Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon

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СКАЧАТЬ the fact that sometimes you know things you don’t know you know. That’s the guiding hand of fate, protecting you or steering you towards knowledge, the reason I keep wondering about that night and people that might have been around and such before he was killed.”

      I hadn’t realized in the first call that he might be insane. I couldn’t tell if that made my situation better or worse. Or if he even was crazy. I said, “But I was gone by then. Up in Chicago,” and he said, “Why’d you go there?” and I said, “Just—the breakup and everything,” and he said, “You had it pretty bad for him, didn’t you?”

      Since he’d discovered where I worked so easily, I knew he’d find where we lived, too, though I’d changed us to unlisted after his first call. But Texas wasn’t so far. Not far enough. He’d show up at work, if nowhere else, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d hide my feelings if I had to see his face.

      “You seeing anybody now?” he said.

      I thought of how Cash would have responded to Kyle, his insane jealousy. On the other hand, maybe the prospect of a man in my life would push Burke away. Though it wouldn’t have Cash. It would have made him meaner.

      “Cash always said you two was wild,” Burke said. “Going down to the river after work at Stubb’s, the two of you drinkin’ and skinnydippin’ and gettin’ high.”

      “That was a long time ago,” I said.

      “Not for me, though,” he said. “Prison stops time. For me, it’s like yesterday. And now I find myself thinking so much about you, Nikki, almost like we know everything about one another through him.”

      I felt myself sinking, and if I didn’t come up soon I was going to have to inhale everything around me, suck it all into my lungs and spit it out once I reached the surface. I made myself breathe. I said, “It’s been good talking to you, Burke. Good to remember those times.”

      “It’s a kind of haunting,” he said, “not knowing what happened.”

      “It’s probably what the cops thought,” I said. “How he was running with bad people.”

      “Is that what you told them?” he said, and I said, “I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t talk to them,” and he said, “They didn’t track you down?”

      “I told you, I was gone,” I said. “And if I’d been there when they killed him, they would’ve killed me too.”

      “That’s what I’m so grateful for,” he said. “Like the guiding hand moved you away for a reason. For later, maybe. For us.”

      I swallowed hard and kept breathing.

      “I just want to learn about the woman he loved,” Burke said. “But not like this, a thousand miles apart.”

      I would never be able to look at his face.

      “You don’t need to be afraid, Nikki,” he said. “I hope you know that much. I want to learn about your love is all, and everything about you. Ain’t no reason to be afraid.”

      That’s when I felt the old coldness—down deep. Just how he said I shouldn’t be afraid. Like he could smell it on me. Like he’d been smelling it for years.

      “You wouldn’t begrudge me,” he said. “Would you? Sharing memories together?”

      “I just want to get on with my life,” I said.

      “Cash did, too,” he said, “but they took him from us. And now it’s up to us to honor his memory, the least we can do. Who knows what other chance we’ll get to make things right.”

      “I just need some space,” I said, and he said, “We gotta heal each other, Nikki,” and I said, “I need time to think,” and he said, “There’s not one reason in this world we can’t help each other, Nikki. We’re practically family. Practically blood.”

      I should have gone to Kyle right then, the only one who could have helped me. I wanted to. I was going to. But I’d been taking care of myself all my life, me and my mother, me and Alina. And I didn’t know how to tell it right. Besides, maybe Burke wouldn’t call back. Alina was oblivious, packing for school, and I didn’t want to burden Kyle with it. I didn’t know how to tell it so he’d understand. I didn’t know how to do anything but run, and I wasn’t going to run. Not this time. Being off the phone made me think, each minute that went by, that Burke would just disappear and I’d never have to think about him or his brother again. I knew it was a lie, like I knew he knew everything that had happened between Cash and me and was just stringing me along, waiting for me to show my throat. But I kept telling myself the lie, like a song stuck in my head I hated and couldn’t get rid of.

      9

      Burke

      I didn’t want to believe she done it and didn’t believe it, but the suspicion would creep up on me, the guiding hand turning my head to something I didn’t want to look at, things she said or how she said them, like the fact that there wasn’t no Oak Bluff, Illinois, at least not according to Rand McNally, though maybe I heard it wrong, because I knew she loved him and would love me, too, especially with him gone and me the person most like him in the world. But then it seemed like she just wanted to push me away—maybe because she was still so hurt, I couldn’t tell. And I didn’t know how to test it without pushing her further, which I didn’t want to do. She was all I had and wanted in the world.

      I told her that a few days later, that she was all I had and wanted in the world, and she said, “You don’t know me,” and I said, “I know you,” and she said, “But you don’t. And I can’t keep talking like this. I’ve got work to do.”

      Knowing how much they loved one another, it didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t want to rekindle it. That she’d deny me. “I just want to share memories,” I said. “Of Cash and the two of y’all together.”

      She held her tongue.

      “It’ll help the both of us,” I said, and she said, “I want to get past all that.”

      I couldn’t half believe she’d deny him now, everything they’d been through, everything I’d been through for them. Didn’t she realize she never could have had him in the first place if it wasn’t for me doing his time? I knew there’d been trouble between them, sure, but there was two sides to all that lovesick talk in his address book. And pictures don’t lie, the way they’d moon over one another.

      “You’d be surprised how alike we are,” I said. “But, remember, I’m the older, so you’ll come to realize, looking back, that it was always me you was seeing in him. You’ll come to realize I was always the one—”

      “I can’t do this,” she said. “I just can’t do it,” and she hung up the phone!

      I called her back and she said it again, that she couldn’t do it, and I said, “What about my hurt?” and she said she knew, she knew, but she couldn’t help me now.

      “How about I call back in a few days,” I said, and she said, no, no, she didn’t want to talk. She needed space. She was hurting too much.

      “When then?” I said.

      Nothing but her scratchy breathing.

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