A Boy a Girl and a Ghost

by Robert J. McCarter

  I stumble through the morning as I slowly wake up. The coffee my parents left helps some. It’s so bitter, though, I wonder how they can stand drinking it, but as its effects kick in, I begin to understand why.

  I debate taking a nap, but after cleaning up I head down to the graveyard on my bike. I need to know what happened to Lionel. I go to Uncle Don’s grave, but I can’t see him. Maybe it’s the sunlight, maybe it’s my sodden brain—I don’t know.

  I call for him, but feel like an idiot for talking to the empty air. I get off my bike and go sit on the grave. I close my eyes tight and rub my face. I’m just so tired. When my hands are covering my eyes, when I can barely see the light of the day, I see the flashes of light.

  Shit! No way.

  I drop my hands and look around—nothing. I close my eyes and cover them—flashes of light out of my peripheral vision. Amorphous white shapes that vaguely look like people. Just like I’ve been seeing every night. Just like when I first started seeing Lionel.

  I can see the ghosts during the day, but only with my eyes closed. And I’m freaking out about it. If I am not seeing the ghosts with my eyes, then how am I seeing them?

  “You do seem to frequent this establishment,” I hear a voice say. It’s deep with the melody of a southern accent.

  I suck in a breath and open my eyes, blinking against the light. It’s the big man, Edward Lopez, except no suit this time, just jeans, a button-down shirt, and cowboy boots.

  “Oh… hello, Mr. Lopez.”

  “It’s Big Ed, son. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say with a nod, standing up. I don’t want him to have to try to sit down again. He moves with a fluid grace, as if he were a dancer, or as if he’s made of something delicate and is easily hurt.

  “I like it here, too,” he says, rubbing at his chin which has several days of growth in black and white. “Most folks avoid the cemetery like the plague. But I find it peaceful. Induces a sense of perspective.”

  I nod but don’t comment further. He seems like a nice man, like someone who would be a good listener. But I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him.

  “I can’t just sort all day long,” he says, his big finger stabbing out to the southwest. “Aunt Tilly, she weren’t so good at throwing things out. The chaos gets to me, so I come down here to walk it off. And stop by and ask her some questions.”

  “Questions?” I ask. “Isn’t your aunt dead?”

  He chuckles. “That she is, Mr. Wade. Dead as an armadillo who couldn’t cross the road fast enough. But why the hell would that stop me from telling her what I think?”

  I stand there blinking. Can he see the dead too? Can he hear them? My stomach flutters in a potent combination of excitement and fear. “Does she answer you…” I say, my voice quiet so he can pretend he didn’t hear me if he wants to.

  He laughs, it’s a great booming sound. “Hell no, son. She’s dead, she don’t talk back. And frankly, that is fine. It’s the first time in my life I’ve gotten more than a few words in where Aunt Tilly is concerned. I am kind of evening things up, conversation wise.”

  I feel stupid for having such a hope. That there was someone else that could see the ghosts too. Someone else that could help me sort this out.

  “But it’s interesting, though,” he continues, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his blue jeans. “Going through all her things. I am beginning to piece together what her life looked like. She being so far west here, we didn’t get out to visit her often, and she stopped traveling a decade ago.”

  “Are you a detective or something?” I ask.

  “Well aren’t you perceptive? Why yes, young man, I am. I served for twenty years with the Bowie County Sheriff’s Department and then became a private investigator. Can’t help but solve puzzles when I find them.”

  I look him over again. He’s stout, there’s no other word for it, with a round face and red cheeks. In a few years, once the grey progresses more, he’ll make a great Hispanic Santa Claus. Thoughts of Lionel come rushing into my mind. Here’s a detective. I have a murder to solve for my ghost friend. But it all seems just too convenient. I want to say something, but find I don’t have the courage.

  “Well, I best get back to it,” he says as he ambles off. “Maybe I’ll see you around here again, Mr. Wade.”

