Ghost Heart

by Weston Ochse

  “Giggle-mesh? Meso-petunia?”

  “Your friend’s recovering quite well,” she told him. “This will do wonders for that small scrape of yours.”

  “But—“

  Matt squirmed and twisted, desperate to get away. Not only was the stench making him woozy, but the flies reminded him way too much of the Christmas Witch. He managed to crawl to the top of the rock, then was suddenly held fast as Buddha’s big hand form-fitted around his head.

  “Hold still,” Granny commanded. “It’ll only hurt a little.”

  “It’s gonna hurt, too?” Matt rolled his eyes.

  “The sheep urine is what makes it burn just a bit.”

  Matt watched in horror as Granny Annie scooped a handful of yellow ichor from the bucket, her hand almost completely enveloped by flies. He tried again to escape, but Buddha’s grip held him like a vise.

  When Granny applied it to his knee, Matt shut his eyes and screamed. The sound was long and loud. When it finally tapered off, he opened his eyes to a normal world. Granny was walking away, Buddha had released him, and his knee no longer hurt. He glanced down to the tear in his jeans. Only one lone fly lingered there as if to prove that it had all been real.

  It took him a few minutes to recover. Once he was ready to get up, he felt a little foolish. He’d made too much of everything.

  Like before.

  Before he could think too much about that, Matt’s gaze settled on Jacket. He gasped with relief.

  His old friend was finally awake, and now he stood by the dying fire, his hands out to gather warmth. Matt hurried next to him and thrust his own hands out, mimicking Jacket’s stance. But Jacket made of point of not noticing Matt or saying anything, just staring straight forward. Matt wanted to hug his old friend or maybe just say hi, but there was a guilt that separated them like a wide chasm. From the corner of his eye, Matt saw the yellow-blue bruises and crusted blood at the corner of Jacket’s mouth. He couldn’t help but feel partially to blame.

  Finally Jacket spoke.

  “I was cold last night.” His voice trembled a little. “People think being dead is all about cold. Believe it or not, I haven’t felt cold or hot since that day in 1953. This feels mighty good.”

  “Yeah.”

  Several moments passed before Jacket spoke again. “What’s that smell?”

  “Sheep’s urine,” answered Matt.

  “And where does a young man go to get sheep’s urine these days?” Jacket asked, a trace of a smile licking at his lips.

  “From Granny Annie,” answered Matt. He grinned at the strangeness of the conversation.

  “If that’s what’s for breakfast, I think I’ll pass.”

  “Too late.” Matt pointed to the telltale yellow strain at Jacket’s elbow. “You have it already.”

  Jacket twisted his arm and glared at the offending ichor. Then he shrugged. “I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve been rubbed with sheep urine. The experience is not altogether unpleasant, but I’d work on the smell.”

  “You should have smelled it before I added the lavender,” Granny Annie told him as she joined them by the fire.

  Both Jacket and Matt made faces, each not wanting to imagine that the smell could be any worse.

  “Jacket, when you’re done criticizing my nursing skills, why not come over here for some bacon and pancakes? I think there’s one or two that the kid didn’t eat.”

  Jacket turned to follow her.

  Matt touched his friend on the arm. “Jacket?”

  Jacket stopped but didn’t turn around. “Never mind, kid. It’s not important.”

  “But I …” Matt swallowed, trying to find the right words. “I’m just sorry, is all.”

  “I know.”

  “Jacket?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Nope.” He paused. “At least not at you.”

  “Okay.”

  XVIII

  BECOMING PART OF THE FUTURE

  “Not exactly heavy, is it?” Jacket asked from where he lay beneath the motorcycle. He grinned to disguise the pain and his embarrassment.

  “Lucky you. That old Harley of yours would have crushed you after a spill like that,” said Granny Annie, hands on hips.

  “That old Harley of mine is a work of art. Not like this,” Jacket said. He slid out from under the Ninja and struggled to stand so he could right the motorcycle. “This is more like an insane alien toy than a bike.” Built for racing, the Ninja was all angles and very, very different from Jacket’s low-slung hydra glide.

