Mac extended his arm involuntarily at the mention of the bracelet. Paul must have thought that was my intention—I hadn’t even thought of it, to tell the truth—and pointed it out to Sergeant Elliot. The sergeant floated down toward Mac.
“I did notice that, man,” Mac said. I ignored the fact that he’d gotten my gender wrong. People like him often call everyone “man.” “You never found out what happened to your soldier, either?”
That was the opening I’d been waiting for, but I wanted to hold my response until Barbara Litton, who had tentatively emerged through the kitchen ceiling face-first—to see if it was safe, no doubt—was able to hear what was going on. She made her way to Sergeant Elliot, who had surreptitiously picked up a fork from the counter and seemed to be trying to determine how to hook it on Mac’s bracelet without showing himself. Whether or not he was worried about injuring Mac was hard to determine. Melissa was watching with fascination. Alison looked to me.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “But I’ll admit, I take the bracelet off once in a while. Don’t you find that it starts to feel heavy on your arm? That it’s uncomfortable when you’re swimming or showering?” I took it off to show him, hoping he might do the same, but he didn’t.
“Yes, it does get to be a real drag to wear it sometimes,” Mac agreed.
Sergeant Elliot gestured to Alison to try and take Mac’s hand, to raise it off the island so he and Barbara could get a better angle with the fork. Alison, probably concerned for Mac’s arm, ignored him.
“Then why not take it off?” Melissa asked. She’d picked up on part of what I was trying to do; that girl is so quick.
“Can’t,” Mac answered her gently. “That would be disrespectful to Sergeant Elliot.”
Sergeant Elliot and Barbara stopped in midair, literally.
“What did he say?” he sergeant asked.
“Respect,” Barbara whispered. She seemed very uneasy among other people, particularly living ones, and rose a little toward the ceiling again, perhaps considering escape if necessary.
“Disrespectful?” I echoed to Mac. “Didn’t you oppose the war?”
“Of course,” Alison’s guest answered. “But not the people who were fighting it. It’s not like they went because they wanted to hurt people. I’ll bet Sergeant Elliot didn’t even know where Vietnam was before the war started.”
“It’s true,” the sergeant said. He hovered, barely moving, directly to Mac’s left, and turned toward Paul. “You knew he thought like this?”
Paul gave a small nod. “I gathered when Mac knew just what date and in what province you had died that it had been especially important to him. That’s information that isn’t on the bracelet—both his and Loretta’s show just a name and a date. He would have had to do quite a bit of research on the name he saw there, long before there was an Internet to make things easy.”
Maxine scoffed. “You call that easy?”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” I told Mac. “You must really feel a connection to Sergeant Elliot.”
Mac tilted his head in agreement. “The more I researched him, the more impressive he became,” he said. “From what I can tell, he was a good man and a fine leader of men. He was never found; his remains, if he’s dead, were never brought home. I can’t disgrace his memory by taking this off.” He gestured with the bracelet.
Like I said, I’m not ashamed of my gift, but I don’t often volunteer the information. I know Alison doesn’t care to broadcast her abilities, and especially not Melissa’s. But this time, I thought directness was the best solution to the problem. I looked up at Paul, who nodded his agreement. “Go for it,” he said.
“Mac, I have something to tell you that must remain a secret between us,” I said. Alison’s brow knitted and Melissa looked at me with a mixture of concern and wonder, no doubt puzzling over what her grandmother must be plotting now. I took a breath. “I can see ghosts.”
Alison grunted. Melissa suppressed a smile. Maxine, watching near Barbara, possibly in an attempt to keep her from fleeing, said, “Uh-oh.”
But Mac seemed unfazed. “Far out,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “What’s that like?”
“It’s a great gift and I cherish it,” I told him honestly. “But I’m wondering what you’d think if I said it might be a greater sign of respect to Sergeant Elliot if you were to take the bracelet off.”
“Very good,” Paul said. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“Do you think he’ll go for that?” Sergeant Elliot said quietly.
Barbara Litton, suddenly, looked focused and interested. “Watch him,” she told the sergeant. “I think he means it.”
“Means what?” Maxine asked, but no one answered.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Mac told me. His right hand went to cover the bracelet in a protective gesture. “I’m keeping his memory alive. Taking if off would be a betrayal. With all due respect, I think I know Sergeant Elliot a little better than you do, Loretta. Can you understand that?”
“Certainly I can,” I answered. “But I’m asking you to trust me on this.”
“Man, I get where you’re coming from, I do,” he said. “But you’re not getting me. A lot of people took their bracelets off. You did, too, and that’s cool. But I think I’m entitled to my point of view, and I think the sergeant wouldn’t want me to forget him. Why should I take off mine?”
It was time, as Jack once told me when he was trying to teach me to play poker, to go all in. “Because Sergeant Elliot is right there and he wants you to,” I said, pointing to the sergeant himself, a foot to Mac’s left.
Probably without thinking, Mac looked where I had pointed, though of course he saw no one. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Very.”
“How do you know that’s what he wants?” Mac seemed suspicious, though that was certainly understandable.
