by Rice, Anne
“It was at this little nursery table that he first demonstrated his eternally feeble voice. No one could hear it but me and I caught it as so many bursts of fragmented thought brightening for an instant in my head. I talked out loud to him naturally, and sometimes in whispers which developed into murmurs, and I remember Little Ida and Big Ramona asking me all the time what I was saying, and telling me I wasn’t talking right.
“Sometimes, when we were down in the kitchen and I was talking to Goblin, Pops or Sweetheart asked me the same thing, what on earth was I saying, and didn’t I know how to talk better than that, would I please say whole words as I knew well enough how to do.
“I brought Goblin up to snuff on this, that we had to talk in whole words, but his voice was no more than broken telepathic suggestions, and out of sheer frustration he gave up on this means of speaking to me, and his voice only returned years later.
“But to continue with his infant development—he could nod or shake his head at my questions, and smile crazily when I said things or did things that he liked. He was dense when he first appeared to me each day and would become more translucent as his appearances, or lingering, increased. I had a sense of knowing when he was near, even if he was invisible, and during the night I could feel his embrace—a very light and distinct impression which I never tried, until this very moment, to describe to anyone else.
“It’s more than fair to say that when he wasn’t making faces and cavorting he impressed me with an engulfing love. It was stronger perhaps when he wasn’t visible, but if he didn’t appear to me at short intervals over the day and into the night, I began to cry for him and become severely distressed.
“Sometimes when I was running on the grass or climbing the oak tree outside, down by the cemetery, I could feel him clinging to me, piggybacking onto me, and I would all the time talk to him, whether he was visible or not.
“One very bright day, when I was in the kitchen, Sweetheart taught me to write some words—‘good’ and ‘bad’ and ‘happy’ and ‘sad,’ and I taught Goblin, with his hand on mine, to write these words as well. Of course nobody understood that Goblin was doing the writing some of the time, and when I tried to tell them they just laughed, except for Pops, who never liked Goblin and was always worried ‘where all this talk of Goblin would lead.’
“No doubt Patsy had always been around, but I don’t remember her distinctly until I was four or five. And even then I don’t think I knew she was my mother. She certainly never came up here to my room, and when I did see her in the kitchen I was already afraid that a screaming fight between her and Pops was going to break out.
“I loved Pops, and with reason, because he loved me. He was a tall gaunt man with gray hair all the time I knew him, and always working, and most of the time with his hands. He was educated and he spoke very well, as did Sweetheart, but he wanted to be a country man. And just the way the kitchen had swallowed up Sweetheart, who had once been a debutante in New Orleans, so the farm swallowed Pops.
“Pops kept the books for the Blackwood Manor Bed-and-Breakfast on a computer in his room. And though he did put on a white shirt and suit to conduct the tours of the place now and then, he didn’t like that part of things. He preferred to be riding the lawns on his beloved tractor lawn mower or doing any other kind of work outdoors.
“He was happiest when he had a ‘project’ and could work side by side with the Shed Men—Jasmine’s great-uncles, brothers and so forth—until the sun went down, and I never saw him in any vehicle except a pickup truck until Sweetheart died, at which time he rode into town in a limousine like all the rest of us did.
“But I don’t think, and it’s hurtful to say it, that Pops loved his daughter, Patsy. I think he loved her as little as Patsy loves me.
“Patsy was a late child, I know that now, though I didn’t then. And when I look back on it as I tell you this story, I realize there was no natural place for her. Had she gone debutante like Sweetheart, well, maybe it would have been a different story. But Patsy had gone country and wild at the same time, and this mixture Pops, for all his country ways, couldn’t abide.
“Pops disapproved of everything about Patsy, from the way she teased her hair and curled it down her back and over her shoulders to the tiny short skirts that she wore. He hated her white cowboy boots and told her so, and said her singing was a bunch of foolishness, she’d never ‘make it’ with her band. He made her shut the garage doors when she practiced so her ‘racket’ wouldn’t disturb the bed-and-breakfast guests. He couldn’t endure her flashy makeup and her fringed leather jackets, and he told her she looked like common trash.
