“Gettin’ a handle on the moment?”
I blinked up at Olin, standing over me in the doorway, his head quirked. His fingers worked a leaf of rolling paper packed with a line of loose tobacco, deftly snugging it into a cigarette. He licked the seal closed, stuck one end in his mouth and pulled a matchbook from his shirt pocket. When the cigarette was lit, he puffed twice as he slid the matches back into place. Then he offered me his hand.
“Join me outside,” he said.
He eased me up and led me from the barn to the trestle table. As we sat, I barely noticed or cared that its benches were still soaked from the rain. Olin watched me for a long moment over his cigarette. He seemed expectant.
“Stew for supper,” he said finally. “If you can eat.”
I shook my head. I started to say something, then stopped. Words had become meaningless.
“Or,” Olin continued, “we could just sit here and talk about the weather.”
I stared at him and he gazed back, placid as ever. His lines never wavered, never shifted out of focus. It gave me encouragement.
“I thought it was me,” I said. “With the Mountain. The way it pulls at me. Almost . . . talks to me. But it isn’t me, is it?”
Olin took a drag on his cigarette, the tip flaring cherry red in the gathering dusk, mirroring pinpoints of light in his eyes. The smoke when he exhaled smelled sweet. He waited for me to continue.
“And you and Jessie—you’re not just old-fashioned, are you? I can’t explain it, but you’re . . . somehow you’re out of time and place.”
If I expected Olin to be offended, he wasn’t. Nor did he protest. Instead, he smiled indulgently.
I glanced at the western sky as the first stars sparked into place, much like the lights in the farmhouse. There was no trace of storm clouds left.
“And that thunderstorm. Deny it if you want, but . . .” I hesitated. The evening air wasn’t cool, but I was starting to shiver.
“Go on,” Olin urged.
“I think . . . I think you made it. Called it down. Whatever. And Jessie and the sisters—” I shook my head again as if to clear it. “Somehow they busted it up right over us, didn’t they? Stopped it smack in its tracks. So they could have their bee. Jessie said they always have their bee outside.”
“They surely do.”
“Rain or shine, right? Only it never rains. At least not where they are. Olin, what is this place? You have to tell me. And tell me like I’m four years old, because that’s about all I can handle right now.”
He bent his head and flicked ash off the tip of his cigarette. He scraped his thumbnail thoughtfully along his chin, as if considering how best to approach the subject. I watched him in fascination and fear, hardly daring to breathe.
“A while ago,” Olin began slowly, “we had a fella come through, said he was a rabbi. From Brooklyn, he said. And him and me, we got to talkin’. He told me about this place by the name of Olam HaEmet. A ‘Place of Truth,’ he called it. He said there comes a time when you go to this Place of Truth, and you stay put till you figure things out. Reflect on all the things you did in your life. Or maybe on all the things you should’ve done but didn’t. He said that’s where he was headed.”
I started to laugh, but it snagged in my throat. A rabbi? Olin in a tête-à-tête with a rabbi—a tallit slung over his shoulders and tefillin boxes strapped to his head? But overriding the sense of the surreal was the gist of Olin’s words. And even more, the meaning between them. I wanted him to fill in those gaps for me unbidden. At the same time, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs for him to stop. I tried to lick my lips, but my tongue was as dry as dust.
“And this place, where do you find it?” I asked.
“Not so much where,” Olin said gently, “as how.”
I was shivering so hard now my teeth began to clatter. I tried to rub the gooseflesh from my bare arms, but my fingers were icicles. The fact was, I remembered reading something about Olam HaEmet, a long time ago. Except the writer had called it the “World of Truth.” It’s a place observant Jews believe waits on the Other Side. A place for reflection.
A place for departed souls.
“No,” I whispered.
“You never know about expectations,” Olin said mildly. “Everybody’s got his own, I guess. When they first cross over.”
Cross over? What the hell . . . ?
A faint ringing started in my ears and my body felt as weightless as balsa wood.
“You’re crazy,” I said. “Or I am. This isn’t happening.”
