Jack B. Bedell
Two P.I. Micros
Post-Katrina Ghost Story
The private investigator never forgot a set up. She even remembered her parking spots on the cases she worked while she was still in college. That’s why the address she was headed to now bothered her so much. Like a memory where faces and names are blank, but still familiar somehow. Like déjà vu.
Even after she eased her van into a great sight line, nothing about the house reminded her of anything. Not the layout of the neighborhood. Not the pitch of roof. Just the address.
Two Poems
The Old Heads at Camp
—after Joe Wilkins’ “Evening Elegy” I remember the old people marking time at camp, sitting around the table as if it would fly away if they ever stood up, as if the weave of their stories would keep everything where it needed to be, locked in place and secure against time, memory, decay. Every fish brought to the table to clean, every deer carcass, every decision made, or left hanging—the old men connected it all to the past, to whatever happened before we arrived in that moment. Somehow, they had the gift of making everything the result of some other thing, not so much judged but considered against the past they shared, or kept alive at their table. Every meal, every breeze, every sunrise connected to another they’ve known already. Even the taste of black duck stewed over rice, decades-old memory attached to the present for all of us to share. All of it. Young or old. With them or dead.
Memory, Sound Device
My dad stayed with us on weekends after my mother passed. Every night we’d hear him downstairs, talking to Mom, not in any desperate way, just patiently letting her know what we did all day. Some nights, he only talked about what we’d eaten, the gravy she would’ve loved, the roux just the color she’d want it. Other nights, we could hear real joy in his voice bragging about how good my daughter was at math or how one of the boys had done something kind for the neighbors none of us knew. At first, the kids worried about him whenever they heard him, but after a few weeks the sound became a Sinatra tune lulling all of us, ushering us gently from this place somewhere else.