by Alice Duncan
After that calamity, eighth-grade classes celebrated their end-of-school picnics up at the Spring River, in spite of the mud holes, bogs, and mosquitoes. No class ever went back to the Bottomless Lakes.
Remembering that day always gave me the willies.
“But . . . well . . . Aunt Minnie, why is Julia haunting your house? If you have a ghost? I mean, I’m sure you do, but . . .” You had to humor Aunt Minnie sometimes. “Well, I mean, you don’t live anywhere near the Bottomless Lakes.”
There went her parasol again, and again it cracked against Jack’s pickle barrel. “The ways of the Other Side are infinite,” she declared sententiously. “Who are we to quibble with the spirits?”
Good question, and one to which I had no answer. I did, however, ask rather timidly, “What does Uncle Joe have to say about all this? Doesn’t he mind Julia’s ghost butting into his territory?”
I know, I know. Uncle Joe was dead. According to Minnie, he was still in communication with her. Poor Uncle Joe. Communicating with Aunt Minnie was difficult even if you were a living and fully functioning entity.
“That’s the problem,” she muttered, allowing her parasol to droop.
“What’s the problem?”
“Her! She’s interfering with my communion with your uncle!”
A few people in town at that time had short-wave radio receiving sets. Some of those people, including Minnie’s late husband Joe, had been interested in wireless communication since far before the radio craze of the 1920s. In actual fact, a friend of Joe’s, who lived in Massachusetts at the time, had intercepted a distress signal from the Titanic after it hit the iceberg in April of 1912. When he ran indoors and told his folks the great ship was sinking, they didn’t believe him. True story. Ma thinks that might be one of the reasons Aunt Minnie believes Joe still communicates with her, although I can’t see a connection myself.
But I digress. The thing about radios is that sometimes something will interfere with their signals, and they’ll fizz and bubble. Radio people call this phenomenon “static.” I had a mental image of Minnie sitting down before her crystal ball and seeing fuzz.
“Um . . .” I wasn’t sure how to ask the question. Or even what question to ask.
“That’s why you have to do it.”
I think I blinked again. I know I said, “Do what?” even though I figured it would only set Minnie off again.
I was right. Up went the parasol. Crash went the pickle barrel. Good thing it was sturdy. “What? Why do you keep asking silly questions, girl? You have to stay at the house with me.”
Oh, no. I didn’t groan aloud and was proud of myself. But . . . staying at Minnie’s house? Nuts. “But what can I do?” I protested feebly.
“Do? Do? You can talk to the girl, of course! You’re her age! You can understand her!”
“But . . . Aunt Minnie, she’s been dead for six years.”
The look she gave me shouldn’t be bestowed upon any but the feeblest-witted. I resented it, although I knew my resentment to be as foolish as it was useless. Nobody ever understood Minnie; my current befuddlement wasn’t my fault.
“Of course, she’s been dead for six years. That’s the whole point,” Minnie said, as if she were explaining a simple equation to an extremely dull student.
“But why can’t you communicate with her by yourself? You’re better at that stuff than I am.” Truer words were never spoken.
“Oh, for heaven’s– Listen to me, Annabelle Blue.”
I listened. Couldn’t do anything else, darn it.
“You were in her class. You were with her when she vanished.”
Vanished. Now there was a good word for it.
“You were her age–”
"But I’m not any longer,” I pointed out, thinking it was a valid detail.
“Fiddlesticks! You were her age when she vanished.”
No doubt about it.
“Therefore, you’re obviously the one to do it.”
“Stay with you, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“But . . . .” Arguing with Minnie once she had her heart set on something was almost invariably useless, but I figured it was worth a try. I hated staying at her house. It was a big, lonely ranch house, although all ranching operations had died with Uncle Joe. Now, where there used to be cattle and horses and men to run and ride them, there was a whole lot of nothing. And it was way far away from the town, out on the Pine Lodge Road, which is the road leading to Capitan and Ruidoso, which were up in the mountains. The place was eerie and full of strange noises even when it wasn’t being haunted.
