Everyday Ghosts (5 page)

A man holding a clipboard with a pencil behind his ear greeted them. He wore a red tie and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. “Thanks for coming, Father,” he said. “You're the only one. Nobody else showed.” He shrugged. “I'm from the county. We can start whenever you're ready.”

“Who are all those other people?” asked Father Gabriel.

“Them? Well, a couple of them knew one or another of the deceased, as far as I can tell. Most just like to go to funerals, I guess. The ones we're putting in didn't have much in the way of kin.”

“How many are there?”

“Of the deceased, you mean?” The
man looked at his clipboard. “That would be fourteen hundred, Father.”

“How's that again?”

“That would be fourteen hundred.”

“Do you mean to say one thousand and four hundred?”

“One thousand four hundred and fifty-six, to be exact,” the man answered, consulting the clipboard again. “It's about a year's worth.”

“Excuse me please,” said Father Gabriel.

He turned and walked back to the Jeep. Pete and the man from the county watched him go. His steps were unhurried, and he looked around him as he walked as if he were out for a stroll. He opened the Jeep's door carefully. Then he lurched into the front seat, slamming
the door behind him. He stared ahead for several minutes. Then he put his head down and covered his face with his hands. Pete saw his shoulders start to heave.

The man from the county took the pencil from behind his ear and scratched his nose with the eraser end. “Do you think he'll be back?” he asked Pete.

“I think so,” Pete answered. “I think he will.”

The man shrugged again. He pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and folded it into his mouth. He rolled the foil wrapper into a little silver ball and played it between his fingers.

A few minutes later, Father Gabriel got out of the Jeep. He walked past Pete
without looking at him and took his place beside the open grave. It was filled with a mound of black plastic bags. They were tied shut with yellow bands. Many were dusted with streaks of gray-white ash.

Father Gabriel clasped his hands together and, looking downward, began to speak. “God did not make death. Nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living. He fashioned all things that they might have being, and the creatures of the world are wholesome. There is not a destructive drug among them, nor any domain of the nether world on earth, for justice is undying. This is a reading from the Book of Wisdom.”

There was a pause. Father Gabriel raised his eyebrows at the scattered
mourners. “Amen,” a few of them murmured.

“The breakers of death surged round about me,” he went on. “The floods of perdition overwhelmed me. In my distress I called upon the Lord. From His temple, He heard my voice, and my cry reached His ears.”

After he was finished speaking, Father Gabriel nodded and strode away, back to where Pete stood. He closed his hand around Pete's arm and held it there. Pete felt his hand tremble.

“Thanks, Father,” said the man from the county, chewing his gum. “That was great.”

“Do you know a cheap dentist?” asked Father Gabriel.

“Sure, there's a clinic right here
in Pomona. I'll write down the directions.”

A mourner made her way toward them. One of her shoes was much bigger than the other, and she walked with a limp, holding up a black umbrella that was open above her to block the sun. She gazed at Father Gabriel through the black mesh of her veil. “My brother's in there,” she said, tilting the umbrella toward the grave. “My little brother Kenny. He never come to much but I wisht it hadn't ended up this way.”

“Your brother is not there, my child,” said Father Gabriel. “His soul is with God.”

“Do you think so, Father?” She leaned forward hopefully. Her eyes glistened.
“Do you really think so? He could never catch a break. They got him on every little thing. He tried and tried but it was just no use. Nothing ever come out right. He was a lot younger than me. I used to play with him when he was just a baby. He was such a little baby. But he never had a chance.” Her voice broke, and she sobbed. “That poor boy just never had a chance.”

“There, there,” said Father Gabriel. He tightened his grip on Pete's arm. “God's way is unerring. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.”

The woman shut her eyes tightly. Then she opened them wide. A tear dropped to her cheek. “Thank you, Father,” she said. “Oh, thank you, thank you.”

Father Gabriel nodded, turned to Pete, and snarled under his breath, “Get me out of here.”

In the Jeep, Pete said, “You gave that woman comfort.”

