The Ghost's Grave (7 page)

“It scared her that she could see me when her sister couldn't so she quit coming to the tree house. Sure did miss that girl. It gets lonely with no one to talk to.”

“Couldn't you have gone to her house to see her when her sister wasn't there?”

“I could have, but once she got afraid of me, I left her alone. All I wanted was someone to talk to, and
you can't hold a conversation when the other person's jumpy as a jackrabbit. I watched her sometimes, though. Saw her grow up, teach school, take care of the critters. I liked that about her—she was kind to the animals.”

“What about after she died?”

“She must have moved on right away. Never saw her as a ghost.”

“Do people ever come back to Earth as animals or birds?”

“Boy, you don't know much about the hereafter, do you? Why would a person turn into a bird?”

“My Aunt Ethel thinks Florence came back as a peacock.”

“My Florence? The girl I knew?”

I nodded. “Florence had said when she died she wanted to come back as a peacock, and a few months after her death, this peacock showed up at her house, and it's been there ever since.”

“If that ain't the most fanciful tale I ever heard. Boy, you ought to be writing a book yourself.”

“It's true! The peacock hangs around the porch, and Aunt Ethel feeds it cracked corn and calls it Florence. Maybe you could go there and see if the peacock recognizes you.”

“No. I'm not talkin' to no peacock.”

“Please?” The idea of proving or disproving Aunt Ethel's theory excited me. “All you have to do is go talk to the peacock and see what happens. If it's really Florence, she'll remember you.”

“If it's Florence and she sees me, she'll be scared, just like when she was a girl. She'll fly away.”

I thought how Aunt Ethel didn't want me to bring Mr. Stray home because she feared he could frighten the peacock, but this was different. This was like a scientific experiment.

“The peacock isn't scared of people,” I said, “so if it's afraid of you, that'll mean it really IS Florence.”

“Or it would mean the peacock's scared of a ghost. Any ghost.”

“Please, Willie? It wouldn't take long.”

“No. I don't go around frightening people or birds.”

“If the peacock is scared, you can leave before it panics and flies away.”

Willie thought a moment. “I don't like to go places that I never went while I was alive,” he said, “and I never went to Florence's house, but I'll make you a deal. I'll go there for you if you'll do something for me.”

“What?”

“Dig up my leg bones, then bury them where the rest of me is buried.”

“I can't do that. There are laws against digging up graves.”

“You don't have to announce it to the sheriff. All you have to do is get a shovel, go there alone, and dig.”

“What if somebody saw me?”

Oh man, I thought, as I imagined the police calling Mom to say I'd been arrested for grave robbery. My palms started to sweat just thinking about it.

“You can do it at night. Nobody's there at night. Nobody's there in the daytime, either, most of the time. That graveyard is not exactly a lively place.” His eyes crinkled at the edges, and I could tell he wanted me to acknowledge his joke.

I shook my head. “No way,” I said. “I'm not sneaking into a cemetery at night, or any other time, to dig up one of the graves. It's too risky.”

“Will you at least go to the cemetery and find where my leg's buried? You can look around, see how easy it would be, and then decide.”

After what Willie had told me, I was curious about the cemetery. I wanted to see the row of gravestones all with the same date of death, and I wondered what it said on his leg's gravestone.
HERE LIES THE LEG OF WILLIE MARTIN
? Or
BELOVED LEG
?

“I guess I could look at the grave.” I didn't mind agreeing to that. I had no intention of digging anywhere,
but there's no law against looking around in a cemetery.

“Good,” Willie said. “Let's go.” He pointed out the door. “You can walk there on the old railroad bed.”

“I can't do it now; I have to get home. Aunt Ethel will worry if I stay away too long. I'll go to the cemetery tomorrow morning.”

“After you've been there, I'll show you where the rest of me is buried, so you'll know where to take the leg bones.”

“I'm only going to look at the grave, Willie. I'm not going to dig up your leg bones.”

“I wonder if the peacock would know me,” he said. “I thought you were curious.”

“I'm not curious enough to get myself arrested.”

