August: A Ghost Story

BOOK ONE

Sunrise and bad weather on the Prairie can be a site of sadistic beauty -- A frightening thing, like a lion loosed from its cage while the tamer sleeps. Often when the weather is bad I am restless, sitting up nights or rising early before the dawn to walk out and watch the rainfall when sleep won't come to me.

The summer nights have only just become bearable and now these Autumn storms begin to take over the skies more and more, turning the dust to mud. When it is just sweet simple rain, one can manage, but as August yields to September, the ground seems constantly soft under one's feet and the gray skies persist, blocking out sunlight and bringing on the melancholia which forbears madness.

The noise of this first great storm woke me and drew me forth to witness, my bare feet carrying me out of the shelter of home and over the sodden ground as angry confused winds blew debris hither and thither. Breaking through to look out at the oncoming dawn full of storm and chaos, I saw the wide sweeping grassland beyond the copses of trees, and above its vast expanse a violent explosion of color as the sun seemed to set the sky ablaze with a fire that consumed heaven itself. The rolling black clouds had bright wholesome sunlight cast upon their ugliness, making them all the angrier at being illumed.

In nature, a destructive force is not always evil, but to see it like that, raging against the oncoming light of day, one could not help but imagine it an evil entity with bilious pulsating clouds of yellow-grey, flexing like powerful muscles, threatening to invade every corner of the sky-world above, stamping out all the golden rays of summer sunshine and drowning us mere mortals who inhabit the land below.

Taking in this sight, I felt or imagined that such color had only once before been present in the sky. Such purple and gold and russet red mingled with the bright luminescence of the light, contrasting with the swelling darkness -- they were once the colors of blood and shot and smoke and death, mingled together in the mire at the feet of angels and demons, teeming in legions, waging war for supremacy, each over the other for some trumped-up trespass. They are something else, too. Above in this rare morning electrical storm, I see myself reflected and amplified by nature.

I fear it most because I see myself so clearly in it.

Soon, I know there will be a break in the line, between the light and dark, and it shall all begin drizzling down from the heavens to sully this mortal earth with the sinful memories of the war and waste. As the hot rain began to soak through the fabric of my nightshirt, a vengeful fever came that caused me to collapse to my knees, my fists clinched at the sky in wrath, cursing God for such an angry morning and the futility of the sunrise.

Insanity will come, I knew it then as I watched the storm blotting out the sun and I know it now. All is lost.

For though it may seem the dawn of a new day, the darkness may never surely be beaten back, the sun may only shine temporarily and when it rises higher the blackened clouds can still choke the golden nimbus of the morning.

I will once more listen to the screams and cries of battle. I shall find myself hearing them and shedding tears for the fallen as I look on through my memory's eye impotent and unable to aid in the action.

The storm will be on top of me soon; and, like a war raging, it will cause nothing good to occur until it passes. Only when it is gone, will peace return to my mind.

I fear. Oh, how I fear.

Soon a hand is there upon me and I turn to see Helen standing there, herself only wrapped in a quilt from our bed, her skin pale and wet with rain, she has missed me and come to find me here, my eyes burning hot with tears. I feel shame as she looks on me but then she kneels beside me in the mud and clasping arms around me she presses herself to me, shouting through the storm.

Her words clear, as her lips brush the hair above my ear. "You will forget," she starts to say. "You will forget."

--An excerpt from the diary of Capt. George A.H. Collins (~Undated)

Chapter One:

"But, you can't just leave like this." Rodger stood in the driveway, watching me push the last box of my things onto the pile in the back of my fastback.

I looked up at him before repositioning the cargo so that it wouldn't shift too much. This was it, this was the last time he would see me, his last shot at redemption, and those were the best words he could muster. "You can't just leave like this."

"We've been through this," I said, doing my best not to sound hurtful. "I told you when we started that I wasn't sure I was going to be the one for you and, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have married you, Rodger. I know that sounds cold, but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. You were so..." I stopped myself. "Look, we had our fun, and then we both changed. It happens. It's nothing to cry over."

I slammed the hood down on the 2+2 and walked over to him, his big goofy eyes were sad and teary.

