Phantom

by Thomas Tessier

  Lynnhaven was neither gloomy nor unpleasant. Some people even thought that its slightly shabby, slightly run-down appearance made it quaint and pretty. But the town didn't have a good beach or much of anything else to draw tourists. Those who did pass through Lynnhaven usually continued on their way after cruising the few central streets.

  Blair's Market still sold bottles of Lynnhaven Water, but they moved very slowly. The mineral content, which included sulpher in strength, may have been good for one's health, but it left something to be desired in the flavor department. Chief among the other stores in town were a couple of boat and tackle shops, a vintage Western Auto, Mae's Candy, which specialized in undistinguished saltwater taffy, and Marine Antiques, which was open whatever odd hours suited its proprietor, Monroe Tillotson.

  Two of the town's larger and more elegant homes had been converted to boarding houses, providing inexpensive accommodation for some of Lynnhaven's solitary folk-widows and widowers, spinsters and bachelors, people without relatives or money enough to live anywhere else. They survived on Social Security and miscellaneous jobs. Everyone knew Miss Merrion, for instance, who had a room at Laurel House. She sold magazine subscriptions and stuffed envelopes for a company a thousand miles away in Minneapolis.

  If there was nothing particularly attractive about Lynnhaven, neither was it the worst place in the world to live. If you liked seafood it was possible to eat very cheaply there. The boats went out every morning and came back every evening, and bargains could be had when they unloaded. Moreover, Lynnhaven was a completely safe town. For more than forty years the police force of two had had little to do other than keep their one squad car polished and the drunks in line. Miss Merrion and others like her could walk home alone after bingo on the darkest night without fear of being bothered. Even the town dogs were well behaved.

  Lynnhaven had to do without some things, inevitably. It had neither a local newspaper nor a library, and the Rialto movie house had been turned into a warehouse years ago. In fact, the last film shown there had been Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in 1948. The nearest A & P was ten miles away and the only church in Lynnhaven was Saint Paul's, which retained a small but reliable congregation of Lutherans. The fire department was strictly volunteer and was put to the test only a few times a year, dealing with things like a grease fire in the kitchen or a small electrical blaze caused by old wiring. If a real fire had ever started, especially on Polidori Street where the buildings stood one to another, half the town could have been wiped out in very little time. But nothing so dramatic ever happened in Lynnhaven.

  There were those who would say that the last time the town ever got worked up about anything was during World War II. A group of local men, who for one reason or another had not been called into the war effort, formed themselves into a kind of unofficial home guard, armed with guns, clubs and fishing spears. They patrolled the shore and kept watch day and night. It would be just too bad for any German sub they got their hands on. But not even the Nazis bothered to visit Lynnhaven.

  Presidents took office and departed without having much impact on the townspeople. Few registered, and of those fewer still got around to voting. Politics, like crime, was something that took place elsewhere. You could keep track of it on television if you were interested. In spite of, or perhaps because of its proximity to Washington, Lynnhaven could not boast a single nuclear fallout shelter. What was the point? Only one of the town's sons, Marv Wilcox, was dispatched to Vietnam, and he came back with a lot of souvenirs and a tidy bankroll. Marv went into business for himself down in Newport News, doing contract work for the Navy.

  All towns have their secrets, and Lynnhaven was no exception. But secrets are not secrets unless almost everybody knows something about them, and then they become an accepted, if submerged part of everyday life, too familiar and mundane to be of lasting interest to any but a few gossips—and poor fare for them. Adultery, cock or dog fights staged in the woods—the Lutheran minister, Reverend Harnack, would address himself to these goings-on one Sunday out of every four, but even he could muster only routine disapproval. Secrets? Yes, all the usual ones.

  More or less.

  2. The Baithouse

  The old man tied one end of the string tightly around a three-inch strip of pork rind. "That's all there is to it," he said.

  "Aren't you going to use a hook?" Ned asked.

  "Don't need no hook to catch crawdads. You just wait and see."

  The old man tossed the pork rind into the water and played out a short length of string. Ned watched it drift briefly on the current before sinking out of sight.

