Ghost

by Louise Welsh

  Everything changed when the Union Pacific Railroad pushed through, killing off the stagecoach business. Most of the stage station structures disappeared, carted away bodily by ranchers needing outbuildings. Bill and Mizpah Fur were forced to abandon the Sandy Skull station. After tearful farewells to the Sagebrush Kid they moved to Montana, adopted orphan cowboys and ran a boardinghouse.

  *

  The decades passed and the Sagebrush Kid continued to grow, though slowly. The old stage road filled in with drift sand and greasewood. A generation later a section of the coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway rolled past. An occasional motorist, mistaking the Sagebrush Kid for a distant shade tree, sometimes approached, swinging a picnic basket. Eventually an interstate highway swallowed the old road and truckers used the towering Sagebrush Kid in the distance as a marker to tell them they were halfway across the state. Although its foliage remained luxuriant and its size enormous, the Kid seemed to stop growing during the interstate era.

  Mineral booms and busts surged through Wyoming without affecting the extraordinary shrub in its remote location of difficult access until BelAmerCan Energy, a multinational methane extraction company, found promising indications of gas in the area, applied for and got permits and began drilling. The promise was realized. They were above a vast deposit of coal gas. Workers from out of state rushed to the bonanza. A pipeline had to go in and more workers came. The housing shortage forced men to sleep four to a bed in shifts at the dingy motels forty miles north.

  To ease the housing difficulties, the company built a man-camp out in the sagebrush. The entrance road ran close to the Sagebrush Kid. Despite the Kid’s size, because it was just a sagebrush, it went unnoticed. There were millions of sagebrush plants – some large, some small. Beside it was a convenient pullout. The man-camp was a large gaunt building that seemed to erupt from the sand. The cubicles and communal shower rooms, stairs, the beds, the few doors were metal. A spartan kitchen staffed by Mrs. Quirt, the elderly wife of a retired rancher, specialized in bacon, fried eggs, boiled potatoes, store-bought bread and jam and occasionally a stewed chicken. The boss believed the dreary sagebrush steppe and the monotonous diet were responsible for wholesale worker desertion. The head office let him hire a new cook, an ex-driller with a meth habit whose cuisine revolved around canned beans and pickles.

  After three weeks Mrs. Quirt was reinstated, presented with a cookbook and a request to try something new. It was a disastrous order. She lit on complex recipes for boeuf bourguignonne, parsnip gnocchi, bananas stuffed with shallots, kale meatballs with veal ice cream. When the necessary ingredients were lacking she did what she had always done on the ranch – substituted what was on hand, as bacon, jam, eggs. After a strange repast featuring canned clams, strawberry Jell-O and stale bread, many men went outside to heave it up in the sage. Not all of them came back and it was generally believed they had hiked forty miles to the hot-bed motel town.

  The head office, seeing production, income and profits slump because they could not keep workers on, hired a cook who had worked for an Italian restaurant. The food improved dramatically, but there was still an exodus. The cook ordered exotic ingredients that were delivered by a huge Speedy Food truck. After the driver delivered the cases of sauce and mushrooms, he parked in the shade of the big sagebrush to eat his noontime bologna sandwich, read a chapter of Ambush on the Pecos Trail and take a short nap. Three drillers coming in from the day shift noticed the truck idling in the shade. They noticed it again the next morning on the way to the rig. A refrigerator truck, it was still running. A call came three days later from the company asking if their driver had been there. The news that the truck was still in the sagebrush brought state troopers. After noticing spots of blood on the seat and signs of a struggle (a dusty boot print on the inside of the windshield), they began stringing crime-scene tape around the truck and the sagebrush.

  “Kellogg, get done with the tape and get out here,” called a sergeant to the laggard trooper behind the sagebrush. The thick branches and foliage hid him from view and the tape trailed limply on the ground. Kellogg did not answer. The sergeant walked around to the back of the sagebrush. There was no one there.

  “Goddamn it, Kellogg, quit horsin around.” He ran to the front of the truck, bent and looked beneath it. He straightened, shaded his eyes and squinted into the shimmering heat. The other two troopers, Bridle and Gloat, stood slack-jawed near their patrol car.

  “You see where Kellogg went?”

  “Maybe back up to the man-camp? Make a phone call or whatever?”

  But Kellogg was not at the man-camp, had not been there.

  “Where the hell did he go? Kellogg!!!”

  Again they all searched the area around the truck, working out farther into the sage, then back toward the truck again. Once more Bridle checked beneath the truck, and this time he saw something lying against the back inner tire. He pulled it out.

  “Sergeant Sparkler, I found this.” He held out a tiny scrap of torn fabric that perfectly matched his own brown uniform. “I didn’t see it before because it’s the same color as the dirt.” Something brushed the back of his neck and he jumped, slapping it away.

  “Damn big sagebrush,” he said, looking at it. Deep in the branches he saw a tiny gleam and the letters “OGG.”

  “Jim, his nameplate’s in there!” Sparkler and Gloat came in close, peering into the shadowy interior of the gnarled sagebrush giant. Sergeant Sparkler reached for the metal name tag.

