Warner Ghost

Crow, photo copyright Clare McCarthy

When  I taught t’ai chi ch’uan all over the state, I looked for big open airy rooms, with  nothing that needed moving out of the way, and cheap rent – to teach in. My go-to spaces were town halls, grange halls, and buildings where similar things were taught: dance, yoga, exercise classes, other martial arts.

One year I was looking for a place in Warner, and decided to check out the town hall – which is beautiful, I might add, and was perfect. However, the town-hall ladies-in-charge told me, there were times I wouldn’t be able to use it: town meeting, voting, Fall Foliage Festival week, plays, special programs, etc. And there were times when lots of chairs would need to be cleared out of the way. And, it was a bit pricey – so, not really perfect. But, they said, how about the big room in the old school where a dance class took place? The building was now used as town offices, no one was there in the evenings, it has a nice parking lot, and the rent was reasonable. 

Even better! As I fished out my checkbook to pay the first month’s rent, the ladies were whispering amongst themselves, and throwing quick glances my way. “Should we tell her?” I heard one say. More muttering, then it seemed a decision had been made.

“Ah… we should mention,” one of them ventured, “that there may be a ghost.” “Is a ghost,” another interjected. My eyebrows shot up. “He’s friendly,” the first continued. “ People who work there are often aware of him. No one sees him; they sense his presence, he straightens up things on the desks sometimes, once in awhile there are footsteps in the halls. We think he’s the ghost of the custodian who worked there until he was quite old. He seems to feel a responsibility towards the place.”

I’d met a few ghosts by then and wasn’t really concerned. “I’ll check it out, and explain to him what we’re going to be doing,” I said. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”  Rent paid, keys in hand, start date established, posters hung up, building use instructions in mind, I went early to the first class to make sure Henry knew we were coming. (I don’t remember the ghost’s name, so let’s call him “Henry.”)

The night entrance was through a side door that opened onto the parking lot. I found the light switches, located the bathrooms (boys and girls) on the first floor, found the stairwell and the practice room – it was perfect! – did a little exploring to get the lay of the building. Like most old buildings that aren’t lit up and you don’t know the geography of, it was a little spooky: echoing corridors, locked rooms with opaque glass, old school smell, surprising corners, odd shadows. But, nothing was too strange, so I went back to the practice room and did a little t’ai chi, explaining out loud to Henry who I was, what I was doing, what would happen during class, promising not to make a mess. “You’re welcome to come watch the class, Henry,” I said, “but please don’t interrupt, and please don’t scare the students as they come in and go out after class.”

I’m pretty sure Henry was there – it felt like I was being watched, and it felt like I was being listened to. When I’d finished, there was a contented feeling. “Henry and I are going to be buddies,” I thought. “He’s fine with me, and I’m fine with him.”

And everything was fine. From time to time, I’d feel him in the room during class; most often, he didn’t bother. A few students either knew the story of Henry, or felt something, so I told the story once in awhile. 

Two of my students were The Cop and his wife, The Teacher. They were usually the last ones out, and always asked if they could help me close up. “I’m pretty well set,” I said, “but my hands will be full, so if you wouldn’t mind making sure the bathroom lights are off downstairs as you go by, that will save me having to put everything down to do it.” “No problem,” they said, “we’ll take care of it every week on our way out.”

As I packed up my bags and locked the studio door, I heard their cheery “Goodnight!” as they slammed the outside door. A quick walk up and down the halls to make sure no one was left behind, and I clattered down the stairs. “Rats!” I said, as I passed the bathrooms. “They forgot to turn off the boy’s room light.” Off with the backpack, down with the bags, open the door. “Anyone in here?” I called. “Unh,” I heard. I checked under all the stall doors. No feet. Pushed open all the doors – nobody.  “I’m turning off the lights,” I said out loud. “Unh,” was the response. Slightly spooked, I turned out the lights, grabbed my gear, and left more quickly than I came in. Door locked, off I went until the next week.

After the next class, I asked The Cop if he’d remembered to shut off the bathroom lights on his way out. “Of course,” he said, “as we will tonight. Why?” “Oh, no reason,” I said. “Except that the boy’s room light was on when I left last week.”