We stared at each other for several seconds while his sad eyes pleaded silently.

“You're my only hope,” he said. “I wanted to ask Florence to do it, but she got scared and quit coming here before I got up my nerve to ask her.”

“It only took you about fifteen minutes to ask me.”

“I've been waiting all these years for someone else I could ask, someone who can hear me. That's one reason I started spending time in the library. I thought people who read ghost stories might be able to see me, so I hung around the supernatural section
waiting to be noticed, but it never happened.”

I envisioned Willie, waiting and hoping for so many years. It made me sad.

“All these years,” Willie said, “I've told myself that if I ever meet a living person who can hear and see me, I'll ask for their help right away. I won't take a chance that they'll leave and not return, like Florence did. Now here you are, the only one who can help me. If you won't do it, it might be another fifty years before anyone else sees me.”

Ten minutes earlier, when I first saw Willie, I had been scared silly. Now I felt sorry for him.

“I'll think about it,” I said.

The ghost smiled at me. “I'll see you in the morning,” he said just before he vanished.

I looked out the window but saw only the woods. No old coal miner.

I took a deep breath. I knew why I'd agreed to go to the cemetery. Besides being curious about the graveyard, I
liked
Willie.

In every ghost story I've ever read, the characters are afraid of the ghost—so why was I calmly carrying on a conversation with one?

I
climbed down the ladder, then spotted Mr. Stray on the same rock where he'd watched me before. I sat down by his food. Soon he approached, walking slowly as if unsure whether or not he should come close. When I didn't move, he stopped beside me and sniffed my shoe.

“Good kitty,” I said.

He leaned against me, rubbing the side of his face against the sole of my shoe. I wanted to pet him, but I was afraid if I reached toward him, he'd run off, so I sat still and continued to talk to him. Soon he stretched forward and sniffed my pant leg.

That's when I realized that Mr. Stray was really Mrs. Stray!

This cat was nursing kittens! No wonder she was so hungry. I wondered where the kittens were.
Hidden in the brush somewhere, I supposed.

My plan to tame the cat and find a home for it had just become more complicated. If Aunt Ethel was unhappy about one stray cat, what would she say about raising kittens?

I made a fist and slowly extended it toward Mrs. Stray. She sniffed my hand thoroughly, but when I tried to touch her, she backed away. She crouched at the water bowl and lapped quickly, her pink tongue darting in and out. Then she moved to the food dish, keeping a wary eye on me.

When she finished drinking and eating, she left.

As I walked back to the house, my brain buzzed with excitement about the ghost and the mother cat, but I decided not to tell Aunt Ethel about either of them. Since Aunt Ethel had not been able to see or hear Willie when she was younger, she might not want me to talk to him, and I didn't want to push my luck about taming the cat. Let her get used to the idea of one cat before I sprang a litter of kittens on her.

The summer that I had thought would be boring was already filled with secrets and excitement.

Aunt Ethel seemed relieved to see me. “I was afraid you got lost,” she said.

“I'm sorry if I worried you. I was in the tree
house, reading.” And talking to a ghost and feeding Mrs. Stray.

She smiled. “You sound like Florence. She always had her nose in a book and forgot the time. Get washed up; our dinner's almost ready.”

“It smells great,” I said as I washed my hands at the kitchen sink.

“Cheese omelets and sliced tomatoes. Another favorite dinner. Fried potatoes, too, and cantaloupe. It's good to have someone to cook for again. I've always liked to cook, but Florence didn't, so we agreed I'd be the cook and she'd be the one to clean up.”

Taking the hint, I said, “I'll do the dishes. That can be my job all summer.”

As we ate, I asked, “Do you have any books about Carbon City history? I'd like to learn about the coal mines.”

“There might be some in Florence's room. I never got around to sorting through her things.”

“Is it OK if I look?” I already knew which room she meant, because she had called it “my sister's room” that first night when she showed me around the house.

“Read anything you want,” she said. “Nothing made Florence happier than a youngster who liked to read. If you don't find anything you like, we can
stop at the library the next time we drive to Diamond Hill for groceries.”

