“I died, right?” I said, looking at the lovely Lynne Hua sitting in the off-white padded chair there next to me.
She was wearing a slight and short maroon dress made from fine silk. She crossed her olive legs as if to say, If you don’t respond to this you may very well be dead.
“How are you feeling, Easy?” she asked.
My vision was still playing tricks on me. I could see the young woman but the room around her was blurred, without specific detail or spatial form.
“I …” I said.
Lynne smiled and moved toward the edge of the boxy chair.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asked.
The question almost brought me to tears. I concentrated so hard that I began to tremble.
Lynne took hold of my cold hand and squeezed.
“It’s okay, baby, you had an accident,” Lynne said. She smiled. Her teeth were perfect. “It was very bad, but you’re pretty much all right. You’ve been coming in and out of consciousness for the last two months. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“You will.”
“Is this a hospital?”
“No.”
The nondescript room behind Lynne got lighter but I still couldn’t make it out.
“It’s the house that Jewelle MacDonald got you when you were trying to protect your family.”
“How did I get here, Lynne? What happened?”
“I don’t know the whole story, Easy.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“The doctor said that when you came to and could talk we should make sure you stay calm.”
“I’m calm. I need to know what happened.”
“You were drunk, trying to pass a truck on Highway One.”
“So you’re saying that if I’m not dead I should be.”
“Everybody thought you were,” Lynne said. “Ray got the call from your son at four in the morning. They found your license on the beach and the registration in the glove compartment of your car. It had crashed into the surf.”
“And I was in the water too?”
“Your body was lost. The driver’s-side door was torn off. The police told us that you had probably floated out on the tide.”
“So what happened?”
“I went up to the house with Raymond. Later in the morning after Christmas Black came to watch the kids, Ray and I drove over to Mama Jo’s.”
The image of the tall black witch-woman came up into my mind’s eye. Just the thought of her power and magnetism anchored my floating thoughts.
“What did Jo have to do with it?” I was imagining some mystical rite where the witch had made a bargain with the Devil to raise the dead.
“Ray told her that you had died and that he wanted her to perform the funeral ceremony, especially since the body had been washed away.”
“And did she agree?”
“She looked Raymond in the eye and grabbed him by both shoulders,” Lynne said, still astonished by the act. “She even lifted him up on his toes. And all Ray did was stare back. After a minute or so she let him go and stood up so tall that her head almost touched the roof of the cottage and she said, ‘Your friend is not dead, Raymond. While you’re here feelin’ sorry for yourself he’s out there in pain, near death. Go back to where that accident happened and look for him. Look close.’
“I drove him up to the place you went off the cliff and he climbed down. He was gone for two hours searching through the hillside and bushes, between the big boulders and down along the beach. I just sat there and waited, thinking about how much Ray loved you and how sure Mama Jo was that you had survived. And then, after I knew there was no hope, Raymond came up the side of that mountain with you slung across his back. You know he’s a small man, Ezekiel; you’re almost twice his size, but he carried you halfway up that steep climb, brought you all the way to the car and laid you in the backseat like you were a child.”
“Where was I?” I asked.
“Raymond said that when your car hit the first boulder the door flew off and you were probably thrown free. You fell into these thick bushes. They broke your fall but they also hid you from view. I guess the police just figured you were dead once they saw the car. You’d been there for almost a day and so were suffering from exposure as well as a bad concussion.”
There came a ripple in the atmosphere between me and Lynne.
It felt as if an invisible wall had suddenly come down between us. She was still talking but I could no longer make out the words. I wanted to know everything about my death, but I couldn’t speak or even gesture, and Lynne was slowly moving backward as if her chair was being drawn away by cables into the depths of the featureless room. As she moved off into the distance the light lowered and soon I was, once again, dead and dreaming.