Down Among the Gilly Fish

DOWN AMONG THE GILLY FISH / Jeanne Dixon BEFORE THEY LET HER have her clothes back so she could go, they reminded her once again—in the gentlest, kindest, most compassionate voices—that she could not see him again. Not in the way she claimed she had. "Oh, in the next life, surely, if you're of that persuasion," one of the doctors supposed, "but not in this world. What you see is what you want to see, a mental projection. This happens sometimes to those in certain circumstances." What she saw was her true heart's desire, and she understood this. Doctors are very scientific in their explanation. The dead stay dead. Buried is buried. And yet she saw him close up this time, standing in the full Ught of the mid-morning sun, which made a dazzUng halo around his good famUiar head and shot a Une of silver across his shoulders and down the arms that must have been cold in spite of the sun. There had been a frost the night before, and he really should not be out Uke this, in the chUly air at the edge of the freeway up-ramp, wearing nothing but those Penney's blue jeans and the black FOREIGNER t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off the way kids do. The car she was riding in slowed to stop. She gasped and waved. Her whole face hquefied with happiness to see him. She would never have thought to find him on this verge of grass beside the freeway. He'd been gone fourteen months— if this was September—and because of this she'd learned to hate the summer, hate the sun. He looked up at her and smiled, and she could see there'd been some reckless mistake on somebody's part: he'd never died at aU. His eyes met hers, and his face too was fuU of joy, exactly Uke hers. It matched exactly. He waved an arm and started down the grassy slope toward them. Her husband WiU was driving, and though he slowed, he didn't stop. He had only slowed to enter freeway traffic. She could see this now, and she couldn't find her voice to make him stop. No, not The Missouri Review · 227 voice. Words. She couldn't find the words that would make him beUeve her. In the back of the wagon, their schnauzer panted and whined. "The dog wants out," she said, in a voice too shriU to be hers. But a hornet was raging against the tinted windshield, and WiU swatted at it with a glove, making such a commotion she knew he hadn't heard her. He let the window down and the hornet blew out. By now they'd climbed the up-ramp, accelerated into the first lane of traffic out of Missoula, and were switching to a fast lane behind a White Express truck. The boy in the t-shirt was gone again, forever. "You okay?" WUl asked. He was wearing dark glasses and a plastic cap puUed down on his short sandy hair. Like her, he was greying. "Tm okay." "You sure?" "Why shouldn't I be okay?" "You're quiet, Glenna." "Is that an accusation?" He sighed. "Observation." "The dog wants out," she said. She'd been gripping the edge of the leatherette seat with such tension her fingers had frozen in their curled position. "Better stop," she said. "Frodo has got to go out." "Frodo has always got to go out." Like her, the dog was a relic from happier times, from the years when the chUdren were young and she had read them The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, when they all had beUeved love lasted forever, that no harm could come if they loved each other. But harm had come. Frodo whimpered and whined, as if the harm were her fault. "Dog's got a problem lots bigger than bladder." WUl tugged at the visor of his cap, stared straight into the heart of the traffic. "It's just that he doesn't understand," she said. "Understand what?" He flicked the signal Ught, glanced into the mirror, and started...