Ghost

Rebecca McKinney: first published in Palm Trees in Midlothian, Tyne and Esk Writers 2010.

 

The cranes are here again in their red-headed thousands; courting, dancing, gleaning what nourishment they can from these wasted November fields as they break their journey south. 

 

Wise little coyote; he knows this is the place for a free lunch.  He peruses the shifting grey ranks, keen eyes picking out those for whom this first—or last—journey is just a little too long.  He will eat well today.

 

An elongated pale shadow moves out there too, silent, a head taller than the chattering Sandhills— and white as the snow-wrapped Sangre de Christos.  Whooping Crane.  Less than a handful left in all of the Rocky Mountains.  To see a Whooper is to see a ghost: the last echo of a fading species.

 

Coyote trots past the white one without interest.  Wise little coyote.  He knows it's not good to bother the dead.

 

 

Betsy Bell and Mary Gray  

Rebecca McKinney

 

A wee story I wrote a few years ago about a walk in the woods. It's true, almost. The song Besty Bell and Mary Gray is traditional Scots, adapted by Janet Fenton.

 

 

Betsy Bell and Mary Gray, they were bonnie lasses

They biggit a bower by yon burnside, and thatched it ower wi’ rashes

They planted herbs and medicines and tended them right gently

Motherwort and rosemary, arrowroot and comfrey

 

   “Witches,” says Fiona.

   “Lesbians,” says Jen.

   “Hills,” says Pauline.

   “Eh?” I say.

   “Betsy Bell and Mary Gray are the names of two hills in Northern Ireland,” Pauline tells us, her voice fading as the February wind draws it away down the brae.  “I read that…I don’t know what it has to do with anything. Oh, bugger…” She freezes, hovering between two strands of barbed wire, one boot on either side of the fence.  “I’m caught.”

   I unsnare the fabric of her fleece from the wire, pull the strands apart so she can squeeze through.  She lifts her right leg gingerly, draws it through the fence, and then holds the wire so the rest of us can follow. 

  Casting her gaze along the half-frozen river, past a narrow footbridge toward the darkening woods on the other side, she laughs. Her laughter bubbles like water under the ice.  “I think it was plague.” 

  Jen sniffs sharply, exhales white vapour.  “How far, you think?”

  The four of us huddle around Pauline’s map, a photocopy of an ordinance survey map from the early 1900s.  We follow the river Almond along with our fingers to the southward bend we now face.  Our destination is a tiny square marked “ruin,” deep in the woods below us.           “Another kilometre,” I say, “maybe a little more.”  The woods on the other side of the river rise up the hill before giving way to stubbled fields, then blackish heather. A ballad-eerie chill whispers against the back of my neck. 

 

   Sometime the night before, the rain had hardened into sleet and then softened again into a light, feathery snow.  There was no central heating in the hired cottage but we were warm enough with logs and coals and red wine.  Pauline sang the song of Betsy Bell and Mary Gray in her grey velvet voice, fingers tapping the rhythm lightly against the body of her guitar.  Like many ballads, it had a beginning and an ending but apparently no middle.  It ended badly, but then they almost always do.  And you want to ask why. The answer is just because.

 

    Betsy Bell and Mary Gray they were bonnie lasses

    They biggit a bower by yon burnside and thatched it ower wi’ rashes

    They wadna heed the minister, they wadna heed their faithers

   They watched the sky in wind and rain and listened tae the weather

 

   It was Pauline’s idea to come look for the grave.  She copied the map in the Central Library on George IV Bridge, and a few lines from a Victorian traveller’s guidebook that directed the curious walker to the grave of two women, apparently named Besty Bell and Mary Gray.  Late at night, after a couple of bottles of red wine, it seemed a good idea. Pauline wanted the band to sing the song.  Maybe finding the grave would help us sing it better. She cut off, turned her face down and fingered a couple of chords.  The rest of us giggled and made ghost noises.

   “They came out here to avoid the plague.  At least that’s what it said in the book where I found the original song.”  The version Pauline taught us is modern, and based on an even more fragmentary tale.  She sings quietly under her breath as she walks ahead, footsteps in the carpet of rotten leaves matching the beat of the melody.  Jen falls into a low, droning harmony behind her.  I can feel Fiona’s silence behind me and glance back. 

   “You okay?”

   A shrug. “Sure.”  She’s older than the rest of us though her moon-shaped face is smooth and unlined. Yesterday she told us about Susan, her daughter who died in a car crash at the age of eighteen. “When the police came that night,” she told us, “the whole earth dropped out from under my feet.  I didn’t know how I was going to keep living.”

   It’s hard to believe that we’ve been making music together all this time, more than two years, and we didn’t know a thing like that.  Why didn’t we?

   Because we never asked.

   But she laughs with the rest of us, and sings in a voice clear and sweet as the blackbird at dawn.  Fiona always sings the angel part.

   We’ve only really known each other through music, through the songs we sing together. Jen’s the political one and Pauline likes her ballads as grim as possible.  Muckle Sang Spice, Jen calls her and we all laugh. 

Fiona likes the love songs.  And me?  I suppose I’m along for the ride, the way I’ve always been. It feels good when my harmony clicks in with the others. 

   We cross the bridge one at a time and turn into the woods.  There are blankets of snowdrops, and rhododendron leaves wet and shiny as plastic.  Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. We aren’t even a mile from the road, but somehow I imagine we’re going to find something in these woods that shouldn’t be here.  The trees close in around us, bare branches creaking in the wind, dripping with melting snow that kisses our cheeks. 

 

    Besty Bell and Mary Gray, they were bonny lasses,

   They biggit a bower by yon burnside and thatched it o’er wi’ rashes

   They thatched it all in rashes green, and planted it wi’ heather

   Men rode oot fae Burgh toon, and slew them baith thegeither.

 

  Our chatter stops as we negotiate the path.  The rhododendrons are so dense that we find ourselves tromping through branches up to our knees.  Our socks and trousers are all soaked. Finally Pauline stops again, consults the map and looks up the hill, beyond the treeline.  There is a solitary standing stone at the top, listing to the left.  It looks about ready to fall over.  It has probably looked about ready to topple for a thousand years or more.

  “Here,” she says.  The stone is marked on the map, directly above the site of the grave.  We turn and gaze down into an impenetrable tangle of rhododendrons, as deep as we are tall.

     “Are we sure this is the right spot?” I ask.

       Pauline peers at the map again.  The alignment of the standing stone with the river’s curve is exactly as it is on the map.  We can be no more than ten feet from the grave.

        “I’ll go in,” Jen pushes into the mass of vegetation. 

        But Fiona catches her arm.  “Nah,” she says.  “Leave it.  We’ll never find anything in there.”

        Jen stops, stands with her hands on her hips for a moment, then lights a cigarette.  Eventually, she exhales and says, “I wonder how long it’s been like this.”

        “Who knows,” I say.

        “D’you suppose folk around here still know the story?” Pauline asks.

         We all shrug, except Fiona, who says, very softly, “No. I dinnae suppose they do.”

         We stand without speaking for a couple of minutes, listening to the sigh of the wind and the steady drip of water onto broad leaves.  Then we turn and begin the walk back to the car.