The only other person on the place was Miss Libby Powell, the lady who’d been with Minnie for more years than anyone could remember. I think Minnie had hired her to be a maid in the Dark Ages, but Libby was now her companion and friend. Libby was built like a house and did the work of two men, thereby negating any need Minnie might otherwise have had for a hired hand. Also, and not the least of the reasons I was loath to visit Minnie, Libby was both deaf as a post and exceptionally sharp-tongued.
She was also big. I think she must have been six feet tall and must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. I don’t think much of that weight was fat, either. She was just all-around big. I’m not sure, but I think she might have had Indian blood in her background somewhere, because she had an olive complexion, and used-to-be-jet-black hair that was naturally wavy. Her hair was more gray than black anymore, and she wore it pulled back in a severe bun. Just about everything as regarded Miss Libby was severe. I didn’t consider her a comfortable person to be around, although Minnie loved her like a sister.
It’s odd to me how friendships develop. If you met Minnie and Libby separately and didn’t know they were friends, you wouldn’t think of connecting them in your mind. But they were kind of like ham and eggs. Toast and butter. Samson and Delilah. You couldn’t have one without the other, if you know what I mean.
I suppose in mitigation of Minnie and Libby, there was Jeepers, the dog. Jeepers was of uncertain origin and a peach of a canine. His coat was medium-short, black and white, and he had a tail that was basically black but had white feathers that waved when he wagged. I loved Jeepers a lot, but he, too, was elderly and deaf, and I couldn’t count on him for company because he slept all the time.
Add to that Minnie’s only close neighbor, Olin Burgess, and you have a setting that would have appealed to Robert Lewis Stevenson in his Jekyll-Hyde mode. Poor Mr. Burgess. It wasn’t his fault. But he was a very unpleasant-looking individual. Rumor had it that he’d been torn up in the Civil War, lost an eye, and received the hideous scars that marred his face and made him limp. He scared people, and kids taunted him. I felt sorry for him . . . but he scared me, too, darn it. I didn’t like being around him. But I was positive Aunt Minnie would only pooh-pooh any objection based on Mr. Burgess. I didn’t dare tell her about my objection to Miss Libby.
The fact that Minnie’s house was also a good twenty miles eastward from where Julia Gilbert disappeared, however, seemed to me a cogent point and a fairly good place to start my argument. “Aunt Minnie, there’s no earthly reason for Julia to be haunting your house. If she’s dead–”
"She’s dead.”
“Probably. But even if she is–I mean, even though she is, there’s no earthly reason she should be haunting your house.”
“We aren’t speaking of the earthly plane, Annabelle. Will you get that through your head?”
Oh, brother. I forged onward through the bog. “But think about it, Aunt Minnie. She can’t be haunting your house. You don’t live anywhere near where she died.”
“How do you know?”
I’d opened my mouth to keep arguing, but this statement made the words I was going to speak shrivel up. I swallowed the dried bits of them. “Well, because she died at the Bottomless Lakes, didn’t she?”
“We don’t know that.”
“But . . . that’s where we were when she . . . vanished.”
“It must be obvious to you, then, that she didn’t die there! She died near my house!”
Huh? “Um . . .”
“Just because the whole world believes something to be so doesn’t make it so, Annabelle Blue. You, of all people, ought to know that?”
“Why me of all people?”
“Because you’re young! You’re open! You don’t scoff as much as the rest.”
Boy, I decided then and there not to be so darned polite to my crazy aunt. I mean, there are limits. “But . . .”
“And furthermore–” She broke off suddenly and, to my utter horror, tears started dripping down her cheeks.
I reached for her hand–a first, believe me–but she looked so wretched, I felt sorry for her. “Aunt Minnie, what is it?”
“I miss Joe. And he won’t come as long as she’s there.”
Oh, brother.
My mother entered the store from behind me–we lived in the back–and I thought rescue was at hand. With profound relief, I turned to her. “Ma! Aunt Minnie’s here.”
