Memories are wispy ghosts that flit through the shadows of the present, leaving no thoughts of what could have been, or what should have been, but of what was, and will never be again. They lurk in the recesses of our minds, and creep forward-----cautiously, fearing a sudden and unexpected revelation will fall under the gaze of the conscious mind, or be exposed to the cold examinations of the world. Nothing is truly forgotten, but some thoughts are mercifully stowed away safely, and lie dormant, lest we go mad.

I left that old town of coal dust and eternal decay for the last time and head west, not bothering to look back until I crossed the Wabash into Illinois. It was the Lincoln Highway that would take me to St. Louis. Westbound Midwestern teenagers, speeding toward the Pacific sun in a fifty-seven Ford, stopped-----just long enough to take me aboard and marvel at my stories of San Francisco and the Golden West. Somewhere in the center of Illinois corn-country they let me off under black thunderheads that filled sky.

The air smelled electric; and the sky rumbled with a promise of rain. That promise was fulfilled when great raindrops began pelting the earth, washing away the Midwestern gloom, sprinkling the land with a groundless hope that would evaporate in tomorrows noon-day sun. I found shelter under a bridge and watched as the rain as slammed against the creek-----water against water, slashing and splashing at the mid-morning green sadness of my interrupted journey. I cowered beneath the dry bridge, hiding more from my forlorn ghosts than from the onslaught of dripping rainfall and brilliant bolts of electricity that stabbed at the cornstalks and trees that lined the creek.

I could hear the cars above, jarring the old bridge, rattling the peace, and disturbing the ghosts that had followed me. I had a vision of the past. Those old haunts and spooks that traveled the same roads and squatted under the same bridge, began to stir.

All my childhood past spread before me, like a terrible ghost wavering on a dark stairwell. I remembered grandmother's winter morning movements in the kitchen. Dishes rattled, and spoons clattered as I lay beneath a down quilt, anticipating the crunch of my rubber boots in the fresh snow; and imagining myself in a deep cave, safely hidden from hungry bears. Those warm kitchen's sounds and smells brought me from the sanctuary of the cave and onto the cold hardwood floor, where my bare feet padded toward the warmth of the wood-stove. The muted rays of first sunlight crept through the kitchen window, scattered the shadows, and painted the room in the soft hues of morning.

She was sliding hot biscuits from the oven. Eggs like yellow suns sizzled on an iron skillet. That winter kitchen was a warm world of jams and jellies, peaches in glass Mason jars, smoky bacon, and an enameled coffee pot that hissed like a gander and spread its exotic odor throughout the waking house. Naked branches tapped at the frosted window, while the icy wind pressed against our world.

In a corner of the shadow-laced morning I saw grandfather with a sack of dead rabbits, stomping snow from his big boots at the back porch, his empty shotgun propped against an ice-shrouded chair. The small house fairly trembled with each blow from his heavy boots. He lifted me up toward the ceiling with his great miner's arms. His coat, caked with dried blood, smelled all rabbity and was covered with cockleburs that scratched at my bare arms. "Ow, Grandpa," I said as the stubble of his beard brushes my cheek.

"Would you like to see what I have in the sack," he asked, his blue eyes twinkling.

I peered into the flour sack at the round eyes and long, silky ears. I stroked the soft fur, all the while wishing they would awaken with their bunny noses twitching, and run about the room, frightening the lazy cat sleeping in the corner. I imagined finding one of the rabbits alive, wrapping it in a blanket, and giving it aspirin and cough syrup to make it well. I would feed it cabbage-----because I knew Peter Rabbit loved the cabbage that grew in old Mr. McGregor's garden. It would lie by my bed, dreaming rabbit dreams, always ready to awaken and play. But those rabbits never awakened------and none ever would.

On rainy Sundays I would put an apple, a cookie, and a slice of cheese into grandfather's lunch bucket, crawl into the cabinet in the pantry, and pretend I was deep in a dark mine, tons of coal and slate dangling above my head.

