Ashes Read online

  But only in the summer. Now it was autumn, with the leaves like kites and November rushing toward them from Tennessee. Now Ellen had school five mornings a week, homework, chores if Mom caught her. Not much time for games, so she and Margaret had to make the most of their time together.

  The bushes shook again.

  "Come out, come out," Ellen called, afraid that Mom would switch off the vacuum cleaner and hear her having fun.

  Margaret's long blonde hair appeared in a gap between the bushes. A hand emerged, slender and pale and wearing a plastic ring that Ellen had gotten as a Crackerjack prize. The hand was followed by the red sleeve of Margaret's sweater. At last Ellen's playmate showed her face with its uneven grin.

  "Peek-a-boo," Margaret said.

  "Your turn to be 'it.'"

  The vacuum cleaner suddenly switched off, and the silence was broken only by the brittle shivering of the trees along the edge of the trailer park. Ellen put her index finger to her lips to shush Margaret, then crawled into the bushes beside her. The trailer door swung open with a rusty creak.

  Mom looked out, shading her eyes against the setting sun. Ellen ducked deeper into the shrubbery, where the dirt smelled of cat pee. Margaret stifled a giggle beside her. Everything was a game to Margaret. But Margaret wasn't the one who had to worry about getting her hide tanned, and Margaret could disappear if she wanted.

  Mom had that look on her face, the red of anger over the pink of drunkenness. She stood in the doorway and chewed her lip. A greasy strand of hair dangled over one eye. Her fists were balled. The stench of burnt cheese powder and cigarettes drifted from the trailer.

  "Ellen," Mom called, looking down the row of trailers to the trees. Mom hated Ellen's staying out late more than anything. Except maybe the special teachers at school.

  Ellen tensed, hugging her knees to her chest.

  "She looks really mad," Margaret whispered.

  "No, she's probably just worried."

  A thin rope of smoke drifted from the trailer door. "She burned supper," Margaret said.

  "It's my fault. She's really going to whip me this time."

  Mom called once more, then slammed the door closed. Margaret rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the mobile home. Ellen laughed, though her stomach felt full of bugs.

  "Let's go to my place," Margaret said.

  "What if Mom sees me? She can see me, even if she can't see you."

  Margaret started crawling behind the row of dying shrubbery. "Your mom won't find you there."

  "She always finds me anywhere." Ellen hung her head, near tears.

  Margaret crawled back and poked her in the side. "Don't be a gloomy Gus."

  Ellen slapped Margaret's hand away. "I'm not no gloomy Gus."

  "Why don't you let me get her? I can make her hurt like she makes you hurt."

  Ellen folded her arms and studied Margaret's brown eyes. Margaret would do it. She was a good friend. And in her eyes, behind the sparkle, was a darkness buried deep. Maybe you looked at things that way when you were dead.

  "No. It's better if we keep you secret," Ellen said. "I already got in trouble at school, telling the special teachers about you."

  Margaret poked her in the ribs again. Ellen smiled this time.

  "Follow me. Hurry," Margaret said.

  Margaret scrambled ahead, staying low beneath the hedge. Ellen looked at the trailer door, checked for any sign of movement in the windows. Then she crawled after Margaret, the dead twigs sharp against the skin of her palms and knees.

  From the end of the hedge, they dashed for the concealment of the forest. Ellen half expected to hear Mom's angry shout, telling her to get inside right this minute. But then they were under the trees and lost among the long shadows.

  Margaret laughed with the exhilaration of escape. She ran between the oaks with their orange leaves, the silver birch, the sweet green pine, ignoring the branches and briars that tugged the fabric of her sweater. Ellen followed just as recklessly, her footsteps soft on the rotting loam of the forest floor.

  The girls passed a clearing covered by crisp leaves. Margaret veered away to a path that followed the river. The air smelled of fish and wet stones. Ellen stumbled over a grapevine, and by the time she looked up, Margaret had disappeared.

  Ellen looked around. A bird chittered in a high treetop. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. Purple and pink clouds hung in the west like rags on a clothesline. She was alone.

  Alone.

