Reeds, Dragonflies, White Sage

Reeds, Dragonflies, White Sage by freeandeasywandering
Ghosts by freeandeasywandering

In life, I was always late. This afternoon, I was slightly early. It was a shorter trip from the swamp to the hut than I imagined.  “Is it just us?”  I was still getting used to not having a body, and much like in life I felt like I wanted a lot and understood little.  A mosquito drifted through me.

When she was listening, she was entirely still, like a photograph.  Then, her mouth opened, forming a perfect circle.  “There’s nowhere where it’s ever just us. Let’s call everyone together.”  She handed me some bells, her arms moving with intense rapidity only to come again to total stillness once the action was complete.  We paused.  Then, her mouth opened.  “Those are the bells John Coltrane played on Interstellar Space.  He let me borrow them.  Go!”

I shook the bells, she shook a bolang gu, and from the trees I heard rattles, whistles, and party-favor sirens.  The rest of the dead were now apparent, making our noise.  In a moment, we became completely still.

Seen-u-how’ called: “Fight Song!”

The ghosts sped from behind the trees.  At first, as I watched in slight confusion.  I followed individual ghosts, mouths open releasing the Fight Song, moving, it seemed, in random directions at rapid speeds and halting instantaneously like photographs only to dart in another direction after a moment.  Gaining my bearing, I looked at the group, and the individual movements, I could see, formed in the aggregate a circle around the hut, passing through trees without interference.  When the song ended the ghosts briefly paused and then darted characteristically to various spots, each at once random and entirely in the right place.

“Thanks for the song, Albert!”  I couldn’t see who said it.

I had been looking forward to this meeting all week. “Thanks for having us over, Seen-u-how’.”

“Shh!  It’s time for the bell.”

Seen-u-how’ began.  “The first rule about Ghost Club is: you do not talk about Ghost Club.”

The leaves rustled their amusement like laughing windchimes.

I was crying ghost tears.  “Why are we here, Seen-u-how’?  I died, but I didn’t go to Heaven or anywhere else.”

“A transcendent Heaven is no Heaven at all.  The dead only leave if they need to rejoin their gods and spirits.  And why would they need to do that?  Only if they had in life chosen to wander far from the graves of their ancestors and abandon them.”

I was overcome, even angry at what I felt I had done.  “But I wandered far from the graves of my ancestors!”

“No, you were taken.  When you came here, your gods came with you. They’ll never go away. No slavemaster can make them go away. They won’t budge from this soil.  Yemanja came.  All of them came for you.  It operates sort of like physics.  When people are taken, their gods can’t not follow them.  See the sign!”

Papa Legba shows himself to the ghost.

Immediately, there were no ghost tears.  I looked at the sign for some time, and then at the other ghosts, each in their place.  I saw their black hair, this one long, that one kinky, their wide noses, their epicanthic eyelids, perfectly still, as if in an exhibition of ethnographic photography.  They were so beautiful.

I realized.  “That’s why there are no white ghosts, even in Rancho Santa Fe.”

“Not none,” she said.  “Very few.  In time, that will change, but not yet.”

“I’m sorry I’ve taken so long and the group had to spend so much time on me.”

“What’s time to any of us?”

The ghosts’ mouths turned from lines into circles.  Riotous laughter filled the area, through the trees and the brook, inside the hut, along the trail, up the hills and even onto the road a bit, for anyone able to hear.  One of the ghosts darted toward her, stopping a if on a dime a few feet away.  “Sing us a story!”  This was why I had so wanted to attend.

“I will.”

The group was silent for some amount of time.  One ghost moved her head, as if in a slow-motion film, turning upward toward the now-purple, moonlit sky. “Here it comes.  This sky shows its appreciation this way when something truly extraordinary is happening for one of the living, somewhere in San Diego.  Probably Santee.”  Her words were at once impossibly slow and entirely natural.

Snow fell faintly on the oak and through the leaves, on the hut and sign, and along the brook.  Seen-u-how’ remarked: “the newspapers are right: snow is general all over Ireland,” and the meeting ended.

A Bed of Roses

A Bed of Roses by freeandeasywandering

There we were: picking blades of grass, crunching leaves between our fingers, and listening to the wind.  A glass flask and paper bag lay nearby left from someone’s night before.  Birds passed overhead.

Beautiful!  “Maria, where are they from? Where are they going?”

“They’re island geese going back to the island.”

“Island geese?”

“Yes, Alma.  You’re too young to remember it, but I do.  I remember the island.  Here it is for you.”

“I remember it! I’ve seen it before!”

Mamie laughed, gently.  “No, Alma.  You were at the time in ovo. All of us were, except Maria. It was your mother who remembered it, and it’s her memory you’re borrowing.”

