Summer of Sun and Shadows

By Roger E. Carrier

This optimistic story about love, prejudice, evil, and overcoming grief involves a relentless contrast between innocent teenage sexuality and the psychotic lust of a murderer of young boys.

After sixteen-year-old Tom Miller is harassed by a teenage hoodlum. His girlfriend, Sabrina, obtains a voodoo doll from her godmother, ninety-year-old Lady Priscilla. Its purpose is not to kill the hoodlum but to scare him off, but in the process of payback of his tormentor, Tom, who doesn’t believe in voodoo dolls, makes an unsettling discovery about an important businessman.

One windy night, he follows Sabrina as she sleepwalks to a local church. From there, the story marches adventure by adventure through a cemetery and other night prowling, including Tom’s secret yard work for the murderer’s beautiful wife, who has seduction in mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796045994

Roger E. Carrier

Raised in Utah, Roger Carrier has traveled through some fifty countries by bus and train, including a three-month bus trip from Salt Lake City to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sleeping in bars and run-down hotels, he made a similar hard-class journey through Africa and India. Roger, a retired teacher and businessman, is the author of A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought (Prometheus Press, 1995, pseudonym David Allen Williams). He is also a mountain climber, a reader of the classics, and collector of early 19th century rare books. He lives in Utah with his family. Finding Sagrado is his first published novel.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Roger E. Carrier.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2019909546

ISBN:                  Hardcover                           978-1-7960-4601-4

                            Softcover                             978-1-7960-4600-7

                            eBook                                  978-1-7960-4599-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/20/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

795952

Contents

1     South Texas: May 1962

2     Ashtabula, Ohio

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67   Monday, July 16

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78   Thursday, July 26

79

80

81

82

83

84   Wednesday night, August 1

85   Friday afternoon, August 3

86   Friday afternoon, August 3

87

88   Saturday afternoon, August 4

89

90   Saturday night, August 4

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98   Friday, August 10

99

100 Saturday afternoon

For Duane Carrier, my beloved brother

* * *

Summer of Sun and Shadows

Roger E. Carrier

* * *

How far, since then, the ocean streams

Have swept us from that land of dreams,

That land of fiction and of truth,

The lost Atlantis of our youth.

Ultima Thule, Longfellow

* * *

-1-

South Texas: May 1962

B EAU WATCHED AS Heavy Duty approached the ladder to the carnival’s high trapeze. Standing against the inside of the fence, Beau focused on Heavy Duty’s red-silk blouse. It flapped like a war flag against his body, and it wasn’t the first time Beau envisioned his friend as a hero about to storm a fortress.

A large, broad-shouldered man, Heavy Duty could hold a full-grown woman from each arm while hanging upside down, not that you’d know it from the way he moved. His unnatural grace always teased smiles from the people on the midway.

With a nod to Beau, Heavy Duty started up the ladder.

Ten, fifteen, Beau said as he counted the ladder marks. Twenty, twenty-five. Oh, Sweet Jesus.

Seconds flashed like Texas lightning as Heavy Duty was on the ladder and then lying on the concrete pad below. A moment, a single distracted or careless instant on the slick metal ladder and it was all over.

An accident—a stupid accident.

Beau couldn’t believe what his eyes had seen. As the shouts and cries of his friends gave way to silence, he argued against reality, pleading for a different result.

But he had a chance, he said, his voice breaking with grief. Just before he hit the ground, he kicked away from the ladder and rolled.

An hour of stunned disbelief gave way to the inevitable conclusion with the arrival of a white-haired doctor. The man shook his head. Most people don’t realize that falls from as low as ten feet are often fatal, especially when you land on concrete.

Kneeling beside the body, the doctor rubbed his chin.

Where in the hell is all the blood and guts? he mumbled.

He lifted Heavy Duty’s arms and moved his legs, puzzled by the apparent lack of broken bones. With a shrug, he concluded that the performer’s heart had stopped due to internal trauma. He neglected, however, to actually put a stethoscope to the man’s chest to determine if his heart had stopped at all. He checked white male, wrote accidental fall, and scribbled his name on a death certificate.

When he raised his head, the doctor found himself staring into the face of an old black woman. She held Beau’s arm for support, and Beau introduced her as Lady Priscilla.

