The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed

by Bruce Coville

  “This isn’t going to be like the garden, is it?” I asked, looking at the half-stripped stairwell.

  “Nine, you wound me!”

  “Truth hurts,” I said, as I ran my blade under a stray patch of paper. Dad had started a garden in the backyard three years ago—and I do mean started. Digging it up is as far as he got. The patch still sits there—dug up, and nothing more.

  In a way I hope he never finishes it. It’s very useful to me as it is, since I can mention it whenever he gets on my case about my not finishing things that I start.

  On the other hand, he started the garden just before my mother left. So maybe I shouldn’t be too rough on him about it. He didn’t concentrate too well for a while back then.

  Still, I really didn’t want to live with the hall looking like this for the next three years.

  Dad started to say something to defend himself, slipped on a piece of wet paper, and announced that it was time for a break. “I think we’ve got some slopnuggets around,” he said.

  Slopnuggets are these cookies the two of us make. They always come out different because we don’t have a recipe. When we want to make some, we just take a big mixing bowl and throw in everything that seems as if it might make a good cookie that night. As long as we make sure to use the basic stuff like eggs and flour, and go light on things like pickles and pepper, they come out just fine. They’re a little weird sometimes, but we’ve never made a batch we couldn’t eat.

  “So how was your weekend?” Dad asked as he set the milk and cookies on the dining room table.

  “Interesting.” I scooped a giant pile of orange fur off a chair and sat down. The fur blob was really our cat, Sidney. He batted halfheartedly at my leg and then stalked away, his belly swaying from side to side.

  “I think he’s getting fatter,” I said.

  “He’s just putting on his winter pork,” said my father, dunking a slopnugget into his coffee. “I shudder to ask this, but why was your weekend so interesting?”

  I stared out the window into our backyard, where our single tree, an enormous maple, was beginning to litter the ground with red and orange leaves. “Did you ever hear of a painting called ‘Early Harvest’?” I asked at last.

  “Sure. One of the most famous war pictures ever painted. Quite well known locally, of course.”

  “How come?”

  He got that superior look grown-ups get when they’re about to tell you something they think you’re incredibly stupid not to have known in the first place. I already knew his next line (“What do they teach you in those schools these days?”), so I waited until he got that out of his system before I really started to listen.

  “‘Early Harvest’ was painted by Syracuse’s own mad genius.” He sounded wistful, as if he thought it was wonderful to be a crazy artist. “His name was Cornelius Fletcher. He grew up right here, painted a handful of the best pictures ever created by an American, and then stopped.”

  “I suppose nobody realized how great he was until he died.”

  Dad shook his head. “Surprisingly, he gained a fair amount of acclaim while he was still living. That’s one reason it was such a puzzle when he stopped painting. Of course, the fact that he stopped when he did is one reason his pictures are so valuable—there just aren’t enough of them to go around. Most American museums would love to get their hands on an original Cornelius Fletcher. Although what they really want are the postwar canvases. His work was pretty bland until after the war.”

  “Which war?”

  “World War One—the war to end all wars.”

  “If that was the war to end all wars, how come we had World War Two?”

  Dad shrugged. “It didn’t work,” he said sadly.

  I decided to change the subject. “How much are we talking about when we say ‘Valuable’?”

  He rolled his eyes back, as if he were consulting some calculator in his brain. “Probably a hundred thousand,” he said. “Maybe more.”

  “Dollars?”

  “No, goldfish! Of course dollars. But that’s nothing compared to what the Lost Masterpiece would fetch.”

  This time I really paid attention. “Lost Masterpiece?”

  “Only a rumor. Gossip has it that Fletcher was working on his greatest picture when he finally went around the bend. No one knows what happened to it. One of the great mysteries of American art.”

  “What would that be worth?” I asked.

  “A few million, I suppose. Dollars, not goldfish. But don’t get excited. I doubt that it really exists.”

  Typical grown-up negative thinking.

  “How come he went mad?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a while since I read up on this. I think it was some kind of family tragedy. Actually, I don’t believe anyone really knows the details. Why are you so interested in all this?”

  “I saw the picture yesterday,” I said.

  “In a book?”

  “No, on someone’s wall.”

  “Strange, isn’t it,” he said. “You wouldn’t think anyone would want that print hanging in their house. But it was quite popular for a while among people who were opposed to wars. You’ll see a framed copy in antique shops every now and then.”

  “I don’t think this was a print,” I said, filling him in on what had happened when Chris and I had been looking at the picture.

  My father’s eyes widened. “At it again, are we?” he said at last.

  I shrugged. “We saw a ghost, too.”

  “What kind of ghost?”

  “A little kid. She was crying for her daddy.”

  My father closed his eyes; he looked as though he were in pain.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Just a little sad.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, think about it. Ghosts tend to hang around when they have some unfinished business—usually around the place they died. From what you heard, I would guess your insubstantial friend died while waiting for her father. Maybe you wouldn’t understand, but I can’t think of anything worse than not—well, not coming through for you if you needed me.”

