Eating Memories (3 page)

They set across the field of ash at a stumbling run, Zeke clutching Daniel’s arm. The breeze teased once before it turned fresh and fierce, lifting the hair on their foreheads and tugging at their shirts.

At the edge of the forest Daniel fell to his knees. Zeke paused to help him up, and then they ran on, their lungs sucking in the humid air. Odd orange-encrusted twigs caught at their clothes and whipped into their faces.

“I’m tired,” Daniel whined as he tried to pull out of Zeke’s grasp.

“Not now. We gotta get home. We gotta get home quick.”

Daniel dropped to the ground, nearly pulling Zeke off his feet. “Let go of me. I’m tired. My legs hurt. Got blisters on my feet.”

Zeke turned. Lifting his arms, he beat his brother about the head and shoulders with his open palms. “Get up! Get up, damn it! Get up right now!”

Daniel let Zeke’s stinging blows fall on his back. “Pa’ll whup you for saying ‘damn.’”

“I don’t give a shit about a whupping,” Zeke said. Abruptly he stopped hitting his brother and fell down next to him on the around. His arms wrapped themselves around his shoulders. “Danny. Danny. We gotta get home.” Zeke was crying so hard now he looked like Daniel when he cried. His nose ran.

“Don’t know why you’re afraid of the rain. Rains ever night,” his brother said with a pout. He rubbed his shoulder where his brother had hit him.

“Dark comes with the rain, Danny,” Zeke whispered. “Dark comes.”

The thing to the northwest gave a growl that shook the trunk behind their backs. “We ain’t never gonna make it home now,” Zeke said in a thin, cry-baby voice that embarrassed him. “Oh, God. Shouldn’t of ever come. We ain’t never gonna make it home before dark.”

As soon as he said it, it was, like it had already happened. Everything fell into place. Daniel and Zeke had sinned and now God was going to get them. Without interest he watched as his little brother shook dirt out of his shoe.

“I’m ready,” Daniel said, his bright face turned up. “Said I’m ready. You deaf, or what?”

Blindly Zeke got to his feet and stumbled his way through the strange-smelling trees.

They were still in the old forest when the last bit of light began to die. Red leaves became gray. Purple-brown trunks turned to black. The orange moss on the branches began to glow with an unearthly light. A ghostly kind of light.

“Oh, God forgive me,” Zeke said half to himself. “I shouldn’t never of showed you that rock.”

“Pa’s gonna whup us sure,” Daniel said, missing the point.

A fat, cold drop fell on the back of Zeke’s hand, and he remembered that they were going to die. Dying didn’t seem real, but the ghosts did. He could imagine them coming out, rank after rank of them, glowing in the night like that orange moss, wanting to know where their stone pictures were. Wanting their arrowheads back. Asking why he threw that bone.

“It’s raining,” Daniel said in a complaining voice.

“I know.”

Coming out from the old forest was like coming out of a grave. The wind bent the tops of the pines. Across the west lightning flashed, leaving a pink afterimage on Zeke’s retina.

The rain was nearly too loud to talk over. Zeke found his way around the soft rises of land where the trees grew thick. Dragging his brother along by the hand, he sought the clear, open spaces, the lower spots, where water splashed ankle high.

“You sure we ain’t lost?” Daniel asked in a strained shout.

“Guess it don’t matter if we’re lost or if we ain’t.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked, his voice barely louder than the rushing of the water.

Instead of answering, Zeke pulled Daniel up with him into the nearest thicket. They sat together at the foot of a pine, huddled against the rain.

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked again. “What do you mean it don’t matter?” The sound of the rain under the branches was a steady drip, drip, drip instead of the wild howl it had been in the open.

“We ain’t going home, Danny.”

“Sure we are. We’re going home.” Daniel’s voice was shrill.

“No, we ain’t. We ain’t never gonna make it. We’re gonna die just like all them others.”

He wondered what the ghosts would look like when they came. He’d only seen their bones. They had had long arms and clawed feet. Would their eyes bulge with dark glee when they saw them? Zeke wondered. And would Downy Phoebes and Horace Watson and Barney Potts be with them? Next to his right side Daniel cuddled, a line of warmth down his ribs.

Zeke disentangled himself from his brother and stood up. “You stay here a minute. I’m going up more in the trees, see if I can see our house lights from here.”

“Okay,” Daniel said doubtfully.