  "Now what do you do?"

  "Just wait a few minutes, give 'em time to gather round for a bite of lunch. Won't be long."

  "What's this stream called, Peeler?"

  "Ain't a stream, it's a creek, and it's called Old Woods Creek. All this stretch of land is Old Woods."

  "Old Woods Creek," Ned repeated. "What's the difference between a stream and a creek?"

  "If you can jump across it, it's a creek. If you can't, it's a stream."

  "What's the difference between a stream and a river then?" Peeler snorted. "River's just a stream somebody decided to call a river, that's all." Then he added: "Unless you're talkin' about the Mississippi and such. They're your bona fide rivers, but there ain't so many of them. Most rivers are just over-growed streams."

  "Think you got anything yet?" "Let's see."

  Peeler hauled in the string. Four crayfish dangled from the piece of pork rind.

  "Wow, look at them!" Ned exclaimed.

  "Greedy little cusses," Peeler said, smiling. "Old Mr. Crawdad is such a fool he won't let go of his food, even if it means he gets caught and ends up being used for bass bait hisself."

  "Can they hurt you?"

  "Big one can give you a pinch, I guess, if you're not too careful with 'em. But these lowly fellers can't do nothin' to you."

  Peeler gently separated the crayfish from the line and dropped them into a pail of water. Then he and the boy moved a few yards further along before plunking the bait back into the creek. Peeler rummaged around in the old burlap sack he carried and pulled out a can of beer.

  "Can I have some?"

  "How old are you, Nedly?"

  “I'll be ten in August."

  "Good enough," Peeler said, grinning. He handed the can of Iron City to Ned, who took a sip and grimaced. "Better not tell your folks I give it to you."

  "I won't. I don't like it anyway."

  "Wait a few years and try again."

  "Peeler?"

  "Hmmn?"

  "Is that your real name?"

  "Is now."

  "Did you used to have another one?"

  ''Fraid so."

  "What was it?"

  "Now that's a secret."

  "I won't tell anyone."

  The old man arched an eyebrow in mock-seriousness and studied his young companion for a few moments.

  "How do I know you won't tell anybody?"

  "I promise."

  "You do?"

  "Honest."

  "Okay, I'll trust" you, but you better keep your word or you'll get in big trouble."

  "I will, I promise."

  "Okay. My name was Hamish."

  "Hamish?"

  "Yep."

  "What kind of name is that?" Ned asked. He had never heard it before.

  "Goddamned if I know," Peeler replied. "Always hated it."

  "So why are you called Peeler now?"

  "Better'n Progger, ain't it?"

  "Progger?"

  "Yep."

  "Is that a name?"

  "Could be," Peeler said as he took three more crayfish from the pork rind.

  Ned watched silently. Sometimes the old man didn't make much sense, or if he did it wasn't always easy to follow. But that didn't really matter. Ned just enjoyed being with Peeler. They had met only a few weeks earlier, shortly after the Covingtons had moved to Lynnhaven. On one of his first rambles
around the place, Ned came across a long, low shed on the spot where a street ended and an open field began. He could just make out the word BAITS in faded paint on the gray boarding. Curious, Ned walked through the thick and tangled grass to the open doorway. Inside, all was darkness and the faint sound of running water. Ned almost turned and left, but he noticed a little light coming in through two small windows in the middle of the shed. He stepped through the doorway and let his eyes adjust from the bright sun outside to the gloomy interior. The air was cool and had a rich, sweet smell, like freshly turned soil. Ned could see why. There was no floor, just bare earth. The shed was full of wooden tables with boxes built on top. In each box was a layer of dirt several inches deep, home for hundreds of writhing worms. A perfect place for a vampire, Ned thought. A little further into the shed he found two chipped and battered bathtubs holding dozens of crayfish. It was the first time Ned had ever seen one, although he knew what they were from pictures in books. A hose had been rigged up to run a thin stream of fresh water through both tubs. Other tables held large metal washtubs full of what looked like clumps of weeds in water, and boxes of sand and moss. Ned couldn't see any sign of animal life in these containers, but he wasn't about to stick his hand in and poke around. The two windows were so fly-specked and dirty they provided only the barest illumination.

