Although, as a Dwerg, I may tend to be a little shy with live people, I feel very comfortable with the dead. Not everybody can see ghosts, and those who can may not be able to see all the ghosts there are. I can see them all, and if you are polite to them, they will be polite to you. I developed nodding acquaintances, hello and how do you do, with many nightwalkers, and I had some warm friendships with ghostly dogs and cats. Yes, there are pet ghosts, dog and cat ones, and mouse ghosts too, what did you suppose?
9.
I HAD A FAVORITE GHOST, Roger Van Tussenvuxel. He appeared to be about sixteen years old, with freckles and reddish curly hair. He always wore blue jeans, blown-out at the knees, and a T-shirt with the words Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here to Stay printed on it. He spoke like an ordinary Kingston kid, with maybe the odd Dutch word mixed in. I was surprised to learn he was born in 1750. I usually ran into Roger during my nightly walks on a street called Frog Alley where there’s an old ruined house surviving from the 1600s.
“You’re always hanging out around here,” I said to Roger Van Tussenvuxel. “Is this the place you haunt? Did you die here or something?”
“You’ve probably heard about these ghosts who appear on the stairs every night at precisely 11:20 P.M. and moan or rattle chains or something,” Roger said. “This happens, but it’s really rare. I don’t know a single ghost who carries on like that. I don’t mean to cast shade on any of my fellow shades, but I think that kind of behavior is sort of neurotic. You know, there are people who can be perfectly nice, and even lovable, but at the same time they will be a pain in the zitvlak?”
“You’re talking about everybody I used to live with.”
“Well, those are the types who go in for haunting. Most ghosts are not like that. The ones you see around here doing the spook walk have just come up for a nice tour around the old neighborhood.”
“Come up from where?”
“From the underworld. Surely you’ve heard of it.”
“Not really, assuming you do not refer to gangsters and such.”
“No, I mean the underworld that’s been around forever, and mentioned in Greek mythology and everyplace else, and not many living people have had a look at it, so it is generally completely misunderstood.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That surprises me, you being a Dwerg and all, and pretty much supernatural around the edges your own self.”
“You know about Dwergs, and can tell I’m one?”
“Listen, when you’ve been dead as long as I have, you pick up all kinds of stuff.” Roger Van Tussenvuxel was sort of cute, I have to say. He had nice blue eyes. I didn’t have a crush on him, what with his being dead and all, and I am just mentioning. He knew a lot about history, especially the history of Wiltwyck, New York, later called Kingston, and especially from about 1760 to the present. He told me I was his favorite semi-supernatural living person, which I considered a compliment, even though I knew all his other friends were ghosts.
It was my practice to sit down with a slice of pizza and a cold root beer at one of the tables on one of my breaks at the pizzeria. Arnold Babatunji told me I could have as many breaks as I wanted. I usually wanted five or six. On these breaks, while waiting for my slice to cool, I would enjoy looking over any customers who were on hand. The variety of customers was always entertaining, fat and thin, fit and sloppy, tall and short, rich and poor, different sexes, different colors, and besides being interesting in the ways they looked, it was fun to see what kind of pizza each one would order, and how they’d eat it, one-handed and folded, New York City style, or knife and fork, or waving it in the air like a flag and snapping at the flopping tip of the slice. Also it was fun listening to them, noting how they talked, and what they talked about.
What I was not prepared to see was my friend Roger Van Tussenvuxel, in broad daylight, sitting at the table across from me.
“Roger! What are you doing here?”
“Came for pizza. Would you be willing to pass me your slice of pizza?”
“You eat pizza? I thought ghosts are insubstantial, have no physical bodies, and are unable to so much as lift a slice of pizza, let alone eat it.”
“This is true, but we can sniff things. Just let me inhale over your slice, I won’t do it any harm.”
“Also, how come you’re out in daylight?”
“There’s no rule against it. Ghosts prefer the dark for a variety of reasons.”
“Such as not upsetting living people? What would the customers here think if they knew you were a walking, talking, sniffing deadster?”
“I doubt they can see me. Takes a special kind of person. As close as even an unusually sensitive type is likely to come would be to see me as a sort of thick place in the air, or an almost-shadow, if that makes any sense.”
“I can see you fine, better than at night.”
“You’re a Dwerg.”
“Would you like to take a whiff of a slice with pepperoni?”
“Oh, yes, please!”
10.
I HAD NO IDEA whether Roger Van Tussenvuxel had done anything noteworthy or interesting when he was alive. He may have. He may have fought in the Revolution, but he never said anything about it. Maybe he was on the British side in the Revolution and that was why he didn’t want to talk about his life, or maybe he was just modest. Mostly he concentrated on looking and acting like a contemporary teenager, talking about rock ’n’ roll music, and sports teams, even though he was born in 1750.
I did get to see, and even had “Good evening” said to me, by a ghost who had been really important in life. This was a tall black woman. She wasn’t just tall, she was powerful, you could see from the way she moved, smooth, gliding, like some kind of queen. She wore big full skirts, with an apron over them that went down to the ground, and a sort of turban or cap, and little squinty gold eyeglasses with big calm eyes behind them. She wasn’t there every night, just once in a while, and all the ghosts got excited when she turned up.
