KELLER JACKSON: Go Home, Pilgrim

Pic credit: Nicolas Ortega-Ward

Elizabeth Bruce

I tried church.

In a little Texas town 500 miles away I lingered in the choir loft.

On the hour, every hour I prostrated myself to God like a dishrag on a dirty floor soaking up tomato soup. Cold and low as an alligator sliding toward the swamp.

Come down to earth, they said. The people in the pews. 

God don’t need no balcony, brother.

No Sistine Chapel.

No Michelangelo.

No Easter Bread on Serifos.

That ain’t what it means to be holy.

Talk to her, son, the preacher said. Go home, pilgrim. Embrace your wife. Raise your children. Break some bread together. You don’t gotta be in pain, traveler.

  I tried to still the ache.

I lay my body down and tried to feel the Hand of God hovering over me. Heating up my whole self like the warm coals of firelight ready to guide me home.

But it didn’t work.

Not for long.

The voices came back. Louder than before.

What do you expect, fool, they said.

Think you can get rid of us?

Like a cancer?

Like a locust egg in a lizard’s mouth?

Like a wrongful conviction in a just land?

Dead souls don’t disintegrate.

Friend.

We are yours for life.

So, I came back.

And here I am.

Watching.

And waiting.

The spirit of calamity, That’s me. 

Calamity’s its own kind of poetry, I guess. If you know how to listen.

 

“Is it morning? I can’t tell,” my Sarah mumbled that night I snuck into the hospital just days before she died. 

She didn’t know I was there. She was talking to herself.

“Why do they keep the blinds closed here? Over the windows. The shades. I wish they wouldn’t do that.” 

I guess she did that a lot, mutter to herself. 

Oh, my poor Sarah. Lying there so full of pain and agony. The insides of her hollowed out. Her bones brittle as porcelain. Her skin a splotchy white. 

“Not everyone dying wants the dark,” she whispered. “I don’t want the dark. I want my boys. Where are my boys? Is it morning? Why won’t they let them visit? Please God, let me see my boys before I die. Let me hold them. Let me feel their hearts beating in their chests.”

That’s when I went to her. I put my hand in hers and held it.

She stopped muttering and looked over at me in the dark. Confused by the scraggle of my face. The scars. The beard. The tangled hair. 

I look different. 

I stood there, letting her feel my hand. The callouses. The gnarly bones.

“Keller, is that you?” she said at last. “Have you come? Finally? I knew you’d come. It’s not in you to stay gone. Forever.”

That got me. How could she be so forgiving? I had stayed away. A coward. A pathetic wretch. I was still away.

“They miss you, the boys. I ‘ve missed you too.” She rubbed my hand. Gentle, like this rough paw of mine was a tiny kitten.

“Oh Sarah. I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had to leave. The voices, you know. I had to take them away from our boy Willis. They would have got to him too, I know they would. Different as he is. They would have sensed an opening and done to him what they done to me.”

“Ah yes, the voices. It was always the voices.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so very sorry.”

“Come closer, Kelly.”

“I’m here, Sarah. Squeeze my hand.”

“Your hands are cold, Kelly. Are you unwell?”

“I’m fine, sugar. You just rest.”

“Is it morning?”

“No, it’s night. Deep night.”

“Oh, yes. I can feel it now. Deep night. Is that what it’s like for you, Kelly? Like deep night?”

“Yes, darlin’. Something like that. Like deep night. You don’t want to know, sweetheart. No good will come of that.”

“You are too sad. Like the boys when they see me like this. Don’t you too be sad.”

“Oh, the boys. The boys. What will they do?”

“Ballard’s a man now, more or less. You’d be proud, Keller. So very proud. A fine young man.”

“I am proud, honey. As proud as a shameful man can be.”

“I’m tired. Is it morning?”

“No darling. It’s still night. Deepest night.”

“Are you really here, Keller? Have I died?”

“No sweetheart. You’re not gone yet. It’s just me. I’m just a ghost. Your old Keller’s just a ghost now. You sleep, you hear.”

“All right. Kelly?”

“Yes darling.”

“Look after our boys. Please. Promise me.”

“I will,” I said. “I will. I promise I’ll look after our boys.”

And I try.

I really try.

I keep a watch out for calamity, my old friend.

Every Tuesday I watch our boys.

They don’t see me.

But I’m the watcher.

This is an excerpt from the Novel-In-Progress I Will Read Ashes For You

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Bio: A native Texan, Washington, DC-based author Elizabeth Bruce is an award-winning novelist & short story author (Universally Adored & Other One Dollar Stories from Vine Leave Press), teaching artist, and podcaster. Her novel-in-progress (which features many characters from her recent story collection) is set in 1980 in the petrochemical refinery town of Texas City, site of the 1947 Texas City Disaster, still the deadliest industrial accident in US history and, until 9/11, the deadliest loss of firefighter lives. Her website is elizabethbrucedc.com

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Setu, May 2025