“I think we’d better walk out with you,” he said, cop mode kicking in. “No, it’s ok, I think it’s just Henry,” I said. “I checked it out, there was no one there.” “Well, we’re going to wait out in the parking lot tonight until you come out,” he said. 

Deal.

After class, I heard The Cop and The Teacher walking about downstairs, and him calling out, “Anyone there?” before he shut off the boy’s room lights. “Lights are out and we’re leaving the building,” he called up the stairs to me, then I heard the door slam. I finished packing up, did my quick hall check, clattered down the stairs, and – the boy’s room light was on. I opened the door. “Anyone in there?” I called. “Unh,” no one said. “I’m shutting the light off and leaving, Henry,” I said, “see you next week!” “Unh,” the air replied. Out I went.

“The boy’s room light was on,” I reported, out in the parking lot. “No one was there,” The Cop said. “I checked, and I shut the light off.” 

And so it went for many, many, many weeks. The Cop would leave, shutting the lights off on his way out; the lights would be on when I came down the stairs, only in the boy’s room, every time. After awhile I stopped checking; I just opened the boy’s room door, reached in to switch off the light, and called, “Goodnight, Henry! See you next week!” and the darkness would answer, “Unh!” I sort of looked forward to our late-night communication.

One night, many months later – maybe it was a full moon night, maybe it was near the end of October – the energy in class was different, somehow, more agitated. Students were tired and crabby; they kept losing their balance; I mentally repeated “If you’re causing this, Henry, cut it out!” Finally class ended, The Cop and The Teacher and all the other students left, I did my upstairs hall check, but I was nervous, and jumpy – shadows were spooking me, I kept thinking I saw motion in the locked rooms. I was looking forward to heading home. Down the stairs; the light in the boy’s room was on; I opened the door, shut off the light, and said, “I’m leaving now, Henry. Not nice to mess with my class like that, if it was you causing the disruption tonight. I’ll see you next week!”

No response. No Unh. I hesitated, then beat it out of there quickly.

As I was driving out of town, I pondered; had hurt Henry’s feelings?  All these months, and tonight no response from him. I decided to try sending him a message. “Henry!” I thought, as hard as I could, picturing the inside of the building, “It’s ok, to come watch class, just don’t mess with the students. I’ll be back---“my thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a very loud, angry mental voice: 

“NOT HENRY!!!”

Published in the Concord Monitor, October  26, 2017, as “A Haunting Season.”

Portsmouth Punkinhead, Charley Freiberg photo, 2014

Sacred Tragedy

Autumn Angelica; Deb Marshall photo

Mid-October, and the dehumidifier in the cellar turned itself on again a couple of days ago: it’s rather warm, and humid, more like the end of summer than October. I systematically cleaned and put away all the summer clothes after our 90-degree September weather; I’ve had to pull a bunch of them back out of storage because it’s shorts and t-shirt weather, not long pants and wooley sock weather. 

We did have another frost the other night, which finally bumped off the zucchini plants, remaining tomatoes, and scarlet runner beans, and turned the basil into mush. The fall raspberries, however, are still in full production, and to pick them, some days we have to fight swarms of  yellow jackets and wasps.  I’m still finding a tomato or two in the compost bin from a volunteer plant; and the cherry tomatoes near the house still think it’s summer. The fava beans are still blooming, and an angelica plant I put in last fall suddenly shot up a week ago and opened eight huge, gorgeous blossoms; and some rogue petunias, and the calendula, are looking just fine. 

I’m supposed to be in the midst of my cleaning-out-the-garden vacation, but so far all I’ve done is start to gather together some of the tomato cages and continue the endless pulling of weeds. I can finish the cage-gathering job this week, and start to empty the flower pots on the wart, but even those are only half finished – one fuschia, and some lovely purple and white stuff and some pansies and petunias are merrily blooming away, cheek by jowl with the chrysanthemums, which are looking the worse for the warm weather. We brought the bay tree and kaffir lime tree and tender hibiscus inside a couple of weeks ago, but the passionflower has a handful of buds on it that are getting ready to open, so I’m leaving it out and keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll have time to bloom before I absolutely have to cut the vine back and haul it indoors for the duration. 