  When Ned turned to leave he saw the figure of a tall, heavy man standing in the doorway. In one hand the man held a wire basket full of live crabs, clicking and crawling over each other. Ned jumped in fright. But then the man was laughing good-naturedly and he came and introduced himself as Peeler and made the boy welcome. Ned ended up staying more than an hour, talking and watching Peeler dismember the crabs.

  "So you just moved here from Washington, D.C.?"

  "Yes."

  "Lot different here, ain't it?" Peeler reached into the tub full of weeds and came up with a can of cold beer.

  "It sure is," Ned agreed.

  "Your father work in Washington?"

  "Yes, he does."

  "He drives back and forth all that way every day?"

  "Sure."

  "He must love his car."

  "It's brown, with a white vinyl top."

  ''I'll be damned."

  Peeler was a tall, solid man who had to walk slightly stooped in the baithouse. His face was as rough and weathered as the sign outside, but it was not without a measure of warmth and friendliness. When he smiled, which he did almost every time Ned said something, it came entirely from his eyes. To the boy, Peeler might have been a hundred years old, but he was an immediate, natural friend. His hands were like those of a giant, huge and leathery, but surprisingly nimble as they took apart a crab or tied a complicated knot.

  Ned also met Cloudy, an elderly black man with a shiny moon face, gold teeth and a silver halo of hair. Cloudy was Peeler's "partner at baitin' and crabbin' and so on."

  "He tell you how he caught them crabs?" Cloudy asked.

  “No."

  "I didn't think so. Well, I'll tell you. He goes down to where the water's shallow and he knows there's some crabs, and he sticks his big white toes in."

  "His toes?" Ned wasn't sure whether to believe it or not. "That's right, and when he feels the clappers latch on, he knows he got a crab."

  "I'd like to meet the crab who'd touch your toe," Peeler said.

  In the days that followed Ned stopped by to visit Peeler and Cloudy as often as he could. They were always the same, joking, telling stories, glad to see him. And they always wore the same clothes. Peeler's outfit was a flannel shirt, green work pants and heavy shoes. Cloudy had on a suit and sneakers. In each case the clothes were wrinkled and torn in places, and appeared to be about as old as the men who wore them. Sometimes Peeler wore a washed-out gray-and-green baseball cap. The breast pocket of Cloudy's jacket held a plastic case crammed full of ballpoint pens, none of which Ned ever saw the man use.

  The baithouse was a place of wonder. At the far end, beyond the tables and tubs, was a cleared area. Two beaten old armchairs without legs sat on the ground, along with the front seat taken from a car. The walls here were covered with tools and equipment, every item of which was a mystery in itself to Ned. Rusted beer cans lay all around the place, and new empties were constantly being added to the collection. It was a crude and trashy shed, but to a boy of nine-going-on-ten recently delivered from city life it was a place of enchantment, a cool dark comfortable haven from the heat and light of summer.

  "That's enough for now, I guess," Peeler said. The pail of water teemed with crayfish. "They'll start eatin' each other pretty soon if I don't get 'em into the tanks."

  "Eat each other?" Ned asked. "Like cannibals?"

  "All I know is the longer we take the more of their arms and legs you'll see floatin' around loose in there."

  Back at the baithouse, they found Cloudy sitting outside on a wooden crate, leaning against a pile of old tires.

  "Look at that lazy son of a biscuit," Peeler said loudly. "Hey, ain't you got enough tan on you already?"

  "Lunchtime," Cloudy said without bothering to open his eyes.

  "He always sleeps through lunchtime," Peeler explained to Ned. "You won't never see him eat no lunch."

  Peeler went inside the baithouse to take care of the crayfish, but today Ned hung back, standing a few feet away from Cloudy. He was curious about something, and it didn't seem right to ask Peeler.

  "Cloudy."

  "Mm?"

  "What's that?"

