He toiled in obscurity and in soulless colors of brass and steel, he felt like the chord of something coming from an instrument sounding bad and looking equally as ugly.
An illusion? Perhaps.
Think of his life more like something that lives on in the heart of the dead, left to rot and ruin, yes, that, maybe.

Shelby pointed at the brass trees to something she saw beyond the thicket. It was her family’s two-story home, it stood, “there… just beyond the trees,” she explained.

“It’s where I grew up…with m’ ma and m’ pa. He ran the station here until he died. I remember when he came here to sell tickets and then he’d come home to work the farm. Fruit trees, we had orange and lemon trees, just yonder. We sold the fruit in town…at the market.” Her toe skid across the dirt as she spoke.

“I’m pretty sure there was never no house over there.”

Edward didn’t want to argue with someone wearing a short, loose skirt that floated around her hips, in a pink haze, as her’s did. Her wispy blonde hair flew away from the strands matted to her skin from the sweat. Cleo sniffed around her scandals she didn’t seem to mind. Edward didn’t really know what to do, except get mad. The fact being he hadn’t spoken with a woman who wasn’t just asking for the time in a long while. He didn’t want to argue.

“I’m Shelby. Did I ruin your nap?”
“No. I was just lyin’ here.”

Shelby crossed the tracks and walked into the trees. She spoke all the while, Edward could not hear her, so he got up and followed her, using Cleo as his excuse. “Come mere girl, Cleo, get over here.”

“See. See? Over there.” Shelby stood like a pointer dog, showing the prey.

She stepped around the three-foot high weeds and jumbled growth. She walked, knees high, setting a new trail through the thicket, and knew where she was. Shelby came right up to a remnant of cement broken up by tree roots and covered by old vines and sod. Some dirt and stacks of broken tree stumps lurked around the concrete, the trees hovered over the area, telling no stories.

“See. See?” Shelby said, “There’s my old house. A dog at the door and a pie in the kitchen window that’s what m’ daddy used to say.”

Shelby jumped onto the small area of cement and respected the invisible walls using the proper entrance, only she could see. She knew every inch and pointed to certain rooms and walls. Edward stood outside in the front yard like a suitor coming to ask for her hand. She walked the space, poked her head out windows, and walked through doors even though it appeared as if nothing had ever been there.

Edward walked around the side of the cement and found buried remains of an old concrete path. He followed it around to the so-called backyard and saw the open area; worn dirt dominated the growth trying to cover it. He saw where the old laundry line used to stand, and then, saw the fruit trees. Edward walked down the slope toward the fruit. Old and dead, brown branches greeted him. Edward searched the brush and found the orange bushes had some grown fruit on the top reaches.

“Want an orange?” Edward yelled to Shelby.

The broken cement bore a resemblance to the state of Idaho. Inside, Shelby stood at its narrowest peak, right around Coeur D’Alene. She didn’t hear Edward: being inside the house where the children scampered, Billy practiced his piano, the baby asleep while she rolled out a piecrust. Shelby stopped what she was doing, went to the window and said, “What, honey?”

Edward walked around to the front porch to sit, hot and tired of selling tickets all day. He envied the people leaving Wires, he’d been wanting out since he was a boy. Shelby met him out front; a wife knows when her husband needs a moment together with his wife. She came and sat on the tattered porch to listen to his woes.

“What book ya reading?” Shelby asked.
Edward had placed the book in the bib pocket of his overalls.
“I don’t know.”
“…think this is the hottest August we’ve ever had?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”

Shelby took the orange from Edward. She knew her way around an orange. She bit into the rind and spit-out a good-sized hole. Without any hesitance or question, she ate the entire orange though the small opening. During the enjoyment of the orange, no juice or pulp went down her arm or on her clothes; Shelby swung her foot all the while.

Edward was busy peeling the orange and wiping the remains on his pants. He would have done a better job, just bit into the wedge and gulp the whole thing, but he couldn’t. He was enthralled with her white skin, her easy swinging knees, her flat chest and timid arms. Shelby blinked a lot at the heat and he liked that, it made her seem as easy as the leg she swung. Cleo came; Edward let her finish the orange.

