Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon

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СКАЧАТЬ all business when she picked up the phone, until I said my name, and then there was a heavy silence before I felt the air go out of her. “Burke Chandler?” she finally said, and it was like a damn breaking inside me at the sound of her voice, my blood rushing so hard and fast as I told her how I’d been looking for her and how happy I was she was alive, feeling it right there on the surface of my skin, in my throat.

      “I was sure they killed you, too,” I told her. “Just sure of it.”

      “No,” she said. “I’m—no.”

      I listened to her breathing, so happy, and she said, “Burke?” and I said, “Yeah,” and she said, “Burke Chandler?” and I said, “Cash’s brother, Burke—I’m right here.”

      “Cash’s brother,” she said, shocked, just like I’d been shocked at discovering her alive, and so grateful.

      “I was thinking they done something to you like they done to him,” I told her. “I made up these awful stories in my mind about it—you and Cash and what they done to him. And what I thought they done to you. Making you turn on him.”

      “I was gone then,” she said. “When he—when they.”

      “I thought maybe you’d know something,” I said. “Who or why or whatnot.”

      “I was in Chicago then,” she said. “My aunt’s place in Oak Bluff.”

      “Oak Bluff, huh?” and she said, “I didn’t know what happened back in Texas.”

      She sounded just like she looked, even though she wasn’t southern and I thought she would be. But she sounded just like she looked. Beautiful. I told her I could sit on the phone and listen to the sweet sound of her voice all day long.

      She didn’t say anything for a long minute, but I could hear her breathing.

      I wondered if she was about to cry, thinking about Cash, bringing up all her old feelings. She didn’t really know me yet, so it wouldn’t be me she’d cry over. Not yet. “You okay?” I asked her.

      “Where are you?” she said.

      “The house we grew up in,” I said. “He must have told you about me,” and she said, “Yes,” and I said, “I just want to hear the sound of your voice. Like honey.”

      “I’m not—I don’t know what to say.”

      “Tell me about you and him,” I said. “All y’alls time together. I’m just so glad you’re alive. I worked myself into a state nearly.”

      “This is just such a surprise,” she said, her voice trembly and scratchy under all that honey.

      “Did he bring you home to Waco?” I asked.

      “Un-unh.”

      “So you never met our mom? She passed, by the way. Last month.”

      “I’m sorry,” Nikki said. “I never did get to meet her.”

      “But he must’ve told you about me,” I said. “We was close as could be. My time at Huntsville was done for him. Did he tell you that?”

      “Yes,” she said, and I said, “What’d he say, exactly?” and when she didn’t answer, I said, “You probably want to tell me face to face, is that it?”

      That’s when she finally let go, crying.

      “It’s all right,” I told her. “I’m here now. You can let it all out.”

      That was probably the peak, when I was still too stupid to see what was right in front of me, right when I could feel us coming together, like I always knew we would.

      “There’s just so much we need to say to one another,” I said when she was about done crying. “And I bet you’re even prettier now than you was back then.”

      “Oh, I wouldn’t. . . ,” she said, sniffling, and I said, “I would,” and waited for her to laugh, this long pause hanging heavy in the air between us.

      Looking back, that’s when something started feeling just a tiny bit off.

      Nikki

      When I finally got off the phone, I had to leave work and settle myself out on the boardwalk, walking, wanting to throw up every time I looked right at it, so not looking right at it, and nowhere to go, just walking, moving. Alina was probably home, packing for school, and Kyle was probably in his studio, preparing paintings for his upcoming show. I just wanted to go, to run. But where? I wasn’t a kid like when I ran from Austin, from Providence, from Manchester. And I wasn’t going to run from Kyle.

      There was a guy I met when I was pregnant in Portland, Bobby, who I became close to before and after Alina was born, who loved me and loved Alina until she was almost two. He was thirty years older than me. That’s when I realized how fucked up I was. Not the rape. It wasn’t that. I wasn’t even calling it that then. But just everything. My mother and how I’d run from her. Cash dead and Alina. My cousin Melanie in love with Daryl down in Austin, and how much I’d wanted him, how wrong that was, and how I wanted to be better than I was. Just all of it. And this guy, Bobby, in Portland, he loved me, I knew that. He loved Alina. And he was a good man—I liked him—but he wanted to be more than friends, which was perfectly natural, even though I didn’t feel that way. And even though I didn’t feel that way, I wanted to feel that way and made the mistake of trying. We slept together a couple times—twice—how I realized my feelings were never going to develop. I wanted them to, but there was nothing there. We lived together awhile as roommates, until I understood it was a kind of torture for him, that as long as I was around he’d hold out hope that we’d wind up together. I knew I was holding him back, that my presence in the house was hurting him. I’d never be able to give him what he deserved. I knew how much he wanted me to love him and I tried. But I couldn’t do it, and he’d never find someone if I was around.

      I was taking classes at Portland State and he’d take care of Alina while I was at school. I came home one night and he was in the kitchen just beaming, because Alina had called him Daddy, and even though I knew it was the best possible thing for Alina to stay there with him, because he’d love her and take care of her, and love me and take care of me, something snapped in me. I knew that minute I couldn’t stay. I wasn’t going to be taken care of. I didn’t love him like that, and if I stayed one second longer I was never going to leave and we’d end up getting married and raising Alina and I would shrink a little every year and lose pieces of myself until there’d be nothing left. But wasn’t that what happened to everyone? I was too young to know. I only knew I wasn’t going to have that life. I ran to Seattle and didn’t look back. I was twenty years old and too wild and stupid to know better.

      But now I wasn’t so young. I wasn’t so fucked up. And I wasn’t going to be so fucked up. I just had to satisfy whatever Burke wanted and get rid of him. Mostly, I had to make sure he never found out about Alina.

      Before he called again, I tried to prepare myself, to anticipate him.

      “I just can’t stop thinking about you,” he said when I picked up the phone a few days later, and I realized I hadn’t prepared anything at all.

      “You don’t know how hard it is to heal in prison,” he said.

      I’d СКАЧАТЬ