The Early Crap: Selected Short Stories, 1997-2005 Page 2

  *

  The Major came back that night. I dreamt I was sitting at the kitchen table finishing a glass of chocolate milk. The ghost fell through the ceiling and floated down in slow motion, writhing the whole way until he landed on his back. He groaned, then sat up and pulled himself into a chair. He was more battered than last time, more pale overall.

  “Why do you look like that?” I said.

  “Because I’m dead.”

  “When you die, isn’t your spirit transformed into something new, or your injuries taken away?”

  The Major shook his head. “I died of a heart attack. Looked fine. Death’s a son of a bitch.”

  I said, “My pastor says you’re a demon spirit.”

  He laughed. “I wish.”

  I imagined what my soul looked like. Weak, no meat on the bones, mouth sewed up, and a big hole in my side where my liver should have been.

  “I’m not going to leave quietly. You can pray and anoint all you want, but I’ll put up a good fight,” the ghost said.

  “How did you know?” I said.

  The room got warmer, and his skin suddenly brighter. The Major stared long and hard, didn’t answer.

  “I’ve got to take my stand,” I said. “Sorry.”

  He smiled. No teeth. “I know that. I know you’ll win, too, if that’s what you want. But like I said, I won’t go quietly.”

  He vanished, but left behind an odor like rotten eggs. I whispered, “But I don’t want you to go at all.” I poured my milk out in the sink.

  *

  Jo was sitting on the couch in the den the next night staring at the stereo, against the wall where the TV had been. I stretched across the couch, my head in her lap while she tapped fingertips on my scalp. She was in a pajama tee that reached to her knees, faded drawing of Donald Duck on the front, with her legs curled up on the cushion beneath me.

  “What about these dreams?” she said.

  “The ghost. He said he won’t leave without a fight.”

  She grinned at that, wiggled her toes against my back. I kissed the top of her knee. I asked, “Is your mom going to keep Alan tomorrow night?”

  “Yeah. I’ll pick him up after. Mom doesn’t agree with Rev. Burtleson, though. She says we should call Unsolved Mysteries and they’d probably pay us something.”

  “And the whole country would know about our ghost.”

  “Then he probably wouldn’t show up. Ghosts are camera shy.”

  I laughed and rubbed my chest. Heartburn. Jo’s fingers stopped tapping and brushed through my hair. We hadn’t been that close in months. I don’t know what it was exactly, just things about her going to church so much. She said she wasn’t going to cut her hair anymore, since the church believed it was a sin for a woman to have short hair. I didn’t mind that. She had nice hair. The she said she was going to stop wearing jewelry and make-up. Also okay. She didn’t need them, as long as she would keep wearing the wedding band. And only long dresses and skirts from then on, no pants or shorts. Whatever she wanted, fine.

  But I wondered if maybe our affections would have to be “acceptable” to somebody in a church office somewhere who had a list of marital dos and don’ts. So, I had found ways to keep busy at night, had a lot of headaches. Jo knew the reason but couldn’t ask, was afraid to try, and we fought without saying what was really on out minds: Are you still the same person I fell in love with?

  “What was that with Brother Porter?” she said.

  “He wanted me to come up and pray. I wasn’t in the mood.”

  Jo clicked her tongue. I tried to turn, but she put her hand in the way. I flashed my eyes back and forth.

  “I want to believe, I really do, but how can I believe in this if I can’t believe in the people who believe in this?”

  “Daryl—”

  “Porter is a jerk. He said he could take me in a fight. What kind of talk is that from a preacher?” I pointed at her.

  Jo pushed my finger down. “You can’t keep taking it to heart. You have to learn to get along with people.”

  “Oh, like Burtleson. There’s a friendly one.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was right about me. I found too many faults in nearly everyone except myself, always the first to criticize. Jo once told me her biggest fear about me was that I’d start criticizing her.

  She leaned over. I lifted my chin and kissed her, our lips barely touching, shaking. I couldn’t move. I felt her mouth go wide in a smile and I bumped her teeth. She whispered, “He’s watching us, isn’t he?”