  Cloudy opened his eyes a crack and saw that Ned was pointing to the shack out behind the baithouse. It was a tiny structure, four walls and a flat roof with a chimney pipe sticking out, a door and a single window. Altogether, about twelve feet square. Nearby was the wreck of an old car; the windows were still intact but the body was covered with rust and the bare wheels were overgrown with wild grass. It was a Studebaker, but now it looked like the remains of a beached monster from another age.

  "That? That's Peeler's house."

  "Oh. I thought that's where he lives," Ned said, nodding.

  "He don't live there," Cloudy corrected. "That's his house but he don't live in it. Oh, no, he can't live in it."

  "He can't? Why not?"

  "Go see for yourself," Cloudy suggested with a wave of his hand. "Go ahead, open the door."

  "Won't he mind?"

  "Naw, Peeler don't mind. He show you hisself if you ask him. Go ahead."

  Ned went over to the door of the shack and hesitated briefly. What did he expect to find—a gutted interior, a caved-in floor, a swarm of rats? It had to be something serious enough- to drive a man from his own dwelling. Ned pulled the door open and jumped back a step. Empty beer cans, dozens of them, tumbled out of the shack and onto the ground. Ned could hear Cloudy laughing behind him. .

  "Wow," Ned gasped. "Where did he get all these cans?"

  This made Cloudy laugh even more. Ned moved to take a closer look. The inside of the shack was a lake of empty beer cans, four or five feet deep, wall to wall. Enough Iron City cans to rebuild Pittsburgh from scratch, if that were ever necessary. The top of a broom handle was just visible, sticking up in the middle of the single room like the mast of a sunken ship. Any other furniture or contents the place might hold could not be seen. Ned couldn't begin to guess how many cans there might be.

  "He got some good old ones in there," Cloudy said. "Down at the bottom."

  "Gosh, where does he live now?"

  "In the car, where else."

  "The car?"

  At that moment Peeler emerged from the baithouse and threw a handful of crab scraps into the little vegetable patch a few yards away. He glanced up at Ned.

  "Damn good car it is, too," he said before disappearing back inside.

  "Only one he ever owned," Cloudy elaborated lazily. "Kept it all this time."

  "Like the beer cans," Ned said. "He must have every one he ever drank in his whole life."

  "And then some. The rest is underground hereabouts, I forget exactl
y where."

  "Underground?"

  "Sure. He used to bury them all, till they finally got to be too much work."

  Cloudy made it sound like the most natural thing in the world, burying your empty beer cans, but it was too much for Ned to figure out. He went to take a look at the car. The weeds and flowers were so tall and thick around it that the vehicle looked as if it might have grown there, the exotic offspring of soil, sea and countless subterranean beer cans. The front seat was gone, undoubtedly the one removed to the baithouse. The floor of the car was covered with blankets and there was a pillow propped in the back left corner. All very tidy.

  "Sleeping in a car, that's neat, but doesn't it get cold in the winter?"

  "Oh, he got the heater and radio workin' in there, and he just have to recharge the battery now and then."

  "Why does he do it?"

  "I never did know that one, Mr. Tadpole." Cloudy thought about it again, and then shrugged. "For some unforesaken reason, I guess."

  Peeler returned, a beer appropriately in hand, and dragged a crate across the ground to sit down with Cloudy and Ned.

  "So this old squirrelbait told you about my house, eh? That what I heard?"

  "Yeah, it's great. I wish I could sleep out in a car."

  The two old men laughed.

  "But why do you have all those cans in the house?" Ned asked. "Why don't you just throw them all away?"

  "I did. I used to dig a hole in the ground and dump 'em in and cover ' em up again. When I got tired of that I started tossin' 'em in the car, but that was no good because the car filled up in no time. So, instead of livin' in the house and throwin' the cans in the car, I decided to live in the car and throw the cans in the house. Took me long enough to figure out, but ever since things've been fine. It works just right."

  "It's a system," Cloudy chipped in, as if explaining everything.

  "But why don't you just have the trash man take them away every week?"

  "If the trash man came here he'd take everything, lock, stock and barrel," Peeler said, and then he and Cloudy roared with laughter.