“Drive faster,” said Father Gabriel. “My tooth is killing me.”

“I'm going the speed limit.”

“It was Samuel. The Book of Samuel. The verse goes on from there. ‘They cried for help, but no one saved them—to the Lord, but he answered them not. I ground them fine as the dust of the earth. Like the mud in the streets I trampled them down.' ”

The dentist's office was in a little strip mall between a car wash and a trailer park. On the plate glass window in front was a picture of a big white tooth with a smiling face. When they got out of the Jeep, Father Gabriel took hold of Pete's arm again and did not let go. The waiting room was mostly full. A nurse at the desk told them to take a seat. Father Gabriel glanced around the room. “Look at them all,” he muttered to Pete. “Just look at them. This time next year they'll all be ash and I'll be yammering over their grave.” The woman sitting next to him got up and moved to another chair.

When the nurse called him in, Father Gabriel insisted Pete come with him.
As they entered Father Gabriel stopped short when he saw an Indian man in a green smock standing inside. “Are you the doctor?”

“I am that,” the man answered with a chuckle.

“It's a Hindu,” Father Gabriel gasped, still clutching Pete's arm. “You have brought me to a Hindu!”

“I am pleased to say I am a nonbeliever,” the doctor said. “Do come in.”

Father Gabriel settled uneasily into the chair. The doctor pressed a button, and the chair slanted backward with a low buzzing sound. “What's happening? What are you doing?” Father Gabriel clutched at the chair's arms.

“The better to see you with,” chuckled the doctor, sitting on a stool beside
the chair. “Now, open wide. Oh my. Have you been drinking?”

“What do you take me for?”

“Very, very bad for the enamel. Tsk tsk. Now where does it hurt?”

Father Gabriel told him. The doctor dipped a stick into a pinkish gel in a beaker and rubbed the stick against Father Gabriel's gums.

“It's gone,” said Father Gabriel. “The pain is gone.”

“It's only a topical,” said the doctor.

“The pain is gone. One touch and you have taken it away. How can I ever thank you? Oh, I feel like I'm alive again!”

“It will wear off shortly. Sit down, please.”

“You have taken the pain away.” Father Gabriel clambered out of the
chair and pulled off the bib they had fastened around his neck. “I feel like myself again.”

“I have not completed the exam,” said the doctor.

“I misjudged you,” said Father Gabriel. “I misjudged your people. You have given me my life back.”

“I will not be responsible for this.”

“You've given my life back and I will never forget it.”

“I don't think he was finished,” said Pete, when they were in the parking lot.

“Oh, look,” said Father Gabriel. “Look how beautiful everything is. I don't want to go back yet. I want to go to the ocean. It's years since I've seen the ocean. The great Pacific! You'll take me, won't you?”

On the way, Father Gabriel laughed and pointed at everything moving past the windows of the Jeep, repeating, “Look—oh, look!”

Pete had to keep his eyes on the traffic. “Father,” he said. “There are many things I have to tell you.”

“I know, I know. But not now. Not yet. For the moment I am happy. Look at that—a big fat cigar floating in the sky! There really are miracles in the world.” Pete glanced up. It was true. There was a big cigar in the sky. A bright banner flapped in the clear air behind it.

Father Gabriel went on chattering happily the whole way, delighted with all he saw. The sight of the ocean silenced
him, but it did not stop his joy. Pete could see it still in his face. They stood together on the shore, the sea stretching before them, blue and measureless. On both sides the beach gave way to the slopes of faraway hills peaked with low clouds. Before them, the distance—a great blue shimmer—had no end. The sky widened above them as if it were spreading its arms to hold all that was below. The ocean's sound was everywhere, even though it was only a whisper, a gentle shushing that rose and fell but never stopped. In its tender way, it said to be quiet, and look, and that is what they did.

“Look—there's a Ferris wheel!” said Father Gabriel after a long while. “Let's go.” He jumped up from where he had
been sitting on the beach and hurried off, brushing sand from the seat of his robe. Pete followed.

