The Ghost Belonged to Me (2 page)

If it had been left up to me, I wouldn't have started with Blossom Culp. It was her who started with me. Blossom and her folks live behind our place on the far side of the car tracks just about on a straight line with our barn. There's a row of houses back there that people move in and out of. The row was built for the workers at the flour mill until they wouldn't live there anymore. I didn't know anything about the Culps at that time and had been looking straight through Blossom for two grades. I couldn't even tell you when they first drifted into town.

Oh, one time back around fifth grade Blossom offered to let me wear her spelling medals if I'd walk her home from school, but I wasn't falling for that. She's an exceptional speller, which always seems to surprise Miss Winkler.

Blossom has big round button eyes, very dark and sharp, and wears black wool stockings right through the school year. Her legs are the skinniest I've seen. When my sister Lucille came to notice Blossom, she labeled her an “arachnid,” which is what they call spiders in the high-school biology class. That was a rude observation, but it's true that Blossom does have a spidery look.

I fell into her web during a fire drill at school. We have them once a month by law. I go to the Horace Mann School, which is a strictly modern structure. They have it fitted out with the last word in fire escapes.

It's a long sheet-metal tube that angles out of the second-floor cloakroom and down to a sandpile beside the foundation. It's better than a playground slide because it echoes.

The bell went one day in early May, and we all let rip with a whoop. Miss Winkler twitched and said, “We'll have order here. This may be the real thing!” She says that once a month.

Blossom was just ahead of me when we trooped to the cloakroom, which I know now was not by chance. Miss Winkler threw open the little doors down by the baseboard. Then she spaced us as we went down, saying to every kid in turn, “Don't yell and light running.”

It's my private opinion that in a real fire the tube would heat up like a stove flue, and I'd sooner take my chances on the stairs.

Blossom flopped down and shot away. Miss Winkler had me by the arm to the count of three. Then she turned me loose, and down I went. You start slow and gather speed. From the top, the daylight at the bottom looks no bigger than a bright dime.

That day I was skidding on my hands to enjoy a slower ride when I glanced down between my feet and saw the tube was all clogged up halfway along. It's as dark as a pocket in that thing, but I knew it had to be Blossom Culp who was wedged sideways. Her petticoats were over her head. Both legs were up against the top, and she was clinging onto a welded seam with all her fingers. She came near to turning herself inside out, and I knew as soon as I saw her she'd jammed herself on purpose.

I had all I could do to keep from hitting her square on with my hobnail boots. That would have marked her for life, so I went into a spin myself. And there we were, packed in at an angle and somebody up at the top waiting to start down.

When I hit Blossom, I was all over her. I had my hands where I'd never handled a girl before, but my mind wasn't on it.

“Blossom,” I said, “you don't know if you're coming or going. Turn loose of that seam, or we'll be backed up all the way to Winkler.”

“Listen to me,” she said with her lips right up against my ear. “I have vital information for you alone. It has to do with forces that only you can comprehend.”

“What is this?” I said. “Will you give way? This tube wasn't built for a crowd.”

“Promise!” Blossom breathed at me. “Promise you'll walk me home from school because I have news of special benefit to you.”

“Blossom—”

“Promise, or I'll set to screaming.”

I promised Blossom. What else could I do, halfway across her with my head upside down and Miss Winkler hollering down the tube? Blossom went limp then, and down we skidded cheek by jowl and heads first. Just as we came to the dip at the end, Blossom reached out and grabbed me around the neck. And that's the way we spilled out onto the sand pile, right at the feet of the principal, Miss Mae Spaulding.

I tried to roll free but went the wrong way and did a turn right over Blossom, who then drew up her knees and did a quick kind of back flip and stood up like an acrobat. “Well, I've seen everything now,” said Miss Spaulding. “Cut and run, you two.” We did but not before I saw a grin spread across Miss Spaulding's face that I don't think I ever will get over.

I could've boxed Blossom's ears for that, but I walked her home that night instead. I didn't owe her anything, and I didn't think she had any secrets to impart. But I walked her home.

 

 

 

 

I
told Blossom to meet me two corners away from the school. A promise is a promise, but I wasn't having anybody see me walk out of the schoolyard with a girl, any girl.

As it turned out, our meeting place was right outside Nirider's Notions store that does a penny candy business. Blossom was looking hard at Nirider's window. But I walked right on by, brushing against her so she'd notice I was there, keeping my promise.

She caught up with me and hit my stride. I walked along with my head down, watching her petticoats switching along over her black spider legs and noticing there were buttons off her shoes. We walked as far as the Baptist Chapel without a word passed. But I could listen in on Blossom's mind, gauging how far we were to home and getting ready to tell me some nonsense or other.

“If you walk this fast, we'll be home before you learn what I have to tell you,” she said.

“This here is my regular pace,” I told her.

“Well, slow it in your own best interests,” she said.

How I had come to be nagged by Blossom Culp was uppermost in my mind. I slowed down.

“My mama was born with a caul,” she said, starting thoughtful and quiet. “You know cauls?”

“Maybe.” “A caul is a mystical veil over the face, like a damp sheet but transparent, and them born with it are born to second sight. Their eyes see through the darkness that blinds others.”

“Cats see in the dark,” I offered. “And they don't know you can't. You can tread on a cat in the dark before he knows to move out of your path.”

“Not that kind of dark,” Blossom said, very patient. “The kind of dark that clouds mankind's mind. Dark of the spirit. My mama sees the Unseen.”

I was beginning to remember something about Blossom Culp I hadn't thought of for maybe a couple of years. When she first came to town, she let it be known around the school that at birth she'd been one-half of a pair of Siamese twins.

