Ghost in the Machine

by Patrick Carman

  It’s funny how you can look at something and ascribe no meaning to it forever and ever. Then one day you see it in a completely different way. That wooden crow has sat quietly turning for years while no one paid any attention.

  Almost no one.

  My dad was paying attention. So was Gladys. Old Joe Bush and Francis Palmer used to pay attention, before they died.

  I wonder when the crow is going to turn again … and when it does, who will do the turning?

  Monday, September 20, 10:10 A.M.

  Henry wandered up here with a cup of coffee. He didn’t exactly startle me when he came in, but Henry doesn’t really knock so much as barge. He was standing in the doorway when I realized I had a bunch of names from the secret room written on a piece of paper next to my laptop. Some of the names were scratched out because I’d discovered they were dead.

  I set my elbow on the list. Henry already had his fishing boots on, which my mom hates because they smell like a moldy loaf of bread. He’s not supposed to wear them in the house. It made me wonder if he’d worn them to bed.

  He started talking to me the second he entered the room.

  “I sleep like the dead up here in the mountains. You?”

  I nodded and Henry looked around the room. His eyes locked on the Dark Side of the Moon poster.

  “How come you moved that?”

  “Trying to change things up, I guess.”

  “I remember one of those songs. Used to get stuck in my head a lot.”

  And then he sang a verse off-key, which sort of freaked me out. It was the one about the rabbit running and digging holes and never getting to stop. I think Henry was half amazed he could remember the words.

  “I can hear that song in my head like it was yesterday,” he said. Then he was a little sad — an emotion I’d almost never seen him display.

  “Two more days and it’s back to the city for old Henry,” he went on. “Time to dig another hole, I guess, like the good song says.”

  “Why don’t you just quit and come live here with us?” I asked. “I think my dad would like that.”

  “For starters, your mother would kill me. Me and my boots and poker and dragging your dad out to the river. Two weeks a year is pushing things as it is.”

  “My mom loves you,” I said. And I meant it.

  “I’m easy to love for a couple of weeks. It gets a little harder after that.”

  He laughed this comment off, but I think deep down he was serious.

  I’d never really thought of it that way, but I could see he might have a point. The charm of an old bachelor like Henry probably wears thin after a while. I don’t mind him hogging all the time with Dad, but if he were here all the time? I’d mind. I like Henry’s loud voice and his energy and the way he can get everyone to play cards. But there’s a twitch that sets in after a couple of weeks when it starts to feel like he’s almost annoying.

  Henry’s smarter than he knows, to leave us wanting more and never overstay his welcome.

  I decided to ask him a question.

  “You ever talk to Gladys, the librarian?”

  Henry was leaning against the doorjamb. It appeared he was trying to remember the next verse to the song he’d sung.

  Finally, he refocused. “I haven’t said a word to Gladys Morgan in ten years. Me and her had a run-in. If I see her coming, I head for the other side of the street.”

  I thought this sounded like there might be a good story, so I prodded him.

  “What happened? What did she do?”

  “Let’s just say she’s not as patient as your mom. I stepped into her precious library with my wet boots on, just off the stream. Sloshed right up to her desk and asked if she had anything on barbecuing a pig.”

  “You’re kidding.” “Nope. She looked me up and down like I’d picked up her cat and thrown it in front of a moving truck. That woman can glare better than all the New York ladies that’ve turned me down for a date. So she glared, then — get this — she got out of her chair, came around the desk, and kicked me.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Not only that, but she told me I better take my stupid pig and my wet boots and go outside and never come back. I told her I didn’t exactly have the pig with me, it was just something I was thinking about. That didn’t go over too well.”

  The scary thing was, I can totally picture all this happening. “What’d she say when you told her you didn’t have the pig?” I asked.

  “She said if it was between me and a chicken and she could only save one of us, she’d definitely save the chicken.”

  Henry laughed his big laugh again, and I laughed, too.

  That Gladys Morgan, what a kook.

  I was feeling bold, so I kept going.

  “You ever see Dr. Watts?” I asked.

  “He’s dead,” said Henry.

  “No, he’s not. Mom said so.”

  Henry scratched his stubbly face.

  “I thought he was dead. I haven’t seen him in forever. You sure he’s alive?”

  “That’s what Mom said.”

  Henry seemed a little perplexed.

  “Well, if she says so.”

  Henry looked at the Pink Floyd poster again, and I was sure he’d see it was crooked and want to move it.

  “You see that story in the paper about the dredge?” he said.

  Henry had been sensitive to my accident there and didn’t mention it much.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’re burning it down.”

  “It’s a shame I’m leaving so soon. Hate to miss the biggest bonfire in three counties. But you know how some people feel about me around here. Probably best if I’m gone when the old relic finally gets what’s coming to it.”

  I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Henry used to work for New York Gold and Silver. He’d come out when the dredge was running, way back in the day, to keep an eye on #42. He hated what the dredge did to the land, but he was young and ambitious back then. He told me as much. He wanted a big career at a big company in a big city, just like a lot of people.

