F IC T ION 137
people who don’t know better, you might say. We know she’s lying when she opens her mouth. She just doesn’t come around anymore.” “What about her parents?” “They died. At least the mother did anyway. Passed of some illness two, maybe three, years ago.” Isaac wiped his mouth with his napkin, cleared his throat. “Well, I mean, you know, that sucks. Right?” Dolores laughed. “I’d say. But what can you do? The dad left not long after his wife died. Left the girl here and told her he’d be back, but he never came back. Some have their theories. I think he just drank too much and ran off the road somewhere in the woods.” Isaac glanced out the window to find the girl, Anslie, still there, still watching. She looked like an orphan. From a movie. Tattered clothes, dirty face. It was uncanny, almost stupidly eerie. “Where does she live?” he asked. “Orphanage.” Dolores pointed off to some place behind which Isaac assumed was its general direction. “If you ask me, there’s something screwy going on there. She was such a sweet girl once, before all this, but—” She paused, lifting herself from the table. “I don’t know anymore.” Later, Isaac wandered from booth to booth, listening to the sound of live amateur jazz toward the end of the street. He stopped at a booth with apples on a stick, but the apples were all crusty and brown, like spherical fried chicken. “Um,” Isaac began, pointing at the apples. “What are these?” “Fried Apples,” the vendor said. He was a big man. And happy. He didn’t stop smiling. He leaned in close, putting his hand up as if he were telling a secret. “We batter them in our own secret batter and deep fry them. Simple as that.” “Oh,” Isaac said, “nice.” He turned away smiling, shaking his head as if to say imagine that, and there she was–the little girl, Anslie, looking up at him, still and translucent as a marble waif. He saw himself in her eyes, or imagined he did, and suddenly he felt himself grown up, adult in all the fullness of the word. Responsible. The kind of man to put women first, and children. “Hello,” he said, his voice deeper, more sonorous, than usual, “Hello.” Anslie giggled as if she could see right through him. “Hi.” Isaac almost giggled too. He felt silly now, light. “Hi. Is your name Shadow?” “No!” She was laughing now. “Why?” Isaac laughed, too. “Well, you’re close enough to step on, and every step I take, you take. I think your name must be Shadow.” “It isn’t,” she said, “it’s Anslie!” She reached for his hand. “Is your name Shadow?” “Could be, but most people call me Isaac.” He squeezed the warm, sticky hand. “Do you like chicken-fried apple-on-a-stick? Can you even believe such a thing?” “What about ghosts? There’s a ghost here.” “A what?” A clown on a giant unicycle rolled by, bunches of cotton candy bouquets in each hand. To their right, folks lined up to buy local crafts, oil paintings of Athney in all seasons, yard art made from garden tools, quilts depicting Thanksgiving with a Pilgrim’s Progress-Norman Rockwell twist. Ghosts? Why not? He maneuvered them to a bench with a clear view of the festivities. Sure. He could believe anything. “What kind of ghost?” Isaac asked, in a feigned sense of fright. “It’s a woman. She walks all over town looking for her husband, but everyone knows the husband’s lost in the woods somewhere. He left when she died and he never came back and now she’s all alone and, and, and here’s the worst part,