Phantoms by Christian Kiefer

Author:Christian Kiefer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

8

CHIGGERS LEFT FOR OREGON IN THE MORNING, PROMISING me that he would stop by again on Wednesday or Thursday of the following week, when his return to San Diego would bring him back down the interstate. Had it turned out that way, some of this story might have been different, but of course the stories we tell about our lives, the true stories, can only describe what actually occurred. We can act as if we might have chosen some alternate path, all the while knowing that, had any of us the ability to roll back time, we would, given the same information, make the same cowardly decisions all over again. And all the people I had a hand in killing would still be dead. And I would still be alive.

“You take care, man,” Chiggers said to me as I stood next to his Fairlane, the vehicle so covered in road grime that it was impossible to discern what color might lie beneath, the windshield fogged with grease and dirt and smeared insects.

“You too,” I told him.

We shook hands briefly and then went into a one-armed embrace, our hands still clasped, Chiggers clapping me on the back once, then twice, and then holding me there, not quite embracing now but close enough that his mouth was at my ear. “You still think about it sometimes, right?” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “Sure I do.”

“I still hear them sometimes.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Comin’ out of the dark. And I can’t tell if they’re gooks or our guys. You know? I sometimes wake up screaming like I’m still there. Scares the shit out of my mom.”

“I know,” I said.

“I still feel like they’re trying to kill me,” he said.

“Me too.”

He seemed to relax at that admission, and after a moment he released me from his embrace, his body sagging toward the car, be it in relief or exhaustion I did not know.

There was a different texture to talking about such things in the bright warm light of the morning, different than it had been even brushing up against those subjects in the darkness of my grandmother’s back porch as the night rode on and on and our pot-stoked mellow flooded toward simple fatigue and finally to sleep. In a way, I was relieved that Chiggers was leaving, for I had sensed he wanted, more than anything, to talk about what had happened over there. But I was afraid that talking about it would bring the sluggish constant flow of the Nine Dragon River into a torrent, one which we would not be able to control or navigate and which would pull us both under its powerful current. How I wish now that I had held him there, had asked him to tell me more about how he felt, about how he was, but I did not. Sometimes I imagine myself telling him that he should picture me beside him when those black ghosts faded out of the shadows of that dream

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