Opening Chapter Of Quitting The Grave

Another entry in my month-long series of posts on Oregon, all in support of my Kickstarter Campaign. Today, I’m very happy to present the first chapter from my novel, Quitting The Grave.

Nothing is impossible for the person who wills it
-Alexander the Great

Three years is a long time to be dead. Certainly long enough for most people to find acceptance. If Christ had been relegated to hell for years rather than days, even he would have been hard pressed to find his way back.

I realize now how trapped I was in my previous existence. I had become complacent in that time-tattered identity. Re-reading these words–this story of another life, these memories from another lifetime–reminds me of a dream mixed with reality. I am no longer able to discern the one from the other. My new life is sharper, more focused on the moment at hand. The memories of my past are haunting me less.

Like the ancient Chinese philosopher, I am well aware we can never be truly sure which of our memories actually happened and which were merely dreams. But life continues without a clear distinction between the two. Perhaps I am finally ready to accept that some aspects of existence may be beyond our control, that we are destined to live forever with a certain measure of uncertainty.

We don’t know anything.

Now that you mention it, I have always dreamed of graveyards. We lived just down the street from the old miner’s cemetery and it was our favorite spot to play as children. Mom complained it was like our second home, that we were hopelessly morbid, that we might as well move our bunk beds inside and take up residence. She constantly threatened us with nightmares.

But despite the unkindness of ravens, they were never nightmares. My childhood impression of cemeteries consisted of well-manicured parks where distinguished gentlemen and educated women took their afternoon tea. Aunt Sylvie told us stories about Charles Dickens and how he used to picnic in the municipal cemeteries to escape the urban rot of Victorian London. Graveyards were the only accessible green space inside the city.

The dreams I remember most starkly had the white rabbit. She would always be smartly dressed, with flowers on her hat and a lilac blue dress that matched our Sunday tablecloth. Her only occupation was to scare away the ravens before they settled on the lawn, and she’d bang pots and hop about making as much noise as possible to ensure they wouldn’t land.

She’d sometimes invite me down for tea, or, if I were in one of my tempers, I’d capriciously chase after her among the headstones. For the longest time, I imagined graves as subterranean rabbit hutches with fine sets of China and pantries filled with carrots and cabbage. Sometimes we’d fight and sometimes we’d play. She didn’t have a name and I can’t remember her having a voice, but that she was a talking rabbit there was never any doubt. How else to explain the conversations we had?

A psychotherapist might say the white rabbit represents my Aunt Sylvie, and the ravens are breast cancer. The graveyard full of living ghosts and talking animals is the guilt that refuses to stay buried. The grave markers are memorials of childhood passages better left behind. The witch–of course there was a witch as well–is my mother.

That’s why psychotherapists are full of shit. Dreams don’t get assigned a meaning until after we wake up. The white rabbit of my childhood was never my Aunt Sylvie, who didn’t catch breast cancer for another decade. She was simply a manifestation of adventure conjured up though a Jungian mixture of Lewis Carroll and Herman Melville.

Even to this day, I count the graveyard dreams with the white rabbit as among my most cherished childhood memories. It’s hard to piece together the fragments as they drift into entropy, but I will always remember her presence. And it’s thanks to Sylvie and the white rabbit that I’ve never been frightened by graveyards. They’re simply the places where people drink their tea and store their carrots after they die.

——–

Henry Logan is the first one to point out the article to me. The story ran on page eight of the local section, in the October 18, 1999 edition of the Eugene Register-Guard, under a piece on homemade Halloween candy and to the right of an update on the Fall Creek tree sitters:

Grave Robbed in Rest-Haven Cemetery, Body Missing

Eugene, October 18–Officials from Rest-Haven Cemetery have reported a grave robbery occurred sometime late Saturday night of the 16th and that the abducted corpse is still missing. According to a police spokesperson, it was the third such grave robbery from the grounds in the past three years.

The body was that of a John Doe, identity unknown, killed the previous Wednesday in a bus accident at 13th and Hilyard Streets. Adding to the mystery, authorities confirmed that each of the prior grave robberies also involved a John Doe.

Police announced they are investigating several suspects in the latest robbery, but refused to speculate on whether there was a connection between the three incidents.

Henry Logan sits down to his second cup of morning coffee, the Register-Guard spread out on the kitchen table before him. Every few moments he earnestly scratches at his head. Perhaps he is remembering back to when he had hair, like an amputee reaching out to shake hands with his phantom limb.

