Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

He knew she wasn’t being mean, and soldiered on.

“I want to marry you. Will you be my wife?”

He handed her the little box. She opened it and went wild, squealing and shouting, “It sparkles, it sparkles! It’s so beautiful .” He was delighted with her response but she wouldn’t take it out. When he told her to try on the ring, she kept saying, “Put it on? Put it on?”—as if it were the silliest, craziest idea in the world.

“I can’t put that on !”

His heart sunk. “Why not?”

She burst into tears.

“Baby, Dixie, what’s wrong? What is it?”

He prayed it was nothing more than an endearing hysteria—her engines flooded by the prospect of being Mrs. Dixie Rose Wylde.

“I have to go home now. I have a headache .”

She kissed him on the cheek and was gone.

He sat there with the ring staring at him from the coffee table like a Jack-in-the-box, trying not to feel like a fool. He quickly did the ameliorative math: She didn’t actually say no, she just said she couldn’t put the ring on. (It’ll be a funny story we tell our kids.) And: If she does say no, that’s fine—she’ll probably say yes later . And: If she says no and it never ever happens, that’ll be fine too. Plenty of fish in the sea. And: It just wasn’t meant to be. And: Maybe she’s seeing someone else. Maybe she even has a husband. Maybe she has two husbands. And: I’ll move away. Go wherever. Fly out to Hollywood and get a glamour job consulting on CSI. Fuck a few starlets. Hell, fuck Amy Adams, Jessica Chastain and Angelina, now that she’s available. And: Get a place somewhere in Holland or Panama City or Bali or friggin’ New Zealand where I can live on the cheap. Some place with six-dollar massages. Someplace whores and hash are legal.

His eyes landed on her purse and the old habit seized him. He picked it up and set it on his knees. No reason to be furtive anymore—not when your bride runs from the altar.

That’s when he saw the Guide and blacked out.

Lacey Beth was written on its cover.

1.

He left her alone that night.

Thankfully, she didn’t call.

It explained everything: her childlike reaction upon seeing the engagement ring—her recent childishness, in general—and the abrupt, adult-informed distress that forced her to flee. Dixie’s identity was in the state of panicked free fall commonplace to all landlords. He’d witnessed it firsthand at the Meeting. And of course something else had become clear:

Dixie Rose Cavanaugh was his Eskimo.

Lacey Beth…

He pushed the savage, irrational thought from his head that being a Porter had somehow paved the way for the fate that had befallen her; that Willow’s role was to blame for “calling” her death. As he went to sleep he willed the train to come, praying he might find answers there. It had been awhile since he’d summoned it and he wasn’t sure it would appear. Yet in what seemed like a blink, the Subalterns, resplendent and monkish in their foggy cloaks, were helping him board.

The locomotive departed…

It was cold on the train, a cold he’d never before apprehended. As if in ordination, a creature made of shadows placed a beautiful brocaded cape upon his shoulders. Annie told him that one day, “if you are very, very lucky,” he would feel its heavy weight. But the detective didn’t feel very lucky; no, he didn’t feel lucky at all. He felt as bereft and lost as the blue children who sought his feeble ministry.

He made his way down the corridor as the Subalterns lit candles in the sconces mounted on dark wood. He could see them through the glass as he passed—so many children were waiting in their cabins! He wondered if it was a backlog from the weeks he had made himself unavailable.

He went into five of the candle-flickered rooms, one after the other. Each child nervously called out his or her name: “I’m Scooby”—“I’m Abigail”—“I’m Marie-Claude”—“I’m Jimbo”—“I’m Britney”—but there was no Lacey Beth. And what difference would it have made if Willow had found her? What was he thinking? That he could convince the little girl not to become Dixie’s tenant? And where would that leave the woman he had hoped to marry? Because he knew too well what the qualifications of a landlord were: they must be dead . Without a tenant to prolong her stay, Dixie would be forever lost to him… In a nearly hallucinatory desperation, he thought he might find her, see her there, not Lacey Beth but Dixie the woman — his woman—but he knew that was impossible—and knew as well that “Lacey Beth” would not be present because the children on the train, this train, were only meant for him. He was their Porter… Still, he kept up his senseless search, yearning to connect with the chimera whom the Great Mystery had assigned to inhabit his fiancée—the child that like a carnivorous flower would slowly then quickly enfold and devour the love of his life, the lady who he now believed loved him back in equal measure. Knowing it was impossible, because Lacey Beth had already disembarked and was living inside his love! He searched and searched, down the hallways and into the cabins that were empty, madly driven to stare into the well of the nascent child-tenant’s eyes—the eyes that already shared sight with his bride-to-be!—even with the knowledge that she would inexorably co-opt Dixie Rose into a seizure of divine violence—Lacey Beth’s moment of balance —the harbinger of his beloved’s permanent leave-taking.

He personally handed the address of the Cross of Glory Lutheran Church to all those he comforted but ordered the Subalterns to deliver their drinks and treats instead.

On awakening, he gathered his paintbrushes and began a new mural.

When she came for her purse in the morning, Dixie apologized for having run away. She started to explain herself and he saw that she was struggling—with so many things.

“I know what happened to you, Dixie.”

“You do?” she said.

It was obvious she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

“Have you been to a Meeting yet?” he said gently. He spoke to her as he would a child. “A very special Meeting, where there are others just like you?” She stiffened and grew circumspect. “It’s okay—it’s okay, Lacey Beth.” Her eyes widened at the name. “I know you’ve been told not to tell anyone about the Meetings, not anyone ‘outside.’ But it’s all right to tell me , I promise. Because I know . I know all about it and I’m not from the outside. Have you been to a Meeting? Have you, Dixie?”

She looked at the floor as if caught being naughty.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me how many times?” he said, trying to gauge how far along she was.

“Just once.”

“Once. That’s good.” She’s not that far along then.

“Willow… what’s happening?” Her mood shifted and he was glad that she was confiding. “What happened to me?”

“Something you had nothing to do with.”

“I can feel myself… but I can feel her too—Lacey Beth. She’s only eight years old. Someone did something so terrible to her, Willow, it’s so terrible what they did! This world is so awful …”

“It can be,” he said.

“The thing that happened to me… to Dixie —did it happen to you too?”

“No. Other things happened to me but not the same. Not the same as you, Dixie.”

“Can we still get married?” she asked timidly.