American Ghost

by Paul Guernsey

  There was a long moment of silence while my mother, her mouth pinched even more tightly than before, turned a trembling head from side to side as she took it all in. I could easily imagine what she was thinking. In her youth, she had been not only a beautiful woman, but a brilliant and uncommonly levelheaded one as well, with a bright and limitless future stretching ahead of her. Her one error, the first and only step she’d ever made beyond the boundaries of the prudence, and maybe the prudishness, that had defined her entire, previous life, had been her helpless fascination with my father. As an educated New England girl whose roots ran back to the Mayflower, she could not have chosen a lover more different than herself. He also could hardly have been handsomer or more self-confident, which never hurts a guy’s chances. But I think the real key that both unlocked and unraveled her was that, as a pilot and a good-natured gangster, he could not have been more exciting. By the time she’d reached the age of twenty-three, Mom had already read a lifetime’s worth of books about other people’s passions, and one morning—or so it seemed—she suddenly awoke feeling more than ready for something exciting that was both real and entirely her own. That passion, that adventure, that something thrilling ended up being my charming and rope-muscled old man, who, complete down to his pencil-thin moustache, reminded Mom of a swashbuckling, Latino version of Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind, a book she had read more than once. She actually dismissed quite a number of more “suitable” suitors in her headlong and heedless new addiction to life on the edge, and one night the story reached its climax in a wild elopement—a manic nuptial flight to Cancún in my father’s plane—followed immediately by a prolonged estrangement from her family, and still later, by me.

  By Mom’s account, there were two lotus-like years before she slowly emerged from her trance and realized the mess she’d gotten herself into. There were a few more years during which she tried to improvise a sensible life with my father. Finally, after the logical and practical parts of her mind returned from their long exile—never, even for a moment, to leave again—she opted for a decisive separation, and immediately hurled herself into rebuilding her life—new education, new career as an involved and affectionate teacher, a few new men, none of whom ever held her attention for very long, and every other spare moment spent volunteering at a women’s shelter. Around that time she started sending me to spend weekends and school vacations at my old man’s apartment, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t always around. While Papa himself invariably provided me with a blast of refreshing irresponsibility, too often, when my visit coincided with one of his frequent “business” trips, he would drop me off for the duration at Tiabuela’s house, which he claimed was good for me in any case because she would teach me my culture. Culture notwithstanding, the old woman had no patience for me, and in fact seemed not to like her little half-gringo grand-nephew in the least, and I certainly hated her. Whenever I complained about this to my mother, she only echoed the thing about “learning my culture” and suggested that I needed to toughen up.

  Well, no one can argue that I didn’t grow tougher—and I now wondered whether mom ever felt bad about that advice, or any of the rest of it. Not that I necessarily wanted her to feel bad….

  I was twelve when my father disappeared. Tiabuela confirmed that he was dead, but claimed to know none of the details. Months later, “friends” of his got word to us that the U.S. military had shot him down over the Caribbean, but we were never truly certain. For all we knew, his associates themselves were responsible.

  No matter; he was gone. And now, more than a decade later, as she commemorated the conclusion to her only child’s life, I was certain the eerie parallels between my passing and his would not be lost on my mother. The circumstances of my death, the uncertainty included, added up to a downscale and far less romantic reenactment of my father’s disappearance and demise, and this was something I knew had to be haunting her.

  Cricket and Mom were holding hands now. Cricket said, “We were engaged.” We hadn’t been, but I was glad she’d thought to say it.

  “Oh,” my mother said, almost seeming to believe.

  “He was going to tell you soon, if he didn’t already.”

  “No, he hadn’t.”

  “Well, he was. And, I don’t know if he told you this either, but my dad’s a dentist, and I was studying to be a hygienist.”

  “You are, or you were?” my mother asked, with an edge to her voice.

  “I’ve been on a break. But I’m going back to it.”

  “Well, I hope you do,” my mother said. “You are clearly better than all of this.” As she spoke, she made a circling motion with her head to circumscribe her surroundings, both material and human.