—I suffer from insomnia. I might not be able to sleep until four or five in the morning.

—I would think you’d prefer to meet at night.

—Hell no. I have to force myself to wake up early no matter what. I’ve been retired for a couple of years now, but I schedule everything I do for the morning. That way I’ll be so tired I can’t help but fall asleep.

I empathize. Not being able to sleep must be insufferable. Sleep is my only escape.

—Anyways, I’m sorry to drag you over to my house so early in the morning.

Because of his inability to be crammed into a particular category, Henry Logan is what you might call a typical Eugenean. His eccentricities are what allow him to sweep past you unnoticed. Though he’s devoured a healthy fortune mismanaging his family’s gravel pit on the outskirts of the city, his name means something more to the city than five white letters in Franklin Gothic Medium stenciled onto the side of cement mixers and printed, with third tier status, in the programs of Eugene charity events. He’s most famous for his collection of World War II army vehicles and the not-so-secret bomb shelter under his house armed and stocked for the apocalypse.

In his view, the city took an especially damaging hit during the sixties and still hasn’t fully recovered, though the current mayor is a good man.

—If we give him the chance, he’ll clean out all the goddamn hippies and radicals. And you’re goddamned right I’ll be voting for him next month.

I’m here to ask Henry about his grandfather for my column Eugene Originals. It’s a topic he warms to immediately as he sheds his curmudgeonly demeanor.

Ted Logan was an early arrival to Eugene, back in the 1880s. It’s an exaggeration to call him a legend, a small-time coach robber who outside of Eugene is only remembered by the most recondite historians and Old West authorities, or the occasional movie buff who’s run across his name in the credits of obscure Westerns in which his personage makes a brief cameo. But his story has certainly become a part of the city saga.

—My grandfather was born in Beaumont, Texas, in the year 1855. His father was a farmer, and as the youngest of three boys, my grandfather was going to have to find his own way. He left home at sixteen to drive the coach between Austin and Montgomery. It was a hard time, what with the devastation and shame brought by losing the War, and my grandfather robbed his own coach because he couldn’t find any other way to make a decent living. He then partnered with Will Preston to carry out a few more coach robberies in Texas before they escaped to Missouri and joined the Whiskey-Setter gang.

—The Dakota Falls face-off was my grandfather’s only real claim to fame. Earl Bickell was one of the meanest men running between Missouri and Montana, and most folks steered as clear away from him as they could. He was a known murderer, wanted by the Federal Marshals in connection with the deaths of five men and two women.

—According to the legend, my grandfather caught Bickell cheating at cards, but rather than let it go like a man of sense, he stood up to him. They agreed to a duel that afternoon, and my father shot him clean dead in front of the whole town of Dakota Falls, winning himself a reprieve for his own outlaw ways in the process.

—But that ain’t how it really happened. My grandfather would always say that for every story, there’s as many versions as there are witnesses, and then two more for each person who hears about it later. If my grandfather had agreed to meet Bickell in a face-off later that day, he would have ended up with a bullet in his back as soon as he blinked his eyes. Earl Bickell wasn’t going to wait for a gunfight like it was some kind of movie. No, my grandfather’s only choice was to draw on him right there and then, and that’s what he did. Shot Bickell clean through the chest before he even had a chance to go for his gun. He told me it was the only way you could handle a man like him in those days. Shoot first before he had a chance to shoot you.

—After that, my grandfather became sheriff of Boise, where he lived a few years before being driven out and moving south to Eugene. This is where he stayed the rest of his days, running his own coach service between Eugene and Salem, succeeding at the very business he started out in more than twenty years earlier.

—Do you think your grandfather was telling the truth?

—I know he was.

—Then where’d that other version come from?

—My grandfather made it up. He thought it sounded more heroic. He told some newspaperman in Boise that story, and it made his legend.

——–

Logan knows plenty of stories about his grandfather, and provides more than enough to do my piece. But before I go, Henry points out the article and expresses his concerns about the latest grave robbery.

—My grandfather used to warn me about the cemeteries in Eugene. Grave robberies have been happening here since the beginning. He refused to be buried in Pioneer Cemetery because he didn’t think it was safe. Everyone looking for hidden treasure. Of course, we buried him there anyway. And I don’t want to worry about his grave being robbed and me and my wife feeling guilty because we disobeyed his wishes.

