by Shea Meadows
“Sounds like a lot of reading material and a way to connect to Norton’s energy; maybe give us a clue about where the artifact came from. Does William recall him mentioning it in the letters?”
“He thinks it’s mentioned in some of them, or clues to where he found it,” Ricky answered. “I think we should copy them first then study them after so we have more time to work with each one. Would you like to join Nory and me when we visit on Sunday? I think you guys would get along well.”
“Certainly would,” he answered. “I think I saw a copy machine in the office on the third floor. I’ll start making copies and put them back in their respective bundles. Sound okay?”
“Wonderful. I will sit here and veg until something or someone demands my attention.”
Alone for the first time in the house, she reclined on the couch, closed her eyes, sighed and started drifting into a cat nap. Just as dreams started to flood the space behind her eyes, she heard Moon’s voice.
“Ricky, you can leave your body in the living room, but you have to see this. I’m in the new nursery, and Nory and I want you to meet someone.”
Ricky allowed her etheric body to float up the stairs and wander through the hallway to the room where Nory was napping. A small crowd of human and animal spirits huddled in a circle on the floor next to Nory’s crib.
Moon was there, wearing a pair of jeans, a crop top and sandals. Nory sat next to Moon in her teenager body, dressed the same as her mentor. Pigeon was there in both her forms; her cat body was lying on the top of the bookshelf dreaming, and her astral body lay on top of the long furry body of Ralph who was deeply asleep. Ralph’s inner being was awake and celebrating, greeting the ghost of a young man Moon had last seen in Ralph’s memories. He was talking to Moon and Nory and playing with the dog and cat as he conversed.
“Will you look at that,” Ricky said with a smile. “Looks like Ralph and Pigeon are going to get along.”
Teenager Nory stood up and hugged Ricky. “Mom, isn’t it wonderful? Moon talked to them, too, and they decided to be friends. The energy was so happy it lured Chick out of his hiding place.”
The young ghost stood up and offered his hand to Ricky. “I’m Charles Barton the third, Mrs. Clark. You can call me Chick if you want. That’s what most people do. I used to live in this house when I had a body. Now I visit from time to time, but not lately because no one was here that I wanted to see.
“Now that Ralph is back, I couldn’t resist. Moon wanted my help talking to this big lug of a dog. He’d do just about anything for me. He figures even if Pigeon is a not-dog, at least he’s a four-foot and could make a pretty good wing-man. Both of them are keeping an eye on Nory until she’s big enough not to get into trouble.”
Ricky took the offered hand and felt a flood of emotions, the strongest of which was relief. The boy had been lonely for four years but finally found people that didn’t walk right through him. And besides that he could see his favorite dog in the world. “Wonderful to meet you, Chick; you can call me Ricky. Where have you been hanging out when you’re not here?”
“Mostly around the lake, and sometimes I float around downtown to the parks and such. Places I’d started to visit shortly before I lost my body. I’ve been looking for someone I met when she was walking around the hiking path near Lake Harriet. She used to hang out with a group who would meet in out of the way places. I want to let her know I’m okay, but her family won’t let me talk to her.
“You still have a body, don’t you, Ricky? You talk to ghosts and tell living people what the ghosts are trying to get through to them, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do that, but I’d need to know more. Some people are too afraid to talk to disincarnates. I’d never force information on them,” Ricky answered. “Usually my clients are the ones with bodies in the relationships, not the ghosts.”
Chick sighed and the curtain in the nursery fluttered. “ Let me tell you what happened. It’s what’s keeping me from going to spirit world. I have to apologize. But Blue’s people won’t let me anywhere near her. Especially, Milton Running Deer, her uncle. He’s their shaman. He thinks I’m trying to attach to her. Says there was a whole big thing with that not long ago. Moon says you know about that.”