I asked around, and learned this was the ghost of Sojourner Truth. I got a book from the Kingston Public Library that told all about her.
Sojourner Truth had been born a slave near Kingston in 1797. That’s right, there were slaves in the North. Slavery in New York didn’t end until 1827 and then it was by drips and drops. Sojourner Truth went to the courthouse right there in the Stockade District and sued to recover her son, who had been illegally sold into a state that still had slavery, and she won her case. A black woman had never done such a thing before. She traveled all over the country speaking against slavery, and after the Civil War she spoke for human rights and women’s rights. She died in 1883, so she must have seen electric light, possibly used the telephone, and might even have taken a ride in an automobile, all those things had come about within eighteen years of the last time a person could own another person in the United States. The ghosts respected her a lot for the role she played, and so did I.
11.
IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT, with the exception of Arnold Babatunji, and a couple of customers who came into the shop and with whom I would exchange a word or two, I was associating exclusively with the dead. This is not to say that the ghosts of uptown Kingston were not very nice, much as the Dwergs in my village were also nice, but I had to admit I was not finding what I had left home to find . . . whatever that may have been.
I was just thinking these thoughts while taking a break at the pizzeria, when a girl I had never seen before sat down at my table. She had two slices and a Dr Pepper, was approximately my age, and had a nice face, and beautiful straight black hair.
“You look completely normal,” the girl said. “What happened to the Little House on the Prairie outfit you and your friends used to wear?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You and a bunch of other kids, friends of yours, I assume. You all had the long skirts, and the big shoes, and went around in a flock, not talking to anybody.”
“Oh, you mean in high school!”
&nb
sp; “Right. I almost didn’t recognize you in normal clothes. My name is Leni Toomay.” She stuck her hand out.
I shook hands with her. “Molly O’Malley,” I said. It’s possible to meet someone and know right away that you have something in common, and you want to be friends. It was like that with Leni. I felt like I already knew her.
“So what is it, do you and those others all belong to some kind of old-fashioned church up in the hills, and it’s real strict and makes you wear the old-fashioned clothes and not talk to modern people?”
“Well, not quite, but sort of,” I said. I think I’ve mentioned that I didn’t feel I was supposed to keep being a Dwerg a big secret, but at the same time it didn’t seem like a good idea to go around announcing it. I didn’t feel it would do any harm if I told Leni, and then she said something that surprised me a little.
“Know what we used to call you and your friends? The Dwergs.”
“Really.”
“Don’t be offended. It was perfectly goodhumored, and not racist or anything, because as you know, Dwergs don’t really exist.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Well, I don’t know, maybe they used to exist and now they’re extinct, or blended into the general population. My own ancestors included the local Native American tribe, and they both blended in and got pushed out to reservations in the West. If I thought calling you girls Dwergs was mean-spirited, I would never have stood for it.”
“No, it’s OK. I can see how we would have looked like Dwergs to you.”
“As a matter of fact, there may be proof that Dwergs did exist at some point. My aunt’s boyfriend, Angus, runs the pawnshop, and a kid came in with what he thinks is a Dwerg coin, must be really old. I’ve seen it.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was sort of lumpy, and heavy, and made of gold. Had what might have been the image of a goat on one side, and what looked like a wedge of cheese on the other.”
I dug one of my coins out of my pocket and put it on the table. “Anything like this?”
Leni looked at the coin, then she looked at me. I found her expression very entertaining, and I had fun watching her run the various possibilities through her mind.
“Keep this under your hat,” I said.
“So . . . so . . . I mean . . . you . . . and they . . . and . . .”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“Your pizza’s getting cold.”
“Wow.”
12.
LENI AND I were walking down Broadway, toward the Rondout Creek, which connects with the Hudson River. It was another old part of town, but not nearly as old as uptown. The Rondout is a pretty big creek, and there are old boatyards that could handle fair-sized rivercraft. Along the way there are all kinds of buildings from the first half of the twentieth century, I supposed, and shops and stores, a place that sold fish, and a couple of the many hot dog stands that are a feature of Kingston. I have to give a tip to tourists and travelers about Kingston hot dogs. It is this: Don’t. Consider, I had more or less just come out of the woods, and had never seen or heard of, let alone tasted, a hot dog in my entire life, and yet I was able to tell that the standard hot dog in Kingston was a pathetic imitation of something real, and would depress a moose. They’re pink, they’re the exact same hot dogs you can buy in any supermarket, the cheapest kind, same goes for the buns, low-grade yellow mustard, and if you ask for chili on your dog, you get watery horrible stuff that is an insult to the chili-eating world and all persons of good will.
Leni explained that the street dog in New York City, while a danger to one’s health, at least tastes good, and the ones sold at papaya juice stands, and also at Coney Island, are cultural treasures and worth a trip from anywhere.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go there now,” I said.
“That’s a topic for another conversation I’m looking forward to having,” Leni said. “For now, there’s something I want to show you.”
