Prom Night in Purgatory (Slow Dance in P)

~4~

A Time to Plant





“Maggie?” Irene started, dishing up a small portion of her famous coleslaw. “Remember a few months ago when we cleaned up the attic and donated all that stuff to Goodwill?”

Maggie nodded absently, wishing she could find a place to dance her despair away. She ached for the escape and considered removing her bed from her room to give her more floor space. Since the school had burned down and she’d been released from the hospital, she hadn’t danced once. She needed it more than the food Irene kept piling on her plate. She needed it almost as desperately as she needed Johnny.

“We didn’t by any chance give away a record player, did we?” Irene worried. “I don’t remember seeing it. I promised the ladies at the historical society that we could have it for our auction coming up here in a few weeks. It should be worth something. It still works just fine, and it has all those old 45s in perfect condition.” Irene sighed. “I got nervous all of a sudden that maybe I’d had one of my senior moments and given it away without thinking.”

Something niggled at Maggie, and she sat for a minute, trying to pull it forward. “I know we didn’t give a record player away…but I don’t remember seeing it either. Whose record player was it, Aunt Irene?”

“It was Lizzie’s. She loved it. It was in her room upstairs until she got married and moved out. When Roger and I moved back into this house after Daddy died, it was still there, right where she had left it. When I made that room into a nursery, I moved it upstairs into the attic. It hasn’t been used since – but it still worked when I moved it up there so….Maggie? Are you all right, dear?”

“Did she used to have a bear she called Jamie?” Maggie blurted out.

Irene blinked once, twice, and then stuttered out, “Why….yes! She did. She named him after James Dean….” Her voice trailed off.

“What Maggie? What is it?”

“I saw her….I mean, I think I did. When I was in a coma….I had a dream. At least I think it was a dream. I was in her room. The record player sat under one window. There were records on the floor. She was sitting on her bed, talking to the bear. It was so funny that I laughed. She saw me. She thought I was a ghost….”

Gus and Irene were staring at her, their spoons halfway to their mouths. In unison, they set their spoons back on their plates.

“She saw you?” Irene squeaked.

“Yes! We talked for few moments and then….something pulled me away. Gus pulled me away. He was telling me to wake up, that Johnny needed me. She, Lizzie, called after me, and told me to stay.” Maggie’s eyes were unfocused, looking beyond Gus and Irene, remembering how real it had all been. “It wasn’t the first time, either. The other time I was with Johnny – riding next to him in your daddy’s big black car. A Buick?” Irene’s jaw dropped.

“Daddy did have a big, black, Buick….but why would Johnny be driving it?”

“He was taking it to Gene’s for a tune-up….I think. I remember feeling so happy, wishing I could stay right there beside him…but he couldn’t see me like Lizzie could. Although he did say my name...” Maggie’s voice trailed off in puzzlement. She had forgotten that part.

“Lawdy, lawdy,” Gus marveled with a short whistle. A deep frown curved his mouth, and his eyes were wide with fear. “You best be careful, Miss Margaret.”

“Careful?….Why?” Maggie and Irene both gazed at Gus in surprise.

“This all reminds me of my grandma. She saw ghosts…just like you do. Just like you, she claimed most the time it was like she was seein’ somethin’ from the past, someone doin’ somethin’ they’d done many times. Or she’d see somethin’ happen that had a great deal of emotion attached to it…battle scenes, things like that. She said sometimes the things she saw were so real that she almost forgot where she was, like she got pulled into their stories. One time she was traveling North with my grandpa….this was in the early nineteen twenties or so, mind you…long past the days of the Underground Railroad. You know ‘bout the Underground Railroad, Miss Margaret?”

Maggie nodded her head. “It was a network of routes and safe houses and people that helped runaway slaves get to the free states and Canada, right?”

“That’s right, during the early to mid 1800’s,” Gus agreed, nodding with her. “My grandma and grandpa ended up staying the night in a home that had been along one of those routes. For some reason or other, my grandma couldn’t sleep that night. She was restless and she didn’t want to disturb my grandpa. She thought she could step outside and get some fresh air, maybe walk a little bit.” Gus suddenly stood up from the table, as if the story was making him nervous. He paced a little and then bade them to follow him to Irene’s little front sitting room. When they were all seated, he continued his story.

“A short ways behind the house there was a big, dried up creek bed. The folks my grandparents were stayin’ with said it’d been dry all summer long, but that night, when my grandma slipped outside, she thought she could smell water. The moon was full, and it was one of those nights where everything is all bathed in moonlight; she said she could see almost as well as if it was day.

“When she got down to the bank of the creek my grandma said it was dry, just like the folks said it would be….but she could still smell the water.” Maggie felt the hair on her neck prickle. She’d forgotten how she had been able to smell Johnny and the scent of cigars and cologne in Jackson Honeycutt’s car. Maggie forced her attention back to Gus, almost afraid to hear what he had to say next.

“Grandma said she closed her eyes, breathing the smell in….She said it smelled so fresh and cool…but then she smelled something else. She said it was a smell she didn’t immediately recognize. She sniffed the air, and suddenly she knew. She said it was a sharp, ripe scent…like someone who has worked long hours in the sun. But it was more than just the smell of sweat and labor...It was the smell of fear.” Gus’s hands began to shake a little bit and he clasped them around the armrests on the old chair. He rubbed the worn fabric with the tips of his long fingers and took several deep breaths. Gus looked up at Maggie then, and Maggie felt a frisson of alarm. Gus was frightened by what he was saying.