“Because that’s what he told me,” I said, although technically the sergeant had been speaking to Paul. “He says that he needs you to take off the bracelet so he can move on to the next plane of existence.”
“Wild,” Mac responded.
Encouraged by his apparent interest, I continued. “You see, in the afterlife, Sergeant Elliot has reconnected with the one woman he loved before he went to Vietnam, and she’s moving on. The sergeant wants to go with her, and time is running out.”
Barbara Litton bit her lower lip. Mac looked at the hand he’d placed over his bracelet, just like Sergeant Elliot put his hand over Barbara’s.
“How do I know you’re right?” he asked. “How do I know the sergeant is actually here?”
“This little hippie is questioning me?” Sergeant Elliot asked. He looked at Alison. “Can I borrow a meat cleaver? I’ll show him I’m here!”
Alison shook her head with some urgency.
“Why not just take it off for a day or two?” Melissa suggested. “We can tell you when the sergeant moves on, and you could put it back if you want.”
“That’s not a bad idea—” Alison’s guest began. “Wait a minute. You can see the ghost, too, Melissa?”
Melissa looked at Alison, suddenly concerned that she might have done something wrong. Alison gave her a little smile and mouthed, “Okay.”
“Yes, I can,” Melissa told Mac.
“I don’t like the way this is going,” Sergeant Elliot said.
“The sergeant and his fiancée, Barbara, are both here, and they both hope you’ll take off the bracelet. Just for a little bit,” Alison said.
This seemed to be moving a little too fast for Mac. “You, too?” he asked Alison. Before she could acknowledge her ability, he put his hands up defensively and stood. “I’m sorry. I can believe in a lot of things—trust me—but all three of you seeing ghosts? That’s too much.” He took a step toward the door. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop him!
” Sergeant Elliot shouted. “We’ve got to get that bracelet!”
“Mac,” I started.
But his gaze was clearly fixed elsewhere. Like in midair, a few feet in front of him, directly at his eye level. It was as if he had been hypnotized. He stared.
He had good reason to do so. Two roast chicken legs were, to his eyes, performing a very vivid cancan directly in front of him. This continued, Mac’s eyes almost rotating as he watched the motion, for almost a full minute before the legs did a final leap into the air and landed, in a split, on an imaginary stage somewhere three feet off the floor.
Barbara Litton held the legs there for a few moments, then brought them back up where each did a “bow,” and then she made them “walk” back to the island and lie back down on the platter from which she’d snatched them. Mac watched them all the way back, mouth agape.
Then, smiling, he walked to the counter and took off the bracelet, which he placed on the center island. He said nothing else as he picked up the plate holding what was left of his sandwich and walked out of the room.
Sergeant Elliot looked at his former—and for all I knew, current—fiancée with awe. He moved to her side and embraced her, and then something seemed to startle them; their whole bodies twitched.
“Is this it?” the sergeant asked Barbara.
She shrugged. “How would I know?”
They started to rise to the ceiling. Barbara looked down at me directly and said, “We don’t have much time. Thank you.” She seemed to evaporate.
Sergeant Elliot vanished in the same moment. But as he left, I could hear his voice saying, “I’m eternally grateful.” And they were gone.
The group of us, living and not, looked up into the ceiling. Alison’s eyes and Melissa’s were a little damp, and if I were to be subjected to a polygraph test, it might prove that mine were as well.
Paul and Maxine stared for a while, then looked at each other. Their expressions were full of wonder but something else—envy?—might have mixed in. Suddenly, they were all looking at me.
“That was amazing,” Alison said.
“I’m just relieved nobody in our family prefers the dark meat,” I said.
Chapter 10
Mac stayed for two more days, talking with us about our abilities and promising not to spread the word of his experiences, before it was safe for him to drive home. After one day, Melissa suggested he could put the bracelet back on, but he chose to go without it, saying he didn’t “want to mess with the karma.”
I went back home the same day he did, and I was relieved to see that there was no damage to the interior of my town house and that the exterior damage was minimal. Jack, of course, was unharmed but relieved I was home safe. The power stayed off for six days. I drove back to Alison’s a day later, after she called to say her power had returned as well. Melissa still wasn’t back in school, as the basement and lower floor of her school building had been seriously flooded. Life was coming back to the area, but slowly.
We cleared most of the downed branches from her front yard, and Alison asked Murray Feldner, a man she’s known since grade school who made his living as a tow truck driver and snow removal service, to bring a chain saw when he could to cut up the huge branch in the back of her property.
There had also been a great number of roof tiles blown off, so Alison was piling them up in the front yard when I arrived. I started to pitch in, but the bulk of the work had already been done.
The scene between Sergeant Elliot and Mac was still lingering in my mind. “Imagine,” I said after a while. “Mac thought he was honoring Sergeant Elliot, and instead he was holding him back. You just never know the effect you’re having on other people.”
“I do,” Maxine said.
“Really,” Alison responded.
Paul and Maxine were not helping stack the tiles—passersby would see tiles stacking themselves, and Alison was already known in parts of town as the “ghost lady”—but they were watching Melissa, Alison and me stack them.
