Pennies for the Ferryman - 01

by Jim Bernheimer

  I returned from my afternoon classes to find the Reverend Reginald Duncan waiting with my mother in my living room. For as long as I could remember, Pastor Duncan was the pastor of the Maple Street Methodist church. He was a bland fellow, and his reputation among the adults was that while he wasn’t much as a preacher, he was a good pastor, patching together a number of shaky marriages. Unfortunately for the Ross family, dear old Dad split before we realized there was even a problem. Pastor Duncan gave me the warm appraising look that he’d been giving me for the past twenty something years, shaking my hand with a firm, strong grip. He looked to the kitchen, where my Mom had retreated, and then smiled.

  “Want to go for a drive, Mike?” he asked.

  I nodded – if we were going to have a private conversation, it wasn’t going to happen while Mom was staking out the kitchen.

  As kids, we’d always admired Pastor Duncan’s car – every two years, year in, year out, he’d change to a new-model car – usually a Cadillac. I hadn’t given it a thought when I was a kid, but now that I knew how much they cost, I wondered how he could afford it. Maple Street Methodist didn’t pay him that much, and his wife was a teacher at the local elementary school.

  “So, Pastor,” I began, once we were belted in and backing out of the driveway. “How can a preacher pay for wheels like this?”

  Pastor Duncan smiled, reaching out to twiddle a knob on the air-conditioning. “When I was a newly minted Minister, back in the dark ages before cable TV and cell phones, I was an assistant minister out in Ohio. I learned then that if you were going to be worth spit in the job, the hours tended to be something other than nine-to-five.”

  He paused to turn off the radio, “So, one Saturday night at eight o’clock, when I was hoping to put the final, finishing touches on the next day’s sermon, I took a phone call on our church’s hot-line. The caller was a troubled young man who wanted to die and was looking for someone to talk him out of it. I spent the next eight hours talking to him on the phone. He decided that life might be worth living. I delivered a pretty vanilla sermon the next day and I didn’t hear from the gentleman for a long time.”

  I got the sense that his good deed was rewarded. Pastor Duncan continued, “Three years later, I got a call back from that young man. In the intervening years, he made something of himself and felt that he owed me something, which was ridiculous, but that’s how he felt. He asked me what I was driving then, which was a beat-up old Chevy with too many miles on it. The next morning, he drove up with a new car and a stack of papers – an hour later, he drove away in my old beater, and I owned a new, top-of-the-line Caddy.”

  Pastor Duncan paused and then shook his head. “Every two years after that, he comes by my house, drops off a new car, and drives away with the one he’d delivered two years prior. I pay for tags, title, and insurance – which isn’t bad, given the cost of cars these days.”

  By this time we were on the beltway, heading towards the District.

  “So, Pastor, do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

  It turned out that Pastor Duncan did believe in ghosts, which wasn’t all that unusual, given his firm belief in life-after-death, but it was refreshing to talk to a seemingly sane person who could take my story in, believe it, and not bat an eye. He stopped the car for a minute, parking carefully before dialing a number on his cell phone. “Mike, there’s someone you’ve got to meet.”

  Sixteenth Street in the District is a long, north-south street, and every few blocks there’s a different church: catholic, orthodox, protestant, even a mosque. As you drive further south, the neighborhoods become increasingly gritty and distressed, until you reach the hospital district, where it becomes downright scary. There’s a cluster of hospitals there, including an outstanding rehabilitation hospital. I’d never been there as a patient, but I’d visited any number of my friends, soldiers and ex-soldiers, there.

  One of the by-products of Mr. Bush’s war was an ever-growing network of castoffs trying to make our way back into American society, but I digress. As I said, the neighborhood around the hospital district is a less than inviting place, but Pastor Duncan parked in front of a liquor store, which was three doors down from a storefront bearing the placard “Ebenezer Church of Deliverance.”