  Cricket should have stopped then, while she was ahead. But it was at that point that she became entirely too creative to be convincing to a person as perceptive, and as used to being lied to, as my mother.

  “Thumb—Danny—was going to help me. Our plan was for both of us to work and save money all this winter and summer, and then I’d go back to school in the fall. And then Danny was going to start school again, too. Maybe next spring, if we could afford it.”

  Disappointment clouded my mother’s eyes as she realized she’d been hearing a fairy tale. She shook her head. “Oh, my dear,” was all she said. She gave Cricket’s hand a squeeze and then let go of it.

  After a strained minute had passed, Cricket took a different tack. “We’ve got some of his things for you. Personal stuff and things he wrote. Poetry … things. Would you like to take them home with you?”

  Mom gave her a tight smile. “How about if I leave you with a check? Then you or one of the young men could just ship them to me down in Florida?”

  “All right. Sure. We can do that.” My mother nodded and had started to turn to leave my bedroom when Cricket blurted, as if allowing some dark and final secret to escape, “He had a dog.”

  Had? What did you bastards do with my dog?

  My mother looked at her, and she continued, “I have him now. His name is Tigger, but Thhh—Danny—had another name for him. The Spanish word for tiger, I think. I’ll take care of him if you’d like.” This, of course, was a huge relief to me—even though I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.

  “What kind of dog?” my mother asked.

  At this, Cricket seemed at a loss for words. “Part bull mastiff, I think,” she said after a moment. “He’s very good looking; he’s got stripes in his fur. Danny spent a lot of time with him, training him and everything. He loved that dog. So, he’s really well behaved, the best-behaved dog I’ve ever seen because of all the training and attention he got from Danny, and no trouble at all. Very protective.”

  “A large dog, then?”

  “Yes, he’s big.”

  “Well then, yes. Why don’t you hang onto him? I’m sure Danny would want you to have him.”

  “Okay.” Then, her voice brightening, Cricket added, “You can see him if you want.”

  “No,” said my mother. “Thank you. I don’t need to see him. It’s not as if he’s a child.”

  Their awkward conversation was interrupted by Chef, who had shuffled down the hallway to stand outside my bedroom with a stricken expression on his face. Cricket and my mother stared at him in grim anticipation and, in a near whisper, looking only at Cricket as he spoke, he said, “They, uh, want to say goodbye. To Thumb’s mom.”

  At this, my mother drew herself up and brushed past Chef to stalk up the hallway to the kitchen. In an almost masculine manner, she thrust her hand out to my old college roommate, and when he, looking startled, took it in his own, she said, “Thank you so much for coming.” She lifted her eyes and looked at each of my other college friends in turn. “Thank you all. It’s meant a great deal to me. God bless you all.”

  My old roommate murmured, “I’m very sorry; I’ll miss him. I hope, I certainly hope … ” At that he bobbed his head, let go of her hand, and took a step back.

  My mother pursed her li
ps and nodded vigorously as if not only understanding what he’d meant to say, but agreeing with him as well. A moment later my old next-door neighbor stepped forward and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. He stepped back.

  Next came the Mexican poet. “Daniel was my friend,” he said. He gave my mother a hug. “I’ll never forget him.” Then, with his lips close to her ear, he whispered, “Cuídese bien, Señora. Dios te bendiga.”

  That left the girl with whose heart I had been so careless. Watching the others, she had suffered a meltdown, and now tears poured down her face and little convulsive gasps were bursting from her mouth. She was shaking, and seemed entirely powerless to take those necessary and final steps toward my mother.

  Mom stared at her for a moment, then the furious look I’d seen earlier returned. She snatched a tissue from her jacket pocket and moved forward to press it into the girl’s hand. “Use this,” she ordered. “Use it now.” The girl took a shuddering breath, nodded, and began to blot her eyes.

