Yesterday's Kiss

by Fall, Carly

  She had read few books about the history of Bisbee and Tombstone not too long ago, and the pull to visit both places had been strong, so she’d convinced Nichole it was a good idea to book the trip. As she drove through Tombstone, she passed Arlene’s Trading Company and the Visitor’s Center. Many of the buildings looked like they were the original structures from the 1800s, and she felt like she was on the set of a cowboy movie. She drove by the O.K. Corral and saw the sign for Wyatt Earp’s grave, although she knew for a fact Wyatt was buried in a Jewish cemetery in California. She would definitely have to check out that discrepancy.

  The O.K. Corral was home to one of the biggest gunfights in history. It involved Wild West legends Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. In the span of thirty seconds, three people were killed, many more injured, and the only one left standing unscathed was Wyatt Earp. Much to his chagrin, he became famous for the gunfight, despite his very colorful life in which he held many different occupations all over the United States such as buffalo hunter, saloon owner, pimp, miner, bouncer, and barber.

  She also wanted to visit Boothill Graveyard. From what she had read, it was an education in itself on how people lived and died in the 1880s. People had been shot, stabbed, stoned by Native Americans, hung . . . she couldn’t wait to walk through and examine the headstones.

  A shiver went up Maggie’s spine as she left Tombstone. There was more to do in Bisbee, so she would stop in Tombstone on her way back.

  A half an hour later, she pulled into Bisbee, excitement buzzing within her. Founded in 1880 as a mining camp, it looked as though a lot of the structures and the layout of the town were exactly as it had been all those years ago, just like in Tombstone. Large brick building housed modern-day bars, tattoo parlors, hotels, and restaurants. The narrow streets had been built before the invention of cars, and maneuvering through them was tricky. As she gazed up the hillsides peppered with houses and buildings, it seemed that Bisbee had started in a valley in the Mule Mountains and built its way up.

  She couldn’t wait to explore.

  Following the very narrow Ok Street up the hillside, she found the Eldorado Suites Hotel. The cream- and red-colored building loomed three stories above her nestled into the hillside, and she was greeted warmly when she checked in at the small office. As she talked with the clerk on the “must-sees” of the town, a feeling of discomfort niggled at her. Something was off, but as she headed to her room, she tried to shake the sensation.

  She lugged her suitcase up the stairs as they creaked under her weight. She entered the two-bedroom suite and placed her suitcase by the door. The walls were stark white, and the hardwood floors gleamed under the bright lights. The small kitchen had recently been renovated, with white cabinets, appliances, and countertops, as did the bathroom. There was a small, comfortable living room with a red couch, two brown end chairs, and a television. To get the full experience of living in the past, Maggie decided she would leave the TV off. Then she laughed out loud at the thought. If she wanted to experience what life was like in the town’s boom-time, she shouldn’t use electricity or running water either. She didn’t see that happening. However, she did plan to keep herself busy for the next three days so she wouldn’t have time for television.

  As she leisurely walked through the suite, she marveled at the history of the old building. Built in 1914, it used to be an apartment house. It wasn’t until 1982 that the new owners made it into a hotel, but thankfully they kept much of the same architecture. Maggie strolled through the spacious suite and smiled when she saw the antique claw foot tub in the bathroom. She wondered exactly how many people had bathed in it.

  “I wish these walls could talk,” she whispered, imagining the stories they would tell of the old miners who used to reside in the apartments. As she looked out the window, she pictured them lumbering up the hill after a long day, their limbs sore from the backbreaking work, their faces and clothing covered in dirt. She envisioned a miner sitting at a small table in the candle-lit kitchen area dipping his hands in a bowl of water and splashing it on his face while his wife sat across from him mending one of his shirts.

  Maggie shook her head. It had been a much different time in the early 1900s. No cars, electricity, iPhones, or computers. Hell, they didn’t even have running water.

  Moving into the bedroom, she pulled back the bedspread and checked the sheets. She was very peculiar about how her bed was made. As she moved around the mattress, she pulled the top sheet and shoved it under the mattress, ensuring that the sheet would be a tight fit around her feet when slid into bed that night. This silly sheet fixation had been with her as long as she could remember, and she always made her own bed this way. It gave her a peace of mind. Even as a little girl growing up in Flagstaff, Arizona, she remembered liking her bed made a certain way. Her mother had never understood it, shaking her head as she watched Maggie remake the bed that had just been made.

  It used to drive Jerry crazy, as he liked to sleep with all the blankets and sheets loose. Maggie hoped his new girlfriend liked the bed the same way he did. It had always been a bone of contention in their marriage, even before they started having problems.

  She had to stop thinking about him. Jerry was her past. She was here to celebrate that fact by exploring history, something she loved to do.

  Maggie had always been a history buff. At age ten, she watched a show on ancient Egypt and was hooked. After that, she read every history book she could get her hands on, but her main passion was for Wild West history. There was just something about that time—families traveling out west for a new start, men mining for gold, hoping to strike it rich—that intrigued her. She had considered going back to school to further her degree so she could do something with her love of history, but never had. Maybe now she would think about it again. She smiled. Her future was wide open.

