Silent Retreats Page 6

  "So. Kelly's a girl is she? Where is she, then?"

  "Right, ma'am. She's in the car." I pointed toward the car, and we walked that way. She breathed hard as we went. We had to step over junk.

  "Who're you?" she asked.

  "I'm a friend of Rhonda's."

  "A friend of who?"

  "Rhonda." I shined the light ahead so she could see the clear path to the car.

  As we were getting there, she asked me, "So how far's this barn?"

  "What barn would that be?" I asked.

  Kelly heard the question. "Hi," she said. "It's about six miles out."

  "Are you Rhonda?"

  "Kelly," Kelly and I answered simultaneously.

  The woman bent down and looked into the car on Rhonda's side. "Never mind names." Her eyebrows seemed unusually heavy. "I need to be back here in time for the Panama Limited—10:52. Is that going to be a problem, you think?"

  "No," said Kelly.

  "What's that?"

  "No, ma'am," I said, for some reason acting as Kelly's interpreter.

  The woman sat in the back seat with me. She was maybe sixty and wore a dark paisley bandana in her graying hair. She was very serious. Kelly started the car, and we headed out.

  "Did the train thing work okay?" Kelly asked her.

  "It worked very well. I thought it would. It's a whistle-stop, real chancy, and sometimes they don't stop and you end up in Carbondale. But I knew they'd stop for an old woman. I come from the age of trains. We speak the same language." She was smiling as she said this. I tried to picture her, all in black like this, attempting to be a typical passenger on the Illinois Central.

  Now that we were heading out of town, the woman said, "Girls, I usually am paid in advance."

  Kelly looked over at Rhonda, who rummaged in her purse. She came up with a leather bag of change which Kelly reached over and took and started to hand back. No telling how much. Rhonda stopped her.

  "You know Kelly's mother, right?" Rhonda asked.

  "Yes," the woman said.

  "And we don't want her or anyone else to know about this. You know that?" Kelly said.

  "Yes."

  Rhonda handed over the bag.

  It disappeared into the black flowing clothes. "Onward, ladies," she said, satisfied.

  After we left the lights of town, there was very little talk in the car for a while. Occasionally Kelly and Rhonda might confer on the right direction. Out on the country road there was a roar of crickets and frogs. The air was almost hot coming in the back window. I slumped down. We were starting to get far enough north that we were in familiar parking territory for West Ridge. We turned, sure enough, onto the Black River Road, crossed the old iron bridge, and went down into the bottoms. We turned onto the predictable tractor path, went along the river and then across the field toward the barn, the barn, the great monument in West Ridge parking lore.

  We were about two hundred yards from the barn, on a tractor path serving as border between head-high corn and hip-high soybeans, when Kelly and I spotted something at exactly the same moment.

  "Oh God, Rhonda, don't look," she said, "don't look," and she actually groped to cover Rhonda's eyes. We were quietly passing the tail end of the white Starfire, partly hidden in the corn. Rhonda stared straight into it as we passed.

  "It can't be."

  "Don't look," Kelly said.

  "What's the deal, ladies?" the old woman said. "You're giving me the heebie-jeebies. What's happening?"

  "Nothing," Rhonda said. "We thought we saw somebody, but we didn't."

  "Out here?" the woman asked.

  "We thought so," Kelly said. "Wrong again, though." She tried to almost sing it.

  "Wrong again," Rhonda muttered. "Is that dumb, or what?" she said to Kelly. "Coming here? Is that goddamned stupid, or what?" She was saying this real quietly, her head down almost on her knees. "How could this be happening?"

  I sat frozen. I realized something amazing. Just as surely as the summer sky was blue, Rhonda's mom was an Arcola girl, too.

  We went on down the tractor path toward the barn, Rhonda staying low in her seat and saying nothing. Once she squirmed up and looked out the back window, but there was nothing to see.

  "You wanna forget this?" Kelly said to her, referring to the woman in the back seat. "No big deal."

  "Oh come now, ladies . . ." the woman said.

  We parked the car at the side, and all of us went into the barn. The woman selected a spot on the dirt floor in the middle of the dark, musty space, and Kelly produced six candles from the same bag she'd gotten the pickles from. The woman lit them. Kelly and Rhonda sat and the woman sat next to them, a triangle.

