Emery looked at her phone.
Hey Emery, I was wondering if your auntie can help me. I am looking for some information on a guy who lived in Longmont. He is supposed to have died a little while ago, but he may be hanging around. I don’t want anyone to know it’s me who’s asking. Do you think you can ask her for me? I’ll make it worth your while. 🙂
Emery was more than willing to ask Aunt Candace who, in turn, would be more than willing to blab all she knew about any topic to her niece. It sufficed to show up armed with two ears and a question. But still, what had Emery said to Gator? When he was in the hospital he had been ranting to her about something called The Garden Terrace of the Ravenous Ghosts. That sounded like a video game to Emery, but Gator insisted that he was not talking about assembling menu items for a virtual restaurant. What had Emery replied? “Oh yeah, I see your point. My aunt set up a business to stop the persecution of dead people.”
This had caused Gator to stop talking and fixate on Emery. “What?” he had asked. He had been trying to tame his urge to reach for the bottle of pills Emery had smuggled into the hospital.
Emery was pretty sure Gator was hundred percent spaced out as usual and she was just humoring him. “Yeah, you shouldn’t worry about these things. My aunt is maybe a little eccentric.”
But what Aunt Candace was trying to be was the antithesis of eccentric. Ever since she ditched Mormonism she kept trying to find ways to subvert Mormonism. Instead of claiming the dead by baptizing them so that they could enter the Kingdom of Heaven, she started encouraging ghosts to stay put and be happy where they were already hanging out.
As Aunt Candace said, “I want the spirits to be in peace wherever they are and without interference.”
Emery texted Gator back.
No problem. I’ll ask her. Who is it?
Emery was watching her mother peel potatoes with her one button automatic potato peeler machine, a Christmas gift.
She glanced at her phone again.
Keith Kumasen Abbott
Then another text.
Could you also ask her if Moses is in Longmont these days?
Then another text.
Check about F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you can.
Thx.
“Now,” Emily Noel said to her daughter, “fixing up a tray of funeral potatoes will be a cinch.”
“Who died?” Emery asked.
“What?” Emily asked. “Oh. Oh no, I just meant in case anyone dies, it will save time.”
Keith Kumasen Abbott woke up in his garage on 1046 Grant Street. He felt a little hungover and blue after the night out with his buddies and Ernest Hemingway in Beer Springs. He dreamt he was a soldier but not in a traditional war. He knew he was in danger. He heard no explosions, the only sensation was an enormous bear giving him a sudden hug. “Well,” Keith thought in his dream, “I can’t be dead. I forgot my dog tags. They wouldn’t know who I was.” Then he dropped through several thousand feet of clouds, still holding his purifying pills for he knew if he saved them he would become a member of some club although he couldn’t remember it’s name.
But when Keith woke up he knew the name of the club. It was The Caterpillar Club.
That’s what it felt like, dying. Like an enormous bear gave him a hug. Why had Keith dreamt of dying? He was already dead. Keith began to think about Hero Pills, the collection of short stories he’d written back in 1968. Some in 1969. Maybe he just edited them in 1969. Maybe he rewrote them in 1969. What happened in 1968? Did he really want to be a caterpillar? Keith began to mentally review the last story in the collection entitled Hero Pills, the text still lodged deep within the recesses of his mind.
Bunting
“Exactly how do you bunt?”
“Like this.” Spell grabbed his bat and put it in his right hand. He let the heavy end fall in his left hand. “You hold it out, like this.” He held the bat out in front of him, arms extended, legs slightly bent and relaxed, almost up on his toes, the bat level with his chin as he bent over.
“I see” the interviewer said, his voice unaccountably trailing off. He turned and looked out over the sparkling green field with its white figures. “They say you’re immortal.”
“Well I wouldn’t say that,” Spell stayed in his pose, “but I’ll be around as long as bunting is.”
The pitcher wound up and threw the ball. Spell deftly punted it with the bat.
“How do you find yourself preparing yourself? Do you get the jitters?”
“Yeah, I get them.”
“How do you cope with them?”
“Let’s knock it off for the day.” He waved out to the pitcher who nodded and shuffled off the mound, later to be killed in a car wreck around Christmas time.
They walked slowly towards the shower room. The concrete walkway echoed with their footsteps. As they entered the locker room, the smell of the bodies hanging around, one body for each locker, seemed to leap up and literally clog their noses.
“I don’t know why they have to hang the Hall of Fame here,” Spell said. His face twitched under the five year growth of beard. The rags he had on could barely be called a uniform. He bent over, untying his shoes with one hand, the other hand still hanging onto the bat.
The interviewer watched, his pencil diddling on the white pad in his hand. “How’s the bunt business going?”
“That’s a dumb question. Ask me another one.”
The interviewer shrugged, the movement sending his shoulders up and the collar of his wet raincoat brushed the back of his neck, sending shivers down his spine. He wondered how long he’d had to stand in the rain while they tried to revive Spell. He’d been dead drunk, passed out in the bullpen. He was near the end of an illustrious career.
Spell finished putting on his dress shoes and they both pushed their way through the bodies towards the exit.
“It’s a living, I suppose.” Spell shook his head, his right arm pushing against the heavy metal door. “I can’t get this open,” Spell grumbled, after trying the door with his arm for a few minutes.
“Let me…” the interviewer said, pressing his shoulder to the metal door.
After a brief moment of mutual pushing, the both turned and looked down the aisle. Spell pointed with his bat above the feet of the Hall of Fame. “We’ll have to get out the way we came in, I guess.”
The bodies seemed to have increased and they walked for so long down one aisle, the air getting bluer and colder, they finally convinced themselves that they should turn, they walked slower and slower as the aisle continued. They came to a slow halt.
“Hey…. are we in the same locker room we walked out of?”
The interviewer shrugged.
Pushing two bodies apart, Spell began to trace his initials in the ice forming on a locker door.
“Damn it, Persephone,” Keith thought of his daughter making YouTube videos. He was sure he’d never get famous and land up wedged in a cardboard box like Ernie. Then again, Persephone might have other ideas. Keith slowly picked up the Phantom Genuis pen and started to draw on the wall.
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