The Meaning of Isolated Objects Read online

  THE MEANING OF ISOLATED OBJECTS

  A Novel

  By

  Billie Hinton

  2010

  November Hill Press

  Moncure, North Carolina

  The Meaning of Isolated Objects is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2010 by Billie Hinton

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by November Hill Press, Moncure, North Carolina.

  www.novemberhillpress.com

  Book design by Billie Hinton

  Cover image by Masson

  One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

  Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies, Vol. 15, p. 470

  … entanglement… connections between separated particles that persist regardless of distance. These connections are instantaneous, operating “outside” the usual flow of time. They imply that at very deep levels, the separations that we see between ordinary, isolated objects are, in a sense, illusions created by our limited perceptions.

  Dean Radin, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality

  Part 1

  isolated objects

  Scott arrived in Kabul wearing loose pants, kurta shirt and chapan, and the pakol hat common to Afghanistan. He’d grown his hair and stopped shaving several days before traveling. He had passed for Afghani before, but mostly he aimed to be unremarkable, just another man on the street.

  The room he chose was in a dirt-colored building that had holes blown in the outer walls, perfect for its narrow window that overlooked the watch site. It was empty except for the crumbling debris in the corners.

  On the way to a nearby market he passed a woman wearing a shabby burqa. Her four children lay around her, sleeping in the dirt as she bent forward gathering money offered by passing men. Scott pulled a roll of bills from a pocket and tucked it discreetly next to one sleeping child’s shoulder.

  He breathed in dust and smoke and walked on.

  Further along, a boy minded a wall filled with clocks, all showing opposing times. Wasted time. He needed to get back to the room.

  He arranged the rickety table and chair he’d bought at the market, and made the legs stable using duck tape. His food within easy reach, he sat and adjusted the camera’s small tripod. Once the target showed up, the rest would be easy, but it was the waiting he didn’t relish. The sitting.

  After awhile his cell phone vibrated. The connection was weak but the office put her through. Jess, the sister-in-law from hell, had used the number he’d given her for emergencies only, which meant something bad must have happened. He had the brief panicked thought: they finally decided to go after my daughter. He flashed back to his wife Lynnie’s last words. Take care of Wendell.

  Jessie’s shrieking voice interrupted. When she hit the high notes she sounded just like Lynnie.

  “Wendell is not at her apartment. I haven’t talked to her in three days.”

  He managed to get out of her that this was not necessarily unusual before the connection cut out. He wasn’t sorry. Jess had a way of pissing him off. He didn’t need to sit there seething for hours on end while waiting on a Pakistani known for being unreliable.

  In most ways Scott was not surprised about Wendell. She had his restless nature. He’d expected her to blaze up for years.

  Jess had accused him of not caring. Of liking it that Wendell resembled him. “All that mystery stuff, the secrets. It’s your fault she’s done this. She’s acting just like you.”

  Well, maybe she had something there.

  When Lynnie had died, Jess wanted him home, taking care of Wendell. How many times had they been through that scenario over the years?

  And how many times had he pissed her off, not doing it.

  Jess didn’t understand his work. Had no idea the way he tracked his daughter using skills he’d been taught two decades earlier on the government’s payroll. Remote viewing. The ability to see things from afar. What he knew how to do allowed him to see his daughter from anywhere in the world. Trouble was, his daughter had it too. The gift, some would say, but he often thought of it as the curse.

  He could keep tabs on Wendell. What worried him was that someone else might be doing the very same thing.

  For the moment, he was waiting and watching, no way could he leave without the photos he’d been sent to take. One hand on a gun, comforted by its heft and balance. There was little other comfort to be found in Kabul. Pleasure had been banned for years on end. Music, cards, chess. Flying kites and keeping birds. Some of it was creeping back. Already he’d noticed men carrying birds in cages, like they’d missed the birdsong and would have it back, by god.

  He sympathized. He knew the loss of beauty.

  But still there were men doing bad things and that’s why he was here. Someone higher up decided a bad man had to die and sometimes Scott was the one who killed him. There was no way to take that home to Virginia.

  He closed his eyes and breathed until an image came. A Welcome To Georgia sign. Wendell had crossed a number of state lines. Otherwise he sensed nothing amiss. She was safe, for the time being.

  Lynnie had predicted this before she died. She’d nailed Wendell still inside the womb. He’d come home from two months OCONUS when Lynnie was pregnant and the first thing she’d said was they had to get a rowan tree for the baby.

  “Why rowan?” he’d asked.

  “It has protective powers.”

  He hadn’t needed to ask why their baby might need them.

  He remembered his hands on Lynnie’s belly. How her soft skin felt tight. He detected the flux of movement beneath the layers. Skin and muscle, amniotic sac filled with warm fluid.

  Quickening. Kin to the verb quicken, kindle a fire. Wendell born with a head full of flaming red hair, just like her mother.

  He watched out the window. Across a street that was mostly dirt and rubble dragged into piles to allow passage. He’d take two dozen digital photos of the man when he arrived and deliver them across the border in the next twenty-four hours.

