Being Dead Read online

  Wouldn't you know if you had done something like run over someone?

  Wouldn't you know if you had killed somebody?

  I still don't remember seeing her. I don't remember being aware of hitting her. I would have stopped if I had known.

  I didn't look in the rearview mirror and see her try to get back up on the bike the way the police say she must have done. I didn't see her wobble and fall into the bushes and into the creek beyond.

  The only reason I knew to tell you to look in the creek where it comes right up to Hopkins at that last curve is because when I saw Leah-Ann—when she came to me after she was dead—she was always wet. She was dead and she was wet and she kept coming to me because I was the only one who could help her.

  I didn't know.

  END OF RECORDING

  transcript signed by Brenda Keehn

  in the presence ot Eugene Randolph, Attorney-at-Law

  Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost

  Nobody was surprised when Conrad Sharpe's wife, Marjorie, died.

  Conrad Sharpe was a mean man—a bully and a bragger. He was too lazy and too stingy to fix die roof that leaked in the spring or die door and window frames that let in the howling winter wind, but he expected his wife to keep the house warm and comfortable. Her hands were rough and red from working in the house and working in the yard. All day long she worked, and late into the night. The neighbors always said that for each year Marjorie spent married to Conrad, she seemed to age two.

  So no one was surprised when—one cold gray day as autumn turned to winter—Marjorie Sharpe died. The neighbors said it was the only way Marjorie could get any rest.

  But, oh, how Conrad wept at Marjorie's funeral.

  Conrad Sharpe always liked to be the best at everything—the biggest, the loudest, the fastest: the best. And if he'd never thought to be the best husband, why, that was no reason he couldn't be the best widower.

  He went to Kelly's General Store and bought the most expensive suit for everyone to see him in and the most expensive dress to lay Marjorie out in. He bought the most expensive coffin from Gilbert Allen's casket shop, and he threw himself on the casket when the undertaker closed the lid, because Conrad Sharpe wanted to make sure everybody saw what a fine casket it was. He was careful, though, not to wrinkle his new suit.

  Conrad wailed and sobbed and carried on all die while die casket was lowered into the ground, so that everyone would know what a devoted husband he had been.

  Then he invited everyone back to the house afterward, for food and drink and to remember Marjorie, though he'd never been willing to pay for a party while Marjorie had been alive.

  "Oh, Marjorie, poor Marjorie," Conrad said to the neighbors. "Do you remember how she loved to dance?"

  The neighbors remembered. They remembered Marjorie dancing before she married Conrad.

  "There never seemed to be enough time for dancing," Conrad said, though the truth was he was too disagreeable to like music and dancing. "Oh, if only Marjorie could come back for even one night," Conrad cried out, "I swear I'd dance with her to her heart's content."

  A cold wind came howling then, where none had been before. Noisily it shook the boards of the Sharpes' house, and came in through the cracks by the windows, and down the chimney, and blew out the candle by Conrad's chair.

  And then went away.

  In the sudden stillness, Conrad realized everyone was looking at him. He rubbed at his eyes and repeated, "If only Marjorie could come back for even one night, I swear I'd dance with her to her heart's content."

  Way, way down the street, the neighbors' dogs started barking.

  Then, closer neighbors' dogs started barking.

  And closer.

  And closer.

  Till the next-door neighbor's dog was barking.

  Till there was a sound, like someone scratching at the Sharpes' front door.

  The neighbors all looked at one another, and at Conrad.

  To prove his courage, Conrad got out of his chair by the blown-out candle and walked to the door and opened it.

  There was nothing there....

  Except on the dusting of snow that had covered the front walk since everyone had come in, there were footprints, footprints that came from down the street, up the front walk, and ended at the door.

  With no one there.

  His hands shaking, Conrad closed the door. And bolted it And said, a third time—to prove that he was cold, not afraid—"If only Marjorie could come back for even one night, I swear I'd dance with her to her heart's content."

  The door flew open, bursting lock and wood alike.

  There stood Marjorie Sharpe in her fine new dress, though she had no shoes—since they wouldn't show in the casket, penny-pinching Conrad had buried her with bare feet Her hair was unbound and streamed out behind her, and though she was pale, she looked more beautiful than she had in years.

  With never a word, she held her arms out to her husband.

  And Conrad—to prove he was the bravest man there—asked, "Why, woman, would you come back from the grave to dance with me?"

  Silently, solemnly, Marjorie nodded, and Conrad stepped forward. He put his arms about her body, which was as cold and as hard as the autumn-turning-to-winter ground, and together—while the neighbors watched with eyes gone wide in terror—Marjorie and Conrad Sharpe danced.

  Around and around they went on Marjorie's well-swept floor, to music none of the neighbors could hear. Or maybe they danced to the howling of the neighbors' dogs.

  After an hour Conrad said, "You came back for one night, and we danced. Surely we've danced to your heart's content," and he made to step away.

  But Marjorie wouldn't let go, and Marjorie wouldn't stop dancing.

  One hour turned to two, and the dogs continued to howl and the Sharpes continued to dance, while the neighbors watched with bodies made heavy with terror, till the candles burned low and the clock struck midnight. Then Conrad said, "You came back for one night, and we danced all night. Surely we've danced to your heart's content," and he made to push Marjorie away.

