She listened to the voices as she passed. The voices were on the wind and she listened. Leah Shepherd, on her way to work, sees the woman entering the wrought iron gates of the cemetery. What was that woman’s morning like? Did she live in the woods? Leah never went into the cemetery.
A cluster of nine girls stand in variations on a single theme: waiting. Green frocks and purple leggings and jeans and white blouses and hair pulled up, let down, tied, bound, and askew. Their heads bowed, looking down into glowing hands. In front of the new All You Can Eat Buffet, a Mercury driven by a melted old man lets out three old women and then rolls along looking for a parking spot. By the double doors to the buffet, they await his return, clutch purses to ample chests. Point fingers at one another. A young man in red shirt and red pants darts from the office supply store toward his car. Eyes heavy-lidded and hair a black nest. Stocking flat-screens and video game consoles all day and now a break, fingers fumbling for keys so he can sit in his car and pull from beneath the seat one perfect joint.
Black metal blast beats bleat beneath guitars. A major to F sharp minor, tremolo picked. Teenage car songs, teenage love songs, teenage death songs, teenage sex songs. A major to F sharp minor, again and again, no matter how blasted the beats, or how guttural the howls. Pop songs for sad youth. Nearly hitting the woman standing by the guardrail, looking down the embankment.
An anvil crests the trees, late afternoon’s black curtain, and as the rain comes, the girls are gone, the women are gone, the songs have stopped.
“What gives you the right to put your hands in my son’s mouth, unless he is choking. That is private.”
“I can’t tell if these diseases are the same or different. Lord have mercy.”
Three children stood outside at the window watching. One gnawed a fist. A woman sighed into her cell phone about a still born baby’s birth.
“You think I have sass? You should meet my little sister. Her first text was ‘Fuck you.’ She’s a sweetie. I’m not as girly as my sister. She wears tiny tutu skirts. I mean, she’s a slut. My brother brought a girl home freshman year but she was like a cow and we gave him shit and he doesn’t talk about girls anymore. My whole family makes fun of each other’s boyfriends. My dad is very open about his girlfriends.”
Leah walked to her car across the parking lot and looked up at the sound of a car bleating and saw that worn-looking woman walking by, along the guard rail. Leah asked a few of the women at work about her. Leah said, “Do you know anything about that woman that just walks around town?” but as soon as she said it, she realized that ‘walk’ wasn’t the right word. It was too casual. This woman was focused. She moved as though compelled by some singular purpose which was beyond Leah’s understanding. The right word was beyond Leah’s grasp as well. Only a couple people knew whom she was talking about. One person said that the woman used to work at a fast food restaurant or maybe at the department store. “Have you ever seen her nails? They are perfectly done.” Another person said that they’d heard that the woman had once been raped, maybe even multiple times, and that she put all that makeup on and walked around like that to look crazy so people would leave her alone. As she passed the woman in her car, pulling out of the shopping center parking lot, Leah considered slowing and offering her a ride, asking her if she needed anything, asking if she would like to come by the nonprofit to see if there was anything they could do for her, but Leah didn’t.
On the sidewalk, a card table with fresh tomatoes on it. A woman in a spaghetti-strap shirt and short green shorts feels fresh fruit and shouts to an elderly woman behind the wheel of a turquoise Nissan. Tinted windows, child in the backseat, playing with an empty soda pop bottle.
A boy sings from behind bushes and falls silent.
“Could someone walk me to the church?” a blind man asks. “Can I have your elbow?” He taps his cane and creates the world. Taps, but does not move. Someone approaches and places the blind man’s hand on an elbow and leads the way, but the person does not speak. At the steps of the church, the person walks away.
The young singer takes up his song again. The turquoise Nissan is gone.
The boy told that when his family moved into the blue house on the corner, they found a room in the basement hidden by a bookcase. In the room was a rusted dagger with a leather-covered handle and painted on the wall images he would not describe. “I mean, just like weird stuff,” he told, “sick and perverted stuff.” Everyone nodded as it had the ring of truth. Across the street from the blue house was a Victorian where a minister lived until his death and then a young family with three daughters. The family was up from Florida. The girls told that their house was haunted. Lights cut off. Plates poured from cupboards in arcs. The youngest heard the voices of men arguing in the fireplace. Behind a brick they found a note written in an illegible hand, written in code, written backward. Obscure and spoiled by time. No one ever saw the note. Everyone waited for the girls to bring it to school, but they never remembered. No one ever saw the ruin of plates. No one ever saw the lights flicker, dim, die. You could hear their father, voice bruising, if you walked by the Victorian on a spring afternoon. After the divorce, the mother moved with the girls back to Florida, but not before the middle daughter became engaged to a libertarian college student from Alabama. The boy in the blue house told this too: Sometimes he could see the girls. Through windows. In their house. “I am Christian, though,” he says. “I just want to pray for them.” He never showed anyone the secret room. His parents, having said a prayer, sealed it up.