Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

“Ruth!” he called again, his voice as commanding as it had ever been onstage, when he was shouting to his legions.

She began to fade away as she was hauled off down the alley. Now her dress was gray-and-white checks. Now her hair was the color of moonsilver. The other sandal fell off, splashed in a puddle, and disappeared, although ripples continued to move across the shallow muddy water—as if it had fallen, impossibly, right out of the past and into the present. Ruth’s mouth was open, but she couldn’t scream, and Jude didn’t know why. Maybe the unseen thing that was tugging her away had a hand over her mouth. She passed under the bright blue glare of the street lamp and was gone. The breeze caught a newspaper, and it flapped down the empty alley with a dry, rattling sound.

Angus whined again and gave him another lick. Jude stared. A bad taste in his mouth. A feeling of pressure in his eardrums.

“Jude,” Georgia whispered from behind him.

He looked at her reflection in the window over the sink. Black squiggles danced in front of her eyes. They were over his eyes, too. They were both dead. They just hadn’t stopped moving yet.

“What happened, Jude?”

“I couldn’t save her,” he said. “The girl. Ruth. I saw her taken away.” He could not tell Georgia that somehow his hope that they could save themselves had been taken with her. “I called her name. I called her name, but I couldn’t change what happened.”

“Course you couldn’t, dear,” said Bammy.

33

Jude pivoted toward Georgia and Bammy.Georgia stood across the kitchen from him, in the doorway. Her eyes were just her eyes, no death marks over them. Bammy touched her granddaughter on the hip to nudge her aside, then eased into the kitchen around her and approached Jude.

“You know Ruth’s story? Did M.B. tell you?”

“She told me your sister got taken when you were little. She said sometimes people see her out in the yard, getting grabbed all over again. It isn’t the same as seeing it yourself. I heard her sing. I saw her taken away.”

Bammy put her hand on his wrist. “Do you want to set?”

He shook his head.

“You know why she keeps coming back? Why people see her? The worst moments of Ruth’s life happened out in that yard, while we all sat in here eating our lunch. She was alone and scared, and no one saw when she was taken away. No one heard when she stopped singing. It must’ve been the most awful thing. I’ve always thought that when something really bad happens to a person, other people just have to know about it. You can’t be a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear you crash. Can I at least get you something else to drink?”

He nodded. She got the pitcher of lemonade, almost drained now, and sloshed the last of it into his glass.

While she poured, Bammy said, “I always thought if someone could speak to her, it might take a weight off her. I always thought if someone could make her feel not so alone in those last minutes, it might set her free.” Bammy tipped her head to the side—a curious, interrogatory gesture Jude had seen Georgia perform a million times. “You might’ve done her some good and not even know it. Just by saying her name.”

“What did I do? She still got taken.” Downing the glass in a swallow and then setting it in the sink.

“I never thought for a moment anyone could change what happened to her. That’s done. The past is gone. Stay the night, Jude.”

Her last statement was so completely unrelated to the one that had preceded it, Jude needed a moment to understand she had just made a request of him.

“Can’t,” Jude said.

“Why?”

Because anyone who offered them aid would be infected with the death on them, and who knew how much they had risked Bammy’s life just by stopping a few hours? Because he and Georgia were dead already, and the dead drag the living down. “Because it isn’t safe,” he said at last. That was honest, at least.

Bammy’s brow knotted, screwing up in thought. He saw her struggling for the right words to crack him open, to force him to talk about the situation they were in.

While she was still thinking, Georgia crept into the room, almost tiptoeing, as if afraid to make any sound. Bon was at her heels, gazing up with a look of idiot anxiety.

Georgia said, “Not every ghost is like your sister, Bammy. There’s some that are real bad. We’re having all kinds of trouble with dead people. Don’t ask either one of us to explain. It would just sound crazy.”

“Try me anyway. Let me help.”

“Mrs. Fordham,” Jude said, “you were good to have us. Thank you for dinner.”

Georgia reached Bammy’s side and tugged on her shirtsleeve, and when her grandmother turned toward her, Georgia put her pale and skinny arms around her and clasped her tight. “You are a good woman, and I love you.”

Bammy still had her head turned to look at Jude. “If I can do something…”

“But you can’t,” Jude said. “It’s like with your sister there in the backyard. You can shout all you want, but it won’t change how things play out.”

“I don’t believe that. My sister is dead. No one paid any attention when she quit singing, and someone took her away and killed her. But you are not dead. You and my granddaughter are alive and here with me in my house. Don’t give up on yourself. The dead win when you quit singing and let them take you on down the road with them.”

Something about this last gave Jude a nervous jolt, as if he’d touched metal and caught a sudden stinging zap of static electricity. Something about giving up on yourself. Something about singing. There was an idea there, but not one he could make sense of yet. The knowledge that he and Georgia had about played out their string—the feeling that they were both as dead as the girl he’d just seen in the backyard—was an obstacle no other thought could get around.

Georgia kissed Bammy’s face, once, and again: kissing tears. And at last Bammy turned to look at her. She put her hands on her granddaughter’s cheeks.

“Stay,” Bammy said. “Make him stay. And if he won’t, then let him go on without you.”

“I can’t do that,” Georgia said. “And he’s right. We can’t bring you into this any more than we already have. One man who was a friend to us is dead because he didn’t get clear of us fast enough.”

Bammy pressed her forehead to Georgia’s breast. Her breath hitched and caught. Her hands rose and went into Georgia’s hair, and for a moment both women swayed together, as if they were dancing very slowly.

When her composure returned—it wasn’t long—Bammy looked up into Georgia’s face again. Bammy was red and damp-cheeked, and her chin was trembling, but she seemed to be done with her crying.

“I will pray, Marybeth. I will pray for you.”

“Thank you,” Georgia said.

“I am countin’ on you coming back. I am countin’ on seeing you again, when you’ve figured out how to make things right. And I know you will. Because you’re clever and you’re good and you’re my girl.” Bammy inhaled sharply, gave Jude a watery, sidelong look. “I hope he’s worth it.”

Georgia laughed, a soft, convulsive sound almost like a sob, and squeezed Bammy once more.

“Go, then,” Bammy said. “Go if you got to.”

“We’re already gone,” Georgia said.

34

He drove.His palms were hot and slick on the wheel, his stomach churning. He wanted to slam his fist into something. He wanted to drive too fast, and he did, shooting yellow lights just as they turned red. And when he didn’t make a light in time and had to sit in traffic, he pumped the pedal, revving the engine impatiently. What he had felt in the house, watching the little dead girl get dragged away, that sensation of helplessness, had thickened and curdled into rage and a sour-milk taste in his mouth.