Dan Keller

Leo knew he was never going back again. He had stepped a few feet within the gates, but he instantly turned around and headed out, almost as if his feet would catch fire or that Heaven itself would rain down punishment if he went any further. He remembered Lot, Lot's wife (although not her name), and what his father told him about them.

"Don't look back. Ne-ver look back, kiddo," Walter Abrams had said, a grand billow of cigar smoke erupting from his mouth. "You can get yourself shit-neck deep if you start thinking What if this and What if that. Don't do that. No regrets. Can you say that, kiddo?"

Leo was lulled by his father's rough voice and the rolling, rocking feel of the 1972 Bonneville as it coasted along the interstate. Too short to see over the dashboard, Leo would often stare at the floor or out the side window and lose himself. His sense of time, his sense of place would be lost in the car's motion and his father's gravelly voice.

"Say what, Dad?"

"Listen to your father. That's Lesson Number Two. Lesson Number One was: No regrets. Don't look back."

"Isn't that two lessons, Dad?"

"Nobody likes a smartass. Number Three."

Leo looked at the enormously huge glove box directly in front of him. You could fit a body in that thing, he thought. He was often tempted to turn the silver knob and see what was inside. Leo stared at the green dashboard and rolled with the Bonneville.

"You listening to me, kiddo?"

"Yeah."

"So, Lot and his wife and his daughters--they all run like hell. The city is burning, blazing behind them. And although God said not to, not to look back at the punishment he was laying down upon the abominations in Sodom and--"

"What's an abombination--"

"--in Gomorrah, guess what the stupid bitch does? That's right. Lot's wife looks back and God says Ah-ahh! And then he turns her into a pillar of salt. Get the meaning? Do you see what I'm saying?"

"What's a pillow of salt?"

"What do you got--shit in your ears?"

About fourteen years later, Leo brushed up on his Bible knowledge in the University of Phoenix's library. When he first came to the university, the library had always unsettled him. There was an unearthly quiet about the place. There was something about the sheer number of books the library contained, almost as if they were gearing up ammunition for a literary war. And then there was the whispering. Everyone whispered. Students, librarians, professors all whispered. Leo couldn't imagine what all the whispering was about. It seemed like secrets were being passed on, revealed within those whisperings. The whispers were the only thing to break that deafening silence. The library seemed to be full of hidden things. There were secrets in the stacks.

It turned out that Lot went on to impregnate both of his daughters after their mother was transformed into a condiment. And before that, Lot had offered both of his daughters to the wicked men who brought down God's judgment of fire and brimstone. His father never mentioned those bits of the story.

"Work or pleasure?" A voice said from behind.

Leo turned around in his seat to see a tall brunette of about twenty-one smiling at him. "Uh, a class."

"Hi," she said, extending her hand, "I'm Ananda."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Leo."

"Would that be Professor Singer's Bible research class? I haven't seen you in there."

"No. For another one."

"What's the paper about?"

"Sacrifices and mistakes made in literature."

"Yeah, well, the Bible's a good place to start. People made as many mistakes in the past as they do now."

"I think you're right."

"Not that I'm bashing the Bible or anything. I'm a devout Catholic," she said, "which means that I haven't been to church in five years. I do believe, though. How 'bout you?"

"No, I don't think about it very often."

"Did your parents turn you off to religion? Always making you lose sleep to get up and go Sunday morning?"

"No, they didn't have the chance--I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

"Ananda."

"Right. Ananda."

"Aren't you going to say something like 'What a pretty name' or 'Pretty name for a pretty girl'?"

"No. I knew the instant you said your name--I knew that I met you too late in life to say anything you haven't heard."

"Well, I've never heard that before." Ananda pulled out a chair and sat next to Leo. He caught the scent of strawberries as it radiated from her. Being so close to her, he couldn't help but notice how fair her skin was, almost like it was porcelain. "So, you were saying about your parents?"

"I wasn't saying anything about my parents. I was saying about how I couldn't say anything about your name."

"You know," Ananda said, tilting her head down and to one side, eyeing him closely, "if I were a psychology major, I would suspect you were hiding something about your parents."

"Are you a psychology major?"

"Yes."

"Well," Leo said, shuffling his papers together, "all I'm hiding is the fact that they're dead."

"Oh, God. I'm so very--"

"No, no--it's okay. I was young. I barely knew them."

"Don't you ever wonder what they must have been like?"