“So I see.”
My mother is a saint. She might occasionally say sarcastic things about people when they weren’t around, but she was invariably kind to them in person. She held out her hand and gave Minnie a sweet smile. “So good to see you, Minnie.”
She must have noticed the traces of tears on my aunt’s face. “But what’s this? Is something the matter, Minnie?” Ma rushed around to the other side of the counter and took Minnie in her arms (Ma is also braver than I). “Tell me, dear!”
So Minnie told her. Even as she spoke, I saw Ma’s face crunch up into her I can’t believe my daughter said that to you expression. I was intimately familiar with that expression. And I knew my days of peace were numbered.
Chapter Two
“I don’t know why I have to go,” I grumbled, knowing as I did so that it would only irritate my mother. Anyhow, to argue was pointless. It was the morning after my encounter with Aunt Minnie, my mother was adamant, and my bag was already packed. “Why don’t you make Jack go?”
“Your brother has to help with the store. Anyhow, your aunt asked for you.”
Lucky me.
In other parts of the civilized world, a girl might have taken a taxicab to visit her aunt. Rosedale, although moderately civilized, didn’t have taxicabs in 1923. We didn’t have street cars, omnibuses, or trolley cars, either. We didn’t even have very many automobiles. There were so few, in fact, that Jack and his pals used to wait out on Second Street until they saw a car coming, then bet each other that they could crawl across the street before getting run over. That game lasted until Pa caught wind of it.
At any rate, in the absence other means of transport, Phil Gunderson was waiting for me in the kitchen. He was going to take me out to Minnie’s house in the wagon he’d driven to Rosedale, pulled by a team of big brown horses.
Phil was a nice guy and he usually worked for his father, who had a ranch a few miles from Aunt Minnie’s place. Sometimes he helped out his older brother at the hardware store he owned in town. The Gundersons had an elderly but serviceable Ford truck, but when it came to hauling supplies they depended on the wagon. That day, I felt like a supply. And I didn’t like it.
Phil was also sweet on me, which was kind of a problem, since he was one of the boring people I really liked but didn’t want to hang around with for the rest of my life. God knew how I aimed to get shut of Rosedale and the folks who lived there, but I wanted at least one adventure before I got married and faded into the woodwork.
“Stop complaining, Annabelle Blue. It’s little enough to ask of you. Your poor aunt Minnie needs you.”
“For what? I’m not in the ghost-removal business.”
“Don’t you be sarcastic about your aunt, Annabelle. It’s a very unbecoming trait in a young woman.” She shoved a sunbonnet at me.
“I’m not wearing that, Ma.” I hated sunbonnets then, and I hate them now.
“Don’t be foolish. The sunbonnet will protect your skin from the sun. It’s hot out there, and you’re sure to get a burn if you don’t wear it.”
“I’ll wear my new straw hat.”
Ma humphed. She did that a lot. “Vanity is a sin, Annabelle Blue.”
“I don’t care.” I was feeling mighty defiant that day, primarily because I was doing something I really, really didn’t want to do. I was entitled, darn it. “Whenever I wear that thing, I look like Kate Bush in The Battle at Elderbush Gulch.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s the truth.” And it wasn’t a flattering image.
So I got my new straw hat, purchased from our very own dry goods store earlier that month and decorated by my very own fingers with yellow felt flowers, and stabbed a pin in it. Since I hadn’t yet dared get my hair bobbed–you had to work up to these things gradually when you lived in Rosedale, New Mexico–I still had lots of long brown hair. That day my hair was knotted into a bun, so the one pin held the hat on nicely.
Observing myself in the mirror, I decided I looked quite presentable, considering my features. They weren’t bad, my features. I had normal ears, blue eyes, and a regular nose, but I sure wasn’t any Mary Pickford. My hair wasn’t anything special, being an ordinary brown, although I always rinsed it with vinegar and it shone like anything in the sun. If Ma hadn’t been there, I’d have smiled into the mirror to see if I could appear coquettish if I tried. I mean, even though I wasn’t sweet on Phil Gunderson, I didn’t necessarily want to lose him to somebody else until I found my prince. Or at least Allan Quartermain.
