Afterlife
Into the gulch with rain, ashes, and ink
Going into it
It didn’t make much sense to go back there. Not in the state that I was in. And certainly not in that gulch that started in the back of Farrah’s property that led through the back of Foley’s place. From there, into the dark wild pig run that digs deep into what used to be Miss Elizabeth’s property. The property that has now been taken over the vampires that pass themselves off as a gentle lesbian farming couple but other than stealing the tall tangerine tree ladder and claiming one of the avocados trees for their own, they don’t farm anything. And anyway it’s pouring rain. And pitch black night. And I know even the less wild parts of the property are slick with pig-gouged rich red cinder mud gone even slicker under the thick clouds pouring all the ocean’s water. And it’s not that I don’t love her, I do, I mean I have her gritty remains here in a mason jar-turned-local-brewery-pint-mug with a lid, and I’m in a rainjacket that looks like it was made for commercial fishing. I have a police flashlight and the two guys have night-vision goggles and an infrared beam for tracking heat sources in the dark. We’ve been dropped off on the side of the road under the high street lamp giving off that threatrical glow, swarming with moths and gleaming on the wet black road. And the new fence the vampires got up. Close the door softly. Slowly enough that all you hear is a muffled click, and I leave the flashlight in the car. My new sister keeps driving up the hill then loops back around, hiding at the friendly neighbour’s property. I’ll call them Malcolm and Michael. They took over a handmade mid-century modern house owned by a Japanese engineer whose three-piece suit and tie is hanging in their garage beside the hot tub he built from boards scavenged from the sugar mill shoots he designed. He used to light a fire underneath the tub and bury a sweet potato in tinfoil in the ashes to cook slowly for dinner after his soak. But their place is down the hill a bit. It’s friendly. Where we are, there are gates and locks and slightly manic handmade laminated no tresspassing signs, that is if you could see anything in this deep murk.
And now we are into it. Further and further up, and in I’m in a dream dark soft rotting guava papaya skins, orange-molded from the inside, crab spiders hunched on the beaded curtains, they run all through the branches. Lobed palms rubbery leaves, trees blue green against the jumbly murk, the softest roar from the tangles dripping. The night a cloak you can’t take off. O to be in it with you. My very skin alert to each crunch, hand on the guy’s shoulder in front of me, big brother. Even they’re scared. The bigger one, of slowed words, easy camo baseball cap, orange grizzled beard, keen bright eyes, ginger colouring but skin seared Hawaiian. He’s a big guy. Husband of the daughter of the Kumu keeper of deep Hula traditions. They carry weight here. They drive a big 4x4. He’s confident in this kind of thing. Quiet guy, but like his wife, he will come on if provoked. If you mess with his family. A good man. BBQs anything. He’s wearing full camo gear that looks more ex-military than hunting. His little eyes glitter. His beard is ginger scraggly. Our wet padded footsteps close as breath. The littler guy, local, bristly black hair, he’s family too. They call him cousin, like I’m called uncle now that I’m in the circle. Little guy at the back also full camo, and he’s got an infrared finder with him. You can see the heat, red blurry human-shaped at the window, up at tree level looking out into the night I imagine.
Sentinels.
My heart is in my throat. I wear a dark green rain slicker that goes down to my ankles. Hood up, I am covered in mist almost hot with the rain. It’s not fear, but more every nerve tensed. All senses on alert. The shape of the place is made with rain and the way it hits things and from how far away. The humming you feel in your feet. Eyes are almost useless here, only the night-vision binoculars, only the infrared looking for heat. Otherwise all shapes are sound and texture of rain on green, on black night. And smell. And memory. I know where the nutmeg tree is. I know its exhaled scent. The clove tree across from it. The slight clearing that brings you down the hill and around back. The sound of fine rain on rubbery big leaves and then the harder sound on the dryer. Dead barky bits of banana palm. Minty wiff where a scatter of drops hits the Moroccan menthol, scratches me on the way past, down the pig track, ducking ferns. Ginger cinnamon bark, a glistening of iron-rich mud kneaded cream cheese frosting smooth by the hard hooves into a rut. We go extra slowly not to fall into this. Feeling our way down to the deeper garden, the clearing where she made a donkey graveyard. I know the pink peppercorn tree is above us.
