Slow Dance in Purgatory

by Amy Harmon

  Chief Bailey was also going to demand that Mayor Carlton set up some reward money in an account at the local bank. It might encourage someone who might have some information to come forward. Dolly Kinross sure didn’t have a damned dime, and Mayor Carlton had plenty. He owed the woman that much; Chief Bailey would make sure he paid, too. It was his own way of doing something, because he had done precious little to solve the missing persons case. It wasn’t for lack of trying. There just wasn’t much to go on.

  They had turned the school inside out the night of the tragedy. They had turned the town upside down in the days that followed. Johnny Kinross had just vanished. The only clue they had had was the destruction in the men's locker room a day or so after the tragedy. The mirrors had all been broken. They hadn't been broken when he and his deputies had searched the school the night Billy Kinross died. They had found the window that had been shot out, just like the Carlton kid said, and Billy Kinross’s glasses. But the destruction to the mirrors had to have happened after. They wouldn’t have known about the mirrors at all, but the new janitor had reported it. He had been hired several months before the tragedy and had been asked to clean up the construction dust and debris and ready the school for its first day.

  “Parley? What was that janitor’s name again?” Chief called out into the front office area where his secretary, Sharon, and Parley were chatting over cups of coffee.

  “Huh, Chief?” Parley shot his head inside Chief Bailey’s office. “Oh, um, the colored boy?”

  Chief Bailey didn’t much like the term colored, but he didn’t correct Parley, who truly meant no harm and didn’t seem to know any better.

  “His name is Gus...Jackson? No, Johnson…..Jasper! Gus Jasper. Why?"

  “I want to talk to him again. Can you drive over to the school and see if he’s there – see maybe if I can have a word with him when he gets done with his shift?”

  “Sure thing, Chief.”

  Gus Jasper was visibly nervous when he arrived at the police station at about 5:30 that afternoon. He held his cap in his hands and twisted it uncomfortably, but his eyes held Chief Bailey’s and his gaze was direct. He was a good looking black man in his early twenties, tall and well built, with limbs suited more to the basketball court than the janitor’s closet. Chief Bailey had noticed that he limped a little when he walked, but decided not to ask any personal questions. Gus had stayed in the background when the chief and a couple of deputies had gone to check out the broken mirrors he had reported. He probably thought he was in trouble now, and Chief Bailey rushed to put him at ease.

  “Thank you for coming by, Mr. Jasper. I just wanted to follow up with you to check if you’d seen anything else at the school that might have struck you as out of the ordinary.” Chief Bailey raised his eyebrows hopefully at the uncomfortable young man.

  “Well…. “ Gus Jasper had a soft voice with more than a hint of Alabama in its cadence. “I don’t know if I’ve been there long enough to know what ordinary is…but…“ He stopped and looked down at his hands.

  “But what?” Chief Bailey prodded.

  “Well, there are times when I feel like maybe someone’s been in the school. A few times I’ll go into a room I’ve just cleaned, and I’ll find a book on a desk that wasn’t there before or something that has been moved. Yesterday, I stocked all the classrooms with erasers and chalk, getting ready for Monday, ya know? Today every chalkboard had the name Johnny Kinross written on it.”

  Chief Bailey felt a damp chill skitter down his neck and across his back.

  “I’m sure it’s just kids messin’ with me, “ Gus continued, “but I don’t know how kids could get in. The school has been re-keyed since the boy died. I don’t have keys. Mr. Marshall, the principal, he lets me in every day and locks up behind me.”

  “Did you show Mr. Marshall the chalkboards?” Chief Bailey questioned.

  “I did.” Gus paused and seemed reluctant to continue. “I think Mr. Marshall thought I did it. He wasn’t very happy. He told me if it happened again, I would be fired.”

  Chief Bailey liked Principal Marshall even less than he had about ten seconds ago, which was not at all. Principal Marshall was a skinny, small-minded, bully. How he had risen through the ranks of educators to become the principal was beyond comprehension. Kids in Honeyville deserved better.