Alison looked at me and sighed. “These are a lot of shingles,” she said, pointing to the intimidating pile. “I’m going to have to go up on the roof and replace them.”
The Victorian is a very tall house, and reflexively I looked up. “That seems dangerous,” I said.
“Gotta get done.”
“You could ask Tony,” I said of her contractor friend.
“Tony’s doing repairs on his own house, and then has about seventeen jobs lined up. That’s why I had to ask Murray for the chain saw; Tony’s just too backed up to come. Who knows how long it’ll take to rebuild everything? My roof is the least of anybody’s problems around here. Once the stores are all restocked, I’m going to get some shingles and get up there.” She didn’t look happy about it, and I didn’t blame her.
“Grandma, you’re not wearing your POW bracelet,” Melissa said. “Did you just leave it home today?”
“No. I’ve decided not to wear it anymore. I don’t want to strand Colonel Mason the way the sergeant was stranded.”
“Well, you have the advantage of being able to see Colonel Mason if he comes to ask,” Alison pointed out.
“Yes, but suppose he can’t.” I replied. “Suppose he never made it home from Vietnam, and he’s stuck there. I don’t want to take that chance. I think the best way to honor him is to allow him peace.”
“You’re very conscientious,” Alison said.
“What’s ‘conscientious’?” Melissa asked.
“Like Grandma.” Alison glanced up at the roof again and looked worried.
I thought about that when I went home that night. Alison told me a few days later that she’d bought the shingles and was planning on climbing up to the roof the next day to begin installing them.
But when she woke up the next day, the roof had been completely repaired.
Epilogue
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked Jack now, on our way to Alison’s house for dinner with the girls, the ghosts and Josh Kaplan.
“Of course it was me; you knew it was me,” he said, “sitting” in the passenger seat. I’d had to talk Jack out of putting on his seatbelt, pointing out that there was little harm that could befall him these days. “I wasn’t going to let her climb up there and break her neck.”
“You’re a good dad.”
“Better now than then,” he said.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I told my deceased husband. “Your heart was in the right place.”
“Technically, my heart is in an urn somewhere, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer that.
• • •
“You’re still wearing that?” Marilyn Beechman asked. She pointed to the POW bracelet on my left wrist. It was some the worse for wear after four years, but not rusted or dirty. I glanced at it.
We were at her apartment in Matawan, where she’d just moved to be with her boyfriend (later husband, later ex-husband), Roy, and Marilyn was cooking dinner just to prove to me that she could. Chicken Parm. She was sautéing the chicken in preparation for the oven as we spoke.
“You told me I had to wear it until Colonel Mason was found or declared dead,” I said. “I haven’t seen anything that said he was either.”
Since I’d gotten to the apartment and Roy had taken my coat—and then disappeared into the bedroom, saying he wanted to let us have our “girl talk,” a sure sign that he’d eventually be Marilyn’s ex-husband—there had been an incessant banging coming from somewhere in the place, but Marilyn was not acknowledging it.
“They’ve found pretty much everybody,” she answered. “There’s no reason to think he wasn’t among them.”
“I wrote away to the Department of Defense and never got an answer,” I said. The pounding wouldn’t stop. “What is that noise, anyway?”
“Oh, sorry,” Marilyn told me. “The super sen
t up some guy to fix the ceiling in the bathroom, and he’s been hammering all day. It’s making me crazy, but he’ll leave soon. They shut down at six. You really wrote to the Department of Defense?” Marilyn repeated with a chuckle. “You’re so naïve. They’re never going to tell you the truth. Hasn’t this Watergate thing taught you anything about trusting the government?”
“Well, maybe I should take the bracelet off for good, then,” I said.
“Don’t do that,” said a voice from behind me.
Holding a step stool, a young man in painter’s overalls and a canvas cap was walking out of the bathroom. He looked at Marilyn. “Ceiling’s just about fixed,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow to compound and sand it, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, stirring jar marinara sauce in a pot and not looking up.
“Why shouldn’t I take it off?” I asked the super’s assistant. He had a small frame but solid muscles, sort of like John Garfield.
“Because it’s a way of letting the guys who fought know that you understand what they went through, and you want all their buddies to get home safe, even the ones who are still being held prisoner.”
“Vietnam was a mistake,” Marilyn said.
The young man shrugged. “Governments make mistakes. Should we punish the poor guys who had to carry them out? Some friends of mine were there. Some didn’t come back. I don’t care about the politics. I care about my friends. I say you should keep wearing the bracelet, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” I said.
“Miss?” he asked and smiled.
I decided right then I would keep wearing the bracelet for a while.
And I married the young handyman the following year.
Addendum
Lieutenant Colonel William Henderson Mason was born October 12, 1924, and was lost in Laos on May 22, 1968. His crew included Captain Thomas B. Mitchell, Captain William T. McPhail, Seaman Apprentice Gary Pate, Staff Sergeant Calvin C. Glover, Aircraft Mechanics Melvin D. Rash and John Q. Adam.
An Open Spook (A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery) Page 7