“ ‘Bitter Grounds’ was written for Nalo Hopkinson,” explains Gaiman, “for her anthology Mojo: Conjure Stories. I wondered if I could say anything new or interesting about zombies, and several things sort of came together at once when I wrote it. It’s set in the hotel the 1994 World Fantasy Convention was held in.
“I read a review of the story recently, which pointed out that it was trickier than it seems on the surface, which seemed like a wise observation to me.”
“Come back early or never come”
IN every way that counted, I was dead. Inside — somewhere, maybe — I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep within, another person who had no access to the face and lips and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smiled and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door, I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.
Sometimes I telephoned her. I let the phone ring once, maybe even twice, before I hung up.
The me who was screaming was so far inside that nobody knew he was even there at all. Even I forgot that he was there, until one day I got into the car — I had to go to the store, I had decided, to bring back some apples — and I went past the store that sold apples and I kept driving, and driving. I was going south, and west, because if I went north or east I would run out of world too soon.
A couple of hours down the highway my cellphone started to ring. I wound down the window and threw the cellphone out. I wondered who would find it, whether they would answer the phone and find themselves gifted with my life.
When I stopped for gas I took all the cash I could on every card I had. I did the same for the next couple of days, ATM by ATM, until the cards stopped working.
The first two nights I slept in the car.
I was halfway through Tennessee when I realized I needed a bath badly enough to pay for it. I checked into a motel, stretched out in the bath and slept in it until the water got cold and woke me. I shaved with a motel courtesy-kit plastic razor and a sachet of foam. Then I stumbled to the bed, and I slept.
Awoke at 4:00 a.m., and knew it was time to get back on the road.
I went down to the lobby.
There was a man standing at the front desk when I got there: silver-grey hair although I guessed he was still in his thirties, if only just, thin lips, good suit rumpled, saying “I ordered that cab an hour ago. One hour ago.” He tapped the desk with his wallet as he spoke, the beats emphasizing his words.
The night manager shrugged. “I’ll call again,” he said. “But if they don’t have the car, they can’t send it.” He dialled a phone number, said, “This is the Night’s Out Inn front desk again… Yeah, I told him… Yeah, I told him.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m not a cab, but I’m in no hurry. You need a ride somewhere?”
For a moment the man looked at me like I was crazy, and for a moment there was fear in his eyes. Then he looked at me like I’d been sent from Heaven. “You know, by God, I do,” he said.
“You tell me where to go,” I said. “I’ll take you there. Like I said, I’m in no hurry.”
“Give me that phone,” said the silver-grey man to the night clerk. He took the handset and said, “You can cancel your cab, because God just sent me a Good Samaritan. People come into your life for a reason. That’s right. And I want you to think about that.”
He picked up his briefcase — like me, he had no luggage — and together we went out to the parking lot.
We drove through the dark. He’d check a hand-drawn map on his lap, with a flashlight attached to his key ring, then he’d say, Left here, or This way.
“It’s good of you,” he said.
“No problem. I have time.”
“I appreciate it. You know, this has that pristine urban-legend quality, driving down country roads with a mysterious Samaritan. A Phantom Hitch-hiker story. After I get to my destination, I’ll describe you to a friend, and they’ll tell me you died ten years ago, and still go round giving people rides.”
“Be a good way to meet people.”
He chuckled. “What do you do?”
“Guess you could say I’m between jobs,” I said. “You?”
“I’m an anthropology professor.” Pause. “I guess I should have introduced myself. Teach at a Christian College. People don’t believe we teach anthropology at Christian Colleges, but we do. Some of us.”
“I believe you.”
Another pause. “My car broke down. I got a ride to the motel from the Highway Patrol, as they said there was no tow truck going to be there until morning. Got two hours of sleep. Then the Highway Patrol called my hotel room. Tow truck’s on the way. I got to be there when they arrive. Can you believe that? I’m not there, they won’t touch it. Just drive away. Called a cab. Never came. Hope we get there before the tow truck.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I guess I should have taken a plane. It’s not that I’m scared of flying. But I cashed in the ticket, I’m on my way to New Orleans. Hour’s flight, four hundred and forty dollars. Day’s drive, thirty dollars. That’s four hundred and ten dollars spending money, and I don’t have to account for it to anybody. Spent fifty dollars on the motel room, but that’s just the way these things go. Academic conference. My first. Faculty doesn’t believe in them. But things change. I’m looking forward to it. Anthropologists from all over the world.” He named several, names that meant nothing to me. “I’m presenting a paper on the Haitian coffee girls.”
“They grow it, or drink it?”
“Neither. They sold it door-to-door in Port-au-Prince, early in the morning, in the early years of the century.”
It was starting to get light now.
“People thought they were zombies,” he said. “You know. The walking dead. I think it’s a right turn here.”
“Were they? Zombies?”
He seemed very pleased to have been asked. “Well, anthropologically there are several schools of thought about zombies. It’s not as cut-and-dried as populist works like The Serpent and the Rainbow would make it appear. First we have to define our terms: are we talking folk belief, or zombie dust, or the walking dead?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was pretty sure The Serpent and the Rainbow was a horror movie.
“They were children, little girls, five to ten years old, who went door to door through Port-au-Prince selling the chicory-coffee mixture. Just about this time of day, before the sun was up. They belonged to one old woman. Hang a left just before we go into the next turn. When she died, the girls vanished. That’s what the books tell you.”
“And what do you believe?” I asked.
“That’s my car,” he said, with relief in his voice. It was a red Honda Accord, on the side of the road. There was a tow truck beside it, lights flashing, a man beside the truck smoking a cigarette. We pulled up behind the recovery vehicle.
The anthropologist had the door of the car opened before I’d stopped. He grabbed his briefcase and got out.
“Was giving you another five minutes, then I was going to take off,” said the tow-truck driver. He dropped his cigarette into a puddle on the tarmac. “Okay, I’ll need your triple-A card, and a credit card.”