  “I’m sorry, A,” Billy says as soon as he comes into the store just after 1 p.m. He’s talking kind of loud, his eyes locked on mine. I point to the three customers looking at the Cedar City section and he flushes red and mouths “sorry.”

  “I was being an ass yesterday,” he says in a whisper when he gets up to the counter.

  “Yes, you were,” I say with a smile. “But that doesn’t matter.” I proceed to tell him what has happened since I saw him: Helena and Lionel and how we “proved” he was real. My dad catching me. Meeting a detective in the graveyard.

  Billy’s reply to the data dump is eloquent as usual. “Shit… Shit… Shit…” He’s shaking his head, his voice still low. “I mean… holy shit!”

  “So, are you up for solving a murder?” I ask, the grin on my face is huge. After so many summers puking my guts out, I am happy as a clam to have something interesting to do.

  “But… How…” he stammers. “Where do we start?”

  “Remember that print shop?” I ask, he nods. “It was just three doors down. It happened right in our neighborhood. We start by going to the library, looking at old newspapers, finding out what we can find out.”

  We would have talked more, but the tourists were ready to check out and it was time for me to go back to work.

  In the library, Billy looks as out of place as I’d look riding a bull at the rodeo. He’s stiff and awkward and has no idea where anything is.

  “They got newspapers here?” he asks in a hushed whisper. My shift is over and we’ve come down here to start our research.

  I nod. “They keep some on file and the rest they put on microfiche.” He’s looking at me like I just told him aliens are running the government. “Tiny pictures… they have these plastic sheets with tiny picture of each page you blow up on a reader.”

  He nods like it means something to him, but the library is not his place, it’s mine. I love it. It’s not much as these things go, just a single-story brick building on Center Street not far from the university. It’s got narrow windows that run from floor to ceiling and let light into the stacks of books. I love searching the card catalog, thumbing through random books. At every turn is a new story, something new to learn, so much to know.

  It’s like the bookstore, but more sacred. The information is free to use, open to all. As a society, who would we be without the open sharing of knowledge? Without libraries?

  We walk up to the research desk. Mrs. Reynolds greets us. She’s a petite woman with glasses and flat brown hair going to grey. “How can I help you, Aaron?” she asks. She knows me, I spend a fair amount of time here when I am healthy.

  “Looking for newspaper articles from the winter of 1976, when Lionel Malak died.”

  She raises one eyebrow and looks from me to Billy. Billy’s got his head down and is staring at his shoes.

  “And what would you need with that info, dearie?” she asks. Her voice goes up half an octave.

  I was afraid of this, but I don’t see any big reason to sneak around about it. I just want to read the newspaper. I take a deep breath and tell the lie Billy and I prepared. “Just settling a bet, Mrs. Reynolds. Billy here thinks he was hit over the head. I remember it being a knife.” I lean over and lower my voice further. “There’s money on the line.”

  She snorts under her breath and says, “That’ll be on microfiche. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, so you’ll have to search yourself.” She sweeps into the back.

  “Do they have a comics section?” Billy asks, his head swiveling around as if he’s looking for a way to escape.

  After the first half hour of searching the microfiche, I se
nd Billy on his way. He is just slowing me down, interfering with the peace I always feel at the library. I spend the next few hours reading every article about Lionel’s murder. I take copious notes in my journal, encoded of course.

  On my way home I go by the graveyard, get off my bike, and stare at Uncle Don’s grave. It’s weird how the space has changed for me. It’s not just about my uncle anymore, but tied up with Helena and Lionel and me seeing ghosts. Ghosts that are real.

  I look around, making sure no one is here, and then close my eyes tight and cover my eyes with my hands. Sure enough, more flashes of white out of my peripheral vision, but no Lionel.

  I sit down, take my journal out of my backpack, and write an unencoded message to Helena. I explain to her that I can’t come out at night anymore and that I have news on our “quest” and that she should call me. I sign it “W.”

