Ghosting (40 page)

When he enters the first room he notes the TV reception has improved, blaring late-night infomercials to nobody; the people that were here are gone. Someone must have moved the furniture back into place, though he had heard nothing, and he sees no sign of the fight. Again he has the feeling of having wandered into a story that has nothing to do with him, or at least one in which he was supposed to have stayed upon the farthest periphery and has now broken its form by leaving his ascribed role—or like he has stepped onto a movie set in the middle of a shoot but the actors and the cameras have already moved onto the next scene; the house, the entire farm, seem to insist to him that they are not quite
real
. The bottles and drinking glasses remain upright and cramped together and small plates have been overrun in their use as ashtrays. On the far wall he’s drawn to a small crushed imprint the size of a softball, level with his face, but he can’t tell if this is new or if it had been there forever.

The stereo needle still scratches at the end of the record. He picks it up and returns the needle to its clasp. Yet the sound continues. He
stares at the slowing LP, dumbfounded—then he realizes the sound is not tied to the stereo, it’s a scouring noise from behind him, in the kitchen. At the table there the man he has named Alfaro sits among rags and bright brass bullets, cleaning the cylinder of a revolver with a bore brush. He is intent on the procedure and working hard, and does not look up until Cole nears. Alfaro stops in his work and glares first at the table before him, and then at Cole. Cole forces a friendly smile. Alfaro smiles in return but with no friendliness attached; his is a smile iced in cruelty. He points the gun at Cole’s face and spins the open cylinder. They stare at one another through the rapid whirl of empty chambers. When the cylinder stops, Alfaro leaves the gun pointed at him. Now his smile seems genuine with merriment. He sets the gun back on the table and shrugs, squeezing a few drops of solvent onto the stained bristle brush. Cole stays for what feels like a long time, watching the man at his task; he wants to show that a gun pointed in his face means nothing to him.

Then he’s outside. Only the church van and a battered Buick he assumes must belong to Alfaro remain in the lot. How did he miss the noise of all those vehicles leaving? The dull lamps are extinguished and the moon holds him under its great eye again, the metal roof of the Quonset hut glowing silver. The moon’s brightness is such that when he looks he cannot make out its features, the face of the moon looks bleached to near white, an incandescent bulb. Bright enough to drive without headlights, like Nate Crutchfield said.

Shady lies asleep in her bed. He pictures her in the same position from that night he had watched her sleep in his room: one arm slung high framing her head, the other clutching the sheet to her chin. Her face never serene but animated in dream. He imagines pale pink sheets, a lush floral comforter; rooms buoyant with clean smells, potpourri and scented candles in the student-housing apartment she has yet to invite him to. Her feet, which she complained got cold at night, nestled within fresh socks.

You don’t want to be here, Crutchfield had said. Cole hears his voice in the way Crutch had said it. Did he really think moving back to his mother’s house would help anything? Fleece had sniggered at the idea. And then Fleece disappears and near a year later Cole has
learned nothing of use, nothing he can bring Lyda to ease her mind or even his own. You don’t need to be stuck in your brother’s life any longer than you have to, Crutchfield had said. There is what happens, set against what you think has happened. Greuel had told him that.

He will never know what happened to his brother. He can know only what happens to
him.
To himself, to James Cole Prather.

Keys in hand, he hurries across the lot and checks that everything in the van is where it should be. He pushes the soccer balls back onto the packing boxes, closes the side door softly, and then hops around to start the engine, leaving his door open. At the same time he ponders the Buick nearby. He looks at the house, all the lights out on the second floor. He slides back out and pulls the knife from his pocket and flips open the handles, and with a single thoughtless lunge plunges the blade up to the choil into the Buick’s front tire, pausing only to listen to the tire exhale a long breath like a pent-up sigh.

He stands a moment looking at the gravity blade in his hand. After years of carrying it in his hip pocket it’s the first time he has ever used it for anything other than parlor tricks.