  Well, just as there was an old-boys-network of soldiers, apparently there’s an old-boys-network for ministers, too. Pastor Duncan and I waited patiently on the sidewalk as the service inside the storefront church let out. More than a few of the people nodded at Pastor Duncan as if they recognized him. I got less polite looks, but as it was obvious that I was with the Pastor, I was given the benefit of the doubt.

  The only person left in the church when we walked in was a thin, extremely old black man, playing the piano. He was playing up a storm, moving from hymns that I recognized, to songs that I didn’t, all the while keeping a strong rhythm with left hand while beating out a melody with his right. As we approached he cocked an ear towards us and stopped playing abruptly.

  “Who’s there?” he called out.

  “Your old brother, Silas,” Pastor Duncan replied.

  “Pastor Reggie!” he exclaimed with glee. He went back to playing the piano, playing a quick few measures of some tune that brought a smile to Pastor Duncan’s face. He then stopped playing again, closing the cover on the keyboard before turning to us. Introductions were made, and we were five minutes into a three-way conversation before I realized that Brother Silas, as he wanted to be known, was blind, totally blind. “Twenty-twenty darkness” he called it.

  Brother Silas, it turned out, was a twofer – not only was he a member of the old-boys networks for pastors, but he’d lost his sight in the US Army, trying to defuse a booby-trap in a tunnel north of Saigon, which placed him firmly in the old-boys network for broken soldiers. We shared something else in common, beyond a fondness for stride piano and twelve-bar blues.

  He could see ghosts too and he could see me as well!

  We had much to talk about.

  It was four o’clock in the morning when Pastor Duncan dropped me off at my house in the ‘burbs. Mom wasn’t waiting up, but there was a pizza in the fridge waiting for me, which was as about as effusive as Mom was known to get these days.

  Days later, I found myself back at Megan Rosemont’s home. Elsbeth had given me the ‘all clear’ that Charlie would be out of town well into the evening, coaching a wrestling match.

  “Mr. Ross, so nice of you to drop by again – how are you?” she asked. “Please come in. Can I get you some tea?”

  “No thank you, I’m doing fine, ma’am. I figured since I was in the area I would drop in and see if you had any more strange occurrences.” I knew she hadn’t. Elsbeth already grabbed my attention, so there was no more need for the ‘gaslight’ nonsense.

  “Goodness, no! You must have scared whatever it was away,” she said with genuine warmth. “Kind of a shame too, somehow it feels lonelier in this old house.”

  “Well if it really is your granddaughter, I doubt that I’d scare her away for very long.”

  “I don’t know. Elsbeth was a very skittish young woman.”

  I asked if she wanted to talk about her granddaughter for something to pass the time. There was no need to look suspicious. After about twenty minutes, I asked if I could use her computer to check my email. Being the gracious hostess that she was, she allowed me to.

  I didn’t have to resort to any of my barely-existent computer hacking skills. She was set up to automatically log into her email account and sure enough, there were a pair of emails in her sent bin that had been saved for the purpose of making her look like a stubborn woman who was refusing to keep her doctor appointments.

  Coming to the conclusion that her ghostly granddaughter wasn’t trying to sell me a bill of goods, I moved on to my final little ‘white’ lie. “Mrs. Rosemont, can I ask you a question?”

  The tiny woman in the living room looked up from her crossword puzzle and smiled at me, “Of course dear.”

&n
bsp; “It’s my mother; she’s not doing so well, she has these occasional chest pains. Do you happen to know a good Cardiologist?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. My Samuel died of heart trouble back in 1995. I think the practice he went to closed down or moved a few years ago. If your mother is having problems, you should encourage her to get checked out.”

  That sealed it! Now all I had to do was figure out a way to get the police interested in this case without getting locked up in the loony bin – piece of cake, really. I thanked her for her advice and continued listening to a few more Elsbeth stories. Honestly, it felt weird listening to someone fondly remembering Elsbeth, when I was still on a speaking basis with her. I guess there was something to this whole weird paranormal thing I had going on.