  But still Marjorie wouldn't let go, and Marjorie wouldn't stop dancing.

  Hour after hour the dogs continued to howl and the Sharpes continued to dance, while the neighbors watched with minds made numb by terror, till the candles burned out, past the setting of the moon, till the sky began to grow light with dawn. Then, pleased with himself, for he was sure that he had gotten the best of Marjorie's ghost, Conrad said, "You came back for one night, and we danced all night and into the next day. Surely you've danced to your heart's content," and this time he gave Marjorie a great shove.

  But still Marjorie wouldn't let go, and still Marjorie wouldn't stop dancing. She danced Conrad out the door, no matter how he struggled, and down the front walk and into the street.

  None of the neighbors dared follow, and the last they saw of Conrad was through the open door; they saw his pale face, and they saw the tails of his new coat blowing in the wind as he danced with Marjorie down the street.

  A few minutes later, all at once, the neighbors' dogs stopped barking.

  Once the sun was high in the sky, the neighbors followed the footprints in the snow. Down the street those footprints led, and over the hill, and they didn't stop till they came to the cemetery, where the dirt was mounded neatly over Marjorie Sharpe's new grave, just as it had been left the day before.

  And there the footprints stopped.

  In the years that followed, come cold dark nights as autumn turned to winter, the townspeople often asked themselves what had become of Conrad. But no one dared dig up Marjorie's grave to learn the truth, for fear of what they might see.

  Shadow Brother

  My brother, Kevin, may or may not have come back from the dead for any one of several contradictory reasons, depending on which of my relatives you assume is most reasonable. Personally, I wouldn't consider any of us particularly reliable.

  Since Kevin was a boy, and since he was born five years
before I was, we had few common interests. That meant we didn't consider each other competition, and that, for the most part, kept us from finding it useful or especially gratifying to persecute each other.

  The only time he was put in charge of me was when I was in first grade and my parents told him he had to walk me to and from school. This he did without trying to lose me. No running and cutting through people's backyards and climbing fences, which some of my friends' brothers (and sisters) did.

  I submit that as Exhibit A in the case against Kevin becoming a malevolent ghost. (Though I'd be the first to admit that death changes everything.)

  When I was in second grade, the people three houses down got a dog that would come to the very edge of their yard and growl whenever I passed. Though Kevin was no longer officially in charge of me, he put himself between me and that dog, and he growled back. The dog slunk away. From then on that dog knew I knew he was a coward, and he didn't bother me anymore, even when Kevin wasn't with me.

  Exhibit B. For anyone who's keeping track.

  For all of that, Kevin and I didn't think alike: I was a fen of the Beatles; he liked the Rolling Stones. My favorite TV show was Dr. Kildare; Kevin said Ben Casey was the better doctor and The Defenders was a better show. But different tastes in music and TV are not important One of the big ways we differed was our reactions when our father talked about being in France during World War II. Dad had been part of the OSS. His group would parachute behind enemy lines to help the French Resistance fighters, and one of his stories was about the time one of his men landed badly, breaking a leg. They couldn't bring the wounded man with them, because he would have slowed them down. And they couldn't leave him behind, because if he was captured the Germans would surely torture him until he revealed the men's hiding place. So Dad had to shoot him. His own man.

  I hoped I would never find myself in a position where I had to kill one of my friends, but I also hoped that—if I had to—I could be as strong as my father.

  But when I made the mistake of sharing this profound thought with Kevin, he called me a ninny. The women, he pointed out, stayed home and kept the factories going, except for the Wacs and Waves, who were mostly nurses, and nobody expected them to shoot anybody.

  "In France," I pointed out, "the women fought."

  "Oh, good heavens!" Kevin gasped, an expression he normally did not use. "I thought you might be turning French, Sarah, but I wasn't sure. We'll have to keep you away from French bread and frogs' legs until you get over it."

  Kevin never seemed to be interested in hearing what he called "the old war stories"—our parents' or our aunts' and uncles'. Not even Aunt Lise's, who was born in Germany and had different stories from everybody else's. Like how by the end of the war she and her mother were eating grass from what had been their front yard, because all the supplies went to support the German military, not the civilians. She claimed Uncle Jack had saved her life by marrying her and bringing her to America after his tour of duty was up. And that was despite the fact that, when she first got here, Americans who recognized her accent sometimes spat at her, even though she was barely eighteen and too young to have had anything to do with the war.

  I thought all this stuff was fascinating. While I would stay indoors after dinners with the aunts and uncles, lapping it all up, Kevin would go play basketball with his friends.

  Would a disinterest in the past be a sign that Kevin was not likely to ever turn into a ghost? Exhibit C? Or at least Exhibit B and a half?

  One time, when I was ten and Kevin was fifteen, Dad wouldn't let Kevin escape. Kevin made some comment criticizing the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and that made Dad mad. "Fascists, Nazis, Communists; they're all the same," Dad said, and the next Sunday he asked Uncle Jack to "Bring those pictures." "Those pictures" were ones Uncle Jack had taken when he had been with a group that had liberated one of the concentration camps where the Nazis used to keep Jews. Dad felt Kevin should see them.