Catman Trimming the Catnip; Deb Marshall photo

Mr. Catmandoo is busy doing his own fall chores, pruning his many catnip plots back, which he does in surges, divided by big snacks in the kitchen and lengthy naps in his chair under the tent on the wart. I have a long list of things I still need to do: pull the carrots and parsley root and the few remaining beets, harvest the celeriac, dig some Jerusalem artichokes, search the scarlet runner vines for bean pods I missed, make sure no winter squashes got left behind. A big pile of cardboard and newspapers are waiting to be used as mulch in the garden, the blueberries that were plagued by mummy berry this summer need to be heavily mulched, and I need to bring in the solar jar lights from the wart rails, and the orb-that-changes-color from the middle of the garden before it freezes; and there’s a basket full of spring bulbs that need planting, the raspberry canes need to be cut back once they finish making berries, and the planters need to be emptied once the flowers stop blooming. Marjoram, bee balm, and eventually Jerusalem artichokes need to be cut back, sunflowers tugged out of the garden and any seedheads the birds haven’t yet cleared placed somewhere the the birds can get at them.  I really should try to locate the iris the marjoram overwhelmed this summer and move it someplace safer. The bird bath needs cleaning and storing, the hardy hibiscus needs mulching and covering with a snow roof, and the tent on the wart needs to go into winter storage. And weeding – oh, the weeds! And it all seems too soon!

As the leaves – which are very slow to turn and fall this year – are slowly turning and falling, we get to see stuff we haven’t seen all summer long – like the road from the wart, and the pile of old wire fencing that we’d put by to take to the dump but got covered by flora long before we got to it. In the apple tree, a lovely bird’s nest is now visible. It was a good year for apples, we have more in the freezer than we’ll be able to eat in three years; and apparently the birds enjoyed the apple tree this summer, too. 

Bird nest in apple tree; Deb Marshall photo

The end of summer is showing itself inside my house, slowly, as well. One sign I find unhappily every morning on my kitchen counters: the Beastreau beastie caught a mouse – or two – in the cellar and brought them upstairs to play with, where she promptly lost them. I can tell, because there are nibbles in  my ripe tomatoes every morning, there’s mousie poop adorning my counters, and I saw the butt end of a mousie launching itself from counter to stove when I came into the kitchen unexpectedly one morning. Besides, the Beastreau has spent hours every night planted in front of the stove, waiting…so far, she hasn’t waited long enough.

In the dining room, the three baskets full of green tomatoes have been reduced to two half-baskets, the rest becoming spaghetti sauce as the tomatoes ripened from inside out. The sauce is satisfying to store in the freezer down cellar -- as the freezers fill, my Inner Primitive dances with glee, counting on her fingers and toes all the lovely things she’ll be able to make to eat when the north wind howls and snow piles up in the garden.

But the Other Me, who finds the calling of the owls in the night-time has taken on a mournful sound, who has harkened more than once to the calling of ravens, is wrought with the bitter sweetness of the season. All that makes autumn the most beautiful and emotional time of year is the slow death of what was vibrantly alive and growing just weeks, or even days, earlier. And this is one of the mysterious, and sacred, tragedies of our human sensibility in our world.

Catman Attacks! Deb Marshall photo

Smartweed/Pinkweed; Deb Marshall photo

   

For the blog, 15 October 2017. 

Weed I can't identify - anyone know it? Deb Marshall photo

The Dark Lady will be telling true ghost stories to adults at the Library on 30 October at 7 pm. 

 

The Heart Swings

 From the Edge of Darkness

Love Lies Bleeding; Deb Marshall photo

It’s not supposed to be very warm and humid more than a week after the beginning of October, but it was, today, and the sky was black, and the world grey, and it rained, which we needed badly, but not enough, so I hope for more tomorrow. Then the sun came out and everything got rather steamy – we might have been in Florida, except not quite that steamy, and no crocodiles, that I could see. The roof of the tent on the wart had filled with water – it sags a bit when it rains a lot, and we need to do a controlled dump, otherwise, as today, there’s a muffled roar as the water dumps itself, and moments later a very annoyed Catman emerges from his chair under the tent, shaking his paws and glistening all over with wet and hissy spit. I suppose it could have been a wayward crocodile shifting weight in the pools in the tent roof that caused the water to dump – that wouldn’t be less believable than much of the daily news since January.

