The Ghost Belonged to Me (7 page)

Since I was free of my cakes and Blossom, I walked down to make him welcome. He said his name was Seaforth and that he'd been sent out by the
Pantagraph
newspaper to cover the party because the society editor was elsewhere covering a dog and pony show at Wood River.

He said he had rather cover prize fights and other events with some action to them. But as a cub reporter he had to take such assignments as he was given. I asked him if he was from around these parts, and he said no, he was fresh from two years at the new journalism school over at the University of Missouri. And if I would fill him in and put him wise to the local scene, he'd be obliged.

I thought this was a step up from passing cakes, and this Seaforth was a good fellow who talked to you man to man. Besides, I thought I'd better do my talking then because when Mother found out the paper was writing up our party, she'd be all over him.

“This is your sister's coming-out party, as I understand it,” said Seaforth, whose first name is Lowell. “Is she good-looking?”

“That is a matter of opinion,” I told him, remembering that Blossom said girls of Lucille's type were going out of style. “But Tom Hackett seems to think highly of her.”

“That's Hackett's Laxatives?”

“The same,” I told him.

“Then I take it that everybody who is anybody is here today,” Lowell observed.

“Very nearly,” I said. “The Breckenridges and the Hochhuths and the Hacketts senior to name but a few.”

“Well, I guess the upper crust of one town is very like another.”

I said nothing to that, not knowing.

Lowell remarked that everyone there seemed to be fairly pleased with themselves. And then he said,

I saw that was a verse and thought it was clever. But he said it'd been written before him by the poet Longfellow.

Lowell looked up at the house and strolled around a bit, viewing it from various angles. “They don't build like this anymore,” he mentioned. “This is the old place where the sea captain or whoever hanged himself, isn't it?”

I admitted that but said Mother didn't like it commented on.

“Well, I guess it'd be easier to die in than live in, what with the upkeep,” Lowell said, “no offense meant. I see you have kept on the barn. But I suppose your father will be thinking of pulling that down in favor of one of these new garages they're building now.”

I told Lowell that was the best idea I'd heard all day and showed him to the punch pavilion.

It was right then that Lucille's party took a turn for the worse. Tom Hackett's own auto, a brown and buff colored Crane-Simplex open model roared up the lane at an immoderate speed, swerved onto the lawn, and came to rest in one of Mother's flower beds, narrowly missing four girls from the high school. Tom Hackett stood up in the seat and then toppled out over the door, drunk as a skunk.

 

 

 

 

T
he day just seemed to go downhill after that and continued to do so long after dark. Mother shrieked out that she'd have the law on whoever had torn up her flowers, before she saw it was Tom. He was face down among the begonias for a time and not identifiable.

His mother recognized his car, though, and left at high speed, taking Mr. Hackett senior with her. Others stayed on, interested to know what would happen next.

Tom was shortly on his feet and weaving toward the pavilion. He got there just as Cousin Elvera was telling Mrs. Hochhuth she had not seen so many well-dressed people in one place since the St. Louis World's Fair. Then Tom was before her, flush-faced, with loose earth caking his lapels.

“Say, listen, Mrs. Schumate,” he bawled at her, “it's my opinion that whatever pink punch you're serving would profit by a little sparking up!” While he spoke, he was unscrewing the lid off a silver hip flask and pouring whiskey into the punchbowl with an unsteady hand.

There for a minute you could have made a photograph because nobody moved. Then Cousin Elvera screamed out, “You have poisoned my punch, and I don't care if you
are
Tom Hackett, I will not have it adulterated!” Or words to that effect.

She grasped the bowl in both hands and tipped it forward, and the punch cascaded right down Tom Hackett from his vest to his shoetops. Then Cousin Elvera fell back, and the bird on her hat took a dip.

“Things are picking up,” Lowell said to me. “Is that the Hackett dude?”

“Where is my sweet—my sweet—has anybody seen Lucille?” Tom yelled out, stumbling in a circle with his wet trousers clinging to his legs.

Lucille was up on the porch with her Mother's arms wrapped tight around her, and both were weeping copiously. Lucille had abandoned her bouquet on the porch rail, and it toppled into the snowball bushes, no doubt catching Blossom square on the head.

When Tom could focus on Lucille, he started in her direction. The crowd made way for him. It was then that Lowell Seaforth went into action. He strode up to Tom and took him by the arm. “Say, listen,” said Tom. “You are asking for a flat nose or worse—do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” said Lowell, “a common drunk,” which brought forth a general gasp.

“Turn loose of me,” Tom bellowed, “because I am going to my belov—my belov—I'm going up to greet Lucille.”

“You won't be insulting any more ladies today,” Lowell said in a voice that carried right up to the porch. Then he put a hammerlock on Tom's arm and marched him over to the Crane-Simplex which was axle-deep in the flowerbed. The crowd followed. He pushed Tom into the back seat where he seemed to pass out at once, though I think personally that he was playing possum. “Tell me where this boozer lives, and I'll drive him home,” said Lowell. And after considerable maneuvering, Lowell got the Crane-Simplex out of its burial ground and spun off down the lane.

He had not turned into Pine Street, though, before Mother was asking who he was. When she learned he was a reporter sent to write up the story of the party, she forgot herself completely, shouting out, “We are publicly shamed and finished in Bluff City!”