  Suddenly the woman looked at me. "He will have to join us or get out," she said.

  "Sit down here," Rhonda said to me. She was stricken, very tense. I sat down.

  "My boy, this is a seance, what we call a 'circle.' We're here to call forth the spirits, and I'm not kidding, the good spirits of departed friends, Karen Ann Kreitzer and Marie Beth McClain. Can you handle it?" She read the names off a small card in her hand, slipped it back into her robe.

  I looked at Rhonda.

  "They were our friends," she said to me, her voice actually trembling.

  I pictured their car in the wreck lot, the blood in the seat, and the shoe in the white gravel. The woman was bowing forward, toward the ground, staring down, changing postures from moment to moment. The candles made the whole barn jump. Gray webs dangled from the crossbeams.

  "What happens if somebody drives up in the middle of this?" I whispered to Rhonda.

  "We won't be here real long or anything," Kelly said.

  The woman's arms were out, embracing us as a group. "Is there someone who can tell us of Karen and Marie?" she asked the night air. The night air was very quiet. "We wish for only good souls to speak to us, friendly souls and no bad souls. Satan lives and we want none of that. Does anyone know of Karen and Marie? And if you do, can you, will you, join our circle?"

  The river-bottom sycamores rustled. I realized I could hear the river.

  "We join our hands here to form a circle. We invite you to be with us here. We are all concentrating, thinking toward you, remembering you—your eyes, your smile . . ."

  Her arms reached out on both sides, and she took the hands of the girls. Then they took mine.

  In the candlelight the woman was alternately very soft and friendly looking, then hard and witchlike. It depended on the candlelight, her movements. I realized there was an old red Farmall not far off behind Kelly, an old red hay baler attached to the back.

  "Now, ladies, I want to tell you," the woman said, "that these young girls might well not be ready to talk. It may not be easy for them right now."

  Rhonda and Kelly said nothing. I was wondering if they had a money-back guarantee. Rhonda's hand was cool and damp, Kelly's hot as fire.

  "I suspect that could be the case," the woman said. "That they aren't ready." Again she bowed forward, her arms out, her hands joined to ours. Again she moved side to side, staring off. "We require the help of a friendly soul, a good soul," she said, "in order to speak with Karen Kreitzer."

  "Or with Marie," Kelly said very quietly.

  "Marie?" the woman said, suddenly tensing up. She held herself very straight, upright, rigid.

  Kelly looked at me and rolled her eyes.

  "Marie honey, are you sad?" the woman asked. She held herself rigid for several long moments. Amazingly, the woman's eyes teared up.

  In a second Rhonda began to cry also.

  "I almost had Marie there," the woman said to Kelly. "She was near. Did you feel it? She was with us in this barn. She passed through here. She passed through us." She looked around. "Marie. Please talk to your friends, to Kelly and . . ." She was stumped.

  "Rhonda," the girls said in unison.

  "Kelly and Rhonda are here to talk to you, Marie."

  Silence. A long way off a private plane was swooping in to land at the West Ri
dge airfield. I listened to the river, the trees' rustle. I could hear a bird steadily cooing in a tree out there somewhere, peaceful sound, made me feel better. I think I had expected something violent to happen any moment—a barn door to fly open wildly, a ghoul to appear, the old woman's head to do a three-sixty, her eyes to light up like the devil.

  "Ladies," the woman said, "this room is full of ghosts—restless souls from this land all around, souls from all ages. There are Indians here and old settlers, pioneers—children and farmers whose bones are buried in this ground. We have made a hole in the firmament and they are crowding to it. Can you sense that they are with us?"

  The girls didn't answer.

  "Karen? Karen, have you come to speak to us? Will you join our circle? No," she said in just a moment, quietly, "it's Marie who comes near. Marie! Will you speak to your friends? Karen? Are you there, my dear?" The woman's eyes were closed in fierce concentration.

  "Karen?" Kelly said quietly into the black.

  "What's that?" the woman whispered. "Did you hear that?" She thought Kelly was a spirit talking.

