CHAPTER TEN


The bus ride had been long, boring, and full of too many lewd stares.


There's always a few cagey characters who stood and waited. I'd been
approached by two men. They offered a twenty with a gesture towards the
bathroom. Both times, I grinned and shook my head.


When the second guy pressed closer and placed a hand to my knee, I murmured,
softly and coolly, "I have a knife in my shoe and if you step one inch closer,
I'll use it."


When he looked down, he realized how close my shoe was to his jewels and he
quickly jumped back, uttered the typical female insult, and went in search for
another taker.


The truth was that I didn't have a knife in my shoe.


I actually had it wrapped to my wrist and ready at a moment's notice.


Skirmishes happened, but I knew how to use the knife.


I was also smart enough to sit where the lights, cameras, and security men
were located.


It paid off. I got through the bus station and onto the bus in one piece
without needing my knife.


The driver was named Carl and he was a bit shifty himself. He loved to talk
and he talked the ear off of a Stan, a redneck who owned his own business and
had a story for every phase of life.


Both were enjoyable to listen to and I was entertained for the first leg of
the trip. When Stan left, the rest was boring and I hoped to sleep most of the
time. I didn't, but that's what it's like to ride the Greyhound. Too many hours
hoping for sleep and none blessed with it. Just aching necks and numb butts.


It took sixteen hours before we entered Paynes, West Virginia. As I stepped
off the bus, my ears were either in pain or had popped a few too many times, but
the beauty of the state made up the tormented hazing that was necessary to enter
into the haven of mountains and yellowed-leaved trees.


They were graced with the fall colors, milder temperatures, but I figured
that a few homeless might be frostbitten through the night.


I saw one who resembled someone I knew and I watched for a moment.


She was thin, with gaunt elbows, and a ragged shirt that dwarfed what meat
she had kept. Yellow-ragged hair hung off her head with a few strands darkened
from grease.


She was lost and she looked like she was trying to stand for something, but
she'd forgotten what it was.


Her hands raised up, cupped to receive any charity change as the first
passengers brushed past.


Her knuckles were bloodied and had been burnt.


I tightened my hold of the bag, still over my shoulder, and stopped just
before her.


Fear filled her eyes before she watched the floor. She shuffled her feet and
awkwardly grabbed one elbow with a protective arm across her.


The hair still hung limp and lifeless.


"I'm not here to shake you down or give you a sermon to go back home." I
ventured and she looked up, fear still evident, and looked back down.


But she was listening.


I added, softly, my heart hardened, "Whatever you got back home, it's
obviously worth leaving if you're still standing here. But…my best advice: find
some friends that will hang out with you when you don't have money. They're the
ones that'll stick around when you do and not steal it."


She looked up again and I saw that her eyes were grey.


She was probably eleven, but I knew her look.


She was already eighteen.


I sighed and said further, "I waitressed and I did cons. I needed the extra
money, but I got hooked to the rush of the game. Don't do that. Just stick with
waitressing and you'll be fine."


Don't hang your hopes on others. And don't let others penetrate your real
heart, not unless you knew they would hold it precious and dear.


Like Munsinger, Cherry, Grey, and Kai.


Not Cora or Zara.


"I was in your place and I got money now. I even got a few that I think of
family."


"What's your name?" She asked, weak.


"Maya."


"You seem…you seem so strong."


A saddened smile crossed my heart first, but the pain was still there. I
shook my head, "I just say the truth, but I guess if that makes me strong then
I'm strong."


I did tell the truth, but I'd gone through trials and tribulations to see the
truth.


I'd been weak, then I'd been strong. I'd been foolish, foolhardy, and
reckless.


And then I met the cold shoulder of an idol and the world shifted once
again.


I took a deep shuddering life-awakening breath and moved to the nearest
bench. She sat beside me and waited politely, as a child should be taught, but
she waited nervously as if fearing an elbow of closed fist to the face.


As a child should never wait.


"I don't know what you're running from." I said sadly, softly, and knew I
spoke to myself. "But, whatever it is…it doesn't matter. Nothing matters in the
end, but…those people that'll light up in a smile when you walk into a room.
Family. That's all that matters."


Even family that was caged.


She didn't do anything, say anything, but I knew the prologue of her
story.


Her family had hurt her and that was why she stood where she stood.


It didn't explain why listened and that propelled me forward.


It was my job. To stand for her. To call the paramedics when a Herbert died
before my eyes. To help her—that was my job and it should've been everyone
else's.


And that is what broke my dichotomous heart.


"What's your name?"


She hesitated and murmured, "Shelly."