“Give me your hands, Joanna.”
I glared back at him as if this—all this—were somehow his fault. Some cruel prank.
He said it again, this time more firmly: “Give me your hands.”
His tone was still soothing, but there was a note of command in it, too. I found myself reaching for him, my hands now shaking so violently they looked palsied. I shuddered as he took them. The infusion of warmth I felt the first time he ever touched me—that first morning at breakfast, at this very same table—was nothing compared to the jolt of heat that coursed through me now, driving out the bone-chill. The shivering began to ease.
“This can’t be.” Tears were sliding down my cheeks. “I can’t be.”
“Go ahead; cry it out if you want. Won’t make it any less so.”
“But how? I don’t know how . . .” An accident on the road? Had I hit another car or careened off the highway to escape that speeding cruiser? Another realization struck, and I pulled my hands from Olin’s to stare in horror at the house. “Oh, dear God . . . Laurel . . .”
“Now, now. It’s all right. Don’t she look all right to you?”
All right? Since we’d come here, Laurel had never looked healthier. Or seemed happier. Suddenly I thought about that night in her room when she’d asked if we were here forever. If this were our forever . . .
“Does she know?” I asked.
Olin considered for a moment. “Not exactly. She’s workin’ it out—children, they catch on when they’re ready. But she ain’t quite there yet.”
Five minutes ago, I would’ve said I wasn’t quite there yet, either. Not ready to catch on. Not ready at all. But I had been suspicious, asking questions and grasping for answers, and Olin had only been obliging me.
Now he was regarding me with sympathy, as if another shoe were about to drop.
“Joanna, when we first met, you recall what I said? That you had the look of a gal who wouldn’t be stayin’ long.”
“A short-timer. I remember.”
He nodded. “Now, that’s the thing. Near all the folks who come through, they go on eventually. But there’s some, a few—they up and turn back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It ain’t their time. They ain’t fixed in one place yet, nor the other. So they got a choice to make. To stay or go back.”
“Are you— Olin, what are you saying?”
“Near as I can tell,” he continued, “you’re here for a reason. You were in a bad way, and for a long time. Back in Wheeler.”
I ducked my head, unsure how much Olin knew, even without my telling.
“This here—” Olin glanced up and down the valley, nearly eclipsed now by the gathering dusk. “Think of this as a place to rest. To get strong and straight inside. Think of it like your own Place of Truth. To consider where you come from, and what you might do different if you go back.”
Jim’s face flashed in front of me, and I shuddered involuntarily.
“That man of yours,” Olin said knowingly. “Seems to me he was bleedin’ the life out of you for a long time before you ever made it here.”
“And he sure as hell won’t stop if he gets the chance to do it again.”
“No, he won’t. It ain’t in him to stop.”
“So why would I ev
er want to go back?”
“That ain’t for me to say.”
I leaned on the table, burying my face in my hands, anxious for the moment to be over. More than anything I wanted to look up again and find no trace of Olin or the farm or that Mountain. I wasn’t ruling out insanity, either—his or mine. I’d sidled up to it often enough over these last few years. But when you’ve finally lost it—lost it good and proper—do you even realize it? Do you know if you’ve given up, crawled inside your own head and pulled the ladder up after you? Die Gedanken sind frei, my Oma used to sing. Thoughts are free . . . The darkest dungeon is futile, for my thoughts tear all gates and walls asunder . . . For all I knew, I was still out there staggering in the desert, just as Simon had said, my broken brain cooking up this mirage . . .
And yet . . .
And yet I did know—knew marrow-deep—this was no delusion. No mirage. I knew because, with all my heart and soul, I wanted it to be. But no such luck. Not for me.
Finally I raised my head. “I don’t— Olin, I have so many questions . . .”
“You hold on to them,” he said. “Now ain’t the time for questions, and I sure ain’t the one for answers. What’s important—well, it’s best we all figure out the important things on our own. In our own way.”