  The special teachers at school told Ellen it was worse to be alone than have invisible friends. "You can't keep playing all by yourself," they told her. "You have to learn to get along with others. You have to let go of the past."

  When Ellen told the special teachers about what happened at home, the teachers' eyes got wide. They must have talked to Mom, because when Ellen got home that day, she got her hide tanned harder than ever. Someday Mom was going to lose her temper and do something really bad.

  Ellen thought of Mom, with fists clenched and supper burnt, waiting back at the trailer. Ellen shivered. She didn't want to be alone.

  She put her hands to her mouth. "Margaret!"

  She heard a giggle from behind a stand of trees. The red sweater flashed and vanished. Margaret was playing another game, trying to make Ellen get lost by leading her deeper into the woods. Well, Ellen wasn't going to be scared.

  And she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes the girls at school made her cry. They would stand around her in a circle and say she was in love with Joey Hogwood. Well, she hated Joey Hogwood, and she hated the girls. Ellen wished that Margaret still went to school so that she would have a friend to sit beside.

  Margaret wouldn't want her to cry. Margaret would just pretend to be bad for a little while, then pop out from behind a tree and tag her and make her “It.”

  Laughter came down from the hill where the pines were thickest. To the left, a sea of kudzu vines choked the trees. A run-down chicken coop had been swallowed by the leaves, with only a few rotten boards showing under the green. That's where Margaret was hiding.

  Ellen ran across the kudzu, the leaves tickling her calves above her socks. She could read Margaret like a book. That was the best thing about invisible playmates: they did what you wanted them to do.

  Right now, Ellen wanted Margaret to go just over the hill, into the new part of the forest. She reached the pines and started down the slope. Half a dozen houses were sprinkled among the folds of the hill. A highway ran through the darkening valley, the few cars making whispers as they rolled back and forth. The headlights were like giant fireflies in the dusk.

  "Margaret," Ellen called.

  A giggle floated up from the highway. Margaret was there by the ditch, waving her arm. Ellen smiled to herself. Margaret wouldn't leave her. Ellen picked her way down the slope, almost slipping on the dewy fallen leaves, until she reached the ditch.

  "Tag, you're 'It,'" Margaret said, touching Ellen's shoulder.

  Margaret's golden-white hair blazed in the lights of an approaching car. She spun and raced across the highway, the roar of the engine drowning out Ellen's scream. The car passed right through Margaret, not slowing at all. The red eyes of the tail lights faded into darkness. Ellen hurried across the road.

  "You're a crazy-brain," Ellen said.

  Margaret shook her head, her hair swaying from side to side. "Am not."

  "Are, too."

  "You're still 'It,'" Margaret said, running away. The darkness was more solid now, the sun fading in slow surrender. Margaret climbed over the low stone wall that bordered the highway.

  "Crazy-brain." Ellen scrambled over the wall after her, into the graveyard. The alabaster angels and crosses and markers were like ghosts in the night. Margaret had vanished.

  "Margaret?"

  Laughter echoed off the granite.

  Invisible friends didn't disappear unless you allowed it. They didn't hurt you or scare you or make you cry, at least not on purpose. They didn’t tease you about Joey Hog
wood, or make you sit in a chair and listen to all the reasons why invisible friends couldn’t exist.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are," Ellen said. She scrambled between the cold gravestones. The grass was damp and full of autumn, and the air smelled of fall flowers. A sharp curve of moon had sliced its way into the black sky.

  Ellen found Margaret beside a church-white marker.

  "Mom's going to be mad," Ellen said.

  "She's just an old meanie."

  "She's really going to kill me." Ellen sat in the grass beside Margaret and the dew soaked her dress.

  "Don't go back," Margaret said.

  "I have to go back."

  Margaret folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her lower lip. "In the summer, we got to play until way late."

  "It's not summer anymore," Ellen said, looking at the sky. Three stars were out.

  "Is that why the fireflies are gone?"

  Ellen laughed. "You're such a dummyhead."

  The moon was higher now, pale on Margaret's face. Her eyes were dark hollows. "I'm not no dummyhead."

  "Yes, you are," Ellen said, her voice sing-songy and shrill. "Margaret is a dummyhead, Margaret is a dummyhead."