“I mean it. You stay here. Right where I can find you. Don’t you move, understand?”

“I ain’t deaf.”

Zeke pushed his way through the prickly needles until he found a steady tree to climb. Easing himself into the lower branches, he saw a faint light to the south. The wind blew and the glow vanished, leaving him wondering if he had seen it at all.

Clambering down the tree, he walked to the right, keeping his eyes on the spot where he thought the glimmer might have been. Three yards later he lost his footing and fell into a blackberry bush. His legs were caught in something thicker than water, less thick than mud.

Pulling on the bush, he eased his body forward. The muck gave his legs back with a disappointed pop. When he tried to push himself up, the ground swallowed his arm to his shoulder.

“Jesus,” he whimpered.

He jerked on the bush so hard that he stripped leaves away. Earth crept into his open mouth; embraced his chest and clambered up his back. Rain fell into his eyes, but he had no free hand to wipe it away. It was then he learned a great, adult truth about death, that sometimes it’s less painful than simply inconvenient.

Something moved in the bushes to his right. His breath stopped in his throat.

“Zeke?’ something said. It sounded like his brother.

Zeke didn’t answer. He pictured the bug-eyed thing not five yards away. Its wide toe-claws would have dug into the dirt. The long hands would be at its side, waiting.

“Zeke?? Daniel asked. “You okay?”

The terrified little voice could only have come from Daniel. Ghosts didn’t have anything to be scared of. Now that he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to drown, Zeke felt sort of stupid.

“I’m here,” he said quietly. “Don’t come no closer. There’s real bad sticky mud. You’ll get caught.”

There were thrashing noises as Daniel oriented himself.

“Okay. Now, what I need for you to do is lay down in this blackberry bush and grab me.”

Daniel’s voice was pouty. “But them thorns’Il eat me alive.”

“Damn it, Daniel!” Zeke snapped. “Lay down in that bush and grab my hand! Hear me? You hear me? If you don’t help, I’m gonna drown!” There was no reply. There was no movement of the bush, either. He could picture Daniel on the other side, thinking it out. “Daniel!”

“Yeah?”

“You lay down in that bush right now, and you grab my hand, hear? This is real serious. This ain’t no game or nothing.”

There was the crunch of vegetation and then, “Ow,” and another, “Ow.” Daniel’s small fingers found Zeke’s.

The suction gave Zeke’s body back to him in Iittle parts: an arm, a leg, a foot. When it was over, he lay on his back on the blackberry bush, hardly noticing the thorns.

“You said we was gonna die,” Daniel said.

“Yeah. So?”

“Well, we gonna die, or what?” Daniel sounded confused rather than frightened.

“I reckon,” Zeke said as he got up on his and knees. His body didn’t want to hold him.

“I’m hungry,” Daniel said.

Zeke crawled his way to the solid ground under the pines.

He curled up under the canopy.

“I’m cold,” his brother said,

Zeke’s eyes were closing in spite of the ghosts.

“Pa’s gonna come for us, ain’t he?”

“No, Daniel. Pa ain’t gonna come for us. Nobody will.” Nobody living, he remembered.

He wondered if he’d fight to protect Daniel. He should. That’s what brothers were for. But he didn’t know if love could be stronger than fear, even though Reverend Sorenson said it cast fear out. It’d be easier if the ghosts took them both together. He prayed for that, and in the middle of prayer fell into a sweet, forgetful sleep.

* * *

The next time Zeke opened his eyes it was daylight. Over his head a line of ants craw led in fire-drill order down the resinous bark of a pine.

Zeke sat up and touched himself all over before checking Daniel. His little brother was sleeping, chest tucked to legs like a cat. His pink mouth was open, “Daniel,” Zeke whispered, shaking him by one shoulder.

A blue eye wavered open.

“Daniel I think we’re alive.”

A thin sound, something between a snore and a complaint, came from the open mouth. Daniel turned over. He made a snicking sound with his throat.

Zeke dug in his shirt pocket and found the small jar, still intact. Stick figures marched themselves around the sides, their stick hands piled with things. Food, maybe, Maybe flowers. It didn’t show it, but he imagined the figures had once been happy.

“Daniel,” Zeke called after a while.

This time Daniel sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I’m hungry,” he said.

“I know. Let’s check and see if the ground’s solid, and then we’ll go on home.”