The screen door smacks against the house. Over the Buick’s hood Cole sees a moonlit Alfaro rushing toward him. He is running with the gun in hand. Cole begins to backpedal, watching for Alfaro to ready and aim—as if he could duck and avoid the shot in time. But the man does not stop, he’s not carrying the gun by the grip, he’s clutching the entire weapon instead as if afraid he’ll drop it. Once he reaches the car he vaults over the hood and dives, tackling Cole so that they both crash into the van’s side. The gravel gives from beneath Cole’s feet and they fall, grappling, Cole thinking only to get the gun away, find the gun and get it away.

To his surprise, though, the whole melee seems to be over before it even began. They are hardly on the ground when already Alfaro’s grip is loosening. His breaths have turned to a high, plaintive panting:
Aye,
he cries,
aye.
He half-rolls off of Cole and lies back, lungs heaving. The gun is nowhere to be seen. Had he imagined it? A frantic moment passes in searching. The Mexican’s hand cradles his shoulder, and it’s another surprise to Cole to see the knife sticking out between his
fingers. He had not felt himself doing it but there it is, his cheap knife plunged into the man’s body to the choil, its unlocked handles bent in the air.

There’s blood on Alfaro’s shirt but it isn’t gushing out, he hasn’t cut anything important. Alfaro holds the knife in place, touching one handle and then the other, and then holding the wound again as he murmurs in pain. He can’t seem to decide what to do with this knife in his shoulder.

There’s the gun, then, radiant beneath the van’s open door. The dumb weight of the thing in Cole’s hand suddenly infuriates him—this little guy came rushing at him with a freaking gun!—and in his anger he sets all his weight behind his good knee on Alfaro’s chest; he makes quiet noises to calm the man, to indicate he’s willing to help now; he taps the man’s hand to get him to move it. Alfaro comes to understand, and he brings the bloody hand to his forehead to cover his eyes. At first Cole grips the knife gently. Then he shifts it back and forth, working the blade out of the man’s shoulder the way he would work an axe from a deep cut of wood. The howl this produces is satisfying in its way, an unfamiliar satisfaction further strengthened by Alfaro’s feet kicking in agony, his free hand gripping Cole in a gesture begging mercy, his tongue delivering words that have never fallen on Cole’s ears before.

All roads lead somewhere. He drives as calmly as the vibrations in his body will allow him to drive. He wants to head west and north. He’ll be fine going west or north. Soon he spots signs for US 119 and drives east, not another soul out, now he’s glad for the crank Creed forced in him, he feels awake and thriving, now he is going to be fine. 119 hits 25 at Pineville; from there he knows the route—he should hit Corbin and I-75 by dawn.

There’s a pinch in his gut and he leans into it but this worsens the pain, sharpens it, and when he touches his belly he feels the hard steel there and remembers he stuffed the gun in his waistband as he got off of Alfaro to leave.

He does not want a gun. Merely holding it, a thirty-eight revolver, seems to summon bad tidings—as though by having the gun he only invites the need to use it. He checks the rearview and sees only the moon’s ghost-lit night behind him and leans across the passenger seat to roll down the window there, a wall of National Forest trees beckoning from across the roadside ditch. Once he gets the window down without crashing the van, he spits on the gun and uses his shirt to wipe it down as best he can, no reason not to be as careful as he can think to be. Again he checks the mirror and the road ahead, and, seeing no headlights in either direction, hurls the gun out of his life.

With the gun gone he feels more settled, his mind piercing a clear and hallowed space that allows him to think. As though his doubts and uncertainties and fears, the confusions of what he is doing, followed the thirty-eight out the window and into the night behind. Now it’s all thrills. Cole knows what he is doing, and it thrills him. He knows what he is doing but does not know what he’s going to do next. Was this how it was for you, brother? Maybe you didn’t know what you were about to do until you did it. Maybe you felt like this was the only thing you could do that was entirely yours.

He’s going to have to be fast, and he’s going to need help. Shady will have ideas. When he makes Corbin the first thing he’ll do is call her. She won’t believe him and then she will. He’ll get her to run by Lyda’s for his diving gear, get him a map to Louisiana or Jersey or one of the Carolinas, whichever one. Hell he can hit them all.