—Hidden treasure?

—How long have you lived in Eugene, Miss Blumenshine?

—Three years. Just long enough to be a suspect in these latest grave robberies, I joke.

—Then I guess you don’t know about the legend of Eugene Skinner.

—Eugene Skinner? Does he have something to do with where Eugene got its name?

—Indeed he does. He named the city after himself, and Skinner Butte as well, where he built his first house.

—I thought the town was founded by the Abercrombie brothers.

—The family sure does act like it. What with all of their showboating and politicking over the years, they make it hard to remember they weren’t the ones to start the town. They may get the credit, but the honor really belongs to Skinner. And according to the stories, he got rich doing it. The richest man in the whole region. Too rich apparently, because they say he was murdered for his money. Some claim it was by his wife, though no one knows exactly what happened. No one alive, anyway.

—What’s this have to do with hidden treasure and your grandfather?

—That’s the reason for all the grave robberies. Skinner was supposedly buried with a valuable family heirloom. Maybe it was gold nuggets he found in the California gold rush. Another version has it he was put into the ground with all his cash sewn into his clothes because he didn’t want to leave any to his wife. No one knows where his grave is located exactly, and so people are always digging up Pioneer Cemetery hoping to make their fortune.

I point out that these John Doe grave robberies took place in Rest-Haven Cemetery and I reassure Mr. Logan his grandfather’s resting place will be safe.

—Let’s hope so. But until the police catch whoever’s behind it, I won’t be able to relax. I already have enough problems getting to sleep as it is.

—Then for your sake, I hope they catch the culprit soon.

What I don’t say is that I’m not about to start holding my breath. The police have much more pressing matters to worry about.

——–

While we’re on the subject, I should tell you I’ve been holding my breath my entire life. My brothers always insisted we not breathe while driving past the cemetery, a bis in die ritual. Of course, they never bothered to tell me the rule didn’t apply when we went exploring the graveyard on foot. I would always vacuum in as much oxygen as possible as we entered the front gate, and they would break into laughter when 40 seconds later I found myself gasping for breath.

It wasn’t until much later I bothered to research the origin of the superstition. It turns out the reason you aren’t supposed to breathe while going past a cemetery is to prevent a recently departed spirit from entering your mouth. The fact you’re still alive can make a spirit jealous, especially those who haven’t had enough time to adjust to the afterlife. Then there’s another old wives’ tale we hadn’t heard of as kids, claiming the reason you should cover your mouth when you yawn isn’t out of politeness but to stop evil spirits from entering.

The two superstitions probably have the same origin, and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In nearly every major language, the words for both soul and breath have the same roots. In Chinese, it’s qi, in Egyptian, it’s ka, in Hebrew, it’s nefesh. In Arabic, tanaffasa means to breathe, nefas means wind, and nefs mean soul. The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, but also soul, courage, and vigor. Along the same lines, the word for ghost comes from the German word geist, meaning mind.

It’s no wonder so many cultures have a custom of covering up their mouths when in the presence of the dead, long before science knew enough about microbiology to worry about germs or disease from decaying flesh. Their language was warning them of the dangers of becoming possessed by spirits. Perhaps Mr. Logan should be more scared for himself than for his grandfather.

——–

I always wear black on Mondays–casual slacks with a black top that may or may not include sleeves. It’s one of those habits that form of their own accord, without any premeditation. I guess it’s how superstitions start. Whatever the cause, black always suits my mood at the start of another week, as if I’m mourning the end of the weekend.

Yet I can’t stand the thought of being called dour, so I always grab a frequency of color–a red scarf, a butterfly pin, Sylvie’s dangling jade necklace–to hide the otherwise absence of hue. Today it’s my champagne belt with the silver buckle, looped around my waist like a tether to convention.

Every Monday morning, clad in my sables, I suffer as the news team gathers for its weekly meeting to assign and strategize upcoming stories. It’s easily my least favorite of our office rituals, the prescribed formality certain of choking off any hints of enthusiasm. I’m not mourning the weekend, but my former self. The same litany passes through my mind, that I’m too good for this job. Awards and platitudes are not enough to assuage me of my fear that I’ve settled with my career the same way I settled with my marriage.

This particular Monday, as I walk into the Register-Guard conference room at quarter till eleven, I feel an extra twinge of anxiety. Susan is looking at me. She hates it when reporters are late, no matter how smartly accessorized we may be. Before I have a chance to open my bag and take out my notebook, she asks if I’ve seen the story on the grave robberies. Her tone suggests that if I offer up the correct answer, I can avoid a lecture.