Time. Time, when Spring came with its colored eggs and sunshine, Time when the warm sun soaked up the snow, and spread blankets of green across the valley, sending leaves fluttering in the hardy wind, but clinging to their mother trees while sipping in the cool rain. Winter's sorrows faded into azure skies; and April sent puffs of white clouds tacking across a hopeful moon. The town stood like a Welsh village, its fresh-washed sheets and garments flapping, shameless in the backyards, its fathers and sons burrowing ever deeper into the coal-dust earth.

A black locomotive spat steam, and hissed at the world, as it towed its swaying carloads of somber coal-lumps over the creaking trestle, and across the river into Illinois. On the banks, rain-crows cooed at the dark thunderheads building on the other side. Small boys with wooden rifles played soldiers on the black gob-piles, dying glorious, bloodless and merry deaths in the Indiana sun.

The sky darkened and treetops rustled as grandmother gathered in the wash. The air smelled of rain, the first huge drops pelted my face, sliding down my cheeks in cool, fresh streams.

As we reached the porch, the deluge began. The old cat meowed at the screen-door, disgusted and sad that her dry world had changed so abruptly. Raindrops pity-patted tinny thumping tunes on the washtub that hung on the side of the house. Lightning-bolts crackled in the garden and licked at the great oak that stood near the railroad. The ensuing thunder rattled the windows, sending the nearly mad cat to her pantry hideout.

"Tommy, stay away from the cat!" Grandmother said. "They draw lightning."

I believed those things then; but grandmother never believed them. They were just a part of her past. They needed to be said, because they had always been said. To abandon the past altogether, was to be lost in the present. Her childhood was what she called, "the horse and buggy days". To her, those times were mostly carefree days whose hardships were worn as a badge of honor. Only old Grandma Burns, whose thin face hid beneath a calico bonnet, could look back farther.

Tiny Grandma Burns, with her pale Celtic cheeks and sea-blue eyes, was well over one-hundred years old. She was born in Europe, and grew up in the rolling green hills of Southern Indiana. She would talk of dark forests, inhabited by Indians that crept through sycamore forests, stalking deer and bears. She recalled runaway slaves sleeping in her family's barn during the day. They left at night for the next farm as they made their way north to a free Canada. She told of her brother's smiling face as he left the cabin with his musket over his shoulder, and headed south, only to fall on his first day of battle.

I loved to visit her house. Grandmother and I would walk down the railroad to the path that led to her house. Grandma Burns would say, "Dorothy, I was just thinking of you this very morning. You come on in now, and set a spell. I'll just fetch some shortbread for the youngin, and we can talk."

I would take the shortbread to the back-yard where the hens bobbed and pecked at the ground, and geese waddled like fat soldiers. Peaches drooped from sappy trees in the orchard; and hummingbirds hung in the heavy air, suspended above the sunflowers that lined the fence. Her old cat crept through the weeds, vainly stalking sparrows that picked at the gooseberries growing along the walk.

Though I loved gentle grandma Burns, I hated the dark portraits that hung on her walls. They were especially frightening in the night. Those bearded men, and those ashen ladies with their high collars and cameos, seemed to be watching me, following me with dead eyes as I sat in a rocker under the old clock that tick-tocked and chimed like Big Ben. The house smelled of hot butter and old wood. It creaked and crackled in the kerosene lamp-shadows; though no one walked over its floors.

Grandma Burns spoke of the distant past as though it were yesterday. Names of long-dead relatives and friends were brought into conversations and spoken of as though they were living happily in a neighboring county, and were likely to drop by at any moment. Some days she would refer to the President as, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Grant, or Mr. Garfield. Once I heard her speaking to grandmother in a low voice. "Its a sin and no good will come of it! I reckon it's going to take another war before folks sees it."

"What is that?" Grandmother asked.

"Why, those ignorant, heathen, Southern folk, buying and selling dark folk like they were sheep. Mind you, the Lord doesn't look kindly on that. The wrath of God will fall on our nation if we close our eyes to this evil. Folks is folks; and nobody can own them. God bless Mr. Lincoln. He's in the Lord's service."

