Hieroglyphics

by Jill McCorkle

  The badge is still in his pocket. He once, probably thirty years ago, thought he had lost it, and he tore through every drawer in the house, only to find it safely tucked in the upper breast pocket in a suit.

  “What was the last thing you said to him?” he asked his mother years later; he had tried to ask before, but the look on her face had kept him pushed away.

  “I said how odd to see ice and snow this far south,” she said. “I told him how when I woke just minutes before, the baby pressing so hard on my bladder I knew I couldn’t make it until morning, that I saw the white glaze on the ground and thought surely we were getting close to home. But we were still seven hundred miles away. And then I kissed him—he was still half-asleep, stubble on his cheek, a tiny scratch from shaving that morning—and I made my way to the Pullman car to find a restroom.

  “The cars rocked back and forth, and I had to hold to the many seats I passed. People were sleeping, snoring, shifting, servicemen with duffels tossed up overhead or at their feet, and outside the windows the world was like a winter wonderland, the trees and ground coated in white. I had to use the bathroom so bad I was afraid I wouldn’t make it. I was carrying your little brother so low. I was so relieved to finally get there. That’s where I was, a tiny cubicle with a cracked mirror and barely room to stretch my legs and attempt to straighten my stockings. Everything made me uncomfortable then. And that’s where I was. One minute, I was watching the dark, glistening trees fly past, and the next, there was a terrible sound and I was thrown into the wall.

  “I lost my breath when I landed on the floor,” his mother told him, “and it took what seemed forever to breathe, forever for the screeching sounds and screams to subside. But then there was just a second of jolted silence before the screams began again, screams from every direction, and my thought was so foolish: there I was carrying a baby, there I was with what I knew were broken bones, but all I could think about was my clean hair and clothes on that dirty bathroom floor, where so many strangers had been before me. Then after what seemed an eternity, I was pulled out and out and out, into the cold, and I couldn’t see anything. By then, I was calling your dad’s name as loud as I could scream.”

  She stopped then and reached for Frank’s hand. “I’m so sorry I took you from your home.” It was something she said many times before she died, but that was the first time. “But he begged me,” she said. “He said, ‘Don’t leave. Don’t leave.’”

  Toward the end of her life, she talked more and more about his father, when it was just the two of them, things like: Do you remember that hill where your father and I took you sledding? Do you remember how your father had written phone exchanges right there on the kitchen wall in a pencil he sharpened with my paring knife? Do you remember how dark his eyes were, and that he had a little dark mole on his left cheek?

  “I saved you,” his brother, Horace, liked to say to their mother as a child, and he continued on into adulthood, especially when he became a nephrologist. “Mom’s kidneys saved her life, and I was the reason for all that pressure on her bladder,” he said. Frank tired of the joke, but their mother never seemed to; she would smile, a hand pressed to her abdomen, as if it were all happening again, as if for just a second her husband was still sleeping comfortably in his darkened seat.

  Horace was named for a young sweet-faced Eagle Scout who ran telegrams and helped Frank’s mother make contact in the days following the wreck. That’s how they got the news: a telegram.

  His mother ran into that Horace—Frank called him the real Horace—a few times over the years; he grew up to become a lawyer, like his father before him, a well-loved pillar of the community, which Frank’s mother always said did not surprise her one bit. She said that night, December 16, had pulled all the communities together in a way that would warm your heart if it weren’t so badly broken. His mother always quoted his dad about sleep, work, kindness—such power to quote the dead! But if Preston was nearby, she never really talked about their private life, the days sledding and the things that had made them laugh; that was a part of herself she let only Frank see, and then just in brief glimpses, which usually led to her getting very quiet and turning away.

  It is hard now, on this hot June day, to conjure that night, to pull the ghosts in around him. The tracks extend as far as Frank can see, the sun glaring. This has been a place of comfort; in those early years, he kept digging and finding things, never as good as the Captain Midnight badge, but things nonetheless, all in a jar and stashed in the old hiding place of that childhood home. And maybe it’s long gone, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it waits, like treasures in a tomb, and that’s why it’s important for him to go there and see. And Lil has encouraged that part of it all; she said she wanted to see everything that he stashed away.

  “How romantic,” their children often said. “Grave artifacts and a match made in tragedy.” Their grandson, David, now college age, had joked that his dad talked about how depressing they were all through his childhood, that maybe there should be a dating site called Morbidity Match, and Frank had laughed along; it was clever—what else can you do? But he would dare them all to find the kind of glue he and Lil had because of it all.

  When they first met, they had both felt so alone with their grief. There wasn’t an internet or therapy sessions about anything. A lot of people didn’t even talk about anything emotional. And, no, Lil was not who he would have picked out at first glance around a dance hall, but in no time, he found a sense of comfort he had not even known he was missing, and she said she felt that way, too.

  She worked at Filene’s then, and her dream was to open a dance school. Frank was in graduate school. At one time, he had wanted to be a minister, but he feared his beliefs changed too often to fit into that role. He did believe and he wanted to believe. But he also thought that surely a great power who knows everything would also know you had doubts and sometimes were faking it. Still, for the most part, he did believe, and he thought of that Captain Midnight badge he found there in a heap of steel and ash and scorched earth, a sign, a miracle of a message to remind him that there is something out there; there is a greater power.