  I tear out the page, fold up the note, put an “H” on it, and tuck it into the grass near the gravestone.

  I debate going by her house, but the butterflies in my stomach make me think better of it. I will if I don’t see her soon, but it’s not something I want to do yet. The thought of meeting her father, for some reason, makes my knees weak. I tell my knees that we are just friends, but for some reason they are not buying it.

  12

  Thursday, June 23, 1977

  I slept like the dead last night, catching up from the extra late outing with Helena the night before. I find myself thinking of her as I wake. Small things really. The way her eyes narrow when she laughs, her cheeks rising up so high. How her hair moves, flowing so smoothly across her shoulders and back. How she walks so confidently with those curves of hers, as if she is unaware of how her presence affects those around her.

  I find myself aroused and feel rather embarrassed about it. We are just friends, goddamnit, just friends. My body shouldn’t be feeling this way about her body.

  I think of Billy and what he does under his covers with his Playboys. His “conjugal” visits with Barbara Bach. He never uses the word masturbation, but there is no doubt that is what is going on. He says it calms him, makes him happy, that the “hormones of a young man in his prime must be obeyed. Release must be achieved.”

  I have a grasp of the basic biology, the propagation of the species and such, but having been sick for so much of my teen years, this experience is new. The knowledge didn’t properly prepare me for the chemistry of it. This feeling is like an itch that can only be scratched in one way.

  I am trying to be logical about it, think about it clearly. Somehow, I think it would be a disservice to her and our friendship to “release” while imagining her. That it would somehow change things between us. I also don’t know if I can stand this feeling, this desire, without something to mitigate it.

  All these thoughts, as well as the associated chemicals, are running through me when there is a knock on the door.

  “Breakfast, Aaron,” my mother says cheerfully. “You are coming down, aren’t you?”

  Adrenalin dumps into my system and the chemistry of my body shifts. All thoughts of “release” or “conjugal visits” are dismissed.

  It’s Thursday and I still haven’t asked Helena over for Saturday dinner. I head things off when I get downstairs by saying, “I didn’t see her yesterday, I don’t know if she can come on Saturday.”

  After putting a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of me, my mother purses her lips and looks at me in that way of hers. It’s a narrow-eyed appraising look that I’ve never liked. It’s like she’s trying to figure out what’s going on in my head. And, frankly, I don’t want her to know that.

  “Maybe you can call her,” she says, pointing to the kitchen phone.

  I shrug. “I don’t have her number.” The lie slips out easily, making me feel super guilty.

  “Hmm, I thought you two were friends,” she says. I’m not looking at her, my attention fully on the scrambled eggs in front of me, but I know she’s staring at me with that “look.” It’s a probing thing, as if she’s looking for a weakness, a way in, a way to change something about me.

  “We are,” I say, taking a bite of the bacon and staring out the window into our little backyard. In it is a swing set that didn’t get nearly enough use. It somehow seems sad out there, like it is not fulfilling its purpose, not having a good life (for a swing set, that is).

  My mother plops the phonebook down in front of me and then sits down and starts eating her own breakfast. I look up to my dad, hoping for an ally, but his head is buried in his newspaper.

  “I think we should give the swing set away,” I say, changing the subject.

  “What?” Mom asks. My father’s head appears above the newsprint.

  “You know, find some people with kids who need it. It just seems so lonely. I never got to use it much.”

  The energy in the room changes. It’s no longer about pestering me to invite a girl over for an excruciatingly embarrassing meal, it’s now about Cancer and the price that we all paid, how much of my childhood was merely about survival, not doing kid things like swinging.

  “It’s a good idea, son.” My dad has put his paper down. He is fully engaged in the conversation.

  “Well… I…” my mom begins. She’s all flummoxed. I’m not sure why, but my properly rested brain has come up with a great idea.