  “Now, listen,” my mother said, standing close to the girl and placing a hand on the side of her face while all the rest of them stared. “This is not worth any more of your life. Do you understand me?” After a moment, the girl blew her nose and nodded again.

  “Forget,” my mother insisted. “Do something. Become something.” After she and the girl had embraced, Mom stepped back and drew out another tissue, which she used to make a couple of impatient swipes at her own eyes.

  When my four college friends were gone, they left behind a vacuum that my housemates and Cricket seemed desperate to fill with upbeat chatter. They confabulated stories about clever things I had supposedly said, and thoughtful or mildly heroic things I had supposedly done, and they were visibly relieved beyond all measure when my mother finally agreed to accept three fingers of cheap wine in a water glass. After she’d taken the first sip, Mom looked at Chef and said, “You all keep calling him ‘Thumb.’ It seems an odd nickname for such a tall boy; where did it come from?”

  Chef said, “Ma’am, his road name used to be ‘Greenthumb’ until it got shortened. Because of his way with, you know, plant life.”

  Mom looked displeased, though not surprised. “Plant life?” she echoed. Dirt started to snicker and cough from around his bottle of Twisted Tea, but he cut it short when Mantis gave him a look of warning.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chef said. “What I mean is, anything that was alive and either breathing or growing, he had a way with it. It was just phenomenal, his knack for botany and so forth.”

  Mantis elected to join Chef at the barricade. “We had a garden here every year, and Thumb made it grow,” he said.

  Chef nodded in vehement agreement. “Beautiful tomatoes,” he confirmed. “This darn big around, some of them.” His trembling hands curved before him to suggest a vegetable the diameter of a small pumpkin.

  “And, you should see the lawn here, in summer,” Mantis said. “If Thumb’s sitting in the backyard and he spots a single dandelion off in the distance someplace, he gets right up … ”

  My mother, finally, could stand it no longer. In a matter-of-fact voice, she broke in by saying, “It would appear Danny never mentioned to any of you that his father was a smuggler of cocaine and marijuana for an international cartel?” They all stared at her in stunned silence. After a moment she added, “Well, yes; perhaps you are all a little too young to remember, but we used to have to import most of our illegal drugs before we learned to grow or manufacture a few of them here. So, I wonder if maybe some of Danny’s horticultural talents might not have been employed in that direction as well?”

  When no one answered, or could even manage to look at her, she added, with her voice rising a bit now, “And do you know what? His father also disappeared under similarly mysterious circumstances, never to return. So, let that be a warning to the rest of you.”

  A minute later, just as the conversation had begun to sputter back to life, a distant buzz from some indefinite point beyond the house suddenly resolved itself into the unmistakable growl of an approaching Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which at its loudest is a combination of throaty rumble and sustained, earsplitting fart. To a biker, the sound of an individual motorcycle can be as recognizable as a voice, and my housemates and Cricket all fell silent once again, listening with apprehension as the machine drew closer, while my mother looked from one to the other of them with troubled and questioning eyes. The machine coasted to a stop across from our house, where it sat like some sort of apex predator, rumbling and giving off an occasional roar as if announcing a territorial claim to others of its kind.

  Following the second, insistent roar, Chef, with almost theatrical reluctance, spread the blinds covering the kitchen window and peered out in order to verify what I am sure he must have strongly suspected and I already knew, owing to my ability to see through walls.

  “It’s Scratch,” he said, without surprise. Scratch was the president of a club chapter that had established its state headquarters in Riverside about a year before. They were a new branch of the Blood Eagles, an up-and-coming national organization that had won its right to exist by surviving prolonged warfare against most of the older, established outlaw clubs, and were therefore a bunch of people with whom an informal, unaffiliated outfit like ours needed to be on good terms—or else steer completely clear of.

  Scratch’s name, after it had fallen from Chef’s mouth, had a strange effect on me. I felt faint the way I did when I had either traveled too far from my corner above the front door, or was giving serious thought to making an actual sound or trying to move something or otherwise considered changing the physical world in a way that was forbidden to a ghost. At the same time, and in spite of the fact that I no longer had a sense of smell, I was almost overwhelmed by a powerful olfactory memory of something that reminded me of nothing so much as the interior of a brand-new automobile.