  “This alien toy, as you call it, is about the fastest thing out there.” Granny Annie lifted one eyebrow. “Without any upgrades at all, she can do a hundred and sixty miles per hour on a straightaway.”

  Jacket swung a leg over and sat awkwardly on the forward sloping seat. He gripped the low handlebars and squinted over the small windscreen. “I’d be happy if I could start the darn thing. I just can’t seem to find the kick start.”

  “There is no kick start. The Ninja has an electronic ignition.”

  “A what?”

  “You remember, right?” Matt couldn’t help getting in on it. “That stuff that Ben Franklin discovered with the key on the kite? Electricity?” Matt grinned.

  “I know what electricity is.” Jacket glared at Matt over his shoulder. “I was just surprised, is all. So that means this key here—“

  “—starts it,” Granny finished for him. “You shift gears with the right foot and use your left hand for the clutch. Brakes for the back wheel are the left foot and the front wheel is the right hand.”

  “They couldn’t have made it any tougher on a fella, could they? I mean, after all that, do you steer with your head?”

  “You could do that, I suppose. You’d look real funny, though.”

  “Lady, I look real funny now. Jackrabbit Johnson wasn’t made for a crotch rocket. I feel like I’m riding a Roman candle.”

  “I drove it here last night and that description isn’t far off. This thing is built for speed.”

  “Speed kills,” Jacket said shortly, then turned the key. The bike came to life, sounding like the buzz of a chainsaw, very different from the low rumble of the Harley. “Take my word for it.”

  Matt sat on a stone beside Buddha and watched Jacket try to maneuver the motorcycle. It was almost as if his Guardian was just learning how to ride. With starts and stops and wheelie-pops, the old biker cursed his way around the meadow. Matt tried not to laugh, but Buddha’s chuckles were contagious and before long, they were practically rolling in the dandelions.

  Jacket tried to glare at them, but the minute he took his attention away from what he was doing, the motorcycle skittered sideways. Attempting to correct it, he goosed it by adding more gas—definitely the wrong thing to do. The motorcycle’s front tire reached for the sky as the back wheel spun crazily in the grass. Suddenly it caught and the motorcycle shot forward, leaving Jacket momentarily floating in mid-air.

  Then he fell. Hard.

  Jacket picked himself up with a grimace and a hand on his lower back. They all watched as the motorcycle buzzed its way across the meadow. Somehow it remained upright as it followed the contours of the earth. Eventually it slowed and came to rest against the fence at the far side.

  “Thing has better balance than I have,” grumbled Jacket. He wiped some mud from the seat of his pants. “You know, this never happened to me when I was dead.”

  “Lots of things never happened when you were dead,” Granny reminded him. “Stop fussing.”

  Jacket opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it. Instead he adjusted the strap on his helmet. It was clear he wasn’t very happy with the way things were going.

  Granny watched him implacably. “Sun’s getting high in the sky. If you’re gonna help the boy, you need to hurry up and learn how to ride.”

  Jacket sighed. “Yes, mother.”

  “I’m not your mother,” she said as she turned to head acro
ss the field and retrieve the motorcycle. “But you can call me Granny.”

  “Yes, Granny,” Jacket said, following after her.

  Buddha stared after his wife for a few moments then turned to Matt. “Ought not to be mean to her, you know? She knows things about the future that other people don’t.” His voice sounded like low summer thunder.

  “She told me once that I can’t change the future until I become part of it,” Matt said.

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “It’s the reason I’m doing this. If I want to make something happen then I need to do something about it.”

  Buddha tilted his head. “And what do you want to happen?”

  “My dream is for my Mother and Dad to stay together.”

  “That’s a good thing. It’s good to want good things.”

  Matt peered at Buddha. Although grown up, the great troll-like man sometimes seemed like nothing more than a kid.

  “Do you dream?” Buddha asked him.

