“Do you know who called it in?” I asked.
“Well, it ain’t like the county 911 dispatch gives that information to the volunteer fire department, and I reckon even if they did, I wouldn’t share it with you, even if you are stepping out with the sheriff,” Leon replied, his mustache quivering in disapproval at my “stepping out.”
“Well, Leon, I can’t say as I disagree with either of those statements. But we’re not stepping out,” I said, reaching down to pat the short man on his ruddy cheek. “We’re sleeping together.” Then I turned and walked over to the side of the bank and looked down. Willis had made it safely to the bottom and was standing next to an overturned car next to Clyde and a battery-operated lantern he’d carried down with him. I couldn’t tell anything about the car except that its lights were on and pointed up the hill, and that it looked smashed all to hell.
“Y’all alright down there?” I called.
“We fine, Lila Grace,” Clyde hollered up without turning around. “You wouldn’t know how to run the controls on a rollback, would you?”
“I don’t, but I reckon it can’t be that hard. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ve got her hooked up. I just need you to go over to the side of the truck and run the winch for me.”
“Why don’t you come up here and do it?” I asked, looking dubiously over my shoulder at the tow truck.
“I need to stay with the vehicle and make sure nothing comes unhooked. Sheriff says it’ll mess up his crime scene even more if it falls down in here again.”
“Crime scene?”
“Yeah,” Willis called up. “The driver’s still in the car. He didn’t make it.”
“Well, damn,” I muttered, looking around. No newly-minted ghost yet, but that didn’t mean anything. Not everybody sticks around after they’re dead, and even the ones that do linger don’t always appear where they died. Sometimes they stay in a place they loved, or near someone they cared for. Then sometimes it just takes them a while to show up, like they hadn’t made up their mind if they were coming or going. “Alright, Clyde,” I called down to them. “What am I doing?”
“It’s easy,” he said. “Just go over to the side of the tow truck and look at the box with three handles on it. You ain’t gonna be able to read the labels, not with all the grease and mud caked on ‘em, but the one closest to the back of the truck runs the winch. Grab that handle and pull it down real slow. You oughta be able to hear the cable tighten, if it’s too dark to see.”
“I can see fine,” I said. “Leon’s got it lit up like Christmas up here.”
“Okay, good. All you gotta do is push that handle down and hold it ‘til the car comes up the bank. Don’t try to pull it all the way up. We gotta let the rescue squad get the driver out first.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“I can’t see enough to know, but I feel like I know the car.”
“It’s a late model Camry, Clyde,” Willis said. “It’s one of the most popular cars in America. It’s going to look familiar.”
“Oh yeah.” Clyde deflated a little, his CSI Hillbilly moment deflated by the big bad sheriff. I turned back to the tow truck, glad that the men down in the gully couldn’t see me smile from that far away. I grabbed the handle Clyde described and pulled it down. I heard the whine of a motor and watched as the steel cable laying across the back of the tow truck pulled taut. The motor sound changed, and other sounds, like branches breaking, came from over the hill as the winch started working in earnest. It took a solid two minutes, but then the battered Toyota crested the hill and crashed to the shoulder of the highway like a giant dead metal whale or something.
A few seconds later, Willis and Clyde came into view over the edge, Clyde scrambling with hands and knees, and Willis pushing on the skinny man’s rump. The little wrecker driver sprawled onto the grass and rolled over on his back, panting. “Looking back on it, going down there might not have been the best idea I’ve ever had.”
“How’d you get down there anyway, Clyde?” I asked, taking in his lack of fancy climbing gear or even a rope.
“I put the winch in free spool and hung on to the hook. Then I just kinda slid down, following the track the car made. It wasn’t too bad going down.”
“Yeah, down’s always the easy part,” Willis said, standing bent over with his hands on his knees. He gave me a lopsided grin. “I might call Tommy and beg off the rock climbing tomorrow.”
I scowled at him. “Good idea.”
An hour later, the poor man who rolled his car down the embankment was identified as Peter Smalls, and Officer Ferber was off to make the notification to his family, since he lived across the line into York County. Clyde was all loaded up and rolled off, Leon and his couple of bored volunteers had shut down all their lights and headed home, and Robert from the rescue squad had poor Mr. Smalls’s body loaded up into the back of his ambulance and was headed up the road. Willis and I were in his little Prius and he had just got the car turned around when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
“Stop the car, Willis,” I said, reaching out to grab his arm. He did as I asked without question, the mark of a man that has come to understand that his significant other (I refuse to be referred to as a “girlfriend” despite my referring to Willis as my boyfriend. And yes, I realize the innate hypocrisy in my stance. It remains unchanged.) is wont to make some truly odd demands from time to time.
“What is it, Lila Grace?” he asked, looking at me with worry on his face. “Did you cut yourself on something at the scene?”
“No, but I think Peter Smalls is standing on the side of the road looking very confused.” I pointed out into the night, but I knew full well Willis could no more see the ghost than I could dunk a basketball.
