together. He grinned, ducked his head. “Well, yeah. It makes you nuts. But what’s the choice?”

  Maybe it wasn’t a curse, something to be overcome, to fight. For the first time in a very long time, Lutie allowed that thought. “Do most of them just go?”

  He nodded, and he didn’t offer more because you had to come to him and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, sometimes. He only gave you what you asked for, no more, didn’t cram you with unnecessary words.

  “So maybe she did, right? Maybe she just went.” There was no keeping it from her voice, the thin thread of doubt, of fear. Of hope.

  “Probably.” Sol nodded, took a couple of steps, no nearer, no further, just circled her like the slow orbit of a far moon. “Most of them do.”

  “What difference would it make, having a ghost tied to you?” She didn’t know how much he knew about this, but it had to be more than anyone else she’d ever met. I am leaving and this might be my only chance to ask.

  The pacing stopped. His attention was fully on her. “Don’t you do it, Luetta. Don’t even think of it. You think you’ll get some kind of power, and you do, it’s true. But there’s a cost.” His words faltered, and she didn’t know what he was thinking about that it pinched his face like that. “It wears you down, takes away that feeling you just had, where you can feel the trees. It takes away how you feel about your friends, and your family. It takes everything you got just to keep that ghost close. It’s like that saying about having a wolf by the throat, that you can’t let go cause it’ll eat you whole. It’s like that.”

  She looked away first, over at the diner, and Baz was no longer there.

  Sol gyred away from her again. Sighed. “There’s no damn ghosts here,” he said, but he didn’t sound disappointed.

  “I know,” she agreed. “I don’t think I can do that, what you just did.” She sat down again, knew that Baz would be joining them shortly. He’d gotten bored, sitting alone in the diner, watching them in their strange dance. “How long did it take you to learn?”

  He stopped his movement, came back to her, but he didn’t sit down. “A while,” he admitted. “I don’t remember, I was just a kid. It gets easier, the more you do it. Faster. It’s not hard now. Usually.” His back was to the diner and so he didn’t see Baz walking towards them, Lutie’s knapsack over one shoulder. “Harder when they’re tossing you around. They gotta be big and mean for me to have much trouble. I was hoping for a nice old lady for you.”

  He laughed, and then sensed or heard Baz behind him and turned. “You give up already?”

  Baz spread his hands. “I didn’t give up, man. I got what I needed.” He flung himself down on the bench. “So, are we surrounded by ghosts? Is this like, ghost central?” He winked at Lutie. “I just sat down on a ghost, didn’t I? Squashed him.” Big stupid shining grin and Lutie couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Nah, there’s nothing here. Beausoleil was hoping for a bunch of blue-haired seniors with tricky hearts who were still waiting for the next pinochle tourney, but we’re out of luck. The dead are all happy in Ogallala.”

  Baz let out a little sigh of laughter, and eyed Sol, who stood a few feet away. “Well, you look ridiculous out here, on your hands and knees in this dogshit park.”

  “What’d you find out?” Sol countered, an easy rhythm to them, Lutie realized now, Sol ignoring Baz the more outrageous he became.

  Lutie watched Baz straighten up, some levity knocked out of him. “Trois hommes noirs, haven’t found it yet. Dad didn’t want to touch it, and I don’t really want to, either. But there’s another one, he wrote ‘works like a hot damn’ beside it. You imagine him writing that? I got no idea what it’s about. Or, I think it’s about an old mill, and something about a chicken. Or a bird or something. What’s duck in French? It’s got a good tune, though, some kind of reel. Dancing music. I found three different versions of it, so I downloaded a couple to your hard drive, chère. That’s legal in Canada, right?” The bag sat between them on the bench, and Baz buried his hands into his pockets. Laughed, and then looked up at Sol. “We could use a hot damn right about now.”

  Sol scrubbed his beard with one hand, found his gloves, drew them on. “Yeah, we could at that.”

  Baz didn’t move. “It’s a happy song. I could sing it, get some practice ghosts for you.” He smiled at Sol’s black expression. “Just a few bars. I’ll shut up before anything too weird happens.”

  “Because singing for ghosts isn’t weird,” Lutie muttered.

  Sol shook his head. “No way,” he said, ignoring whatever Lutie might have to say on the subject, and that didn’t sit right with her.

  “How am I supposed to practice without some ghosts?” If Sol could learn, then she could too. And setting ghosts on a path was next to tying them to you, and she’d thought she’d been able to do that, too.

  Sol stared long and hard at the both of them. He took a couple of steps from them, hands in his pockets. “The tracks. We can try the tracks,” he suggested. “More ghosts there, but no little old ladies. Hard core.” He raised his eyebrows to her: You game? And of course she nodded. He didn’t smile, ins
tead he turned to his brother. “You go back to the motel and wait for us there, Baz.”

