Ghost Town (11 page)

"Now everybody just hold on a minute," I objected. "I have personal items in my room. I don't want some stranger poking around in there."

Merilee Rowling glared at me. She had high cheekbones and wide eyes like the girls on the covers of catalogs. I liked that.

"Oh, really, Spencer," Merilee Rowling said. "Do I look like a snoop?"

Now, what kind of question is that? This girl had just driven a thousand miles to get the skinny on a nonexistent Native American accidental poet, and she wanted to know if I thought she was capable of going through my stuff?

Holy macaroni!
I thought.
She's not just a snoop. She's a professional snoop.

It seemed that I'd already lost control of the situation. My timing was months off. Merilee Rowling should have waited until January to show up. Then we could have gone ice-skating on Craddock Pond before we chose rooms.

But who would have saved us when we broke through the ice? Paisley was deserted.

Hmm,
I thought.
Even the simplest of fantasies can become too complicated.

"Well, at least let me collect my valuables," I muttered, meaning my cigar box filled with photos, my ghost camera, my toothbrush, and a change of clothes.

"Spencer," my mother said, "how did you get to be so rude?"

"Is there anything I can do to help you prepare dinner, Mrs. Honesty?" Merilee Rowling asked. "I'm quite good at slicing vegetables."

"Well, I guess I could use some help with the pumpkin pie," my mother replied. "Do you enjoy baking?"

"It's my favorite pastime," Merilee Rowling replied.

What?
I thought.
First you give this girl my room, and now you 're trusting her with knives? This is not turning out at all as I had hoped!

A scream awoke the household in the middle of the night. It came from my room. I lay on the lumpy sofa and considered investigating. On the one hand, there was the siren call of my pillow. On the other, obvious trouble upstairs. Possibly serious. Possibly not.

What to do, what to do,
I wondered in a half slumber.

"Spencer!" my mother shouted. "Get up here now!"

I found the two women in my room, my mother seated beside Merilee Rowling with her arm around her shoulders, comforting her. I noticed that Merilee Rowling was wearing one of my T-shirts.

"Spencer, Merilee says there was a man in her room," my mother announced.

"Was he wearing a FedEx uniform?" I asked.

My mother glared at me.

"He was wearing an Indian headdress," Merilee Rowling said with a sad little sniff.

"Oh, that would be Chief Leopard Frog," I explained. "Did you get your interview?"

"Are you crazy?" Merilee Rowling responded. "I was too scared to think. Anyway, the guy gave me the creeps."

"He has that effect on some people," I agreed. "Well, good night."

"Wait a minute, Spencer," my mother commanded. "Aren't you going to do something?"

"Huh?" I said. "Oh, yeah." I leaned over and kissed my mother on the cheek.

"Night, Mom," I said, turning to go back downstairs.

"No, Spencer," my mother said. "I mean, about the situation concerning our houseguest. She's traumatized."

"Oh, all right," I replied.

I leaned over and kissed Merilee Rowling on the cheek.

"You jerk!" Merilee Rowling responded, wiping her cheek with her hand. "I don't want your slobbery kisses. I want you to stay in this room with me for the rest of the night."

Was I hearing this correctly? Or was it the sound of ice cracking on distant Craddock Pond?

"I see no reason why you can't sleep on the floor, Spencer," my mother said, "to protect Merilee from any more intrusions by that spooky so-called friend of yours. You owe her that much."

"The couch is lumpy, but at least it's a soft lumpy," I complained. "The floor is nothing but boards. Why can't she just scoot over?"

"That, Spencer, as you well know, would be improper," my mother pronounced, "although I don't expect you at your age to understand why."

Ha!
I thought.
Sez you!

WELL, WHO WOULD'VE THUNK IT,
I thought.
I've got seventeen-year-old Merilee Rowling in my room. No, not just in my room. In my
bed!

Spencer Adams Honesty.

The last kid in Paisley, Kansas.