To hear her tell it, they'd had to hack off the twin stuck on her side in order for her alone to live. A bunch of fourth-grade girls got fed up hearing this tale and set on her in the girls' washroom one time. They jerked her shirtwaist up and her skirt down to see if they could see the scar from where her twin had been taken off. But she was just as smooth-sided as anybody. From then on none of the girls would have anything to do with her.

“The Gift's in the family,” Blossom said, “but I don't have it. Neither does my paw. Oh, he used to could cure warts by passing his hand over the affected area, but he don't do anything regular. There's gypsy blood in the family, Mama's side. She had a sister who foretold the San Francisco earthquake—saw buildings falling and fire raging four days ahead of time. When she heard her prophecy was become manifest, she frothed at the mouth, and we had to lay a spoon across her tongue to keep it from going down her windpipe. We're from Sikeston. That's in Missouri. You know Sikeston?”

“Maybe.”

“It's a place neither North nor South. Farthest upriver cotton grows. It blows like snow across the road at picking time. Sikeston's a wonderful place for the Unseen. Ghosts of both the Confederate and Union forces, wandering, wandering, forever wandering, trying to get to a Christian grave. My mama has saw them going by the house many a time, with their canteens swinging and dragging their rifles. A ghost battalion. Made her heart bleed, she said.”

I wasn't rising up to any such bait as that. I just kept trudging and picking at the foliage in the hedges to show Blossom my whole attention wasn't on her.

“It was quiet for Mama when we moved up here,” she went on, “until she seen the halo from the sink.

“Mama sees halos sometimes, in colors. And they only mean but one thing. A sure sign—and Mama seen one when she was standing at the sink, looking out the window at the back of you folks's barn.”

“If there's a halo round our barn, I reckon it fell off a passing angel. He'll very likely be back to pick it up when he misses it.”

“You don't want to talk light of halos,” Blossom said. “They're a sure sign.”

“What of?”

“They're a sign that a place is haunted. The halo tells it and the color tells who.”

“What who?”

“The kind of ghost that's haunting it. The halo round your barn is pale pink. That means it's the ghost of a young girl, cut off in her prime or sooner.”

“Sunsets turn things pink. Especially brick.”

“Sun sets in the other direction. Anyhow, Mama sees it at night. Late.”

“You ever see it?”

“No, I don't see nothing. I ain't got the Gift. Mama says the Gift is running thin, and when she's gone we'll be just like other people. Common. I don't do much too well except spell, and that don't mean anything to Mama. Someday I'm just going to light out on my own.”

Now that took me by surprise. I thought sure Blossom was going to claim she could see what wasn't there to make herself interesting. And here she was saying she didn't have the Gift. Not that I fell for that Gift business anyway.

“Your mama seen the ghost itself or only this pink halo?”

“Oh, Mama don't approach a ghost. But she knows.” We were walking past a horse trough full of green water about then. And I had an urge to give Blossom a big shove right in it to cool off her storytelling. But the way she was going on, I had an idea she'd just settle into the trough and keep right on talking in that soft and steady way of hers.

“How come you're telling me all this?”

“Mama says you're receptive. Maybe you have the Gift and maybe not. But she says you're receptive. You can make contact with the Unseen if you take a notion to, that's what Mama says.”

“Your mama doesn't even know me.”

“Mama don't need the Gift to know you. We live right behind you. Maybe you don't see us, but we see you.”

“Maybe I'll have a word with your mama about this. How'd you like that?” I thought I was calling her bluff the same as those girls did the time they looked to see if she was one half of Siamese twins. But Blossom just said, “You can try it if you want to, but Mama don't tell anything without you paying her. And if you pay her, she'll say anything that comes into her head. But you can try if you want to.”

That didn't make a believer out of me, but it had me stumped. Just when I thought I'd catch Blossom, her words would ooze away.

Before we got to the Pine Street intersection, our house came into view. It's the third biggest house in town, with a good deal of brickwork and carpentry to it. It was built back in the days when people put a lot of style into everything. There's three-quarters of an acre of yard which we've got a bronze deer in and three big flower beds bordered in shells. And there's a porch roof thrown out from one side that you can drive a team through and let off callers dry-shod in case of rain. Of course, we have an automobile now. And in spite of what Blossom was saying, I thought it was the only thing we had in the barn.

Our house is a regular showplace, though my dad says he could have had a new, strictly modern house built with twice the convenience at half the price. But buying the third biggest house in town was my mother's idea. Blossom glanced up at it and knew time was running out.

I walked her up to our lane, though, and back past the barn. But I never let her notice when I glanced up at the barn to see if there might be something extra showing. With my imagination somewhat inflamed, I could picture a big rainbow-looking thing arching up over the lightning rods. Blossom talks a good line, and I'll give her that.

I figured I'd walk her as far as the tracks. Then she could hoof it from there by herself. An open streetcar went past and
made a stop down at the corner.

My sister Lucille was climbing down out of the car, but luckily she didn't notice me seeing Blossom home. Lucille took the streetcar home from the high school because she wouldn't walk eight blocks under any circumstances, unless maybe it was on the arm of Tom Hackett. She was carrying her book satchel and a hatbox from the Select Dry Goods Company, Lucille not being able to walk past a store without going in and buying something.

She was wearing one of those stiff straw hats girls were beginning to wear then, like men's hats only bigger in the brim. “That's my sister Lucille,” I remarked to Blossom for something to say.

“I know it,” Blossom replied. “She's a dressy kind of girl.”

“She goes out with Tom Hackett,” I mentioned.

“I know it,” Blossom replied. “She'll marry him if she gets half a chance.”

How these Culps came by all their information beat the devil out of me. “She'd better make haste, though,” Blossom went on, “because these big, full-figured girls are beginning to go out of style, and Tom Hackett'll turn his attentions elsewhere.”