Just an hour or so later, it suddenly poured buckets with the sun still out and shining brightly. We jumped up and raced to the windows to look through the trees to the northeast and there it was: a low, very brilliant, very wide-banded rainbow. It didn’t last long before fading, but it was quite glorious while it was there. 

I’m on vacation so you can expect we’ll have many days of bad weather coming up. This is the vacation during which I usually put my garden to bed for the winter, but as it’s currently full-on summer again, I’m doubting how well that will go. I have no doubts that I won’t be mulching or pulling root vegetables or digging up gladiola corms or even collecting tomato cages in the rain; and I have limits about how much heat I’m willing to work in, too, especially in October.

With this evening’s temperature a balmy 60 degrees at nearly midnight, the windows wide open and crickets caroling and toads singing their night-time arias, it could be the middle of summer. I’m dressed, again, in shorts and a t-shirt, and stripped down to a tank top earlier today; and one of the Barkie Boys is too warm and panting a bit in the next room. The world seems a very odd place at the moment, with little we can rely on, and I mean that in the larger national sense as much as in the local weather. With the horrifyingly immature and ever-more-dangerous wing-nut we have  playing out his travesty of a presidency in the White House, it’s hard to know whether it will matter one whit whether I get the garden cleaned out and mulched or the spring bulbs planted. The garden, and I, may not be here next spring. As the Tall Dude said, if the two dick-waving fools start shooting nuclear bombs at each other, let the first one fall directly on my house: we won’t be able to live through the aftermath, and if by some sad chance we do, we’ll wish we hadn’t.

If you’re a person of a certain age, as I am, you probably remember the false promise of living through the bad days after a nuclear attack in the bomb shelter our fathers built for us, mostly in our cellars. Ours was equipped with fold-down platforms upon which we were going to have to sleep, and a few cans of vegetables and soup did eventually get stored on shelves there to slowly rust away. The test-weekend that Dad thought we should plan, so we could try out what it would be like, never happened; I suspect he realized that six people trying to live together without electricity in a really tiny space would lead to six throttlings in just hours. Bathroom facilities and air locks turned out to be a too-expensive engineering feat, so even in a nuclear emergency we were going to have to hold our breaths and run upstairs to use the facilities; and besides, the cellar flooded every spring, and so did the bomb shelter. It wouldn’t have worked even if the science had been adequate; and I wonder how many of those so-called shelters ended up as wine cellars, 50 years later? Dad did grow mushrooms in ours one year in a cardboard-box grow-your-own kit; the humidity was about right. I suspect he grew some black mold, also, but we didn’t know much about black mold up here in the north back in those days.

Many Sunflowers; Deb Marshall photo

Bomb shelters wouldn’t have saved us then, and the modern equivalent won’t now. The bombs are bigger, and mad men are in charge of wielding them. There may be some deep bunkers that could potentially protect a small number of people for a while – but they’ll either live out the remainder of their lives there, or emerge to a ravaged, ruined land, where nothing we recognize exists – if they ever can come safely out. It won’t be you and me in those deep bunkers, and I’m pretty sure the folks who are invited into them won’t have the survival skills to exist in the world that would be left. I’m not sure anyone has those survival skills. We won’t be able to fix it. If you doubt that, just take a look at the excellent job we did fixing New Orleans so it would never flood again after its last disaster; and the remarkable planning and execution of systems we’ve put in place  to safeguard the west coast to avert major tragedy when the inevitable, and long-overdue, earthquake causes a large part of California to fall off into the ocean. Maybe the North Koreans will ignore Trump long enough for the earthquake to happen – from all reports, that will pretty much destroy about half the country on its own, and it’ll save them the trouble. For that matter, just waiting as Trump continues his path of destruction of life as we know it will be very effective.

The moon is full, and the orb-that-changes-color-at-night in my garden is more visible now that many of the tomato plants are in the compost. I look out the window and my heart quickens with joy: the orb in the garden, the solar lights on the wart rails, the sound of crickets and toads, the owl who hoo-hoos in the near distance. If winter ever arrives this year, my freezer is filled with peaches and tomatoes and corn and beans and there are baskets of squashes under the table in the dining room. Half of my heart is filled with satisfaction and comfort; the other half trembles in fear.

I hope, if the time comes and those-with-connections are scurrying to get into their deep burrows, they leave Trump and his gang of destroyers out in the rain.

