Chapter 1 #19
Then rose, and the others fell in behind her, and I behind them.
We flew west across Stanley, to a part of town that used to be its own separate village, Hickum, but then got absorbed into the greater town of Stanley, and was known, in my day, for two bars (Jocko’s and the Maze), both of which would let a high school kid (even one as baby-faced as me, with no ID, not even a fake) just waltz right in.
Behind Jocko’s lay (my heart dropped) the broad expanse of the cemetery.
Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery. Down we all floated as one.
Beneath a willow, fifteen feet from a stone bench upon which that Slurpee cup rested and had been resting now for the better part of a year, was the same old (disappointingly economical) stone reading: J Blaine, Wife, 1954–1976.
There beside it was (oh dear) a new one, made of marble, not just plain old stone, reading: L Blaine, Husband, 1948–2023.
I dived down underground before I’d really thought it through, and there he—
And shot back out so quick I found myself up on a phone line, sobbing, and though I had zero bodyweight, the phone line was swaying ever so slightly just from the sheer power of my feelings.
Those others of our ilk rose up, forming around me a consoling cloud.
He went, I said.
Yes, Grandma said. Right away. Immediately after. No dilly-dallying.
Without finding me first, I said.
Right, she said.
Without saying goodbye, I said.
And there’s more, Grandma said.
There was.
Over on the far side of Lloyd’s stone was another (of the same ritzy marble), reading: Susan Connor Blaine, Wife heads humbly lowered, they fled to positions against the glowing white fence, propelled there by my strangeness.
Nope, still rattled.
And, as far as elevation: no, not great, pretty subpar.
I felt weird, dual, not quite right.
In my mind was a dispute, like two women were up there competing for, so to say, a certain right, the right to guide the ship of speech.
It was like she (the elevated, more or less hoity-toity part, no offense) kept pushing me (who had actually once lived and all) out of the way, even as we, together, had to admit that she (the elevated part) could, really could, say, more precisely than I could, that which we felt might need expressing.
It seemed I’d somehow damaged myself on that stupid trip to Indiana.
Had become, it felt like, a bit of a freak.
A freak of sorts.
A hybrid.
Part elevated, part Jill “Doll” Blaine.
This had never happened before, not so extremely, and I have to say I didn’t much like it.
And tried again to fix it.
Dropping, I skimmed along the surface of a red-clay stream feeding the Canadian River that, flowing along there in the dark, was rippled by a wheat-stalk-flattening cross-breeze that set four wind-chimes to sounding from the front porch of a creepy hunter’s shack/shed I wouldn’t have set foot inside of if you gave me a million bucks, honestly.
Dang, it was so odd.
To find oneself in this new mixed mode.
What a riot.
Confounding yet intriguing.
Weird as all get-out.
I couldn’t seem to shake Jill “Doll” Blaine (all she’d seen, been, and done) and didn’t want to. But neither could Jill “Doll” Blaine shake me, the elevated part, and didn’t want to, for to be in touch even briefly with elevation is to know the bliss of being one with God.
In any event, I had to get back to it.
Here, now, was Texas, here the neighborhood of my charge.
Every room on the second floor of his house was lit, though only one of them was in use.
—
I landed softly, in a sitting position, on the base of the statue of the golden dog.
I couldn’t go in.
Just couldn’t somehow.
Needed a minute.
Up the driveway came a man of our ilk, short but densely muscled, shirtless, who looked as if he’d been rolling around in a vat of grease, whose wild white hair was sticking straight up.
Seen my wife? he said. I’m always about ten minutes behind her. Old lady in a rocking chair. Or young gal with her hair down all slutty, about to dash off into the rain. To meet her friends. Also sluts.
Afraid not, I said.
I mean to make it up to her good and proper, he said.
Do you, I said.
Naw, he said. I mean to do what I want with her again, way I used to. I’ll catch her. If you see her? Knock her down, pin her down, and hold her for me, will you?
No, I said.
Maybe I’ll pin you down, he said.
I blasted through him, thinking, as I did, of a huge mound of shit coming out of his rear, with razor blades embedded in it.
When I came out on the other side, he was on the ground, moaning in pain, clutching his ass.
All right, all right, he said. I was just funnin’ you.
Go “fun” someone else, I said. I’m not in the mood.
I guess not, he said.
And he tried to stand but his ass hurt too much.
How’d you do that? he said.
Not sure, I said.
But that wasn’t true.
I had a pretty good idea.
Part of me was eternal and I had those considerable powers at hand (my mind was vast, unlimited, unrestrained, rapid, and skillful), while the other part, which very much longed to be alive again, was making me: desirous, ornery, active, aching to interfere in whatever way I could, in any old thing.
Powerful combo.
—
Nearby, someone was whistling “La Marseillaise.”
The Frenchman came unsteadily around the side of the house.
Ah, madame, he said. Here you are. Where have you been? You look wonderful, by the way. Disordered, loose. Full of desire and confusion. Rather unhinged. Yet beautiful. In a rough way.
Oh, be quiet, I said.
But it was true: my beige skirt and pale pink blouse had been cleaned and pressed by fresh love for life and also I had self-redone my hair with fondness for ME, and, being decidedly ephemeral yet nevertheless touched by the eternal, I looked, if I may say so, just terrific.
He, on the other hand, looked awful: his head a nearly featureless blob, his hands two vague smears at the ends of sticklike arms, his feet likewise, at the ends of sticklike legs, his formerly white clothing/boots/scarf now dirt-colored and in tatters.
You don’t look so good, I said.
I don’t feel so good, he said.
Suddenly he noticed the fellow whose ass I’d damaged.
What happened to him? he said.
Me, I said. I did.
You are perhaps not yourself? he said.
Which was like the understatement of the century.
The fellow whose ass I’d damaged got to his feet and limped away, one hand reflexively covering his damaged ass.