Free Ghosting by Kirby Gann Page A

Cole remains in the cool cotton safety of the bed, eyes and ears open in a room still cloudy from his cloudy dreams. Over long minutes he watches the outlines of his few pieces of furniture begin to form in the steepening light—a dresser with one drawer missing, a footlocker stood on end—bringing with their growing shadows a strange dread. Sleep: so far and hard to come from, a good place.
    He listens to the house. Lyda’s one to always have her ear to the rails; she knows what train is coming in and whether it’s on time.
    He listens to the house, his ear exploring the short hallway past Lyda’s room and into the kitchen (the refrigerator humming), through the kitchen and into the living room. There the TV sits silent. He backtracks to her bedroom and listens for any sound in the sheets, a rustle, snore, or sigh, or even the murmured complaint he often catches through the wall separating their heads, Lyda ready to set straight some imagined or remembered companion even in her dreams. Nothing there.
    On his feet then for a sweatshirt from the drawer, he peeks out the window. She still drives the old Country Sedan, proudly displaying its
historic plates even as rust claims the fenders, duct-taped cardboard replaces one rear window, and the suspension angles high on one side. She doesn’t have money for a newer car and insists she doesn’t need one, the Country starts every time she turns the key and she hardly drives anywhere anyways. The Country sits parked behind his truck in the driveway. He sock-foots through the house and does not see her as he rinses his mouth in the bathroom sink—not bothering to brush his teeth, he’ll be gulping gas-mart coffee and cake in a few minutes—and runs icy tap water over his hands and through his short hair and into his eyes.
    On the concrete porch with boots in hand Cole’s spacey fatigue carries him through morning ritual. It’s Saturday, he has horses to feed and turn out at the Spackler farm, and then he’ll work a handful of hours in the city with Uncle Ron-Ron’s crew. He sets to lacing the leather boots, malleable cowhide and once his father’s, boots Fleece wore briefly before bequeathing them to Cole once box-toes came into fashion and his brother splurged on a beautiful black pair from Johnston & Murphy. Cole resoled his father’s boots with tire-tread rubber and by now the leather has conformed to his feet, sinking outward for the bulge of his ankle bones and following the outward spread to his calves, not quite erasing the material’s memory of his father’s form, undecided between the two. There are moments when he believes he cannot love anything as much as these boots—moments such as this one, alone, on the front porch of his mother’s house, starting another day.
    It is winter-morning cold but not so cold he needs to complain about it.
    He feels her standing behind him; she must have slunk into his wake when he wasn’t paying attention. He feels her staring into the back of his head, into his shoulders tight beneath the hooded gray sweatshirt still smelling of the dryer sheet, a scent he likes.
    He double-knots the laces of his left boot and asks what’s on her mind.
    “You know my burden, pup,” she says, her voice worn. She clears her throat. “Your big brother. You and your big brother.” Her tone implies exasperation and lassitude, as though she could have launched into a list of numerous instances in which Fleece and Cole
have disappointed her, perhaps even hurt her deeply, but there are so many known between the three of them already she saw no point in listing them yet again.
    “What about us?”
    “You only come back for yourself? I mean who’s looking out for who here?” The wire mesh of the screen door sings a faint song against her scratching nails. “I raised you boys better than to have to wonder. Blood is blood. You got to have each other’s back.”
    “I never had to have Fleece’s back. He didn’t need me to. I was just a