“She shot right back at him, saying she’d earn the money to get the hell out of here, and she broke a cookie jar once in a fight with him—a cookie jar full of Sweetheart’s chocolate fudge, I might add—and whenever she left the kitchen, she never forgot to slam the screen door.
“Patsy was a good singer, I knew that much from the beginning because the Shed Men said it, and so did Jasmine and her mother, Little Ida, and even Big Ramona said it. And I liked the music myself, to tell the truth. But there was an endless procession of young men to the back garage to play guitar and drums for Patsy—and I knew Pops hated them—and when I played outside I crept close to the garage stealthily, not wanting Pops to see me, so I could hear Patsy wailing away with the band.
“Sometimes Goblin would get to dancing to Patsy’s music, and, as happens with many spirits, Goblin can be caught up in dancing, and when he was dancing he rocked from side to side and made goofy, funny gestures with his arms, and did tricks with his feet that would have made a flesh-and-blood boy stumble and fall. He’d make like a bowling pin, rolling but never falling, and I would nearly die from laughing to see him carry on.
“I got to liking this dancing too, and being his partner, and trying to imitate his steps. And when Patsy came out of the shed to smoke a cigarette, and saw me, she’d swoop down and kiss me and call me ‘darlin’ ’ and say I was a ‘damned cute little boy.’ She had a strange way of putting that last phrase, as if it were an admission over opposition, but no one would have opposed her in saying it, except her own self.
“I think I thought she was my cousin, until Patsy’s screaming fights with Pops told me a different tale.
“Money was the cause of Patsy’s screaming arguments with Pops because Pops never wanted to give her any, and of course I know now that there was plenty of money, always plenty plenty of money. But Pops made Patsy fight over every nickel; Pops wouldn’t invest in Patsy, I see it now, and sometimes their quarreling made me cry.
“One time, when I was at my little table in the kitchen with Goblin, and one of these fights had broken out between Patsy and Pops, Goblin took my hand and guided my crayon to write the word ‘bad.’ I was happy when he did this, because it was right what he wrote, and then he sat real close to me and tried to put his arm around me, but his body was very stiff in those days. I knew that he didn’t want me to cry. He tried so hard to comfort me that he became invisible, but I could feel him clinging to my left side.
“At other times when Patsy was battling for money, Goblin would pull me away, and he didn’t have to try very hard. He and I ran up to my room where we couldn’t hear them.
“Sweetheart was far too submissive to oppose Pops at the time of the kitchen quarrels, but Sweetheart did slip money to her daughter. I saw that, and Patsy would cover Sweetheart with kisses and say, ‘Mamma, I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you.’ Then she’d ride off into town on the back of somebody’s motorcycle, or in her own van, her much excoriated van which had ‘Patsy Blackwood’ written in spray paint on both sides of it beneath the windows, and we wouldn’t see Patsy or hear any music from the studio for three days.
“The first time I realized that Patsy was intimately connected to me was a terrible night when she and Pops got to screaming at each other and he said, ‘You don’t love Quinn,’ plain and simple, and ‘You don’t love your own little boy.
There wouldn’t be any Goblin in this house, he wouldn’t need Goblin, if you’d be the mother you’re supposed to be.’
“At that moment, I knew it was true, these words; she was my mother. They had an echo for me somewhere, and I felt a potent curiosity about Patsy, and I wanted to ask Pops what he meant. I also felt a hurt, a pain in my chest and stomach at the thought that Patsy didn’t love me, whereas before I don’t think that I had cared.
“At that moment, when Pops was saying, ‘You’re an unnatural mother, that’s what you are, and a tramp on top of it,’ Patsy grabbed up a big knife. She ran at Pops with it and Pops took a hold of both her wrists in one hand. The knife fell to the floor and Patsy told Pops that she hated him, that if she could she’d kill him, he’d better sleep with one eye open, and he was the one who didn’t love his own child.