  “Sure I do.” Matt absently picked at the tear in the knee of his jeans. “Everyone dreams.”

  “I don’t. I never have.”

  “Really?” Matt considered this. ““That’s not all bad, I guess. Then you can’t have nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “That’s when you dream about bad things.”

  “Who would want to do that?”

  “Nobody,” Matt said. “But you don’t have a choice. You can’t control your dreams.”

  “Granny said you have baseball dreams.”

  “Baseball? I don’t remember any baseball dreams.” But even as Matt said it, he felt the lie. Gossamer threads told him that he did dream baseball dreams … or at least he once had. How strange that he’d totally forgotten them. Doubly strange, because the only person he’d ever played baseball with was his father, and he always remembered his father.

  “Granny says that your dreams will get you through this. She told me what she said to you,” said Buddha, his eyes crossing as he concentrated on the memory. “Baseball Dreams, Blackbird Screams, Sunshine Beams, The Bull Charges Through.”

  Matt remembered the words as well, Granny Annie talking to him in that otherworldly voice at the Buffalo Chip Campground.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t even have baseball dreams.”

  “You did once. Maybe you’ll have them again.” Just as Buddha finished speaking, the sun was enveloped by a summer thunderhead. On the other side of Buddha sat the ghost of the hitchhiker, staring blankly forward. He’d gone unseen during the full brightness of day.

  Matt’s jaw dropped open. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Granny’s taking him home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Buddha gave a small, sad smile. “An empty grave.”

  The sunshine suddenly returned, bringing back its light and warmth. The ghost was invisible in its rays, but Matt had no doubt that it was there. The thought of the ghost and its own dreams of the grave brought goose bumps to Matt’s arms.

  XIX

  MOUNT RUSHMORE REALITY

  Four faces stared into the distance, their carved granite eyes somehow human upon the broad tall mountain. Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson and Lincoln, all presidents of America’s past, made up Mount Rushmore. It didn’t have the rides of an amusement park and there were no cartoon characters walking around in costumes, but it was a theme park nonetheless. Mount Rushmore’s theme was pride—pride that one man could have a vision that would change the shape of a mountain. Pride that four great men stood so tall in America’s history that the country felt the need to praise them.

  High above the ponderosa pine they gazed into the distance. Matt had been here several times, but he’d never seen it from the back of a motorcycle. The view was so much greater than that of a car, so much greater that it made the mountain seem even larger than it was. The whole sky rolled out before him, a great expanse of blue whose boundary lay only in the blackness of the surrounding hills.

  Jacket swung the Ninja around a blind curve and the faces momentarily disappeared. Long ago the forest service had cut through smaller hills so the great trucks and cranes could make it all the way to Mount Rushmore. Curves like this one, with thirty-foot tall walls of rock on each side, were commonplace. The high-pitched sound of the racing engine diminished once again as the motorcycle shot out the other side of the curve, where Matt’s view of the faces was once again clear.

  The road continued to weave between the stands of pines and rocky cuts until it came to a pair of signs. One pointed to an upper parking lot with a concessionaire, while the other, much smaller, indicated a lower parking area. Buddha and Granny Annie, driving the three-wheeler in front of them, turned into the lower parking lot. Jacket followed, easing the motorcycle through its gears with taps of his foot and gentle twists of his wrist. It hadn’t taken the old cyclist long to figure out how to ride the Ninja. Although the bike was nearly fifty years more technologically advanced than his Harley, Jacket had always been pretty good at mechanical skills.

  Their most difficult problem had been finding a way for Matt to ride on the short seat of the motorcycle. Buddha had offered him a seat in the three-wheeler, but Granny Annie reminded her husband that they were going their separate ways soon. The problem was finally settled with a bungee cord.

  When Jacket and Matt finally rolled to a stop beside the three-wheeler where Buddha was already pulling a head of lettuce out of the cooler for an after-drive snack, Jacket sat on the bike for several seconds until he grudgingly turned off the key.