It wasn't. She'd given me an alias and I told her, "My first name was Kate.
And then it was Miranda. And then it was Natallia. And then, after that, it was
Geneve. It took awhile, but it's back to my birth name—Maya. I'm okay with Maya
now."


She giggled, nervously, but she still giggled.


"Don't believe any man who's friendly. If they seem just really nice and it's
too perfect to be real—then it is. They're monsters and they prey on girls like
you. Don't go with them, don't talk to them, and don't give them an inch. If you
want money, they'll offer you hundreds. If you want food, they'll take you to
the nearest five star. If you just want some kindness, they'll be the softest
shoulder you've ever met. Don't listen to them because it's a lie and they'll
make you do things afterwards—things—things that'll tear you down."


She flinched and I knew she'd already learned that lesson.


My fingers dug into the seat's armrest, but I still pressed, "Go to a diner.
Find a manager who watches you in pity, but doesn't come near because he knows
he'll scare you. That's the guy that you want to ask for a job because he'll
give it to you. He'll want to help, but he won't know how to help unless you
tell him. People want to help, they just don't know how to help. That's our
job—"


It was our job to tell, to unlock the skeleton in our father's closet, to
unearth the dusty bottles at the bottom of the liquor pile.


It was our job, but it shouldn't be.


It was my mother's job to keep me home and she let me walk out.


She washed her hands of a twelve year old who idolized her brother enough to
say 'no.'


A mother who made it a choice: her or him.


It was my mother's job, not mine, and not even Krein's.


She hadn't been a mother, though she'd tried at times.


And now—too much time, too much knowledge of the rightness, and too much
freedom has passed between us.


"You said that you used to do cons?" Shelly asked on a slight squeak. She was
interested.


I nodded, "Yeah, because I thought anyone who fell for them was a chump. I
think—don't do cons. They're just not good and they'll get you in more
trouble."


A few too many police chases through the mall and around the
neighborhood.


It was my backyard, not theirs.


They'd never caught me and I'd known when to lay low and wait out their
stake-outs.


I'd been a bit too smart to be a child who's trouble set them right. My
trouble never set me right, not until it landed me in waters I either sunk or
swam. Swimming through them—cost a bit too much of my soul.


I laughed to myself and remarked as I dipped my head and looked at my hands,
"My brother's in prison…"


"…mine too." Shelly mumbled. "He's…my mom kicked me out because of him."


"Not me." I signed up for my education, but I hadn't been allowed back
home.


"She said that I'd turn out just like him. He did drugs and he hurt some
people. Mom said I wouldn't wake her up at midnight or have my 'dealers' banging
on her door. She was 'done with that foolishness.'"


There was more to her story and I bet I could guess…"Let me guess…her
boyfriend really liked you?"


The curtain fell back down and she shifted away from me.


I was right and her brother hadn't been the real reason for her mother's
rejection.


Cherry wore the same cloak.


She'd cried every first night after her boyfriends left her. And she'd filled
the void with a new guy the same night.


It's how she met Krein.


"I'm sorry." I murmured.


Shelly was gone even though her body still sat next to me.


And I figuring—she'd been gone from home less than two months.


Two months and she already had aged ten years with bloodied knuckles and the
lesson learned of kind strangers.


With stories like Shelly, knowing there were another dozen girls in the same
block, it made the world a bleak portrait.


Shelly was gone. I knew her story and a stranger's intimacy was too
threatening. She still sat, probably fearful to leave, but I knew she was
gone.


I didn't pat her arm or place a comforting hand to her shoulder. She was too
tense. She would've bolted and it would've been a violated of a child who'd been
violated too many times.


When I stood up, I looked once more and we shared a glance. She didn't know
it, but I'd hoped she stared at the future while I stared at the past, and
yet—she was still alive inside of me.


I'd stood in a similar bus station, with a similar offered hand for
charity.


As I turned and moved towards the street, with it's busy highway, I
remembered how dismal the world had seemed when I was at that age and in that
spot.


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


Paynes, West Virginia was hugged by looming towers of white birch and yellow
leaves. Rich burgundy leaves interspersed and sprinkled atop the canopy of
forest that reigned supreme from the mountain's cliffs and dips.


Paynes took up one side of a cliff while the mainstreet ran the valley's
line, next to the river. A dam separated the pooling water from the sudden
incline to another valley south. Flooding could've been a problem, but the dam
was built high enough to withstand two feet of rain—if blessed upon.


The city wasn't too large, not large enough for a metropolis, but not small
enough for a mere town.


Paynes was a city with a library, a few too many liquor stores, and a couple
of gyms with high schools that used the local community center for their
sporting activities.


