Deadly Decision (11 page)

It sounded dull to me, but knowing Trina, it would be classy. I headed out for another load.

“Does the air seem funny in here?” I asked on returning. “I opened the window, but it still feels stuffy, like there are too many people and not enough air.”

“And you think the mice are breathing in all the air? They must be having a club meeting.”

I laughed at Trina's joke, but the sensation of not being alone in the room persisted.

I wondered if the creepy feeling could be from high electro-magnetic fields. There were only two receptacles in the entire room, both the old two-prong format, without the ground. The ceiling light was a flat oval of opaque glass, something from my mother's era. In my minds-eye, I could see the cracked wires hidden behind the old glass. EMFs generated by old electrical wiring caused some people to have feelings of paranoia. Was there enough old wiring in the room to create my feeling of being watched? I hated to think my brain was affecting by wiring, but the room definitely felt odd.

With my possessions moved, I was eager to escape the heaviness of the house. Perhaps our construction efforts had created toxic fumes, like cyanide that is found in treated wood. Even with the windows open, the air felt stale. I wandered to the backyard.

The only good thing about walking around in a depressed slump is it gives you a chance to see the ground, and in this case the grass. Locals called it centipede. It crept along, one blade crawling over another, rooting as it went. The cross-hatched carpet held the sandy soil in place, but it didn't look much like Kentucky Blue. Staring at the web of grass, I realized it reflected the current state of my life: a maze with no way out.

I didn't miss Barbara, but I did miss the opportunity she had provided. With Barbara gone, it was impossible for me to figure out why Jimmy had appeared to me. I would never know who the other ghost boy was, or what role he played in Jimmy's death. And why would two boys, separated by a hundred years and four states, appear together?

Losing Barbara was like having the Internet crash: there were questions with no way to access the information. Maybe I should forget I had ever seen the ghosts, but knowing the spirits lingered in the house bothered me. Why couldn't they move on?

And I would never forget the demon Barbara had contacted in the attic. She never resolved where demons went after leaving her. He, too, could still be lurking in the house. Could a demon hurt the spirit-Jimmy? I remembered the warnings going off in my head that first time I had met Barbara. I should have listened. I should have run.

Even in the warmth of the outdoors, my brain continued to spin like a top. A loud noise startled me, and I jumped and then felt foolish as I realized it had been a car backfiring.

I hadn't been in Ted's workshop since he moved it to the garage, so I ambled that way. My son-in-law was just what I needed to help me forget my other problems. His singing drifted across the yard.

He stopped when he saw me. “Hey, Bill.”

I looked around, pretending to be comfortable, one man out for a walk, stopping to talk to another. The cans were gone, along with the other junk. More trips to the dump, I imagined. More reasons for Mitch to be at the house. Since Ted had removed several of the smaller trees, natural light filled the room. In addition, a long utility light hung over the work area.

Ted stood behind his easel, the afternoon sun illuminating the space around him. Tubes of paint covered the surface of the old workbench. Small containers rested on a shelf, along with a radio and CD player.

“So what are you working on?” I asked.

“I'll show you.” Ted turned a large canvas toward me, partially covered in shades of green, with bold red and blue, and bits of brown in the center. I had no idea what it was. It certainly was not like the painting he had done for Betsy. She wouldn't have lied about Ted painting it, would she?

“It's called
Garden of Gethsemane
. It's not finished, but it's coming along.

I stared, trying to see a garden in the random dabs of color. “So who'll buy something like this?”

“It's already sold. A church in Columbia wants me to do six pieces.”

“Churches buy real paintings?” All I remembered seeing in church was the usual cheap prints of Christ knocking at the door, and the traditional Last Supper that someone had painted-by-numbers and donated.

Ted swatted at a mosquito that buzzed around his head. “You know, art shaped culture in the past. But sometime during the industrial revolution, art and religion got lost. Christian artists, like me, are trying to use art to bring others closer to Christ.”

“I don't think many churches will buy paintings. That seems beyond what God wants in His house.”

Ted leaned against the side of the heavy workbench. “I disagree. In the beginning, God created. He dreamed and formed—and painted. And He still creates. He makes new lives, new worlds, new species. Our creativity comes from God; it's one of His gifts to us. I think God smiles when we place art in our churches.”

Where was all this coming from? Ted had never talked so much before. “So how can having art in a church help someone's faith?” I wasn't so much interested as I was reluctant to leave his workshop. He believed I saw Jimmy. Maybe not his earth-trapped soul, but something. Maybe Ted secretly agreed with Barbara, that souls can linger. A spark ignited in my chest.

“There's a spiritual dimension to both music and art,” Ted continued. “When Trina and I go to a Christian concert, the audience is moved by the music in a way words alone can't. Art has the same ability to show God to the world. It's another tool He can use.”

Here was my open door. “If there is a spiritual dimension to art, how about death? Is there a spiritual dimension after death?”

“What?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked, impatience coloring my words.

“I believe in life after death, if that's what you mean.”

“Did I see Jimmy's spirit in the attic?” I blurted. My stomach churned. Did it really matter what Ted thought?

Ted was silent before he answered. “No.”

“Then what did I see?”

“I don't know. I've been praying about it because I know it bothers you.”

“Of course it bothers me. It should bother you, too; it's your house.” Why had I thought I could talk to this man?

“You led us to the fiber and bolt. Maybe that's all that was to happen. I can't explain what you saw, so I have to let it go.”

“Let it go. Just like that?”

“What else can I do?”

Ted dabbed at the canvas with his brush, adding bits of yellow.

A mosquito landed on my leg and injected her proboscis into my skin. She needed blood to grow her eggs. I was willing to share, but mosquitoes also brought disease. What kind of stupid plan was that for creation? What else in God's plan was flawed?

