El-Don followed Buck out of the bar and onto Main Street, intending to drive his sedan home and hide in his basement until the evening blew over. As El-Don stood on the sidewalk he witnessed two of the ghosts climb into the bed of a vintage Chevy truck and stand next to a man strapped to the cab by a set of ropes. The man was wearing a large cardboard box and held a fishing harpoon in one hand. The three ghosts shook hands. The ghost in the oatmeal colored sweater lightly slapped the ghost in the carboard box on the back. Gertrude Stein was seating herself in the cab. The man in the box standing in the bed of the truck banged the fist that didn't hold the harpoon on the roof of the cab and the Chevy took off.
El-Don stared at the scene in front of his eyes. "You can see it clearly now, can't you?" Buck said. He shoved El-Don into his jeep. Candace and Hope attempted to get into the backseat. Buck pushed them out of the way with a force that sent Hope flying to the sidewalk and walked around to the driver's door.
Seated behind the wheel, Buck directed the Jeep after the fleeing Chevy truck. "It's those Hero Pills. You can see the spirit world with them," he explained to El-Don.
El-Don thought back to the fall. Back then his life seemed normal. Teary was promoting prairie dogs as pets, and he had been demoted, again, at work. Now he was seeing ghosts in a ghostly pick-up tearing through downtown Longmont, heading out to the prairie land.
"Look," El-Don began to feel close to experiencing what could be described as a mild heart attack. "I don't have the manuscripts."
"Who does?"
El-Don didn't want to meet the ghost of Keith Kumasen Abbott. "Lolly."
"I bet you they're going to the ranch," Buck said through gritted teeth. He swerved abruptly and headed into Carl Jr's drive thru. A wave of relief swept through El-Don. Maybe he could escape from Buck. El-Don was feeling decidedly out of his comfort zone. "That's were Lolly was last seen. We'll meet them in the Shadowless Room," Buck announced.
El-Don didn't want to go to the Shadowless Room.
Buck pushed the button to lock all the doors. He turned to his passenger. "What will you have? Hell, let's order a bunch of stuff, take it back to the to the ranch, throw a little party."
For once, El-Don wasn't rejoicing at the thought of fast food. He looked around for the nearest church. If he could get out of the jeep, maybe he could seek refuge, but then again the nearest church would certainly be locked up tight for the night. Come to think of it, Westview Presbyterian supported a food pantry and El-Don had been briefly involved as community co-ordinator of the InBetween Foundation. But close as it was to Carl Jr.'s, Westview probably didn't hold events on a Saturday night.
El-Don shut his eyes. "Oh Lord, help me," he prayed, "to face the trials and tributations this life has.."
"I'd park that routine if I were you, El-Don." Buck checked his mirrors to see if Candace and Hope had followed them.
Saturday night Mila was at home with Juanito. Listening to the sleeping baby breathe deeply in his crib, Mila checked her notes again.
1. Thursday - followed subject to Jewish bakery, Challah Maffia, subject picked up order in a large bag
2. Saturday - discovered subject by chance in Flexipals Toy Shop, overheard talking on phone about reservation for "lavoo tent"
3. Monday - picked up package at food pantry (for Tio Ben) after school and discovered subject handing out the veggie bags in the line up. Subject also handed out a card for free coffee and baked goods at the Boulder Mannughnite Church social hour on Wednesdays. Subject claimed to be a member.
Considering that only one of these encounters was due to Mila actually tailing Teary Filisteinsdatter Mast, it was surprising to learn that TFM was involved in so many activities with different organizations.
Mila started asking questions the following week. She brought Juanito to the Jewish bakery and said that she was picking up some treats for her mother-in-law. "Yeah, she's been feeling down ever since someone sent her a mean letter," Mila said as she paid for the pastries while holding the baby on her hip.
"Lilith? Someone sent Lilith a mean letter?"
"Yeah, anonymously. I hear it's been happening," Mila added casually.
The woman behind the counter swiftly changed the subject and offered Juanito a small cube of soft bread.
Then Mila tried to figure out what a "lavoo tent" was and asked her social studies teacher.
"You ever heard of a lavoo tent?" Mila asked. "It is some sort of bathroom?"
"A lavoo tent?" Mrs. Nilsen asked. "Does it have to do with the Sami community?"
"Who's a Sami?" Mila asked. "Where they at?"
Mila finally googled the Boulder Mannughnite Church and read that TFM was involved in the festivities agenda.
The teenager glanced once again at her baby boy, and then stuck her hand in her sweatshirt pocket and took out the sixty dollars in cash that she had earned trailing her cousin's cheating boyfriend to the mobile home park that afternoon when he should have been at the gym. The sixty dollars included expenses. Mila sighed. She pulled out her binder from behind her headboard and tucked the cash into a pocket. She was well past the hundred days saving challenge period and, because she had skipped days, her binder wasn't full. She thought of the money that Blessing was hiding.