“I do know about it. Moon and I and a whole group of folks put an end to that practice. We found the person responsible and stopped him, but some people are afraid it will happen again. I’ve talked to folks who work out of body, and some think there’s still a danger. And I understand their concern. It was a giant mess. Is there more to your story? Is Blue a Native American?” Ricky asked.
Chick nodded. “She’s half Ojibway. Her dad is full-blooded Norwegian, and her mom is from the tribes. She has long black hair and dark eyes, but her father’s light, freckled skin. I met her when I was walking around Lake Harriet with my dad and Ralph. She was with a group of girlfriends, and I heard them call her Blue. I was shy then, but Ralph is a girl magnet. They surrounded him, and he licked their faces with his big sloppy tongue and tried to play like the puppy he thinks he is. Blue fell in love with him. I was kind of on the outskirts of their friendship.”
“How old were you both when this was happening?” Ricky asked.
“I was sixteen and she was eighteen. She had graduated high school the month before. Six months after I died, she started training to be a nurse. I tried to get in touch with her at school, but she ignored me. I knew for a fact she could feel me. She would mutter at me. Things like ‘Chicky, Chicky, Chicky, go over to the other side. You made this mess, not me.’”
Ricky sighed. “Chick, you have to tell your story in some sort of order. You met, then what happened next? Then what happened after that? How did it lead to you losing your body?”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to tell this for so long and no one could hear me, so it’s tumbling out all at once. Maybe you can take my hand and read my story? Nory says you do stuff like that.”
“Sounds like an excellent idea.” Ricky reached over with the intention of reading the part of Chick’s record that explained what happened with Blue that led to his death. As she reached over she saw the events unfold.
Chick was just a little shorter than his very tall father Charles Barton Junior. They both had sandy blond hair cut in crew cuts and the same prominent nose. Charles went by Chuck, so Chick’s mom, Florence started calling their son Chick as a joke, but the name stuck. Chick, Chuck and Ralph enjoyed walks around Lake Harriet. They had been in the house near the lake for close to four years; they had moved from Edina.
Florence was an attorney and had live-in help to take care of the house. Her work weeks consisted of twelve-hour days, six days a week. She planned to run for a Federal judgeship so was building an impressive resume. Usually she tried to walk with “the boys” but was wilting the day Chick met Blue, so was napping instead.
Chick and Chuck had less and less to say to each other as Chick grew older. The boy was sixteen, interested in girls, sports and when he’d get his driver’s license. Chuck was a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota, so his conversation was about his work training the anthropologists of the future. He’d go on and on, quoting from the current students’ outline from the course, trying to make it interesting, hoping Chick would be attracted to the subject. But to no avail.
As his father rambled on, Chick was keeping Ralph out of other dogs’ poop and watching the approach of a group of girls walking toward them. Blue’s musical laugh echoed around her. Her dark eyes sparkled as she pushed her friend and was pushed back, all in fun. Then the magic moment: the girls were in front of them. “Oh, look at this beautiful creature,” Blue trilled in her angelic voice.
The four girls started petting Ralph, ruffling his fur, touching his paws. Blue put her face up in Ralph’s and talked to the dog as if he were the critter of her dreams. After a bit, they noticed Chick, although his father seemed to be invisible. They gave Chick almost the same treatment as they gave Ralph,
admiring his muscular body, gained through hours of lifting weights. Commenting that without those muscles it might be difficult to walk a 150-pound Saint Bernard.
Chuck stood quietly and looked across the lake, wondering when he could pull his son away from this gaggle of girls. They were obviously from the wrong part of Minneapolis. Look at their clothes. Skirts so short they left little to the imagination. Long finger-nails on one of them that were painted multiple colors and curved into claws at the end. Strange hair that spiked out in all directions, tattoos on necks, arms and legs, and piercings on noses, chins, tongue and ears.
Only one of them looked half-way normal, the one the others called Blue. Her skirt was a little longer, her hair closer to what he was used to seeing on campus, and only her ears were pierced, with one small tat of a blue bird on her upper left arm. But you judged a person by whom they hung around with, and these girls were too wild and probably too old to be bumping their bodies up against Chick.
