The Ghost Belonged to Me (5 page)

“Alexander,” she said, soft and straight, “I never been up here in my life, and that's the truth.”

“What about that time you claimed you were a Siamese twin?” I yelled. “Was that the truth too?”

“No,” she said, looking at the floor behind me. “That was when ... that was different. Alexander, let's go right now.”

“What's the hurry?” I didn't know what to think, and I needed time. Blossom may not have any powers, but she's not bad at persuasion.

“Alexander,” she said, “I'm begging you. Let's go.” She was looking past me, and that made me turn around.

There on the floor behind me was a footprint. A perfect shape of a foot, including the toes—a girl's probably. Black with water and green with slime. I whirled around to see if Blossom had her shoes and stockings on. She did.

I turned back to the footprint which had soaked into the softwood floor but kept its shape.

“How'd you get your shoe and stocking off and back on without me seeing?” I barked in a jumpy voice. But when I tried to confront Blossom, she was gone. I heard her shoes banging down the steps.

And I followed without delay.

 

 

 

 

L
ucille was having a coming-out party. She wanted to have it before her class had their graduation picnic, so nobody would confuse the two events. As it turned out, nobody did.

It seems like that whole month of May was given over to getting ready for it. It wasn't slated to be any everyday kind of party. I was passing the time keeping clear of both the barn and Blossom. I gave up hoping to see Trixie again.

But Uncle Miles and I both got drawn into the party preparations, though neither one of us cared much for the work. A coming-out party, as far as I could determine, was supposed to launch a girl into polite society by putting her on display. Mother and Lucille talked a good deal about launchings and coming outs when they weren't arguing with each other. It pretty much had me stumped. Because if Lucille kept up with Tom Hackett on the porch settee much longer, she'd be so far out she'd never get back.

Anyway, Mother hired extra help just to polish the silver. And she interviewed a baker on the subject of petit fours. The invitation cards were ordered engraved from a St. Louis firm.

“If it rains, I'll kill myself,” Lucille often remarked.

When they told Uncle Miles he was to built a latticework pavilion on the lawn for serving refreshments from, he had a good deal to say. Then when Mother told him that all the best people serve lawn-party refreshments from a pavilion, he told her a number of things about the best people she didn't want to hear.

One of the things he pointed out was that the Van Deeters never accept invitations from people they don't receive. Which turned Mother's cheeks to chalk. But Uncle Miles reckoned the Hacketts would come since they'd feel obligated. And why not pass around a silver tray of laxative pills just to make them feel at home?

Then he got down to work, pounding laths into latticework all over the back yard. I helped him after school. As far as I can remember, Dad spent that whole month of May at his office, only slipping back home after dark.

We had our hands full with all the preparations. But the only part I enjoyed was working outside with Uncle Miles, though he did fuss at me quite a bit for not driving straight nails. Inside the house was a regular hell after the dressmaker took over in there.

One time Uncle Miles and I were working late. We were trying to finish up the long back pavilion wall and had it stretched out flat on the lane right in front of the barn doors. The sun was down, and I felt edgy that near the barn. I'd as soon have been up at the house.

“You believe in ghosts, Uncle Miles?”

“What brought that to mind all of a sudden?” he wanted to know. But I noticed he laid down his hammer and took out a plug of tobacco.

“Oh—I was reading a book—a library book—of ghost stories, and I just wondered if you maybe had an opinion.”

Uncle Miles took two nails out of his mouth to make room for the plug. “Well, I am no hand at reading,” he said, settling back against the hitching post. “But I don't hold with written-down ghost stories anyhow. They leave a person with the idee you have to have castles and dungeons and like that to attract a ghost. A lot of them stories are German anyway, so you got to take that into account. Some of them is English too. So you want to take into consideration that they're the products of two pooped-out peoples.”

He worked his jaws in silence for a while, getting the plug into a chewable shape. I knew the day's work was at an end. “No,” he said, “I wouldn't put any stock in made-up stories, especially them that claim to have took place in ancient days gone by. But of course there is ghosts.”

