After a while the bosses started using him for hits, the kind where they’re making a statement. Messy, crazy hits. He did that for years until he got into a situation he couldn’t cut his way out of. Cops took him away in a bunch of little bags.
Man, I’ll never forget that day. I was doing a short stretch in the county when I found out and I near laughed myself sick. I’d hated that old bastard for the way he’d treated ma, for what he did to my sister Juney. He used to kick the shit out of me on a regular basis, but I could deal with that. It was the things he did to them . . . . I knew one day I’d take him down, didn’t matter he was my old man. I just hadn’t got around to it yet. Hadn’t figured out a way to let the bosses know it was personal, not some kind of criticism of their business.
Anyway, I’m not mean like the old man was, I’ll tell you that straight-off, but I purely don’t take crap from anybody. I don’t have to get into it too much anymore. People take a look at me now and think, blood is blood. They see my old man’s crazy eyes when they look in mine, and they find some other place to be than where I’m standing.
So I make the point with these boys that they don’t want to mess with Lillie, and all it takes is a tap against a tombstone for them to get the message. I let them get their pal and take off, then I go to see what Lillie’s doing.
It’s the strangest thing. She’s just standing there by one of those old stone mausoleums, swaying back and forth, looking off into the space between a couple of those stone crypts. I scratch my head, and take a closer look myself. She’s mesmerized by something, but damned if I know what. I can hear her humming to herself, still doing that swaying thing, mostly with her upper body, back and forth, smiling that pretty smile of hers, short black hair standing up at attention the way it always does. I’m forever trying to talk her into growing it long, but she laughs at me whenever I do.
I guess I watch her for about an hour that night. I remember thinking she’d been sampling some of the dealers’ wares until she suddenly snaps out of it. I fade back into the shadows at that point. Don’t want her to think I’ve been spying on her. I’m just looking out for her, but she doesn’t see it that way. She gets seriously pissed at me and I hate having Lillie mad at me.
She walks right by me, still humming to herself. I can see she’s not stoned, just Lillie-strange. I watch her climb up some vines where one of the walls is broken and low, and then she’s gone. I go out the front way, just to remind the boys what’s what, and catch up with Lillie a few blocks away, casual-like. Don’t ask her where she’s been. Just say how-do, make sure she’s okay without letting on I’m worried, and head back to my own place.
I don’t know exactly when it is I realize she’s looking for ghosts in there. It just comes to me one day, slips in sideways when I’m thinking about something else. I try talking to her about it from time to time but all she does is smile, the way only she can.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she says.
“Try me.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not something to understand,” she says. “It’s just something you do. The less you worry at it, the more it makes sense.”
She’s right. I don’t understand.
4
There’s a boy living in the garden. He reminds me a little of Alex. It’s not that they look the same. This kid’s all skin and bones, held together with wiry muscles. Naked and scruffy, crazy tangled hair full of burrs and twigs and stuff, peach-fuzz vying with a few actual beard hairs, dink hanging loose when he’s not holding onto it—I guess you’ve got to do something with your hands when you don’t have pockets. Alex, he’s like a fridge with arms and legs. Big, strong, and loyal as all get-out. Not school-smart, but bright. You couldn’t pick a couple of guys that looked less alike.
The reason they remind me of each other is that they’re both a little feral. Wild things. Dangerous if you don’t approach them right.
I get to the garden one night and the trees are full of grackles. They’re feeding on berries and making a racket like I’ve never heard before. I know it’s an unkindness of ravens and a murder of crows, but what do you call that many grackles all together? I’m walking around, peering up at them in the branches, smiling at the noise, when I see the boy sitting up in one of the trees, looking back down at me.
Neither of us says anything for a long time. There’s just the racket of the birds playing against the silence we hold between us.
“Hey there,” I say finally. “Is this your garden?”
“It’s my castle.”
I smile. “Doesn’t look much like a castle.”
“Got walls,” he tells me.
“I suppose.”
He looks a little put out. “It’s a start.”
“So when are you going to start building the rest?” I ask.
He looks at me, the way a child looks at you when you’ve said something stupid.
“Go away,” he says.
I decide I can be as much of an asshole as he’s being and play the why game with him.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I don’t like you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re stupid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Guess you were born that way.”
“Why?”
“Have to ask your parents that.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know.”
“Why?”
He finally catches on. Pulling a twig free from the branch he’s sitting on, he throws it at me. I duck and it misses. When I look back up, he’s gone. The noise of the grackles sounds like laughter now.
“Guess I deserve that,” I say.
I don’t see the boy for a few visits after that, but the next time I do, he pops up out of the thick weeds underfoot and almost gives me a heart attack.
“I could’ve just snuck up on you and killed you,” he tells me. “Just like that.”
He leans against a tree, one hand hanging down in between his legs like he’s got a piece of treasure there.
“Why would you want to do that?” I ask.
His eyes narrow. “I don’t want to play the why game again.”