For the blog, 9 October 2017: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

The Last Hibiscus; Deb Marshall photo

Fiction: 1

Constance – An Autumn Tale

Fall Foliage; Charley Freiberg photo

I

When Meg and I moved to the tiny New England town of Appleton from the suburbs of Hartford, we were looking forward to a big change in our way of living. We were lured north mostly by an opportunity for me to become a small-town cop. Appleton had a one-man police force, run pleasantly and efficiently by a man everyone calls “Chief.” The Chief is a huge man – I look up to him from my own six and a quarter feet – with massive shoulders and hands, and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. That twinkle sometimes makes it hard to tell exactly what the Chief is thinking, but it’s also one of his most endearing qualities. My arrival finally gave the Chief someone to be chief over.

Moving from a sprawling suburban area to a rural town with a population of about 1500 would hardly seem to be a good move to most folks; but I was tired of breaking up bar-room brawls and chasing petty thieves through dark buildings in the wee hours of the morning. This move also put me in a fine position to inherit the Chief’s title and salary when he retires a few years from now – a status for which I could work many years in the city and never obtain through the sheer number of officers senior to me. Meg’s a computer programmer – she easily found work in a large town fifty miles from home, a commute of more miles, but taking no longer than that she had to make in the city, and a much more enjoyable drive. We quickly settled down to enjoy a simpler, quieter life in the country.

We moved into our new home – a log cabin, fulfilling a dream we’d nurtured for years – early in July. Our cabin is located high on Appleton Ridge, which surrounds and overlooks most the town. The town is encircled by pine and mixed hardwood forests on one side, and apple orchards on the lower slope of the other. Across the valley on the top of the far side of the Ridge we can just see the old cemetery peeping out between the pines. The morning sun shines brightly on the church steeple below in the valley, poking up white and brilliant through the pines to the east. Many mornings I’ve been happy knowing there is no finer sight to wake up to anywhere. To the west, Hermann’s Pond shines ghostly red in the evening sunset, and the Sennebec River winds through the valley and over the Ridge, tying it all together like a brilliant silver ribbon.

Meg and I soon made a habit of sitting on our front porch on fine summer mornings to enjoy our coffee and the incredible view before she starts off to town and I head down to the drugstore to meet the Chief. The drugstore is the local meeting place – the lunch counter serves fine coffee and bagels, a treat I was happy to discover I didn’t have to give up when I left the city. The less-occupied townsfolk gather here daily to drink coffee and catch up on all the local gossip. The Chief took me to the drugstore for my first job interview; and since we moved here, an early morning meeting has become a ritual that I look forward to. Like most small towns, our police force doesn’t keep strict business hours. The Chief makes it his business to be out and around town from early morning to about supper-time, and I drive around town from mid-afternoon until a late bedtime. Everyone in town knows they can call either of us if we’re needed late at night.

Door Handle Shadows; Charley Freiberg photo

 

So, over coffee and bagels, the Chief and I catch up on town gossip and I bring the Chief up-to-date on the previous evening’s occurrences and what I plan to do during the day. More often than not, there’s not much to report.

What I like best about our new home is the freedom it gives me. I rarely have to be anywhere at any special time, which leaves me free to do things I consider important, and I enjoy myself in a way that would be inconceivable were I still on a city police force. The next best thing is the people that live here – the kids are really children, not the toughened pseudo-adults I met so often in the suburbs, and the adults are friendly and helpful. I have never been happier than when giving a talk on traffic safety at the school, or describing the merits of mutual aid to the local Grange. Meg and I quickly made lots of friends, and Meg began to get involved in town politics.

Labor Day weekend during our first autumn brought an early cold snap that put colors that I swear I’d never seen before on the trees, and made the air heady with the smell of drying vegetation and fermenting apples. I began at that time to spend wonderful, uneventful sunny afternoons on the county road on the far side of the Ridge, near the old cemetery. The road used to be a main thoroughfare, but now is used mostly by folks on their way to the town dump, the few farmers who live up on the Ridge, and a surprising number of summer folk looking for a private spot for a picnic. The view from there is even better than from our house, and its proximity to the orchards makes the air intoxicating in the fall. I made the fine weather an excuse to park the cruiser and wander up and down the road, enjoying the sights and sounds, and picking up any bottles or other discards left behind by summer picnickers.