  “Who, Burtleson?”

  “No. That ghost.”

  I collapsed into her lap and groaned. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure he sees everything else, so he’s probably watching us kiss, too.”

  Jo rubbed lightly against my stomach. “Want to come to bed with me now?”

  “I’m not tired,” I said.

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be the bed, then. Right here.”

  “Then what if Alan gets up?”

  She exhaled. Deep sigh.

  “I’m just saying ‘what if,’ you know?”

  “Fine.” She pushed me up. “Stay here, okay? That’s fine by me. I’ll go get a good night’s sleep, save my energy for this little séance tomorrow.”

  “Exorcism.”

  “I thought it had to be inside someone for it to be an exorcism,” Jo said. She stretched her nightshirt down. “You’re the one having the séances, talking to this demon every night.”

  “It’s not a demon.” I couldn’t look at her when I said it.

  “Shut up. I’m going to bed. Don’t wake me up when you get there.” Jo walked out of the den stiffly. But I didn’t want a ghost watching my wife and I make love.

  *

  On Thursday evening, Jo took Alan to her mom’s while I fired up the hot rocks in the gas grill on our backyard deck. I walked through the house and opened the windows, figured we’d need them open for this thing, even if it meant the neighbors would hear.

  Jo made it back and said she had to get dressed, then looked at me and frowned.

  “No jeans.”

  “Yes jeans.”

  “My God, Daryl, why bother inviting them at all if you’re going to wear jeans?”

  “He invited himself,” I said.

  She clenched her fingers towards me like claws and said through gritted teeth, “Fifteen minutes. How can I be ready in fifteen minutes?”

  The doorbell rang. I walked to the door and opened it to Rev. and Mrs. Burtleson with Porter and Sister Janet. The pastor was in a print shirt that was too brown. His wife was a head taller than him in a blue blazer and long black skirt. Porter was in jeans, and Sister Janet wasn’t smiling. She never did. Her dress was long and severe, with a high collar and sleeves that covered her wrists. I’d heard her say once that she had prayed for people a thousand miles away, and they had seen her walk into their rooms at that very moment. I figured she was like my ghost then.

  Jo waltzed out, gorgeous in a khaki skirt and green blouse. I let out a low whistle, but she ignored me and shook all their hands. I flipped the steaks, looked over my shoulder. Porter smiled at me from my favorite patio chair and said, “Could I get some tea, Brother Daryl?”

  I shrugged. Jo said she’d get it.

  Rev. Burtleson loomed behind me, watching the steaks.

  “I thought we’d eat first. These will be done in a few minutes,” I said.

  He nodded and patted his stomach. “They smell great. I’m not known to miss a lot of meals.”

  “I’m nervous about this. What if he won’t leave without a fight.”

  Burtleson grunched his eyebrows. “It doesn’t have a choice. It has no power against the name of Jesus.”

  “He told me he used to read the Bible, too.”

  The pastor sighed and reached his arm around me, his hand on my shoulder. “Brother Daryl, you’re goin
g to have to stop doubting. You’ve got to trust God. You can’t go around believing every evil spirit that comes your way.”

  “This is my first one.”

  “Not necessarily. They don’t all speak English. How long until these are done?”

  “It’ll be a while. I just put them on.”

  “Maybe we should pray first.” Burtleson said.

  Sister Janet started murmuring “Lord Jesus” under her breath. The pastor asked us to gather inside the dining room. We stood in a circle in the dining room, near the sliding glass door.

  “Join hands,” Burtleson said. We did. I looked around. Everyone had their eyes closed except Porter and me.

  “What about the oil?” I said.

  The pastor, eyes still closed, said, “We’ll do that later.”

  They began to pray aloud, Janet in tongues, Burtleson claiming authority by the Word of God and commanding the spirit to vacate the house. His wife was crying, and Porter was abusively loud, jerking on my arm as he punched his accents: “In the NAME of JESUS, al-MIGHT-y God, we will not let Satan set up Hell on Earth before his time.”

