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Beckoning Mr. Bierce...Clothed or Not
by Lasher Lane A difficult birth, she’d been named after Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, as if the namesake were some sort of amulet promising a lifetime of protection, although living life as a ‘hopeless case’ at times seemed more of a cross to bear than a lucky charm. Now fifty years later, alone and lonely, Jude exited the ferry and drove toward the saltbox. Surrounded by sun-bleached marsh grass, under a slate September sky, the house sat secluded on an outwash plain beside the modest dirt runway of Katama airfield, its drab landscape saved only by the neon shock of randomly scattered cosmos. She’d spent many summers on the island as a child, then with her husband and children, after inheriting the place from her deceased parents. Before removing luggage from the car, she bent to pull some of those bright, magenta blooms from the yard to place in a vase, hoping to lift her spirits. Across the road, a small plane took off, its engine’s whir evoking bright summer days, sitting on the beach, watching planes fly over the open ocean, while her son and daughter attempted sandcastles. Now in their early twenties, an age having no room in social schedules for parents, their lives had separated from her own. “They’ll come back,” her mom often said. “Children depend on us when they’re young, but as they grow older, wanting freedom, they leave for a while, then return. Husbands are the opposite. They rarely come back.” Mom was right. Jude wasn’t surprised when after twenty-five years of marriage, her own left her for a woman half her age. But were husbands who left their wives for younger women really to blame, when wives became strangers, forced to trade off suffering nearly a half-century of menstruation, their only reward being the many tokens of menopause? Waking up in a strange body, after knowing their own for decades wasn’t fair and should have earned older women the right to be left alone with their new, unwanted symptoms, including impatience and irritability. She unlocked the door, instantly searching kitchen drawers for a corkscrew to open wine she’d bought on her way to the house. In one she found the red, rubber lobster, its squeaker still intact,reminding her of when her daughter Jane was three. Windblown, salty, and red themselves, the family stopped at a seafood store after the beach, to buy two live lobsters to bring home and cook. Jane had asked if they could buy a rubber one for sale by the register. Back at the house, when Jude’s husband placed the big metal pot on the stove, announcing the crustaceans with taped claws would be Mom and Dad’s anniversary dinner, Jane broke into tears. The whole time Jude assumed Jane wanted it for herself, her daughter really thought the lobsters were pets and planned to offer them the toy. Once having read shellfish didn’t feel pain when scalded to death, Jude wasn’t convinced. She sympathized, never having boiled any living creature alive, and and admitting to herself that she wasn’t looking forward to witnessing the task, took her children for a walk, while her husband did what was necessary. Telling her son and daughter that while they were out, Dad took the lobsters to the beach, their real home, and set them free, she hid their murdered dinner hidden until the children ate their own, were bathed and put to bed. Coming back to the present, Jude poured some wine, remembering her need to get away for a while. She’d come to Katama to write, deliberately leaving all electronics, including her cell phone in Boston, seeking an escape from her job at a well-known publishing house. She also needed an escape from aging, but was foolish to think running from a city and the present to an island where past memories were locked away in the saltbox at the end of each summer would restore her youth. Ignoring her reflection in the kitchen cabinets, she reached for a wine glass, knowing only too well that hair dye was no longer covering the gray and wrinkle creams had long stopped working. She put the cosmos in an old Mason jar, then switched on the radio for company. Kicking off her shoes, she lay on the couch to read, blindly reaching for the canvas bag by her feet which held the novel she’d brought with her, only to realize she’d left the book, along with her journal on the ferry. And by the looks of the sky, waiting until after Labor Day was the wrong time for her sabbatical. She’d hoped for a tourist-free beach and an ocean warmed by months of summer sun. Instead, weather reports predicted a bad storm, followed by days of showers. Before the rains came, after a few glasses of wine, Jude drove to the small bookstore in town to find something to read before bed, to hopefully help her sleep. Once there, a collection of Ambrose Bierce stories fell off the shelf at her feet. She took that as a sign to buy the book. Studying him in school years ago, she recalled his “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Boarded Window,” but his essay, “The Clothing of Ghosts” always stayed with her. His amusing argument, doubting that “apparel of the grave,” along with the hair on our heads, which was “purely vegetable growth and no essential part of us” could resurrect itself and materialize anywhere, at will, after having decayed in the ground. He believed if ghosts were real, they should appear not only naked but bald. Back at the house, she studied the book’s jacket, its photo of an attractive Mr. Bierce, mildly resembling a mad scientist, reminding herself they shared similar predicaments: dizzy spells from old head injuries: hers as a child, not paying attention while crossing the street, his, earned more courageously while fighting in the Civil War. They also not only shared failed marriages but impatience and irritability. Reading herself to sleep on the couch, Jude woke to complete darkness, rain and wind charging the windows. A loud knocking sound coming from the downstairs bedroom had woken her. Reaching to switch on a lamp, she found the power was out. Thinking someone had broken in, with shaking hands and a pounding heart, she quietly crept