  “It’s why you’re interested in history and religion,” Lil had said on an early date. He could tell she was annoyed when he put ketchup on his mashed potatoes, but big deal, because he found her looks to be bland, her lips bare of color. “She’s nice,” people said about her. Nice. The necessary word when trying to convince others of someone’s worth. But then they had stumbled on all they had in common, and the many times they might have been in the same places at the same time.

  “So tell me about yourself,” she had said, her hair tucked behind one ear, a beige scarf wrapped around her neck and fastened there with a little pin—an ivory Scottie dog with little rhinestone eyes, something he later learned had belonged to her mother.

  How romantic. A match made in tragedy.

  Yes, sixty-five years. And, yes, lots of digging and searching, for both of them, and both literally and figuratively. Burial practices became a focus of his, the beliefs and rituals in preparation for the afterlife. He was especially drawn to the graves of children, that premature closure, some ancient graves containing a keepsake, a toy to take along into the next life.

  Lil liked to say maybe it was a match made in tragedy, but they had built a beautiful and happy life on top of it. The knowledge and experience of tragedy groaned and heaved like an old furnace in the basement—and ultimately, sent waves of warmth that radiated and lit the good parts. Now, fragments of memory course through his veins like the pieces of plaque that threaten to seize his heart.

  Frank often thinks of the man whose responsibility was to walk ahead to warn any approaching train—all of those people, their lives in his hands—and then he slipped on the ice and broke the fusee flare he carried. Maybe the man woke early that day and he chose the wrong shoes, he didn’t prepare; he slipped on the ice, and down he went. The snow was falling, and perhaps the sight had made him think th
ings he rarely thought. He might have even looked out and beyond the ice-glazed trees and thought how beautiful it was, how excited his children would be, how good it would feel to get home and slip beneath the heavy pile of quilts where his warm wife was already sleeping. But he slipped and he went down, and how easy to make a mistake. And then one mistake begat another mistake: Doesn’t every human make mistakes?

  Hadn’t Frank made a mistake those times, slipped and fell when Lil was so preoccupied, first with the kids, perfect mother, having lost hers, and then later, drawn to the sick and dying, while ignoring the living; it was like she chose to stand there by the exit door and see everyone off, bid them farewell, like some modern-day Charon paddling the Acheron. As if it was her calling, a kind of obsession, either to punish herself or to feel closer to her mother. At the time, she was lost to him, in a place he had no desire to visit.

  He wanted to forget what he’d done, and who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to get beyond the turbulence into calmer waters. Of course he wanted to forget, and in fact, he had succeeded in doing just that until Lil brought it up again, as if referencing something they had been meaning to get around to, like cleaning out the garage or shredding old tax returns. How could he know what was on her mind? How could he know what was bothering her unless she just came right out and said it in clear spoken syllables?

  But things don’t always get resolved; people don’t always get to see it coming and prepare. War, catastrophic accidents, the betrayal of a body shutting down all of a sudden without warning—the number of those who have had no time to get ready is too large to count. Frank’s own mother had been so consumed by her grief, and then with her concerns about a new baby, that nothing else seemed to matter to her, and then Lil did that exact same thing. She carried her big sack of grief like a badge of honor as she catered to first her father and then whomever from the outside world needed catering to. And of course she was there for the children, and she was a good mother, but then they were gone and off at school, and instead of giving him that time, she filled up even more spaces with those in need, and so of course it was easy for Frank, to fall, to slip—and of course he looked like the bad guy! He fell into something he had never seen or noticed before, like snow in southern climates where it is so rare.

  At first, it was just letters, little friendly back-and-forth exchanges that allowed his mind to wander away from whatever was bothering him at the time, and there’s no crime in that, no crime in communicating with a like-minded creature, and yet what about the way he chose not to mention it, the way he hid the letters away in files of schoolwork that appeared so boring and messy, who would want to look? And then there were those times in the empty-nest years—Lil so strange and distracted—that the conversations happened in person; it was certainly nothing he ever would have planned.

  He can’t even recall the young woman’s face, just the kind of energy that comes with such a connection or flirtation, call it what you will, attention, a secret, that feeling of being invited in, everything easy and no strings to tie or alarms going off. He slipped and then floundered, and found himself wanting to be near the young woman in blousy Indian cotton tops and faded jeans and flip-flops, long hair yanked back, and not a trace of makeup on her young, smooth skin, a body tanned and untouched by childbirth cool beneath him. She lay there, arms raised over her head, wispy auburn hair there under her arms, something he found arousing, which surprised him, and he had to shut off that part of his brain where he could hear Lil telling their daughter how she really hoped she would shave under her arms: Lil had called Becca “Fuzzy Wuzzy” and said that rhyme—“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” like Becca might’ve been six and not a grown woman in her twenties, and a woman in her twenties is every bit a woman, or can be, which had surprised him—and then Becca had said, “Mom, please,” as she had said a million times before, and Frank slammed the door of his mind on them. He slammed the door because he was drawn into the warm smell of citrus and earth, and he had never been kissed or touched that way, or so it seemed, and what were years after all? Lines etched in a tree or a shell or a face.