After dinner and two pieces of the best chocolate cake I'd ever eaten, I washed the dishes, then found two apple crates in Florence's room. Stacked on their sides to make shelves, they were filled with old books.

Several were books for children:
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The Adventures of Sammy Jay
, and
The Birds' Christmas Carol
. All had names written inside the cover, but none of the names was Florence. She must have bought used books, or maybe they were donated to the school by the parents of her pupils. Compared to the mystery and adventure books I had brought with me, these didn't look very exciting.

In the second apple crate, I found two slim volumes—pamphlets, really—on the history of Carbon City. One, called “Mining Disasters,” consisted of reprints of old newspaper articles about the area. I began to read, skimming until I saw the date, May 10, 1905.

EXPLOSION IN CARBON CITY MINE
FIFTEEN MEN MEET THEIR DEATH

Widowed women and fatherless children wept near the mouth of Mine Number Five's tunnel yesterday
,
as the bodies of fifteen miners were hauled up out of the mine on the long incline tramway
.

An explosion occurred shortly after noon on May 9. Mine Superintendent Richard Jones speculated that carelessness and disobedience of orders by one or more of the miners caused the tragedy. “Someone must have struck a match or exposed the flame of his safety light,” the superintendent said, “probably to light his pipe.”

Details of the disaster are still meager
.

* * *

The article ended with the names of the dead, including Emil Davies and Wilber Martin. I stared at Willie's name. I had talked to him that very afternoon, yet here was proof he had died more than a century ago, and his death took place exactly where and when he had described it.

Why could I see a ghost when others couldn't? Did I have special psychic powers? Mom sometimes watched a TV show where a man helped people talk to their dead relatives. I liked to watch the show with her, but it gave me the creeps to think I might have such ability.

If I could see one ghost, maybe I'd see more of them, and what better place for them to show up than a graveyard? What if all of the dead miners decided
to pay me a visit? I regretted my promise to go to the cemetery the next morning.

I put the two pamphlets in my own room. Then I went down to talk to Aunt Ethel.

“Why did Aunt Florence think the tree house was haunted?” I asked, hoping I sounded casual and not overly curious.

Aunt Ethel put down the book she was reading. “Florence claimed a ghost visited us whenever we were in the tree house—a coal miner who had died in one of the explosions. I never saw him, but Florence swore up and down he'd come inside the tree house and talk to her. She even described his clothes, and she said he smelled of coal dust. At first I thought she made it up to annoy me because I didn't see him, but when she got frightened, I knew she wasn't pretending.”

“Why was she scared of him?”

“She wasn't at first. She liked seeing him when I couldn't. It made her feel special. Later it bothered her that he always came when we were there. She feared he might start popping up other places, and she wouldn't be able to get rid of him. So she quit going to the tree house.”

“Did she know his name?”

“If she did, I don't remember it. I do remember he had only one leg, which seemed odd.” She put a
bookmark in her page and looked directly at me. “Why are you so interested in Florence's old ghost? You didn't see anything like that today, did you?”

Who, me?

I shrugged. “I'm curious. I like ghost stories.” My reply wasn't the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it wasn't a lie, either.

“Did you find any history books in Florence's room?” Aunt Ethel asked.

“A couple. I'd like to visit the coke ovens sometime.”

“They're overgrown and crumbling now, but you can still find them. When we go to town for the mail next week, I'll show you where they are.”

“You only pick up mail once a week?”

“No need to go more often. It's mostly ads and bills.”

“Maybe I'll hear from my parents.” Since Aunt Ethel did not have e-mail, Mom had made arrangements with Mrs. Arbuckle, Steven's office manager in Minneapolis, to forward letters between India and Carbon City. When I wrote to Mom and Steven, I was supposed to mail the letters to Mrs. Arbuckle, who would scan them and e-mail them to Mom and Steven. They would e-mail to Mrs. Arbuckle all their letters to me, which she would print and send to Aunt Ethel's post office box.