Chuck didn’t see Blue writing her phone number on Chick’s arm. He was ignoring them as much as he could, and was relieved when Chick turned around and waved good-bye as they left.
The action moved quickly forward. There was Chick, walking around Powder Horn Park with Blue on his own. She was talking about studying nursing at the Burnsville Technical College in the fall. He told her he planned to play pro football. He’d been on the team since freshman year. She talked about her family and the traditional ceremonies of the tribe she was born into by her mother’s blood. She loved the ceremonial clothes, music, and dance, but feared she’d grown away from that part of her life. He was talking about how he never saw his mother and his father not being there even when they were standing next to each other.
Blue had walked over to his house, and he showed her around. They played with Ralph in the backyard and took a dip in the swimming pool, then necked on the lawn chairs with Ralph barking until they stopped.
Then Chick complained he wanted to get his driver’s license but he hadn’t had enough behind the wheel time. His parents were always busy. Really, he was thinking of getting her alone in the backseat of the car with the drive time as an excuse for being far away from the dog who wanted the ball thrown a thousand times and the spying housekeeper doing dishes twenty feet away from them.
She was hesitant. She was a licensed driver. The car was an old clunker registered to Chick’s parents, and they hadn’t given permission. His pleading won out.
In the car, all Chick could think about was parking under a tree in an isolated area and going further with Blue than he had a little while ago. She took her role as driving supervisor very seriously, the amorous feelings put to one side. She instructed him to practice parallel parking in an empty lot; he thought he nailed that skill days ago, but his attention was divided so poor performance ensued. He kept making sexually charged remarks about parking something else somewhere else on her person. She started to blush and realized Chick was not as mature as she thought he was. At one point, they got out of the car and argued, and he promised to behave. They were both so angry they forgot to fasten their seatbelts when they got back in.
Next she directed him to drive down countless neighborhood streets with gradually increasing traffic. As his frustration mounted, his driving skills decreased. He barely missed rear-ending a truck because he was again making steamy jokes to impress Blue with his manly nature. That was it for her; she ordered him home, telling him she had other things to do. Another argument began, Chick mentioning she’d told him she had the day free. Her responding she had put up with enough. He felt the pressure and anger building. She asked him if he wanted to pull over and let her drive back. He accused her of being a flirt and a slut and leading him on. She was completely confused.
The argument continued as they neared his house. He looked angrily at Blue so didn’t see the unexpected; Ralph had escaped the yard and run into the street and barked at them in the middle of the road. Chick veered to avoid hitting the dog and drove into the stone wall surrounding the house and flipped the car over. Chick slammed into the airbag as the car landed on its roof. Blue made hard contact with the dashboard. The housekeeper heard the dog and the crash and ran to the scene then back to the house to call 911.
Chick’s spirit slipped from his body instantly; he had suffered massive brain damage. Blue’s spirit moved up and out but was still connected to the physical reality. Her nose and facial bones had fractures, and she sat in a pool of blood but was still breathing. Paramedics and police were at the scene and worked on resuscitating them both but were only successful with Blue. She was rushed to the hospital with Chick following close behind, feeling as guilty as a ghost could feel. Ralph sat on the side of the road, mourning his best friend, somehow feeling it was his fault.
Chick followed Blue to the hospital, hovered over her in the emergency room. He watched as her Uncle Milt showed up with her mom. He followed her to surgery where her jaw was wired together and her nose straightened. When she was put in a room, Uncle Milt got permission to do some Ojibway healing for her. In the midst of this, he looked around, confused, and then locked eyes with Chick who watched from the corner of the room.
“Get out of here. Haven’t you done enough damage? You are dead and it’s your own fault. Go over to wherever rich boys with poor driving skills go when they have gone to their ancestors.”