Grandmother said nothing until we were home. "Poor Grandma Burns; her mind's just about gone," she said to grandfather.

As she grew older, and all of her children were gone, Grandma Burns sat on her porch-swing, sipping tea or sweet cider, peering down the road, as though she were waiting for a rider to approach with news of their whereabouts. No such rider came; and Grandma Burns was laid to rest at one-hundred and five. The pipes of her childhood were silent. The soldiers and Indians were dust; and the bitter-cold wind moaned over her bones. So it is with all of us.

Time. Summertime. The greening of the earth was complete; the air smelled of snakes and wet timber. Fireflies winked across the fields, and mosquitoes buzzed at our beds. Plums, and the fruit of the thorny brambles that clung to our sagging fence, found their ways into grandmother's kitchen. The sweet odor of grapes boiling on the stove permeated the house. She gathered rhubarb from the garden to fill brown pies that cooled in the window. Tomatoes flowed from our garden in an endless stream that filled the pantry with Mason jars. We had fresh, sliced tomatoes for every meal. Grandmother even sliced the green tomatoes, rolled them in flour, and dropped them into a sizzling skillet. Often, I pulled a tomato from my own garden, and sank my teeth into the flesh. The warm juice spurted out and clung to my fingers in sticky globs that attracted honey-bees and wasps.

That was the summer Sean O' Hara's father was killed in the mine. He was the first to go into the shaft; and the gas suffocated him before he could even cry out for help. He survived the war in France, but not the mine. "Poor Mary O' Hara," grandmother said. "Now she will have to look after little Sean herself."

"Yes;" Grandfather said, "and Old Gib just lost his wife three months ago; and now his son. Since he lost his sight, someone needs to look after him too."

Grandfather and Uncle stood on the steps of the funeral parlor, talking with the other miners. They spoke in low voices of President Truman, the union, and crops. No one spoke of Mr. Gilbert O' Hara, who was cold and silent, waiting for them to come inside.

It was the first time I saw a deadman. The coffin sat on a high platform before a lit portrait of an immense Christ who hovered beneath wispy white clouds, his arms outstretched toward Mr. O' Hara. The precisely scaled picture gave the illusion of a gentle Jesus lifting the shiny pine box up to the clouds. Mr. O' Hara appeared small before this image.

I sat in silence amongst the stifled coughs and throat clearings that rippled through the parlor. I wondered if Mr. O' Hara could see us; or if he had already been transported up into that cloudy blue sky.

Women sniffed behind handkerchiefs and fanned their faces with hymnals, while small children fidgeted and folded scraps of colored paper. I didn't know Mr. O' Hara well, but I cried because Sean cried. I cried because Mary O' Hara fell to the floor and three strong miners carried her out into the fresh air. I cried because I was afraid to look at Mr. O' Hara-----though his face was kind and he appeared to be sleeping.

I heard an old German woman ask grandmother, "Why didn't they have it in the Catholic church in Vincennes?"

"It was too hard on the family," grandmother said. "And all their folks are buried here in the old Catholic section. All of his friends live in Ashton-----and old Gib is too blind and feeble to be gallivanting about the county,"

"Well, it don't seem right, them being Catholic and all. You'd think they would be happier with their own kind," the woman said, as she fanned her plump face vigorously.

"It must be hard on you, getting all dressed up, sitting there wiping your eyes, and snorting and sniffing like a sow-----you not being Catholic and all," grandmother said.

Down redbrick Main Street, past the Civil War monument, and over the railroad tracks, we followed the hearse in uncle's old Studebaker. All the drivers turned on their headlights in the bright sun, while the town police car's red lights twirled and flashed in respectful silence. I pressed my face against the window, watching the string of lights behind and the doleful town-folk waving American flags that fluttered in the August breeze. The sad procession wound slowly past the city limits, over the covered bridge and out to the old cemetery.

