A Moment Ago :
Erica Goodkind
I.
“AMERICA LACKS INTELLIGENT GHOSTS,” the stream of words unraveled from Jack’s lips like some kind of pre-programmed memory, like the Pledge of Allegiance or his social security number. “But this is logical friends, in that America simply lacks the history to grant such intelligence.” He could see the audience stir and shift about uncomfortably in their padded velvet theater seats.
He peered fiercely over the tops of his eyeglasses at the congregation of attentive listeners. The men in the audience flashed flawless streamlined suits, a few tuxedos even. He could see the shoes of those sitting in the aisle seats - all freshly polished fine leather. Their fancy neckties hung as if to display the mark of their manhood.
Jack eyed the women, too, through the muggy late-summer air. Their faces were painted with every imaginable color of lipstick, eye shadow, and all sorts of those things whose names Jack had never bothered to learn. Each woman’s hair was done up some intricate and uniquely unnatural style. Pearls and precious gems framed every defined neckline. Their crossed legs and perfect posture could have made a nun faint from sheer delight. Jack swallowed his criticisms, as he always did.
More than anything, on this occasion, Jack noted the audience’s wide expecting eyes – a trait that seemed to be contagious among both the men and the women. Today, he shook his head, bemused. What sort of event did they think they were attending, the Lyric Opera? What always troubled him the most was that behind all of their upbeat expressions, none of their clothes showed any signs of having been lived in at all.
That is precisely the problem, he thought.
“Fellow men, ladies, and friends,” he continued cautiously at first. He needed to gather all of their delicate minds upon a single page before closing his palm tightly around them. He scanned the hall again, making eye contact with as many people as possible. An unusual looking child came into his view, a boy. At the same time, an undesirable rush of adrenaline surged through Jack’s arms, his legs, and his chest. “My god,” he whispered away from the microphone. “Not again.” It was odd how the child seemed to be glowing, but somehow broken like the static from an old reel film projector. The boy’s eyes, clear and blue, pierced through the dim lighting of the auditorium. His face was washed over in a sort of blandness, his expression fixed and numb. But his eyes - blue, vivid, and telling - captured Jack’s attention like an approaching siren. His bushy eyebrows sloped upward with concern.
His heart became heavy. Over the tops of the toupees and French twists, his gaze could not escape this boy, whose body seemed as still and lifeless as a tombstone. But Jack was being pursued by an aura of expectation, winning over his intrigue for the flickering boy. His focus snapped back towards all the others.
Tell us exactly what is going on, the air echoed.
Jack’s hand gravitated to his chest, summoned to the region that housed his beating heart. He was humbly aware of his own mortality, the impermanence of his flesh, and so he understood what was happening. The young boy was dying, he was certain, and no one in the audience took even the slightest notice. They sat waiting, expecting like pigeons in the park soliciting breadcrumbs from bypassers, entirely detached from their own intelligence. It was difficult for him to shake off his sympathy for the child, so he placed one hand on each side of the podium to steady his weakening stance.
He cleared his throat. It seemed as if it had been so long since his last spoken word that cobwebs had been strewn around his vocal chords, like streamers at a party.
“You’re dead!!” he at last shouted into the microphone, a spray of saliva spewing from his mouth. The word “dead” reverberated through the thick afternoon air, seeming to hover for a moment near the ceiling like a cloud of smoke, and then coming to rest in the form of a collective huff from the attendees.
They could hardly believe him. It was as though they thought this point could be argued, as if this were a debate that could be won or lost merely with the exchange of passionate words. Jack was used to such a reaction, of course. It was reflexive, like putting one’s hand on one’s stomach when it ached. But no matter how many times he’d gone through this routine, the response never ceased to irritate him.
“You people are the ghosts of our country to which I refer!” he clasped his hand over his sweaty forehead. “You foolish phantoms, tell me something. What did you do this morning? Did you traipse around your former homes as if they somehow still belonged to you? Did you completely ignore the living families that have since moved in? You didn’t even notice they tore down that hideous wallpaper you loved so much, did you?” His voice escalated in volume with each new cutting accusation.
“Why do you do it, I ask? Why do you sit on your invisible beds, knitting invisible mittens for babies who - by the way - have long since grown up and had babies of their own? People. Don’t tell me you don’t wander aimlessly around your former homes. Don’t tell me you don’t spend all day and all night opening and closing doors, creaking floorboards, and rocking in chairs humming lullabies. What a shame you don’t even realize that you’re scaring the rest of us to death!”
The auditorium became devoid of sound. The shuffling and shifting subsided. There were no longer gasps of amused disbelief. In fact, not a single breath could be heard. Finally, Jack thought, they are starting to understand.