“I’m not. I really want to know.”
“It’s not a thing I do or don’t want to do,” he tells me. “I’m just saying I could. It was a piece of information, that’s all.”
There’s something incongruous about the way he says this—innocent and scary, all at the same time. It reminds me of when I was a little girl, how it took me the longest time to admit that I could ever like a boy, they were all such assholes. All except Alex. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d pulled my hair or pushed me on the schoolyard, but he never did. He was always so sweet and polite to me and then after classes, he’d go out and beat up the guys that had been mean to me. I guess I was flattered, at first, but then I realized it wasn’t a very nice thing to do. You have to understand, we’re both still in grade school when this is going on. Things weren’t the same back then the way they are for kids now. We sure never had to walk through metal detectors to get into the school.
Anyway, I asked him to stop and he did. At least so far as I know, he did. I wonder sometimes, though. Sometimes my boyfriends have the weirdest accidents—walking into doors and stuff like that.
5
This one time Lillie’s going out with this college-type. Dave, his name is. Dave Taylor. Nice enough looking joe, I suppose, but he’s not exactly the most faithful guy you’d ever meet. Happened to run into him getting a little on the side one night, so I walk up to his table and tell him I have to have a word with him, would his lady friend excuse us for a moment? He doesn’t want to step outside, so I suggest to his lady friend that she go powder her nose, if she understands my meaning.
“So what the hell’s this all about?” Dave asks when she’s gone. He’s blustering, trying to make up for the face he feels he lost in front of his girlfriend.
“I’m a frie
nd of Lillie’s,” I tell him.
“Yeah? So?”
“So I don’t like the idea of her getting hurt.”
“Hey, what she doesn’t know—”
“I’m not discussing this,” I say. “I’m telling you.”
The guy shakes his head. “Or what? I suppose you’re going to go running to her and—”
I hit him once, a quick jab to the head that rocks him back in his seat. Doesn’t even break the skin on my knuckles, but I can see he’s hurting.
“I don’t care who you go out with, or if you cheat on them,” I say, keeping my voice conversational. “I just don’t want you seeing Lillie any more.”
He’s holding a hand to his head where the skin’s going all red. Looks a little scared like I’m going to hit him again, but I figure I’ve already made my point.
“Do we understand each other?” I ask him.
He gives me a quick nod. I start to leave, then pause for a moment. He gives me a worried look.
“And Dave,” I say. “Let’s not get stupid about this. No one’s got to know we had this little talk, right?”
“What. . . whatever you say. . . .”
6
I wonder about Alex—worry about him, I guess you could say. He never seems to be happy or sad. He just is. It’s not like he’s cold, keeps it all bottled in or anything, and he’s always got a smile for me, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of passion in his life. He doesn’t talk much, and never about himself. That’s another way he and the boy in the garden differ. The boy’s always excited about something or other, always ready for any sort of mad escapade. And he loves to talk.
“Old castle rock,” the boy tells me one time. His eyes are gleaming with excitement. “That’s what these walls are made of. They were part of this castle on the other side and now they’re here. There’s going to be more of the castle coming, I just know there is. Towers and turrets and stables and stuff.”
“When’s the rest of it going to come?” I ask.
He shrugs his bony shoulders. “Dunno. Could be a long time. But I can wait.”
“Where’s it coming from?” I ask then.
“I told you. From the other side.”
“The other side of what?”
He gives me that look again, the one that says don’t you know anything?
“The other side of the walls,” he says.
I’ve never looked over the walls—not from the garden. That’s the first thing Alex would have done. He may not have passion in his life, but he’s sure got purpose. He’s always in the middle of something, always knows what’s going on. Never finished high school, but he’s smarter than most people I meet because he’s never satisfied until he’s got everything figured out. He’s in the public library all the time, reading, studying stuff. Never does anything with what he knows, but he sure knows a lot.
I walk over to the nearest of those tall stone walls and the boy trails along behind me, joins me when I start to go up. It’s an easier climb than you might think, plenty of finger-and toe-holds, and we scale it like a couple of monkeys, grinning at each other when we reach the top. It’s flat up there, with lots of room on the rough stone to sit and look out, only there’s nothing to see. Just fog, thick, the way it rolls into the city from the lake sometimes. It’s like the world ends on the other side of these walls.
“It’s always like this,” the boy says.
I turn to look at him. My first impression was that he’d come in over the walls himself and I never learned anything different to contradict it, but now I’m not so sure anymore. I mean, I knew this garden was someplace else, someplace magical that you could only reach the way you get to Neverneverland—you have to really want to get there. You might stumble in the first time, but after that you have to be really determined to get back in. But I also thought the real world was still out there, on the other side of the garden’s magic, held back only by the walls.
“Where did you come from?” I ask him.
He give me this look that manages to be fierce and sad, all at the same time.