The sun bore down on the mourners and old Father Sullivan as they stood over the wooden box containing Mr. Gilbert Patrick O' Hara. He was to be buried beside his mother, who lay quietly below, as she had since April's first showers. Rain crows cooed knowingly beneath the willows.

Overhead, a hawk sailed, its shadow gliding over the white headstones and above the sad Irishmen that shifted about in the grass, their tweed caps in their hands, their heads bent low to the brown upturned soil of summer. A coal-train rumbled through the sun-washed valley, rattling the trees and shaking the earth. Unkindly.

Sean's uncle Danny held an umbrella over Mary O' Hara's head as she sat in a folding chair, moist-eyed and pale in her black dress of mourning. I stood near Sean; my eyes downcast, and away from the anguish of his pallid, tear-stained face.

"There, now, Sean; your da's in a finer place now. He's with his dear mother; you can be sure of that, lad," old Gib said. "No more dark mines for the likes of him."

The old man trembled in the warm sunlight as he stood like a bent branch, leaning on his crooked cane. He placed a gnarled hand on the polished lid of his only son's coffin, caressing it, and muttering softly to himself. He had been there many times before, to that field of slanting slabs, stony-white angels, and gleaming marble crosses. His sightless eyes gazed across the death-ridden valley; searching for a silent utterance-----an unheard cry-----an unshed tear-----a single, time-lost smile.

Where then, was the pink baby boy that cried naked in the night and tugged with small fingers at his father's ragged shirtsleeves-----and the footfalls and laughter that once were heard in hopeful youth? Where then, was the scarlet-haired daughter of Erin, the smiling rose of County Cork-----And the pounding sea? Where then, the grief-pounded sea? Where then?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust-----

dripping-----

a dirt-clod and piney smell-----

a dark and muffled ear-stopped hush-----

I was glad father was safe in Indianapolis. I thought of the dark mine and the soot-faced miners that crawled on their bellies through the damp tunnels. I thought of waxen-faced Mr. O' Hara, lying in the pine box that rested on the metal rails. I never played coal miner in the pantry cabinet after that day.

Time. Time slipped by as summer passed into autumn. Leaves that once hung hopeful and verdant, dropped to the ground and lay like crimson and amber patchwork quilts, carpeting the earth, leaving the trees forlorn and bare beneath a sallow sky. October, pumpkin-patched and harvest-mooned, faded into winter. North winds dusted the land with snow, leaving us huddled in the quiet cat-warmth of our homes.

Christmas Eve father and mother visited from Indianapolis, bringing presents that were hidden away for Santa to distribute on Christmas Day. They couldn't stay for Christmas. They were on their way to Cincinnati.

That night grandmother baked cookies shaped like red Santas; and there were tangerines whose peelings slipped off like mittens, orange-slice candy sprinkled with crystal sugar, and chocolate-drops that melted on my tongue, leaving my fingers sticky and sweet.

The Christmas tree stood a corner of the small living room, twinkling beneath silver tinsel that hung like Spanish moss from the branches. Those branches were laden with colored glass balls and winged, trumpeting angels that blew silent carols into the Holy Night.

In the morning I found those gifts from Santa spread around the tree. There was a sad Greyhound bus that rolled across the floor, ringing its bell and stopping-----just long enough for the door to fly open to board new passengers. Cling, cling, it went, as it crossed the kitchen linoleum, pausing at a chair or table-leg to open its door. Cling, cling, the door closed, and off it went again, driverless and no passengers peering out the dark windows.

"Where do buses go, grandma?" I asked, as I held the silent bus in my hands.

"Everywhere," she said. "To Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville-----even California."

There was a red organ-grinder with a furry monkey on top that danced up and down as I cranked "Pop Goes the Weasel."

Grandfather was awake, but still lying in bed when I brought the organ-grinder to him. He turned the crank with his big hand and began to sing to the tune. "All around the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel. . ."

Grandmother entered and told him to take his cloths and move out. That was the last time I saw them together.