“When do you paint the flowers?” I asked, needing to move my thoughts somewhere else.

“They're already there. It's called abstract expressionism. A lot of us Christian artists are using this format, but it's not new. Actually it started around 1920 with Jackson Pollock.”

“So the flowers are there, but you have to have faith to see them.”

“Sort of.”

“Abstract expressionism, huh?” Talking to Ted had only added to my frustration. “I had better let you get on with abstracting your expressions.” I walked out of the workshop into the hot sun, my black mood failing to provide shelter from the scorching heat.

Everything stable in my life was gone, and I drifted as the tide willed.

 



 

After supper, when the temperature had dropped to eighty--still hot for this northerner but as cool as it was going to get before the mosquitoes descended in earnest—I grabbed the hoe and headed to the back of the yard. Manual labor didn't require any brainpower of its own, and I had a lot of thinking to do.

Between my earlier hacking, and the trampling by the drug investigators, the marijuana patch was now a weed infested square of sandy soil. It was visible from anywhere in the back yard.

Finding marijuana at the old Barnet place had been local front page news. The story had attracted the curious like garbage attracts rats. Between Ted and me, we had chased a dozen young kids out of the yard since the article had been printed. Mitch hadn't shown much interest one way or the other. When I quizzed him about it, he acted bored. Not the reaction I expected from someone who had just lost his crop; but then maybe he had another supply growing somewhere else.

The interest in the marijuana patch would remain until the evidence of its existence was gone. At the end of an hour, I had managed to clear a section of weeds extending from the edge of the marijuana patch all the way to the foundation of the old summer kitchen. As far as thinking, I had gotten nowhere. The ghost boys were still lingering but unable to contact me, Ted was still my son-in-law, Mitch was still strange, and the demon was still missing.

Trina approached, holding a glass.

I gulped the cold water gratefully.

“You've really been working. Devil got your tail?”

“What?”

“You used to ask me that when I was working hard. You said I acted like the devil was after me. It was supposed to be funny, but I never got it.”

I thought of my experience in Williamson Park, the swirling entity trying to force its way into my body.
Is the devil after me?

“It looks nice,” Trina said.

“I've been working to get rid of your marijuana plot. After all the lectures I gave you in high school…”

“Dad,” Trina laughed.

“Mostly I want to keep the kids from trampling through the yard.”

“There isn't much here to trample.”

“I've been thinking. How about a gazebo?” I put the empty glass in the grass and moved to the stone foundation of the old summer kitchen. “We could put it here. And then we could plant some of those azalea bushes around it, to make it look nice.”

“That would be pretty.” She plopped onto the grass and stretched out her long legs.

“I can run some wiring out to it, and install a ceiling fan. That'll keep most of the mosquitoes away in the evenings, at least for a while.”

“Strange how you and I both ended up not doing what we were supposed to do.”

“What do you mean?” I sat beside her in the moist grass.

“You were supposed to be a lawyer. All the men in your family were lawyers. Instead, you're a school teacher. And I am a school teacher, when what I really love is fixing up this house and starting a business…”

“But you went to school to be a teacher.”

“I know.”

She had never told me this before. Had I pressured her to be something she didn't want to be? “Maybe we're the family rebels.”

She lay back in the grass, her arms folded under her head. I followed her example, remembering the nights we used to do this. We would weave the most elaborate stories about outer space, and the stars, and what might really be out there. I longed for those years.

“Aunt Betsy called today.”

My back stiffened. “Oh? What did she want?”

“She wanted to know how you were, said you hadn't called in a while.”

“The phone works both ways.”

“You should call her.”

“You know my phone was lost in the wreck.”

She rolled toward me. “You can always use mine. What did you fight about?”

“Nothing important.”

“Then why won't you call her?”

I looked away from her questioning eyes, back to the spot where the marijuana had been growing. “I didn't see Mitch today. The police finally get around to raiding his house?”

“He's working extra at the garage. I really think you're wrong about Mitch.”

I was surprised when she let the subject drop so easily. It wasn't like her to let me off the hook.

“How?”

“You see a lot of kids at school. And I trust your judgment, I really do.”

“But?”

“But Mitch is not a bad person.”

“A rattlesnake looks harmless until he's backed into a corner. Just keep your eyes open when he's around, that's all I ask. If he's smoking pot, it won't hurt anyone but him. Except now he'll have to grow his crop somewhere else.”

She sat up, her back stiff. “Why are you so absolutely sure it was Mitch?”

“Who else could it have been?”

Trina snatched the empty glass off the grass and stood. “It wasn't Mitch.”

I watched her retreating back, and then returned to my hoe, forcing it deep into the sandy soil.

There was something I had yet to discover about this house. The thought made me uneasy. So far, discovery had been painful. As for Betsy, she would call when she was ready.

 



 

“Good night Dad.” Trina stretched and walked toward the stairs. “You headed to bed soon?”

“After I catch the rest of the news.”

“Don't stay up too late.”

“I'll be up as soon as the news is over. Maybe I can trap some of those Palmetto bugs of yours before I turn in.”

“If you can do that, stay up all night! The jar's under the sink.”

“Don't need the jar,”

Trina's mouth turned down. “Then don't catch them. It's not their fault they ended up in my kitchen. We just need to put them back in their own place. Besides, the one you stomp might be a dad with a family, or a mom with babies to feed.”

“Trina, go to bed,” I said, laughing.

Her soft spot for everything living had created many funny memories. Obviously, she had forgotten our earlier disagreement.

The news ended. I remained in the recliner.

A late movie came on.

The sound of gunshots woke me. I looked at my watch. One AM. Rambo was after the bad guy. I hoped he would have better luck with his problems than I was having with mine. After a glance in the kitchen for bugs, I headed up the stairs.