"How have I changed?" he asked.

I looked behind him at the large boat he kept in our driveway. I looked over at the house we'd lived in now for the last two years. It was big and looked like every other house on the street.

"Maybe it's not you at all, Rodger," I said, shifting my gaze back to him. "Maybe it's what you want me to be. I'm not cut out for all this," I waved my hand at the neighborhood with three car garages and manicured front lawns. "I just..." I let the sentence fade into a shrug as I had done a million times before, and with a peck on his lips and a hug, I pulled away and walked around to the driver's side door. "You'll get over me. You're a big boy. I left the divorce papers on the kitchen counter." I opened the door, flung my lucky leather jacket into the passenger seat and climbed in. The engine roared to life and I pulled away, leaving Rodger speechless and alone in the driveway of the house.

We'd been married nine years, before it had happened. A new practice in Beverly Hills had brought money and the money had gone to Rodger's head. A new house in Brentwood, a new neighborhood, the kind of development I'd learned to despise from years of reading Chandler and Fante.

I'd never liked the reality of Los Angeles. But staying in an old building on an old street not far from Redondo Beach had helped me get by. Running along the path by the beach, watching the morning sunrise on the Pacific, smelling the air and hearing the surf, it was the highlight of almost every day for ten years.

Ten years -- that had been amazing to me at the time. I'd actually felt some sense of pride in a marriage that had lasted that long. A bit shocked even, to be honest. But the move had changed things, and the money had changed things, and two years of the new neighborhood with its parade of newly leased Mercedes, its strictly enforced ordinances, its social obligations, the housewives running in herds with their hands lightly pushing special three-wheeled strollers and planning play dates for their children.

I wasn't quite the oldest wife on the block, but I could feel the stares and hear the whispers. I was nearly 35 and I wasn't a mother. And apparently I was the only person in our circle of "friends" who didn't find that particularly bothersome.

It wasn't Rodger's fault. In fact, we were both very capable of producing children. I actually did want them; that much I knew. However, the concept of having children of my own in the new neighborhood seemed highly unattractive to me.

This wasn't home for me. In fact, much as the beach at Redondo had helped me get by, it hadn't really been home for me either.

Somewhere in my life I'd read a story about a man who'd "wanted a life and settled for a living." That was more and more how I'd felt living in the big house with the rooms I was expected to help fill with over privileged children. This was a world where nobody earned anything accept money and I didn't really want to be a part of it, not nearly as much as Rodger wanted to be.

Los Angeles, the way it had been described to me in books, was something different than reality. There was very little romantic about it. Everything was overcrowded and rebuilt, or it was manicured, or paved, or revitalized and if it wasn't one of those things it was just plain unattractive. It was a world of imported palm trees and overpriced goods. A world devoted to vanity disguised as glamour with billboards posted everywhere displaying everything and anything without care, shame, or even point.

Damn, it would feel good to be free of all that.

Secretly, I felt as I pulled out of the neighborhood and on to the surface roads as if I'd been planning the whole escape for more than just the last few weeks.

Something had been bubbling up within me for a long time, calling me away from the coast in some vague but familiar direction -- back to a time and place when and where I'd last felt like I'd had any control in my life. Perhaps it was the fact that sex with Rodger had never really been good or the fact that the arguments were getting more and more frequent, but I really didn't feel too guilty about leaving him standing, mouth agape, in the shadeless driveway on that sunny Friday afternoon.

The only thing that stung was the thought that I'd wasted so much time, so much energy, and so much love, on yet another man who ended up being an utter disappointment.

I turned south on North Fairfax Avenue and, just before it changed to South Fairfax, I stopped at the bank at Beverly Boulevard to get some extra cash. Then another three miles to the I10.

Shame, shame, shame, I thought, as I flipped down the sun visor and went about picking a CD while merging on to the eastbound I10. I smiled as I flipped the visor up and leaned over to pop the latch on the glove compartment. The tape had wound up under an avalanche of garage receipts, but I found it and smiled, plugging the old bootlegged alternative rock into the cassette player.

