The train had left Denver at dawn; Sol hadn’t slept in the more than sixteen hours since he’d dropped the acid, had watched the landscape slide by, mind wandering mile after mile after mile. It was a sunny day coming up, redolent of the summer past, now late October, two months into his seventeenth year. He’d gone hungry for the last week, no child welfare check coming. He’d mistimed the sequence of payments, not able to easily predict how much an almost thirteen-year-old kid could eat when left alone—in two days Baz had gone through what Sol had estimated was a week’s worth of groceries. Rent was three months past due, but the landlady was cool with it. He hoped she was cool with it. He’d been avoiding her, so he didn’t really know her relative state of coolness.
Blew out more smoke, and it trailed behind, gone.
He hoped they’d be in Canada soon. The border was a place of magic, liminal space. One moment, all laws known to him—so well-known by now—the next transformed, another place, where the language sounded different and the currency colored like origami paper. Laws were made and broken and he would never be able to tell the difference. Up north, their mother’s country, the land itself a construction of songs and stories. Canada could be anything he wanted it to be.
He lay back on the open boxcar, the rumble and noise blotting out his sense of corporal being, and he floated, drugged and at peace with it, smoking away his past. The train was moving so quickly, he couldn’t feel any connection to the ground, to the earth and that was fine. Connections meant rootedness, meant all the lessons his father had taught, all the ghosts and the responsibilities his father said were his. Connection was spurned. Instead, he wanted to float, to not-be.
Like Hamlet, and he smiled at that thought, eyes closed against the anvil sun, so much noise and vibration he almost didn’t exist at all.
When he sat up to stub out the last ember, to flick the cigarette out the open door, he suddenly remembered having a beard, the feel of it against his fingers. He lipped another cigarette to his mouth, feeling his smooth chin, puzzled. This cigarette, he didn’t light, he held it there, remembering whiskers. The drugs, that was all, that was it. He stretched back, feeling the boards of the boxcar against his bare hand, recalled belatedly that his hip would hurt if he stretched too far, he should really ice it some more. Lucky I didn’t break anything.
He sat up straight, one hand running down his left side, whole and so gaunt he’d be able to count ribs if he cared to. Hand to face, taking out the cigarette from his mouth, running fingers through hair long past its last cut because barbers cost money and he sure as hell wasn’t giving Baz a pair of scissors.
Robbie always sings when she cuts my hair and she can’t carry a tune to save her life.
For a moment, he thought he might pass out. Just the drugs, he kept telling himself, but it wasn’t that, it was something else and damned if he could remember what. Two selves, sliding together, apart, together again. His breath came ragged, and he looked at his hands and they weren’t right either. His left pinky had been broken in a house call, caught in a stretcher’s undercarriage so it was crooked like an old cat’s tail. Except it was straight as he held it out, blocking the rising sun, light leaking through the gaps. Je vais aller au nord. Enough of this shit, I’m going north and I’m not coming back. Jamais, jamais, ever.
“Hey, buddy, you gonna smoke that one?” How he hadn’t noticed the other drifter in the car was beyond him, and Sol thought he’d jump out of his own skin. If it is my skin.
He stared, wide-eyed, able to hear his own heart, even above the train. In the corner of the car, dark against the bright light of the prairie outside, a shape moved, resolved itself into arms and legs, a scraggly beard, army surplus pants held up by string. As Sol’s eyes adjusted, the man shuffled forward on his ass, disturbing the small dog by his side. The dog whined and the drifter hushed it with a movement of his hand. “Well?”
Sol handed the cigarette over, got out another one and lit it, passed the drifter his book of matches. Together, they sat on the edge of the car, pant legs whipping in the wind. In exchange, the drifter, who said his name was DJ, tried to give Sol half a squished peanut butter sandwich, but Sol refused with a frown, used to being hungry, used to refusing food when someone else needed to eat.
But that wasn’t quite it, and he knew it. You don’t just take food in these places, gars. Mon Dieu, what kind of maudit bioque did I raise? Almost under his breath, but not quite, Sol told his father that he wasn’t making the rules anymore. Still, he knew better than to take food from strangers. To take food in strange places, in this place. Here. Not here.