  I imagined the Major bucking on a horse above the dining room table, his mouth open to laugh but he screamed bugle noise at us.

  Burtleson’s eyes opened. “Now, Brother Porter and I will anoint the doors and windows, and some of the furniture.” He turned to his wife, who went to get her purse, came back with two small vials of yellow olive oil, handed one to Porter and one to Burtleson. The pastor shook some of it on his fingers, then walked over to the sliding door and smeared a line across the glass.

  Mrs. Burtleson asked my wife and Sister Janet to come pray with her in the den. I shoved my hands into my pockets and watched the ministers, listened to their barely audible chants as they made sure to get a little oil on all my kitchen appliances, especially the microwave. They anointed every doorframe, every window. From the den, Sister Janet was whooping in her rasp, and I even heard some of Jo’s prayers, “I love you, Lord,” mostly, which was good. Maybe she didn’t want the ghost to leave, either.

  Burtleson asked if he could go into the bedrooms. I said it was no problem and waited in the hall. Then, Janet stopped making any noise at all, and I heard Mrs. Burtleson say, “Uh oh.”

  I ran into the den and saw my wife sitting on the couch. Mrs. Burtleson stood over Janet, slumped on the floor in a pile.

  The ministers made it into the room just as I went to call an ambulance. While we waited, Jo and I watched as they tried to pray the woman back to life. Then, Rev. Burtleson tried CPR. Nothing worked.

  After paramedics took her to the hospital (just in case), Burtleson asked me if I thought the spirit was gone. I felt that the Major was everywhere, watching everything, when I said, “Yes, I think that did it.”

  Jo looked at me, knew good and well I was telling a huge lie, and she was proud of me.

  *

  I didn’t embalm Sister Janet, but had to work the visitation, answering questions, setting up flowers around the casket. Many of the church members came, a chance to gossip about how it happened, what we were doing when she died, how the evil spirit killed her. The pastor spent most of his time trying to explain how that wasn’t so.

  I was standing at the head of the casket when Porter and his wife passed by.

  “Just got rid of one ghost, and now you’ve got another, huh?” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She died in your house. Hey, don’t worry. Maybe she’ll be a good influence on you.”

  I laughed as he moved away and felt sorry for all the people he would eventually pastor when he got his own church. I thought about planting a Kiss CD in his car to ruin his reputation.

  *

  I was shaving Friday morning a week later and nicked my neck. I reached for a piece of tissue, turned the tap off, looked in the mirror at myself again, thought for a moment I saw the ghost’s face superimposed on my own.

  “Major?”

  I blinked. The ghost was gone.

  Back in the bedroom, Jo was at her vanity mirror in a slip, twisting her hair into style for the day. “Talking to the ghost again? Kind of early, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s gone.”

  Jo spun around, grabbed the back of her chair and let her hair fall. “What about Janet? She died here. Do you think she’ll start haunting us, too?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We won’t see her. She’d be too embarrassed.”

  I watched a grin rise on her mouth, and her eyes got flirty. “But she can still see us, can’t she? Well, there’s a thing or two I’d like to teach her, show her what she’s missed.”

  “Isn’t Alan going to be late for kindergarten?”

  My wife laughed and shook her hair. “Oh yeah. Yes.”

  *

  I got home from work after five and found a note from Jo: Gone to the store with Alan. Dropping him at Mom’s for the night. I sat back in my recliner in the den and pretended to watch the radio news by imagining faces for the anchors. The suit he was wearing, the color of her dress, how fat the sports guy was. Photos, maps, an ambulance drawing with “Fatality” written beneath it in a box by their heads.

  I turned off the radio when she appeared in the doorway, two plastic grocery bags in her hands. She tossed one into my lap.

  “Look what I got,” she said.

  “What’s in the other bag?”