  I stood up and walked around the table. “You’ve been coming through for me, Dad,” I said softly.

  He patted my hand. “Come on. Let’s go strip wallpaper.”

  I followed him into the hall, wondering what tragedy had left a little girl’s ghost waiting in Phoebe Watson’s house.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Past Imperfect

  When I called Chris to tell her what I had found out from my father, she said, “A crazy painter, huh? I suppose you could say he had a ‘brush with madness.’”

  I refused to satisfy her with a groan. “What are we going to do about all this?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

  “We start by getting more information.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Sure. We go to the library. If this Fletcher guy was so hot, we ought to be able to learn something about him there. Of course, we don’t know that the picture has anything to do with anything else, but it’s as good a place to start as any.”

  “Do you suppose Sam still works in the reference room?”

  Sam was a librarian we got to know while we were trying to solve the mystery at the Grand Theater. He had the most gorgeous eyes of any librarian I had ever met. In fact, he was pretty gorgeous in general.

  “We’re going there to learn about the dead,” said Chris, “not to long for the living.”

  “Life goes on,” I replied, trying to sound casual.

  Actually, by the time I met Chris at the library Monday afternoon, I wasn’t so sure life was going to go on. I had been so wound up in the weekend’s events that I never got around to doing my homework. My teacher was not amused; somehow, I didn’t think my father would be either.

  “You’d better get your act together, or your dad’s going to nail your feet to the floor,” was the way Chris put it.

  I had a feeling she was right.<
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  “Hey!” Sam said, when we walked into the reference room. “It’s my ghost-bustin’ buddies. What’s up, ladies?”

  I raised my left eyebrow, a trick I had spent about six months trying to perfect. “More mystery,” I whispered.

  Sam looked from side to side, as if he were afraid someone in the room might be a spy. Lowering his voice, he whispered back, “What is it this time?”

  “Ve vant to know about zis arteest named Corneeelius Fletcher,” Chris said, slipping into her secret agent accent.

  “Zen you should go to ze art and music section!”

  “I get confused,” I said, dropping the game. “I never know where I’m supposed to start in this place.”

  “Start by asking a librarian,” said Sam. “That’s why we’re here.”

  The woman in Art and Music had jet black hair and skin the color most beach freaks spend all summer trying to get. Only you could tell her skin was just naturally that color. According to the sign on her desk, her name was Olivia de la Pena. She was sticking labels on some compact discs when we walked up. When she saw us, she stopped what she was doing and asked if she could help us.

  We told her what we wanted.

  “No one has written a biography of Cornelius Fletcher yet.” She sighed. “Lord knows I could use one—I’ve got high school students in here all the time trying to learn about him for papers on local history. But I do have one thing that might help.”

  She stood up and led us to a book called Twentieth-Century American Artists. It had a half page of small print on Cornelius Fletcher, along with a black-and-white copy of “Early Harvest.” Next to the photo, in tiny letters, were the words “Courtesy of Phoebe Watson.”

  “That settles that,” said Chris, pointing to the credit line. “The picture’s the real thing.”

  “It’s still hideous,” I said.

  “I tend to agree with you,” said Ms. de la Pena. “On the other hand, it is considered one of the most powerful antiwar paintings ever done. That was a real change for Fletcher, of course. He was just a landscape painter until after he came back from France. But that’s all in here,” she said. “I’ll let you find out for yourselves.”

  She went back to her compact discs. Unfortunately, there wasn’t that much more to find out. According to the book, Cornelius Fletcher was born in Syracuse in 1890, got married in 1915, went off to war in 1917, and died in 1924. The book did mention the Lost Masterpiece, but only as an example of art world gossip.

  “Find what you were looking for?” asked Ms. de la Pena, when she saw us close the book.

  I shrugged. “I would have liked a few more details,” I said. “Like how he died.”

  “I don’t know how he died,” said Ms. de la Pena. “But I can tell you how he lost his legs.”

  “Lost his legs?” Chris asked.

  “It’s a fairly nasty story,” said Ms. de la Pena. She frowned. “Actually, I’m not the best one to tell it. Since you’re so interested, you might want to wait a little while. I think Marcus is going to be in today.”

  “Who’s Marcus?” I asked.

  “A student at the university. He’s doing his thesis on Fletcher, and he comes here to use the local history section. Does a lot of digging in the newspapers from Fletcher’s period. Spends time in the genealogy section, too. All that obscure stuff graduate students feed on. He’s been working on it for nearly a year now. I wish he’d finish. If it’s good enough, maybe he’ll get it published and make my job easier.”

  We decided to wait. Except we’re not very good at waiting, and after a few minutes Ms. de la Pena got sort of sick of us and suggested we take a trip to the reference room to look at some microfilms of newspapers from Fletcher’s day.

  “The last time we tried to look at microfilms, they had already been stolen,” Chris said, referring to what had happened when we tried to do research on the Woman in White.

  When Ms. de la Pena realized we were the ones who had recovered the stolen films, she acted as if we were celebrities. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? I’m so pleased to meet the two of you. I was very impressed with what you did this summer.”

