once. I walked to the triplex, carrying my paper bag with the empty box in it, suddenly feeling dumb for having bought a gift at a head shop. It wasnât even almost dark out yet. One boy was still spinning on his back on the sidewalk in front of the sprawling church. I felt as if a round furry animal, an animal like an otter, was curled in my stomach. It had eaten away just enough room to curl up and sleep inside me there in my belly, wet and silent.
Years later, a psychokiller named Leonard Lake filmed himself, it turned out, cutting up a bunch of girls. It turned out, in fact, that heâd been at it for decades. But before they knew any of that, when he was, as they say, initially brought to the stationhouse for questioning, Lake said, âI want to take this aspirin I have here,â which they let him do, and then he died almost immediately, right there, where they were asking him questions, and it turned out the aspirin was a cyanide pill heâd been carrying in his shirtpocket.
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The world is enormous. You leave your womb where you are not a stranger, and then you leave your motherâs arms where you are not a stranger but there is no mistaking that you are also not part of her; you are not a tumor and you are not an extra limb. Then you leave your house and your school, and you must walk through the world anonymous.
If you are not doomed and ruined and can make it through childhood, then maybe you can stop moving, get yourself known about town as they say, draw eyes toward you. A ghost breaks through time because itâs remembering, or it breaks through because itâs remembered. Everyoneâs asking, âWhere am I, exactly? What has become of me?â The question bounces between live bodies and dead ones. A ghost is afraid of disappearing into history. It has pain and no body at all.
Box on the Beach
For a while, my mother worked at a lay-up stable for racehorses, a place where they put horses that have, as they call it, broken down. Broken horses rested there, at Sandpiper Farm, after or instead of surgery. When they recovered theyâd head back to the track for more. When they didnât recover enough, theyâd go up for sale to people who wanted to jump them, hunt them, hack them, or breed them. Horses that went to butchers didnât make it to Sandpiper at all.
The entrance to the farm was a brick bridge over the canal with four white plaster horses, the size of small ponies, or truly enormous dogsânot life-sized but not exactly not-life-sized either. This made it difficult, when you looked at them, to tell how far away they were, exactly. These were plain horses, not rearing like the statue outside the rodeo or trotting fancily like the ones up Griffin Road on the signs for rich farms, not tangled with tack, jockey, and whip in silhouette like the emblem for the racetrack. The four white horses stood, identical, each on its own pedestal, all feet solid on the ground, square, they call it, the pedestals set at each of the four corners of the little brick bridge, two horses facing cars arriving and two facing cars departing, as if set to draw and quarter any car that came through. You couldnât look at them and tell which breed they were supposed to be, or what kind of activity horses were meant to engage in behind the gates.
Usually, itâs very important for a stable to identify what kind of horses itâs working with. If the sign has its letters made out of rope, for instance, you can bet they do Western. People who do English or racing just donât use rope like that. Four white horses, like ghosts of any actual horses, posted there on gargoyle duty, but vacant of any features except what you might call horseness .
The other thing about the statues changed the whole scene because all the horse statues were damaged, each one. Plaster had crumbled away from a couple legs, exposing the cable framework beneath. In fact, not one horse had a
Years later, a psychokiller named Leonard Lake filmed himself, it turned out, cutting up a bunch of girls. It turned out, in fact, that heâd been at it for decades. But before they knew any of that, when he was, as they say, initially brought to the stationhouse for questioning, Lake said, âI want to take this aspirin I have here,â which they let him do, and then he died almost immediately, right there, where they were asking him questions, and it turned out the aspirin was a cyanide pill heâd been carrying in his shirtpocket.
Â
Â
The world is enormous. You leave your womb where you are not a stranger, and then you leave your motherâs arms where you are not a stranger but there is no mistaking that you are also not part of her; you are not a tumor and you are not an extra limb. Then you leave your house and your school, and you must walk through the world anonymous.
If you are not doomed and ruined and can make it through childhood, then maybe you can stop moving, get yourself known about town as they say, draw eyes toward you. A ghost breaks through time because itâs remembering, or it breaks through because itâs remembered. Everyoneâs asking, âWhere am I, exactly? What has become of me?â The question bounces between live bodies and dead ones. A ghost is afraid of disappearing into history. It has pain and no body at all.
Box on the Beach
For a while, my mother worked at a lay-up stable for racehorses, a place where they put horses that have, as they call it, broken down. Broken horses rested there, at Sandpiper Farm, after or instead of surgery. When they recovered theyâd head back to the track for more. When they didnât recover enough, theyâd go up for sale to people who wanted to jump them, hunt them, hack them, or breed them. Horses that went to butchers didnât make it to Sandpiper at all.
The entrance to the farm was a brick bridge over the canal with four white plaster horses, the size of small ponies, or truly enormous dogsânot life-sized but not exactly not-life-sized either. This made it difficult, when you looked at them, to tell how far away they were, exactly. These were plain horses, not rearing like the statue outside the rodeo or trotting fancily like the ones up Griffin Road on the signs for rich farms, not tangled with tack, jockey, and whip in silhouette like the emblem for the racetrack. The four white horses stood, identical, each on its own pedestal, all feet solid on the ground, square, they call it, the pedestals set at each of the four corners of the little brick bridge, two horses facing cars arriving and two facing cars departing, as if set to draw and quarter any car that came through. You couldnât look at them and tell which breed they were supposed to be, or what kind of activity horses were meant to engage in behind the gates.
Usually, itâs very important for a stable to identify what kind of horses itâs working with. If the sign has its letters made out of rope, for instance, you can bet they do Western. People who do English or racing just donât use rope like that. Four white horses, like ghosts of any actual horses, posted there on gargoyle duty, but vacant of any features except what you might call horseness .
The other thing about the statues changed the whole scene because all the horse statues were damaged, each one. Plaster had crumbled away from a couple legs, exposing the cable framework beneath. In fact, not one horse had a
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