  Kelly looked at her. "It was me," she said. Kelly clearly conveyed impatience. This seemed to deflate the woman completely.

  "Ladies," she said after a moment, "these are girls who have died very young. Maybe to you your age doesn't seem real young. I believe that they are not yet ready to talk. They are still very sad, I think. There is the sign that they are not happy on the other side. They will be, but they have died young and they aren't happy yet. I'm sorry." She broke hands with Rhonda and Kelly and leaned forward and blew out the candles.

  "Or else," she said, "something's distracting you ladies and keeping us from fully communicating."

  Abruptly Rhonda went out the door. I suddenly realized where she might be going. Kelly followed me out but ran by me very fast, disappeared on the lane ahead. She wanted to stop Rhonda. I was having a hard time believing Rhonda was really going where it looked like she was. At one point I came around a bend in the path, and could see that Kelly had caught up to her. The two of them were talking, Rhonda waving her arms—she was pretty upset. Kelly had her hands on Rhonda's shoulders—trying to talk sense, it looked like. Then in a moment Rhonda was coming back toward me, and Kelly was heading on back toward the car parked in the corn.

  "What's going on?" I asked when Rhonda was close enough.

  "Kelly's gone bushwhacking," she said. "She's going to get a ride home for her and Ghost-woman." Not knowing I knew what I knew, she lied for my benefit: "I guess Kelly knows those people or something." She looked at me to see if it was going to fly. I let it. "Anyway, I've got Kelly's keys, in case there's a problem," she said. Now she was running back toward the barn with me right behind her. "Give me your keys," she said to me, "so Kelly can get back out here in your car. Then we can go dancing and she can go to West Ridge."

  "I don't get this," I said.

  "Hang in there," she said.

  The windows on Kelly's car had misted up in the night air. The woman was standing next to it. The moon was just up, red and looming low in the east. "The car broke," Rhonda said.

  "It what?" the woman said.

  "Kelly says it won't start. But you wait here—Kelly's going to get you to the train on time. Him and me . . ." Rhonda indicated me. "We're going to hide from the people in the other car, then stay and guard Kelly's car until Kelly gets back. How's that?"

  "You mean she's gone to—er—interrupt those kids parked back yonder?" the woman said.

  "Yeah. So you can get to the train. Give these to Kelly," Rhonda said, handing my car keys to the woman.

  "Well, what are those kids going to think of me and Kelly out here alone?" she said as the Starfire headlights glanced high off the side of the barn and changed the shadows.

  We were retreating into the standing corn. "What are you worried about?" Rhonda shouted. "You've got a whole bag of money."

  Later we were near the swimming hole, in a stand of oaks, sycamores, and river willows. Rhonda was munching on a pickle. There were hedge apples on the ground, and I lobbed a few into the river. Maybe she seemed a little shorter than I imagined she was. I'd never stood near her before.

  "Pretty strange evening," I said.

  She didn't answer. After a while, though, she turned and stood there looking at me. "We paid her seventy bucks." She kept looking at me. I did my best not to react.

  The moon was up brighter now, and it gave enough light for me to see the rope I thought I remembered being there, attached high in a sycamore, for swinging out over the water. The night was muggy and hot. Rhonda said nothing.

  "Try to tell me what was going on back there."

  "You mean Ghost-woman? Just something completely insane," she said. "Kelly gets these great ideas. Kelly's mom knew this nurse up in Champaign who does this stuff—reads palms, all that. I forgot this was the night. That's why I messed you over. Forgot."

  "Oh. I thought I was the front man. So you could get out of the house."

  She said nothing to that. She was sitting on the riverbank. I sat down next to her.

  "My mom's having an affair with the local veterinarian." She looked downriver into the dark. "Jesus. I'm coming apart," she said. She was quiet for a minute. "I feel so sorry for Dad. I can't think about it," she said. Then she was crying, her head down on her arms, which were resting on her knees.

  I sat next to her. I couldn't think of a thing to tell her.

  "I thought we might reach Karen," she said after a while. "I really loved her. She was my best friend. My best friend. I'm definitely coming apart."