It was on one of those fine afternoons, shortly after school began for the season, when I met Constance.

The day was bright and balmy, a true Indian Summer day, and I stopped in the clearing by the old cemetery to enjoy the view down to the valley. “What a picture!” I thought, and soon noticed I wasn’t the only one admiring the scene. A young girl with long dark hair was perched on a wide gravestone, looking off across the valley, and occasionally drawing carefully on a sketchpad she held on her lap. I was making it my business then to meet as many of the town children as possible, so I jumped at this chance for a new acquaintance.

“Hello, there, I’m Officer Sam,” I offered, as I approached. “I don’t think I’ve met you yet. I’m the new policeman in town. Who are you?”

The child turned toward me and gave me the sweetest 9-year-old smile I’ve ever seen. “Hello, I’m Constance Stearns,” she answered, a little shyly.

I was immediately impressed by two things – her incredibly fragile child’s beauty, and her ridiculous clothes. In the Sixties a lot of young couples moved to small towns in New England, bringing with them their desire to get back to the land, to a simpler life. Constance was one of these ‘Lander’s children, obvious at first sight – she was dressed in a long ruffled prairie-style dress and apron. I had met several of these Flower Children’s children already, and they added to the charm of my new town, in my mind. Many of them seemed more thoughtful than their peers, a result, I supposed, of growing up listening to their parents and friends talking often about their ideals.

“How old are you, Constance? Where do you live?” I was anxious to get to know everyone in town as quickly as possible. I hadn’t met this child’s parents yet, either.

“Oh, we live down there,” she answered, pointing at a path going steeply downhill through the trees. “We moved to a farmhouse here before school started. We used to live in Boston.” She thought for a moment, then added, “I’m nine years old.” 

“Hey, that’s pretty neat,” I exclaimed, “a fellow refugee from the city! My wife and I came here this summer, too, from Hartford. Do you know where that is?”

“No,” she answered. “We never travelled much out of town. Do you like it here?”

“Indeed I do, it’s just beautiful,” I said, looking around happily. “I see you’re an artist! Can I see what you’re drawing?”

“Uh-uh,” she hugged her pad to her chest. “Maybe when I’ve finished,”

That was my first conversation with Constance. After that day I often met her on the old road. She was always sitting alone with her sketchpad and pencils, perched on the graveyard fence or on one of the gravestones, gazing off over the valley or sketching. She’d never show me what she was working on, but we did talk some about art, and I was impressed with her grasp of the subject. She discussed theory and style as easily as an adult who was well-schooled in the subject might, quickly leaving me foundering.

One morning I mentioned to the Chief that I’d met Constance.

“So, Constance is back, eh?” he looked at me thoughtfully.

“Has she been somewhere?” I asked.

“Yes, you could say that. She wouldn’t be around in the summer,” the Chief muttered, still looking thoughtful.

“I thought I’d drive ‘round to meet her folks one of these evenings,” I said. “They might be happy to know some other city transplants.”

“Oh, I don’t know as I’d bother to do that,” the Chief said quickly, with the twinkle in his eye. “I don’t believe you’d find you have much in common.”

I didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant by that, because just then Perley Jones clapped the Chief on the back and lit into a long, half-deaf tale about some wood he’d stored out on Perkin’s Lane.

Meg, however, was eager to hear my description of Constance, and of her knowledge of art theory. Meg loves kids. In fact, she was a teacher before she became a programmer.

“What an unusual child,” she said when I’d finished my description. “I hope you get a chance to see her artwork. Any child that can discuss art that way could be a budding genius. Strange that her parents would move her out of the city, away from any good art schools.”

“Well, it may be her parents want her to have a normal childhood,” I answered. “You know, so many young prodigies become stunted when they spend too much time in special classes.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. And it could be that summer vacations are spent back in the city, at a special art school, or with a tutor,” Meg pondered for a moment. “Yes, that would explain the Chief’s remarks about Constance being back, and not around n the summer. I suspect if she’s a prodigy, her parents are pretty talented people themselves.”

“Many of the Flower Children are,” I answered, yawning.