It was a mix tape my friend Summer had made for me when we'd graduated from the university together. She'd called it a "balm" to help me get over what I'd considered up to that point to be the most horrific breakup of my life. I rolled down the windows and let the hot late summer air flutter through the car. My hair fluttered in the wind as the angry, post-punk, chick-rock filled the car and I began singing along to the half-forgotten words.

It was fun to find out I was still truly adventurous and happy. Off to teach Spanish at a school almost 1,500 miles back east, near where I had gone to college. Maybe I would find another man, maybe I wouldn't. I didn't care. Who needed one really?

And it wasn't like I was bad to look at. A size six brunette, I'd worked hard at keeping in shape. I'd never had much time for insecurities, getting over the fact that I would never be supermodel material sometime in high school when my last growth spurt before junior year had left me in the lurch at a petite 5' 4". I wasn't slender, I didn't have abs, I was really very average and I liked myself that way.

Once upon a time when I was young I might have been considered coquettish, but that had more to do with a want to be left alone than a want to cling to virtue. Not to say that I was a closet sexual deviant. I'd, for the most part, been a very good girl all my life. I'd never cheated on a boyfriend, never shoplifted, always paid my rent and taxes on time.

Not to say I didn't have impulses. Over the months the impulses had been too much to ignore when it came to thoughts of sex. Rodger wasn't home much now that his new practice had taken off. It was hard not to feel neglected and in those feelings of neglect it was hard not to let my mind wander a little.

There would be a car wash attendant or a man in the next booth at Barney's -- all of them were alternatives to the rather under-indulgent medium-sized man camped out on my living room couch most evenings.

When a marriage becomes something you do almost invariably in front of the TV every night between 7 and 11 p.m. you've got nothing left the rest of the day but impulses and the impulses become harder and harder to ignore.

Conversations with my mother about the dullness of a marriage were rather useless. "It's just how it goes, dear," she explained over the phone from Chicago. "You can't have hot and heavy forever, eventually you've got to settle down."

"Is that what's happened to you and dad?" They'd been married 40 years.

"Well, there were times, dear," she said, I pictured her in the kitchen shrugging her shoulders, holding a hand up. "But we had you and your father had the Rotary... By the time we sent you off to school it was like we'd had a break from being ourselves."

"So I should just have a baby, then?"

"Lillian, nobody's telling you what to do..."

"You don't like Rodger, do you? I've always suspected..."

"He's fine, dear," She countered. "But you're the one who's complaining about him and if you feel you don't want to be with him, don't be with him. You've gotten out of relationships before."

"This is a marriage, though," I sighed. "It's different."

"Yes, it is. But if you're unhappy..." She let the sentence fall away.

"This wasn't how I expected it to go. I thought I'd be ready for a family by now, I just... Aren't I supposed to have some sort of alarm clock or something? They talk about it all the time, how, you hit 30 or 35 and bang!"

"You always were a late bloomer, Lily." She chuckled and then we shared a little pause before she continued. "You do what you feel is right, dear. Perhaps you could go back to Kansas. You liked it there when you were in school. Who knows, you might meet a man out there and settle down."

"Yeah," I sighed. "Bye, Mom."

I hung up the phone after hearing her say good-bye.

I didn't want to settle down. Women who settled down lost all their ambitions, all their independence -- all their passion. They pushed running strollers and never seemed to have any sort of spontaneous conversations about anything other than their husbands and children. That wasn't me. Marriage wasn't me. Kids weren't me. Book clubs and bake sales and Girl Scout cookies and den meetings, those weren't me. At least, marriage and kids with Rodger, in Brentwood -- that wasn't me.

It had begun as a conversation over a late dinner at home. I'd said it flatly. "Rodger, let's move."

He'd looked up with a half smile as though he'd thought it a joke at first, but then the smile fell and the question formed on his face before he voiced it in confusion. "Why?"

And after that it had become one long unending argument that we both kidded ourselves into thinking wasn't really an argument but a "discussion." Then at the end of three months I knew he wasn't going to budge. He liked the money. He liked the house. He liked the boat. He liked Brentwood.