  Margaret leaned back against the marker. Her shoulders trembled and thin lines of tears tracked down her cheeks. Ellen stopped teasing. With invisible playmates, you always felt what they felt.

  "I'm sorry," Ellen whispered.

  Margaret was bone silent.

  "Hey," Ellen said. "Now who's the gloomy Gus?"

  She poked Margaret in the side, feeling the hard ridges of her friend's ribs. It was funny how invisible friends could be solid, if you thought of them that way.

  "Sometimes it's hard to remember," Margaret said, sniffing. “You know. What it was like.”

  Ellen poked again. “It’s not that great.”

  Margaret twitched and tried to hold back her smile. Then the laughter broke and she blinked away the last of her tears. They watched the moon for a while and listened to the rush of the passing cars.

  "I miss summer," Margaret said.

  "Me, too."

  "You don't have to go back."

  They could play hide-and-seek all night and never have to hide in the same place twice. A few gnarled trees clutched at the ground with their roots, perfect for climbing. Honeysuckle vines covered the walls and gates, waiting for summer when they would again sweeten the air. Best of all was the quiet. Here, no one ever yelled in anger.

  But Ellen didn't belong here. Not yet.

  "I'd better get home," Ellen said. "I'm going to get my hide tanned as it is."

  Margaret tried a pouty face, then gave up. All playtimes had to end. Ellen waved good-bye and started back over the stone wall.

  "See you tomorrow?" Margaret called after her.

  Ellen turned and looked back, but her friend had already vanished.

  Margaret's voice came from everywhere, nowhere. "It won't hurt."

  "Promise?"

  "Even if it did, I would tickle you and make you laugh."

  "Good night."

  Ellen paused at the edge of the highway and waited for the next car. She could step out before the driver even saw her. Margaret had promised it wouldn't hurt. But maybe dead people always said that.

  A car came over the hill, its engine roaring like a great beast, the headlights prowling for prey. Ellen ducked into the ditch and waited. Five seconds away, maybe. One jump, a big bump, and then she could be with Margaret.

  Her lungs grew hard and cold, she couldn’t breathe, and the car was maybe three seconds away. She told herself it was only another game, just hopscotch. She tensed. Two seconds.

  Margaret whispered in her ear. “I lied. It really does hurt.”

  One second, and the car whizzed past, its exhaust lingering like a sigh.

  “See you tomorrow?” Margaret said, sitting on the stone fence, pale under the scant moon.

  “I guess so.”

  “You get this way,” Margaret said. “When you’re dead, you want to play games all the time.”

  “I guess I’ll find out someday.”

  Ellen crossed the highway and tried to drift through the trees the way Margaret could. But it was no use. She was too solid, too real, she belonged too much to the world with its hard wood and hard people and hard rules. If only she were someone's invisible playmate.

  But she wasn't. She forgot games, laughter, the red sweater that Margaret had been buried in. Her thoughts were of nothing but Mom and home.

  Ellen moved onward through the night, only half-dead, not nearly dead enough.

  ###

  THE ENDLESS BIVOUAC

  The day that James Wilkie killed his first man dawned hell-hot and humid, and didn't get any better as the hours dragged on.

  He'd just gotten over a touch of the bilous fever, and sweat clung to his collar and soaked through the brim of his cap. Wilkie had seen what happened to men who took the fever, and a few days in the sentry box was better than some extra bed rest. In the makeshift field hospital, bed rest often turned out to be permanent.

  Wilkie was a private in the Third Regiment Georgia Volunteers. Back home, all his friends had talked about was glory, honor, and the freedom to keep working the coloreds. Wilkie was from a family too poor to have slaves. But he'd joined up just the same, even though he was only fifteen. By the fourth year of the war, recruiters were enlisting men and boys alike with no questions asked.

  Wilkie wasn't sure how he would react to battle. He'd heard tales of the blue-bellies who would cut you down and then stir in your guts while looking you dead in the eyes. They were devils, rapists, the worst kind of trash. So he had been relieved when he was assigned as a guard at the prison camp near Andersonville. Except he didn't see how this duty could be worse than that of the front lines.