“Why would anyone leave there, Maria?”

“Our mothers were looking for their husbands.  They had taken the boat into deep water and not returned for days. The geese told our mothers that they saw a beautiful woman from the east take their husbands.  They said she had only just arrived in the area.

They suggested that our mothers might buy the men back with their most precious gifts.  Our mothers brought song.”

Maria continued.  “Not all of the island’s women went to find them.  Only the pregnant ones.  I was the only girl who came, and I hadn’t learned to speak yet.  I could only listen to my mother as she sang, and played her guitarrón.”

A skateboard passed on the sidewalk. A gull walked beside Ellie and Mamie, through our circle, and down to the water.  The breeze blew between the leaves, one of which fell from above onto the grass near my right hand.

“Our mothers followed the stars as usual, and the geese came with them all the way.  Soon, they lost sight of the island, without finding any trace of their husbands, our fathers, or of the beautiful woman.  They had begun singing wedding songs as they traveled, but once it was clear our fathers would stay in the sea, they began to sing funeral hymns.  The songs were old, and in the language of the people who lived on the island before our ancestors arrived.  Their ghosts taught our ancestors, who memorized them phonetically.”

“They came here?”

“Precisely here.  It was to this park that our mothers first came on this land. All the buildings were here, without any people, waiting for our mothers to arrive, carrying us.  Look!”

I lay my head back down on the grass and looked up at the sky.  Wilma reached for her mandolin.  “Come on out! I’m going to sing for you again! Maybe you can tell me what each of the words mean!”  I never understood my sister.  Nonetheless, I soon felt comfortable, like someone was there in the space next to me.

Wilma sang:

Half-way through, I glared at Wilma.  I usually took the first solo.

When we finished, Ellie whistled for a while.  When she stopped, I felt as if someone had left us.  We sat together, listening to the water, using our mothers’ memories to picture our fathers, young men.

Six Figures

Six Figures by freeandeasywandering

There he was: smoking two cigarettes.  Not just buying drinks for strangers with our money, but buying a full bottle.  Nearly running along the bar, pouring tequila, missing glasses more often than not.  “Done! Finished! Over!”

“Mike, we got one more set.”

Ready as ever to perform, Mike dropped both bottle and cigarettes.  The ash, falling on the bar, lit the spilled tequila.  Listen:

Firemen entered the room, and the five of us left through a window.  Police surrounded the building.

“We know it was you, Mike.”

Mike ran, and we followed.  The police let fly a volley.  An arrow punctured Hank’s shoulder.  Mike, Gabe, and Mamie were gone.  Hank and I turned onto Prospect.

“An arrow!”

“This is Santee, Hank.”  He was just learning.  He was from El Cajon.

“Where’s Mamie?”

We walked to the lake.  Look, here we are:

The other three were already there.  Gabe gave us his broad, broken-teeth smile.

“How many songs has this lake heard?”

“I couldn’t say, Mike.  But listen, you can hear one it kept handy.”

Soon after the song began, I felt weight on my right shoulder.  Gabe bandaged Hank’s wound.

“Did that song come from a long way from here, Ellie?”

“No, Mike, we did.  We crossed the ocean, and then the Steppe to get here.”

“I’ll leave my song for the lake, then.”

He sang:

After he finished, the pressure came off my shoulder, and was gone. “We’d have more money if you didn’t buy everyone drinks, Mike.”

“I know it.”  Snow fell lightly on the lake.

“The ghost was here again, Mike, listening.”

“Boy ghost or girl ghost?”

“Just a ghost, Mike.  Don’t worry so much.  You know I’m as much yours as you are mine.”

“I do.”

Preface

I wander between the trees, through the water, below the mud.  When I peek above the trees, I can never see the city.  The sun, at all times, has just set.  Listen:

Swamp country near El Cajon.

At the water’s edge, a sidewalk, Fletcher Parkway, and the bowling alley, at noon.

One evening, I stumbled along C St., collecting cigarette butts, change, begging alcohol.  Passing wheelchairs, a sewer, three policemen, the trolley, and a man, with briefcase, in tears, I heard unearthly melody.  Sober, suddenly, I chased the song.  The moon, light reflecting off night clouds, colored the empty streets.  The streetlamps were off, the trolleys still, windows dark.

Turning left onto E from 15th, I saw him.

“Velluti.”

Velluti sang.

“What are you singing? Whose song is it?”

He stopped, visibly put-off.  “You caught me.  I can tell you that here, in San Diego, there are only two kinds of song.  There are funeral hymns, and outlaw ballads.”

“So which are you singing?”

“A funeral hymn, of course.”

In my life, I never sang.  I followed song.  Now, between the trees, in the water, I have silence, and the memory of song. Of all the ghosts, I am the hungriest.