It was evening then, and the katydids were starting up their whine in the Dutch elm. The latticework stretched out in the lane was glowing a sickly white. And the barn towered over us. Nothing moved but Uncle Miles's jaw as he chewed.

“Naw,” I told him. “There aren't such things as ghosts.”

“Don't say what you don't know. I bunked in with a feller who seen one to his sorrow.”

“Naw,” I said hopefully.

“Boy, I don't lie.”

Then he told me the story.

“Oh, it was twenty years ago and being restless I took off for the southern part of the state. Had a job down there at Teutopolis as drayman for the Star Store. I was weary of carpentry for a time and wanted a change.

“At the boarding house where I put up was a feller name of Cleatus Watts. He'd lost his best friend during an epidemic of the swamp fever which could be very bad down there at that time. People dropped like flies, laid in a coma, and flickered out.

“Anyhow, they'd buried Cleatus's friend a month before I come to town. And one time Cleatus come back to his room late. And there stood his friend in the room, facing away from the door. Why, for a minute it seemed so natural that Cleatus forgot the feller was dead. Then when he got his wits about him, he was in the room alone.

“He come down the hall and told me about it, and I said he was being fanciful.

“Well, the next night it was the same story. Cleatus come into his room, and there the ghost of his departed friend stood, facing away from Cleatus and in a great anguish. The ghost was as real as the living man, Cleatus said. And it was tearing its hair and clawing the air something pitiful.

“Cleatus hotfooted it down to my room again, but when we went back, the ghost was gone, though the room smelled something wicked. Cleatus said that this sort of thing was getting on his nerves and did I think he ought to take lodgings elsewhere.

“I told him no, since the ghost of his friend was appearing to him for some purpose and would likely follow wherever he went. Cleatus took no comfort in this but saw the sense of it.

“Well, sir, third night running the ghost returned. And I tell you, I heard it myself. I was in bed but awake and heard Cleatus go into his room. There was quiet then, but I smelled graves.

“Then a voice I never heard before echoed down that hallway like a bell pealing. ”Turn me over, Cleatus!' it said. I can hear it yet. ‘IN GOD'S NAME, TURN ME OVER!'

“Cleatus come pounding down the hall, half wild. But I stepped out and told him I'd heard it too, which was some relief to him. Why, that voice raised everybody in the place. There was a head poked out of every door and witnesses a-plenty.

“ ‘But what can he mean?' Cleatus says to me, grabbing hold of my arm like a child. ‘What does TURN ME OVER signify?'

“I didn't know the answer to that one. But a bunch of us in the boarding house lit a lamp and went downstairs to the dining room table to put our heads together. The landlady set in with us, very concerned that her place might develop a bad name.

“It was her idee to take this problem to another woman who lived down there right outside of town. She sold herbs and root-mixtures and was otherwise a woman of wisdom. So that night Cleatus slept on the floor of my room, and the next day all of us paid this woman a call, a very dried-up old party but highly respected.

“She heard us out and nodded like she knowed where to put her finger on the problem. ‘Get an affidavit from the county coroner,' she said, ‘and have your friend's grave dug up and opened.'

“Some of us didn't like the sound of that and didn't see the point to it, but Cleatus was takin' the whole thing so bad we thought it couldn't hurt.

“Well, the coroner was under the influence of this wise woman anyway and oversaw the diggin' up of the grave personally. Of course, we all went along, wanting to get to the bottom of it.

“I don't know,” Uncle Miles interrupted himself. “The rest of the story's grim. I don't know if you want to hear it.”

I explained to him that I did.

“They dug down to the coffin and cleared the dirt off the top. And the first thing we all seen was that the nails on the lid was all wrenched loose. A gasp went up at that. And it was an easy matter to lift up the lid.”