“Next thing I knew I was outside with the electric light pouring out of the shed, and Patsy was sitting in a wooden porch rocker before her open garage studio and she was crying, and I went to her and kissed her on the cheek, and she turned to me and hugged me and took me in her arms. I knew Goblin was trying to pull at me, I could feel him, but I wanted to hug Patsy, I didn’t want her to be so unhappy. I told Goblin to kiss Patsy.
“ ‘Stop talkin’ to that thing,’ Patsy cried. She changed into a different person—rather, an all too familiar person—screaming at me. ‘It kills me when you talk to that thing. I can’t stand to be around you when you talk to that thing. And then they say I’m a bad mother!’ And so I stopped talking to Goblin and gave all my kisses to Patsy for an hour or more. I liked being in her lap. I liked being rocked by her. She smelled good and so did her cigarette. And in my dim childlike mind, I knew it marked a change of sorts.
“But there was more to it than that. I felt a dark feeling when I clung to Patsy. I felt something like despair. I’ve been told I couldn’t have felt such a thing at that age, but that’s not true. I felt it. I clung to Patsy, and I ignored Goblin even though he danced around and tugged on my sleeve.
“That night Patsy came up to watch television in here with Goblin and me and Little Ida, an unprecedented event, and we had a riot of laughter together, though what we actually watched I don’t recall. The impression made upon me was that Patsy was my friend suddenly, and I thought she was very pretty, I always had thought she was very pretty, but I loved Pops too and could never choose between the two.
“From that day forward, it seemed that Patsy and I had more hugs and kisses for each other, if not anything else. Hugging and kissing have always been big on Blackwood Farm, and now Patsy was in the loop, as far as I was concerned.
“By age six or so I had the run of the property and knew well enough not to play too near the swamp that borders us to the west and southwest.
“If it hadn’t been for Goblin, my favorite place would have been the old cemetery, which, as I’ve told you, was once beloved by my great-great-great-grandmother Virginia Lee.
“As I’ve described, the guests adored the place, and the tale of how Mad Manfred restored every tombstone just to quiet the conscience of Virginia Lee. The elaborate little cast-iron fence that surrounded the place had all been patched and was kept painted jet-black, and the small stone shell of a pointed-roof church was swept clear of leaves every day. It’s an echo chamber, the little church, and I loved to go in there and say ‘Goblin!’ and hear it come back to me, and have him doubled over with silent giggles.
“Now the roots of the four oak trees down there have buckled some of the rectangular tombs as well as the little fence, but what can anyone do about an oak tree? No one kin to me would ever chop down any kind of tree, that’s for certain, and these trees all had their name.
“Virginia Lee’s Oak was the one on the far side of the cemetery, between it and the swamp, and Manfred’s Oak was right beside it, while on this side there was William’s Oak, and Ora Lee’s Oak, all fantastically thick with huge heavy arms that dip down to the ground.
“I loved to play down there, until Goblin started his campaign.
“I must have been about seven years old when I saw the first ghosts in the cemetery, and I can see this very vividly now as I speak. Goblin and I were rollicking down there, and a long way off I could hear the thumping of Patsy’s latest band. We had left the cemetery proper and I was struggling up one of the long armlike branches of Ora Lee’s Oak that is closest to the house, though not really all that close to the house at all.
“I turned my head to the right for no apparent reason and I saw a small gathering of people, two women and a boy and a man, all drifting above the buckled and crowded community of graves. I was not frightened at all. In fact, I think I thought, ‘Oh, so these are the ghosts that everybody talks about,’ and I was silently stunned looking at them, at the way that all of them seemed to be made of the same translucent substance, and the way that they floated as though created mostly of air.
“Goblin saw them after I did, and for one moment he didn’t move but only stared, the same as I was staring, and then he became frantic, gesturing wildly for me to get down out of the tree and come up to the house. I knew all his hand signals by now, so there was no question of it. But I had no intention of leaving.
