THREE DAYS AFTER HE WAS MURDERED, RICHARD PRATT BEGAN TO FEEL MUCH BETTER...
A seemingly random act of violence propels Professor Richard Pratt into The Hereafter. It is a strange, muted, netherworld of the dead-a world in which he is forced to bear...
June 25, 6:00 pm Emigration Canyon, in the Foothills Above Salt Lake City
It's impossible in life not to tread on the people we love.
I suppose it's the nature of being in this frantic ant colony. And no, I don't mean Salt Lake City, specifically, and not even any city for that matter. I guess I mean the whole thing: Life, love, death, and loss.
In stumbling through it all, we can't help but step on each other. We're drunks in the dark, trying to find our way through an empty desert. And so we fall together, and we fall apart, clumsily crushing each other in our confusion. It's part of the deal, I suppose. But I've always believed that when you step on the people you love, you must at least try to tread as lightly as you can. And you must never tread on those whose backs can't bear your weight.
I wish I had always followed that advice, but I know I didn't. For what I did to Justin, I bear the responsibility. And the responsibility for all that followed. For my part in all the death that followed.
And yet, even after all that has happened, I find it impossible to view my life as a tragedy. Even now, after so much is gone, I can't see my story as anything but a miracle. Standing here in these foothills, looking out over the ruined city that was once my home, I'm acutely aware that I have lost... everything. Keith is gone. I'll never see him again, never touch him again. I'll never hold him, or anyone, in my arms again. Justin is gone. Billy is gone. Even Michelle and Pil, who bore me no love, are gone.
I'll never enjoy another meal. I'll never delight in the touch or even the gaze of a lover. And now that Billy has stepped through, I'll never again even enjoy the smile of a friend.
And yet, now that I'm truly alone, I've found this sense of peace that is hard to describe. I remember touches of it from when I was alive. Frequently, after a long day of teaching classes at the University, I'd leave the campus with my head spinning with new ideas and new intellectual connections. Walking home down 2nd South, I'd glance into the cars that lined the road, looking for what I called "artifacts of life."
It was a creepy habit, and one that I shouldn't have indulged. But even while I was alive I knew that every car held a mystery, every passenger seat was a story waiting to be told. The old, battered teddy bear sitting alone in the afternoon sunlight embodied the love of a toddler, and a family that was happy or lost or somewhere in between. The collection of charms hanging from a rear-view mirror. The ticket stub from the symphony in the cup holder. The picture of the old couple lovingly taped to the dashboard, where the driver could glance at it while she waited at stoplights. Every item, proof of another life saturated with mystery and hope and love and despair. Sometimes the awareness of it all would overwhelm me, and I'd feel both too small to understand, and as important as even the most world-shaking heroes in history. It was as if a million flashbulbs suddenly went off and illuminated the vast, dark desert in which I had been wandering. The immeasurable complexity and wonder of it all was humbling and filled me with both awe and terror.
But fortunately, the split second illumination would always wink back out as quickly as it came. And before I reached home, I'd find myself back in the warm and comforting darkness of everyday life. Grateful, because the vastness of it all would have driven me mad.
"The Vastness." That was Billy's word.
Being a ghost is something like that. But for us, those flashbulbs went off, and then the desert stayed illuminated. The grandeur and strangeness of it drove most of us mad. Those whose eyes adjusted to the brilliance longed for the dark, which had been easier to endure. We remembered when the touch of a lover in the middle of the night would collapse the vastness to just a single instant, into a world small enough to fit under the sheets in a locked and inky bedroom.
No, my life wasn't a tragedy. It was longer than many lives. I made mistakes, and I trod on people whose backs could not bear my weight—and yet they loved me anyway.
And I had Keith.
For ten years, right until the moment I died, he showed me the best of what being alive had to offer. My loss of him will be an ache I'll gladly carry. I want to say that I'll carry it forever, but I think even as a ghost, it's impossible to imagine what "forever" really means. And I have every reason to believe that my sanity isn't going to endure it.
But for now, looking over what remains of this once great American city, I can hold fast to my memories. And it will be my pain that keeps me sane for a bit longer.
It may be a day or a month. Or it may be thousands of years. The dead can't know what is coming, any more than the living. But unlike the living, we know that it is going to go on forever...
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