American Ghost

by Paul Guernsey

  I went over to the woman and said, “My mother named me Danny. But Thumb is what I go by.”

  “I’m Alice Poe-York,” she told me, without smiling. “I’m from Cairo, not far from here.”

  “I’ve been to Cairo,” I said. In fact, one of Chef’s and my best distributors lived in that town. Alice pronounced it “Kay-ro,” as did all the town’s natives.

  “Born there. Grew up there. Spent all of my life there.”

  “I always enjoyed it. In Cairo.”

  “I was the head librarian in town for twenty-six years. My husband and I raised two girls in town. Now both of them have their own children, and one of them even lives in Cairo, right on the same road we do. She and her two little boys, Zack and Carl.”

  “Oh, nice,” I said. “Have you been able to see them at all since you, uh, passed?” From the way Virgil and Gib looked at me then, I knew that this was the worst question I could have asked. Alice Poe-York’s eyes narrowed to slits and her lower lip began to quiver.

  “No!” she said. “I haven’t! I can’t reach them. And it just is not fair.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” I agreed. “A lot of this afterlife stuff. And you’re never quite sure who or what to be angry at, or whether you even have a right to be angry in the first place.”

  “Oh, I have a right to be angry. And I know who to be angry at, too.” As she said this, she was staring at the two chess players as if they were the ones at fault.

  Gib and Virgil ignored her; they focused on their cocktail napkin, and after a moment Virgil said, “I suppose I’ll have to take the knight.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Gib responded.

  Alice kept glaring at them until at last she blurted, “The fat one there told me I shouldn’t even try to visit them. That I should just give up on seeing my grandsons and my daughter and my husband ever again. Can you imagine?”

  Gib looked up then, smiled at her, and in as mild a voice as he could manage he said, “It was advice, Alice. You’re free to take it or leave it. In any case, I meant no harm or disrespect by it.”

  Alice aimed a finger at Virgil. “And the black man there is an egomaniac. He thinks my family and I are nothing but a dream he’s having.”

  Virgil looked at Gib. “Did she just refer to me as ‘the black man?’”

  “Yes she did,” Gib confirmed.

  “Why, what did I say that was wrong?” Alice asked in a tone of offended astonishment. “Isn’t that what you people call yourselves?”

  Virgil met my gaze and gave me a rueful smile. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I agree with Thumb now—and with Sartre, too, come to think of it: We are in hell.”

  Gib said, “Alice is just upset. She’s lost a great deal—as we all have, of course—and she hasn’t yet gotten used to the afterlife. We need to be compassionate.”

  “Oh, be quiet, Fat Man!” Alice said. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know that God loves you, Alice,” answered Gib. Then he returned his attention to his cocktail-napkin chessboard.

  “That’s a lie too!” said Alice. “I was a regular church-goer, and I used to think that way myself. But all I need to do is look around me here to know it isn’t true.”

  Gib, still focusing on his game, said, “Maybe you need to look with a different set of eyes.”

  “Maybe you need to shut up, as I asked you to do.”

  “I’m shutting it,” Gib said. Still without looking up, he lifted his holographic hand to draw an imaginary zipper across his non-existent mouth. He then mimed the turning of a lock, and the tossing away of an invisible key. He and Virgil laughed.

  To my horror, Alice returned her attention to me. She was quivering her lip again. “I’m only fifty-five years old,” she said.

  “That is kind of young,” I agreed. “But look at me; I’m only twenty-two. I won’t be twenty-three until August, whenever that is.”

  “But I didn’t deserve to die,” she protested. “I had cancer. I was even in remission at one point. I fought as hard as I could; I did everything they told me to do; it just wasn’t fair!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t think any of us deserved to die. It’s just what happens, sooner or later. And, the professor there was only sixty.”

  “I was fifty-nine,” Virgil said.

  “Your obituary said sixty, Virgil.”

  “Fifty-nine,” he insisted. “There was no obituary, and, in any case, I’m reasonably certain I can remember how old I am.”