Everybody is hiding something, that much Mila had learned early on in life. "But how can you live three separate identities while involved in three different organizations in the same area?" Mila asked aloud. Not that Mila thought that the Mannughnites were talking to the Jews and the Jews were talking to the Sami-American Club much or the Sami American Club talking to the Mannughnites on a regular basis. Despite leading a triple life, TFM clearly could fool people and fool them well, but why was that lady sending those poison pen letters? Did she want to get caught out? It sounded to Mila like TFM had some sort of Catholic guilt trip, and not the simple kind about getting spicy in the kitchen or dipping fingers into the charity box.
Mila didn't want to take any more risks when it came to TFM. She sensed danger.
Emery was turning fifteen in February. She had already achieved her Five Thousand Savings Challenge. Her binder was full of cash. And she had even more cash. She was now doubling the money in the binder, aiming to get ten thousand by the end of the year. Except Gator was dead. It didn't really bother her that her cut of Gator's cash was hidden in the garage of 1046 Grant Street. That was better than trying to hide the cash from her mom and, if Blessing kept her mouth shut, Emery could pretty much count on buying her own vehicle when she turned sixteen. But sixteen sounded like a long ways away and most days that frustrated Emery.
Gator's death was a shock and Emery convinced her mother to drive her to Loveland to attend Gator's funeral held a day after his death for the "sake" of Gator's soul. They sat in the middle of the Memory Space at 'S Natch Funeral Home and watched as Gator's body was prepared to be laid to rest as per Episcopalian rites. Gator lay in a big basket, swaddled like baby Moses.
"Well, at least he recognized Jesus," Emily muttered to herself, after learning that Gator was born a Jew.
Emery said nothing more to her mother during the service after that remark.
In the limelight of the Memory Space, Tirzah was saying a lot. Too much really. Actually what Tirzah said mainly concerned herself. Blessing was right, Tirzah Pyrestone was totally bonkers.
Emery looked around. There weren't many people in the Memory Space. The funeral directors were a really odd couple. One called himself Meth T and the other Goody. Meth T had a long beard and Goody sported a crew cut. They welcomed people, speaking as if the room were overflowing with visitors, and lit the candles to start the service.
"That's Buck Rogers, the rancher," Emily said, looking at a man two rows from the front. Buck had hired Reverend Cornell and paid cash for the entire funeral. There had been no autopsy.
Emery looked back towards the double doors and spotted Aunt Candace, attempting to appear incognito under a rainhat and dark glasses.
No one mentioned the bizarre lifesized cardboard cut outs, Gator's gluey eyes and his way of observing people or the Hero Pills during the service.
Kim, the breakfast lady at the Holiday Inn, talked about egg white omelets.
"I am not sure that being a candy striper suits you, if you get so caught up in people's lives," Emily said on the ride home. She thought her daughter could have done a better job at introducing Mormonism to Gator Matcha. Why hadn't Emery spoken to her about Gator before? They could have visited him together at the hospital.
"I just hope that he really found Our Saviour," Emery said with all the conviction she could muster.
"We need to prepare for Daddy's uncle's funeral and I would like you to help me," Emily said, switching the topic, thinking she needed to have some close mother daughter time to pry into Emery's friends. Emery's diary didn't mention anything about Gator. Reading Emery's diary reassured Emily that Emery was devoted to the Mormon cause and cherished her time at Young Women.
Emery tried to relax. She was now taller than her mother and inherited her lanky limbs from her father's side. She was tired of the six am Bible Study at home, tired of the time she had to commit to Young Women and desperately wanted take charge of her own agenda. Every night she copied pages of Eden's old diary into her own diary because she knew her mother was reading her diary. She had set up a hidden camera in her room and watched her mother read the diary, usually starting around ten am on the weekdays.....with a hot drink in her hand. Emery made sure to add a little extra that would keep Emily busy calling people up and texting radnom odd ball questions to virtual strangers, and thus less likely to dig around her room further.
In the car after the funeral Emery smiled and said, "Of course." She understood that the topic of Gator was far from over. Once home she went to her room to change and shook out half of the bottle of pills that she had pocketed from Gator's room at the Holiday Inn.
Taking advantage of a moment when her mother was looking in the fridge, Emery sprinkled the ground up pills into the funeral potatoes. "There," she thought with satisfaction, folding the mashed potatoes with a spatula. Dr. Bob's celebration of life party might take a different turn. Not that she thought anyone would die, no, Gator had been taking those pills for a long time before he died.
#longmont #colorado #mormonism #gator #matcha #loveland #funeralhome #rabbitirzah #keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #gertrudestein #ernesthemingway #rhinoritz #buckrogers
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