She pointed at the body. He be my godson. He must stay with me tonight.

When Beau nodded, the doctor arched one of his bushy eyebrows.

If you say so, he said. But you folks take this body to a registered mortician. I’m bending the rules enough in letting you keep it until tomorrow morning.

Lady Priscilla nodded. Don’t you worry. He be coming straight away to the undertaker’s house.

That was not exactly the case, but the old black woman couldn’t be faulted for the miscommunication because Baron Samedi, the prince of the spirits, appeared to humans as a traditional undertaker, wearing a top hat and long tails. In a manner of speaking, the undertaker already had Heavy Duty in his care.

The next morning and three hundred miles from the doctor’s registered mortician, Beau fired up the calliope’s boiler. A bribe to the cemetery manager allowed for the unusual burial without a mortician’s signature. When everything was ready, a bald white man covered with tattoos began to sing as the calliope screeched out Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace, Priscilla sang, joining in.

Her nod to Beau and the other mourners confirmed that Heavy Duty had indeed been saved. Amazing Grace, she continued, putting all the emphasis on amazing, rather than the saving grace of God. The emphasis was appropriate because the dirt hitting Heavy Duty’s pine-box coffin made a hollow sound, almost as if it were empty. The minor detail escaped notice amid the noise from the calliope.

Priscilla dabbed her eyes and sighed at this second funeral in two months. The first had been even more difficult to bear. The orphan man-child Isaac, one of her many godsons, had died far across the waves in Jamaica town, though none of the outdoor-amusement vendors—they were moving away from the word carnies—ever mocked Priscilla’s expressions. Wisdom also dictated that one not be amused when she climbed onto a cushion and stretched to see over the steering wheel of her green-and-black convertible. The 1935 Duesenberg served as a reminder of the respect due this ancient black woman.

Yet now, Priscilla cursed her pride. She cared nothing for the vanity of respect because the news of Isaac’s death had arrived with a terrible sense of guilt. She had felt the presence of evil when she stared at her picture of the ten-year-old child, but her sacrifices of a goat and three chickens had meant nothing to the inhabitants of the spirit world.

Having failed to save Isaac’s life, Priscilla could only entreat the loa for revenge by shedding the blood of three goats. Slicing their throats with a straight-edged razor, she drained their blood into a large offering bowl and sprinkled in ashes from the Jamaica Observer—the newspaper with the lies about Isaac’s accident. Then she poured in some sacred cornmeal, palm oil, and new wine.

Dropping a match into the bowl, she watched as blue flames leaped into the air and suddenly died.

Perhaps a favorable omen, Priscilla said, noting the backward play on Beau Getty’s name with Ghede Nimbo, the prankster loa and protector of children.

Driving his new Buick and leading the caravan, Beau pulled the trailer bearing the calliope-hearse, while inside the car he carried the precious living cargo of his goddaughter. Beau, the girl’s protector from the powers of the world, would have the help of Ghede Nimbo, who traveled on the wind. A watchful guardian, Ghede Nimbo would do his fickle best to protect the girl from any rude bad-boy loa attempting to ride this teenage beauty at the height of her virginity. The lusts of the spirits, both good and bad, posed many problems for the devotees of voodoo. The loa loved to celebrate, dance, and cavort with the living—especially cavort.

Priscilla understood these passions of the flesh because she had once been a beautiful courtesan, but God forbid anyone translate the term as prostitute, lest their tongue cease to function for a week.

The man, she often said (and nobody ever corrected her redundant expressions), he must respect the female woman. Nevertheless, as a practical matter, she hid a box of condoms inside a pink teddy bear as a parting gift for the girl’s upcoming trip.

She spoke to the teddy bear as she mended its back. Let her find this box of gummy-shoes in the ripeness of the summer.

* * *

After the mourners returned to the carnival lot, Priscilla chanted some prayers that wafted into a spring air scented with bluebonnets and lemongrass. Then she gave a thumbs-up, and the little caravan pulled onto the highway. At her side stood Murphy, a shy young man with a large, port-wine stain on the left side of his face.

Go launch Jasper.

Yes, Mama Priscilla, Murphy said.