  Alice said, “No matter how old he was, he died doing something stupid—driving like a bat out of hell on an icy, winding road.”

  Virgil and Gib looked at one another. Virgil said, “The black man got his just deserts.” They laughed again.

  “What a couple of hyenas!” Alice said. She looked at me and added, “And you, for your part—you did something stupid, too.”

  “I sure did,” I agreed. “A bunch of things, each one stupider than the one that came before. In fact, the word stupid falls way short in most cases. But still I didn’t deserve to die.” Then I said to Virgil and Gib, “I think you two have been talking about me behind my back.”

  “We’re sorry, Thumb,” said Gib. “We had no idea what it would lead to.” At this, there was a fresh outburst of laughter from them.

  Alice was relentless. She told me, “And I can tell, just from looking at you, the kind of life you must have led. For instance, how many trusting young women did you bamboozle, just to get your way?”

  “Checkmate!” Gib yelled. “Time to tell us about those pecker tracks, Thumb.”

  “At last,” I told him. As I was rising to go over to them, I said to Alice, “The answer is, all of them. In different ways, I bamboozled every single one of them. And I feel terrible about it.”

  *

  I didn’t need to go into a ton of detail about my house burning down: Virgil had been there, had seen for himself, and had reported back to Gib. He told me, “That seems to be what happens to abandoned buildings these days. Kids and social misfits have nothing better to do. But I wasn’t worried about you, Thumb; I knew it was about time for you to be out traveling, and that we would see you soon enough.”

  “And here you are,” Gib said, with unmistakable fondness in his voice. It occurred to me then that they had become like a couple of uncles to me—and this was something I valued a lot, since I’d had no dependable men around me when I was growing up. I was the product of women who were suspicious of, and even feared, what I would become.

  Nor, in my story of the fire’s aftermath, did I tell them how helpless and depressed I had felt. Instead, I skipped ahead to the visit by Cricket, Chef, and Tigre, and I told how they had left their flowers and then moved on to avoid being spotted by a Blood Eagle riding by. I also told them about every one of the graveyards and deathbeds and other places I had visited. Once, Gib interrupted me to say, “She’s gone, thank God.” I saw then that Alice, apparently tired of being ignored, had slipped out of the church without saying goodbye.

  “She’ll be back,” said Virgil. “It’s too bad; when I first met her, she seemed like she’d be a good addition to our group. She was smart and well read. But a bitter ghost is bad company.”

  Gib asked him, “So, if this is all your dream, why did you dream Alice up in the first place?”

  “I suppose you always have control of your dreams?”

  “Point there, professor,” said Gib after thinking about it for a moment. “Except, I don’t dream anymore; I’m a spirit. I guess I sort of miss it, too.” Then he looked at me. “Sorry, Thumb. I just needed to point that out to the prof. So you were saying, the kid was scooping up moths and making them fly…. ”

  I wrapped it all up by telling them about finding Dirt with the dirty needle in his arm, dying silently in an attic. When I was finished, Gib made a whistling sound. Unexpectedly he said, “The guy who they got to shoot you. It was your friend, Chef, the meth cook.”

  “You think
Chef shot me?”

  “He had more reason than anybody. You stole his woman; he wanted her back. Not only did he love her, but because he was nothing but white trash and her parents were well off, she was his golden ticket to a life that didn’t have jail or an early death in its future.”

  “Gib, I’m surprised at you. I thought you disapproved of my dwelling much on the subject of who my killer was. You told me to forgive and let it go.”

  “But you’re dwelling on it anyway,” Gib pointed out. “So I might as well help you with it. Plus, Virgil keeps telling me you’re writing a book about it all, and that’s got my interest going. I’ve always wanted to write a murder mystery myself.”

  “Chef, the meth cook!” Virgil said suddenly, with unusual enthusiasm. “It’s Hamlet, don’t you see? With Thumb as the ghost! Could it fall together more perfectly?”

