(today's installment is gonna need a lot of reworking to drum the fantra out of it. patience please, i beg)



Lola says all the princes in Persia couldn’t match my Lou.

“We were never in love, there wasn’t room for that sort of thing,” says Lola, “but he was a good man, a good man, and we run deep.”

Mama Lola’s eyes always look dreamy, watery and unfocused, and the spent youth of her face has long fallen to puddle around her neck, but if you look at anyone the right way you can see them every way they ever were and there is no hiding Mama’s strong chin –

“We never fought, didn’t need to. I used to flash my eyes at him and he would flash right back, and we would sit there at the dinner table with his mama and grip our spoons and tell each other off without a single word. And then you know I would look up the table and Mrs. Molitar would be sitting there with her eyes laughing at us two fools. She still laughs at me sometimes, would never say it out loud of course, but I know she thinks I’m a silly woman.

“Lou used to say to me, ‘Lola, there never was a livin thing you couldn’t read like a book,’ but you know I guess he never figured about the ghosts. Guess I didn’t expect it either, and back then I was too busy making biscuits and raising chickens and trying to keep miss Mary out of Bill’s way, and I just reckon I never paid attention to all the souls wandering the desert.

“Well and I had a one-track mind back then, all I could think about was getting out of this town. I was pretty enough, me and Lou figured we could clean ourselves up and fit in pretty good in Reno, maybe even get all the way to San Francisco and be proper city folk. The way we saw it, him being the older brother, he would inherit all the cattle when his mama died, and we could sell ‘em off and buy ourselves a nice house in a new town and raise a couple children. Bill would get the house, you know, and that could work out just right. I felt a little sorry about the thought of leaving Mary here with that drunk husband of hers, but you know that woman needed to learn to stand up for herself and I was tired of watching over her. Besides, I had these dreams of a handsome son, a lawyer maybe, pullin up to the curb in a shiny new car with presents for his mama, a pretty daughter-in-law with city ways, clean-scrubbed grandchildren...

“But you know everyone will tell you that nothing in life is gonna turn out the way you planned it, and I am no exception to that rule. Things happened real fast, once they started happening, and I just wasn’t ready for it. Lou’s mama died in the winter, she got pneumonia and her old bones couldn’t stand for it and she only lasted a few days, and the last thing she said to me was, ‘I am praying for my boys, you tell them I will always watch over them.’ Those weren’t her last words or anything, but they turned out to be truer than I ever thought. Me and Lou, we were gonna stick out the winter and sell the cattle in springtime, but Bill wanted those cattle and sure enough he got real drunk one night and shot Lou right in front of the house.

“That night, me and Lou and Mary were playing poker at the kitchen table, and it was pretty late. Then all of a sudden Bill came back from the bar with a bottle of whiskey still in his hand, and he stomped in the front door bellowing Lou’s name. Lou shot me a look and he got up from the table quick and walked Bill out to the front yard.

“Now Bill wasn’t a bad man, he wasn’t. There was something wrong with him, no doubt about that, and I know if we’d lived in a bigger town he would’ve been in a hospital somewhere, or else jail. But we were here, and he’d gotten this far in life and was trying real hard to do the right thing, and his mama had always been there to talk him down when he got mad. Me and Lou always figured Bill would be angry forever, but we never thought he do worse than throw a few punches here and there, you know?

“But, well, I guess we were wrong. I never saw what happened. Me and Mary were walking hand in hand up the hallway toward the front porch, scared as mice, and we heard a shot and a scream like something not human, like a mountain lion. We ran up to the porch and hid ourselves under the big oak table, and right after we got under there, the porch door swung open and Bill stomped through. There was a gun in his hand, and he used it to smash out a picture frame on his way into the house. He wasn’t saying anything, but he was screaming something terrible.

“Me and Mary didn’t know what to do but hide under that table in the freezing cold all night. Mary was hugging me tight, hiding her face as Bill crashed around the house, but I had my cheek against the screen and I was watching my husband die. You ever see anyone die? In the end, you just pray for it to be quick. Lou died slow, groaning and bleeding, and I prayed and prayed. I was never even religious, nobody ever taught me how to do it right, so I prayed to Lou’s mama

Oh please Mama if you’re up there you said you would be watching oh Mama look down here, look at Lou oh please can you help him

And I guess it worked, didn’t it.

“I must have seen a ghost or two before out of the corner of my eye. I remember as a girl I was always more in tune, more on edge, always could guess why the dogs had their hackles up. But I’d never known anything like this, never. I sat there in the porch, shaking from the cold, and I pinched myself over and over…

“Bill’s screams seemed to fade suddenly, not really quieter, but less important. Mary, well, I knew she was there but I couldn’t feel her a bit. And I was warm, and somehow I felt like I was standing up, like I was right there in front of my Lou. And I felt a surge of love, deep true warm joyful love, all through every part of me when I looked in his face, and then he looked up at me and the way his eyes widened, I knew he was looking at his mama. He stretched out the fingers of his hand, the hand that wasn’t holding his stomach, and I saw my own hand reaching out to his, and my other hand went to stroke his poor sweet face, and suddenly I saw him - remembered him - as a little baby with colic and I knew I’d seen him dying once before, and I had no fear.

“Then I heard a rushing noise in my ears and it was like a thousand million voices all babbling and laughing and talking at once, flowing past me and around me, like swimming in a river of ghosts. And just like a flash of lightning in my brain, all of a sudden I knew something I had never known before and haven’t been able to fully understand since. I saw the world all full of life and beauty, and I saw plain as day that there is no such thing as death, and I fell backwards and I floated through the air, like being carried on the backs of a thousand happy souls.

“Next thing I knew I was cold and awake and it was like nothing had happened. I thought it was all a dream, until I tried to stand and I banged my head on the table. Mary was next to me crying without making a sound, and Bill was passed out drunk, right there on the floor of the porch, and Mrs. Molitar was standing above him looking stern as a schoolteacher. That morning, her eyes weren’t laughing.”

Mama Lola sighs.

“I guess when someone finds this tape, they’ll just think I’m a crazy old lady making up stories,” she says. “But it’s all true, I will swear it on my life, and if you don’t believe me then you just stay around here a few days and you’ll see soon enough. You’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid to miss all the Molitars roaming around my house. Why do you think I’m still here? I can’t leave my family, I won’t leave the memory of my husband, and I’m not letting this house fall into the wrong hands. If it was up to me, I would’ve hopped a train to San Francisco twenty years ago.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when I die. I guess maybe I’ll end up hanging around here with Bill and Mary and Mrs. Molitar, just us chickens. It won’t be long now, I don’t have many more winters left in me and anyway I’ve seen what I need to see in life. Guess I’m ready to find out what happens next.

“Well.”

There is a fumbling noise, a muffled click, and suddenly Mama’s voice is gone from the tape and Donny Osmond is singing joyfully:

…silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine, all your dreams are on their way
See how they shine, oh
If you need a friend…

DamNear shuts it off.

nonowrimo day three, unedited