(This part was written last week, October 17, 2017.)
That gall durn Ben Slipowitz keeps pestering me. Sure he was the best damn friend a fella ever had but he’s been dead for 10 damn months. Why the hell can’t he leave me alone? Most every night, usually about nine o’clock he starts banging on the ceiling. I look up and there’s this dark mist with an outline of ole Ben’s face in it, soze I know it’s him. He winks at me too. Then he swoops and swirls around the cabin sometimes making this, I guess you’d say, cackling sound. After a few minutes everything gets quiet and then I see him plain as day sitting in a chair by the fireplace with his old hunting jacket on, the one with the blood stain when he cut himself skinning a rabbit. He’ll look over at me, smile from one darned ear to the other then he’s gone. Who needs that kind of aggravation?
Ben and I hunted and fished together for a good fifty years, since we was kids. Well we fished that long, we gave up hunting a few years back. Ben, why he got tired of all the work that went into hunting compared with fishing and me I just lost my taste for killing mammals. Sometimes another friend or my oldest boy or one of my cousins visiting from the city would join us, but most of the time it was just the two of us. Ben died of a whopper of a heart attack just under a year ago. Was tying his shoes right here in the cabin when all of a sudden like he stood up, put one hand to his chest and looked straight up with his mouth wide open in a silent scream. Then he dropped like a dang rock and hit the floor with a thud. Yeah I saw it all right and knew without a doubt he was goner when he fell. I checked for a pulse just the same and there was nothing doing. Dead just like that, 67 years old, same age as me. I aim to go on living a lot more years though don’t know that I'll make it if Ben don’t stop visiting me from the spirit world or wherever the hell he’s supposed to be. Damn him.
Ben had never married and was an orphan so I was his only family to speak of. I got divorced from my darling Rebecca four years ago. Once our kids growed up and left home all she and I did was argue. She’d always wanted to do one thing and I’d always want to do the other. Worse, she brought up every bad habit I ever had and raked me over the damn coals about everything. Nothin’ I did was ever right anymore and I supposedly wasn’t good enough for her. I half think Rebecca just went off her nut ,the way she talked. Anyway I was the one who suggested the divorce. I could tell the old battle axe was surprised, but her pride made her agree to it and before the papers were even filed she went off and moved in with her spinster sister over in Cabook County where I guess she spends her time talking about what I no good bum I was — or am. Hell, I don’t care. Like I said the kids are grown, Tom is big wheel in the real estate biz, Lorna is nurse and the littlest one, Jim is a fashion designer. Yup he’s a queer. The signs were all there when he was a kid, never did take to outdoor actives which is pretty much all I do. Real mama’s boy that one. Oh hell, I don’t care, he’s still my boy and I still love him and always will. I just don’t like to think about what he and what he calls his partner do when the lights are out.
I sold the house when Rebecca left and moved permanent into our cabin, it’s right down by where Lake Tahoma and Big Frog River meet. I still fish pretty regular — hell, who am I kidding, I damn near fish everyday — and many a meal I eat is fresh perch or trout or salmon or whitefish or whatever the hell I happen to catch. My life’s pretty good. I got all the nature a fella could desire which is good for long walks and now I got a satellite dish for the TV so that can keep me company along with all the books I never got around to reading when I was working full time at the mill which I did for 40 years. Mostly its detective stuff and biographies of great men although I don’t know how damn great some of the people I read about are. Most any person who lived long enough to be worth writing about has done his share of bad things. Hell I’m the first to admit that I ain’t exactly been an angel myself. Don’t believe me, ask Rebecca, she’ll give you an earful.
Yeah sure I’m lonesome a lot of the time. I spent so damn many years with the guys at the mill and with a house full of kids and Rebecca that I’m used to other folks. I go into town now and again like for shopping and sometimes stop at McGinity’s for a beer or six but most days it’s just me and of course that gall darn ghost. I reckon it’s about time I got back to writing about Ben in the afterlife, cause that’s far and away more interesting than me babbling on about my Rebecca — who ain’t mine no more — or the kids or my solitary life.
More than once, hell more than a dozen times, I’ve asked Ben just what the hell he wants out of me. I’ve asked that question in as many different ways as I can come up with but it don’t matter no how cause that son of a bitch don’t answer. I told ya what he does do and none of it entails him talking to me let alone explaining hisself.
The first time he “visited” less than a week after he died, it scared the bejeezus out of me. I thought for a second that I’d gone stark raving loco. I didn’t sleep a wink that whole night. The next night he came I was a little less scared but I still damn near soiled myself and still hardly got any shut eye. As he started coming regular I got a bit more used to it until by and by I came to get irritated by the whole show. Pretty much the same dang thing every night. Sometimes there’d be more thumping and other times he sit longer and other times the top of his head would float away while he was sittin’ there. That was downright spooky the first time, but like everything else I got used to it. What I can’t get used to is the whole idea of it. What’s he after? Is this what I have to look forward — more like dread — for the rest of my days?