  I didn’t mind being cast as the ghost in Hamlet—I was a ghost, after all—but I didn’t like the idea of my kid as a madman or madwoman, wasting his or her precious life on avenging my stupid death, so I decided to ignore him. I said to Gib, “The thing about Chef is that of the three of them, he’s the one I would say who doesn’t have it in him to kill anybody.”

  “I’ve been through a war,” said Gib. “We all have it in us. We just need the reason.”

  “I’m still leaning toward Dirt,” I said. “It would be like him to shoot somebody from behind. He sure wouldn’t have wanted to look into my eyes while he did it. But then there’s the ITCOB patch I saw on Mantis’s cut. He had a thing for Cricket, too, you know; for a while, it seemed like they were going to get together, after I was out of the picture. And speaking of golden tickets, Mantis really wanted a ticket back into a one-percenter club. Now he’s there.”

  Gib looked at Virgil. “So, Professor, who do you think killed Cock Robin? If you really like the meth cook for this murder, that makes two of us.”

  “It’s not that I like him—or anyone, for that matter,” said Virgil, who now seemed annoyed. “I really am not at all interested in the whole whodunit angle; I was just pointing out a plot similarity. If you must have my opinion, it could still be that the killer was none of the three; my soundest idea is that the evil biker fellow said what he did to Thumb because he’s a sick person and because he wanted to add another dollop of anguish to Thumb’s final moments. But it hardly matters now; knowing won’t bring Thumb back.” Virgil added, almost to himself, “And, what am I even talking about anyway? It’s not like Thumb is anywhere to come back from to begin with. As for the book he’s writing, this is all a cliché, you know. The story of the ghost seeking its own killer.”

  “Is it a cliché?” I was both curious and worried. “Did you read a lot of mysteries when you were alive? Were they part of your curriculum?”

  “Certainly not,” Virgil answered in an offended tone. “But I have a strong sense of what’s out there in the world of literature. And your idea has been done before.”

  Gib said, “I thought everything had been done before.”

  “You’re right about that,” Virgil told him. “But, some done more than others—with some done better, some done worse, some done to death. All there really is now in literature is borrowing and rearranging. That’s why I myself finally gave up on my own youthful ambition of writing fiction.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m not really writing a book. That’s just your fantasy, Virgil. For one thing, I’ve got no way of writing one even if I wanted to. But just like you, I’m kind of a snob, so even if I did write a novel, it wouldn’t be a mystery.”

  After sitting silently for a few moments, Gib said, “You guys are a couple of snobs. What the hell is wrong with a good mystery?”

  *

  The next time I returned to the church, Alice seemed to have been waiting for me. While I was talking to Virgil and Gib she interrupted us and said, “I’ve decided you’re not such a bad young man. Not like these two, anyway. If you would like, I’ll show you the few paths I’ve found for moving about this part of our state.”

  Gib looked up from the chess napkin and said, “I think that’s her way of asking you on a date.”

  “Be quiet, you big lump!” Gib and Virgil snickered like a couple of boys.

  “Do you know how to get across the river?” I asked. “I mean the above-ground one?”

  “No,” she said. “And no interest in doing so. I go back and forth to Cairo; that’s about all. But, once in Cairo, I can travel widely. There’s only one small corner of town I’ve been unable to reach.”

  I said, “Well, it’s possible that route might be useful to me some day. Besides, I’m dead; what else have I got to do? Let’s go.” We set out on our midsummer, midday hike to Cairo. For some reason, as we traveled I suddenly made up my mind to confide in her my story about Cricket and the son or daughter I likely would never see. After I’d talked she seemed to further soften her attitude toward me, and she told me more about her own family. They all did sound like awesome people; if I’d known them, I no doubt would have resented being torn from them myself.

  She also told me that she did not care at all for Professor Shallow, who she complained “thought a great deal of himself.” But she especially hated Gib because of the fact that he was constantly “preaching his religion” at her. “I’m done with all that nonsense,” she said. “He would be too, if only he’d quit being such a Pollyanna and take off those rose-colored glasses.”

  “Could it be that all of this ghost stuff is a test for us?” I asked.