  The motorcycle bellowed again. Mantis, with unconvincing breeziness, said, “I guess I’ll go see what old Scratchy wants.”

  As he went out to talk to Scratch, I faded from the world even further, so close to falling into the underground river that I could hear it rippling through timeless time and spaceless space, and when I finally returned after what must have been a minute or so, not only was I still suffocating in that new-car smell, but I was trailing a memory of having been on my way to visit Scratch at his clubhouse. It seemed likely this was my most recent, and therefore my last, recollection as a living man, prior to darkness and rebirth as a spirit.

  With irritation in her voice, my mother was asking, “Who is this ‘Scratch’ person?”

  “He’s just a friend, ma’am,” said Chef, who was still using two fingers to spread the blinds above the kitchen sink. I could see the dark figure of Scratch as he straddled his idling Super Glide on the edge of the road opposite our house. Mantis had crossed over and stood talking to him.

  “If he’s a friend, why are you all afraid of him?”

  Dirt answered, “He’s one of those guys who’s just kind of a scary friend.” My mother gave him a look of contempt, and Cricket, after making sure my mom was not watching her, rolled her eyes at him.

  Cricket said, “It’s just that he’s got some anger issues, and we know how upset he is about Thumb. Mantis is probably trying to calm him down.”

  My mother said, “If he’s a friend, why doesn’t he come in?”

  Chef turned from the window to answer her. “Probably because he knows you’re in here with us, ma’am. As Dirt tried to mention, he is a bit scary to some people; he’s a big old boy, for one thing, and he has a haircut that he knows might seem somewhat strange to you, and he’s also got some fairly prominent tattoos on his face that he understands might make him a bit frightening to a regular citizen like yourself. And then, there’s the anger thing Cricket spoke about, which is a very real issue with him; he probably doesn’t trust whatever might come out of his mouth in your vicinity.”

  Mom’s eyebrows rose above the frames of her
glasses. “So, this is all out of concern for my delicate sensibilities?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chef confirmed. “Beyond that, he’s probably here because he wants to pay his respects—though in the words that come most naturally to him, which are not necessarily the words most of us would choose.”

  My mother’s eyes traveled from Chef to Cricket and back again. In a quiet voice she said, “What do you suppose ‘Scratch’ knows about my son’s disappearance?” But at that moment, we heard the front door open and Mantis was back among us.

  His face expressionless, Mantis entered the kitchen, glanced at Chef and said, “He wants to talk to you.” Then he opened the refrigerator, popped open a can of beer, and took a long, gurgling chug. Chef pulled his fingers from the blinds, excused himself to my mother, and headed out; I tried to follow him, but the strange exhaustion that had settled over me at the first mention of Scratch’s name remained with me, making it impossible for me to squeeze my way through the front door once Chef had closed it behind him.

  I returned to the kitchen as my mother was saying to Mantis, “I was just asking them what this ‘Scratch’ might know about my son.”

  Mantis blinked but held her gaze. “He knows Thumb is gone,” Mantis said. “And he’s wicked pissed about it. He liked Thumb.”

  Mom looked at Cricket, who nodded once and turned her gaze to the floor, biting her lip. Mom said, “You know, I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe you believe it.”

  After a moment Mantis said, “Hard to know how to answer you, except to say I’m sorry.”

  Chef returned after he’d been outside for only a couple of minutes. He and Mantis exchanged a brief but meaningful look, then Chef lifted his chin at Dirt and said, “Dude.”

  “Me?” Dirt said, with what seemed to be genuine surprise. “I don’t want to.” Facing the floor and seeming to pretend that his bottle of Twisted Tea was a microphone, he said, “Just tell me what he told you and that’ll be good enough.” Outside, the bike roared briefly, as if with impatience.