  She went to the reference room with us and helped us pick out some microfilms that might be of use. We each took three or four of the fat spools over to the reading machines. Sitting side by side, we threaded them in and started to scan through them.

  Let me tell you, you can learn a lot of weird stuff by looking at old papers.

  For one thing, you learn that things today probably aren’t as awful as people like to think. I found a bunch of stories about the kinds of grisly crimes that make people shake their heads and mutter, “What is this world coming to?” After looking at those papers, I’d say whatever we’re coming to isn’t that much different from what we were coming to seventy years ago.

  On the other hand, movies were silent back then, liquor was illegal, chicken cost more than steak, and a car cost less than a good bicycle costs today. Of course, people got paid a lot less, too.

  I didn’t find anything about Cornelius Fletcher, but I didn’t really mind. I was enjoying looking at the old papers. At least I was getting a better sense of the time he lived in.

  I was reading an article about a fourteen-year-old girl who was suing her husband for divorce when a voice above us said, “You can spend months looking for information that way.”

  Chris and I turned around. Then we looked up because the man standing behind us was incredibly tall. He was also so skinny that I kind of worried he might break in half while he was standing there. He had rumpled black hair, big glasses, a huge nose and a friendly smile. The knees on his jeans were patched, a fact I noticed because they were so close to my eye level.

  “You are Chris and Nine, aren’t you?”

  “I’m Nine. She’s Chris.”

  “I understand you’re interested in Cornelius Fletcher.”

  “Ms. de la Pena told us you knew how he lost his legs,” Chris said.

  Marcus nodded. “It’s a pretty nasty story. Doesn’t put this community in a very good light. Why do you want to know it?”

  “We saw one of his paintings the other day, and it got us interested in him,” I said.

  Marcus looked more interested. “Which painting?”

  I made a face. “‘Early Harvest.’”

  “You mean a print?”

  “No, we saw the original,” Chris said.

  Suddenly Marcus looked very interested. “Then you’ve met the owner?”

  “If you mean Phoebe Watson, then the answer is yes.”

  “All right, here’s the deal; I’ll tell you what I know, if you’ll tell me what she’s like.”

  Chris and I looked at each other.

  “I’ve been trying to get an interview with her for over two years,” said Marcus. He sounded a little desperate. “I need something about her for my thesis.”

  “Well, okay,” I said, feeling confused.

  Marcus seemed to relax a little. “Let’s go over there,” he said, gesturing to one of the library tables. “I’ll tell you as much as I know of the story.”

  When we were all settled around the table, Marcus took off his glasses, rubbed them on his shirt, settled them back on his beaky nose, and began.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ve been able to figure out. It seems that when Cornelius Fletcher came back from the war, he was filled with despair over what he had seen. It was a terrible war, you know. I mean, they all are, but this one was something new in the history of the world—new kinds of weapons, new ways of fighting. Fletcher went over with stars in his eyes and came back with rage in his heart, particularly at the old men who ran the war and sent young men off to die.”

  I thought about “Early Harvest” and all the young men dying in the forest.

  “His style of painting changed,” Marcus continued, “became very political. It was a bad time for him to do that—at least, in terms of his own career. The country was going through a reactionary backlash
, and freedom of speech had just about been thrown out the window. Poor Fletcher might have been all right if he had been living in Greenwich Village or someplace like that. But not around here. The more famous his work became, the more upset the reactionaries got. Finally a gang of them jumped him one night and ‘taught him a lesson’—which is to say they beat him so badly that he nearly died.”

  “That’s terrible!” I cried.

  Marcus nodded. “What made it even worse was that he was already half crippled. His legs had been injured in the war, and he had to walk on crutches.”

  “They beat up a guy on crutches?” Chris asked in astonishment.

  “They didn’t like what he was painting,” Marcus said. His voice was sharp with anger. “They left him in a ditch, and he had to crawl home. Only he couldn’t get in, because the whole place was surrounded by a stone wall. Fletcher had locked the gate when he left, and now he couldn’t reach it to unlock it. By the time somebody found him, his legs were so badly frostbitten, they had to be amputated. People mark that as the time when he began to move deeply into his insanity.”

  “What happened to the men who beat him up?” I asked.

  “Most of them were never identified. The police weren’t big on tracking down people who attacked suspected radicals; they figured Fletcher had it coming to him. You have to understand the times. During the war Congress actually passed a law that made it an offense to criticize the uniforms of the army.”

  “You mean you could be sent to jail for saying there was something wrong with the way soldiers dressed?” asked Chris.

  “You got it,” said Marcus.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “it wasn’t an atmosphere where the authorities had a lot of respect for people who spoke out against the official line. Even so, at least one of the men came to justice—the ringleader of the group, in fact.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Chris eagerly.

  “His name was Hiram Potter. After the beating it came out that Fletcher had saved Potter’s son’s life during the war. The day Fletcher’s legs were amputated, Potter went out to his barn and hung himself.”