Suddenly I felt wrung out, weak as an infant. “What should I do?” I asked. “I don’t know what to do.”
“First off, you go on inside and get yourself some supper. You get yourself a good night’s sleep. You wake up tomorrow and praise the day. You be mindful. And the next day, and the day after that, you get up and do it all over again. You live.”
Was that all? Eat, sleep, wake, work—in the afterlife, the same rules applied? I had no idea of the proprieties here. The physics. Were there other short-timers? Was everyone who crossed paths here a departed spirit? If not, would I know the difference? Would they? Olin and Jessie spoke of Wheeler as if they’d been there many times. As if they went there still . . .
“Olin,” I whispered, as if Jim could be within earshot. “Can my husband find us here?”
Olin looked past me for so long I thought he didn’t intend to answer. Then he did.
“That ain’t for me to say, neither.”
Little Yellow Boots
I woke on the porch, curled up like a fetus on the wicker settee. It was early morning and a dank chill hung in the air. I pushed myself up and a blanket slid off—someone must have laid it over me while I slept. I felt sluggish, as if my brain had been working overtime through the night. I rubbed at eyes that were dry and sore, trying to recall how I ended up sleeping outside.
And in a flash it came back . . . The sisters and the bee. The thunderstorm. Olin. The Place of Truth.
I swung my legs to the floor and nearly toppled an empty wine bottle sitting at my feet. It was one of Simon’s—the apple wine he supplied at Saturday suppers. I’d sneaked it from Jessie’s cupboard after they’d all gone off to bed. Then I’d slipped outside to get as snockered as circumstances would allow. I considered it a necessity. A palliative. Even an experiment. And what I discovered was that circumstances allowed snockered, sure enough. But apparently not sloppy. Or maybe for sloppy you needed two bottles.
The noises of a waking household were coming from inside. Jessie would be back in the kitchen, setting her cast-iron skillet on the stove, grinding coffee beans, sending Olin to the henhouse for eggs. I pulled the blanket back over my shoulders and stood. The planks of the porch felt cool and sure against my bare feet. I padded to the front railing, keen for any signs of the supernatural. I wasn’t sure what that might be—a melting landscape like something out of Dalí, maybe. A second sun flaring overhead. A herd of bush elephants trumpeting across the valley floor, white tusks flashing . . .
How had Olin called it? Getting a handle on the moment. But how do you get a handle on a moment like this? Take it one day at a time, like a recovery program?
Then again, maybe this was meant to be an easy, familiar passage. Like leaving one room to enter another. Otherwise, how could you bear it?
The rattle of an engine came from the hills to the north where the road reared up and disappeared. An old Ford pickup appeared, its black paint faded to dull, piebald grays, coughing blue smoke from its tailpipe. It puttered past the diner on its way south, a ladder poking from its bed, a red rag knotted around the last rung, whipping in the wind like the wings of a scarlet bird.
For some reason, the sheer banality of it heartened me. This, I could handle.
I picked up the empty wine bottle and slipped it under the blanket, out of sight. When no one was looking, I’d drop it in a waste can. Apart from sparing myself some embarrassment, I intended to use it as another experiment—to see if I was entitled to secrets here.
Breakfast proceeded the same as every other morning. Olin gave no hint that anything was amiss. As if he hadn’t lobbed a virtual grenade in my lap hours before.
Hours. Were there still hours? I wasn’t sure anymore.
But there was continuity. Familiarity. You sugar your coffee. Spoon the jam. Sop gravy off your plate with hunks of biscuit. You talk about the day ahead, ticking off what needs doing. By the end of breakfast, I was reacquainted with the rhythm, nearly myself again. If I wasn’t ready to praise the day, at least I was ready to participate.
Dishes washed and dried, I stepped back outside to find the chill had gone, the sun blazing overhead. It was what Laurel calls a shiny day—so bright and clear your eyes ache with it. She’d gone with Olin to the coop earlier, and her sneakers were caked with mud from the storm the day before. I took a bucket to the yard and was scrubbing her sneakers when Jessie suggested we walk to town to get Laurel a pair of rain boots. I wiped a stray bit of hair from my face and stared at Jessie, searching for a sign on hers—anything to indicate she was aware of what Olin had told me last evening. A hint of complicity. Of knowing. Maybe even of sympathy.