“When my grandma opened her eyes, she saw them. There were three women, two men, and a handful of children walking up the creek bed. My grandma said she cried out in surprise, but they didn’t seem to see her. She said they were maybe ten yards downstream when suddenly she noticed there was water in the creek. It came up to the knees of the men and women who were walking in it. The children were holding the hands of the adults and had to struggle a little to keep upright. A light breeze was blowing toward where my grandma stood, and she caught that scent again....the smell of raw terror. Their clothes didn’t match the time period, and my grandma realized she was seeing something that had happened long ago. They were moving quickly, as quickly as the water would allow, and my grandma watched them as they neared and then passed her and walked out of sight beyond the bend in the creek.

“She realized they was slaves…runaway slaves. My grandma says she felt a connection so strong that she was sure someone in that little group had to be kin. She said it was almost like she could hear another heartbeat, and it called to her own. She didn’t want to leave. She said she wanted to run after them, that she almost couldn’t bear to stay behind.

“Then she heard another sound, and it made her blood run cold. She heard dogs. She said the baying sounded like it was comin’ from everywhere at once. And then, just like with the water in the creek bed, one minute it wasn’t there and the next it was. She said there were men on horses with dogs, obviously trying to run down the runaways. But unlike the slaves, the dogs could see her. They veered off one side of the bank, across the water, and up onto the side of the creek where she stood, watchin’ all of it happening maybe seventy-five years after the fact. The men on horseback followed the dogs. My grandmother began to run. She turned back toward the house, screaming for my grandpa, and suddenly…”

Gus stopped and mopped his forehead, which glistened with a light sheen of sweat. “Suddenly she couldn’t see the house no more. It wasn’t there. She could feel the dogs closin’ in, and she heard one of the men cry out and knew that he had spotted her too.”

Irene was suddenly clasping Maggie’s hand tightly in her own, and her eyes were as wide as saucers.

“My grandma was wearing a long white nightgown with a shawl wrapped around her. She said the ends of the shawl must have been streaming out behind her because she felt when one of the dogs caught a piece of it, and it was yanked from her shoulders. She stumbled a bit and another dog was immediately at her heels. One dog sunk his teeth into the back of her leg, and she screamed for my grandpa again. She said she knew she was done for…and in that moment she saw my grandpa’s face in her mind and held on tight to his image, wishin’ for him like she’d never wished before.

“And then he was there, grabbin’ her up in his arms…” Maggie and Irene breathed out in unison, one gusty sound of relief. “The dogs were gone, the men on horses, nowhere to be seen. Grandma had awakened the whole house with her screams. Grandpa apologized to everyone and hustled Grandma back to their room with some excuse as to why she was outside screaming bloody murder.”

“So it was just….a vision?” Irene asked timidly.

“Of sorts…” Gus nodded. “But when they got back to the room, my grandma’s nightgown was soaked through in back from the knee down.”

“So there had actually been water. She actually saw the runaway slaves walking in a creek filled with water,” Maggie whispered.

“It wasn’t soaked through in water, Miss Margaret, it was soaked through in blood. Grandma had a huge bite mark on her left calf. She showed me the scar many years later when she told me this story. She hadn’t just seen a vision, she’d been there. For that moment in time, she wasn’t just an observer of the past, she was a full-fledged participant.

“My grandma always wore a St. Christopher medal that my grandpa gave her around her neck. She told me St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers.” Gus paused and looked at Maggie. “She was a traveler of a different kind, I s’pose. She said there were places that pulled at her, as if the layers of time were very thin, and if she wasn’t careful she would fall right through and find herself in another time completely.”

“What did she mean by ‘layers of time?’” Maggie was spellbound by the direction the conversation had taken.

“She believed that time wasn’t a big long line of events. Grandma said time was like layers of thin cloth folded back and forth, one layer above the other, accordion style. She said sometimes certain events seeped through from one layer to the next, creating a stain that was visible even on the uppermost folds. Visible to some, at least.”

“So something happens in the past -- a powerful event or something that is repeated enough to create a…a stain and that stain seeps through to the present?” Maggie pondered aloud.

“That was her theory. It made sense, especially given that she was constantly seein’ people and things from the past. She steered clear of places that were part of her family history. She felt like the blood connection with an ancestor, combined with a location where that ancestor had lived, created a conduit – a place where the layers of time were so thin as to be precarious to someone with her gift.”

Gus stood and walked to Maggie. Leaning down a little so he could make eye contact, he spoke very slowly and succinctly. “You have her gift, Miss Margaret, the same gift as my grandma. It is a gift YOUR grandmother had, as well. Your grandma lived in this house, and you live here now. That’s some mighty thin layers…”

“This house could be a…conduit?” Irene fluttered her hands in front of her face, as if she’d just been told the house was haunted. She looked ready to collapse, and Gus reached for her hands apologetically. He soothed and shushed, reassuring Irene that the house was nothing of the sort, but he looked at Maggie over Irene’s bowed head, and though he said nothing more to her on the subject, his eyes spoke volumes.