  Kevin, but not me. And not Uncle Jack and Aunt Lise's son, Dwight, who was one year younger than me. (Dwight was exactly the kind of boy who if he died would come back and haunt his family. He would be the sort of ghost who would rattle chains in the attic and who would sneak up behind you and breathe on your neck.)

  "Go out and play," Dad told us.

  Aunt Lise agreed with him. "These pictures are disturbing. They are not for you to see."

  Well, all right. Be that way.

  Dwight and I could wait.

  We went up to Kevin's room and played Monopoly, but we listened until we heard Uncle Jack open the hall closet door to return the pictures to his coat pocket. Then I sent Dwight downstairs to fetch a glass of milk, and on his way back he stopped at the closet.

  The pictures were worse than disturbing. I felt scummy, as though I was looking at dirty pictures, as though—by looking at those pictures—I was responsible for what was in them. I'd never seen such skinny people, not even in the pictures of starving African kids that the nuns would show us on Mission Sunday.

  "They don't even look real," I said.

  "Maybe they're actors," Dwight suggested. With Dwight it was sometimes hard to tell if he was joking or being stupid.

  The men all had shaven heads; the women all had scarves to hide that their heads had been shaved, too. And there were kids, as bald and dull-eyed as the grown-ups. I'd seen pictures of other people—French and Belgian and Egyptian—welcoming the liberating troops. They were always waving, cheering, dancing in the streets. There was always some young woman climbing up on the tanks to kiss the soldiers. The people from this camp just stood there, though you'd figure they'd have been the most relieved to be rescued. But they just looked at the camera, or beyond it, with their hollow eyes, as though they'd given up hoping and weren't ready to believe they'd really been rescued.

  I couldn't stop looking, even though I wanted to.

  Kevin came in then, and he plucked the pictures out of our hands. "These are the ones who were rescued," he reassured me, even though I hadn't said a word. "These guys survived."

  I hoped Kevin was right, and ignored the feet that his foot came down on Dwight's before Dwight could talk about the ones who weren't rescued.

  Exhibit Whatever.

  That was my vision of the war my parents had lived through: the valiant Americans who came in the nick of time to rescue the downtrodden people of the world. Bad was bad and good was good. Once in a while there were hard choices—wounded buddies, no-win situations—but generally if you thought about it long enough, you would know what you had to do if you were brave enough to do it.

  Then came the war in Vietnam.

  At fourteen I was more interested in trying to iron my hair straight and in reading J. R. R. Tolkien's "Ring" trilogy than in watching the news—especially news that was always depressing. And it wasn't just that American soldiers were getting killed. Buddhist monks were setting themselves on fire to protest the war; college students were burning flags and draft cards and ROTC buildings, yelling and screaming into the TV cameras. I was vaguely annoyed at the rude and messy ruckus, but mostly I was grateful—grateful to be a girl so I wasn't draftable, a Catholic so I could look down my nose at the suicidal Buddhists, and too young to go to college, which looked to be fast becoming a dangerous place to be.

  Kevin, of course, was draftable.

  He was also more sympathetic to the draft dodgers and the protesters—Buddhist and U.S.—than anybody else in the family. Is that another piece of evidence to support that he couldn't have turned into a vengeance-seeking ghost, that he was sympathetic by nature and didn't approve of killing?

  Or is it a sign pointing at exactly the opposite?

  "When I was your age," Dad told him at the dinner table, the day he got his draft card with a number so low we knew he would be drafted, "I was proud to serve my country."

  "When you were my age," Kevin countered, "the United States had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, and Hitler was an obvious psychotic who wanted to
take over the world and re-create it in his own image."

  "Yeah?" Dad wouldn't have been surprised that his patriotic pep talk was being sidetracked. This was not a new conversation.

  "Now, we're the bad guys."

  I thought, Can't we talk about something else for a change? Being stuck at the dinner table, with the conversation endlessly going round and round, the only thing I could think of was Hey, how about those guys on Ed Sullivan last night who spun all those plates on those poles. Probably not the most brilliant opening for diverting an argument.

  "The bad guys," Dad said, "are the ones who keep undermining their own country—kids who have too much time on their hands and don't appreciate that their parents are going broke sending them to college."

  "Have you looked at a map lately?" Kevin asked. "North Vietnam is ... what—the size of Florida? Talk about the bully that can't pick on someone his own size."

  Mom, spooning out mashed potatoes, murmured, "Kevin, you don't need to be sarcastic to make your point And, Tom, we're all right here—you don't need to shout to be heard."

  "He isn't making a point at all," Dad said, "and I am not shouting." But he did lower his voice: "Obviously this isn't an issue between the United States and North Vietnam. Because if it were just North Vietnam"—Mom handed me the bowl of potatoes, since Dad was too engrossed in making his own point to take it—"the war would have been over about two and a half minutes after it started. This is an issue of fighting Communism, of keeping the people of the world free."

  "What's right for us isn't necessarily right for the world," Kevin said. "Especially when the only leaders they have to choose from are corrupt."