  “I see.” Chief Bailey sighed and leaned forward in his rickety desk chair. “From now on, when you see something that doesn’t feel right or find something that might help us find Johnny Kinross, would you just come to me? It doesn’t matter how small. If Principal Marshall has a problem with that, you just refer him to me, all right? Principal Marshall and I go way back.” Way back to when Mr. Marshall was a squeaky new math teacher and Clark Bailey was a smart alecky senior making his life miserable. Chief Bailey smirked at the memory.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll do that.” Gus sat quietly for a minute, waiting for further questions. When none were forthcoming, he arose and turned to leave.

  “Sir?” Gus said softly.

  “Yeah, Mr. Jasper?”

  “What do you think happened to that boy?”

  “Hell if I know, Mr. Jasper. Hell if I know.”

  4

  “CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN?”

  The Ames Brothers - 1950

  November, 2010

  A week passed with nary a whiff of anything remotely ghostie. Shad had a bad cold and hadn't been to work for several days. It had been a little lonely....and very peaceful without him around. Maggie and Gus went about their nightly duties – Gus happily, Maggie decidedly less so, but trying bravely to enjoy emptying trashes and scraping gum from underneath desks. Every once in a while Gus would play some oldies over the sound system, and Maggie would boogie her way through her chores a little more cheerfully. That night she had been serenaded by some truly ancient doo-wop, and a girl really couldn’t swing by herself. It was time to make some suggestions to the D.J.

  “So, Gus?” Maggie smiled up at the old janitor as they closed and locked the supply closet for the night. “I really like your song choices, but I was thinking I need to bring you into the 21st century. I mean, you have great taste and all, but I wouldn’t mind some Rhianna or Maroon 5 sometimes.”

  “Now, how do you know what my song choices are, Miss Margaret?” Gus laughed a little. “Miss Rhianna is one of my favorites. You be thinkin’ I don’t know modern music?” Gus did a quick shimmy and shake and a shuffle ball change. Not exactly Usher but pretty darn good for an old guy.

  “I know your song choices because 'you be' playin’ stuff that Elvis could dance to!” Maggie did her own swivel hips impression and “thank you very much” lip curl.

  “What you talkin’ about, Miss Margaret? “ Gus tilted his head at Maggie and furrowed his brow in question. “I haven’t been playin’ any music. Although I definitely could! Bet you don’t know any old-school moves.” Gus crossed one leg over the other and did a little spin. The guy had to be over seventy. Maggie laughed at his agility.

  “I think you stole that from the Temptations, Gus. And yes, I can do old school.” Maggie started doing the Charleston, and Gus laughed right out loud and joined her. After a few minutes, they were both giggling and a little breathless.

  Maggie elbowed the old man as they neared the side entrance where Gus’s rusty truck and Maggie’s bike was parked. “And what do you mean you haven’t been playing music? The night I saw the intruder the music got turned on so loud it almost blasted me down the stairs.”

  Gus stopped walking and was suddenly very still, staring down at her. The laughter had fled from his lined face.

  “You’re not playin’ are you, Miss Margaret?“ It wasn’t really a question, but a realization. “How often are you hearing music?”

  Maggie felt a little shiver in her stomach as she gazed back at Gus’s suddenly serious face.

  “Um. Well, I’ve been hearing it off and on since I started working here. It’s always when I’m alone, working separately from you. A
nd it’s always old stuff.” Maggie smiled again, hoping to alleviate the tension that had descended upon them. Gus didn’t smile back.

  “I thought you turned it on to keep me company,” Maggie finished in a small voice.

  Gus shook his head slowly. “Oh, Miss Margaret. I think maybe you’ve met Johnny.”

  ***

  Gus wouldn’t say anymore as he lifted Maggie’s bike into the back of his truck, and they bounced their way to Aunt Irene’s. When she pressed him to tell her who Johnny was, he simply shook his head and told her that he and Aunt Irene would explain over dinner. Gus and Shad had dinner with them at least twice during the week and always on Sundays. Maggie was always glad to have them, but she didn't want to wait to hear the explanation about this “Johnny.” And what did Irene have to do with any of this? Gus deposited her in front of her house and said he'd be back with Shad in an hour. He drove off without further comment.