“I don’t know what’s going to become of you, Annabelle Blue,” Ma said.
The way she said it made me feel guilty, but I didn’t let on. Instead, I muttered, “Ghosts, of all things,” grabbed my bag, and headed downstairs to the kitchen. As soon as I walked through the door, Phil stood up, holding his hat in his big, work-worn hands, and staring at me like a hungry puppy. I deduced I looked respectable.
Naturally, I couldn’t get away from the house without fifteen or twenty admonitions from my mother. Phil and I exchanged a grin and I heaved a sigh of relief when he clucked to the horses and the wagon pulled away. The only good thing about all this was that Jack had to work in the store for the duration of my stay at Minnie’s house because I wouldn’t be available. Served him right, the little stinker.
“And don’t you be sarcastic about your aunt’s beliefs, young lady!” followed us down Second Street, along with a huge cloud of dust. None of the roads were paved in those days. Heck, they still ran cattle through town twice a year, right there on Second, which is Rosedale’s main east-west street.
“What’s your aunt up to now, Annabelle?” Phil’s smile was almost as warm as the weather, and it made me feel good.
“She claims her house is haunted.”
“Mmm. She’s probably got bats in the attic.”
“Probably.” Fortunately, I didn’t mind bats.
“You got a sunbonnet? That hat’s not going to protect your neck from the sun.”
Darn it! “I’ll be all right.”
“Hmm.” He handed me a bandanna he plucked from his pocket.
I eyed it with misgiving. “Is it clean?”
“‘Course it is.” He chuckled.
So, in spite of the fact that it didn’t go with my outfit and only made me feel stupid, I wound the bandanna around my throat, making sure I covered the back of my neck. And that was that. Not a big conversationalist, Phil.
He was a good-looking guy: tall, lanky, with dark curly hair and chocolate-brown eyes framed by lush dark lashes. I always wished I could have eyelashes like that, but I had to augment mine by judicious use of mascara. It had to be judicious, because if my mother found out I was using makeup, she’d shoot me. Back then, it seemed that half the world was embracing flappers and all they represented and the other half was decrying them. My mother and father were among the latter group.
As for me, I wouldn’t have minded being a flapper, but it required too much
work. Face it, it was one thing to follow all the fads and fashions if you lived, say, in Los Angeles, California, amongst all the motion picture actors and beautiful people, or, more importantly, had a lot of money. It was a whole ‘nother thing if you lived in Rosedale, New Mexico, and were about as well off as your neighbors, which meant not very.
Ma must have telephoned Aunt Minnie to tell her I was on my way, because she and Libby were standing on the covered porch and Minnie was waving her handkerchief at us when the wagon drove up the long road leading to her house and pulled up to the porch. Jeepers barked once and subsided, sitting himself down on the porch beside Miss Libby. I guess he decided I wasn’t worth the effort of an all-out barking barrage, being related and all.
I braced myself for Minnie’s onslaught. Then I thought of something that might save my own personal sanity while I stayed with Minnie and Libby–besides all the books I’d brought along, which I’d borrowed from Rosedale’s Carnegie Library, a block north of our store.
Taking Phil by the arm before he could hop down and help me alight, I whispered, “Phil, you have to promise that you’ll visit me. Once a day, at least. Okay?”
His eyes brightened, and I felt guilty again, this time for giving him false hopes. Darn it, none of this was my fault!
“Sure thing, Annabelle. Happy to.”
Then Minnie was upon us, and there was no more time. She’d hurtled down the porch steps and thrown herself upon Phil. Jeepers still watched from the porch along with Miss Libby. Of the three, he was the only one I especially liked. Oh, well.
“Philip! Are you staying with us, too? Thank God, thank God!”