Last week I drove into town and went to the library where I checked out everything I could find about the afterlife and what they call seances and mediums and anything else that was halfway serious about visitors from the graveyard. I’m still pouring through some of this stuff but so far haven’t learned nothin’ that I can apply to my situation. It does seem that Ben may be stuck going from this world to the next but that’s just a theory. I’ve thought about having someone over to the cabin hoping that Ben will do one of his “performances” and that I can at least talk about it to another human being. Thing is I don’t know whether to warn them or not. If I don’t it might scare a person half to death and if I do they might think I’m loony, especially if Ben takes that night off.
Ben lived most of his life in a small house just down the road a piece from our place. Course he lived alone. He worked at the lumberyard which was right by the mill so we saw each other every day. On weekends and vacations we’d head down to the cabin, which is only a half hour ride from town and like I say sometimes we’d have company. Ben always seemed like a happy guy, always ready with a joke or a story and a pretty good listener too. No one had a bad word to say about Ben, least of all me. Up until he started haunting me I regarded him as as fine a man as has walked the earth. Oh there was nothing special about him, no great talent, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but a nicer person you’d never meet. That was while he was alive, though. Right now I’m dealing with his spirit and he’s become goddamned aggravating.
PART TWO
(This part was written today, October 25, 2017, a week after I wrote the first part.)
I’m finally shed of Ben, least I think so, it’s been five days since he showed up last and he’d never before missed more than one day. What happened was this. The night after I wrote the first part of this story (and it’s a true one, I swear to God) I was sittin’ in my rocking chair by the fire reading one of those books on the afterlife with stories of ghosts and what not. To tell ya the truth I was having a deuce of a time making heads nor tails of most of what I was reading. Some of it just seemed damned silly and other books were full of scientific mumbo jumbo that I could’t understand to save my life. Anyway I’m getting kind of intrigued by this one story in a book by this fella who investigated ghost sightings when damn Ben shows up banging away at the ceiling. It was one interruption too many.
“Goddamn it, Ben!” I hollered, “you need to stop with this right now. You got no call to interrupt me every dang evening. I’ve been patient but this has gone too darn far. You hear me?”
Next thing there’s Ben again sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace from where I’m sittin’. Only this time he ain’t grinning. Instead he’s got a sadder looking face than you ever did see. In fact, it looks like he’s got some sort of afterlife tears streaming down his face.
“Now don’t get all weepy on me, Ben. That’s no better than the way you usually are. I’m sorry you’re dead but I can’t do nothin’ about it and I’ve got a right to live my life.”
Then Ben’s ghost looks right at me, more like he’s staring, and he mouths something, a word that seems like “shout.”
"You sayin’ not to shout at you? Is that it?”
Ben shakes his head no and mouths the word again. This time I take it for “out.”
“You saying ‘out’? Is that it?”
Ben nodded his head yes.
Suddenly it came to mind that Ben died right here in this cabin and maybe for some reason his spirit was stuck here and he wanted to get out. I walked over the front door, looked back at Ben and then swung the door open. I nodded my head towards the outdoors. The next thing I know this mist in the shape of Ben is flying past me and out the door. I look outside and the mist is hovering in the air about 40 feet over the ground. It seems to be smiling.
“You takin’ off now, Ben?”
The mist seems to nod its head yes and then breaks into the biggest gall durn smile you ever did see. Next he flies back and forth this way and that, up high, down low, doin’ summersaults and back flips like a kid diving into the lake on the first day of Summer vacation. Finally he paused for a few seconds and it was pretty clear he was looking down at me. I got the feeling this was goodbye. I gave him a good hard look and waved and said, “goodbye Ben, I loved you, you were a great friend.”
He hovered another few seconds and then disappeared into thin air.
I went back into the cabin and balled my eyes out. I hadn’t cried like that since I was little kid. I’ll tell you, it felt good. When I was done sobbing and had blown my nose and splashed my face I poured myself a tall glass of whiskey and sat staring at the fireplace, I had a good fire going. At one point I thought I saw Ben’s face in the fire but I’d been dozing on and off and it had been a pretty tall glass of whiskey so I don’t put much account to it.
It was late when I went to bed and I slept better than I have in years. When I woke up the next morning I had a huge appetite so I made eggs, ham, flapjacks and toast and ate every bit of it. Then I had a powerful hankering to do some fishing, which I did. I sat by the river with my pole in the water and goddamn I never caught so many fish in my life. The whole time I could feel Ben’s presence beside me and I tell ya that it was a great comfort. I miss the son of a bitch.
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