In the car, the ghosts of his wife’s parents sat there silently.
They weren’t speaking to him but they had his full attention.
They made him think.
It started with the woods, beech, at the back of their house where they used to walk their dog, and the forest where he had slept this night, pine.
And then suddenly he was back in a garage in Spain.
They were not there, but it was the garage of his friend’s father, a clockmaker long-time retired.
Long-time.
He couldn’t remember sleeping but he had been there three days with his friend. The garage held no car, only a workbench. And a lot of tools.
Maybe he had slept in the van outside, and his friend inside with his parents; maybe they worked in there for three days straight.
The sea was across the garden behind the garage, but they had no time to swim; he would swim later when the driving was done and the ghosts parted.
In the garage a lamp lay in pieces on the work bench and his friend looked like a surgeon bringing it to life.
Like his puppets.
Father was a clockmaker, the son a puppeteer.
Mechanical puppets.
The ghosts in the back seat nod in agreement; they don’t remember any of this but they are happy that the past holds them along with all the other memories.
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