“You talk to yourself, but not to me. That’s okay,” DJ said, eyes an alarming blue in the sunlight. The little black dog nuzzled Sol’s hand and he patted it, chucking it under its ears so it groaned in pleasure, broad head pushing back against his hand, wanting more. Renard, Sol thought, because that was a dog’s name, wasn’t it? It meant ‘fox’ in French, and that was a stupid name for a beagle, but Robbie had laughed and laughed at his suggestion for the puppy. Her hair dark in his hands, sliding away as she smiled, freckles on her nose, her shoulders. She had such a great laugh, it started something inside him, like she’d turned on the ignition.
Fuck, what is wrong with me?
“So, where you headed?” DJ asked.
It wasn’t the sort of question drifters asked, Sol knew it, and he shook his head. Still, it wasn’t the weirdest thing he could be asked, or that he could ask himself.
“Nord,” he said. “J’cherche ma mère, et je pense qu’elle est du nord. Maman, elle est canadienne.”
“Always with the mother. Why d’you need her so much?” Eyes like the sky, might as well be the sky.
“C’est mon frère, Basile. Il a besoin d’elle. Pas moi.” He didn’t need her, not like Baz did. I don’t need anything, me. I’m telling M’man that Baz is all alone and that’s it, I keep going and I don’t look back.
“You sure about that?” The drifter looked away with a smile. “What’s wrong with the phone?”
The dog was now nudging his elbow with its nose, trying to get his attention. Sol stared at the drifter, a thread of recognition tugging at him. “Where are we?” he asked, suddenly, the English strange in his mouth, realized now he’d been speaking French, that there were differences between the languages.
The drifter laughed, low chuckle like broken glass. He’s dead, Sol thought, more confused than scared. Most dead things didn’t scare him, not lately. He hanged himself in a jail cell. “You don’t know?”
After a minute, Sol shrugged with one shoulder. “Halfway to Winnipeg, probably.” He seemed to remember going through Omaha, changing to a Canadian National car in the yards there, but it was a long, long time ago. It had happened years ago.
The drifter shook his head. “East-west corridor. The only thing that moves north-south goes down to New Orleans. That where you want to go?” One blue eye hard on Sol, who struggled to keep himself calm. “Yeah. I didn’t think so.” With a smooth motion, as though they weren’t going a million miles an hour, DJ stretched his hands out, precariously balancing, legs swinging out into the open spaces between steel and grassland. “We’re going east. Chicago first, then Detroit if you’re lucky. From there, Toronto. But your mom, she’s up in Nouveau-Brunswick, eh? My stomping grounds. We still have a way to go.” DJ eyed him, then stared out at the prairie. “You should eat.”
Sol stayed silent, one hand on the dog, trying to stay inside his skin, inside his skull. He sensed danger, but remotely, like he was reading about it happening elsewhere, to someone else. “Am I dead?” he asked suddenly. As he said it, he heard his own voice deepen, crack, emerge from youth into realization.
Lean, drugged up, hungry—all these bodily concerns changed as the sun lit the darkest corners of his haze, coming in obliquely as the train took a slow curve, engine noise changing, coming through some outpost on the prairie. A discordant clang of warning: here comes the train. The train responded with a lo
on’s mating call: two longs, a short and a long—lookout, here I come! Sol’s hand clutched the frame of the open door and he looked at his knuckles, bruised, and had to lower his arm because his side rippled with sudden and ghastly pain. He leaned back from the open door, hip throbbing, shoulder screwed, scooted back a foot or so, reeling from sudden vertigo.
“You’re not dead, my friend, not yet,” DJ answered, but it wasn’t DJ, it wasn’t human at all. It wore a DJ suit, maybe Sol himself had clad the thing in such attire looking for answers. Hard to know, here.
“You killed my father,” he said, and the thing laughed, liquid, slow, full of seaweed and salt.
“That wasn’t me.” Sunlight hit it, and it threw no shadow. Slowly, it started to shift, darken, hair became black, hematite eyes. “Wish it was, I always hated Aurèle. You still have a way to go, I said, before you get to me.” It chuckled. “Et toi, bougre? You still have to find your M’man.”