  “Dinner. I’m going to make tacos. Look in that bag.” She set her groceries down, leaned against the door frame and kicked her tennis shoes off.

  I opened the bag. A pack of Polaroid film and a roll of Kodak 400, 24 exposures.

  “I thought we could try to take pictures of the ghosts,” Jo said. “Haven’t you seen those pictures where it was just a person or a church or a room when they shot it, but when it was developed, a ghost shows up?”

  “I thought those were fakes.”

  Jo pulled off her socks and shoved one into each shoe, then threw them over my head across the room. I hadn’t seen her enjoying little things in a long time.

  “Go get the cameras,” I said.

  We started in the den, snapping in dim light first, then bright. Jo had the Polaroid, pulled the pictures out as they came, tossed them down and said we’d get back to them all later. I followed her into the dining room, shot a couple of the space over the table. The flash and whirr made us both trickle with tiny laughs.

  As we made our way down the hall, Jo said, “You’re not going back to Burtleson’s church, are you?”

  “No, I’m done with them all.” I snapped a photo of the bathroom.

  “What if I wanted to keep going and taking Alan with me?”

  “Hey, I can’t tell you what to do about it. If you want to keep going, fine. I won’t complain.” But I knew I would.

  She pushed Alan’s door open, held the Polaroid to her eye, then flashed a shot.

  “You really want to keep going there?” I said.

  “No, not anymore. But I wanted to see if you’d try to stop me,” she said. We were standing outside the guest bedroom, the one we used as an extra closet, had an old mattress on the floor.

  “Do you believe in what they teach?”

  Jo heaved out a breath and said, “I don’t know. But maybe we can go to a different one Sunday. See what’s out there.”

  I looked at her through my camera lens. “Smile for me.”

  “No, don’t.” She turned her head, put her hand out in front of my camera.

  I snapped a picture anyway and said, “You either get good poses or bad ones. I’ll keep snapping.”

  She arched her back, put a hand on her hip and one on the back of her neck. A big smile. “How’s that?”

  I clicked again. “Great, good. Have some fun, show me fun.”

  She spun around, almost fell over and started laughing, her hair st
rung across her face. She put her hands on her knees. I took a picture. “Perfect.”

  “Now you,” she said.

  “Me?” I flexed my arms, strained tight. “This good?”

  “No, don’t flex. You don’t have much to flex. Just be you.”

  I held my arms behind me, held my chin up, leaned against the wall. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, great! I like that.” Jo snapped a couple that fell out onto the floor. She backed up until her foot hit the mattress and she tripped backwards with a whoop.

  “You all right?”

  She was laughing, rolling, flushing in her face. I reached behind me and clicked the light switch off.. Jo was up on her knees, waving her hand at me.

  “Come here. No more pictures,” she said.

  “We haven’t seen the ghosts.”

  “So? Come on.” She reached out for my fingers, pulled me down beside her, and I felt her cool breath on my chin. “Maybe they’ll see us.”

  And I thought, That wouldn’t be so bad.

  EVERYONE GRIEVES IN A UNIQUE WAY

  The week after Curtis returned from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his ex-girlfriend Dana was murdered. She was found pretty much drained and wrapped in her shower curtain on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. No suspects. Funny thing—while Curtis prayed at the Mount of Olives and retraced the steps of Jesus, Dana was the only person he couldn’t forgive. Tried and tried, but couldn’t because he remembered how it felt when she cheated the second time, called off the engagement, made fun of him joining the Pentecostal church her sister attended, how she’d said he traded singing rock & roll for southern gospel: “That high mousy voice singing about Jesus? You want to be all Holy Roller sweetness?”

  The first person to tell him about Dana missing, and later about Dana dead, was Dana’s older sister Veronica. She had led Curtis to church a year before when things started going really bad with his and Dana’s relationship. He thought it would make things better, but Dana reacted like she was running from wasps. She dumped him. Six months later, he started dating Veronica, who had always been so understanding and pure, if not quite as drop dead gorgeous. No sex—it was like junior high.