  They passed notes in department meetings and lectures—how innocent was that? Little slips of paper that he threw into the sewer on his way to his car, except then he wanted to save a couple and he couldn’t help but reread them, couldn’t help but study the letters and the word choice: Was there more meaning there?

  One day, she drew the Eye of Horus, and he thought of it for days after. Was she suggesting safe travel for them together? Warding off anything that might interfere with what seemed a tender connection? Or was it just fun? A doodle: an eye with the curl below, what could be a tear. It seemed a secret message, and with it came a rush of power and energy he had not felt in years. It was the same kind of sudden excitement that comes when you spot something shining in the earth or the flash of silver with a fish on the line, the tug and pull that exhilarates and, for just that little bit of time, erases all else. He once wrote an article on the earliest known fishhook, carved from a snail shell twenty-three thousand years ago and found in a cave in Okinawa—rustic and primitive, and yet its purpose the same as modern hooks, the need behind the purpose the same.

  He sent back a drawing, big nose and eyes peering over a wall—Kilroy was here—which he realized dated him, so he said how much the Kilroy drawing resembles the sign for omega and wondered if that went into the creation.

  She had read it and smiled and immediately sent back an alpha. A beginning? Dominance? And why did he allow his mind to see what was conjured by that, and why did he want to enter that imagined space, like a quiet, dark room, footsteps silenced, drapes drawn to the harsh glare of day, a place of secret rest and release? He was a married man, with children out on their own as well, and she was on the fast track: an appointment for further doctoral work at Harvard, a piece all about an excavation in Peru about to be published, a boyfriend off somewhere in the Peace Corps.

  He realized his mind had wandered; he had no idea what was being discussed in the meeting, and he tried to appear indifferent to her new scribbling. She wrote: What’s the Maat-er? Truth? Justice? Maybe she was letting him know she had a sense of humor, by playing with the Egyptian goddess’s name in that way, not taking it all seriously, perhaps telling him she was someone to be trusted.

  He wanted to return something witty but felt himself going blank. Something playful about Ba, how he felt he was moving between the living and the dead, his outward appearance and interactions with the world half-hearted and unfulfilled, his empty soul hoping to find the physical manifestation that would allow him rest.

  The idea was hers first, after all. One day in his office, when she began the habit of stopping by after lunch, she had asked how crazy it is to imagine being in one of the ancient tombs, to be one of the humans placed there to service the waking king. “You would have food and riches,” she said. “I think you would hope he would wake, right?” She was watching him so closely he had to look out the window. “I mean, you would know it couldn’t last forever. The wine and food would run out. The air.” It was raining outside, and he watched students rushing along the brick paths, heads down, books cradled, colorful umbrellas, and when he turned back, she was still watching him, smiling. “But it could be pretty good for a night or two.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think that’s probably right.” He laughed and then spent days wondering what message he had sent. A yes? A no?

  What’s the Maat-er?

  Ba can’t find his body, he wrote, and passed the little piece of paper before he could talk himself out of it, and then he got up and left early. Such an elemental response; if only it were all so simple. It was autumn, gray skies and damp leaves under his feet; it would be dark in an hour.

  He was almost to his car when she ran up and slipped the piece of paper back into his hand; she held it there, pressing hard before disappearing into the crowd at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Ba needs to let me help, it said.
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br />   Things can happen so suddenly, and now he hates remembering all of this, hates that it was Lil who always reminded him.

  The man from the train was on his way to do the right thing, just doing his job and going to warn the northbound train, but he slipped and fell, and he later took his own life, the burden too great to bear, too much darkness to see. And the older you get, the more there is to see, and the signs are everywhere: the teeth and bones and heart and brain, creases in the lobes, capillaries in eyes and cheeks, bubbles of cholesterol, and moles too dark not to fear. Or what about little slips of memory? Or a bit of plaque, part of a crumbling wall breaking off and racing along a river of blood straight to the heart, a rusty old valve creaking on its hinges. His grandfather had described the human body like an adventure trip, and now the rivers of Frank’s body are struggling to keep flowing, the source is all dammed up, and it’s too painful to wait for the break. Why wait to be felled by what you know is coming anyway?

  “I hate surprises,” Lil told him right after they got married. “Please, never surprise me beyond a little something of note on my birthday or our anniversary.”

  He didn’t say it then, but he hates surprises as well, and the best way to not be surprised is to head things off, take control: put down the suffering dog, pop the goddamn balloon, and pull the trigger.

  Harvey

  Jason told Harvey that there’s a place not far from where he goes to school called Munchkinland and if you ride through there after dark a whole bunch of mad little people will come and flip your car and try to kill you, that there are people who went there and never came back. People said to stay away, because bad and crazy things will happen to you. Harvey asked the teacher and, sure enough, it was in a book about all the ghosts and bad things that have happened. His mom has heard of it too, but she said it was very, very sad, little children picked on by mean bullies.