I hauled up a few sofa cushions and quilts and fashioned on the floor the same sort of nest I was accustomed to sleeping in when the bed belonged to me. I couldn't see Merilee Rowling from where I was curled up, but I could certainly hear every sound she made, and it was pretty clear to me that she wasn't sleeping.

"What's on your mind?" I asked.

"You," she said.

"How's that?" I inquired.

"I was thinking I might be better off with the Indian," she explained. "You don't strike me as being old enough to have developed a code of honor."

"What do you mean, 'code of honor'?" I asked.

"In the days of old when knights and their royal ladies had to travel together and it came time to sleep, the knight would place his sword between them as a sign that he would not cross over while she slept. This was an important part of the knight's code of honor."

"No problemo," I replied. "I'll just fetch that pie knife from downstairs. Okay with you if there's still some pumpkin goo on it?"

"I'm not certain you understand," Merilee Rowling said. "How old are you, again?"

"Nineteen," I lied, adding some six years to my life in a single stroke. "But I'm small for my age. I had a rare disease when I was a child."

"Yeah, you had a disease, all right," Merilee Rowling retorted. "You had bullshit disease."

"We're hoping for a cure," I answered.

"There isn't one," Merilee Rowling replied. "Trust me. I know."

"You mean like your favorite activity being baking? Is that what you mean?" I asked knowingly.

Merilee Rowling giggled

"Oh, all right, you caught me," she said. "But I was just trying to be a good houseguest."

"Well, in your own special way, you are, Merilee Rowling," I said. "Anyway, good night. And don't worry. I'll keep an eye out for Indians."

"Thank you, Spencer," she replied. "And I'm sorry for doubting your code of honor."

And that was it until the next morning and the half-hour wait for the bathroom.

I couldn't stand having Chief Leopard Frog angry with me. The chief and I go back a long way, back to a time when I really needed a father and instead, after a whole lot of wishing, I got Chief Leopard Frog, who in many ways was better than a father.

Sometimes I'd mention to my mother that he'd told me something and she'd just smile and say, "That's nice." But I don't think she ever believed in him. The thing is, with an imaginary friend, no matter what age you are you have to be willing to suspend your everyday disbeliefs.

I've known people who've seen angels, received secret messages from ghosts, and had long conversations with Jesus (who must be terribly busy). I've known people who jabbered with their dead ancestors or wives or husbands as if they were standing right beside them.

Who am I to say they're mistaken?

And who are they to say that Chief Leopard Frog is nothing but a figment of my imagination?

Mr. Riley, who once lived three miles down the road before he went to live with his daughter in Florida, used to talk to his dog Flag all the time, and Flag had been dead and buried for five years!

I used to leave pork bones on Flag's grave.

Mr. Riley wouldn't make a decision without first talking it over with Flag. Heck, it was Flag who'd said, "Let's go to Florida and see the sights."

There are millions of people who talk to their cats. How many cats are listening? There are people who talk to goldfish, and hamsters, and parakeets, and I've read in magazines about scientists—educated people—who talk to plants.

Potted plants.

When we pray, to whom do we pray?

When we ask for forgiveness, whom are we asking to forgive us?

Ourselves?

I found Chief Leopard Frog squatting underneath a walnut tree, whittling a talisman in the shape of a pony.

"I wish you'd let me explain," I said.

"I know what happened," he replied. "I figured it out."

"It's turned out well," I went on. "Commercially speaking."

"That's good luck, then," he said.

"Yes," I agreed. "Very good luck."

"Bad art, though," Chief Leopard Frog added. "Aesthetically speaking."

"Who's to say what art is?" I asked. "The sender or the receiver?"

"You may have something there, Spencer," Chief Leopard Frog observed, thawing just a little bit. "Who's the girl?"

"Someone looking for you," I answered. "A poetry writer. She wants to make you famous, but you scared her last night."

"I was looking for you," he said.

"I figured," I replied. "What'd you want?"

"To say I'm sorry for my anger," he explained. "Not for my disappointment. I'm entitled to that. But it was wrong to blame you for events."

I held out my hand.

"Friends?" I said.