  Women in burqas passed. Even now, when it was said in the free world that they no longer had to wear them. He felt their eyes beneath the heavy cloth, sensed the women beneath, still not talking to men, not even shaking hands.

  The window was small and the day long. He couldn’t read. All he could do was sit and watch, so Jessie’s phone call, annoying as hell, provided an opening to a memory. Lynnie, in that gown she’d worn when he came home from places just like this. Her body showed right through. The opposite of a burqa. Something to think on. Let the details come back. He didn’t control this as much as it did him.

  That rowan trip. Twenty-seven years ago.

  Lynnie sat up and lit an amber-colored candle. Her invitation to lovemaking. His relief. He had dreaded the thought of coming home to a pregnant wife and no sex. The next day they’d headed for the parkway and spent the week looking for the rowan seedling. Lynnie pregnant. A perfect peach, ripe and juicy. She looked sexier than ever.

  Each night, in pine-paneled rooms with double beds and satin-edged wool blankets, Lynnie climbed on top of him, all hot and bothered from the day’s drive. Afterward he sliced apples and bananas with his pocketknife and slipped the pieces into her mouth. Cheese, bread, rolls of deli meats sliced extra thin, cold water. He could never get it cold enough to suit her.

  She fell asleep while he hummed songs he’d forgotten the words to and rubbed her feet. He studied her face as she sle
pt, guilty at the ferocity of his desire. Sometimes coming home the roughness of those countries stayed with him, Afghanistan, dust and grit, wind and Kalashnikovs. All sensuality buried. He had to let it wear off, like a bad smell.

  The next day he took the picture she’d clipped and found a seedling in the crevice of a huge rock outcropping. It was not a tree he’d ever noticed.

  They’d planted it in the back yard. Lynnie tended it the same careful way she would have tended the baby. The way she went on about that little tree. In the end the deer got it, same deer she wouldn’t let him shoot. He held her while she cried. She was close to the end by that time, emotional and easily moved to tears. But she would have cried about that tree pregnant or not.

  Years back, Lynnie had asked just the one time. “Scott, will you quit the Company?”

  He had paused to consider. A pretense, really, but he’d got lost in it. Dust storms in the afternoon, hair matted, mouth full of sand, sweat dried on his face. The cratered landscape, decades of war. She wanted him to give it up. Why wouldn’t he?

  There were reasons. Lamb cooked on skewers. Green tea and sugared almonds. Simple meals shared by people who had little but gave anyway. Glimpses of human nature, primitive and often raw, a man who would share a meal with you and later sink a knife in your gut without a thought. The distance between the extremes made him whole somehow.

  He’d turned to Lynnie and answered her question.

  “Hell, no.”

  She never asked again.

  All these years later the pull to be in Afghanistan was still strong, the call of something wild and violent. The rough men. Brutality that burned. Secrets he heard and kept.

  Wendell had some of that.

  Charlottesville was not big enough for her. Just like it hadn’t been for him. What she was doing – a young woman leaving the safety of home – was normal. It was what she might find that worried him. Who might follow. But he’d seen her remotely, minutes earlier, and she’d been okay.

  When she was young she cried when he left. He ignored the tears. At fourteen she flung her hair and screamed, “Leave, just go, like you always do.” In college she seemed not to care.

  And suddenly she’d lit off like she used to when she was little. Playing hide and seek. That game always did her in. She wanted so badly to win but couldn’t stand not being found.

  Scott’s life ran in two streams, there was never a confluence. Wendell. Work. Jess filled in through the years, accepted his lifestyle even though she hated it.

  He worked for the government. Only a handful of people knew what he did, where he went. Wendell had never asked.

  Truth was, he could fly out of Kabul tomorrow and go straight to her if he wanted to. That sketch he’d made the night before he left Culpeper. Working oil wells. He knew exactly where she was.

  But Wendell didn’t think so and for the time being, that’s what she needed to believe.

  Fanny’s chocolate brown eyes stared deep into mine. “Tell me what you dreamt, Miss Lynnie. I see the mark on you this mornin’.”

  It was hard to sit down I was so excited, but she pulled me to the sofa and took my hand. Fanny believed in spirits and fortunes. She carried odd powders wrapped up in squares of brown paper in her pockets. “Charms for things, child, that’s all they is.”

  In between cleaning up and taking care of the house, Fanny took care of me. She walked me to school in the mornings and met me halfway in the afternoons. It was Fanny who planted the rowan tree outside our front door. Fanny was a black woman and she was my best friend.

  And now she saw the mark. Her older sister had the mark. An aunt had it too. Now I had it. According to Fanny, the mark came from a dream. “Not just any dream, no, one of them dreams that means something big. When you has one you get the mark.”

  “Now, Miss Lynnie,” she said, pulling my hand and reminding me I was supposed to be telling the dream. “Hurry up before it slips away. Tell me what you saw. It’s rare a girl your age gets the mark. Eleven years old. That’s the youngest I heard of so far.”

  I started talking. “I was on a ship. Not me like I am now. Me all grown up. My older self. I was on a journey, Fanny. Unknown destination.”