Soon the beautiful, red-tailed hawk lifted its wings and flapped away.

Murphy waved into the sky. Pleasant journey, Jasper.

The powerful bird rose on the thermals high above the carnival’s trucks and trailers. He had been trained to follow the brass sun dangling from an arch spanning the length of the calliope. Jasper would follow the three-foot sun to the next town, then fly back to the matching moon atop a twenty-foot cross by Priscilla’s fortunetelling tent.

Out on the road, Beau tried and failed to remember the events immediately following Heavy Duty’s death. Something about the body reminded him of the famous story about Priscilla and her rich lover, who ran a hypnotism show in the carnival. When their affair ended, the man gave her half his money.

He walked away feeling happy, peaceful, and rested, Bulldog Johnson had said, laughing to tears whenever he told the story. Like one, two, three, you can wake up now.

Is that what happened to me? Beau wondered, his mind considering the question for all of five seconds. Priscilla, whose piercing black eyes held many secrets, had told him he needed a rest for the summer, and her hypnotic nodding soon had him agreeing to her wonderful idea.

She had raised her eyebrows. And who knows, perhaps you will find a good woman to share your holiday.

With a last glance back at his friends, Beau headed north in a three-vehicle caravan composed of his Buick pulling the calliope trailer, a truck pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with the disassembled high trapeze, and another pickup driven by the girl’s mother and pulling her trailer house. The travelers in the outdoor-amusement business had miles to go before they slept.

Beau’s destination was circled in red on the map Priscilla had given him. Once they arrived in Ashtabula, Ohio, he would launch Jasper on a flight from the sun to the moon.

-2-

Ashtabula, Ohio

Tuesday, June 5, 1962

W HAT THE HELL! Hans yelled, hitting the horn of his flatbed truck.

From the passenger seat, Tom watched open-mouthed as a red convertible shot past, swerved, and narrowly missed a head-on with a delivery van. The teenagers’ car had a three-foot speaker rigged up behind the back seat, and with its rock ‘n’ roll screaming away, the speaker rose like a huge finger, making it unnecessary to yell, Up yours, asshole!

But they did, anyway.

Sixteen-year-old Tom watched the convertible speed away, as behind him the pile of willow branches in the truck bed whistled in the wind, leaving a trail of loose leaves that curled and danced like smoke.

That’s a Chevy Impala, Tom said.

Hans, a sandy-haired Dutchman with a steel tooth, shook his head in disgust.

Like hell, he said. It was a goddamn coffin on wheels, that’s what it was. Another second and they’d be a road pizza.

Although the near-collision should have reminded Tom of what happened to his parents and little sister, he smiled. His grin remained long after the goddamn coffin on wheels with its road-pizza hoodlums had vanished.

Zephyr, his mother’s sister, had told him that hard work could ease the pain of grief. She had a point. Yet, easing such pain was not the same as letting it go. Grief was one thing, anger another. And no matter how many willows he cut down, the anger would return as if it were a ghost consumed with vengeance.

And don’t feel guilty, Zephyr had said, not knowing the real reason Tom had stayed home the day of the accident. It was just one of those terrible things that can happen to anybody.

But it wasn’t anybody. It was his family, even if he wanted to believe it was not a sin to play sick—to lie to avoid going on a picnic to the lake, to have a secret, to let his parents and little sister drive away, to stay home for pleasure, to allow the headlong train of events to crash. If only his advice to himself—and from everybody else—had worked.

Letting go of his anger hadn’t worked because logic told him if he had gotten into the car, the accident would not have happened. The seconds of delay as he climbed in the car would have changed everything. If only he had not waited on the porch for their car to disappear. If only they had come back for something they had forgotten. If only the magazine hadn’t been hidden under his mattress.

If only—

Hans started in with, "Kids nowadays don’t appreciate what they have. During the Depression in Europe, a shitload of money don’t buy a loaf of bread, but I didn’t live in the Neverlands. I spend my young-man days in Indonesia.

My parents owned a shop, and when the Japs come, they rounds up us Dutch people and put my parents in the concentration camp. They died there. But, like you, I got on with my life and come to America.

Tom frowned at Hans. The Neverlands?

