“Physicists and sphinxes in majestical mists,” came the old man’s voice out of Kootie’s mouth. “I will go right through that sand and leave you way behind.”
The smoky shred that was deLarava’s ghost now swung toward Elizalde, and the voice was like wasps rustling in a papery nest: “You have no mask.”
The bloody fabric of the sweatshirt over Elizalde’s breasts flattened, as if an unseen hand had pressed there, and then a spotty handprint in Sullivan’s blood appeared on the sweatshirt shoulder, and smeared. Elizalde cocked her head as if listening to a faint voice in her ear, arid then said, almost wonderingly, “Yes, of course.”
Sullivan felt the bourbon-breath blow out of his mouth again. “This one is my family, too,” the voice said softly.
Then Elizalde’s shoulder twitched as if shoved.
—And out of Sullivan’s mouth Sukie’s ghost-voice added, “A. O. P., kids.”
As quick as an image in a twitched mirror, deLarava’s ghost folded itself around past Kootie and stood between the three of them and the roofed causeway off the ship. “No one passes” it whispered.
Kootie looked back at Sullivan fearfully; and in spite of his own sick-making pain, Sullivan noticed that the boy’s curly black hair needed washing and combing, and he noticed the dark circles under the haunted brown eyes; and he vowed to himself, and to the ghosts of his father and sister, that he would make things better.
“There’s no one there, Kootie,” he said. “Watch.” He stepped forward, away from Elizalde’s arm, and faintly felt the protesting outrage as deLarava’s fretful substance parted before him like cobwebs and blew away on the strengthening sea breeze.
Kootie and Elizalde hurried after him. Kootie looked up at Elizalde with a strangely lost look, and he waved the roll of gaffer’s tape he had snatched off the deck. He held it gingerly, as if he didn’t want to get any more of the glue on his fingers than he could help. “When we get to the stairs,” he said, “I figured you could tape Pete’s arm with this.”
Elizalde looked startled. “Of course. That’s a good idea…Edison?”
“No,” said Kootie, trotting along now between the two grown-ups. “Me.”
Halfway across the elevated walkway, Sullivan paused and began unbuttoning his shirt. “One last stop,” he said hoarsely.
He fished out the front-side wallet of his scapular and pried free of the torn plastic sleeve the brass portrait-plaque that he had taken off of his father’s gravestone yesterday evening. DeLarava’s bullet, a .22 or .25, had deeply dented the center of the metal plate, and the engraved portrait of his smiling father was almost totally smashed away.
Sullivan rubbed his own chest gingerly, wondering if the blocked gunshot had nevertheless cracked his breastbone; and he held the brass plate between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
“Goodbye, Dad,” he said softly. “I’ll see you again, after a while—in some better place, God willing.”
The piece of brass was warm in his hand. He hefted it and looked down at the shadowed water between the dock and the ship.
“I’ll take that,” said a whisper from behind Kootie.
Sullivan whipped his head around in exhausted alarm, but it was the ghost of Edison who had spoken, a smoky silhouette hardly visible out here in the breezy sunlight; the hand the old ghost was extending was so insubstantial that Sullivan doubted it could hold the brass plate, but when he held the plate out and let go of it, Edison supported it.
“I’ll take him, and go, at last,” Edison said faintly. “I hope it may be very beautiful over there.” Sullivan thought the ghost smiled. “On the way,” it whispered, “your father and I can talk about the…” and then Sullivan couldn’t tell whether the last word was silence or silents.
KOOTIE WANTED to say goodbye to Edison, but was shy to see the ghost standing out away from himself, tall and broad in spite of being nearly transparent.
But the ghost bent over him, and Kootie felt a faint pressure on his shoulder for a moment.
In his head he faintly heard, “Thank you, son. You’ve made me proud. Find bright days, and good work, and laughter.”
Then the Edison ghost stepped right through the railing and, still holding Peter Sullivan’s piece of brass, began to shrink in the air, as if he were rapidly receding into the distance; the image stayed in the center of Kootie’s vision no matter which direction he looked in—down at his feet, toward the buildings and cranes on the shore, or up at the mounting white decks and towering red funnels of the ship—so he turned to the walkway rail and gripped it and stared at the glittering blue water of the harbor until the image had quite shrunk away to nothing there.
And at last he stepped back, and took Peter Sullivan’s hand in his left hand and Angelica Elizalde’s in his right, and the three of them walked together to the stairs that would lead them down to the parking lot and away, to whatever eventual rest, and shelter, and food, and life these two people would be able to give him.