  “How about I come to church with you on Sunday,” I say to her, briefly catching my father’s eye. He asked me to do something nice for her and we both know she’ll love this. “Maybe we can ask around, find a good home for it.”

  She’s got a frown on her face and then her brow furrows and she nods, a smile creeping onto her pink lips. “That would be nice, Aaron.”

  My mother goes to the Lutheran church. That was her church when she was a kid, but she was kind of lapsed until I got sick. Since then she always goes—provided I’m healthy enough. My father wouldn’t be caught dead in a church. He’s an atheist, although not very loud about it. Cedar is a small town in Southern Utah, an area dominated by the Mormon religion. You don’t run around and openly proclaim yourself as an atheist.

  I catch my father’s eye and he’s smiling. I’m sure he’s not thrilled about me going to a church, but he knows how happy it will make my mother.

  The rest of breakfast is quite pleasant, not one more word about Helena.

  The morning and then my hours at the bookstore go by at a crawl. I miss Helena, I’m dying to talk to her about what I found out in the newspapers. For once, I don’t really want to be in the bookstore. I want to be out in the world trying to find out what happened to Lionel.

  It’s a strange feeling for me. This sense of purpose. Not that I haven’t had a huge purpose before. I have, it was survival. It was all about me. Now it’s about someone else, something else besides my Cancer. It’s a feeling I like.

  It’s about 3 p.m. and my dad is settled in with a petite blond going over some homework. She’s pretty, and I think at this point in my hormonal life I would have really noticed her, but looking at her makes me want to see Helena all the more. The student is giving off the “vibe” to my dad—it’s clear to me that she likes him, but he seems entirely oblivious. Which fits. My dad is a standup guy, he’s devoted to my mother.

  I say my goodbyes and head out the door and step onto the sidewalk.

  “Got your note.”

  I can’t help but smile. Helena’s got my note in her hand and is leaning against the red brick of the building.

  “Hey,” I say, my smile getting so big it must surely classify as “goofy.”

  “What’s with you?” she asks, pushing herself up from the wall.

  “Just glad to see you,” I say. “We tell the truth in this relationship, right?”

  Her eyes narrow and it appears she’s giving me her version of the “look.” Do all women do this?

  “Well I’m glad to see you too,” she says. “I’ve been poking around about Lionel. I’ve got some good stuff.”

  “Me too,” I sa
y. “I was at the library yesterday and have the basics of what happened.”

  We both stand there for a breath. I’m staring at her, she’s staring at me. I don’t know what this moment is, but my memory of this morning and my body wanting hers comes rushing back. I look down and feel my cheeks flush red.

  “What!?” she asks, her fist bumping my shoulder.

  I look up briefly and shake my head.

  “Come on, Wade, what was that look about?” she says. “I don’t break easily, we are friends, you can tell me.”

  I look around, there are a few people headed down the sidewalk towards us and driving on the street. “Not here.”

  I look around and think, the university is just a couple of blocks away with open spaces and fewer adults.

  “Let’s find a quiet spot,” I nod towards the university.

  We find a spot on the grass under a big spruce tree in sight of the construction of the Adam’s Shakespearian Theatre, a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. From the outside it looks like it’s complete, but judging from the sawing and the banging, they are still working on the inside. They don’t have much time, opening day is in a week.

  “What’s going on, Wade?” she asks once we are sitting on the grass. “What was that look?”

  This spot is up on a slight rise, with fir and spruce trees all around. It feels safe, most people bustling by won’t even notice us here.

  I bite my lip and try not to fall into those amber eyes of hers. “How much truth can a friendship handle?” I ask.

  The “look” comes back briefly before she says, “A lot. A true friendship can handle the truth.”

  “And do we have a ‘true’ friendship?”

  She shrugs. “This is not the kind of thing I have a lot of experience with. I told you, I have trouble making friends.”

  I sigh and pick at the grass.

  “Just spit it out, Wade. It’s Truth or Truth with us, okay?”