  *

  The botanist sprayed insect repellent on his ears, neck and hair. The little black mosquitoes fountained up as he walked toward the tall sagebrush in the distance. It looked as large as a tree and towered over the ocean of lesser sage. Beyond it the abandoned man-camp shimmered in the heat, its window frames warped and crooked. His heart rate increased. Years before he had scoffed at the efforts of botanical explorers searching for the tallest coast redwood, or the tallest tree in the New Guinea jungle, but at the same time he began looking at sagebrush with the idea of privately tagging the tallest. He had measured some huge specimens of basin big sagebrush near the Killpecker dunes and recorded their heights in the same kind of little black notebook used by Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin. The tallest reached seven feet six inches. The monster before him certainly beat that by at least a foot.

  As he came closer he saw that the ground around it was clear of other plants. He had only a six-foot folding rule in his backpack, and as he held it up against the huge plant it extended less than half its height. He marked the six-foot level with his eye. He had to move in close to get the next measurement.

  “I’m guessing thirteen feet,” he said to the folding rule, placing one hand on a muscular and strangely warm branch.

  *

  The Sagebrush Kid stands out there still. There are no gas pads, no compression stations near it. No road leads to it. Birds do not sit on its branches. The man-camp, like the old stage station, has disappeared. At sunset the great sagebrush holds its arms up against the red sky. Anyone looking in the right direction can see it.

  THE WHITE COT

  Jackie…

  Jackie Kay (b.1961) is a poet, playwright, novelist and short story writer. She was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. Kay was adopted at birth and the experience of growing up in a white family inspired her first poetry collection, The Adoption Papers (1991). Her work often explores themes of race, identity and sexuality. Jackie Kay lives in Manchester and is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. In 2006, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

  It is seldom that Sam and I get away. Sam works long hours and is reluctant to take time off. This time, I think it was obvious I needed a break. I’d been feeling a little down, crying at the slightest thing, and had said often, I think I’m going through the change. I hadn’t actually stopped my monthlies, but they were becoming very sporadic.

  We arrived at the house around eight in the evening. There was stil
l light in the sky, a brooding light expecting rain. We drove down a long tree-lined driveway to find our cottage at the bottom on the left. Sam unlocked the front door into a large kitchen. At first the house was a disappointment; it struck us as soulless. “Don’t worry,” Sam said. “As soon as we’ve unpacked our things and hung them up, and got our books out, it will feel like ours.” I hoped so. Rented houses often seemed as if they were never truly inhabited. You were too aware of the people who had cleared away all signs of themselves, as if they had never been here at all. There was a feeling of people vanishing that hung in the grotesque decor of the place. Each room was decorated with such purpose that it all felt unreal. I couldn’t imagine the mind of the person who had gone from innocent room to innocent room creating such strangeness.

  “Which room shall we pick for our bedroom?” Sam shouted from the top of the stairs. “Come here and help me choose?” I climbed the stairs slowly, heavily. Why did I think that coming away would make things better? There was a bedroom with pink and yellow wallpaper with a very strong geometric design. “That wallpaper would drive me mad,” I said to Sam. “Look, the view from this window is lovely,” Sam said. I looked out; ahead of me was a path, a path that somebody had cut through the long, long grass. The wild grass was full of buttercups and cow parsley and tiny purple flowers: the path cut stretched into the distance and curved towards the east. I could imagine myself walking down it, away into the distance and disappearing off the face of the earth. “No, not this room,” I said to Sam. “You choose then, Dionne. I don’t mind which room we have. But don’t take all day. It’s late.”

  The walls of the bedroom downstairs were painted a deep red. “Very sexy!” Sam said, walking into the room. In the corner of the room was an empty cot, an old-fashioned one that had a lace awning over the top like a sun roof. The paint on the bars was scratched a little. The curtains were tied at the sides; it was like a mini-four-poster bed. Inside, there were two soft blankets neatly folded into squares. One was baby blue with a sandy coloured teddy bear stitched in relief. One was pink with a fat white rabbit. There was a tiny white pillow, a white towelling fitted sheet on the mattress and a minute lacy duvet. In the opposite corner of the room was a rocking horse. “Odd combination,” Sam said. “We could move the horse out into the kitchen, but we couldn’t move the cot.”

  “Well, it’s this one or the one upstairs,” Sam said and I nodded. I felt like I couldn’t speak. Sam went out to the car and brought in our case. “Why don’t you put your feet up and I’ll unpack for both of us?” I went into the living room, painted bright yellow and with table lamps covered with feathers. I couldn’t shift the uneasy feeling. I sat down on the armchair, cream with red and grey flowers, and then stood up again. I went into the kitchen: yellow painted cupboards, pale blue painted Welsh dresser, black and white floor, navy blue and red small tiles. I stood staring, then put the kettle on. It sounded unnaturally loud. It seemed to go on and on and on, bubbling away furiously before boiling. I could see the water through a window in the kettle splattering against it like rain. I made us both a cup of tea and returned to the living room and sat down. Sam came through and laughed at the expression on my face. “Don’t look so miserable, you’re on holiday! Shall we have a leaf through these leaflets and plan our days?” “Let’s leave it until tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s not make plans.”