Dispatching Tom Hackett so stylishly was enough to make anybody an admirer of Lowell Seaforth. But what he wrote up for the next day's newspaper was another star in his crown. Though a good deal happened before the next day's
Pantagraph
even went to press, I'll put in Lowell's article right here where it fits best:

 

 

 

 

T
hey say history repeats itself, which can be nervewracking. Though in this case it was a good thing it did. I'm talking about candlelight in the barn.

We were a good while settling Lucille and Mother down after the party that night. Gladys took a supper tray upstairs to Mother, who said she could not face anybody anymore that night or maybe ever. Lucille was a worse case. She stalked through all the rooms staring up at the ceilings like she was planning to take her cue from Captain Campbell and hang herself from a light fixture.

She had pulled all the combs out of her back hair, which flowed freely. She was on a rampage for sure.

“How could Tom Hackett do such a thing to me?” she wailed numerous times.

And finally Dad said, “Tom Hackett was never my idea.”

Which only set Lucille off again. “To arrive liquored-up at my party just when I thought—oh, I am ruined and it is too awful.”

What Lucille thought was that she had Tom in her sights—and with witnesses. She had no doubt been planning an engagement party to follow her coming out. But Lucille was still thinking even in the midst of her rage. She has a practical side to her nature that comes out at odd moments.

Pretty soon she flopped in a chair and reasoned it out with herself. “Tom Hackett is crazy about me and has made it plain. But it was having to face up to the formalities of our families' meeting that made him—shy. So he just naturally had a little too much to drink so he wouldn't have to go through a—meaningless social ritual.”

“A
what
—which cost me seventy-five dollars not counting the damage to the yard?” asked Dad.

“Never mind, Dad,” said Lucille. “I am feeling better about it now.”

“That is the first good news I have had these many months,” Dad said. “Let's all call it a day.”

“But I have some bad news, Dad,” I had to say to him.

“Oh never say so, Alexander,” he moaned. “What is it?”

“Bub Timmons was by this morning and said his pa was in a bad way and running out of control and not to look for him at work for a while.”

“Alexander,” Dad said, “that is a shame, but with what we have been through today, I'm not going to take it to heart.” Then he led the way upstairs and I followed. Lucille, though, headed through the house in the other direction toward the back hall where we have installed the telephone.

I was in my bed, reviewing the day, which took quite a time. What was foremost in my mind was the way Lowell Seaforth had taken Tom over. You couldn't help but marvel at a fellow who would step up and take charge like that.

I listened to three, maybe four streetcars rattle by out back and was beginning to feel drowsy when I heard something else. It was way off at the front of the property, but I knew the sound of Tom Hackett's Crane-Simplex. All I could make out was the engine purring along, which must have meant he was driving on the grass to avoid the gravel. I was reminded then that I never had heard Lucille come upstairs.

She is going to make it up with him pretty quick, is what I thought to myself, before he has time to realize what fools he has made of them both. So, bye and bye, quite a while after I heard the car stop, I slipped out of my room and up to the spare bedroom right over the piazza. I like to listen in to other people's business, which is probably why I was not too sanctimonious with Blossom when I caught her under the porch watching our party.

The view out over the front lawn was not encouraging. It looked like a team of Clydesdales had dragged a road-grader across the grass, and paper roses were blowing everywhere. Tom and Lucille were in the settee directly below. No sound came from them at first except for the rustle of Lucille's dress and small sighs.

I was half asleep at my post when Tom said, “Have I made my girl unhappy?”

Lucille murmured something in reply. “I wouldn't do anything to hurt my girl. She knows that, doesn't she, because she is the sweetest, most generous girl in the world?”

Oh this is pretty disgusting, I thought to myself. More murmurs from Lucille.

“But what does it matter what other people think? At most times I can hold my liquor and I always sober right up,” said Tom, gaining confidence. “My father could buy and sell everybody in town except maybe the Van Deeters who weren't even there to see me when I'd had a drop too much.”

Oh, I thought to myself, I wish there was an extra bowl of punch I could fling down on their heads. “You know,” said Tom, “my intentions regarding you are strictly on the up and up and as far as I am concerned we are already engaged, married even.”

Oh, Lucille, you think you have him where you want him again, and it'd serve you right if you did, is what I thought.

“So let us have a kiss to show we aren't mad, and then some more,” said Tom. Then later, “Yes, Lucille, but let's not rush into any public announcements until after you graduate from the high school. It wouldn't do if the word got around that I was robbing the cradle.”

Then Lucille's voice came up quite strong. “You will not slip through my fingers, Tom Hackett,” she said. “Never think it.” Oh, this is more than I can stomach, I thought to myself, and crept off to my room.

I guess if the conversation passing back and forth between Tom and Lucille had not been so sickening, the whole history of Bluff City would be different. Because I would not have gone on back to my room when I did.

 

 

 

 

T
he room was so bright I could almost make out the colors on my patchwork quilt. There looked to be a million lightning bugs glowing outside the window. I walked over to it and stared out to the barn. The dormer window was ablaze with candlelight. “Blossom is outdoing herself,” I said. But the words stuck in my throat.

Why I didn't yell to raise the house I don't know. The light slanted down from the window and threw a long patch of yellow across the yard. It was all as quiet as a tomb. Then a flock of roosting birds stirred in the elm. They flapped their wings with a sudden noise and wheeled off into the night. So did I.

When I got out back, the birds were gone, but the light wasn't. I cut across the yard and fetched up by the hitching post, not thinking too far ahead. There beside the barn, I looked back at the long shape on the lawn, bright as electricity but not so white.