Daniel ran before Zeke could catch him. His small legs pumped; his hands windmilled. With a whoop he darted down the side of the slope to where Zeke had nearly drowned. His feet made shallow impressions in the mud

After steeling himself, Zeke followed, The spot would have looked innocent in the sunlight except that the blackberry bush was stripped of its leaves.

Daniel stopped running to limp. His feet must have still been bothering him. “Are we the only ones who ever made it back?”

“So far as I know,” Zeke said. Somehow that bothered rather than cheered him.

Daniel, though, was beside himself. “We’re gonna be famous. We’re gonna be spoke about in service, and they’re all gonna thank God that we come back.”

“Uh huh,” Zeke said doubtfully. “But you know what?”

Daniel had never liked the you-know-what game. Instead of replying, he kicked the smooth floor of the hollow,

Zeke suddenly realized why there were no pebbles on the path. “I had the feeling like that gunk could of buried me right there, with no sign of me left behind.”

“I don’t get it,” Daniel said. He was grinning ear-to-ear, too happy about their being special to think about anything else.

“What if there ain’t no ghosts, Daniel? What if that night mud was what caught up Downy Phoebes and Horace Watson and all them others?”

Daniel was skipping in spite of his bad feet.

“Daniel?” Zeke asked worriedly. “What if there ain’t no ghosts?”

The idea horrified Zeke. He’d lived with the ghosts all his life. They’d been a fixture, just like Ma and Pa had been a fixture. Thinking that the ghosts might not be real left him with a sense of vertigo that might have been relief or loss.

“We’ll just tell them, that’s what,” Daniel said after a moment’s thought. “Then we’ll be more famous than ever.”

Zeke chewed his lip as he followed his brother. By the time they reached the house, his mouth was raw.

The house was too quiet. The stock hadn’t been put out of the barn. The chickens were still in the coop. He drew his brother back toward the nearest stand of trees and waited.

“I’m hungry,” Daniel said. “I want to see Ma.”

“I know. Shut up.”

A little while later Pa opened the door and set off across the yard. Zeke stood up. Daniel stood with him.

Pa glanced toward them and stopped in his tracks, his face white against the red plaid of his shirt. Then he stepped back a few paces and whipped his hand through the air three times, shooing them away.

Daniel stopped trying to squirm out of his brother’s grasp. He halted, confused. “Pa?” he asked.

The callused hand moved like a hatchet across the air. Whip, whip.

“Pa!” Zeke called, his voice reasonable. “Pa, we made it through. Them ghosts didn’t come for us We’re all right.”

Pa’s narrow brown eyes found his. Whip, whip, went the big hand through the air, Whip, whip.

Pa let the cattle and horses out of the barn. He released the chickens. Ma came out on the porch for a while and, looking toward the place where Daniel and Zeke stood, put her hands over her face and cried. Her hair was down. She still had her nightdress on. Pa gathered her up and led her back inside.

“They don’t know we’re here,” Daniel said. “They ain’t seen us.”

“They seen us, all right, but maybe we look different or something.”

Daniel studied his brother. “You look ugly as ever.”

Zeke didn’t feel like laughing,

“Pa’s mad, ain’t he?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah.”

“When he decides to, he’s gonna whup us blind.”

Zeke looked down at the silent house and didn’t say a thing. The sun rose higher. Three red chickens pecked in the dirt of the yard. Pa came out with Ma. Ma was dressed in black. Pa set the bay gelding into the traces of the wagon and they rode off to service.

“I’m going on down to get me something to eat.” Daniel clambered to his feet and looked down at Zeke expectantly.

Zeke had his arms wrapped around his knees and was staring straight ahead. ”You just go ahead, then. I ain’t gonna bother stopping you. I’m tired and my hands is all cut up from them bushes. But I’m telling you there’s something not right here. There’s something real bad wrong.”

“With Pa?”

Zeke put his head down on his arms and didn’t answer. Daniel stayed on his feet a minute, just to show his big brother he wasn’t chicken. When he did sit, he acted casual about it.

After service, Pa and Ma drove up, old Reverend Sorenson, Pete Jones and Hady Miller behind them. They all looked towards the place where Zeke and Daniel waited. Pa seemed startled to see them still there. He sent Ma into the house and shooed them away.

They didn’t go.

“Pa!” Zeke called. “I don’t think there are no ghosts. I don’t think there’s no ghosts noplace.”

Old Reverend Sorenson said something about Satan. His voice didn’t carry.