  Sometimes he felt that both sides were prisoners here. Rations were often short and the Confederate camp up the hill wasn't a whole lot better than the pieces of torn blankets and old coats that the prisoners rigged up for shebangs. Dysentery didn't respect stockade walls or uniform color. The heat stifled everybody the same whether they were twenty feet up in a lookout or huddled by the swamp relieving themselves.

  At least Wilkie could leave the endlessly sick and dying at the end of his watch. The Yankees were trapped inside with it, the groans of the starving, the septic stench of gangrenous flesh, the thick odor of human waste, the constant stirring of bottle-flies, the shouts and fights, the songs that the prisoners sang in the evenings that always seemed to find a minor key. They didn't look so high-and-mighty down there, unwashed and scruffy, thin as locust posts. Not like devils at all, though the prison was closer to hell than any place Wilkie had ever heard described in a sermon.

  But all Wilkie could do was his duty. Ten hours in the box, trying to breathe, fanning his cap to keep the fever down. He kept the musket in the shade so he could occasionally press the cool metal barrel to his forehead. It wasn't even his musket; the guards had to trade off at the end of the day since supplies were short.

  He was drowsing, so close to full sleep that he could see the dream image of the little garden back home, Susan sitting in the big oak tree, him with flowers in his hand. He was just about to say something kind to her, to lure her down from the tree and into his arms, when he heard the shouts. At first he thought it was part of his dream, just some raiders hooting drunk in town, but the shouts grew louder, a strident chorus. Wilkie's eyes snapped open and he looked down on the compound.

  The prisoner was running straight for him. Even from thirty yards away, Wilkie could see the wide, haunted eyes, the mouth torn open in a silent scream. Other prisoners were shouting at him, telling the crazed Yankee to stop. One man gave chase, but the prisoner was driven by some strange energy that belied his knobby bones and stringy muscles.

  The prisoner was making for the dead line.

  Captain Wirtz’s orders were clear: shoot any sorry Yankee dog that crossed the line. The single-rail
fence ran about fifteen feet from the stockade walls. Not that any of the prisoners could scale the timbers before one of the boys put him down. But Wirtz said rules were rules and a civilized camp was in the best interest of both sides.

  Wilkie lifted his musket and stood on legs still trembling from sleep. "Hold it there, Yankee," he said, but his throat was so dry that the words barely reached his own ears. Still the prisoner ran, his ragged tunic flapping.

  "Stop or I'll shoot," Wilkie shouted, louder this time. The prisoner reached the dead line, vaulted the fence, and made for the wall. The man who had given chase stopped and backed away from the dead line. Wilkie felt a hundred eyes on him, and the shouts died away. Only then did Wilkie realize that half the Yankees had been urging the prisoner on, the other half yelling at him to stop.

  As Wilkie raised the musket and sighted along the barrel, he took a deep gulp of August air. He closed his eyes and opened them again. If he paused long enough, maybe one of the other sentries would pull the trigger first. But duty was duty, and the prisoner was halfway to the wall.

  It was no worse than shooting a rabbit or wild turkey, at least as far as aiming went. As the powder exploded, Wilkie thought he heard some other shots. The stricken man fell to one knee, jerking like a toppled stack of kindling, then reached a hand toward the wall. An additional shot rang out and the man's skull shattered.

  Wilkie was sweating from more than just the fever. Prisoners crowded near the dead line like a harvest of gray scarecrows. One of the guards let out a whoop of triumph. A lieutenant ran from the officer's quarters and hurried up the ladder to Wilkie's sentry box.

  "What happened here, private?" The officer was a bearded man of about forty. He stood with his arms folded, tapping one of his knee-high leather boots. Union boots, taken from the last round of new prisoners.

  Wilkie could barely speak. "He crossed the dead line, sir."

  Wilkie's eyes crawled from the officer's face to the corpse on the ground below. Flies had already settled on the wounds, their wings bright blue in the sun. Eggs would soon be laid, and maggots would be born in the man's rotting meat. Some of the larvae would crawl through the shallow grave dirt and make their way back here to continue the endless cycle.