  Baz laughed, high-pitched, eyes glinting in the wan sunshine. “I don’t think so. That devil’s got a bad habit of appearing out of nowhere, and I don’t want to be alone waiting for the damn thing.”

  He had a point, even Sol could see it. Finally, Sol dipped his shoulder. “Fine. You wait in the truck, though. You keep your mouth shut.” Said that while walking away, jabbing a finger in their general direction.

  They headed west past Brule, past the now-closed Coffee Caboose, past the place where they’d last faced Lewis, far from inquisitive eyes, parked on the south side of a grade crossing near the fairgrounds, nothing on the landscape except for some bare trees behind a torn-up snowfence, a broken down barn falling in on itself. Miles and miles of grayed out grasslands.

  Getting out of the truck first, Sol nailed Baz with a look. He acquiesced with a sigh, leaning back into the passenger seat, eyes to the roof of the truck, epitome of boredom within seconds. With one last warning glance to his brother—stay put—Sol led Lutie across the tracks to the river, which was an icy runnel cutting the landscape, defining the territory, a meek boundary.

  “Running water,” Sol pointed at it, then jerked his thumb to the tracks behind them. “Iron.”

  “Does that matter?” Lutie asked.

  Sol paused, unsure and showing it. “Water isn’t reliable, not always. Sometimes it’s like a safety net, especially when it’s moving. Ghosts have trouble crossing it. But standing still, like swampwater? Not so predictable. Rivers are usually good.” He grinned. “Aqueducts are even better. Iron is a safer bet, and salt is the best of all.”

  “What about fire?” Lutie said, watching the Wagoneer, where she could see Baz’s dim outline against the gray plains.

  After a second, Sol shook his head. “Couldn’t say. It cleans things, I guess. Sometimes. Didn’t help with Lewis, though, burning up like that. I know iron and salt. Water and fire, they’re not so easy.”

  “Sounds like a cooking show,” Lutie said, scowling. The landscape was bleak and ghostless. “You think it happened here?” she asked, finally. “I mean, I guess this is where it happened. Maybe this isn’t such a great idea, so close to where Lewis died.”

  Sol shook his head, spoke lowly, not even looking at her. “The Megeath crossing is west of here. There’d be a granary, and a house, or what’s left of it.” He looked over his shoulder at the broken barn. “Not this.”

  Her brows crooked. “He died in a mobile home, across from the fairgrounds. There isn’t anything left. Except the barn, Bart said.”

  A whistle sounded, far away. Sol was shifting his weight, one foot to the other, eyes scanning the terrain. He’d been barely listening to her, at first, looking for ghosts, back to her. Now he blinked, then his eyes widened a little. Lutie lifted her hands. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Come on,” he said, shortly. “Let’s get out of here.” He turned momentarily to the river, as though the devil was sneaking up on them from behind. Lutie glanced over at the Wagoneer, couldn’t really see Baz through the spattered windshield. She splayed her hands wide, giving up, not knowing if he was watching her.

  As it happened, he was.

  Then the train blasted between them, cutting off Lutie’s sight-line of Baz sitting alone in the Wagoneer.

  Prior to Lutie’s silent plea for help, Baz had been flipping through his father’s stolen library book, trying to figure out which one he’d try first, if his ghost-busting siblings ever changed their damn minds about his usefulness.

  He knew one or the other of them would ask for his help. Eventually. Of course it was Lutie. Sol wouldn’t have known how to ask for help if his head was on fire. And besides, she had that cute little pissed off shrug and Sol’s back was turned. As if either of them would know, anyway, if he just sang here, in the truck.

  If Aurie had been able to call ghosts himself, call angels, Baz had never heard about it. But obviously, Aurie had some kind of experience with it, had some kind of ability or luck or help. Open across Baz’s lap, the book was slowly revealing its secrets, the songs were becoming real, taking on rhythms, melodies. It might have taken an internet-less Aurie half a lifetime to collect melodies for these songs; for Baz, it was a couple of afternoons.

  According to Aurie’s scrawl, happy songs correlated with good results—très bonne! Excellent!—sad ones with darker outcomes.

  But none of the Acadian songs seemed quite happy enough, and so he grinned widely to the windshield, wished Lutie could hear him. The train was coming through; he could barely hear himself sing. He’d rustle up some ghosts for them, for sure. He belted out ‘Feelin’ Groovy’ like he was conjuring sunshine, launched into it without hesitation.

  It was halfway normal, singing in the car. Hell, he’d always been allowed to sing in the car, hadn’t he? But he wasn’t moving, and the car wasn’t moving, and that meant that he wasn’t safe, that he could be found.