  That night I got into the side of the bed near the window. Sam was already in bed on the other side, book in hand. No matter which house we sleep in, we always choose the same side of the bed; Sam has the left and I have the right. “You were ages,” Sam said, putting the book down, and curling into me, turning off the bedside lamp. I lay facing out. I lay for the longest time with my eyes open and at some point in the night I felt as if someone had entered the room and gently closed my eyes, tiny fingers, pushing down the lids, pulling the covers over me. I woke up, disorientated with a dull ache in my abdomen. The space next to me was empty. I looked at my phone. It was already ten o’clock. I didn’t feel as if I’d been asleep, I felt as if I’d tossed and turned the whole night long, throwing the covers off, putting them back on. At one point in the night, I’d sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat, and full of dread.

  Sam had the boiled eggs on; the coffee that we’d brought ourselves, ground with our own grinder, was already bubbling away in our coffeepot. The smell of fresh ground beans was in the air. The half-cut grapefruits were on the table, glasses of orange juice and a jar of our favourite vintage marmalade. There was even warmed milk in the microwave and it was sitting in a jug, painted with cherries and green apples. “Once you’ve had your breakfast, you’ll feel better. There’s nothing like boiling an egg in a place to make it feel your own.” Sam had set the timer on the BlackBerry to get the eggs done to perfection. Sam liked eggs very runny and I liked mine just as they were about to go hard. “It’s one thing we are all allowed to be fussy about, eggs,” Sam was often saying. “That and how we like our tea; any other fussiness is just neurotic.” The first time this made me laugh, but when it kept being repeated, I wondered what it was really about. Did Sam think I was over-fussy, neurotic?

  I sat down at the table and tapped on the shell of my brown egg. I picked the pieces of shell off the top and then broke in. Sam had already been out and got a newspaper. “Want a bit of the paper?” “No, thanks,” I said. “You should take an interest in what’s going on in the world, bloody hell; what a mess they’ve made of Manchester!”

  “I’ve told you,” I said. “I can’t read any more. The words just swim in front of me.”

  “You should go and get your eyes checked out, then,” Sam said. “Often prescriptions change in middle age.” Sam’s glasses were tilted on the end of her nose. “Your glasses aren’t right for your eyes,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t be peering over them!”

  “At least I can still read,” Sam said and returned to dipping her slice of toast into her queasily runny egg. “I don’t know how you can eat your egg that runny,” I said. “Leave me and my egg alone,” she said, and shook the newspaper out to find the article she had just been reading. “Clegg is a pain in the arse; he’s duped the lot of us.” Sam sat reading the paper, eating her egg, slurping her coffee. Her thick black hair was a little tousled. She seemed quite content. She looked as if there was nothing the matter at all. I managed to finish my egg and spread some marmalade on a slice of toast and stare into space for quite some time before Sam said, “Do you want to go for a walk?”

  She took my arm firmly and we went out through the pale blue wooden door at the bottom of the garden. We crossed the narrow country road and climbed a wall that had two wooden steps jutting out of it. Then we walked the path that we could see from the bedroom window. At one point we got to a place that we couldn’t see from the window, beyond the curve of the path, and I felt like we were suddenly free. “It’s as if that house has eyes,” I said to Sam, “and now that we are out of its sight-line, I feel suddenly better! Let’s stay away. Let’s not go back there.” “You are joking, aren’t you?” Sam said. “You get more and more bonkers every day. I didn’t have all this with the menopause you know. I never even noticed it.”

  “Well, you were one of the lucky ones,” I said. “You got away with it. I feel as if I’ve been stolen and some other woman has been put in my place. I just feel so anxious all the time, like I’m on the edge of something.” “You’ll be fine,” she said as I smiled grimly. “Well, try and enjoy yourself, why don’t you?” Sam said, irritated. “I mean I’ve taken all this time off. I’ve booked us a holiday house…”

  “It’s not work that you’re missing,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Sam said.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” I said.

  “Oh, here we go! I give up. If you want to see things that are not there, that is your choice,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll give you top marks for imagination.”

  She walked ahead on the path, big angry s
trides. I just stood on the spot staring after her, until she came back for me. I looped my arm through her arm. “I’m sorry,” I said, close to tears. “You seem so distant, half the time. I just keep thinking there is someone, even though of course I know there isn’t.”

  “You like saying it though, don’t you? You like bringing it up. It’s not funny any more, that one.”

  “I know,” I said, “So – what you’re saying is there isn’t anyone else?” I was half-joking, but Sam took me seriously.

  “No, there isn’t anyone else,” she said, and patted my arm. She stopped on the path and turned round and hugged me and kissed my lips, softly. “I just wish I’d had a baby,” I blurted out. Sam pulled back. “What?” Sam said. “Where did that come from?”

  “I can’t stop thinking what my life would have been like if I’d had my daughter. Do you remember what I wanted to call her?” Sam shook her head, sadly. “Don’t go down this path,” she said, “are you deliberately trying to ruin our holiday?”

  I wanted her to listen, that’s all I wanted. “Here I am going through this mid-life Hell, and I’ve got nothing to show for it. You knew I wanted a baby.”