Ashes (5 page)

The scratching sound was at the door now, as
if Robert were wiping his boots on the welcome mat. She braced
herself for Robert’s crestfallen expression, the caved-in look of
his eyes, the deep furrows at the corners of his mouth. She would
never have inflicted such suffering if it weren’t for the best.

Alison opened the door. On the porch, Sandy
Ann stood on bowed legs, working her dry lips. The dog lifted a
forlorn paw and dropped it with a click of nails. There were
spatters of blood across the dog’s snout.

One shot.

Robert couldn’t have missed.

Not from so close.

Could he have . . . ?

No, not Robert.

But it was the kind of choice Robert would
make.

His only choice.

A dog person to the end.

“
Robert?” she called, voice
cracking, knowing there would be no answer.

Alison’s ribs were a fist gripping the yolk
of her heart. Her legs were grits, her head popping like hot grease
on a griddle. Her spine melted like butter. She sagged against her
house and slid to a sitting position. Sandy Ann whimpered, limped
over, and ran a papery tongue against her cheek.

The dog’s breath reeked of bacon and poison
and unconditional love.

###

THE OCTOBER GIRLS

The evening was Halloween cool, the sun
creeping toward the horizon. It would be dark soon, and the games
would be over. Margaret could stay out as late as she wanted, but
not Ellen. Ellen had a mom and a bed and a life to worry about.

"Come out," Ellen called.

The scraggly shrubbery trembled. Margaret was
hiding under the window of the mobile home where Ellen lived. For
an invisible person, Margaret wasn’t so good at hide-and-seek, but
she loved to play. Maybe you got that way when you were dead.

The mobile home vibrated with the noise of
the vacuum cleaner. Mom was inside, cleaning up. Taking a break
from beer and television. Maybe cooking a supper of sliced wieners
in cheese noodles.

"I know you're in there," Ellen said.

She stooped and peered under the lowest brown
leaves of the forsythia. Vines snaked through the shrubbery. In the
summer, yellow flowers dangled from the tips of the vines. Ellen
and Margaret would pull the white tendrils from the flowers,
holding them to the sun so the sweet drops of honeysuckle fell on
their tongues. They would laugh and hold hands and run into the
woods, playing tag until night fell. Then they would follow the
fireflies into darkness.

But only in the summer. Now it was autumn,
with the leaves like kites and November rushing toward them from
Tennessee. Now Ellen had school five mornings a week, homework,
chores if Mom caught her. Not much time for games, so she and
Margaret had to make the most of their time together.

The bushes shook again.

"Come out, come out," Ellen called, afraid
that Mom would switch off the vacuum cleaner and hear her having
fun.

Margaret's long blonde hair appeared in a gap
between the bushes. A hand emerged, slender and pale and wearing a
plastic ring that Ellen had gotten as a Crackerjack prize. The hand
was followed by the red sleeve of Margaret's sweater. At last
Ellen's playmate showed her face with its uneven grin.

"Peek-a-boo," Margaret said.

"Your turn to be 'it.'"

The vacuum cleaner suddenly switched off, and
the silence was broken only by the brittle shivering of the trees
along the edge of the trailer park. Ellen put her index finger to
her lips to shush Margaret, then crawled into the bushes beside
her. The trailer door swung open with a rusty creak.

Mom looked out, shading her eyes against the
setting sun. Ellen ducked deeper into the shrubbery, where the dirt
smelled of cat pee. Margaret stifled a giggle beside her.
Everything was a game to Margaret. But Margaret wasn't the one who
had to worry about getting her hide tanned, and Margaret could
disappear if she wanted.

Mom had that look on her face, the red of
anger over the pink of drunkenness. She stood in the doorway and
chewed her lip. A greasy strand of hair dangled over one eye. Her
fists were balled. The stench of burnt cheese powder and cigarettes
drifted from the trailer.

"Ellen," Mom called, looking down the row of
trailers to the trees. Mom hated Ellen's staying out late more than
anything. Except maybe the special teachers at school.

Ellen tensed, hugging her knees to her
chest.

"She looks really mad," Margaret
whispered.

"No, she's probably just worried."

