Ghosts of Yesterday

by Jack Cady

  GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY

  Other books by Jack Cady:

  The Haunting of Hood Canal

  The American Writer

  The Night We Buried Road Dog

  The Off Season

  Street

  Inagehi

  The Sons of Noah

  The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish

  McDowell’s Ghost

  The Jonah Watch

  Singleton

  The Well

  Tattoo

  The Burning and Other Stories

  GHOSTS OF YESTERDAY

  Stories by Jack Cady

  Night Shade Books

  San Francisco & Portland

  Ghosts of Yesterday © 2003 by Jack Cady

  This edition of Ghosts of Yesterday © 2003 by Night Shade Books

  Cover Photo © 2003 by Jayme Thornton

  Cover & interior design by Jeremy Lassen

  All Rights Reserved

  “The Ghost of Dive Bomber Hill” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “Israel and Ernest” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “Jacket Copy” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “The Lady With the Blind Dog” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “On Writing the Ghost Story” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “Support Your Local Griffin” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “The Time that Time Forgot” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “Truck Gypsy Blues” © 2003 by Jack Cady. Appears here for the first time.

  “Weird Row” © 2002 by Jack Cady. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2002.

  “Halloween 1942” © 2000 by Jack Cady. First appeared in October Dreams, CD Publications.

  “Jeremiah” © 2000 by Jack Cady. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2000.

  “Daddy Dearest” © 1998 by Jack Cady. First appeared in UFO Files, DAW Books, 1998.

  “Science Fiction, Utopia, and the Spirit” © 1989 by Jack Cady. First appeared in a slightly different form in Books & Religion, Christmastide Issue, 1989.

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-1-59780-527-8

  For Carol, as always

  CONTENTS

  The Lady With the Blind Dog.

  Jeremiah

  Science Fiction, Utopia, and the Spirit

  Halloween 1942

  On Writing the Ghost Story

  The Ghost of Dive Bomber Hill

  Truck Gypsy Blues

  Weird Row

  Daddy Dearest

  Jacket Copy

  Support Your Local Griffin

  Israel and Ernest

  The Time that Time Forgot

  THE LADY WITH THE BLIND DOG

  She may have once been a lady, and so Jill and I choose to think of her that way. I was first to meet her. She seemed a miserable old woman who tugged a panting dog through crowded streets, beneath blue sky and sun. We met during summer when light lay across San Francisco like the gaze of Mediterranean gods. Jill and I were, and still are, warmed by that sun; but now sometimes feel held in place; pinioned.

  When Jill met her, Jill said, “She makes me feel so old, and I’m not ready. Only the blush of the rose, that’s only what I want. I don’t want to be old. I don’t.” Her voice almost hysterical.

  That was quite some years ago. Jill is now old, but can’t get accustomed.

  The Lady grew no younger; but not a day older, either. The dog still pants, unchanged.

  The dog is a mixture of small, fluffy breeds with white fur, and with feet callused and clumsy. The callus comes from a constant round of padding along sidewalks. The nose is flat like a pug, and the eyes are pop-eyed like a Boston bull terrier. The eyes vary; chalk white, fish-belly white, dead white, and they contrast with the red tongue, always panting.

  It’s got a red collar, too big for a dog that can’t weigh more than five pounds. It’s got a temper, because it will snap at anything or anybody. The lady drags it on a leash stout enough to hang a man. There are chew marks on the leash, but the dog’s teeth are worn flat. It never barks. It never growls, or not exactly. It makes a low sound, a rumble, a noise that somehow sounds like fire racing before wind. If the dog actually growled, I think people would flee.

  Flee from a five pound monster? Probably. With monsters, size doesn’t matter much.

  “Our monster,” Jill says. “Does everybody have one, or are we just lucky?” She’s still a lovely lady. The blush of the rose has long faded, but the high forehead has no more wrinkles than in her youth. Her hands remain lovely, her figure slim, and her neurosis only wild enough to make her interesting.

  When young she wanted to be an actress, which is half of why we came to San Francisco. At the time the city owned a reputation for experimental theater.

  The other half: I wanted to be a landscape architect drawing graceful lines of leaves across the world; make the world beautiful. I had other wants as well. I wanted to be warm. We were in Boston where outside-work is a frigid five-month sentence during winters. You have to let your hair grow to protect your neck. Your hands are never warm, nor your feet. I spent my last two winters there with a tree company, pruning and snow removal.

  When we got to San Francisco I didn’t even need to get a haircut; just walked into the office of the nearest landscape construction company, and walked out with a job. At the same time, in Cleveland and Chicago, there were riots and looting. In those days I paid little attention to the news. My attention focused on the job.

  In the downtown financial district, where the old lady first showed up, there was a well-established pocket-park. The park sort of dwelt between tall buildings. People from the offices took their lunches on good days. They sat on lush grass and chatted, chewed sandwiches, sipped thermos coffee, and for a few minutes quit pretending that what they did was especially important.

  As the business district grew, and as more buildings rose, the park became crowded. My first assignment was foreman of construction for a new park. My crew and I built it right across the street.