Now, two weeks after the realization that Rodger wouldn't leave with me. I was leaving alone. And oddly, I wasn't sad at all. I was scared more than anything, by that fact. Nearly 12 years with him, and I wasn't at all sad.

I fingered the little silver charm I wore around my neck, wondering just what kind of monster I was.

My cell phone rang every so often as I motored my way out of Los Angeles and through the San Gabriel Mountains. I switched it off, not wanting to hear the whimpering simp on the other end.

Odd thought. Perhaps I had been driven insane?

Thinking back on that wonderful first year in L.A. I couldn't quite figure how I'd ended up in the rut. I'd been 22 and more than usually happy. I'd gotten out of a dead-end relationship, packed a bag, hopped a flight and found an apartment in West Hollywood, just a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard. It was an adventure to be a small town girl in a big sprawling city, even though it was a bit of a cliché, and I'd enjoyed loafing around from job to job teaching English as a second language or High School Spanish depending on the demand.

Rodger had been a complete accident. A happy one, I'd thought, at the time. I'd been in the city almost a year when the pain hit me like an anvil to the jaw. An abscessed tooth took me to the dentist's office and the dentist was the soft-spoken and handsomely respectable Rodger.

Soft-spoken. Handsomely respectable. Is that really how a woman describes a man she marries? Isn't there some "thing" a woman's supposed to feel? Had I felt it? Why was I waiting until now to think about it?

My stomach lurched a bit, I felt ill. What was my problem? Why couldn't I just live in Brentwood? Why couldn't I just settle down?

The drive through the desert in the late afternoon was surprisingly hassle free. And as the tape switched from side A to side B, for the fifth or sixth time, I couldn't help but feel a little numbness growing inside of me.

Was it really supposed to be this easy?

The basics of the divorce went quickly. I had visited a paralegal office and had them prepare all the papers, which is what I had left with Rodger that day. I had not asked for too much -- not based on his income. I had made a few withdrawals from our joint checking account that I think I forgot to mention to him -- or the paralegal. In a way it was like waking up suddenly from a twelve-year coma.

There was disorientation. There was fear. And then again, there was elation. The fog had lifted and, though I'd lost time and I'd learned very little from being married, very little from getting divorced, very little after thirteen years in Los Angeles -- I was not saddened.

I was headed somewhere, toward something. I couldn't really put my finger on what it was that made me feel somewhat confident in my adventure, but one thing was certain -- where I was going was going to be better. A whole lot better.

Chapter Two:

It's when you're on a cross-country road trip in the middle of summer that you begin to wish you'd sprung for the convertible top. Halfway through the Mojave Desert I cranked the volume on my stereo and enjoyed the feeling of the wind blowing through.

I'd intentionally started my road trip late in the day, wanting to turn the two day road-trip into a bit of a mini-vacation. Where I stopped depended on what signs I chose to obey, what roads were under construction, and the lapse of time between pit-stops and fuel-ups.

I'd gone for a few hours, watching the sun set over the desert in my rear-view mirror before hitting Las Vegas.

Once I was in "sin city" I took Flamingo, avoiding the strip, heading for downtown and the cheaper hotels and casinos along Freemont Street. The bright neon of old Vegas was a must see, and after taking a room at a cheap motel, I ended up walking around downtown, taking in the people and the street performers before meandering back to my room and plugging a dollar into the magic fingers, removing only my little silver pendant and my wristwatch before falling fast asleep.

I woke the next morning early, hopping into the car with a cup of coffee from the dispenser in the motel's office, and maps of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

In Cedar City I hit E on the gas gauge and stopped to refuel. The place was one of the old-time stations with a cafe attached. The type of place that served coffee and sandwiches and had glass cases displaying wedges of apple pie. After filling the tank I went in to pay for it and see if the place looked clean enough to risk eating there.

The place was empty, even though it was lunch time. Behind the counter was a pimply kid, probably 18, a paper hat matting his hair; a white apron, denim shirt and blue jeans covering his lanky frame. Upon reflex to hearing the bell as I entered, he'd put down a greasy-looking paperback novel, grabbed a pen and order pad and began to talk.