  It wasn’t until they had pushed their chairs back from the table and sighed in contentment that Gus peered at Irene and asked her if she remembered Johnny Kinross.

  “Oh my! It’s been decades since I heard that name,” Irene fluttered and patted her thin chest. “Johnny Kinross!” She sighed a little and shook her head. “He was something else. So handsome and just a little bit bad! He could make a girl blush just by looking at her. I think he kind of liked me. But he sure didn’t like Roger. Not that I blame him. I didn’t like Roger.” Aunt Irene waved a graceful hand at the mention of her dearly departed husband.

  “I’m sure he did like you. You were the most beautiful girl in town,” Gus flirted sincerely. “And the sweetest.”

  Aunt Irene and Gus smiled at each other fondly.

  Maggie cleared her throat loudly. “Um, back to Johnny Kinross, please.”

  “Johnny Kinross disappeared more than fifty years ago, and nobody has seen him since,” Aunt Irene declared matter-of-factly. "The whole town was in quite the uproar. The whole thing was such a tragedy. I wonder what ever happened to him." Irene shook her head sadly.

  “I’ve seen him,” Gus said quietly. Aunt Irene gasped, and her teacup clattered noisily on its saucer as she attempted to put it down.

  “I’ve seen him off and on for fifty years. It’s been a while since I saw him last, but I have no doubt that it was Johnny Kinross.”

  “Gus! You've seen Johnny Kinross?! Where?” Aunt Irene blurted out loudly, and then put her hand over her mouth as if she’d burped. “Pardon me, Gus. That was rude.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes affectionately. Aunt Irene wouldn’t know rude if it bit her on the butt. She was such a little lady, she even apologized for speaking too loudly.

  “At the school. Always at the school. I saw him the first time a few weeks after he came up missing. I thought he’d been hiding out there. He looked right at me, and he knew that I saw him. I could see that he was scared, and I told him not to be.” Gus shook his head, remembering. “I ran all the way to the police station, and I told Chief Bailey – you remember Chief Bailey don’t you Miss Honeycutt?” Gus always called Irene by her maiden name of Honeycutt instead of her married name of Carlton, and he rarely addressed her by her given name.

  “I told the chief I’d seen Johnny at the school, and he and his department searched the school from top to bottom. There was no sign of him. They put out a bulletin on him and had posters up in different counties. Never even got a bite, even after they offered a reward,” Gus sighed. “I shoulda never said anything.”

  “Why?” Maggie queried, puzzled.

  “’Cause his poor mother got her hopes up again. She suffered, wondering where her boy was and why he didn’t come home.”

  “Why didn’t he go home?” Maggie wasn’t following the story very well. “Why wouldn’t he at least contact her?”

  “He couldn’t.” Gus met her gaze frankly. “He’s dead.”

  “You mean you saw his GHOST?” Aunt Irene squeaked and then covered her mouth once more.

  Shad yelled, "No way, Pop! You mean I’ve been cleanin' a school that's haunted by a ghost?" Shad danced in his seat like he had ants in his pants. "That is freakin' awesome!"

  “I guess that’s what I mean – yep,” Gus declared. “I didn’t realize it at first. He looked like any other kid that got caught being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. I didn’t see him for a long time after that.”

  “So what made you think he was a ghost?” Maggie interrupted.

  “The next time I saw him it was five years later, and he hadn’t aged at all. Then a few years passed, and I saw him again. He looked exactly the same, same blue jeans and white shirt, same everything right down to the 50s hair do with the duck butt in the back. Pardon the language, Miss Honeycutt.” Gus gave a sheepish grin. “I just didn’t know what else to call it.

  “I’m well aware of what a duck’s butt is Gus,” Aunt Irene said primly.

  "A duck's butt?" Shad hooted. Rising from his seat he squatted down and waddled around the table, shaking his skinny butt wildly. "That's what this move is called, Maggie, a duck's butt."

  "Shadrach, sit down." Gus smiled to soften the reprimand.

  Maggie tried not to laugh and ended up snorting instead. Aunt Irene looked at her sharply, and Maggie quickly changed the subject.