  The architect designed the place with seven little hills, because San Francisco is built on seven hills. It was a routine design, nothing exotic, but green and functional. Our machine operator piled and carved soil. A subcontractor put in sidewalks. My guys installed irrigation and pine trees, and then seeded grass. After which, I went sort of crazy.

  It wasn’t an ordinary job, or ordinary conditions; at least not to someone with experience. The irrigation heads were placed in a way that, with the touch of a button, I could light off enough water to cover seven little hills and better than an acre of ground; silver arcing flashes crashing above raw soil.

  And, it was the middle of summer. Cloudless days. Overflooding sun. Grass seed down. What I did made no sense, except — ask any gardener.

  Grass seed dies if it dries once wetted. A constant sheen of water is wanted. I made a bet with myself. I bet that I could bring that job in so fast it would go in the record books. And I did, from first water to first cutting in seven days.

  Water crashing silver through sunlight, strong as creation, beautiful as hope. I dodged here and there, wet half the time while adjusting irrigation heads. Turn off the water, let the soil heat beneath that sun. When the first spot of gray showed surface dryness; time to light ’em off for another five minutes.

  Crazy old lady. She first appeared on a sidewalk in the park across the street. From a distance she moved like a dark blotch against green grass, and beside loads of people dressed for business; gaily colored dresses, summer suits of tan
.

  The dog half-walked, was half-dragged beside her. The old bat could have allowed the dog to walk on grass, but she short-leashed it. The dog couldn’t stray an inch. It had to walk on hot concrete. Even from across the street, you could tell it was blind.

  The lady dressed witchery. Her darkish dress hung near shoe tops, thin ankles; dress of dark maroon but faded to sort of red — shabby where it almost touched her shoe tops. The dress looked made of velvet, and the lady wore a ragged fur jacket, but she shivered beneath that sun. Her face looked like someone or something had taken a normal human head and twisted it. Her lips sagged and could not quite close. Her face was smooth around the eyes, but it seemed like one eye rode a good bit higher than the other. Her face sagged everywhere else. Her eyes were closer to black than gray. Small slobber occasionally dripped.

  “They wonder about you,” she whispered. “All of them. They watch you scamper, and they wonder.” Her voice sounded metrical as a harsh poem.

  “You’re gonna burn up in that coat,” I told her. “You’re gonna get heat stroke.” Crazy old lady. I looked across at the other park, from which no one paid the least attention. “Nice dog. What’s its name?”

  She shivered. Beside her the dog panted. The eyes seemed to change in the sunlight, from milky to wheyish, sometimes marble-white. The dog did not rest on its haunches, or lie down; it never has. It is always ready to spring.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. Sun already had me burned brown, and my hair bleached. Now the sun lay between my shoulders like a hot iron. The lady shivered. I thought she might pass out.

  “Torment,” she said, and I did not know whether she spoke of herself or the dog. “Don’t come close…. Nothing wrong with his nose.”

  The dog’s nose was crusted, the way dogs get in the last stages of distemper. Bald patches lay scabbed in the wavy fur. Its tail hung thin and ratlike.

  I remember thinking she was cruel not to have the animal killed. Then I thought maybe the dog was her only companion, and she was so old.

  Around us, I could feel the first stirring of life as seed germinated. It was like the soil began to breathe. Life, then death. Turmoil, then darkness. Regeneration, then life.

  “Don’t you mind them,” she said. “And don’t you worry. You can make the world beautiful. I’ve got my eye on you.” She tugged at the leash. The dog snapped at air, snap, snap, clicks of flat teeth. White-popping eyes.

  I watched her leave, dark ruby splotch against the gleaming white of the city. She walked less than a half block and then sort of faded. It didn’t happen fast, and there were people going to and fro on the sidewalk. She might have stepped into a doorway, but that seemed unlikely. I told myself I wasn’t scared. Later on, I told Jill I wasn’t scared. What a liar.

  I told Jill during one of our little dust-ups. We fussed at each other because of the job. She didn’t understand why grass was important.

  Seed hit the red stage in three days. The red stage is crucial. It’s when the seed has to stay constantly wet. If you can bring it from red to green, and keep it green for thirty or forty hours, the job is home free.

  What happened was, I parked at the job and slept in my car. I woke from time to time, like a mother with a new baby. Hit the irrigation for a couple of minutes, then go back to uneasy sleep. Jill spent nights at home, trying to persuade herself that I was not out with another woman. She tried to stay nailed in place, but paranoia got the best of her.

  She wanted to be an actress, but what she needed was acting lessons. She showed up at the job around ten at night: a snazzy-looking young woman, riding a bus, then walking the empty streets of San Francisco; a young woman bearing sandwiches. Pretending love, and not paranoia.

  “You didn’t have to, but thanks.” I actually sort of treasured the sandwiches, even if she was nuts. I could, back then, be as phony as she. Then I paused, realizing she was scared. If she was not scared, she would have checked me out from a distance, then gone back home.

  “I’ll give you a ride, then come back.”

  The old lady appeared beneath street lights as we climbed in the Ford. I wondered if the lady patrolled that park across the street. I wondered how somebody that old could constantly walk, day and night. The dog shone as a small white spot beneath street lights. The lady moved slow as befitted her age, but she dragged the dog most firmly. The leash tied them together, tighter, at the time, than Jill and I were tied. I started the car.