  “Mm-hm. That sounds just like you, girl. Big plans and fancy talk. Right there in your dream. Keep goin’.”

  “Well, the trip lasted a long time. Like I slept longer than just one night. It seemed like the trip took longer than it possibly could have, Fanny. How could I dream all that time just in one night?”

  She stroked my hand with her fingers. “Hush, now, that’s just how dreams work. Dream time is different.”

  “Anyway, I kept looking over the edge of the ship and all I saw was deep water. The ocean stretched on forever. I just stood there and watched. Finally one day I saw land. Then the ship got in close and I could see a harbor. Fanny, do you remember that time we went to Norfolk? That old dock thing we saw? It was a little like that.”

  “Your mama took us that time.” Fanny looked away, like she was remembering. Her skin had little wrinkles beside each eye, and the whites were a little pink. Fanny sometimes said she was getting old, but she never acted like it. She did more work than anyone I knew.

  “Go on, now. Finish the telling.”

  “When the ship docked, I dragged a huge black trunk along the deck. I couldn’t wait to get to land. I don’t know why. I didn’t even really know where I was.”

  “What was in the trunk?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t too heavy. I was able to drag it.”

  “What did it look like near the dock?”

  I stopped to remember. “It was a city. Not too big though. There were buildings and a lot of people. Busy. It seemed new. I don’t know. That part’s fuzzy now.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I never got further than the dock. A man walked up, like he knew me. He said hello and took the handle of my trunk. He set it down and hugged me. Then it got clear. That was as far as the journey went. I had come to him.”

  “And you knew this man.”

  “Well, in the dream I did. It was like I knew him. But in real life I don’t. I just knew I had to tell him. I had to warn him.”

  Fanny’s eyes got big. “Warn him? What about?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. That was what woke me up. In the dream I whispered something to him, but I don’t know what it was! How could I say something in my own dream and not know what it was I said?”

  Fanny shook her head. “It’s one of those dreams that’s telling the future. You’ll know it when it happens. Whatever it is, you’ll know it then.”

  “It was important.”

  “Dreams always are, child. You don’t fret this one.” She touched my hair. “That mark means it’s something special. I don’t know what. But you just let it go for now. It’ll come when it comes. Now go get little Jessie, and let me get your breakfast ready.”

  I went to the bathroom while Fanny made my eggs. In the mirror I looked like the same girl I had been the night before. Fanny said there was a mark, but I couldn’t see it. I looked and looked, but whatever she saw, it wasn’t there.

  The next week Fanny’s sister Rebo came to town. “Rebo’s home and she’s going to look at your mark.” Fanny got my little sister Jessie tucked into her blue jacket. “Come on, I told your mama we’d be home before bedtime.”

  It was Tuesday night, and Fanny always stayed late so my parents could go to dinner together. Instead of leaving right after she fed us dinner, Fanny got to stay and help us get baths. She let Jessie and I stay in my bed together while she told stories. We loved it. But tonight we were going to meet Rebo.

  “Is she at your house?” I asked.

  “No, she’s with Mig. My other sister. You met her one time. She stays over near the woods behind the old store.”

  Fanny didn’t drive, so we walked, with Jessie between us holding our hands.

  Mig’s house was small, with a front porch that dipped on one side a
nd two old rocking chairs. Fanny marched up the steps and opened the door, tapping me on the shoulder to get me to go in first. “Go on, it’s fine. She don’t care about us knocking.”

  It was darker than I expected. Through the dimly lit front room, which had a sofa and some chairs, there was a doorway to the kitchen. Rebo and Mig were sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over something, under a bare light bulb.

  “Mig, we’re coming in.” Fanny’s voice sounded different, like a young girl’s. I glanced at Jessie. Fanny was Rebo’s little sister. Just like Jess was mine. Rebo had silky scarves wrapped around her shoulders and neck, and dark red lipstick on her lips. The red looked wonderful against the deep brown of her skin. She reached out for me as soon as I got in the room.

  “Come over here, girl.”

  She didn’t even look at Fanny or Jessie. She took my face in her warm hands and then glanced over at Mig. “She’s got it.”

  I looked at Fanny. She had taken Jessie around the red formica table and handed her a cookie from a plate.

  Fanny winked and smiled. “It’s okay.”

  Rebo took a little felt bag from her pocket and put it in my hand. “You been marked a seer, child. Now tell me about the dream.”

  It was early evening, not quite dark out in the middle of summer. The bath was warm, heaped high with bubbles that smelled sweet, almost like candy, but when Wendell touched the tip of her tongue to the peaked mound of white in her hand, the taste was bitter.

  Even at eleven years old, she still played with the tub toys her father had never thrown away. She reached over the edge into the plastic bin and pulled out the sailing ship. She had never chosen that one, but it had always been there.

  As she set it free in the bubbly water, the dream from the night before came back. She had been much older, driving alone and then with a man. There was an armadillo dead by the side of the road. The man’s low voice had calmed her. She had kissed him. But the dream had been scary, and she shivered.