As I researched the local landmarks and cemeteries, I found where Good
Shepherd's Grace sat amongst a hill, just on the embankment. The town's local
festival of the Paynes Racing Turtles colored the sky above the tombstones as it
danced and spewed as it encircled the cemetery of six hundred.


It was on my second visit to the cemetery, to note where each tombstone sat
and any new plots, when a voice spoke from behind him, "You looking like you're
needing a shopping spree."


I turned and the voice belonged to a still-muscular, shovel in hand,
black-skinned man with peppered beard and hair. He looked around fifty, but the
years of labor were pronounced from the rough calluses on his hands as they
gripped the edge of his grave-digging shovel. One strap of his bib-overalls hung
off his shoulder while his other gave a wide berth of skin that shone sweat and
muscle.


He looked comfortable with one hand propped on it's end and a heel resting on
the shovel's bucket. He had cocked his head to the side and those chocolate
brown eyes looked relaxed and amused as he regarded me.


"Why do you say that?"


"Because you're visiting these people with dollar bills in the eyes. That's
why." He grinned and lifted the shovel in his hand. He shifted to the balls of
his heels and flung the shovel's end into the mound of dirt he'd been unearthing
before I stepped onto the property.


I wasn't sure what to say so I said instead, "Have you worked long?"


He laughed, but kept shoveling dirt, "Since the womb, my momma says.
You?"


"Since I was twelve." I replied without thinking, but cleared my background
music. "Here. I meant have you been working here long?"


"About a dozen years or so. Give take a couple more." He wiped a hand over
his forehead and his sleeve was quickly darkened from grease and sweat. "How
about's you ask a question like that?"


"I'm looking for a new arrival."


"Might check the obits if you're looking for a particular funeral."


"No. He would've been shipped in from another cemetery."


He frowned, but commented casually, "Not many families choose that right.
It's tradition to be buried and stay put. No point in moving around, peoples are
dead."


"A family would want someone moved if they couldn't visit the grave
anymore."


"Never heard of that happening."


I chuckled, but said, "It's happened. Trust me."


"Well, then…would make more sense to have the dead moved where a person could
visit them, now, wouldn't it?"


I grinned lightly and stepped closer, one step, "It would."


"So maybe I'm remembering a certain gravesite they needed digged out, but no
processional went through the town."


"So saying you did…"


"Saying I maybe remember a thing like that, cause it's unusual, you hear
say." He chuckled to himself, wiped his forehead clean of sweat again, and
stopped with his heel upon the shovel's bucket once more. He regarded me with
steel-tipped eyes and didn't say another word.


"You remember where that grave would be?"


"I'd remember it more if you gave your name. I don't kind to sharing oddities
with a complete stranger. Tell me a bit about yourself."


"I'm a Gemini." I threw back with a light grin.


It earned me a chuckle, but he held firm. "No. I need your name in case
someone comes asking me about you. I'd need something to handfeed for my safe
hide."


"Maya." I said and asked again, "So'd, your memory remember where that grave
would be?"


"Maybe I need a bit more than a name."


"How about your name?"


He smiled a blinding smile against his black skin and replied, "How about you
call me Oscar."


"How about I know your real name so that I know who's safe hide sent 'them'
after me."


He nodded and declined, "How about we keep playing this name game and I
forget where that grave is."


"How about you tell me what you want to hear." I said smoothly.


"How about a smoother-talker, like yourself, figure out that I've been around
the block a few times. I know your game."


"Oscar." I smiled sweetly, "I don't got no game for you to know my game."


He chuckled again and the sun sparked off his bald head as he shook it in
admiration. "You talk a sweet talk, but you got nothing I want and I got
something you want. How about you come back when you got something of my
desire?"


"Is that you want? You want me to be asking about you? Maybe I can see who
you're in the wrong with? Maybe I'd use that to my advantage." And despite my
best efforts, I fought a grin from curling at the tips of my mouth. 'Oscar' was
proving a delight to converse with. Too bad he was on the opposite line of the
sand's edge.


"Is that how you work? You're a snake?"


I wasn't no snake.


And Oscar saw the glint of disgust before I masked it. He'd done more than
dig graves in his lifetime.


He said nothing, which also showed me that he had some integrity. He knew I
hadn't liked being called a snake, and yet—he hadn't pounced on that reaction to
off-balance me.


"How about you tell me where that grave is and I'll owe you." I offered.


His eyebrows arched high as he whistled and picked his shovel back up, "Marks
me mighty surprised a mere stranger won't give a few little lies to cover her
behind."


"You'd know they were lies."


"I never said I cared. I asked for enough to cover my behind."


"You never struck me as someone who'd accept less than the truth."