Sol stared at the thing that wasn’t DJ for a long moment, and it smiled crookedly, head dropped to an unnatural angle, skin smooth and beluga white before blackening as though it was burning in front of him, no flame, only smooth flesh like polished coal and raven-blue hair, clothed in ash. Then not a man at all, something else dark and armored, eyes glittering like embers in an inferno, calm, deadly.
Sol blinked, too shocked to be scared. The dog had crawled under his jacket and was shivering. Les trois hommes noirs, he thought, in this dreaming between-place. There’s three of them. And that other one, it couldn’t hurt me. This one, here, this one, it could draw blood if it wanted to, it could rip him apart.
The train had slowed considerably as it came through the crossing, which was the only reason he did it, could do it. With the silence of a bitten-back curse, Sol swung out of the moving car as it chugged past the empty grain depot, slowslowslow the train called to the residents, and the dog flew from him, a blur and a whine. Sol dropped to the ground, a ball of rolling pain, over before he’d even properly registered he was going to do it.
He spent a long time staring at the sky before trying to move, hearing the train fade into the sunlight, no sound of a devil following him, no scurry of gravel or hiss of clogged lungs. No sign of the dog. The day was still sunny, still some memory of summer, some town past Omaha, a long way from Denver, a long way from Baz, who would be wondering where Sol had gone, or happy that Sol wasn’t there berating him for not having done his homework. Non, il n’y est pas, Baz, he’s not there doing homework. He’s with Lutie, wondering where the hell I am. Bearded chin and cheeks, hair still short from Robbie’s last buzz cut, body not as whip thin, grown into its bones, padded with muscle, flawed with injury. A million miles from anything he recognized as home.
Where the hell am I? he asked again, but under his breath, to the wind. He’d made this trip when he was seventeen years old. This was memory, not fabrication. Back in the broken Nebraska barn, by the side of the frozen Platte River, a ghost had been killing him, he’d been dying. And then…then, but recollection was slippery, the memory moving, almost unable to be seen. Somehow, Lutie had gotten rid of Lewis’s ghost, he’d felt it, a wave, all wrong, nothing like what he’d tried to teach her, and he’d been caught up in it. And now he was here, in a remembered landscape on a remembered trip.
C’est moi, he thought. This is me, back here. Lutie didn’t make me a proper deadroad. The devil had said that he wasn’t dead, not yet. In between. Cold came over him. That devil’s full of crap; Lewis must have killed me. I’m one of those guys who just won’t go when their time’s up.
Last time he’d been here, all those years ago, a limit had been reached, a bare toe dipped into a pool too cold. I was so out of it that first leg, it’s a wonder I didn’t get hit by a train or beaten by a bull. Denver to Omaha, high as a kite, then changed to a CN car heading out of Omaha, the company name—Canadian National—enough for him, like it would take him directly to her. To Maman.
I turned back. After Omaha, I turned back.
Sol remembered. The drugs had eventually worn off. He’d had no food, no money. The task—find one woman in the second-largest country on the planet—had slowly revealed itself for what it was: impossible. Despite his many absences and run-ins with the cops and the school psychologist, he’d been an exceptional student, able, resourceful; he’d been an even better apprentice to le traiteur. And it had been easier to catch a train back to Denver, to shoulder the responsibility of raising a wild teenaged brother, to being a man among wastrels and criminals, than to find his mother. Truth, then: easier to do all these things than to face her, after what she’d done. After what she’d left behind when she’d gone away.
Shield, and block, and parry: She kills herself, soon. Couple of weeks. I still could make it, if I just keep going. Present tense, past tense. I could have stopped it, then. I could have stopped her, changed everything.
But not now.
Sol lay on his back, staring at sky, indeterminate time, blue and mid-temperature, unknown month. I made it this far that October. This is as much rope as I took. After the worst of the pain had subsided, he stood shakily, glad that the effects of the drugs had moved off him, had receded into memory, into the memory of that day. Only his present set of bangs and bruises impeded him, that and memory, which was a different sort of impairment.
