Jeff Jackson - Mira Corpora

I shimmy up a tree to escape the smell. This is my first funeral. As I watch, part of me wants to obliterate the experience from my memory but part finds it exhilarating. I can’t take my eyes off the blaze. It’s several minutes before I realize what’s missing: None of us are grieving. Daniel grimly stokes the fire, determined to finish the job. Nycette chants a round of basic incantatory stuff, trying to splice into some primeval spiritual current. Isaac curses us all and flees into the woods.

The body ignites. It ruptures into a mass of flames, followed by a sickening pop. “There she goes,” Nycette shouts. The corpse is completely alight, an incandescent effigy, starting to flake off into swirling sheets of gray. The putrid smell continues, lifted by the flames and carried in the smoke toward the firmament. Ash rains down like confetti on Nycette and Daniel. They are coated from head to toe in flecks of burnt skin, but they hardly seem to notice, staring up at the sky, tracing the soul’s journey home, marveling that something up there might be looking back at them. Their upturned faces are beatific and shining.

While Nycette and Daniel are fixed in their private rapture, I leap down from the tree and slip into the woods. I need to be alone. I spend the night curled under a canopy of ferns in a clearing upstream. No matter how many times I tell myself to stop thinking about the girl’s face submerged in the cool blue current, the horrid pop of her body won’t stop echoing in my ears.

In the following days, the other kids in camp avoid Daniel and Nycette. Both their bodies give off a rank and fleshy odor. Even the canines aren’t sure how to deal with the smell; their carrion instincts are scrambled and they can’t decide whether to make a move. Nycette and Daniel are too pleased with themselves to care. They’re often seen together on nightly strolls talking cosmology in the meadow. A pack of dogs always trails a few paces behind, their noses vibrating.

After the cremation, I start thinking it might be time to leave Liberia. The idea appears one morning, like the sticky residue of a forgotten dream. I pull on my damp socks. Swallow a few teeth-pulls of beef jerky. Roll up my hammock with the plastic sheet inside as carefully as if it were a pastry, spend the morning wandering through the muddy ravines of camp, not meeting anyone’s gaze, hands sunk in the pockets of my rotting jeans, feet scuffing the spongy ground, feeling like I’m already half gone. Even my footprints seem lighter.

That afternoon I pack my bag. I know where I’m headed. I scale the chain-link fence and scout the perimeter. Nobody is around. I creep through the empty grounds, careful to avoid the cement janitor’s shed. I run a moss-covered branch along the bars of the cages, soothed by the metallic reverberations. I wonder what the animals remembered of their time here. On a lark, I squeeze inside one of the cages. Sniff the dirt to determine what creature lived here, but there is no tang of musk or finely scented urine. I make myself at home. Pace back and forth. Hop up and down. Swing arms from side to side. Make chattering and hooting noises. But the play-acting seems half-hearted, even to myself.

While I hang upside down from the bars, someone strides past the cage. He doesn’t seem to notice me. I follow at a discreet pace as he heads toward the overgrown arcade where the carnival rides once thrived. Only a few dilapidated husks now remain, their paint faded to a sickly pallor, peeling and infested with scabs of rust. They’re like misshapen boulders deposited by some receding glacier. The boy marches into the ring of dirt where the carousel once sat. He kneels at the center of the circular pit and starts to dig.

Crouched in some scrubby bushes, I can’t see his face. The boy methodically scoops out a small hole with his hands. He slides a bag off his shoulder and removes a yearbook snapshot of a teenage girl flashing a stiff half-smile. He places it in the hole and smothers it with dirt. The boy pulls out a series of small china plates, none larger than a sand dollar. He arranges them in a precise circumference around the hole. The remaining contents of the bag are scavenged scraps of food — half-eaten apple, moldy dinner roll, frayed threads of beef jerky — which he lays on the plates as if setting out a meal.

Entranced by this private ritual, I forget myself and rustle the bushes. The boy wheels around. It’s Isaac. A contorted expression of anger and desperation ripples across his face. For a second, he looks like a colicky baby before it screams. But then his features snap back into blankness. He motions to join him in the carousel pit. I feel weird about interrupting, but he’s insistent.

“My girlfriend killed herself three years ago today,” Isaac says. “She overdosed by swallowing a bottle of pills. Not many people know that.” I give an empathetic nod, as if I can possibly understand. We sit together with our legs crossed Indian-style. My eyes are trained on the white plates, two of which are still missing food. Isaac doesn’t offer any explanations. His fingers knead the lip of a plate, as if trying to conjure sound from the ceramic grooves.

There’s something about this strange and touching offering that makes me realize what I need to do. I start to offer Isaac my condolences about his girlfriend, but instead I blurt out: “I’m leaving Liberia tonight. I’m going to the dead village. To the oracles.”

I expect him to try and talk me out of it, but instead he offers a weary smile. He sets about completing his ritual, taking the last gnarled strands of beef jerky and positioning them on the empty plates. As he surveys the circle of food, his expression oscillates between anxiety and melancholy. I dig inside my knapsack for the filthy plastic bag filled with crushed blackberries. My favorite meal. “I’d like to add something,” I say.

“You’ll need those for your trip.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I want to.” I’m not sure why but I know it’s important to make a contribution. With an appropriate sense of ceremony, I kneel next to the china plate that holds only a half-gnawed crab apple and slowly shake the berries from the bag. They form a soggy black pyramid and spill over the plate, which is soon encircled in a pool of purple juice. “For your girlfriend,” I say.

Before Isaac can respond, we hear crackling sounds and hushed twitters from the bushes and trees. The leaves shudder. Fleetingly familiar shapes dart through the foliage. Isaac stares into the underbrush, gradually working his gaze round the perimeter. “They’re here,” he says. “We’d better go now.”

Without seeing them, I can feel their presence. The small faces, hairy paws, arched tails. “They’re real,” I say.

“Quiet,” Isaac says. “Back away slowly. Don’t spook them.” We take a series of deliberate and measured steps toward the entrance of the midway, as if this too is part of the ritual. The whistling whoops and belly growls begin to escalate. A shiver ripples through my body. I imagine a mass of furry backs hunched in the shadows, anxious for us to leave so they can swarm the plates and devour their offering. We keep walking with our gazes trained on the ground, but I can tell we’re encircled by countless pairs of tremulous golden eyes.

The dead village is silent. A hushed crowd waits inside a decaying house to see the oracles. We huddle along the wooden staircase and stare up at the water-stained ceiling. Black mold spreads in fern leaf patterns across the plaster walls. A fractured kitchen sink rests at the end of the hallway. A partially disassembled motorboat engine lies in the bathtub. The pilgrims are a combination of vagrant tourists and weary travelers. Most of these patient souls have been waiting for hours. I’ve been here longer than any of them.