The Ferris wheel was at the end of a pier. They edged their way through crowds that stood watching acrobats and street performers or milled around hot dog stands and soda fountains. A fat man chomping on a cigar helped them into their car. “We don't get many of your types around here,” he said. “But bless your heart.”

Father Gabriel pointed at his cigar. “We just saw one of those floating in the sky,” he beamed.

They were lifted up. Little by little, they rose. Even as they did, the sky did not seem to come any closer, but the ocean stretched farther away. The horizon
drew back and vanished. Father Gabriel caught his breath. “It's the top of the world,” he murmured.

“We're very, very high,” Pete agreed.

“It's the top of the world,” Father Gabriel repeated crossly.

“Father, what are we going to do?”

Father Gabriel sighed. “I'm going to go back and face the music and you are going to go off and live your life. It is time. Long past time, I would say.”

Pete looked down. “Where will I go?”

“Home.”

“I haven't got a home.”

“You'll make one.”

“I don't know how.”

“Then you'll do without. Look at all
those people down there. They're doing without. Didn't you see their clothes spread around them on the ground where they slept? You haven't had a home for a long time. We can't live in the world and we can't live anywhere else. Do you want to go on living as a ghost?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want not to want.”

An airplane crossed the sky above them. It went higher and higher, then turned on its wing, circling back. Its movement was slow. Its sound was swallowed by the throb of the sea.

“Brother Dominic, you know,” said Father Gabriel, “is the only one who ever comes to confession these days. Isn't it odd? I sit hunched in that booth twiddling
my thumbs, and he is the only one. And he is quite the little blabbermouth, I must say.”

Pete met his eyes. “Then you know.”

“If your question is how long can one live without revelation, the answer is forever. ‘He fashioned all things that they might have
being
.' If you have to remember any of it, remember that. And now there is one last thing I have to tell you.”

Father Gabriel told him what it was. It changed everything. Pete knew what he would have to do. His heart opened. It was as if he had the ocean inside him. Yet he was also filled with rage. He wept, and Father Gabriel took him in his arms.

“You should have told me before,” said Pete. “All this time I've lost.”

“I'm terribly sorry, my boy. I haven't been in my right mind for years. Please forgive me, Pete.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

“I'm telling you now,” said Father Gabriel. “We have to start somewhere.”

On the way back to the Jeep, they weaved through crowds along the boardwalk. Sellers spread their wares out everywhere. There were blankets across the ground covered with polished shells and charms for sale, bins and easels filled with colorful drawings, musicians playing their many different instruments in
a babble of music that almost drowned out the sound of the sea. A little girl with a ponytail was sitting at a plain folding table. On the tabletop were a little red plastic tube and a square of cardboard. The girl sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her.

“What is it that you are selling, young lady?” asked Father Gabriel.

“Oops. I forgot,” said the girl. She picked up a small pink purse from the ground beside her and set it on the table. She unsnapped its bright gold clasp. The only thing inside was a roll of tape. The girl leaned forward and taped the piece of cardboard to the edge of the table so that it hung down in front. In red magic marker, it said, GLIMPSES OF INFINITY—
one dollar
.

“You are selling glimpses of infinity?”

“That's right. Would you like one?”

“Very much so.”

“One dollar, please.”

Father Gabriel placed the bill into the empty purse. The girl handed him the red tube. It had little plastic see-through circles at each end. They were smudged with fingerprints. Father Gabriel peered into one end of the tube.

“That's the wrong side,” said the girl.

Father Gabriel turned the tube around.

“You're still doing it wrong. You've got to hold it up.”

He did. He looked into it for a long time, his face slowly changing. “Oh my,”
he said. “Oh my. I never dreamed.” He handed the tube to Pete. All Pete saw were two straight lines, very close to each other. But as he watched, they grew even closer, without seeming to move at all, until bit by bit there was only a single line. Then, very slowly, the line disappeared, and all Pete was looking at was an empty circle in a wash of yellow light.