A thin rope of smoke drifted from the trailer
door. "She burned supper," Margaret said.

"It's my fault. She's really going to whip me
this time."

Mom called once more, then slammed the door
closed. Margaret rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the
mobile home. Ellen laughed, though her stomach felt full of
bugs.

"Let's go to my place," Margaret said.

"What if Mom sees me? She can see me, even if
she can't see you."

Margaret started crawling behind the row of
dying shrubbery. "Your mom won't find you there."

"She always finds me anywhere." Ellen hung
her head, near tears.

Margaret crawled back and poked her in the
side. "Don't be a gloomy Gus."

Ellen slapped Margaret's hand away. "I'm not
no gloomy Gus."

"Why don't you let me get her? I can make her
hurt like she makes you hurt."

Ellen folded her arms and studied Margaret's
brown eyes. Margaret would do it. She was a good friend. And in her
eyes, behind the sparkle, was a darkness buried deep. Maybe you
looked at things that way when you were dead.

"No. It's better if we keep you secret,"
Ellen said. "I already got in trouble at school, telling the
special teachers about you."

Margaret poked her in the ribs again. Ellen
smiled this time.

"Follow me. Hurry," Margaret said.

Margaret scrambled ahead, staying low beneath
the hedge. Ellen looked at the trailer door, checked for any sign
of movement in the windows. Then she crawled after Margaret, the
dead twigs sharp against the skin of her palms and knees.

From the end of the hedge, they dashed for
the concealment of the forest. Ellen half expected to hear Mom's
angry shout, telling her to get inside right this minute. But then
they were under the trees and lost among the long shadows.

Margaret laughed with the exhilaration of
escape. She ran between the oaks with their orange leaves, the
silver birch, the sweet green pine, ignoring the branches and
briars that tugged the fabric of her sweater. Ellen followed just
as recklessly, her footsteps soft on the rotting loam of the forest
floor.

The girls passed a clearing covered by crisp
leaves. Margaret veered away to a path that followed the river. The
air smelled of fish and wet stones. Ellen stumbled over a
grapevine, and by the time she looked up, Margaret had
disappeared.

Ellen looked around. A bird chittered in a
high treetop. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. Purple and pink
clouds hung in the west like rags on a clothesline. She was
alone.

Alone.

The special teachers at school told Ellen it
was worse to be alone than have invisible friends. "You can't keep
playing all by yourself," they told her. "You have to learn to get
along with others. You have to let go of the past."

When Ellen told the special teachers about
what happened at home, the teachers' eyes got wide. They must have
talked to Mom, because when Ellen got home that day, she got her
hide tanned harder than ever. Someday Mom was going to lose her
temper and do something really bad.

Ellen thought of Mom, with fists clenched and
supper burnt, waiting back at the trailer. Ellen shivered. She
didn't want to be alone.

She put her hands to her mouth.
"Margaret!"

She heard a giggle from behind a stand of
trees. The red sweater flashed and vanished. Margaret was playing
another game, trying to make Ellen get lost by leading her deeper
into the woods. Well, Ellen wasn't going to be scared.

And she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes the
girls at school made her cry. They would stand around her in a
circle and say she was in love with Joey Hogwood. Well, she hated
Joey Hogwood, and she hated the girls. Ellen wished that Margaret
still went to school so that she would have a friend to sit
beside.

Margaret wouldn't want her to cry. Margaret
would just pretend to be bad for a little while, then pop out from
behind a tree and tag her and make her “It.”

Laughter came down from the hill where the
pines were thickest. To the left, a sea of kudzu vines choked the
trees. A run-down chicken coop had been swallowed by the leaves,
with only a few rotten boards showing under the green. That's where
Margaret was hiding.

Ellen ran across the kudzu, the leaves
tickling her calves above her socks. She could read Margaret like a
book. That was the best thing about invisible playmates: they did
what you wanted them to do.

Right now, Ellen wanted Margaret to go just
over the hill, into the new part of the forest. She reached the
pines and started down the slope. Half a dozen houses were
sprinkled among the folds of the hill. A highway ran through the
darkening valley, the few cars making whispers as they rolled back
and forth. The headlights were like giant fireflies in the
dusk.