Chick felt his being disappearing but thought of the beauty within Blue and how he really would have liked to marry her if this hadn’t happened. That loving thought kept him on Earth plane but was not strong enough to allow him to stay near her as long as Uncle Milt was around.
A series of attempts at contact followed. Chick had more luck with Blue than with her uncle. He was able to follow her around the house when she returned from the hospital. He watched as she attempted to defend him to her parents, but they would have none of it. She postponed school until the winter semester when her face was healed except for one vertical scar across her forehead into her left eyebrow. It was considered cosmetic surgery, so their insurance didn’t cover it.
That is when Chick again tried contact. She felt him and grieved him, but the pain of the argument and his immaturity remained. She was curious as to what he was experiencing and what he wanted to say. She could only find out with the help of Milton Running Deer, who refused to have anything to do with it. So Chick watched and waited and wondered when he’d be able to apologize from the heart that has long stopped beating.
Ricky took her etheric hand out of Chick’s ghostly one. “So, how do your propose I make contact with Blue to be your interpreter?”
“She works at Minneapolis General Hospital in the children’s wing. She starts at 6:30 am and leaves at 2:30 pm most days. Is there any possibility you’d be able to go there when she’s having a lunch break?”
Teenaged-looking Nory squealed with delight. “Mommy, that’s right near Dr. Susan Fry’s office. Remember the map you got when we were discharged? The kids ward is down the hall from the doctors’ offices.”
“You’re right, sweet-heart. And that’s in six days, next Tuesday at 10 am. We can give it a shot. I got a pretty good picture of Blue when you showed me how she looks now, Chick. If Moon comes along too, we can figure out a way I can approach her. Does that work for you?”
Chick had started swopping around the room in his excitement. “Can I be there too? If she feels me there, she’s more likely to take you seriously.”
“I can ask Blue’s guide to put something in her path that you or I have written, Rick.” Moon contributed. “With a few guides helping stir the encounter, we can make the meeting work.”
Ricky chuckled. “I can see the spirit world code for staying out of physical reality business is still being ignored when it’s convenient to do so.”
Moon nodded. “It’s for a good cause. And besides, Chick has friends that might be able to walk Ralph for you. He knows all the teenage guys who are strong enough to handle a St. Bernard.”
“I
do, Ricky. There are two on this block alone that I think would do a good job. They are younger brothers of guys that used to be on the team with me. They both love Ralph and need the extra money.” Chick said from the corner of the room where he had started shrinking from sight. “Is it okay if I come and visit Ralph until we can talk to Blue? I promise not to disturb anything.”
“I don’t know too much about Rita, our housekeeper, so I’m not sure of her reaction to ghosts,” Ricky said.
“She was in and out all the time when I lived on York and was fascinated with what I did. I don’t think one tame teenaged ghost will scare her from the house,” Moon said.
“Bye for now. I think I’ll go over to the ward Blue works on and see if I can get a glimpse of when she’s scheduled. Here’s hoping she’s on next Tuesday,” Chip said as he disappeared.
“Well, that was interesting. Do you have any idea how long my body has been sleeping?” Ricky asked.
“About an hour, Mommy, and the baby is getting hungry,” Nory answered. “Tell Daddy about the dog and cat. I think he’ll be happy.”
Ricky blinked into awareness, still lying on the couch. David sat near her reading the care and feeding material for the dog. She could faintly hear Katera and Bonta talking in the kitchen and the smell of vegetable soup wafted throughout the first floor.
“Dear heart, I just had a very interesting experience,” Ricky informed her husband.
“Should have known you weren’t really sleeping. Out of body? Where this time?”
“Nory’s room. Come on up. She wants to nurse, and she wants you to see something.”
David followed her upstairs and peeked in the nursery where Ralph was still sleeping soundly with Pigeon curled up between his front paws. They could hear baby Nory, now back in her body, her little fingers scratching around in the porta crib looking for her next meal.