  “So the music? You think that’s Johnny?” Maggie said doubtfully. The ghosts she had seen had never acted like they could see her at all. In fact, they had ignored her completely, and they definitely didn’t play music, or mop floors, or even make eye contact the way Gus described. She didn’t doubt what Gus had seen; she knew firsthand that it was possible. It just wasn’t anything like her own experiences.

  “It isn’t me, and it isn’t you, Miss Margaret.”

  "And it sure as heck isn't me," Shad interrupted trying to sound tough. "We should be listenin' to some tunes though, Pop. Maybe me and Mags can teach the ghost how to do a few moves." Shad was attempting to be funny, but he was clearly bothered by the thought of a ghost lurking around the school, and his brown eyes were as big as saucers.

  Maggie ignored Shad's suggestion and shivered a little. All this talk of ghosts was giving her the creeps, too. “What happened to him anyway? Why is he haunting the school?’

  “His brother died there," Aunt Irene broke in softly. "Maybe he did, too. They never found his body, though. It was a terrible night. I’ve always wondered if things would have turned out differently if I’d warned him. You see, Roger was going to lure Johnny into the school. He and a couple friends were going to jump him there. Roger knew he couldn't beat him by himself." Irene shook her head in disgust. "It was all planned out. Roger had gotten his hands on a key, and he planted a group of his friends outside the school and a couple of them inside, although, when Billy Kinross shot out the window they all scattered and ran.

  “Roger smashed up Johnny's car and then went inside the school, trying to lure him to follow. But…I guess Billy followed him. I'm not really sure how it all transpired. Nobody is." Irene was quiet and reflective for a moment.

  "It scarred our little town. I think it ruined Roger. He wasn’t such a bad boy before that. He was just angry. You see, Dolly Kinross, Billy and Johnny’s mother, had a reputation of being a bit of a floozy and had been, well, sleeping with Mayor Carlton, Roger’s father,” Aunt Irene whispered ‘sleeping with’ as if she had said the ‘F’ word. “Roger found out about it and made life difficult for Billy Kinross around town – he was a much easier target then Johnny. Rumor had it, he even roughed Dolly Kinross up a little and warned her to stay away from his father.”

  Shad had gone very quiet and stared down at his plate. Rumors of his own mother's shady exploits had found their way around Honeyville in the last few days. Apparently, Malia Jasper had turned up in town but had yet to drop in and see her son. Maggie's heart hurt for him. Gus sighed, and Irene continued dabbing her eyes, unaware of Shad's discomfort at the turn the conversation had taken.

  “Why in the world did you marry Roger Carlton, Aunt Iren
e?” Maggie couldn’t help but ask, shifting the subject away from wayward mothers. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not my business but….it just seems so…”

  “Wrong?” Aunt Irene finished quietly. “I thought I loved him. And there was guilt, pressure from my daddy, pressure from Roger’s momma, people’s expectations, and maybe somewhere in all of that I felt like I owed it to him…like maybe if I’d protected him from himself, if I’d had the courage to do the right thing that night, to speak up, he wouldn’t have had the death of those boys on his conscience. And I wouldn’t have had them on mine. I suppose it was a kind of penance.” Aunt Irene’s voice wobbled a little, and she used her napkin to dab the corners of her eyes.

  “Oh, Aunt Irene.” Maggie shook her head and rose to wrap her arms around Irene’s thin shoulders.

  “There, there, Miss Honeycutt.” Gus patted Aunt Irene’s hand gently. “I think that’s enough storytellin’ for one night. Thank you very much for that fine supper. Come on, Shadrach. Let's see ourselves out.” Shad and Gus rose from the table, and Gus slung his arm around his grandson's thin shoulders as they ambled toward the door.

  “Gus?” Maggie called after him, and Gus turned as he reached out toward the doorknob.

  “I’m a little...afraid. If a ghost can turn on music and do…other things,” Maggie still hadn’t confessed that she hadn’t actually mopped that long hallway, “then couldn’t he be dangerous? Couldn’t he actually hurt someone?” Like Me? Maggie didn’t say the last part, but her meaning came out loud and clear.