What the Dead Want Read Free Page A

you will tell me of any opportunity that might arise for me to help. I only wish that I had been able to be there and see Mr. Douglass speak myself. Maybe one day people will understand that no matter the plight, it’s the very same people holding everybody down.
    I think about his life and journey and, like you, am inspired. Were that I not forced to stay in my father’s home and care for my nieces, I would be at school, like you, or maybe even helping in the cause. Just to be surrounded by those who can speak so bravely about freedom, and fight for it.
    I share all your sentiments, James, even the ones we shouldn’t be so careless to speak about in letters. Would that you were here and we could talk more plainly face-to-face. I think about the day you left for school, and the things we said. It’s all true, James. I have never had a better friend. And my feelings grow ever stronger in your absence.
    Life at home in Mayville is as you would imagine. Pretty and airy and oh-so dull. I ran into your brother George while picking berries with my nieces. He was out hunting with some friends and seemed well and red cheeked and jovial. George is charming and well liked, isn’t he? Splendidly suited to take over the Axton family business, and always dressed in the finest cotton.
    Sincerely yours,
    Fidelia

TWO
    G RETCHEN SNAPPED HER FIRST PICTURE STANDING IN front of the house. She was not a person to take dozens of photographs a day of frivolous things. Of all her friends, she was proud of never having taken a selfie. She used a real camera, not her phone, and she chose her subjects carefully.
    Never in her life had she seen anything as remote or abandoned as this place. And yet it was somehow vibrant. The sun shone through the pine trees onto the gray boards of the porch and spilled over the roof and the cupola, glinted off the weather vane; the air was wild with dust motes and pollen and speck-size insects. There were billions ofshining particles in the stillness, circulating madly. Birds were chirping. The whole place was teeming with nearly invisible life.
    She stepped back away from the porch and took a shot of the house surrounded by light and insects—then a picture of the black car pulled up in the looping drive, to capture the strange juxtaposition of country dilapidation and city wealth.
    â€œOh, Simon,” she said under her breath, “you would love it here.” Simon had always said of writing poetry that he didn’t know how people who didn’t write could stand it—and, by “it,” he didn’t mean “not writing,” he meant being alive.
    â€œI mean, if you’re not a writer, you could be walking down the street one day, and a brick could fall on your head,” he said. “And then you’re just, you know, some guy who had a brick fall on his head, and it totally sucks. But if you’re a poet and one day you’re walking down the street and a brick falls on your head, if it doesn’t kill you, you’ve got material . Whatever bad shit happens to you, you can use it in your writing.”
    â€œExactly,” she said aloud to the memory of his voice, and snapped another picture. She felt the same about photography. That with her camera she could at least bear witness to the hard and strange things that happened. Beingin this place where her mother lived, after her mother was gone—it was like photographing her absence. Documenting what loss looks like.
    The Axton mansion was simultaneously one of the most amazing pieces of architecture and one of the most amazing examples of neglect she’d ever seen.
    The quiet of the country was profound and unnerving. She scanned the horizon—nothing but rolling hills and farmland for miles. Farther down the dirt road on which they’d traveled she could make out a barn and a small white house, but nothing else. She snapped another picture of the road, the distant buildings. The smell