  Jenny knocked on my door the next morning. I resisted the urge to bury my head under the pillows in the hope that she’d go away.

  Things had been a bit strained between the two of us, since that kiss on the cheek. She thrust her research in my hand the other day and ran off to one of her other classes without much comment and when I checked the parking lot after my class had let out, her car was already gone. She’d been on my mind more than I’d like to admit. I hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since Fort Hood. Thankfully, that relationship petered out when I’d received notice that I was headed for Iraq – it seems that Heather was just looking to get on someone’s benefit plan!

  I threw on a shirt and a pair of shorts. In the past few weeks, with the distinct possibility of fighting with dead people looming over my head, I made an effort to start seriously working out and getting more muscle and less fat on the frame. After my leg healed and I didn’t need the cane anymore, I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about regaining my Army physique. As a result there was far more ‘pudge’ on my body than I would have liked; the mostly pizza diet wasn’t helping much either!

  “You realize it’s not even seven yet?”

  “Elsbeth killed herself.”

  “Huh?” That was definitely news to me.

  She looked hesitant, which always worried me before replying, “Well, I’m trying to convince Uncle Brian to speak with you, so I gave him some of the background. He looked at the police report of her car accident and said that there were no skid marks at the scene or any indication that she had tried to brake at all!”

  “I haven’t asked her about it, but it makes sense. I’m pretty sure old Charlie there was beating her. Either way, the rest of her story checks out. Megan lost her husband to heart problems, and when I mentioned my mom having problems she told me to convince her to go see someone. That doesn’t sound like a person that would ignore their own chest pains.”

  “Mike! Your mother isn’t having problems, is she?”

  “No…”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that!”

  “I had to work it into the conversation somehow! I couldn’t just start asking her about her medical problems.”

  Jenny sighed, “It’s the principle. You shouldn’t tempt fate like that.”

  I smacked my forehead with the palm of my hand and ran it through the unkempt mess that was my head of hair. Jenny possessed an exasperating quality to her. “It was the best I could come up with. So, did your uncle agree to see me?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “And that means?”

  “He may have said the words, ‘I don’t want you to ever see that boy again outside of class’ and he may have sent an email to my father.”

  Ignoring the fact that I had been called a ‘boy’, I shrugged, “Well, that’s some cheerful news. So, is this the part where you tell me that it’s been nice, but don’t ever talk to me again?”

  She looked hurt and wounded, “Mike! That’s not how it is. I’m trying to help. I just don’t want to piss them off either…”

  “Fine, I’ll talk to him. Just tell me what precinct he works at.”

  She did and I walked her out to her car. I watched her Civic head down the street, as a Dodge Ram full sized truck pulled up into my driveway. Out stepped Charles Snowden. Elsbeth sat at the wheel looking upset, but useless. Well, at least the action decided to start early on this day, instead of waiting for a respectable hour – or breakfast.

  He jabbed a single finger into my chest. “What did I tell you, boy?”

  Smacking his finger away, I went right back at him, “I ain’t your boy. If you want to start something right here, I can make sure the police get called. Bet the school where you teach would love to see a pair of uniforms show up to question you about an assault. They might even poke around and start asking some questions. A big guy like you must get his rocks off throwing his weight around. Anyone there got an ax to grind with you, Charlie?”

  Oh he looked angry, with good reason. Elsbeth provided some dirt. A few of wrestlers made complaints over the years that never amounted to anything more than a written caution in his employment record, but certainly wouldn’t help if the boys in blue showed up. Even teacher’s unions had their limits. I already knew that he was skating on thin ice.

  “Since you’re a slow little shit, I’ll repeat myself. Stay away from Grandma Meg. If I even hear that you’re over there again, I’ll turn your slimy little grifter ass over to the cops. Do you get me?”