—Yeah, I just read it.

—Good. You’ve spent a lot of time in Rest-Haven. This will be perfect for you. With any luck, it might get picked up nationally. But move fast, because this story’s only got legs for two, maybe three days before it dies.

Eunice, my closest thing to a friend at the paper, leans over and whispers in my ear.

—Graveyards on Halloween. Lucky you. I smile.

—But these grave robberies could be connected to the riots, complains Kate Kline, one of the newsroom’s more venerable artifacts. She hates to get passed over for a juicy story and has generally been jealous of my success and popularity since my arrival. I find her jealousy typically ridiculous. I’m just about to offer Kate the story if she really wants it when Susan preempts me.

—Everyone will be assigned something related to the riots.

Susan is optimistic there will be more than enough sensational headlines to go around. She’s planned features on how the annual violence will affect the upcoming mayoral election, and reports on how it will impact the city’s tourist industry. There will be interviews with the police, interviews with city officials, interviews with the protestors. The sports section will speculate on how attendance might be affected. The weather reporter will provide forecasts on how the start of the rainy season might limit the protests.

—I want all of our efforts focused. Any personal features you’re working on are officially relegated to the back burner. This is bigger than the election, bigger than homecoming weekend. Don’t even think about taking any vacation days the next four weeks.

In addition to the piece on the grave robberies, I’m gifted two primary assignments: interview the leader of the local anarchist movement about how he is corrupting the youth of the city, and ask the opposing mayoral candidate, Philip Abercrombie, what he thinks of the police response to the riots and if he has any plans to move the department on a new course.

By now, even a recent transplant like myself knows the biggest news story every Halloween is the riots. If I am thinking of avoiding them, I might as well start dodging raindrops.

——–

Walking back to our desks, Eunice prods me about missing the start of the meeting.

—Late night?

—No, early morning.

—With a guy, I hope.

—I guess you could say that. But he was pushing 60 and is definitely not my type.

—Come on, Caya. Let me fix you up with someone. Paul and I know lots of people.

—No thanks. I’m doing fine.

—That depends on what you mean by fine.

—I’m just waiting to meet an alpaca farmer. I figure I’ll settle down on his ranch, and he’ll tend the animals while I learn to knit. We’ll raise a whole family of wool farmers.

—I know just the guy. Paul is friends with an alpaca farmer. He lives just south of town.

Eunice is genuinely excited. She takes out her compact from her desk drawer, and reapplies her lipstick–a very practical sugared maple–by the tiny mirror.

—Sometimes I can’t tell when you’re joking.

—Listen to the pot calling the kettle black.

—Seriously, I’m fine.

Thankfully Eunice changes the subject. —Are we still on for lunch?

—Of course we are. I can’t wait to meet your grandfather.

—Good. And don’t forget on Wednesday we’re having lunch with the girls. We have to do something to celebrate your birthday on the actual day. Your party’s not going to be until Saturday.

—I told you we should just forget about the whole thing. Eunice knows I’m not comfortable with so much attention, but as usual refuses to relent. It probably explains why we are still friends.

——–

Allow me to share a story with you about the forest near my childhood home in McCloud, California. A young girl, maybe ten years old, died there many years ago. Some claimed she’d been murdered. Others that she lost her way and died of exposure. Either way, she has haunted the area ever since. Several years after her death, a passing motorist saw the girl standing inside the cemetery, clutching at the front gate as if desperate to open it. She was wearing a white dress visible through the lingering fog, and her cries could be heard all the way from the road. By the time police arrived, they found the cemetery empty. They did, however, find several bars on the gate bent open and branded by what appeared to be the impressions of small handprints. It’s true that our cemetery has a crooked gate, but I’ve never seen any handprints.

It will probably seem morbid to you, but I always hoped to meet this girl. I wanted to ask her what it’s like to be dead. Is she lonely living all by herself, or does she have other ghosts to keep her company? Does it feel like she’s inside a dream? Would she like to be my friend?

For too many years to admit, I have suffered a slow decay. My most essential qualities moldering off me like spent ash. My greatest fear is that life will end up as a burnt fuse of random encounters, with no inherent meaning in all the suffering we’re forced to endure. Anymore, I glide from one tragedy to the next, protected by my objectivity that allows me to be a great journalist, but which keeps me far removed from the people around me. I am unassailable. Not even the consequences of my own misdeeds have the power to touch me.