“Same place as you,” he says and touches a closed fist to his heart. “From the hurting world. This is the only place I can go where they can’t get to me, where no one can hurt me.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t come here looking for sanctuary. I’m not running from anything.”
“Then why are you here?”
I think of Alex and the way he’s always talking about ghosts, but it’s not that either. I never really think about it, I just come. Alex is the one with the need to have answers to every question. Not me. For me the experience has been enough of and by itself. But now that I think about it, now that I realize I want an answer, I find I don’t have one.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I thought you were like me,” the boy says.
He sounded disappointed. Like I’ve disappointed him. He sounds angry, too. I want to say something to mollify him, but I can’t find those words either. I reach out a hand, but he jerks away. He stands up, looks at me like I’ve turned into the enemy. I guess, in his eyes, I have. If I’m not with him, then I’m against him.
“I would never hurt you,” I finally say. “I’ve never hurt anybody.”
“That’s what you think,” he says.
Then he dives off the top of the wall, dives into the fog. I grab for him, but I’m not fast enough. I hold my breath, waiting to hear him hit the ground, but there’s no sound. The fog swallows him and I’m alone on the top of the wall. I feel like I’ve missed something, something important. I feel like it was right there in front of me, all along, but now it’s gone, dove off the wall with the boy and I’ve lost my chance to understand it.
The next time I come to the garden, everything’s the same, but different. The boy’s not here. I’ve come other times, lots of times, and he hasn’t been here, but this time I feel he won’t be back, won’t ever be back, and I miss him. I don’t know why. It’s not like we had a whole lot in common. It’s not like we had long, meaningful conversations, or were in love with each other or anything. I mean, he was just a kid, like a little brother, not a lover. But I miss him the way I’ve missed a lover when the relationship ends.
I feel guilty, too. Maybe this place isn’t a sanctuary for me, but it was for him. A walled, wild garden, held safe by moonlight and vines. His castle. What if I’ve driven him away forever? Driven him back to what he called the hurting world.
I hate that idea the most, the idea that I’ve stolen the one good thing he had in a life that didn’t have anything else. But I don’t know what to do about it, how to call him back. I’d trade my coming here for his in a moment, only how can I tell him that? I don’t even know his name.
7
Lillie doesn’t leave the graveyard this night. I watch her sitting there on the step of one of those old mausoleums, sitting there all hunched up, sitting there all night. Finally, dawn breaks in the east, swallows the graveyard’s spookiness. It’s just an old forgotten place now, fallen in on itself and waiting for the wreckers’ ball. The night’s gone and taken the promise of danger away with it. I go over to where Lillie is and sit down beside her on the steps. I touch her arm.
“Lillie?” I say. “Are you okay?”
She turns to look at me. I’m expecting her to be mad at me for being here. She’s got to know I’ve been following her around again. But all she does is give me a sad look.
“Did you ever lose something you never knew you had?” she asks.
“I only ever wanted one thing,” I tell her, “but I never had it to lose.”
“I don’t even know what it is that I’ve lost,” she says. “I just know something’s gone. I had a chance to have it, to hold it and cherish it, but I let it go.”
The early morning sunlight’s warm on my skin, but a shiver runs through me all the same. I think maybe she’s talking about ghosts. Maybe there really are ghosts here. I get the crazy idea that maybe we’re ghosts, tha
t we died and don’t remember it. Or maybe only one of us did.
“What was the one thing you wanted that you never got?” she asks.
It’s something I would never tell her. I promised myself a long time ago that I’d never tell her because I knew she deserved better. But that crazy idea won’t let go, that we’re dead, or one of us is, and it makes me tell her.
“It’s you,” I say.
8
Did you ever hear someone tell you something you always knew but it never really registered until they put it into words? That’s what happens to me when Alex tells me he loves me, that he’s always loved me.
His voice trails off and I look at him, really look at him. He almost flinches under my gaze. I can tell he doesn’t want to be here, that he wishes he’d never spoken, that he feels a hurt swelling up inside him that he would never have to experience if he’d kept his feelings to himself. He reminds me of the boy, the way the boy looked before he dove off the wall into the fog, not the anger, but the sadness.
“Why did you never say anything before this?” I finally ask.
“I couldn’t,” he says. “And anyway. Look at us, you and me. We grew up in the same neighborhood, sure, but . . .” He shrugs. “You deserve better than me.”
I have to smile. This is so Alex. “Oh, right. And who decided that?”
Alex chooses not to answer me. “You were always different,” he says instead. “You were always the first on the block with a new sound or a new look, but you weren’t following trends. It’s like they followed you. And you never lost that. Anyone looks at you and they can tell there’s nothing holding you back. You can do anything, go anywhere. The future’s wide open for you, always was, you know what I’m saying? The streets never took their toll on you.”
Then why am I still living in Foxville? I want to ask him. How come my star didn’t take me to some nice uptown digs? But I know what he’s talking about. It’s not really about where I can go as much as where I’ve been.