"Margaret," Ellen called.

A giggle floated up from the highway.
Margaret was there by the ditch, waving her arm. Ellen smiled to
herself. Margaret wouldn't leave her. Ellen picked her way down the
slope, almost slipping on the dewy fallen leaves, until she reached
the ditch.

"Tag, you're 'It,'" Margaret said, touching
Ellen's shoulder.

Margaret's golden-white hair blazed in the
lights of an approaching car. She spun and raced across the
highway, the roar of the engine drowning out Ellen's scream. The
car passed right through Margaret, not slowing at all. The red eyes
of the tail lights faded into darkness. Ellen hurried across the
road.

"You're a crazy-brain," Ellen said.

Margaret shook her head, her hair swaying
from side to side. "Am not."

"Are, too."

"You're still 'It,'" Margaret said, running
away. The darkness was more solid now, the sun fading in slow
surrender. Margaret climbed over the low stone wall that bordered
the highway.

"Crazy-brain." Ellen scrambled over the wall
after her, into the graveyard. The alabaster angels and crosses and
markers were like ghosts in the night. Margaret had vanished.

"Margaret?"

Laughter echoed off the granite.

Invisible friends didn't disappear unless you
allowed it. They didn't hurt you or scare you or make you cry, at
least not on purpose. They didn’t tease you about Joey Hogwood, or
make you sit in a chair and listen to all the reasons why invisible
friends couldn’t exist.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Ellen
said. She scrambled between the cold gravestones. The grass was
damp and full of autumn, and the air smelled of fall flowers. A
sharp curve of moon had sliced its way into the black sky.

Ellen found Margaret beside a church-white
marker.

"Mom's going to be mad," Ellen said.

"She's just an old meanie."

"She's really going to kill me." Ellen sat in
the grass beside Margaret and the dew soaked her dress.

"Don't go back," Margaret said.

"I have to go back."

Margaret folded her arms across her chest and
stuck out her lower lip. "In the summer, we got to play until way
late."

"It's not summer anymore," Ellen said,
looking at the sky. Three stars were out.

"Is that why the fireflies are gone?"

Ellen laughed. "You're such a dummyhead."

The moon was higher now, pale on Margaret's
face. Her eyes were dark hollows. "I'm not no dummyhead."

"Yes, you are," Ellen said, her voice
sing-songy and shrill. "Margaret is a dummyhead, Margaret is a
dummyhead."

Margaret leaned back against the marker. Her
shoulders trembled and thin lines of tears tracked down her cheeks.
Ellen stopped teasing. With invisible playmates, you always felt
what they felt.

"I'm sorry," Ellen whispered.

Margaret was bone silent.

"Hey," Ellen said. "Now who's the gloomy
Gus?"

She poked Margaret in the side, feeling the
hard ridges of her friend's ribs. It was funny how invisible
friends could be solid, if you thought of them that way.

"Sometimes it's hard to remember," Margaret
said, sniffing. “You know. What it was like.”

Ellen poked again. “It’s not that great.”

Margaret twitched and tried to hold back her
smile. Then the laughter broke and she blinked away the last of her
tears. They watched the moon for a while and listened to the rush
of the passing cars.

"I miss summer," Margaret said.

"Me, too."

"You don't have to go back."

They could play hide-and-seek all night and
never have to hide in the same place twice. A few gnarled trees
clutched at the ground with their roots, perfect for climbing.
Honeysuckle vines covered the walls and gates, waiting for summer
when they would again sweeten the air. Best of all was the quiet.
Here, no one ever yelled in anger.

But Ellen didn't belong here. Not yet.

"I'd better get home," Ellen said. "I'm going
to get my hide tanned as it is."

Margaret tried a pouty face, then gave up.
All playtimes had to end. Ellen waved good-bye and started back
over the stone wall.

"See you tomorrow?" Margaret called after
her.

Ellen turned and looked back, but her friend
had already vanished.

Margaret's voice came from everywhere,
nowhere. "It won't hurt."

"Promise?"

"Even if it did, I would tickle you and make
you laugh."