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Date with the Dead

This Wednesday there is going to be a full moon and I’ve planned a date for Tenant and me. Do you think he’ll go with me?

I’m going to pick him up at the cemetery at nine o’clock and take him down the coulee to this tiny stream I know. He’s not from around here, so he won’t have seen it before. Then we’re going to have a little picnic. He won’t be interested in the food. He’ll just have to devour me with his eyes. I’ll have grape juice and sandwiches, but only because of my medical condition. It’s called Being Alive. I’ll have to remedy that someday.

We’ll lie on a blanket and talk about our dreams and I’ll tell him one of my favorite fairy tales. Then I’ll take him home and maybe… if I’m lucky… he’ll kiss me.

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Kerry was careful when she got ready that night. She had a shower and curled her hair. Then she put on a short jean skirt with black leggings and knee-high boots. Then she put on a white T-shirt, a red knit cardigan and went out into the kitchen to pack her supper.

“Where are you going dressed like that?” Aaron said, actually peeling himself off the couch to have a look at her getup.

She looked down at herself. Yeah, she might have overdone it. In a small town, she looked ridiculous. Well, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she was going to meet anyone other than Tenant. So, she turned her nose upwards, packed her juice box along with a crystal goblet, and grabbed a blanket from the supply cupboard.

On her way to the cemetery, she saw a total of three people. Two were teenage girls in the grade below her. They were walking towards her house after going to the store. Each one was carrying an ice cream cone. Kerry couldn’t help but notice it when they dropped a wet napkin on her next-door neighbor’s lawn. She turned her head and pretended not to notice what they did, but instead of becoming less involved, she became more involved. She saw a curtain flicker. The old lady had definitely seen them.

Kerry hurried on. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the garbage trail. It was summer, so her yard had been unusually free of trash. She had only had to clean up once that week, but the neighbor’s looked like school was still in session and everyone was dropping their lunch trash in the same yard.

The last person she saw was the driver of a pickup truck. He was pulling out of the cemetery as she was walking in, but he was too far away, so she didn’t register anything except that someone was coming out as she was going in. It could have been anyone.

She walked to the far end of the cemetery and stood in front of Tenant’s grave.

“Hello darling,” she said out loud. “Are you ready?”

Then she walked to the coulee just like she planned.

The coulees in that area were amazing. The prairie stretched out long and hard and then abruptly dipped in. In the coulee, the grass grew in lush green heaps. There were mosquitoes because of the stream, but it didn’t stop the wildflowers from spreading like a brush fire.

Kerry was happy as she sat by herself and pretended she was on a date. She had never been on one before. She thought the boys in her high school had nothing to offer her if they had liked her, which they didn’t. She was on her own there… just like now.

Later, she sat on the gate of some farmer’s land and watched the sunset. When twilight fell, she started walking back to the graveyard. Once she got there, there was no one to kiss goodnight to. There was no one to smile at or thank for a good time. There was nothing.

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There had to be something.

She lay down on the grass beside Tenant’s grave and put her arm over where his body should be under the grass. The night was warm and more than anything, Kerry did not want to go home. She wanted to die and sleep there next to someone who had never neglected her, who had never shut her down, and who had never told her she was too different for them to be together.

Eventually, she fell asleep. She didn’t dream at all. She was merely conscious one moment and deeply asleep the next.

Morning came.

She was bitterly cold. It was summer, but she was frozen to the bone. The sun was rising, but she felt frost-bitten. And she still had to walk home.

Rising, she wondered what time it was.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” someone shouted from down the gravel road of the cemetery.

Kerry fell backward at the sound of his voice. That was what had woken her. It was the sound of his truck. Glancing at the gates, it was the same truck she had seen leaving the cemetery when she came the night before.

Standing in front of her was John Tracton. He lived on the other side of town and he was in the grade above her, so she knew his name. He was wearing beaten-up running shoes, torn jeans, an ancient paint shirt, a mucky baseball cap, and work gloves.

Kerry stood up, immediately heated by the embarrassment of being caught in her guilty pleasure.

“Um, I was just leaving,” she muttered as she gathered up her stuff and tried to pass him.

His face was extremely distressed as he looked at the tombstone and her clothes, which he undoubtedly recognized from the night before. Dressing up cute in a small farming town didn’t go unnoticed.

“Wait. Was he a friend of yours?” John asked concernedly, pointing to Tenant’s monument.

“No,” she felt bound to admit. “I didn’t know him.” She started down the gravel road towards the gates.

“If you didn’t know him, then why did you spend the night here? That’s downright creepy.” He paused then shouted, “Hang on. Did something worse happen to you than just you sleeping here? Why didn’t you go home?”

Mercy! He thought she’d come here in desperation after someone abused her the night before! “No. Nothing weird happened. I’m fine. Leave me alone,” she snapped. Kerry was panting now in her hurry to get away from him. Didn’t he realize that he should just forget what he saw?

“Wait,” he said, running up beside her and speaking quieter. “Let me take you home. If someone sees you walking home, looking like that at this hour you’re going to look like …” he hesitated uncomfortably before he finished saying, “a girl walking home in the morning.”

She paused. He was right. She didn’t want anyone to see her. Gossip knew no bounds in a town like this. She looked around helplessly and saw his truck. He had a lawnmower in the back. “But aren’t you supposed to be cutting the grass for the town? Won’t your boss be mad if you take off?”

He smirked and opened the vehicle door for her. “You’ve got to be kidding. Taking you home won’t take me five minutes. He won’t notice. Get in.”

Kerry got in the truck and looked straight in front of her while he revved the engine.

She wished she knew more about John. She didn’t know if he was the type of person who would keep this a secret. Truly, of all the guys in the grade above hers, he was the one she knew the least about.

“Hey,” Kerry said when they started driving. “Do you think you could keep this a secret?”

“Why?” he asked. His voice was mildly uncomfortable.

“People already think I’m a weirdo. Can we not make it worse?”

“I never thought you were a weirdo.”

She groaned. Well, if he didn’t before, he definitely did now.

“So, why did you go there?” he asked, turning his brown eyes on her.

She put her head in her hands and put her face between her knees. “I hate it here. I hate being alone. I wish I was dead.”

He didn’t answer.

When she lifted her head, she couldn’t bear to look at him. Her face was tear-streaked and she was mortified that she had broken down and told him something like that. It was like a desperate call for help, but at the same time, she didn’t want to seem like she was trying to get attention.

“If you hate being alone, why don’t you make some friends?” he asked.

She snorted and when she spoke, her tone was sarcastic. “Yeah. I wonder why I didn’t think of that. Exactly who am I supposed to make friends with? I live in probably the second most crumbled-down house in town. Socialites beware. And who isn’t a socialite in this town? Kids from school obviously don’t respect anything about me. They are always throwing their litter in my yard and guess who gets to pick it up sometimes every damn day?”

He flinched.

Then he pulled up in front of her house. There was trash on her lawn. Kerry got out of the truck and on her way up the front walk she kicked an empty pop bottle out of her way.

He didn’t understand.

When she got in the house, she went straight for the bathroom. When she looked in the mirror she saw that her face was a mess. There were mosquito bites from the middle of her forehead to her temple and three under her right eye. She had been sleeping on her left side, so that side had been open. Besides that, she saw that John was right. She looked like the survivor of a one-night-stand.

Terrific.