The rain slows. And for a moment the sky, which was so black that it was not even there, becomes something: a lid above us, of darkest charcoal blue. And here the ashes when I sprinkle them, still grey-ground bone minerals carbon flutter, seem to shimmer for a moment. There is no moonlight but it is a moonlit colour. The ashes are no longer a dead thing the funeral home gave me. The ashes are Lisa’s spirit laughing with us in this ridiculous quest to sneak back onto the land that she bought with love for the women who now claim it as their own and hate everyone. This bit of jungle. This tree farm. The coffee trees too high for anyone to get more than a handful of beans for a days work. This land with the macadamia nut trees that were going to make everyone a fortune, now mostly fattening the silky bristle coats of the many pig families that share the land with rogue roosters, and the wet carpet coat of the donkey full of burs, her big sad knowing eyes. This land of jade vines and pomelos and oranges and tangerines and lime and tangelos, perfect globes dotted everywhere. The avocados that fall with thud you feel rather than hear, so soft and large they are bowl for my kids to dip chips into. Better than any guacamole you could make.
Her ashes bless the night. They bless the spiders. The rosebush incongruously looking like something from an English cottage. They bless the opening where Nora’s place is tucked back into the hillside, her DIY paradise bunker. She too has been forced to leave. Elizabeth’s ashes bless our quest. The orchids tucked with wire into trees. The vines and fruits and spikes of green. Of each little carefully cultivated pocket of her land that was never hers or anyone’s land at all.
The ashes seem to hang there glittering in the plants-swimming air. And we are on our way back out of the gulch, and it’s black black again. Suddenly a light, a big spotlight comes on and my heart stops. We all freeze, caught terrified of what two old ladies who are protecting the land against the spirit of the woman who bought it for them. Except that one of the old ladies looks like Sam Sheppard and has a view of the whole property from her perch on stilts at tree level, and the other old lady has already called in the police twice, and a couple of years ago got everyone into court and wakes you up in the middle of the night making demonic hand gestures. Not the good kind of witch. Leaving unhinged magic-markered notes in the kitchen. Pad-locking gates while you are still on the property. Somehow the whole town knows that these two old women are so wildly unpredictable, so in league with some sort of dark elemental spirit, that they should never be approached directly. And other dark thoughts. It is after all, late at night in the rain and we are in hunting gear trespassing in hostile territory. And so we freeze when we see the light.
Both the guys whisper it. It’s a sow. The heat-sensing camera sees it, huge, and it’s set off a motion-sensor light in one of the outbuildings. I can’t see anything once the bright beam goes off, except, finally, a huge shadow passing over the already shadowy night. It is a pig of enormous stature. Almost some great sow spirit from Miyazaki’s imagination. A thing of, and out of, this timeless nature.
After the sow, back up the path past the oldest avocado, the surinam cherry bush, the tangerine trees, the lime tree, the sleeping grass. Past the outdoor shower, the mostly empty house, the stairs up to the bedroom mosquito net, leather steamer trunk full of ancient European lace and cockroaches. Past the kitchen, past the solar generator, once the heart of the whole system. All these things known, not seen in the dark rain. Ashes in a perfect circle around the nutmeg tree wet by the endless rain. And past the main house where the heat blobs hover. Following the edge of the paved driveway. Past the gate. And the second gate and we are out by the road still crouched in the bushes. The high streetlight wavery like the moon and crackling. The pavement blue with wet. The car rolls to a stop and we leave the bushes and get in, and I am in the car with my new family, laughing, and serious, and alive. You know the kind of alive that so washed by the rain that you can see clear through to the other side.
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—Jason
beautiful JL, just beautiful.