A trucker blasts by in the opposite direction and in its high headlights a glinting flashes from somewhere deep on the dashboard, up by the vents. Cole reaches over, feeling for it with eyes readjusting to the darkness of the road, until his fingers clasp Nate Crutchfield’s ring. How could he leave this behind, after all he said to me? Cole wonders. Yet there it is. The ring fits the middle finger of his right hand, the stronger of the two. He leaves it on but makes a note to pocket it any time he exits the van. Until then he admires the dancing fire within the stones, moving his hand this way and that, the diamonds alive beneath this strangely bright moonlight.

He cranes forward to get another look at the moon. It’s strange—all night he thought of the moon as following him, eyeing his every move, a spotlight he could not escape. It floats lower now, yet still bright enough to blot out the stars. The face of it remains blank and brilliant. As though the night is solid, total, except for this one clean hole bored through its armor and revealing what lies behind: radiant, golden, perfect light.

There is a number, a random number in the amount of coffee consumed in a day—and it’s never the same cup, say, cup numero cinco or six each afternoon—when the caffeine not only loses its effect but rather even reverses it; instead of charging his blood, this random gulp hits the stomach and his exhaustion feels complete and irreversible. Such point Brother Gil Ponder has reached tonight. He wants to believe it’s the fault of this weak coffee, not fatigue from a day stretching into hours thirteen and fourteen that has him ready to shut his eyes and lean his forehead against a convenient, quiet wall. His assistant Carolyn is a genius in the species of assistants; in the Platonic realm of assistants he envisions Carolyn Hightower and her sensible outfits and the pencil staved through her ponytail and the small Dayrunner tucked under her arm, save for her inability to make a good pot of joe.

The thing is she thinks in terms of quantity—an entirely forgivable offense; in the end it helps his standing with the congregation when he gets up from the wealth-building seminar in the basement cafeteria and heads into the kitchen to make a pot of his own: look there, busy Brother Gil ministers to us all and still he starts a pot of coffee for anyone who needs a boost. Carolyn has left for home (her family having already stepped away from the defeated life, not in need of the workshop’s information on subprime mortgages and the uses of home equity), and she won’t see or mind this small undercut to her general excellence.

The kitchen opens onto the cafeteria. He hears the guest speaker wind it up by thanking everyone for their time, and a brief silence ensues while the group waits for Ponder to return and give a benediction to the workshop and its attendees and their goals. He likes this speaker, Bobby Howell; he’s a believer and fair businessman, too, and it was Howell’s idea to set up the bank’s generous agreement to donate $300 to the church for each contract loan taken out by a parishioner. Ponder keeps the supplication short, giving thanks for God’s abundant creation and the inheritance of silver and gold He has left all His children. He then asks everyone to recite with him the fundamental verse from Third John:
Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.

The attendees applaud one another and begin to scoop up their handouts and folders and head to the exits at Ponder’s urging, for the space is needed—Carolyn keeps a tight schedule, no meeting can run over its allotted time save the last. Already behind the double doorway a crowd waits to start the Recovery seminar. Outside of Sunday services, the weekly Recovery assemblies bring in the largest number to the new building, many of whom are not regular members of CWE, and so he strives to be on top of his game.

Not all of the construction is complete as of yet (the future cafeteria exit is covered in plywood sheathing) and so there’s a traffic problem between meetings, an awkward confusion grabbing the reins as the two groups mingle and bump and try to be polite with one another. The situation requires patience. Still he puts on his best face and greets each arrival with effortful warmth, his gracious-host act undermined by a newly sour stomach as he moves into the hallway himself and joins the horde. Then, there, the lift he sought arrives—his hopes met—at the sight of two women near the back of the line, just in sight against the iron railing at the top of the stairs. Ponder strides down the procession to meet them as they make the landing, gratefully awake now as he squeezes Shady Beck’s shoulder before taking Lyda’s hand in both of his.