Uncle Miles paused a minute and ran his old knobby hands over his eyes. “When they got the lid off, we all seen the problem. The dead man was a-layin' face down in his coffin with his arms throwed back behind him.”

“You mean—”

“That's right. What with the swamp fever panic and all, they hadn't let the body cool. And they'd buried him alive. He must have come to hisself underground. And I reckon it drove him mad and he thrashed around before the air in the box give out.”

“What happened then?” I whispered.

“Well, the damage was done, wasn't it? They turned him over. I won't tell you what he looked like in the face. He'd eaten off his mouth. Then they nailed the lid on good and shoveled back the earth. He rested easy then. Cleatus Watts took it severe. The ghost never come to him again. But Cleatus started goin' to revival meetings and church twice of a Sunday, and was just generally not very good company thereafter.”

“I think I better be getting up to the house, Uncle Miles. It's late.”

“Well, that's enough for one day, I reckon,” Uncle Miles said. But I was already halfway to the back door by then.

 

 

 

 

M
ostly to drive Mother half out of her head with worry, Uncle Miles didn't knock the latticework pavilion together till the morning of Lucille's party. We had it all done but the sinking of the posts to hold it up. Mother had driven stakes in the yard to show us just where the thing was to stand. And Uncle Miles was enjoying himself no end.

“I never been to what they call a party, Alexander,” he said to me. “But I take a lot of pleasure in watchin' what folks put theirselves through to lay on a big show. Your maw, though, she takes the cake!”

“Well,” I replied, “I guess she wants to give Lucille a good coming out.”

“Many a big battleship has sank at its launching,” said Uncle Miles who has never seen an ocean.

We had the sides up by midmorning on that sunny Saturday. Then Uncle Miles sent me up a stepladder to stretch a striped canvas awning over the top. He'd had the idea to fly a couple of American flags from the highest part. But Mother said she was having a party not a circus. Uncle Miles mentioned that on the whole he preferred a circus.

From the top of the pavilion I had a good view of the property. I was getting to the point where I could look at the barn without visualizing pink halos and burning candles. There was a brushpile between the barn and the streetcar tracks which was there because we'd picked the lawn clean. And I saw somebody lingering back behind it. It didn't give me much of a start. I dropped the hammer, but I didn't fall through the awning.

“Who's that over yonder?” I yelled out, and Uncle Miles looked pretty sharp through his spectacles.

At that, Bub Timmons stepped from behind the brushpile and said hey to both of us. I was surprised to see Bub who isn't one to drop by and was looking especially hangdog. Bub is the one who's still learning the mechanic's trade at the Apex garage. I thought maybe he'd stopped by to admire our Mercer as interested people will.

Bub is a good fellow, though not forthcoming in his conversation. He's had a rough row to hoe on account of his father, Amory Timmons. Who, if it hadn't been for my dad, would have had worse reason for grief than he did.

Amory Timmons worked as a common laborer all his life. He lost a hand while laying track on the Woodlawn Avenue extension of the Bluff City Surface Lines streetcar company. It happened while they were just finishing off the trestle over Snake Creek out near the end of the line. It was the end of the line for Amory's hand.

He slipped and fell in new loose gravel just as a workmen's car came down the track. He'd have been cut in two if he'd moved slower. But the end of it was that the flanged wheel caught him just at the wrist. Witnesses said Amory's hand fallen there on the far side of the rail clenched up and shook. But witnesses will say a good deal to make a long story out of a short happening.

After that, everybody thought Amory would not be fit to do any kind of work and would have to live off the county. But my dad went to him and offered him a job in construction. Amory said he was useless, but Dad convinced him he could mix mortar and make cement one-handed, and Amory found he could. So he had steady work.

But still, ever after, Amory was given to bitterness against the streetcar company and went into states of mind that even liquor wouldn't touch. His wife and Bub told it around that Amory would get down at the foot of his bed some nights and bark like a dog. There were people who said he was a public menace, and they proved to be right. But Dad said he could do a good day's work when he wasn't low in his mind.