“And what would that be?”
“Wait and see. We’re almost there.”
Leni and I had been hanging out almost any time I wasn’t working, and sometimes she would visit the pizzeria during my work hours and keep me company. Arnold Babatunji already knew her before I met her, and he liked her.
We made our way along the bank of the creek. “General Vaughn and his troops came along this route the opposite way we’re going in 1777, when they burned the whole town of Kingston,” Leni said.
“I read about it,” I said. “Has that got anything to do with what you want to show me?”
“We have arrived at what I want to show you,” Leni said. “Are you good at climbing?”
“I sleep in a tree.”
“So a chain-link fence eight feet high won’t be a problem. And here it is, and over we go.”
A few feet beyond the fence was the entrance to some sort of cave, great big open arches. “What is this?” I asked.
“Cave.”
“I can see that. What cave? What sort of cave?”
“It’s the Kingston Cave, goes on and on, under the whole eastern part of the city. It goes down and down too. It’s not so much a cave as a mine. They used to dig limestone to make cement out of here. Apparently it was just the right kind of limestone, because they dug out a lot of it. The mine goes on for thousands and thousands of feet, there are columns, and a couple of big underground lakes. Also, it’s got all kinds of cave things happening, stalagmites, and huge columns of ice, it gets cavier and cavier all the time. In a few hundred years people won’t be able to tell it’s not a natural cavern. You feel like exploring a little? I brought a flashlight.”
“Let’s go, and do not worry about what could happen should you use up your batteries. I can see in the dark like a bat.”
“Is that a Dwerg thing?”
“I suppose so. And I’ve been in a cave before, only just a little one.”
The cave was great. Starting out there were great big chambers. You could see trucks had been driven in and out. There were massive columns holding up the roof. Then we came upon long tunnels that went left and right, and always downward. We passed old rusty mining machinery, and cars from the 1920s and 1930s. It was cold and there were bats. We almost stepped into a huge black lake, and I could hear fish jumping and splashing.
“This is a fantastic cave,” I told Leni.
“I knew you’d like it.”
We explored the cave for about an hour going in, and maybe an hour and a half getting out, because it was uphill, and we got a little bit lost for a while.
“We should come back with at least four flashlights, extra batteries, and some lunch,” I said. “I want to find out how far this thing goes.”
“There are supposed to be ghosts,” Leni said. “I forgot to mention.”
“Ghosts a problem for you?”
“Nah, I like them.”
“Good. So do I.”
13.
“ROGER VAN TUSSENVUXEL! I’ve been looking for you!”
“And you found me.”
“There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
“Ask away.”
“Late the other night, I was taking a walk around the neighborhood.”
“As one does.”
“Right. And I saw a bunch of redcoats.”
“Redcoats, as in . . .”
“As in British soldiers from the time of the Revolutionary War. I never saw them before, and I thought I’d ask you.”
“This is a mistake people keep making. You think because I’m a ghost I know every other ghost. It’s annoying. Imagine if I assumed because you’re a Dwerg that you knew every other Dwerg there was.”
“I do.”
“Well, it’s not a good example, then. Anyway, I don’t know these British soldier ghosts, never saw them in my death, besides which, it’s a little surprising they’re around here.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, I don’t know if British soldiers die
d around here in any numbers, or even at all. The story is they marched in, set fire to the place, and marched out. I never heard about any of them making the supreme sacrifice.”
“Something about them puzzled me. Some of them were eating hot dogs.”
“To that I say ‘Ick,’” Roger Van Tussenvuxel said. “If they got them around here.”
“And you told me ghosts do not eat.”
“This is true. Possibly what you saw were the ghosts of hot dogs.”
“Ghostly food? Is that a thing?”
“How do I know? Am I Professor Knows Everything or someone? But if they were eating hot dogs, I suggest what you saw was not ghostly.”
“You mean they were other than ghosts?”
“Other.”
“Then what?”
“Again she assumes I have the answers.”
14.
THERE'S A LITTLE BRICK BUILDING on Fair Street, near the Old Dutch Church, that’s maybe a hundred and fifty years old. At the street level is a shop, Cows and Frogs, a gift shop, I suppose you’d call it. It sells little ceramic cows and little ceramic frogs, pictures of cows, pictures of frogs, dish towels embroidered with . . . you guessed it. Cow greeting cards, and also frog ones. I guess it could be the favorite store of people who like cows, or frogs, or cows and frogs. It belongs to Isabel Backus, and she and her husband Billy Backus live in an apartment on the upper floor of the building. This upper floor, in addition to the Backuses’ apartment, has the studio of WKIN, a radio station. It’s a one-man operation, Billy Backus is the owner, the engineer, the announcer, the disc jockey, the news reader, and also the janitor and the guy who sells advertising spots. When he has to run an errand for Isabel Backus, or when it’s time for lunch, or he needs to take a nap, he just shuts the radio station down. Billy Backus is also Professor Knows Everything, and has a program every day called Ask the Professor, on which he answers questions that people phone in. He’s a genius, and always knows the answers.
Adventures of a Dwergish Girl Page 3
