BUT APPARENTLY ELI COULD FLOAT. That was his name. I saw it, written in wriggling, poorly-formed letters on a light-colored surface. EL i
Eli wasn’t swallowed up in the waters I called down. He came back. Again. And then again. I even tried to take a trip, as if that had ever worked. Here, there, half-way across the world, there’s no escaping yourself . . . or the dead, Tag reminded me when I complained, throwing my duffle in the back of my truck. The truck was new and smelled of leather and made me want to drive and drive and never stop. I rode with open windows and pounding music to reinforce my walls. But as I headed toward the Salt Flats west of the valley, Eli appeared in the middle of the road, his little black cape blowing in the wind as if he were truly standing there, a forlorn little bat boy in the middle of an empty highway. I ended up turning around and going home, seething at the intrusion, wondering how in the hell he was finding all my cracks.
He showed me a book with a worn cover and dog eared pages, a woman’s voice faint and muffled, speaking the words to the story as Eli turned the pages. Eli sat in her lap, his head pressed up to her chest, and I could feel her wrapped around him, as if I sat there too, in the well created by her crisscrossed legs. He showed me the horse, Calico, and the image of jean-clad legs walking past the table as if he sat beneath it in his own little fort. Random things that meant nothing to me and everything to him.
When he woke me at three a.m. with dreamy images of sunsets and horse rides, seated in front of a woman whose hair tickled his cheeks when he turned his face, I tossed back my covers and began to paint. I worked frantically, desperate to be rid of the child that wouldn’t let me be. The picture in my head was one of my own making. Eli hadn’t put it there, but I could see how they must have looked, the fair mother with her dark-headed son, his head tucked against her chest, seated in front of her on the horse with all the colors. The pair on the horse were moving away, moving toward the sunset spilling over the hills, the colors rich yet blurred, reminiscent of Monet, looking at beauty through a pane of wavy glass, discernable yet elusive. It was my way of keeping the viewer at a distance, allowing them to appreciate without intruding, observe without being a part. It reminded me of the way I’d come to see the dead and the images they shared with me. It was the way I coped. It was the way I kept myself intact.
When I was finished, I stepped back and dropped my hands. My shirt and jeans were splattered with paint, my shoulders impossibly tight, and my hands aching. When I turned, Eli looked on, staring at the brushstrokes that, one by one, created life. Still life, but life all the same. It had to be enough. It had always been enough before.
But when Eli looked back at me, his brow was furrowed and his countenance troubled. And he shook his head slowly.
He showed me the soft light of a lamp that looked like a cowboy boot, the way it tossed light on the wall. His eyes were trained on the wall and I could see a woman’s shadow outlined in the light, and I watched as her shadow leaned in and kissed the child goodnight.
“Goodnight, Stewy Stinker!” she said, nuzzling the curve between his shoulder and his neck.
“Goodnight, Buzzard Bates!” he responded gleefully.
“Goodnight Skunk Skeeter!” she immediately shot back.
“Goodnight, Butch Bones!” Eli chortled.
I didn’t understand the nicknames, but they made me smile. The affection dripped from the memory like water spilling from a downspout. But I still pushed it back, slamming the black doors down on the touching display.
“No, Eli. No. I can’t give you that. I know you want your mother. But I can’t give you that. I can’t give her that. But I can give her this. You help me find her, and I’ll give her this.” I pointed at the drying picture I’d created for the persistent child. “I can give her your picture. You helped me make this. This is from you. I can give her this. You can give her this.”
Eli stared at my offering for several long heartbeats. And without warning, he was gone.
Moses
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL.” Tag lifted his chin toward the canvas on my easel. “Different from what you usually do.”
“Yeah. That’s because it didn’t come from his head. It came from mine.”
“The kid?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands over the stubble on my head, anxious, and not sure why. Eli hadn’t come back. Maybe painting had worked after all.
Tag had wandered up, unannounced, uninvited, just like in the early days, and I was grateful for the intrusion. He would come up when he needed a sparring partner or something from my fridge or a piece of art to temporarily place in a prominent position to impress whichever female he had over for the evening.
But he’d already worked out, apparently, and I wouldn’t be taking any pent-up frustration out on him today. His hair was wet around the edges, curling and clinging to his neck and forehead, and sweat from his workout had soaked through his shirt and made it stick to his chest. Tag cleaned up well enough, slicking back his hair and donning an expensive suit when he was doing business, but he’d always been a little shaggy and rough-looking with a nose that had been broken a few too many times and hair that was always too long. I don’t know how he could stand the heat of having hair on his head. I never could, it suffocated me. Maybe it was the fact that every encounter with the dead scorched my neck and made my head swim, and my body burned energy like a furnace.