I got out of the car and walked over to the man. I hadn’t gotten much of a look at him as they loaded his body into the ambulance. Despite the fact that I literally talk to ghosts every day, I have never had a fascination with dead bodies. I’ve seen more than my fair share, but I don’t have any desire to ogle the empty vessels the ghosts I see come from. To be honest, I don’t even like open casket visitations, much less funerals. I think it’s just a touch gruesome, and I can never stop myself from wondering why the undertaker bothers putting shoes on the body.
Peter Smalls was a short, portly man in life, and apparently he was very fond of khakis and pastel polo shirts, because that’s what he wore in death. I’ve learned over the years that ghosts don’t have to show up wearing what they died in, which is a blessing given how many people pass in truly unfortunate circumstances that do not lend themselves to dignified apparel. He had a light beard, salt-and-pepper hair, and what was probably the beginnings of a good suntan, at least on his arms. Maybe a golfer. He was also just the slightest bit translucent, which was how I could tell he was a ghost. Well, aside from appearing on the side of the road in the middle of the night in his penny loafers without a car in sight.
“Peter?” I asked. “Peter Smalls?”
He turned to me. “Yes, that’s me.” He blushed a little and looked at his feet. “I’m sorry to ask this, but…do you know where I am and how I got here? I’m really embarrassed, but I have no idea. I think someone may have slipped something in my drink.”
I took a deep breath. “Mr. Smalls, my name is Lila Grace Carter. My…boyfriend for lack of a better word is Willis Dunleavy, sheriff of Union County. We’re on the side of Highway 49, about four miles north of Union. As to how you got here, well…this might come as a little bit of a surprise, but you’re here because this is where you died.”
I hate telling the dead about their new status. It truly sucks, as a generation after mine would say. You never know how they’re going to take it. They might be mad, or sad, or just shocked. But the one thing they almost all are…is disbelieving.
That’s where Mr. Peter Smalls stood out from the crowd. He didn’t seem shocked at all. Just gave me a little nod, more of a chin bob than any big acknowledgement, then
said, “Huh. Okay then.” He looked up at me and said, “Are you my guide to the other side? I thought you’d be uglier. With horns, maybe.”
I gaped at him. “You think you’re going to Hell? And you’re…okay with it?”
“Well, I’d rather not, if I get a choice,” he said, still remarkably sanguine about his dramatic change of state. “But it’s not like I lived a perfect life, and given where I was headed home from, and the fact that my wife’s seven months pregnant, I figure if there really is something after death, and apparently there is, then I doubt I’m going to be seeing Kristen Bell in The Good Place.”
I wrinkled my brow, opened and closed my mouth a couple of times like a very large small-mouth bass, and blinked a couple of times at the man. “There’s…a lot to unpack in that assumption,” I said. “But let’s start with you telling me where you were going home from that you shouldn’t have been with a pregnant wife at home.”
He blushed again, making him the most embarrassed ghost I’d ever spoken with, and said something very quietly. I couldn’t understand him, so I stepped closer.
“I’m sorry. You’re going to have to speak up.”
He looked at me, blushed an even deeper red, and said, “Pole Cats. I was at Pole Cats. My Gloria is home round as a beach ball with our third daughter on the way and I was at a strip club. And I was drinking on a Sunday. And I was driving too fast. Or I reckon I was, since I wrecked my car. Where else would I go but straight to Hell?” He held out his hands like he wanted me to slap handcuffs on him, telling me that he very much did not understand how this whole ghost thing worked, and said, “I’m ready. Take me to my never-ending torment.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I do. I’m not into the torment side of things, never-ending or otherwise. I talk to ghosts. I try to help y’all move on, to wherever it is you move on to. But I don’t pick sides, or assign elevators, or any of that.”
“So…you’re like the Ghost Whisperer girl on TV?” he asked, his eyes getting big.
“I reckon,” I said, making myself a mental note to get off my high horse and see if that show was on Netflix. If everybody and their brother was going to ask me if I was like her, I should at least see an episode.
“Lila Grace?” Willis called from where he stood leaning on the roof of the car. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I replied. “Just talking to a dead guy. Like you do.”
He laughed. “Like you do. I do not, for the record, talk to dead people.”
“I find they lie less than the living. They don’t seem to care as much about people’s opinions.” I turned my attention back to Mr. Smalls. “Okay, I reckon we have to do some experimenting about what you can and can’t do. We already know you can talk. That’s good. Not all ghosts can, and that makes it harder to figure out why they haven’t moved on. But we don’t know if you’re going to be tied to this general area or not. And I don’t really know much about how ghosts get around. So why don’t you think about someplace that means a lot to you and see if you can go there. Then come back and tell me what happens.”
He screwed up his mostly-solid face in concentration, and then Peter Smalls just popped out of existence. Or at least out of view. For somebody who has spent a lifetime talking to dead people, I have spent remarkably little time asking them questions. Probably because most of them either can’t or won’t tell me anything about the afterlife, no matter how much I pester them. I have certainly plied the three members of The Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency, as the trio of ghostly busybodies who reside in the cemetery down the street from my house refer to themselves, with more than my fair share of nosy questions.
Peter reappeared about two minutes later, looking stricken. “You went home, didn’t you?” I asked, walking over to him. I didn’t try to touch him, wouldn’t have been any point to that, but just stood close by so he could know there was somebody there who cared about his hurt.