Your goddamn rights, the Neverlands. Hans winked, his grin showing his metal tooth. I’m Dutch, but I’ve never been there.

The somber face Tom had tried to maintain broke with laughter at Hans’ Neverlands and how Hans had him leaving Indiana to travel to America. His laughter, though, held no disrespect because Hans was a no-bullshit man, who told it straight. Get on with your life.

Hans, a chain smoker who could swear a fish out of Lake Erie, was probably the best example Zephyr could find to show her nephew that he wasn’t alone. Zephyr’s plans for him didn’t include sulking all day. That’s why she hired Hans to cut down the willow tree. On that score, Tom had to give her credit. The willow had taken him off the porch and clear to the county dump. And unknowingly, the hoodlums in the red convertible had also brightened his day.

The hours passed, and after three trips to the dump only a three-inch stump from the willow remained. To top off the day, Hans handed Tom four dollars.

See you in church if the windows are clean, he said with a wink.

Hans drove away before Tom could ask what he meant. By his own admission, Hans had never set foot inside a church. Two minutes later, Tom laughed when he figured it out.

-3-

T HE NEXT DAY they visited a house to repair the damage from a burglary. Tom played gopher, going for this and going for that, as he helped Hans fix a window and install new locks. The job earned him two more dollars, and when he came home, he mowed Zephyr’s lawn.

The following morning he opened the garage, wheeled out his bicycle, and hosed it off. Drying it with an old towel, he decided he had nursed his grief long enough. If Hans could sail to America after losing his parents, he could at least go exploring around Ashtabula.

Take me back to my old mountain home, Zephyr sang as she stood at the nearby clotheslines.

Tom listened through the entire song before asking if he could go for a bike ride.

Zephyr’s face broke into a wide smile. She had already suggested such an adventure several times.

That’s a wonderful idea, she said. You sleep okay last night?

Like a baby.

Good, she sighed, as if remembering his scream from a few nights ago. Watch out for cars.

Don’t worry. I will.

Tom paused and stared back at the clotheslines, seeing Zephyr’s legs from the knees down. The rest of her body was hidden by the wash, as the clothespins, resembling tiny wooden birds, gripped the lines and peered down at her.

In his childhood, Tom had played with his trucks on the grass as his mother hung the wash. The little-bird clothespins had gripped the lines—just like now. His mother had sung the same Carter Family song—just like now. And the scent of laundry detergent had sweetened the morning air—just like now.

The butterfly of longing fluttering inside Tom’s chest produced a reverie that it wasn’t Zephyr standing behind the wet laundry. Maybe, as in the story from Amazing Science Fiction, a strange breeze would blow back the curtain separating the present from the past. Maybe he could go running into the open arms of his mother.

He closed his eyes and wished it true.

You have money for lunch? Zephyr asked, moving into sight again.

Plenty, Tom replied.

He forced a smile, wounded at how unfair reality was. His slender mother, who wore her blonde hair short, had been replaced by a plump brunette with a beehive hairdo.

* * *

Enjoying the sunshine under the dome of a summer sky, Tom turned away from lower Ashtabula and pedaled inland along the side of the road. Ashtabula, a town of grassy fields, stately trees in vacant lots, and no two houses the same, sloped its way down a long hill toward Lake Erie, whose shores at one place bore the cancer of a chemical plant. Thankfully, the plant’s smoke seldom drifted to the outskirts of town where Zephyr lived.

Forty minutes of leisurely pedaling brought Tom to a covered bridge some distance from any houses. A sign beside the red wooden structure indicated a scenic view, and he rolled into the parking area. Setting his kickstand, he stepped to the guardrail.

Below him, tall trees stood on either side of a shallow river as wide as a four-lane highway. A long outcropping of rocks split its clear waters in half.

Oh my God, Tom said and stepped into the brush to stay hidden.

On the opposite bank, sixty feet below the bridge, the red convertible with its rigged-up speaker brightened up a yellow beach. Nearby, three teenage boys stood on a rock outcropping at the base of the bridge, while a redheaded kid sat in the sand smoking a cigarette.

One of the boys on the rocks grabbed a rope tied to a bridge beam. He hollered, swung out, and dropped into a deep pool. When he broke the surface, his friends began pelting him with gravel.

