FIRST STANZA: CLOTH GHOST

34.

The dead man's shoes spoke to Kurt long before he put them on.

He expected the shoes to say something, of course; Kurt had hundreds of articles of clothing from the dearly departed, a wardrobe of wearable ghosts that fueled his existence. It wasn't unusual, when browsing estate sales, to find a jacket that whispered of adulterous affairs, a pair of slacks that sobbed uncontrollably about financial ruin. While searching through the piles of belongings at these sales, Kurt heard the constant babble of past lies and past lives rising from the tables where the clothing lay neatly folded.

So he wasn't surprised in the least to find shoes with something to say. But while most of the clothing spoke to him in words, in plaintive voices tinged with desperation, these shoes spoke a single, simple image: a catfish.

It started as a white dot on the horizon, floating in a vast expanse of orange. But the dot moved, coming closer and closer, until at last the dot took its fish form, its continual back-and-forth sweeps of the tail coming into focus. Finally, as the catfish filled the entire slate of his mind, Kurt absently replaced the light tan sweater he'd been holding and turned his attention to the shoes.

The sweater had been quiet. Or maybe it hadn't been, but if it said anything, its voice was drowned out by the image the shoes pushed his way.

A catfish. What did that mean?

The scene began to loop again, and Kurt moved to touch the shoes. When he did, the image in his mind became a bit more vibrant, a bit more dimensional.

“Good stuff, huh?”

Kurt swiveled his head in the direction of the voice, the catfish momentarily dissolving as his concentration broke. A short man stood next to him, rifling through the folded clothes of lot 159; a scruffy beard concealed most of his face.

“Sorry,” Kurt said, trying to force a smile into his voice. “I didn't catch that.”

The bearded guy picked up the tan sweater Kurt had just been holding, examined it a few moments, began folding it again. He finally looked at Kurt. “Good stuff here. Guy left lots of stuff.”

“Oh,” Kurt said, feeling as if his mind were in a slower gear than usual. “Yeah. Sure.”

And even as he tried to sift through the rest of lot 159, an assortment of clothing left by a dead man to scavengers at an estate sale, one item continued to speak to him.

The shoes.

Sending him the flickering scenes of the catfish, swimming against the murky current of his mind.

39.

That evening, after paying just fifty dollars for the entire lot (the bearded guy, for all his talk about the quality of lot 159, didn't offer a single bid), Kurt unlocked the rolling doors of his workshop.

He'd already sealed all the clothing from lot 159-shoes, shirts, slacks-in a plastic storage container, and now he carried the container to another door on the back wall of his workshop. He paused to unlock this door as well, then pushed it open and flipped the light switch that illuminated a single overhead bulb.

Cold storage. That's what he called this room. It was the size of a single garage stall-had once been a garage stall, in fact-but it held no vehicles. Instead, giant storage bins just like the one that now held lot 159 filled the entire room, stacked floor to ceiling.

The room remained unheated, because there was no reason to heat it. Quite the opposite, in fact, because cold-especially the frosty autumn and winter nights here in western Montana-fueled the fears, the ghosts, that spoke to him. The fears and ghosts that fed his work.

After all, not every piece of clothing was haunted by the ghost of the person who wore it. Far from it. Perhaps only one out of every twenty pieces had something to say. Putting the clothing in cold storage, keeping it in isolation, tended to amplify the voices caught inside the folds of denim or cotton or silk or wool.

Kurt paused at the door, glancing up at the noticeable flicker in the bulb overhead. From its bare, corroded cord, it swung slightly, rocked by a gentle breeze that wasn't there.

From inside the plastic storage containers stacked around him, Kurt heard murmurs. Whispers. Chatters. Even a few screams. No more than a dozen distinct voices in all, out of the more than two hundreds of articles of clothing neatly tucked away into this space. And even now, unamplified by cold storage or isolation, the shoes were projecting images of the catfish in his mind, a movie to accompany the cacaphonic soundtrack of the voices.

He shuddered.

Kurt didn't want to confine ghosts of the dead in cold storage. He didn't want to hear them scream or suffer. He didn't want any of this.

And yet he knew this was what he had to do. It was his task, to listen to these ghosts of the present, because he could never hear the ghosts of his past-the past that stretched beyond truck driving school, beyond his therapy sessions with Todd almost eight years ago.

The invisible past that haunted him more than any of the ghosts ever could.

15.

Kurt sat, nervously tapping his foot against the floor as he waited to meet the therapist for the first time.

He'd graduated from the High Road Truck Driving School only a few weeks before. Top scores, and he'd been recruited by trucking firms all over the country. He could go anywhere he wanted, start his career. Maybe eventually buy a rig of his own.

Eventually.

But right now, he was here because . . . well, he'd let the therapist decide that. That's what therapists did, didn't they? They listened to your secrets, nodded their heads appreciatively, and told you what was wrong with you. End of story.

So that's why he was here. Not really for the end of the story, but for the beginning of it. That was the Great Secret he was going to have to admit to the therapist, something he'd not mentioned to any of the other students at the driving school, something he'd not mentioned to any of the trucking firms trying to recruit him.