“It was awful,” he said. “Gloria is just sitting on the couch bawling, and little Maybelle is sitting next to her patting her mama on the leg and telling her it’ll be okay. She ain’t but nine. That child don’t have a single idea what’s going on; she’s just mimicking what she saw somebody else do one time. I heard Jeremy in his room throwing stuff around and yelling cuss words he don’t know the meaning of. Or at least he better not. He’s six, and I reckon I should have watched my mouth around him more. Oh, Jesus, how could I do this to them?”
He dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with big, heaving sobs. I didn’t try to say nothing, because there wasn’t nothing to say. He was dead, and the people that he left behind suddenly had a Peter-shaped hole in their hearts and lives, and it was going to take some of them a long time to learn how to fill it, if they ever did. As cold as it sounds, the living weren’t my concern right at the moment. My work is with the dead, and with helping them find some kind of peace. And the first step on Peter Smalls finding peace was in him losing his shit on the side of the highway in the middle of the night. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting grass stains on his khakis.
After a few minutes, he pulled himself together and looked up at me. He was still down on his knees, so I got the full view of his bald spot as he lifted his head. “What now?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I reckon we try to figure out why you’re hanging around so we can get you some rest.” I covered my mouth as I yawned. “But first, and I do apologize for this, but I ain’t as young as I once was, so I have got to get some sleep.” I thought for a minute, then nodded. “Do you know the Red Hot gas station on the side of the highway right before you get into Lockhart?”
“Yeah, they’ve got good tater wedges,” he said with a smile that fled as he realized he didn’t get to eat tater wedges anymore.
“Meet me there tomorrow morning about nine o’clock. I’m going to get some sleep, and when I get up in the morning, I’ll get Willis to call and find out if they’ve done an autopsy on you yet. You said you were drinking on a Sunday, which might keep you out of Baptist Heaven, but depending on how much, might also create enough guilt to make your spirit linger.”
“I had two beers! I wasn’t drunk, I swear to God.” He looked around. “Wait, is God real? Should I not say that now?”
“There’s plenty of people who say you shouldn’t have ever been saying it, but I’m not going to judge. I’ve been at the top of a whole lot of people’s Most Likely to Go to Hell lists for nigh on sixty years, so if I don’t think a little necromancy is going to damn me, I don’t see why saying God’s name should damn you. As for if he’s real, well…I believe so. I don’t have any insider information, and I expect you’re more likely to have that than I am nowadays, but I’ve always believed there’s something bigger than us out there, and talking to a whole lot of ghosts over a whole lot of years hasn’t done anything to change that. Now I’m going to go get some rest, and tomorrow we’ll start working on getting you some, too.”
He stood up and gave me a sad little half-smile. I could see the tracks of light his ethereal tears made down his cheeks. He said, “Thank you, Lila Grace. I’m gonna go watch over my wife and children, like I should have been doing all along. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then he vanished, a sad little man going home to watch the family he left behind begin to learn what a world without him looked like.
At nine the next morning I pulled my beat-up old pickup into the parking lot of the Red Hot gas station and looked around for the deceased Mr. Smalls. He stood over by the door and smiled at me when I pulled into a parking spot right in front of him. Peter walked over to the passenger door and reached for the handle, looking confused when his hand passed right through it. Then he just stepped into the truck and sat down next to me.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” he said. “How come I can sit on the seat of the truck and not fall through it?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Some of my friends that
have spent a lot more time than me wondering about such things believe that it has to do with how you think the world should behave. You think ghosts should be able to walk through things like car doors, so you can. But you also think you should be able to ride in a car, so you can do that, too.”
“What if I stop believing the car will hold me?” he asked.
“I’d rather you not do that until we get where we’re going. I don’t want to deal with you figuring out how to make a car work and trying to figure out why you’re a ghost all at the same time.”
“Where are we going, by the way?”
I backed the truck out of the parking spot and turned around, heading back toward the highway that would take us into Lockhart. “The sheriff’s office. I did some research this morning, and I want to talk to Willis and see what he thinks.”
“Okay,” Peter said. We rode in a companionable silence until I pulled up outside the jailhouse.
Willis was on the phone when I walked into his office, and he held up one finger to me. I sat down and waited, then gave him a questioning look as he hung up. “What’s up, babe?” I asked, not before I looked to make sure the dispatcher, Ethel, or his new deputy, Tommy, weren’t within earshot. I don’t mind the occasional PDA, but I do try to keep things moderately professional when we’re at his office.
“That was the coroner. There were no wounds that weren’t consistent with an automobile accident, so we’re ruling it an accidental death and releasing the body. Which won’t take much, since the examination was performed in the back of Bratton’s Funeral Home.”
“Is that normal?” I asked. “Don’t they usually do those things at the hospital?”
“Usually,” Willis agreed. “But since we had it on good authority that there wasn’t any foul play, and Bratton’s was closer than the hospital, me and Ferber just agreed to send Mr. Smalls there. Save the family one more thing to deal with. Kenny Bratton handles about all the funeral business in that half of York County, so it was a good bet he’d get the call anyway.”
Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails Page 8