What the shit! the boy cried.

He swam for the beach, but he wasn’t swift enough to prevent his friends from launching another round. The gravel splattered the water like machine-gun fire.

The boy stomped ashore.

Bob, you asshole! he cried.

It was the old story of blaming the weaker guy. The gravel victim started to climb the rocks, but Bob made a swinging escape and dropped into the hundred-foot pool. When the victim reached the launch site, he stooped to find something to throw. His friend punched him in the arm.

The boy didn’t return the hit.

The puncher, undoubtedly the boss, spit toward the redheaded guy sitting at the water’s edge. Alarmed at the near miss, the boy flipped his cigarette into the river and slid six feet down the beach.

When the dark-haired boss lit a cigarette, Tom broke a twig off a nearby bush and mimicked his smoking. The boss poked his cigarette at the boy next to him. With no time to grab the rope, the boy cannon balled into the water. Meanwhile, as Bob pulled himself onto the rocky island in the middle of the river, the boss threw a beer bottle that splashed into the water a foot from the other boy’s head.

Puzzled by the boss’s method of smoking, Tom sucked on his twig cigarette. He held his breath, and when he finally breathed again, an earthy scent filled his nostrils. Hidden in his leafy hideaway, he felt strong as he enjoyed the show across the river. Eventually his attention focused on the rock ‘n’ roll coming from the convertible’s tall speaker.

Tom took a last drag, dropped the twig on the ground, and turned his foot on it. The satisfaction he felt at discovering who gave them the finger the other day as the teenagers roared past Han’s truck beat finding a twenty-dollar bill all to hell. Maybe he would be a detective someday. He hopped on his bike and pedaled into the covered bridge.

At the middle of three large window openings, he stopped and peered down at the car. He could only see three of the boys. The boss was probably still standing on the rocks directly beneath him. Pushing off, he continued through the bridge, singing with the Coasters, whose chanting rose from the beach. Once again, King Curtis, their backup, had his saxophone walking, talking, and standing on its toes as they sang Yakety Yak.

-4-

T OM’S EXPERIENCE AT the bridge left him strangely content. He actually considered doing some reading. After making good use of the dirty magazine the day of the accident, he had planned to borrow the Martian Chronicles from the library. His plan, like so many others, had evaporated in a mere five minutes. He hadn’t picked up a book since then.

Back in town, he glided into lower Ashtabula. He explored the harbor on Lake Erie, racing to cross the little drawbridge five seconds before it began to rise. He paused to study the tall neon sign of a chicken at the Chubby Chicken Restaurant. Then he coasted to a stop at a Catholic church. He wasn’t Catholic or religious, but the marble inscription above the door grabbed his attention.

Our Lady of Sorrows, he said to himself, letting the words settle in his mind before heading home.

* * *

Back in his room, Tom sat on his window seat and stared into the empty lot next to Zephyr’s yard. A gray house with dormer windows stood across the hundred-yard field. Although in many ways similar to Zephyr’s house, its yard sprouted weeds rather than flowers. Tom smiled as the scene tugged at his sense of adventure. He imagined himself and his friends sneaking up the stairs on a night raid.

There’s a ghost! someone would shout, and everyone would scream as they piled down the stairs.

A knock on his door brought Tom back to the present. He rose from the window seat as Zephyr entered his room and placed a radio on his nightstand.

I don’t care how loud you play it, she said, facing him, as long as you don’t wake the dead. Her face flushed, she rushed over and gave him a hug. You’ll have to forgive me. Sometimes I say things without thinking.

Tom returned the hug.

It’s okay, Aunt Z. I’m not that touchy, he said, remembering his anger over her philosophical advice the first day he arrived. He stepped back. You know, life goes on. You can’t live in the past.

A smile softened Zephyr’s face. She blinked hard and ran her hand down his cheek.

That a boy.

As Zephyr left the room, Tom stared at the cardboard boxes at the foot of his bed. Like him, the boxes had come to Ashtabula as a result of his lie to stay home that fatal day. His decision brought him to the same room where his mother and Zephyr slept as young girls: two sisters as different as their names, deliberately chosen by their parents from the ends of the alphabet—Alberta and Zephyr.