  Finally satisfied with the sheets, Maggie climbed onto the bed and pulled out her laptop. After responding to a few e-mails and sending one to Nichole letting her know she had arrived safe and sound, Maggie pulled up her list of everything she wanted to see in the next forty-eight hours. She planned to fully immerse herself in the town and to experience as much as she could.

  She quickly decided that her first stop would be the Copper Queen Mine tour. Checking her watch, she saw that a tour would start in a half-hour.

  In the height of its mining history, Bisbee proved to be one of the most lucrative mining sites in the United States. The ground was rich with copper, silver, lead, and zinc, and the small town boasted a population of over twenty thousand. As Maggie drove the short distance to the mine, she wondered how and where all those people lived. The town must have been so crowded. She thought of big cities, such as New York City, where everyone literally lived on top of each other. In Bisbee, the buildings were up the hillside, the mining town version of apartment buildings. To this day, people lived in those houses up the mountainside that could not be accessed by car. They needed to take steep stairwells up to their homes, and Maggie cringed thinking about what a pain bringing home groceries must be.

  She signed up for the mining tour and walked around the old, wooden building, looking at the pictures of miners from the past. None of them smiled. It was as if life had beaten the happiness out of them, or hardened them, and she wondered if they ever enjoyed any of their time on Earth. Maybe when they went home to their families they found joy and comfort and something to grin about.

  When the staff called for everyone to line up for the tour, she chatted with some fellow tourists while they waited for the employees to fit them all with a thick, yellow plastic coat, a hand-held mining light, and a green hardhat before leading them outside. A train, similar to one a child would ride at a fair or in a park, was lined up before them, except it didn’t have normal seats. A bench ran down the middle, and her excitement grew as they boarded the train that would take the twenty-three tourists fifteen hundred feet into the mountain.

  As the train entered the mouth of the mountain, Maggie felt a
blast of cool air and darkness engulfed them. She had read that the temperature in the mine was always a steady forty-seven degrees, and she was happy she had heeded the warning and wore a sweatshirt. She shined her hand-held mining light around; the long, dark tunnel ahead looked ominous and foreboding. A shiver traveled up her spine, and that feeling of uneasiness returned.

  The train stopped. The tour guide, Bill, asked if everyone was feeling okay in the confined space, and if anyone felt uncomfortable, they needed to leave now. No one budged. Claustrophobia was not a problem with this group.

  A half hour later, she stood deep within the mine, immersed in Bill’s stories. He had worked in this very mine in the sixties. Suddenly, movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and she glanced over at a darkened area. A miner emerged from the darkness, walking toward them. He was average height, yet muscular. He wore dark pants, a dark jacket, and a hardhat with a lamp. His boots clomped on the dirt floor as he approached. Maggie smiled at him, thinking that the tour company went above and beyond bringing in “extras” to play the part of old miners. She turned back toward Bill, listening as he explained how they used dynamite in the mine and the safety precautions that were eventually put in place.

  As the group headed back to the train, Maggie hung back for a moment to study the rock walls. She ran her finger over the white part of the rock called silica, and imagined a miner breathing in the dust when it was jackhammered from its resting place. Bill had called it the Widow Maker. The dust would cake up in the miners’ lungs and kill them.

  “Margaret?”

  She jumped and stepped back, putting a hand over her heart. The miner she had seen earlier stood before her, and now that he was closer, a strong feeling of recognition overcame her. She tried to remember where she knew him from, but the information eluded her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”

  The man smiled, his teeth bright against his dirt-stained skin. She guessed his age at twenty-five or so as he took off his hat and ran his fingers through a mop of chin-length black hair. His light blue eyes twinkled as he smiled. “It’s me, Joseph. I’m shocked that you’re here. I knew you’d come back, Margaret.”

  Why was he calling her Margaret? The last time someone called her by her given name she had been in line waiting to be summoned by the worker at the DMV.

  A cauldron of emotions swept through Maggie, and she took another step away from him. Her heart raced as she tried to put a name on the feelings: uncertainty, excitement, relief, fear, and . . . something else she couldn’t pinpoint. For the life of her, she couldn’t place where she knew this man. However, it was obvious he was very pleased and seemed excited to see her.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s just not coming to me. Where have we met?” she asked.

  “Margaret, I’m your husband, Joseph. Please try to remember,” he said.

  Her husband? What he said resonated as truth deep within Maggie, and she felt the urge to run, but something held her there, standing in front the miner. She shook her head. Obviously, this man . . . Joseph . . . had her confused with someone else.

  “I wasn’t sure it was you until you smiled at me,” he said, “but then I knew. Only you could smile at me like that and light a fire within my heart.”

  Maggie swallowed, trying to wet her throat so she could set this guy straight.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for so long, Margaret. I’m so happy to see you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but I think you have me mistaken for someone else.”

  He shook his head, smiling again. “No, I’m certain.”

  “Miss?” Bill said. “We need to get moving.”

  Maggie turned to Bill then back to Joseph. “I need to go,” she said quietly. “I hope you find this Margaret you’re looking for.”