  “Drive roundabout,” Jill said. “Don’t go the direction she went.” Then she said, “Please.”

  “Problem?”

  “I don’t want to be old,” she whispered. “There’s stuff I got to do. Ingénue, that’s me.”

  Jill was never little-girl pretty. She had the face and body to play Shakespeare’s Portia, not some comic twinky. Her face and body are as far as matters ever went. She pretended she knew it all. She figured talent doesn’t need training. Jill can pretend to perfection, but it’s always Jill pretending. She never learned to act.

  Driving her home, in that night long ago, it took less than a minute to find that she too had met the old lady. It happened on a deserted street; deserted because the San Francisco business district lay like a black and abandoned tomb after dark. Jill had seen the lady and dog from a block away. They crossed paths because who could imagine danger from an old lady and a tiny mutt?

  “She told me not to worry,” Jill whispered. “She said to examine my skills. What skills? I can type. She said she was keeping an eye on me.” Jill’s voice came as close to sounding ‘little-girl’ as I’ve ever heard. She was totally scared, dry-mouthed and spitless.

  What I didn’t tell Jill, or at least didn’t tell her for some years, is that the old lady said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got my eye on you,” to lots of people. Mostly, she was ignored, which is the standard in San Francisco. The city is, or used to be, proud that people can be as weird as they want, as long as they don’t cause trouble.

  My grass came in (I thought of it as mine), and the maintenance crew arrived with lawn mowers. I left the park for other installation jobs, running as far north as San Rafael, and south to San Jose. The company landscaped freeways, power transfer stations, business and industrial parks, The Cow Palace, universities, and BART, the rapid transit system. Then, in three years, the company went broke. Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.

  And, during those years, all hell broke loose. Riots and burning in Atlanta and Boston, Buffalo and Cincinnati, Tampa, Newark, Detroit. The newspapers reported a war going on in the far east, but I had my own troubles.

  Unemployment happened. I found myself back on the streets in autumn. Landscape outfits cut back against the coming winter rains. Jill worked as a temp secretary and started hanging out with little theatre groups. I looked for any kind of work.

  It was a thin time, but had its points. I job-hunted from early morning to mid-afternoon, then, discouraged, loafed. For the first time in a long time, I was able to watch what went on. I learned to like the scurrying of shoppers in the west end. I liked the mixtures of colors and languages and oriental faces; plus Irish and Italians, Russians, Hebrews, a sprinkling of Spaniards.

  The old lady appeared one afternoon near the bandstand in Golden Gate Park. I saw her from a way off, saw mostly the white spot of dog, and faded velvet dress. I loitered on a park bench, like a bum in a two-bit movie. Sea gulls squawked overhead, circling, but they stayed away from her; or maybe away from the dog.

  “Torment,” I said when she approached. “He’s looking well.” I moved to one end of the bench, making space. “Take a break.” Scared yes, but I was interested. Anything that can impress a seagull….

  “He looks the same,” she said, and she actually took a seat. I had the uncanny feeling that she was there, but really wasn’t. I felt that if I touched her, my finger would go right through. Like, maybe, spectral.

  The dog stood short-leashed, and two feet from my ankle. “Such a lovely city,” she murmured. “Such a pretty day. B
y the time I’m free to know it….” She paused as the leash tightened, and the dog tried for my ankle. She held it most firmly. The dog rumbled, panted; red tongue, white fur, scabby and blind.

  I felt sorry for her. She spent her days, even her nights, walking around tied to a dog that should be dead of old age. There had to be something better for her than that. “If you let him run, he couldn’t go far.”

  “The last time he ran,” she said, “quite a few ended in a graveyard.” Her voice sounded honestly sad, like she honestly spoke the truth.

  I didn’t mind if she was crazy. After all, I lived with Jill who was nutsy. I wasn’t all that bright myself; stupid enough to work, when I worked, at deadend jobs that offered only plants and trees as benefits. Plus, half of the people on the streets seemed screwy. One more Crazy didn’t matter.

  “He enjoys suicides and mayhem,” she whispered, as much to herself as to me. “Decimation is his nature. Decimation is his right.” She sat wrapped in the fur jacket, sitting in sunlight and shivering. A little slobber hung as a droplet in one corner of her mouth. “When he runs, people make fatal jumps. They destroy others, destroy things. They kill what they say they love.” The dog stood on thin legs. It looked like it could hardly walk, leave alone run.

  “I must go,” she said. “I have my work.” She stood. “You can weather hard times. I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t worry.”

  At that time, in Los Angeles, people were scared because of something called the Tate-Bianca murders. It had something to do with cults. Whatever.

  I got a job driving city bus. Half of the guys driving those things were splow-heads, freaks, junkies, jerk-offs; and generally on their way to rehab or a cemetery. The other half were guys worth knowing. I tooled bus for fifteen years.

  For awhile I kept hunting something better. Took a couple of night classes at community college; agronomy and botany. Actually designed and installed a Japanese garden in the tiny yard in back of our apartment. Could have done more.