He covered it with his own while at the same time placing the freshly carved pony into my grasp.

"Always," Chief Leopard Frog said.

IN OVER MY HEAD
, I sought practical advice from a man in daily contact with ancient wisdom.

"What shall I do about this visitor?" I asked Chief Leopard Frog.

"Ha!" he laughed loudly. "An excellent question. Give me a few days to ponder the answer."

Back at the house, my mother and Merilee Rowling were laughing and carrying on like old friends while they sorted the mountain of mail, most of it for Chief Leopard Frog, but one letter for me was from Maureen Balderson, plus a packet from Sparkle Snapshot and a small box from the Cayman Islands.

There's an old saying—as least I'm told it's an old saying; I'm not exactly old enough to know how old the sayings are—but at any rate it goes, "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it."

But have I mentioned that already?

Like many sayings, this one is a trifle vague, but I think it means that if you're wishing you had excitement in your life and all of a sudden you're dealing with the bruised egos of sensitive imaginary Indians, and the sudden bursting forth of motherly behavior by a former television vegetable, and the unannounced arrival of a smart-aleck cutie-pie way too old for you, and letters from modern-day pirates of the Caribbean, not to mention notes from girls who once lived next door and the occasional unexplained photograph of a vanished person, well, it's like that other old saying that goes, "It's either feast or famine."

Suddenly I had too much to do.

I could feel the pressure building.

I think I liked it better when I was bored.

The giggling subsided when I entered the room.

"You've got quite a few book orders here, Spencer, which I presume you will process promptly," my mother said, like she was giving instructions, "and there's some personal mail for you as well."

"Your son appears to be quite a popular person," Merilee Rowling observed. "It must be a trait he acquired from his mother."

"Aww," my mother said, brushing away the transparent compliment with her hand. "I've never seen him with anyone at all. Not even that Indian friend of his."

"Really?" Merilee Rowling responded, looking me square in the eye. "How interesting."

"I think I'll read my mail now," I announced.

For some reason I was afraid to open Maureen's note, so I opened the package from Uncle Milton Swartzman instead. Inside was a conch shell that had been polished and fitted with a mouthpiece and a muting device such as you'd find on a trumpet. There was also a check for five thousand and fifty dollars, plus two pieces of paper.

One a letter.

One a contract.

Dear Partner,
Uncle Milton wrote.

Have you ever heard of an ocarina? It is an ancient flutelike device that in the right hands plays lovely, haunting sounds that remind some
of us of the sea. Well, this is a concharina, a device of my own creation that is a steady seller in the catalog. I wanted you to have it as an expression of our friendship. Ditto the five grand. I have enclosed a one-page contract for you and your Indian pal to sign. Basically, it says I can keep printing the poetry book so long as I keep sending you twenty percent of the gross. In the publishing business, that's known as a sweet deal for the writer and his agent, because I take care of everything. You don't have to lift a finger, except to get your friend to write more books when he's ready. Who knew this would be such a hit? Already it has outsold the life-size talking reproduction of the Jackalope.

Earnestly yours,

Milton Swartzman

President and Publisher,
Uncle Milton's Thousand Things You Thought You'd Never Find

P.S. Thanks for the gourd that looks exactly like the late Sammy Davis, Jr. I like it so much that I am keeping it for myself. The extra fifty is for your effort.

P.P.S. Don t forget to send along some more bad luck talismans whenever you can. I don't want to wear out Chief Golden Goose, but I'm developing a very specialized clientele for his whittling. Military types and self-appointed officials from countries you've never heard of.

'Nuff said.

The note from Maureen was written on a card, the kind you search for in the aisles of Hallmark Gold Crown stores for a long time until you happen upon just the right one. This one showed two people standing underneath a garden bower. They were kissing.

Inside, the printed part said,
Thinking of you.

Maureen had added a handwritten note:

Guess what?
she said.
We may be coming back for a few days to check on the house. I ll let you know.

Hugs,

Mo

P.S. Thanks for the swell pix of me in my room. I don't know how you managed to do it, but it was fun to get them.