  “Life was the test.” Alice said bitterly. “Cancer was the test. I passed them both. Now give me my damn diploma already!”

  We traveled through woods, across fields and swamps, and along a weed-choked stretch of abandoned railroad track, moving mostly at ground level, but sometimes also levitating above the tops of the trees. Before long we ended up in the small but sprawling town of Cairo. Alice pointed out the white-clapboarded library where she had worked, as well as the hospice only a short distance from the library where she had ended her days. Her entryway to and from the underground river lay just inside the after-hours mail slot at the front of the brick post office building, which stood about halfway between the library and the hospice. As she was leading me past the little supermarket where in life she’d done most of her shopping, I asked, “Don’t you ever see your family here? Or walking around town? It seems like all you’d have to do is stake one of these places out. Somebody would have to come by, sooner or later.”

  “I’m not stupid!” Alice replied. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. But none of them is ever here when I am, and vice-versa. It’s like an infernal conspiracy.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow, indeed,” she agreed. “And yet, the Fat Man thinks we’re in paradise. Here, come with me; I want to show you something.”

  Alice lifted off her feet and started to fly, and I followed her. She finally settled to the ground at the top of a ridge where a narrow road plunged into a wooded valley. “We can’t go any farther than this—at least, I haven’t been able to find a way to do so. But, you can just make out the top of the chimney from here. Do you see it? You have to use your special vision to look through the trees, but when you do, you’ll notice the red chimney poking up from behind a little hill.”

  Just then a black pickup truck whooshed right through us going downhill at about fifty miles an hour. When we saw the backs of the people’s heads through the rear windshield I asked, “Do you know those dudes? They could be neighbors of yours.”

  “I don’t know; I might. But they’re not my family, so what does it matter? Anyway, the chimney. Have you spotted it?”

  “Yes, I see it. It looks like a nice one.”

  She lifted her hand and pointed. “Well, that’s my daughter’s house.” Her hand rolled forward and she added, “Two houses north of it is my house—mine and my husband’s.”

  “Oh,” I replied, because I could think of nothing else to say.

 
“Down there, for me, is the Promised Land,” said Alice Poe-York. “I don’t need anything else. I don’t want anything else. No heaven in the sky will ever compare to it.”

  *

  When I next went to the church, it was two days after my trip to Cairo with Alice. A ghost—a thin chick with plastic-framed glasses and a long, horse-like face—was standing by the double doors as I drifted through them. When I said hi and told her my name she only nodded and gave me a weird smirk. I went over to the pew where Virgil and Gib were sitting, thinking they might introduce us. But Virgil only looked up and said, “Thumb! How’s the novel coming?” Gib watched me, grinning, to see what I would say.

  “I think I’ve told you I’m not writing a novel.”

  Virgil shrugged. “If I believed you, I would say good for you. As an art form, it’s moribund anyway; why waste your time, even if you have eternity?”

  I tilted my head toward the front doors. “Who’s the new dude?”

  Gib answered, “Take another gander at ‘the new dude,’ Thumb.” I looked, and after a moment, I realized it was Alice. She’d made herself about thirty years younger.

  “Alice!” I said. “You look … good.”

  “Thank you, Thumb,” she said, not bothering to conceal the skepticism in her voice.

  “It’ll take some getting used to, though.”

  “That’s not my problem,” she replied.

  After that, Alice—her behavior along with her appearance—became erratic. The next time I saw her, she’d transformed into someone completely different—a slightly plump but still paralyzingly beautiful and somehow familiar young woman who Virgil and Gib reminded me was the actress, Marilyn Monroe. She was wearing a dress, and as she walked around the church, she kept making the skirt flutter skyward as if a strong breeze were coming up from beneath her. Virgil and Gib both thought this was hilarious—Virgil, especially, kept laughing about it—but the disguised Alice did not crack a smile.

  The following day, there was another “new” ghost—a man in a wide-lapelled, long-out-of-fashion business suit who somehow also looked familiar.