  Skeleton Creek stayed in his bones long after New York Gold and Silver went bankrupt. Some say Henry keeps spending all his vacation time here because he feels bad about working for a company that almost destroyed the town. I think he comes here because his best friend is here — my dad — and because he loves the mountains.

  I felt a little sorry for Henry when he peeled himself from my room and went downstairs. I heard the screen door flap against the wall and knew he’d gone to the creek.

  So now I’m alone in the house again, and I can’t help thinking about what it feels like to live in Skeleton Creek. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it for a long time. No one new ever moves here. It’s the same old people keeping mostly to themselves. There’s a kind of Gothic loneliness about every thing.

  You know what it feels like?

  It feels like the dredge dug the heart out of my town and chucked it into the woods. All that’s left are the ghosts walking around.

  Monday, September 20, 4:10 P.M.

  Well, my parents can’t complain about me sitting in my room all day. Henry came back and talked me into going down to the creek with my fly rod. I haven’t been up to fishing since before the accident and I probably had no business standing anywhere near fast-moving water with a shattered leg barely out of a full leg cast.

  Henry did most of the casting, catching, hooting, and hollering. I mostly sat in the shade and watched him work his way up and down the best stretches of Skeleton Creek, hooking fish after fish. I have to give him credit: He’d learned the water and knew what to throw. I’ve been fishing nothing but Skeleton Creek all summer for years and I’ve never caught as many big fish as I saw Henry catch today. The guy is a machine.

  Being out near the water today made me value it more than ever. The creek is lined with these great big cottonwood trees that fill the air with what looks like snow every time the wind blows. And there are groves of aspen — thin tree
s with white bark and gold leaves — huddled close along the banks of some of the best water. Those aspen groves will take your breath away. And there’s one other thing, a part of this place that makes it unlike any other. All those big piles of rock and earth the dredge dug up formed an endless line of rolling hills along the banks of the creek. Over the years the surface filled with grass and trees and flowering plants. The creek is like a secret paradise no one has discovered way up here, tucked away in the woods next to a ramshackle town the size of a postage stamp. There are birds every where, little creatures scampering and chirping over the hills, and larger animals rustling in hidden places nearby.

  All these sights and sounds today made me realize how much I missed visiting the creek. It gave me a view of things I hadn’t thought of before. I’d only ever hated the dredge like everyone else. But right here, right under my nose, is this spectacular thing the dredge left behind. It makes me wonder if this is a principle that can be counted on: Good things can be created from bad.

  I can’t stop thinking about how this old town of mine just needs a lucky break to start heading in the right direction again.

  Monday, September 20, 7:25 P.M.

  Sometimes, after one of Henry’s barbecues or a morning at the café eating chicken-fried steak and eggs, my mom decides the McCrays need to eat a healthy dinner. This is a terrible idea and always puts my dad in a bad mood.

  “Just eat. It’s not going to kill any of you.” These were my mom’s words as my dad, Henry, and I sat staring at the food she’d placed before us.

  “What is it?” Henry was brave enough to ask. He was about half serious and half honestly curious as he stared at the three bowls clustered together in the middle of the table.

  “That right there is rice,” I said, pointing to the round bowl in the middle.

  “It’s brown rice,” my mom corrected, staring at Henry. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never seen rice before?”

  Henry had seen rice. It was the main dish he was worried about.

  “What about that stuff?” he asked.

  He pointed to a bowl filled with something that looked like green logs floating in a purple lake.

  “You really want to know?” asked my mom. “Because you’re eating it whether I tell you or not.”

  Henry pondered his options, swallowed hard, and nodded. “Tell me.”

  My mom scooped up a big spoonful of brown rice and slapped it onto Henry’s plate, then she ladled a glob of purple lake water and green sticks over the top.

  “Low-fat yogurt with whole beets, pulverized in a blender and poured over a can of green beans. Eat up.”

  Henry looked like he was about to barf.

  The last item was a flat pan of green Jell-O with sad little mandarin oranges trapped all through the middle. My dad put about half the pan of Jell-O on his plate so there was no room for anything else, and then he sat there, slurping miserably with a spoon.

  “Stop that,” my mom said. She can’t stand it when people slurp their Jell-O.

  The best part was when Mom took a bite of this crazy concoction and chewed and chewed but couldn’t swallow without washing it down with a Diet Coke. She tried really hard to keep a straight face, but once Henry took a bite himself, just to be a good sport, his eyes started bulging and Mom came completely unglued.

  We all had a pretty good laugh and then she let Henry and my dad go to the kitchen and make pancakes for dinner.

  We sat there — me and my mom — eating Jell-O without slurping.

  “You doing okay?” she asked. “Yeah. It was nice going to the creek today. I haven’t done that for a while.”

  “I’m glad you went outside. The fresh air is good for you.”

  I nodded and took another bite of green Jell-O.

  “I checked your computer last night,” she said. “It looked clean — a little too clean, if you get my drift.”