  There was nothing to say. I ate a pickle and regretted it. I rolled a couple of hedge apples down the bank into the water. Finally I stood up and kicked my shoes off, dropped my wallet on the ground next to them. I tested the rope to see if the limb would hold me.

  "What if Karen had talked tonight?" I said. "What would she say?"

  "Don't tease me. It was a nutty idea. Karen would talk to me if she could. You're going to bust your ass swinging on that thing. I'll tell you what, that woman was a complete fake." After a while she said, "Didn't you think so?" She didn't move. "Kelly says a medium like this one helped her contact her father."

  "Kelly wishes," I said. I swung out over the river, a warm wind in my ears. "One thing I know is that Karen and Marie aren't sad. You are, but they aren't." I grabbed a hedge apple, and I swung out over the river, dropping it straight down. It was hard to tell how far above the water I was. I told Rhonda, "There's not anything to say, is why they didn't talk. They died, and that's all."

  Her head was down. "I just don't believe your friends can die like that," she said. "Not your friends." By now it seemed to me like she'd been crying off and on for hours.

  "It's a real pretty night, you know it? You ought to try to relax."

  "Ha. Relax," she said.

  I swung out again and again on the rope. I realized it would have been better if she could have been left to herself. "Lucky I'm here to keep you company," I said. At the far point of the arch, I could see all the way to the iron bridge. Out there, the moon broke through the trees, and I could see the movement of the water downstream. Sometimes I could hear a carp break the surface.

  "I didn't want to go dancing anyway," I said. When I swung, I could hear the rope grating on the big limb high above. At one point while I was far out on the rope, I heard Rhonda slip into the water. I swung back to the bank, took a run and swung far out again, trying to spot her in the inky black be low. I could hear her swimming.

  "It's nice and cool," she said.

  At the far point this time I let go of the rope and dropped. En route to the water, in a moment when I was anticipating splashing hard into the Black River, in a turning and falling motion in the dark, I happened to glimpse Rhonda's clothes in a little moonlit pile on the riverbank.

  Why I Shacked Up with Martha

  Even though she'd been with the company a couple of years, Martha seemed to emerge from nowhere, talkin
g to me a lot, leaning over the desk at work, asking questions. She was very thin and tall—the bones in her legs long, her arms long and luxurious in how they hung at her side. Visually, she reminded me of an airline stewardess, only less metallic. Her eyes were wide and deep, harbors of secrets, deeper than the deep blue sea. Somewhere down in that well of blue, you knew, was her precious little girlhood, her past, and her grown-up, secret, rambling sense of womanhood, currently preoccupied by "liberation." Her laugh was quick and strong; she moved forward, or she waited, standing back a little too far—the eye contact always held a shade too long, the laugh a little too appreciative. Had she always behaved this way and I was only just noticing?

  Anyway, I began to get the picture.

  "Why don't you join the Chiefs?" my wife had asked about that time, during dinner one evening when one of the silences had lingered longer than usual. "It'll bring you and Scotty closer. Take your mind off work."

  "What do I have to do?" I asked her. I felt another increment of my minimal leisure about to evaporate.

  "Just be with him. What you do is, you make a vest with him, a vest for each of you. Sew them yourselves—you two boys, no help from Mom. That's the rule. And you go camping a lot. He's growing up. You have to be with him more. He loves you. He needs your example."

  So I joined the Chiefs, to Scott's delight, and received in the mail days later patterns for father- and son-sized vests. There were no directions at all on how to sew the infernal things, but there was a notice enclosed that the first Chiefs outing, a camping trip to the Blue Ridge, would be two weeks from that very day.

  "They don't allow drinking on these trips either," my wife advised me one afternoon. "It's another rule." She was repotting some coleus and her favorite weeping fig and a lot of flowers I'd never bothered to learn the names of.

  "It's for the boys, after all," she said.

  "Where are all these rules written down?" I asked her.

  And while all this was going on, I suddenly realized there were a few things that I'd been meaning to explain to Martha, this lady at the office, if there were only time. She was just back from Houston, having served as squad leader or something at the women's convention—International Women's Year, remember? When she got back she was talking about having actually shaken the hand of Gloria Steinem.