Last Day of Love(4)

I find the receipt from the gas station where I dared to stand behind her in line, some of her hair tucked into the back of her t-shirt, some of it spilling out along her shoulder blade. My heart raced as I slid the receipt from the counter into my pocket, avoiding the cashier’s eyes.

West Lafayette Stop-N-Go. Cashier: Macy. Time: 1:34 p.m. Apple Mentos. $1.03.

I pull out a T-shirt that reads The Faith Healers. They’re a band from Eureka’s high school. I found the shirt at the Salvation Army—a wife-beater someone wrote the places and dates of local shows on with a permanent marker. I stole it so I could wear it in front of her. I never have. I see now how ridiculous my fantasies were that the shirt might spark a conversation:

Hey, I love that band.

Really? Me too!

Did the shirt shrink in the dryer or something?

No, I just like wearing wife-beaters two sizes too small.

These are the three things I own related to the girl I love. I hold them against my chest, then fling them into the fire. The receipt vanishes; the bib curls into flames. The shirt becomes ash. My love for her remains.

There’s one last thing in my bag. It’s replaceable and irreplaceable. There are millions like it but none of them like this. My worn copy of The Great Gatsby is the only book I can stand to read.

The book is how I know I love Eureka. When I read it I find words for what she does to me. And when I close it I always feel the awful ache upon reentering the world.

Albion’s baffling words return: He is not like the last one.

Who?

I burn Gatsby slowly, feeding him page by page into the fire. I recite the book’s last words as they burn:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I’m expected to initiate an endless future, free from small concerns like aging, like death. But I see only blank and disappearing pages. I see a past I don’t understand swirling wordlessly around her.

The fire dwindles. It’s cold and dark and I have failed. If I could have surrendered my love for her, the rest would have melted easily away. But she is a tree whose roots embrace the center of my being. There is no uprooting her. She holds down everything else, making it impossible not to love.

I remember the cake. I unwrap the foil and shake the candles out of the box. I plunge the candles into the cake and light them, staring until their flames lick the icing. I fill my lungs with air and blow with all my might, wishing for my family not to see instantly that my Passage was a lie.

The force of my breath startles me. It smothers the campfire, blows branches off the surrounding trees. I send a bald cypress stump tumbling down into the bayou with a swampy splash.

Giving up in darkness, I pull close the dog that won’t leave, and fall asleep.





III





It is nighttime and I am standing in a desert, surrounded by dunes a hundred feet high.

An enormous bird soars above, silhouetted against the moon. I hear soft footsteps in the sand behind me.

I turn and see her. Though she is very far away, I hear the rustling of her clothes, feel the weight of her body on the sand.

As she draws closer, her face begins to change. Lines deepen around her eyes, gray comes into her hair. She was seventeen a moment ago; now she looks seventy.

By the time she is in front of me, she is stooped and frail. I recognize her easily as my Eureka, though she is close to death. She opens her mouth to speak.

Ashes pour out in an endless stream.

I awake. Three crows sail the pink sky above my opening eyes. My body is stiff and it takes a moment to recall where I am. The campsite looks like it’s been trashed by something bigger than a boy blowing out candles. Black logs lie scattered across slick leaves.

I roll over in time to see a raccoon run away with the last remnant of my cake.

Sometimes I look at people and wonder if they’re afraid to die. My family speaks of age with pity and disdain: The elderly are weak, sick, pathetic. My aunts and uncles look away from old men with walkers and women in wheelchairs, as if no one should have to endure such shameful spectacles.

I wonder if those old people would make the bargain I was supposed to make last night: Stop feeling and you get to live forever. Would Eureka?

Shiloh stirs and sighs beside me, dreaming of chasing something. He smells more like home than anything in that sad farmhouse I will return to without him. I lay my head next to his and we stare into each other’s eyes. He has to go because my heart has to go. And soon—the meeting place is a full day’s hike away. My family is always on time.

I feel around in the pack Starling gave me and find two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a bag of chips, two bottles of soda, and another can of beans. Anything will taste of nothing, go down bitter, but a sandwich at least will give me energy. I force one down and feed the beans to Shiloh. We eat slowly, watching the sun rise, listening to the gentle waving of the bayou.