  She spun around, tripped over a rock, and stumbled, almost running into Bill, who gave her an odd look. Her heart still beat at a frantic pace, her breath came in short spurts, and sweat had broken out on her brow despite the chilly temperature. The feeling that she did indeed know the man was overwhelming, but where in the world would she have met a guy from Bisbee? She’d never been in the town before. Maybe he came into the library in Phoenix? And what was that craziness of him calling her his wife?

  “Don’t speak out loud to me with others around,” Joseph said, falling in step with her. “And please, watch your step. It’s dangerous in here.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “What did you say?” Bill asked, turning to her.

  “He can’t hear me,” Joseph said.

  “Did you say something, miss?” Bill inquired.

  “What do you mean?” Maggie asked.

  “He can’t hear what I’m saying to you, Margaret.”

  “I asked you if you said something,” Bill asked and stopped. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Maggie looked from Bill to Joseph, the three of them standing together in a small triangle. Joseph looked as real as Bill—both flesh and bone, and both breathing. They stood about the same height, yet Joseph was somewhere in his twenties while the Bill was in his sixties or seventies. Bill didn’t acknowledge Joseph’s presence.

  “Why?” Maggie asked, fear clawing at her gut.

  “Well, you’re acting a little strange,” Bill said.

  “He can’t hear me. He can’t see me. I’m dead, Margaret,” Joseph said.

  With that, Joseph walked through Bill, and Maggie’s knees went weak. As her head spun, she reached out for the rock wall and realized she was going to faint. “No,” she croaked, “I’m not okay.”

  Chapter 4

  Maggie came to a few minutes later, lying in a puddle of mud, surrounded by the people from her tour. Twenty-three sets of eyes were on her, and her cheeks warmed with embarrassment.

  Shivering, she tried to sit up, but Bill wouldn’t let her. He said they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, and then the whole group would get on the train and take her out of the mine.

  “You don’t have to stop the whole tour just for me. I’m fine,” she said, meeting the gaze of everyone hovering over her. “Please, let me at least get out of the mud.”

  Bill hesitated, then held out his hand. “It’s protocol, miss. I can’t leave these folks in here while I escort you out, and we’re in too deep for another guide to come and get you. As far as having you sit up, I suppose that would be okay as long as you’re sure you’re up to it.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. She took his hand and he helped her to her feet. The hum of voices echoed all around her, all talking about her. She thought about the events that had landed her in the mud. Had she really just seen a ghost? She searched for Joseph, but didn’t see him.

  Good God, was she losing her mind? Was she seeing things? She felt fine until they got into the mine. Maybe there was some sort of oxygen-level problem in here that caused her to hallucinate? She looked around, but everyone seemed to be lucid and acting normal, so that couldn’t be it.

  Finally, she saw him. He stood in the back of tour group, leaning against the rock wall. He gave her a wave and a half-smile that caused her heart to flutter. Then he put his finger to her lips as if to remind her to keep quiet. Glancing at the crowd around her, she suddenly felt claustrophobic. “I just need some space,” she said to everyone.

  “Of course, honey,” an elderly woman said. “Give the girl some room.”

  People backed up, and Maggie took a deep breath and walked toward Joseph.

  Hesitantly, she stood next to him and leaned against the wall. She glanced over at the tour group. They watched her, but kept their distance. She figured she had put about fifteen feet of space between herself and the tour group. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Who are you? Is this some sort of joke they play on the tourists?”

  Joseph threw his head back and laughed, a deep sound she recognized from long ago that made her bones warm, and she glanced over at the group. There was no reaction to the sound. She
, however, couldn’t help but smile, certain she was losing her mind. What was going on with her sanity? When had it checked-out?

  “No, Margaret, but that would be a good one. You should recommend that to the people who are now running the mine. However, in your case, no one else can see or hear me. Only you.”

  She looked up at him, and he smiled at her with such . . . love. It was disarming. His dark hair hung to his collar, and small crinkles sat at the corners of his blue eyes glittering under the low lights of the mine. The dirt that had been on his face before was gone, and she noticed a small dimple in his right cheek. She inhaled deeply and smelled fresh soap.

  There were so many things disconcerting about this situation. First and foremost, her imagination had somehow conjured up this man that no one else could see, a man she found terribly sexy. His hair, his eyes, his scent—everything about him appealed to her.

  Second, she was trying to have a conversation with him without letting on to the others that she was talking to anyone. Third, she had passed out in front of twenty-three people in a puddle of mud, and her main concern was this figment of her imagination named Joseph. Under normal circumstances, she would be suffering from an extreme case of embarrassment, but she wasn’t. She didn’t care mud matted her hair, or that her jeans were soaked through to her butt. The fact she was shivering didn’t concern her, and neither did any of the stares or whispers she was receiving from her fellow tourists. All that mattered was Joseph, and trying to understand what she was feeling, and the fact that she was seeing him.

  “Okay, so let’s just say you are dead,” she whispered. A thrill went through her as she said the words. What if she was really talking to a ghost? It was like a history book coming to life. She had always believed in ghosts, but never had any sort of paranormal experience.

  “I am dead,” he said, still grinning.

  “Uh-huh,” she mumbled. “Let’s go with that. So why am I the only one who can see you?”