“Let’s examine what you’re doing here. You are trying to fit back into their system,” he spoke faster to expedite his delivery. “It is the system of the living, a system to which you no longer belong! My fellow citizens, you are so young and without understanding of time!” He continued sermonizing, and by now the crowd was extolling his every word with blind cheer and rampant applause.
They may be dressed for the opera, Jack mused to himself, but they act like they’re at Oprah. You’d have thought he’d just given them all brand new Pontiacs.
Ovation is obligation, not comprehension, Jack reminded himself. The dead could be so ignorant sometimes.
It seemed that his pro-bono speeches were always taken for granted. Dead people were equally as confused about their place in the cosmos as the living were, and were just as unwilling to acknowledge it. What was he doing there again, putting all of his heart and soul into the air only to have it fall upon deaf ears? He often felt like he was talking to a brick wall.
“You’re all dead!” he shouted again, the beads of sweat that had built on his forehead and neck had nearly sizzled to a boil. “You have a choice! Abandon your anchors and sail away free.” His voice lowered. The seriousness of his expression swiftly morphed into a look of desperation. “Do it my friends. Before you wind up sailing in circles for eternity.”
He was losing them. He knew from experience he had to act quickly to instill the reality of the circumstances into their freshly lifeless minds. But really, he knew that this was the never-ending plight of his business, the so-called self-help industry. He knew the truth, that a person could read a thousand sugar-coated books, could go see inspirational speakers who claim to know valuable secrets, could attend seminars that promise the world. But to seek help from an outside source meant you’d never genuinely figure out how to help yourself. Jack thought briefly about how one of those dime-a-dozen self-help gurus would handle a situation such as this. He wondered why there’d never been a book written called “Chicken Soup For the Recently Expired”. Finally, he gave up.
What does it matter anyway, he thought. After all, it wasn’t his job to try and help them live more fulfilled lives. For that he was too late.
He tightened his grip on the podium. He lifted it high above his head, his forearms trembling from the weight. He thrust the podium across the stage and straight into the crowd of suddenly horrified spectators.
They were dead, after all. They couldn’t get injured. They couldn’t get deader.
He cultivated all his courage into a ball, shut his eyes, and as if spring-loaded flung himself headlong into the crowd.
His head hit the cinder brick wall outside of Kennewick’s Bail Bonds with such a force that he immediately crumbled to the sidewalk and lost all consciousness.
II.
“I’m a nurse,” a woman who had been waiting for a bus across the street said, shooing the other bystanders back away from the decrepit man. “What a nut job,” she muttered underneath her breath.
“Oh, so you’re a nurse?” a filthy looking bum recoiled at the woman. “My name’s Gary, but I probably been called a nut job a few times before, too. So I think I might know a little more about the state of this man’s head than you do, lady.”
“The state of this man’s head,” she scowled at the bum, “is that he clearly suffers from delusions, and he needs to see a doctor as soon as possible.”
The homeless man shifted his weight to the other foot and leaned in towards her. She tried to hold her breath. The man stank of urine. “Seems to me,” he said rolling a toothpick around in his mouth “that he’s perfectly happy with his delusions. I see him every day out here. Couple a days ago, same guy gave a perfect weather report right here against this wall. See that brick? That was supposed to be Chicago. Said it was going to be sunny and pleasant. Now, if those ain’t the words of a happy man, I don’t know what the hell are.”
The woman stood blankly. “What does it matter? The guy ran straight into a brick wall,” she said and bent down to take his pulse.
“You don’t know this man,” the bum said. “He never suffered once from any delusions. This man only ever suffered from the realities that interrupted them.” He pointed his index finger down towards the ground vehemently. A moment ago he’d been comparing himself to a piece of garbage littering the street: old, worthless, with no future other than the inevitable trip to the dump (or to the grave – both seemed so similar). But now, after hearing Jack O’Grady’s final delivery the bum felt alive, even lively. It was
the first time in years. It was like a cool wind had begun to blow and play songs with the wind chimes that were his rickety old bones.
“I promise,” he said with assurance. “This guy never suffered a day from delusions.”
Deep red blood spilled from Jack’s hairline, parting in two like a forked river. Red ran down the ridge of his nose; Red flowed across his left eyebrow and temple, forming a new stream down the crack in the middle of the sidewalk. As the man and the woman argued, they could hear the “L” roar by a few blocks away. Amidst the train’s rumbling, the man thought for a moment he’d heard the sound of a microphone hissing. And the woman also thought something strange. For a moment she thought she’d heard the faint sound of people cheering, as though perhaps for a standing ovation. As though, perhaps, someone important had just taken the stage.
Erica Goodkind grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She spent four summers working on fire towers in western Idaho and eastern Oregon. She currently lives in Seattle, where she works at a sleep disorders lab, and is slowly chiseling away at the makings of her first novel.