I never stopped to consider how I'd known it, but I had. Something about the
guy, about a wisdom that gleamed from years around the track glowed off his skin
and struck me in the gut.


I trusted my gut, even though I rarely knew where the hunches formed and why
they lingered.


He rubbed his jaw, slowly, and one finger rasped over his forgotten stubble
from that morning. The whiskers were rough and the sound echoed like an animal's
fur that rubbed against a nearest tree's bark.


"I got you, girl." He nodded and I had passed his test. "I got you,
girl."


I didn't know what he 'got', but he still studied me when he gestured to a
back patch of trees.


"Your grave's back yonder."


I turned and looked.


It looked like a hidden conclave that was just trees. Thick trees of pine,
spruce, needle, and even a weepy or two.


"You sure."


It wasn't a question, just an automatic response.


"I'm sure." Oscar came to stand next to me and we both looked at the trees,
as if they would suddenly stand up, lift their skirts around the roots, and move
off for better ground. "I dug that grave myself and was might surprised to find
it already covered the next day. The coffin arrived late and my order came in
all sudden-like. My boss said the orders were hush-hush and if anyone come
a-asking, I wasn't to know anything. I got you, girl. You ain't no snake."


I damn sure wasn't.


Oscar continued, calmly, as a lazy breeze unwound around us, "The family
chose that spot for a reason, I figured."


"Do you know if anyone visits?"


"Sure do."


I held my breath.


"But I ain't ever seen 'em. Figure they come late at night because I used to
see footprints every now and then. Real soft-trodder, though, because the
footprints were always half-formed. Like they was a ghost or something. If I
never found those footprints, I'd say that grave was never visited. No flowers
ever been brought to that home of the dead, whoever lay buried in there."


"If it's who I think it is…his name was Brian Lanser."


"Is." Oscar corrected me.


I looked at him.


"He still got a name just because he don't walk among us, don't mean he ain't
here. He still got a name. He still a person to whoever went to all that trouble
to move his coffin where they can visit, if what you say is true."


He had whiskey eyes. I noticed them with the neon lights in the sky behind.
And if he smoked, amongst the dead silence that often floated above a grave's
surface, and the calm eye of the storm as the town's festival raged around every
corner, I knew Oscar would've smoked right then and there. He had a southern
tongue and a hot summery calm about him that would've been complete with a smoke
in one hand and a jazz song in the next.


"If that was my brother, my son, I'd still consider them my brother or son.
And they'd still have a name."


The thick patch of trees seemed to beckon as fireworks sprung to the sky
behind them. If ghosts were alive and if I believed in fantasy, I could've
considered those trees as alive. It was as if they knew their secret had been
shared and they loomed larger than life to scare the invader away because they
knew, their seclusion was no longer a kept secret. It looked as if their leaves,
branches, and roots all expanded to cover what they deemed worth protecting.


Oscar must've caught my stare. First at him, then to the trees, because he
said, "There's an old saying about those trees, you know. A witch, who knew
Hoodoo, did a spell so those trees kept the souls of the dead. It's why they
always grow at each cemetery. The cemetery's don't grow them, but those trees
always spring to life by them." He patted the earth with the bottom of his
shovel. "I never believe in those stories, but sometimes I feel eyes on my back
and I don't think it's from the dead."


I'd never had a thought for the Hoodoo or supernatural.


An uneasiness lingered, but I asked instead, "You never seen anyone visited
then?"


Oscar grinned faintly and as a firework exploded red, his eyes were caught
alive in their reflection.


If I had believed in the supernatural, I would've suspected Oscar to be more
than a mere gravedigger. In that moment, I would've considered demonic
powers.


"No, child. I come and dig when I'm told. Sometimes in the morning,
afternoon, and sometimes at night, but I never seen anyone who entered that
patch of trees."


He glanced at his wristwatch and whistled again, "And speaking of…I'm off the
clock in a few." He flicked the shovel in the air and caught the middle as he
turned and started walking away, "If you see Brian's family, you make sure to
give my condolescences. It sure is a hard thing, losing a family."


"I will." I said faintly and more to myself.


"And if you ever need anything, girl, you can find me at Borbon's Bar. I like
to enjoy a whiskey before I head home to Abagail. She sure'd enjoy a visitor for
dinner some night."


He had vanished within the moonlight, the night's blackness, and bursts of
fireworks from the festival before I could respond with a yay or nay. I didn't
think Oscar would've wanted a quick reply to an open invitation.


No one ever does.


Call me a coward or call me wise, but as I looked at the trees once again, no
matter how many souls surrounded our secluded eye of the storm, I decided to
return during the daylight hours.


When the supernatural weren't known to walk among us freely or when the
darkness didn't shred any remaining rationality.