  * * *

  Immediately, Lutie felt a deep cold seep into her bones, ghostcold, and realized what was happening. She shook her head. “Oh, Baz, no,” she said to no one in particular.

  Behind her, Sol turned sharply, looked at her, came to her side, followed her attention. The train wasn’t a long one, but it was plenty long enough. They waited thirty seconds, a minute, the sky bright and heartless. The train passed, a blur, too close for comfort. It was a stupid place for anyone’s home, really, even someone used to trains.

  The final train fled, leaving an odd silence and they both stared at the Wagoneer. Baz wasn’t really all that far away although the sun was at a bad angle so neither of them could see through the dirty windshield. The air was cold, ghostcold, and both Sol and Lutie knew that Baz was sitting in the Wagoneer, singing.

  Sol marched across the tracks to his truck, Lutie right behind him and to Baz’s credit, he didn’t stop singing even after Sol wrenched open the door. It would be easy to get caught up in the song as Baz was singing it, the dappled and drowsy, the loving of life, the wide smile. Instead, Lutie kept watch across the wide hood of the Wagoneer, scanned the strip of land between them and the rails, the ruined barn providing cover for what might come.

  Nothing, not yet. But it was cold.

  Beside her, Sol wasn’t paying attention to anything except Baz. “What the fuck did I tell you?” he asked, but it was no question. It wasn’t anger in his voice. It was something much different. Still, his hand curled into Baz’s collar and he hauled him out of the truck, or maybe Baz wanted to be out anyway.

  Lutie sidled closer to Sol, and Baz looked past them to the barn. Surprisingly, he seemed totally unconcerned. “Anything yet?” Disengaging Sol’s grip, Baz took maybe five steps away from his brother—getting braver all the time—his voice laughter incarnate. He took a deep breath, didn’t look at Sol. This is something he can do. The one thing he thinks he can do to help.

  One more verse, but softly, under his breath, with laughter, ignoring Sol’s pleading eyes. They were in the middle of a murder site, Lutie reminded herself, and then noticed movement by a clump of buffaloberry. Motioning with one hand, she glanced at Sol, who nodded, and then she followed his eyes to a further movement, nearer to the stand of cottonwoods by the barn. Two ghosts.

  He fanned out, holding one hand out to Lutie, telling her to stay put. “Baz,” he called softly. “Shut up. Now.”

  The nearest ghost appeared to be a young man, clothes nondescript, and it looked hollow-eyed, as though the boy had died of starvation or sickness. Who knew where it had come from, what its story was, why this young man had become stuck. Further away, the other ghost had a long tunic that flapped in an unseen wind. Chinese, from the coolie hat resting on its back when it turned, old-fashioned, as though it had stepped out from a sepia-toned daguerreotype.

  Glad they like Simon and Garfunkel, Lutie thought, as Baz stopped singing. The silence was enormous.

  “Get back in the truck,�
� Sol said, but Baz didn’t move. Fine time for him to find backbone. Sol sighed. He couldn’t just leave the ghosts. Lutie understood that about him now. Sol couldn’t leave things alone when he could do something about it.

  Then she paid all her attention to what Sol was doing. He bent down, and she saw him clench his jaw as he did it—too fast, you gotta make the morning last—and put one hand to the hard cold ground, closed his eyes, head bent for a moment.

  Finding his connection, feeling the threads of underground water, the vibration of the land.

  One moment, then pushed his hand inside his shirt, and Lutie bent down too, put her hand out against the ground, tried to feel something of what her brother was feeling. Hand to heart, declaring his intention, and his eyes slid to hers—understand?—and then he brought fingers to lips, opened the road and it shimmered in the cold air for a long moment before it settled along the ground, swung over toward the boy, Sol guiding it, fingers of his right hand twitching. Lutie watched as the boy looked back, but only once, then stepped onto the road Sol had made, followed it, not noticing them, eyes half closed in acceptance or ecstasy, it was hard to tell.

  Three taps on the ground, then Sol looked over at Lutie, and he said, softly, “The other one, see what you can do, T-Lu.”

  Her hand was cold against the ground, but she’d found the hum of the earth already, so she looked up at the Chinese rail worker, who knows how long it’s been walking this half-life, and she was well aware Sol was hovering close by, waiting to intervene if necessary. For once, his implied control wasn’t an annoyance; it was a relief.

  Hand to heart. C’mon, mister, you need to get going. Hand shaking. I really don’t want to screw this up. Up to lips, blowing out, imagining the road shining from her.

  Nothing.

  Sol was right beside her, crouched. The ghost looked confused. It had come for the singing, and that had quieted, and Baz had taken a few steps toward them, his eyes straining, but seeing nothing, face a blank.

  “It’s okay,” Sol allayed her flash of disappointment. “That one’s not going anywhere. Been around a long time, just wants out. Try it again.”