“I stared at the cluster of people, wondering at their blank faces, their colorless matter, their simple clothes and the way that they all looked at me.
“I slid down the branch of the oak and went towards the cast-iron fence. The eyes of the ghostly gathering remained fastened to me, and as I see it now, as I gaze at them again in remembrance, I realize that they changed somewhat in their expression. They became intense and even demanding, though of course I didn’t know those words then.
“Gradually, they began to fade, and to my severe disappointment they were no longer there. I could hear the silence that followed them, and a larger sense of the mysterious stole over me as my eyes moved over the graveyard itself and then the overpowering oaks. I had a peculiar and distinct feeling about the oaks—that they were watching me and had seen me see the spirits, and that they were sentient and vigilant and had a personality of their own.
“A real horror of the trees was conceived in me, and as I looked down the slope, towards the encroaching darkness of the swamp, I felt the giant cypress trees were possessed of the same secretive life, witnessing all around them with a deep slow respiration which only the trees themselves could see or hear.
“I became dizzy. I was almost sick. I saw the branches of the trees moving, and then very slowly there came into view the ghosts again, the very same collection, as pale and wretched as before. Their eyes searched my face, and I remained steadfast, refusing Goblin’s frantic gestures, until suddenly I backed up, nearly stumbling, and took off running for the house.
“I went, as always, straight to the kitchen door, with Goblin skipping and racing beside me, and told Sweetheart all about it, which immediately put her in a state of alarm.
“Sweetheart was already very stout by that time, and a permanent fixture in the kitchen, as I’ve described to you, and she took me up in her arms. She told me point-blank that there were no ghosts down there and I should stay away from the place altogether from now on. I found the contradiction in that, young as I was, but I knew what I had seen, and no one could dislodge it from my mind.
“Pops was busy with the guests in the front part of the house, and I don’t remember his ever responding.
“But Big Ramona, Jasmine’s grandmother, who had been working in the kitchen with Sweetheart, was very curious about the ghosts and wanted me to tell everything about them down to the flower design of the women’s dresses and that the men had no hats. She believed in the ghosts, I knew she did, and she launched into the famous story of how she saw the ghost of my great-great-grandfather William in the living room, going through the drawers of the Louis XV desk.
“But to return to the folks of the cemetery, the Lost Souls, as I’ve come to call them, Sweetheart was frightened at all this and said it was time I went to ki
ndergarten, where I’d meet other children and have lots of fun.
“And so one morning, Pops took me in the pickup to a private school in Ruby River City. I was kicked out within two days. Much too much talking to Goblin, and mumbling and murmuring in half words, and not being able to cooperate with other kids. Besides, Goblin hated it. Goblin made faces at the teacher. Goblin took my left hand and broke my crayons.
“Back it was to where I wanted to be—either spying on Patsy and her music making, or working with Pops as he planted a row of beautiful pansies along the front of the house, or eating the cake icing mix that was left in the bowl in the kitchen, while Sweetheart and Big Ramona and Little Ida sang ‘Go Tell Aunt Rodie’ or ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ or songs I’ve long forgotten, songs I’ve lost, much to my shame.
“I saw the Lost Souls of the graveyard several times after that, and I’ve seen them in the past year. They don’t change. They linger and they stare and nothing more. They do seem to be locked together, a floating mass from which no one spirit can detach itself. I’m not even certain they have personality, as we know the word. But the way that they follow me with their eyes argues that they do.
“I must have been asked to leave at least four schools when my Aunt Lorraine McQueen came home.
“It was the first time that I can remember ever laying eyes on her, though she had been home several times when I was a baby, and told me so with much enthusiasm and sweet embraces and fragrant lipstick kisses and proffering of the most delicious chocolate-covered cherry candies, which she gave to me from a large fancy white box.
“Her room was the same as it is now, in location, and I have no memory of ever noticing it until I was taken in to see her on that long-ago day and she put me on her lap.