  Uh-oh. Maybe my mom knows more about computers than I thought. Was I erasing everything? Was I making it look too perfect?

  I pretty much expected what came next. “Have you been talking to Sarah?” The big question I was asked in one form or another every day. It should have gotten easier to lie, but the guilt was starting to pile up, so it only got harder.

  “I’m not talking to anyone. I just like my computer clean. It runs faster that way.”

  Mom looked at me sideways.

  “Now we’re talking!” Henry yelled. He was balancing some king-size pancakes on a spatula in one hand and carrying a handful of paper plates in the other. My mom kept looking at me, but Henry had saved me from any more cross-examination at the dinner table. She left me alone after that, but I had the feeling she didn’t trust me. I couldn’t blame her, and was worried it would mean she’d be watching even closer than before. With school starting in only a week, her radar was dialed in and searching for clues.

  In another half hour, it’ll be dark. I can’t get out of here. If I go for a walk alone, they’ll assume I’m trying to see Sarah.

  I haven’t heard from her all day.

  I bet she’s sent me something.

  The blue rock in the morning — that’s the soonest I can try to contact her.

  Tuesday, September 21, 8:56 A.M.

  As soon as my parents left for work, I crept out the screen door and down the front porch. (Henry snored in the guest room, so getting by him wasn’t a problem.) I walked through town, down the main artery of Main Street, passing the twenty side streets that shoot off like veins. It still amazes me that this is our whole town. My house more or less on one end, and Sarah’s on the other end, down a street that doesn’t look a whole lot different from mine.

  I remember when we were seven or eight years old and we spent an entire day trying to figure out the exact halfway point between our houses. We did it because neither of us liked to walk any farther than we had to, and we thought it was only fair to split the distance as precisely as possible. After hours of pacing and figuring and drawing a map of the town, we came to the conclusion that the old station house for the train conductor was exactly halfway between our houses. We would sometimes call each other on the phone and then race there. She won every single time. After a while I figured out that she’d tricked me by putting the middle on her side of Main Street, not mine, thereby making it possible for her to use a shortcut we hadn’t used when calculating the distance.

  I think girls are much craftier than boys when they’re little.

  In any case, by the time I figured out the whole distance problem, it was too late. We’d decided we needed a marker at our spot.

  First we found the rock. It took both of us to move it under the station house and center it just right.

  “Let’s paint it,” said Sarah. “Why?” I said. “Because I want to paint it. Don’t you want to paint it?”

  “Sure. Let’s paint the rock. Why not?” This very short conversation says a lot about my relationship with Sarah. She wants to do something, I don’t necessarily care one way or the other, and so we do it. Eight years later, I have come to discover this is no way to lead a life.

  It can get you into a lot of trouble.

  It might even get you killed.

  It was more out of opportunity than anything else that the rock became blue. It is the color of Sarah’s house because she stole an old can of paint from her garage. We didn’t have a brush, so she just poured the paint over the top like hot fudge on ice cream.

  And you know what’s funny about this? The paint can is still under there, too.

  We didn’t know what else to do with it. What if we tossed it in a ditch and someone found it? It was Sarah’s House Blue, and someone would tell.

  The blue rock became the place we met, where we put secret notes and treasures we’d found and candy we wanted to share.

  We were secretive like everyone else in town, even back then. We didn’t want anyone hearing us talk about the blue rock. It was ours. And it wasn’t easy to find.

  The train st
ill comes through town in the early morning, but it never stops here anymore. It used to, a long time ago, when the dredge was pounding away 24/7, digging up something worth stopping for. But the old station house was already abandoned when we were kids, so we set about exploring it. It wasn’t too intimidating, only about the size of a backyard storage shed on the edge of the tracks. It was locked up tight, but the cool thing was you could climb underneath it. The station house was up off the ground for some reason — I think so it was the same height as the train conductor when he came by — and the cheapest way to accomplish the extra height was to put this little shack on a bunch of cinder blocks. Weeds had grown up all around the edges, sort of like a curtain you could pull back. It was cold gravel underneath, and when we crawled inside, it crunched under our knees.

  As we grew older, there wasn’t much point in meeting at the blue rock or leaving secret notes there. I hadn’t been back there in years. My leg was already tired and sore from the long walk, and the space under the station house seemed a lot smaller than when I was seven. I’d be lucky if I fit at all.

  Did I mention that I don’t like confined spaces?

  I squeezed in on my back and slid under, through the weeds, until I hit my head on the blue rock.

  It was a big rock, and I hit it hard enough that I yelled.

  Once I recovered, I craned my neck around and saw a piece of paper taped to the rock. I took it, carefully removed the tape, and taped my own note to the slick, blue surface.

  The note I had written was short.

  I read Sarah’s note on the walk home. It was easy, since it was so short. It wasn’t even a letter at all. I wish she’d write me a letter, but Sarah doesn’t write if she can say it in a video.

  Technically that’s not even a note; it’s just a handoff of some vital information.

  No punctuation, unless you count dashes and slashes.

  And who’s Carl Kolchak?