Both his mother and Zephyr exuded a transparent honesty. He could tell that Zephyr wasn’t an actress playing a role for her poor nephew. She had not taken him in merely because of family obligation. Despite the initial awkwardness, Tom sensed she really did like him.

The days and weeks had chipped away at his prejudice against living with an old-maid schoolteacher. The last of his assumptions had evaporated with her slip of the tongue.

Tom plugged in the radio and turned the dial. He rolled past two country stations, sped by a preacher and some elevator music, and caught the Elegants doowoping Little Star.

Yowza! the disc jockey came on with a shout. Hello boys and girls and everything in between, you’re listening to Ted Herald from WOUV in Youngstown, Ohio, and I’m here until the witching hour of midnight to play all the rock ‘n’ roll you can stand, or should I say, more rock ‘n’ roll than your parents can stand. So here’s Gene Chandler with the ‘Duke of Earl.’

Turning up the volume loud enough to wake the dead, Tom stretched his arms at the best part and sang,

"As I walk through this world,

Nothing can stop the Duke of Earl."

-5-

T HE SUN SET and came up on another day with the sound of something in the street. The thump might have pulled Tom off the bed if he had not been mesmerized by the angled ceiling of his room. Instead of leaping off his bed, he continued to contemplate the day he arrived in Ashtabula. After climbing from Zephyr’s station wagon, he had stood there staring at her narrow house with its four sets of beveled-glass panes in the center of the front door, and despite the tragedy that brought him there, he had smiled. Wisteria vines made their way up the center porch columns and embraced to form a graceful arch. The house was an old-maid’s dream if there ever was one.

The yard and white house with its dormer windows glowed three times as clean as his real home back in Indiana. Staring at the flowers growing along either side of the covered porch, Tom had briefly wondered if Zephyr had planted the clumps of long-tongued, yellow-and-purple iris for his benefit. No, he realized, they had been in the ground for years.

It had surprised him when Zephyr led him into the house through the front door. His guess, if he had been asked, would have been the backdoor to avoid tracking up the place. Stepping inside, he had found himself in a house full of tall windows. As he stepped through the entry, he glanced to the right. In the parlor stood Zephyr’s piano and a TV nearby. To the left, he noted the open door of her bedroom with its tall windows and flowered bedspread. Down the hall, the stairs angled up to his room, the only one on the second floor.

The hall into the kitchen had a door on each side. One was for the bathroom, the other for a tiny room under the stairs. That room contained a sewing machine and four laundry baskets. Undoubtedly made for Tom’s benefit, each basket had a handmade sign: COLORS, WHITES, SHEETS, TOWELS.

Another old-maid’s dream.

At the rear of the house, the kitchen opened onto a screened-in porch, where Zephyr had an electric washing machine, and outside beyond the clotheslines stood a one-car garage. Along its side grew a row of larkspurs, whose purple stalks rose against the white, clapboard siding.

Tom had wandered through the deep backyard to the fence, where he leaped to grab the limb of a black walnut tree. He climbed twenty feet and found a limb to stand on. Holding onto the branch above his head for balance, he gazed at the creek that meandered through the neighborhood. Beyond the creek, hundreds of acres of undeveloped woodland rolled into the distance with scarcely a telephone pole or power line in sight. His eyes had narrowed as if attempting to penetrate the mystery of this wilderness so close to where he lived. His neighborhood in Indiana consisted of houses and more houses.

His guilt over his lack of sadness that first day had slipped away. He liked his room at Zephyr’s place better than the one on the ground floor of his real house. The dormers on each wall had alternating red-and-green panes along the top of the windows, and, as he learned on the first night, the glass reflected colored moon shadows onto the walls. The shadows soothed him while he drifted off to sleep to the wailing of distant trains. Sounding from the other side of a dream, the Golden Arrow always took him home again. At times, he wondered if ghosts returned to the places they loved. Overcome with grief, he would bury his face in his pillow and imagine his mother sitting on his bed and stroking his head.

It’s all right, she would say.

But it wasn’t.

* * *

Rubbing last night’s sleep from his eyes, Tom stared at the dresser where Zephyr had suggested he put some pictures. She already had a bunch of family photos in the parlor. They stood on top of the piano next to a TV, and