In fact, the only person who knew was Marcus, the one instructor who had become something of a friend. One night, after a few beers with Marcus, Kurt had blurted his secret confession. Slowly, hesitantly at first, but then in a torrent as Marcus listened.

After he'd finished his story, Marcus had taken the last swig of his draft, nodded, looked at him, and given him the names of two people. One a private detective and the other a therapist.

So he'd called the therapist. Later, he might be able to call the private detective. But not yet.

Kurt smiled, thinking of the incongruity of Marcus, a sterotypically big, beefy guy with a shaved head and a pointed Van Dyke beard, telling him about a therapist. Swigging that last drink of beer? Yeah, Marcus looked natural doing that. But Marcus would look decidedly out of place sitting here, in this room, surrounded by soft flute music and burning incense, waiting to talk to a therapist about his past.

The way Kurt was waiting now.

The door at the back of the waiting room opened, and a pink-faced woman walked in. She stopped a moment, stared at Kurt intently, then moved quickly through the waiting room and to the door to the outside, her arms wrapped tightly against her.

“Mr. Marlowe?”

Kurt turned his attention back to the doorway the woman had emerged from, now filled by a tall, lanky man with dirty blond, shoulder-length hair.

Kurt stood. “Yeah.”

“You ready?”

“Okay. Yeah, sure.” Kurt walked across the waiting room. The lanky man waited for him to approach and held out his hand. “I'm Todd Michael Greene,” he said. “Just call me Todd.”

Kurt stood awkwardly for a moment, then shook hands. “I'm Kurt.”

Todd backed into the darkened room, swept his arm as an invitation to enter. “Have a seat.”

Kurt looked at the small couch. “Just sit?” he asked.

Todd smiled. “Lie down, if you like. I get that a lot.”

Kurt moved to the sofa, sat, started tapping his foot on the floor again.

Todd moved to a small desk in the corner, opened a folder, and looked through it a few moments. While he read, Kurt scanned the office. Nothing expensive; not what he'd imagined. He'd expected heavy furnishings of burled walnut in dark tones. Instead, he saw particle-board shelving units holding several books. At least the books had the kinds of titles he'd expect, tomes about relationships and couples and depression. A couple thick books that seemed to be drug references.

Todd's desk was clean and neat, almost bare. A framed photo was turned away from Kurt and facing the office chair where Todd sat. Still reading.

“So Marcus recommended you?” Todd finally asked, keeping the folder at his desk open and looking at Kurt.

Kurt cast his eyes toward the floor. “Yeah.”

“I've known Marcus for a long time. He's a good man.”

“Yeah.”

Todd smiled, pushed his way back from the desk, rolling on the chair's wheels. “We're off to a strong start.”

Kurt looked up again. “Yeah.” He returned the smile.

“Okay, you mind if I call you Kurt?”

“No. I mean, sure. Call me Kurt.”

“You want a drink?” He rolled the chair over to a dorm-sized refrigerator on the floor. “Afraid I don't have anything harder than your basic Pepsi.”

“Diet?” Kurt asked.

“Sure.”

Todd retrieved a Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator, rolled back to him with it. “Ice?”

“No, no, that's good.”

Todd rolled back a few feet without retreating behind the desk, and watched while Kurt took his first drink.

“Thanks,” Kurt mumbled. He noticed his foot was tapping the hardwood floor a little too loudly, and made himself stop.

“Nice gloves,” Todd began.

Kurt looked at the driving gloves on his hands. “Yeah.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Driving gloves. Good for . . . um . . . driving.”

Todd smiled. “But you're not driving right now.”

“I guess not.”

“You wear them all the time?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why's that?”

Kurt shrugged again. “They make me feel better.”

Todd nodded again. “Nothing wrong with that at all.” He paused. “Tell me why you're here, Kurt.”

“Well, like you said, because Marcus gave me your name.”

“Okay. But more than that. You're here to talk, obviously. Maybe find some answers?”

“Yeah.”

“So before we find the answers, we have to look at the questions.”

“Okay.” Kurt took a deep breath, raised the can of soda to his lips and drank again, then exhaled. “I . . . uh . . . don't know who I am.”

Todd said nothing, so Kurt rushed to fill the silence. “I mean, past the last six months. I'm . . . I guess you could say I have amnesia.”

Todd nodded thoughtfully, pushed himself up on his chair and wrapped one leg under him. A casual pose in his Office Max chair. “Well, we'll just start by exploring that. Six months, you say?”

“Roughly. About the time I came to California, really.”

“And where were you before?”

Kurt smiled grimly. “You tell me.”

“So you have no memories before . . .”

“Before truck driving school.”

“What about your childhood? Where you grew up, went to school, that kind of thing?”

“Nothing.”

“But you're able to form new memories.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, during your trucking school, for instance. You remember what you learned there without any problems, who you met.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Todd seemed to be considering a deep question.

“I know it's crazy,” Kurt said. “But that's why I'm here, huh?” He nervously took another sip of his Diet Pepsi. “Because I'm crazy.”

“I'd like to send you to a friend-an MD-for some scans and other tests to start with, Kurt. But the answer to your question is: it's not crazy at all.” He cleared his throat. “Most people have no idea who they are.”

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