through darkness, feeling her way toward the kitchen, searching drawers until finding a useless flashlight with expired batteries, then matches and a candle. The knocking stopped, as she crossed the room to the stairs leading down to the bedroom. In the silent house, with only candlelight to guide her, Jude paused on the stairwell, lightning, like firmament camera flashes, illuminating her surroundings. Hearing the sound again, she descended the steps, finding one of the casement windows open. After securing it, she returned upstairs to spend the rest of the night in the living room. Finding sleep difficult, she read by candlelight, realizing that alone in the dark, she’d chosen the wrong author to keep her company. After a week of relentless rain, at least the power was back on, including the landline: her only connection to the outside world. With a brief break in the clouds, she took a walk on the beach. Having read his work each night, Jude felt closer to Mr. Bierce and chose him as her fictitious friend. Walking barefoot in cold sand, she questioned him about marriage, children, politics and writing, imagining his answers. In the past, she’d relished time alone, but since her divorce she felt lonely, maturity teaching her too late that alone and lonely were two very different things. Was she in that much need of male companionship to obsess over a man who’d disappeared without a trace a century before and was surely long dead? She read the usually ignored beach signs, asking four-wheel-drive vehicles to respect the nesting terns, and after a few miles, came upon the remnants of a house, possibly lost to a hurricane. The only traces left were the foundation and fireplace with chimney. Climbing a dune and standing on the stone platform, she looked out to the ocean. Her clothes damp from mist, wind whipping around her ears, she swore she heard a man’s voice whisper her name once or twice. Back at her own house, she found the downstairs window open again. Closing it tightly, she returned upstairs. The rain had stopped. Sunbeams bathed the room, surrounding a man sitting at the kitchen table. Jude froze at the top step, quietly studying the intruder from the stairwell. Ruggedly handsome, she instantly recognized him, in all his tousled finery, bushy eyebrows and unkempt hair, like some ancient holographic projection. She called out, “Mr. Bierce?” He stayed facing the kitchen window, his head tilted up toward the sun’s brilliant light, eyes closed, legs outstretched, as he reclined in the chair, hands folded in his lap. He then turned and looked in her direction, waving Jude to come closer. “Come keep me company,” he calmly ordered, patting the empty seat next to him. When he smiled, the corners of his eyes wrinkled up, a trait she thought most sexy when asked once what she found attractive in a man. Joining him at the table, he pulled a flower from the Mason jar, and with piercing eyes, handed it to her, saying, “Why the tears?” “I haven’t cried for years.” “You’re crying now.” He reached across the table, wiping her cheek with the back of his hand. She instinctively flinched, remembering what she’d read about this bitter, sarcastic man, acting as if he hated everyone and everything, even once writing of murdering his own parents. Was he mocking her emotion? Yet Jude saw a sad, sincere kindness in his eyes. Waking on the couch, her clothes dry but her face wet, she wondered if she’d even been to the beach. Looking to the kitchen table, with its empty chairs and jar of flowers, she counted the blooms. None were removed, no Mr. Bierce, no sun shining through the window. Unnerved, and in need of talking to a living person, Jude phoned her daughter, asking if Jane remembered the lobster toy. She laughed but seemed distracted, too busy to talk. Jude heard music and voices in the background. She asked her mother when she was leaving the island. “I don’t know. I might stay longer.” Her daughter kept talking. Jude closed her eyes, listening to Jane’s voice, not her words, remembering happier times, summers spent as a family on Katama, when Jane and her brother ran in the foggy front yard, hoping to summon the Black Dog Ghost, or when they fought bedtime, having Jude read Reeve Lindbergh’s The Midnight Farm again and again, even their 4x4 getting stuck in the sand at the shoreline, with the tide coming in. Novices that they were, they’d neglected to take air out of the tires before driving on the beach, the nice man with the the wench on his truck, rescuing the car as they stood nearby, helplessly watching. Even though it was almost lost it to the sea, they were all together and happy. Saying goodbye, Jude hung up and drove into town for groceries and writing supplies. She had three more days before she was booked to return on the ferry, a reservation made months in advance. The living room couch too uncomfortable, she put the downstairs bed to use for her last few nights, writing until she fell asleep, trying to recall as much as she could from her lost journal. The morning she was scheduled to leave she heard, “Are you sailing home today?” Jude turned, half-asleep, to find Mr. Bierce again, this time standing with his back to her, his right hand resting in his jacket pocket, as he looked out the bedroom’s casement window, which was open again. She realized that under the sheets, she was without clothes. Feeling for the hair on her head, she wondered if the author was right about ghosts, if she’d crossed over. Relieved to find hair still there and her clothes on the edge of the bed, she wondered why she’d undressed. “I’m not sure,” she answered, staring at the ceiling, avoiding the gaze of someone she wasn’t sure was really there. Wondering if she should choose between either finding a good psychiatrist as soon as she got back to the city, or staying on the island for the rest of her life, hiding from the world she’d known, she opted for the latter, switching off the alarm before it had a chance to ring. She then turned to look where he stood, but he was gone. Pulling the covers tightly around her, she stayed in bed, leaving the casement window open. |
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