"I don't think about the past too much. I try not to look back. I try to stay focused on what's ahead of me." He continued gathering his books and papers together.

"Look, do you want to get out of here? Maybe go somewhere and get something to eat? Talk?"

"No, thank you, Ananda, but I should be going."

"Shit in my ears?"

"Listen to your father, kiddo. We're going to be spending a lot of time together, so you gotta listen."

"Where are we going?"

Walter looked at him, then looked back at the road. Looking back at Leo, he said, "You know, for six, you ask a lot of questions. Did you always ask this many questions?"

"I don't know."

"Well, sometimes it's better to not ask, kiddo. Accept and move on. Don't look back. You and me, buddy, we're going to Minnesota. I know what you're thinking, kiddo. It's gonna be a long drive from Arizona to Minnesota, but could you imagine going by horse or foot? That's how people used to do it--"

"When's Mom coming?"

"She'll make it in her own time, kiddo. Don't you worry about that. Women are funny, kiddo. You ne-ver can predict what they're gonna do. Have we had our talk about women, yet? No? Now's as good a time as any, I suppose. The key is, kiddo, that you always--always, always, always--go after them. Never let 'em come after you. If they come after you, you can't trust them. Those are lessons One, Two, and Three right there."

"They sound different from before."

"Well, kiddo, that's because it's a different subject matter. The subject before was life. Now, it's women. Oh, never tell your woman about other females you know. It's not pretty. Deny knowing any other women."

"Isn't lying bad?"

"Honesty's overrated, kiddo. Sometimes you have to lie. Sometimes, it's good to lie. Sometimes, you need to keep secrets. Of course, we don't lie, kiddo. Not you and me. Not to each other. Is that right? Do we got a deal?"

"Deal."

For years, Leo avoided the letters. For months, Leo ignored the calls and the messages. Finally, three weeks before returning to Minnesota, he answered the phone when it refused to stop ringing.

"Yes, what do you want?"

"Hi, Leo, please don't hang up. Just hear me out, okay?" The voice sounded shaken, but familiar.

"Aunt Cindy? Look, if this is about my father--"

"You haven't seen or talked to him since you moved back to Phoenix. He's written you tons of letters--"

"Oh, I'm well aware of that, Cindy. Going on two years. I've received less junk mail in comparison. And he's been calling non-stop for the past couple of months. The telemarketers are jealous. They want to recruit him, in fact. I've got the number--"

"I made those calls. I've been down here for the past couple of months. Look Leo, he's not well and he hasn't been for a long time."

"I could've told you that much, Aunt Cindy. He took me away from my mother and lied to me every mile on the cross-country journey. The odometer on that old Bonneville tells a history of lies."

"I know all that, Leo. And I'm sorry. More importantly, he's sorry. He should've told you the truth. He knows that it was wrong to keep you from her, especially when she didn't have much longer. But he did it to protect you. He couldn't save her."

"Save her? Save her? He was pestilence to her."

"Look, he doesn't have much longer. It's spreading out from his lungs, moving to his stomach. It won't be long."

"Good."

"If you won't do it for him, do it for me. Come on, I took you in when you came back to go to college. Do you know how many years he was pissed off at me for keeping you from him?"

"And now you're trying to bring me to him."

"You'll regret it if you don't."

"I doubt that, Aunt Cindy. It was nice to hear from you." Leo hung up the phone, resolved to go nowhere within 500 miles of Minnesota for the rest of his life. Three weeks later, he drove to St. Paul, Minnesota.

The brown, frost-covered leaves crinkled under Leo's feet as he ran back to the car. He couldn't do it. He couldn't go past the gates. He looked beyond St. Paul's cemetery gates, to the fading sun and the feverishly red sky it brought.

He took in the rows of gravestones and crosses in the fading light. He was in there somewhere. Somewhere in there was a wedge of stone with the name Walter L. Abrams engraved into it.

Leo wrapped his coat tightly around himself. He stood still, transfixed by the red sky beyond the gates. The cemetery was so removed from the road that there was hardly any noise. He could hear leaves cracking from the cold. "Dead quiet," he thought grimly.

He wouldn't go inside the gates. He had committed too much of his life to getting rid of the past. He wouldn't do it anymore.

Never look back.

Shades of night would be falling soon.

Don't look back.

His feet shuffled backwards. He made his way towards the car, but never took his eyes off the gates or the sky.

Ne-ver look back.

Leo turned around, pulled the keys from his coat pocket, and got into the car.