  “Haven’t charged her for the last two visits and I don’t intend to charge her for any more. Far as I can tell, she’s an old lady who misses her granddaughter. Answer this question for me, Mr. Snowden, how does a bright guy like you leave his truck in neutral?” I gestured towards the Ram that was slowly rolling backwards.

  Well what do you know, Elsbeth grew a pair! Actually, she probably only borrowed them, but I’d take what I could get and it was enough to send him sprinting for his vehicle. He stopped it before it got into the street and glared at me. She should have locked the doors on him! Either way, he drove off after giving me yet another threatening look.

  “Jenny’s a sweetheart. The kind of girl that always brings home strays and jumps on lost causes. How does it feel to be the flavor of the month there Mike?” Brian Wycheck tried to bore his eyes through me.

  I quipped back, “So much for ‘protect and serve’. Jenny also seemed to believe that you were a ‘good’ guy and interested in helping people.”

  “You might want to watch that smart mouth of yours, boy. You’re already on my last nerve – coming down to where I work and peddling this bullshit about ghosts telling you about murder plots. My niece, I’ll humor, but I don’t have to put up with walking garbage like you.”

  Pondering whether there was a conspiracy around today to insult me by calling me ‘boy.’ I concluded that this just wasn’t going to be my day. Maybe the stars were aligned against me or some such crap. Brian Wycheck was the kind of police detective that wore his badge and suit like a suit of armor. It allowed him to take pot shots at me, but the moment I dish out a little, he’s shows he can’t take it.

  “I figured coming here and talking to you wouldn’t do any good. Well next week, when she does die, make sure to test for metal poisoning. Tell me, if I overheard a conversation between two people about a murder plot, would you be taking me more seriously? I’ve told you when he bought the bluing solution, where he’s hiding it, and when he plans to do it! What more do you need?”

  His sneer was mildly disturbing, “Oh I don’t know something other than a cock and bull story. Maybe that would help.”

  Jenny put way too much faith in him, “So, you’ll take a tip from a strung out junkie, hooker, or some homeless bum on the streets, but not me. As for wasting your time, did you have something else planned already for that day?”

  He leaned forward and hissed at me, “Well, if you’ve got all the answers, why don’t you fill out an official report and go on the record instead of coming down here to talk to me ‘off the record’? I’ll even help you fill out the forms. The reason is that when this doesn’t happen, I’ll drag your ass in here for filing a false report and then we’ll put you in front of a judg
e who’ll order you into a psychiatric care facility.”

  I stood to leave and he grabbed my arm, “Stay away from Jenny! If I catch you filling her head with all this stupid ‘new age’ shit, you’ll wish you were back in Iraq – psychic boy.”

  After ‘withdrawing’ another forty-seven dollars from the Maryland lottery system with three well-informed ticket purchases, I sat on the bench and looked at the fuming ghost of Elsbeth Snowden.

  “What are you angry at me for? He didn’t want to believe me! Tell me the truth, Elsbeth, if you were still alive and I came to you with a story like this, would you? Some people don’t think ghosts exist, which means that the only people that are likely to stop Charlie are you and me. You need to do more of that crap like putting his truck into neutral! You’re a ghost! Haunt his ass! Get him back for treating you like shit all these years!”

  My pep talk wasn’t doing that much good. She finally owned up to the abuse. Elsbeth obviously wouldn’t stand up for herself in life. Apparently, death doesn’t really change a person’s character - nice to know that I’d be a sarcastic smart-ass in the next life. I started wondering if I could ‘recruit’ some other ghosts, some who might be more willing to help bring a bit of chaos into Mr. Snowden’s life.

  The problem is that I still didn’t really know how ghosts operated. The few I’d talked to were pretty tight-lipped about what they could and couldn’t do. Jenny’s mom was angry enough to flat out try and kill the two of us, but trying to talk Elsbeth into tripping her husband and sending him down the stairs wasn’t going anywhere. Most ghosts seemed capable of doing some of the standard poltergeist stuff, but it made me wonder if they could do other things.