How did I become so disconnected? Was it genetics? That would be the same as saying the only reason Eugene became eccentric and self-absorbed was because of its Northwest geography. Maybe it was my upbringing? My Protestant parents, transplants from the city, raised me half-hippie, half-determined to take the corporate world by storm, white but female, well-off but not rich, a cluttered bag of ethnicities that’s left me completely devoid of an identity to claim as my own.

I have no way of knowing what happened to that better version of me because I have no idea who I am. I’m a Jane Doe, a victim of amnesia, a ghost of a ghost.

Anymore, I only allow people to know a few things about me, and one of them is that I like to spend time in graveyards. I have a history, but it’s buried beneath sins best forgotten and choices never made. I’m alive, but what’s the point?

——–

The Eugene police station is drab and cluttered, the detectives’ desks crammed together under the unnerving buzzglow fluorescence. The room feels sapped of color, as if you’ve been trapped inside a saturated lomograph. They don’t even have cubicles. The desks are arranged in groups of four like an elementary school art classroom. It’s no wonder most of the detectives spend as much time as possible out in the field.

Spencer preempts me before I can even say hello. —I hope this isn’t about the riots because we’re under strict orders not to give interviews, even off the record.

With the exception of my Aunt Sylvie, Spencer is the most optimistic and uncynical person I’ve ever known. His beleaguered tone warns me the situation has grown severe.

—It’s that bad, huh?

—You read your paper, don’t you? I’ve never seen so much backlash against the department. It’s like the sixties all over again.

Spencer Kim grew up in Eugene, but at age 33 he certainly doesn’t remember the sixties. I met him during our freshman year at Stanford, soon after I first started up with Nathan. They were already best friends, both having settled on a career in law enforcement. He’s my lone, true friend in Eugene. Probably the whole world.

—You can relax. I’m here about the grave robberies.

—The grave robberies? Well I can’t help you with that either. We don’t know anything.

—I figured, but I have to ask anyway. Who are the possible suspects and all that.

Spencer looks around to make sure no one is close enough to overhear. Only a couple of rookies are in the office, forced into the corner desks, too busy sifting through files to pay us any attention.

—It’s not my case so I can’t tell you anything definite, but my understanding is there aren’t any suspects. My best guess is they’re looking at both the anarchists and witches as persons of interest. You know, the usual.

Exactly what Susan wants to hear. I look at him skeptically.

—What? he asks innocently.

—I suppose the anarchists because they’re always committing acts of public vandalism as a way to draw attention to themselves. And the witches, because they’re occult satanists who want to defile our most sacred rituals.

When I’m finished being sarcastic, I add, —Neither group has any history with the graveyards. And you haven’t accounted for the fact that all three corpses were John Does. You can’t really think either group had anything to do with this, do you?

—No, of course not.

—Who’s working the case?

—It’s on Sergeant Ulrich’s board, but my guess is it’s not getting much attention from anyone.

Spencer pulls me in closer, speaking just above a whisper. —Listen, if you want to know the truth, the department’s embarrassed. This is pretty sensational. They have enough problems on their hands with everything going on right now. I think they’re hoping to bury the whole thing.

—No pun intended, right? Spencer looks at me blankly for a second before realizing the joke.

—Yeah, exactly.

I’m not surprised. This is not Spencer being cynical. He believes the system can work. No matter how disappointed he becomes, he works that much harder to force a change. If the department were trying to sweep something under the rug, Spencer would normally let me know so I could apply just the right amount of public pressure through the paper. It’s not like him to mutely toe the company line.

—There’s something you’re not telling me.

Spencer leans in. —Have a look at the video tape.

—Video?

—The security video from Rest-Haven. Make sure they show it to you.

—There’s a clue?

—That’s all I’m going to say. Just watch it. How’d you get assigned to this case, anyway?

—Who else would they assign to a story at the graveyards?

Spencer laughs. —Yeah, it really suits your personality. If you find anything out, let me know, will you. Before it goes in, okay?

—I promise.

If you find yourself intrigued, you can go right now to my Kickstarter page and by a pre-release copy of Quitting The Grave. Because who doesn’t want to read a story that combines grave robberies, ghosts, witches, anarchists, corrupt politicians, and true-life American history!