“I remember my days here; they were good ones, the ones before my mama died.”
Shelby’s voice lowered to a whisper.
“She died right over there in her bedroom.” She gave a meager point with her finger. “I was there with her holding her hand and wailin’ like a baby. She laid there a ninety-pound weakling, smiling like she had no cares in the world,” she looked down at the ground, she said, “a right angel, worrying about me and my brothers, telling me not to cry.”

She fell still and silent.

“Then my pa went and killed himself and I had to go live in Two Horns, Missouri with my Aunt Bessie,” Shelby burst out with one breath.

The part of the house that she referred to was the part where Montana meets Idaho. No cement stood in Montana’s stead, only dirt, and undergrowth, three-feet high – claimed that corner.

“Maybe the same people who stole pieces of the train station, came and took pieces of cement,” Shelby muttered.
“Maybe…” Edward said, licking the orange juice from his fist.
“How old were you?” Edward snuck a look at her, sitting next to him.
“Ah, maybe I was fourteen, ten years ago now. I just barely got the nerve to travel down here and see the old place.” Shelby’s voice ended before her words. She went silent.

Edward suspected Shelby had tears on her face. He froze, too afraid to look again. She picked up her hair, above the neckline, and used her hand to fan air on the nape. She moved her face behind her elbow so Edward wouldn’t see the tears. After a while, she couldn’t hold it back, she wept into her hands.

She whispered to Edward, “I was happy here. Running around in orange groves and helping my momma with the kids and the washing, a right happy fool, I was….” Edward heard it well.

Then, Shelby jumped up from the three-foot high cement and walked to the front of the imaginary house, she swung her arms at it like a conductor in front of an orchestra, pacing.

“This was my life. I was happy here…during my childhood. I was never hungry or scolded, just happy. Now I’m just some slave to my auntie and uncle, like they make me do everyday,” she started to cry again, “where is all that now…?”
“Gone, I guess,” is all Edward could think to say.
Shelby sat on the dirt she stood on, straight down, and let out another weary cry.
They both sat in silence.
“One time a helicopter crashed over yonder,” Edward said orange rinds at his feet, and Cleo by his side. “Yeah, three men died. That chopper came down and cut the tallest trees down with its huge blades whirling round.” Edward laughed a little as he remembered. “It blew huge branches all around, all the way into town. Then it landed in the lake. I go down and see it sometimes. Someone removed some of it, maybe the same people who took some of your house and the old station.”
“Maybe,” Shelby whispered between her fingers.

The time lingered. Shelby sat in the dirt, Edward on the cement. Edward stroked Cleo’s head, he mumbled, “I could protect you…” although Shelby didn’t hear it and Edward refused to repeat it.
“I go down to see it, to look in the water but mostly I just see myself, nothing else, no dead men, no scrap metal, just my face looking back at me in the rusty water. Do you ever do that?”
“No,” Shelby responded.
“I do. It makes me feel like I can see death, down in the water. Like a skeleton’s down there or something.” Edward became shy after so many words. He studied his fingernails.

Then Shelby stood up from the dirt, slapped her hand against her bottom to get the dust-off, walked over to Edward and said, “thank you, I appreciate your comin’ down here with me.” She shook his hand, turned and marched up the path they had come down.

“Hey. Where’re you going? Did I say something?” Edward followed her up the path with Cleo well ahead of them both.

Shelby was determined to leave. She vanished into the harsh mid-afternoon sun. The word skeleton was too direct, Edward without knowing hit a chord in Shelby. The house as it stood was a skeleton, but Edward didn’t realize this until the town’s shadows absorbed Shelby. She was determined to leave and he knew he didn’t want to stop her. Edward took the book by Lewis out of his bib pocket and slammed it several times against his forehead.

In a drab daze, he walked to the station and slammed his head against the wooden wall. To look at the old station, one would think it would fall down with one good swift kick. The station stood, even under the pressure. Edward walked to the bench, lay down, rolled over on his side, pulled his knees-up, took the book by Lewis, and hit himself repeatedly.

Life left Edward alone again, left to toil in his obscurity under soulless colors of brass from the trees near a steel rail. He beat himself with a book by Lewis to deaden the chords in his head, words left there from long ago, sounding bad and looking equally as ugly. He is not an illusion. Just think of his life more like something that lives on in the heart of the dead, left to rot or ruin, yes, that definitely.