He placed his hand on the ground, cold, dusty, grit and pebbles and thin strands of grass, trying to find a connection in the bones of the earth. He’d wanted none of it at seventeen, no connections whatsoever. He’d wanted out. I left them all behind. But now…now… He bowed his head, realizing what he’d lost, then and now. Discovered that what he’d pushed away still resided deep within.
It’s all I ever wanted. Sol’s head jerked up, eyes burning, sore, feeling nothing against his fingers. Aching. His need was a weight, deep inside and he’d carried it for years, his whole life maybe, longer than he could remember.
NINETEEN
COMING THROUGH
She had screwed up again.
This time, she cried in frustration, her hands balled at her side, thin keen sound like a garrote, strangling her. The noise escaped her throat and she didn’t recognize it, had never made such a sound before, had never been as scared perhaps, as full of self-loathing.
She was alone by the river bank, which was the problem. One minute, Baz had been there, singing so as to break your heart, and she’d felt it, she’d felt her heart break. The next, that damned white light, so fast and her too far away to cover him—as though that would have helped—and the angel had found Baz. Found him, taken him, and now she was alone, not even the devil hiding in the roots of the dead tree. Not quite alone, though: there were at least five ghosts, no six, and they milled about as though they were starstruck by the promise of a celebrity on the red carpet.
Angry, Lutie walked toward one, open, connected, and the ghost seemed to see her coming. It turned, terror in its eyes, blank only a moment before, and fled. She’d seen this before, approached ghosts with anger, and they would leave, maybe thought she was going to shred them to pieces. Maybe I am. Maybe I will.
It was cold enough to freeze the tears on her face, and so she swiped at them, but more came. The ghosts disappeared in her vision’s swim, and she wiped again, wiped until no more came. The ghosts, now down to three, hung well away from her, but they didn’t leave. Fine, that’s fine.
“Baz?” but it came out small, pathetic. I’m not going to cry again. She straightened her shoulders, looked around to be sure of the number. When Sol declared his intentions to ghosts, when he crouched down and opened a road for them, the ghosts came at him. It was like hitting a wasp’s nest with a stick. She didn’t care. Maybe she deserved this. Far away, she heard a bleat of train, and she kept an eye on the track.
The nearest ghost, just on the other side of Lutie’s Toyota, was that of a woman, shaggy haired, looked like an inmate escaped from the asylum. Lutie stared dispassionately, maybe twenty feet and the car between them. The ghost�
��s hair was matted, eyes downcast, mouth slack. It wore a loose white robe, dried blood on its wrists. A suicide, Lutie thought. Goddamn suicide nut-jobs.
“Okay, sweetheart,” she whispered under her breath, her anger not surprising her, it was so constant, but the sheer depth of her reservoir was astonishing. Every hurt catalogued, saved here, hoarded like gold, like injury and anger were currency, could make an over-the-counter purchase. The ghost blinked, walked quietly around the car, one hand stretched out as though touching the heads of the winter grass, nodding in the wind. Its feet were bare, and Lutie shuddered.
They don’t feel the cold.
Maman had said that one winter, the one before she died. They’d been in New Brunswick by then, living in a back room let to them by a man with awful breath and a dog that humped Lutie whenever she wasn’t vigilant. The place had smelled of rotting newspapers in the fall, and kerosene in winter. Mireille hadn’t spent much time there, Lutie remembered. Instead, like this ghost, she had circled the local churches slowly, looking at their entrances, looking for a way in, a way out. Maman had held her hand like that sometimes, feeling for that which wasn’t there. She cried in her sleep, but never when awake.
T-Lu, you show ’em. You show ’em who’s boss. They’re scared, that’s all they are, big scaredy cats. All they want is someone to protect them, and they’ll do whatever you want.
Pourquoi, M’man? Pourquoi ils ont peur?
Because they don’t know what happens next, and everyone wants a mother.
It was quiet on the prairie, just the low vibration of a train miles away, coming closer, but not too quickly. Lutie didn’t want to bind this ghost. She’d had enough of madwomen. They weren’t strong. They were needy, sucked you dry. Lutie had had enough of that to last a lifetime. Unlike Sol, she didn’t care where this ghost went, had no desire to put anything to rest. It’s not my damn business.
Deadroads Page 34