  “You know,” he said, shaking his head, “this toy isn’t all bad. It’s the fastest thing I’ve ever been on, even if it does look silly.”

  “I like your Harley better,” Matt said wistfully.

  “Me too. I was just commenting on the characteristics of this cycle, not making it a part of my life. Now you’ve gone and made me feel like I’m cheating on my Harley, like she was a faithful girlfriend and me the unfaithful jerk.”

  “So would you unhook me already?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Unhook the cord? I gotta go to the bathroom and I feel stupid sitting here and attached to your backside.”

  Jacket grinned and he released Matt. “Right. I could use a little more of Granny’s salve anyway.”

  “Ewww.” Matt made a face and climbed down, removed his helmet and tossed it to Jacket. “That stuff is disgusting.”

  “Disgusting it may be, but given the choice to smell bad or to feel every bump and bounce, I’ll take the smelly part.”

  Matt strode toward the long, low building with the universal blue and white bathroom sign, his mind on the more smelly qualities of sheep urine as Jacket dismounted and unwrapped the cord from his waist. He placed both helmets on the seat and ambled over to the big three-wheeler. Matt saw Jacket manage to wheedle a small jar of the stinky stuff from Granny Annie before she took off up the hill, following an asphalt path that wound through the trees and low brush. Buddha dozed.

  There were wooden picnic tables all around the edge of the parking area, and Jacket settled at the one right next to his bike. Matt returned just as the biker finished apply the salve to his ribs, then sat beside him. “I’ve been thinking, Jacket.”

  “All by yourself?” Jacket grinned half-heartedly, then placed his arm around Matt’s shoulders.

  “Yes, all by myself.” Matt frowned for a moment before continuing. “There’s so much to do today that we might not be able to get it all done before you change back.”

  “There are hours still. The Christmas Witch said that we have until twilight. As long as we find Calamity and she tells us where we can find the War Shirt, everything’s gonna be all right.”

  “But when exactly is twilight? It’s not like there’s a place for it on the clock.”

  “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll get everything done in time.”

  “Don’t forget what you told me.”
>
  “What’s that?”

  “You said that calamity means disaster.”

  Jacket’s mouth twitched slightly. “Yeah, I sure did. Let’s hope for your sake that we don’t have any disasters.”

  Matt nodded, then gripped Jacket’s hand. They watched as a middle-aged man in shorts, black socks and sandals wrestled a large metal cooler from the back of a station wagon across the parking lot. A young boy and girl fought for ownership of a Frisbee in the backseat while their mother brushed pine needles and bird droppings from a picnic table.

  “Either I’m having flashbacks from some 1972 psychedelic wonder, or I’m seeing a sad old ghost and his ward holding hands just like they’re both real people.”

  “Raisin!” Matt spun and launched himself across the grass to where Raisin stood.

  The ghost was almost the same as he’d always been—blazing red afro, Jimmy Hendrix shirt, jeans, soft leather boots that came to the knees below a leather fringed vest. Sadly, the only change was that there was less of him there.

  Jacket turned more slowly. “Not an old ghost, old friend. I’m whole again. Try old man.”

  Raisin’s eyes bulged as his mouth made an O beneath its Fu Manchu mustache. “Holy clown on a Harley, how’d you become alive again, and where can I sign up?”

  “You don’t want this,” Jacket said shaking his head. “The price is too high and it’s only temporary. Worst part about it was I forgot how much being alive hurts.” Jacket stood slowly, rubbing his side.

  “What happened? Did you crash? That why you have that goofy rice rocket?”

  “Worse. Got jumped and my bike got lifted.”

  “No!”

  Matt was grinning from ear to ear. “Even worse than that is he’s got sheep urine all over him.”

  “What?” Raisin’s shock tripled.

  “And he likes it,” added Matt.

  Jacket grinned sadly and nodded his head. “Gotta love this job.”

  Raisin’s nose wrinkled. “Sheep urine?”