But it was Jessie as Jessie had always been—her gray hair coiled to a tight bun, her sturdy frame as straight as a fence post, brooking no argument.
She tied on a straw sunbonnet and handed me another. It was wide brimmed, and from long habit I slung it low to hide my face. I brushed Laurel’s hair into a ponytail and the three of us set out.
This was the first time I’d ventured off the farm, and even now—even now—I couldn’t imagine heading along this road without running into a deputy’s cruiser, slanted off to the side, engine idling, windows dark. And Jim hunched like a vulture behind the wheel. But I knew that if I hid out on this farm much longer, I’d only be making myself a prisoner on purpose.
We struck out for town—toward the Mountain—an easy walk not only for its length, a mere two miles or so, but also because it felt as if the road sloped down a tick, although to my eyes it seemed level enough. The effect was of some force drawing me on, compelling me to come.
As we walked, Jessie pointed out wildflowers on either side of the road. So many, and such variety. She began to name them: fiddlehead and soap tree yucca, thistle and red pussytoes, lupine and Indian paintbrush, chicory and biscuit-root, sagebrush and mountain dandelion, heartleaf and pearly everlasting.
The only sound aside from Jessie’s voice was the faint basal hum of cicadas. Their drowsy noise always reminded me of high-voltage transmission wires, and a thought struck. I looked about, and there were no transmission towers in sight. No power lines anywhere, in fact. No telephone lines or utility cables. No poles to string them on. No cell towers, no radio towers. Behind us, no poles or lines running electricity to the farmhouse. Yet the house had electricity. Something was powering the lamps, the radio, the sewing machine, the oven, the clocks . . .
I glanced at Jessie, at my daughter walking so easily with her, the two of them holding hands like great friends.
Jessie glanced back at me, her expression obscure, still reciting the names of flowers in a singsong voice
as soothing as a lullaby.
* * *
By the time we rounded that first foothill, I had few expectations of Morro. Olin had said it was long forgotten, and I’d seen bypassed towns before: the bitter decay of empty storefronts and boarded-up windows, littered streets and broken sidewalks.
But Morro was nothing like that.
It wasn’t big, consisting of but a single street. But that street was more like a broad boulevard that ran for blocks, and smoothly paved. At the town line a sign read:
WELCOME TO MORRO
Beyond the sign, sidewalks with rows of shade trees that branched thirty feet and higher lined each side of the boulevard. On the outskirts of town stood handsome family homes with deep lawns, while at the center well-kept commercial buildings bustled with people. And right in the middle of the boulevard stood a large domed gazebo.
Jessie stepped briskly to the sidewalk, making for the business center of town. Laurel and I followed. There were few cars, and no traffic signals. We passed a sidewalk café and an Italian bakery selling gelato from a walk-up window. An antiques store, an art gallery, a butcher shop, a green grocer’s. Across the street was a lending library and a redbrick building with a sign that read, Town Hall. Beyond that were more shops, then more homes lining the far end of town.
But the anchors of this place were clearly the general store—a three-story building that took up the better part of a block—and across from it a grand Victorian hotel called the Wild Rose, painted in flamboyant shades of red.
I walked slowly, the better to take it all in.
There wasn’t a single crack in the sidewalk, no hole in the asphalt. No chipping paint. Not a stray bit of litter skittering down the street.
Morro was idyllic—a town Norman Rockwell might have dreamed up.
Or me.
Jessie led us past the hotel, where a couple emerged—very elegant, in their thirties, with dark hair and skin. The man wore a tan sport coat and open-collared shirt; the woman, a beautiful sari of apricot silk. I tried not to stare—they seemed so cosmopolitan, and in their way as anachronistic as Olin and Jessie.
The Hummingbird's Cage Page 10