II

Pink and Purple Pumpkin; Deb Marshall photo

Life in a small town seems to pass slowly, to the outsider, but what with getting a wood supply ready for the winter, last-minute new home chores, and the little jobs that keep popping up in my line of work, I never did get over to meet Constance’s folks that fall.

I continued my habit of spending time on the Ridge when I could, and usually found Constance there, sketching and dreaming. I was ever more impressed with the child as I spoke with her, and developed a real fondness for her. I discovered that she was the eldest of three children, and had a tutor to teach her at home – that explained why I never saw her at any of the school programs I was invited to, and strengthened the belief Meg and I had that she was, indeed, a prodigy. I also thought it explained why she seemed so lonely. Never did she have a friend with her, and I never saw her playing at the schoolyard. When I asked her about her friends, her answers were vague, and I gathered that she spoke mostly about old friends she’d left behind – fellow students at the art school in Boston, I suspected. I felt she was lonely, and tried to be a bit of a bright spot in her life. 

One afternoon I drove by the cemetery late in the day and was surprised to see Constance there still. “Hey, Constance,” I called. “You’d better be getting home or you’ll miss your supper.”

“Oh, I guess I’ll go soon,” she replied.

“Nope – go now, or it’ll be dark before you get home, and I’ll catch it for not bringing you home. Here – I’ll count out loud, and see how long it takes you to disappear.” I shut my eyes and began counting loudly. I could hear Constance snatching up her drawing materials and running off down the hill, through the trees, giggling as she went.

When I couldn’t hear her footsteps any longer, I opened my eyes and stopped counting, heading back to the car. As I turned to take one last look at the glorious sunset, I saw Constance peeping at me from behind the gravestone nearest the woods path. “That little beggar,” I thought with a grin, but I only shook my finger at her, and went on my way, certain she’d go home now she knew she was caught out.

The next day I teased her about it. “So, I guess you thought I wouldn’t notice you hiding from me yesterday,” I accused her, pretending to be angry. “Did you miss your supper?”

“Oh, no,” she said with her shy smile. “I went home as soon as you left. I just wanted to pretend we were playing hide and seek.”

That was how the Goodbye Game started. It turned into a regular game, whenever I chanced by the cemetery close to suppertime.

One night at supper Meg said she thought the game was a good thing; she thought it would help poor Constance, if she was having trouble adjusting to her new home, and “Besides,” Meg said, “I know you miss all your playmates from Hartford.”

I was on my way out for my evening rounds, so I only threw a pillow at her head.

“But seriously, Sam,” she said. “We – and the other townspeople – should do what we can to help Constance and any new child or home-schooled children feel welcome. I think I’ll mention it at the library meeting Tuesday night. Maybe we should have some children’s parties. Hallowe’en is coming up – a Fall celebration would be a good theme.”

“I love you,” I said.

True to her word, Meg organized a Fall celebration for the schoolchildren. It was to be a real, old-fashioned celebration – apple dunking, marshmallow strings, popcorn and ghost stories – all in the big sunny room at the library on a Saturday afternoon. I eagerly told Constance about it.

“Oh – it sounds like such fun,” she said, all big eyes and bright cheeks and wistful smiles. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been to a party. And ghost stories!” she shivered with delight.

“It will be fun, Constance, and you’ll get to meet Meg. I’ve told her so much about you, she’s very anxious to meet you. She wanted me to ask if you’d like to help her with the decorations?”

“Oh! I’d love to, but I doubt I’ll be able to,” she looked crestfallen. “You see – I have such little time…” her voice trailed off.

“Well, it isn’t important,” I reassured her. “We know you must spend lots of time with your art.” Constance blushed and hugged her sketchpad tightly. “But do come to the party, and bring your brother and sister. Even though they’re very young, a lot of the babies and toddlers in town will be there with their parents.”

“I will try!” she called as I pulled away in the cruiser.

The big day of the party came and Meg was all aglow with excitement. I could hardly keep her calm ‘til it was time to go to the library. Just as we were heading off, the phone rang.

“I’m sorry, Meg, you’ll have to go on without me. The Chief needs me – seems that old Joe Philip’s place was broken into. I’ll probably be tied up all afternoon.”

“Oh, Sam! What a disappointment!” Meg frowned. “Well, it can’t be helped. I’ll say hi to Constance for you.”

I was right – I was tied up all afternoon. After the Chief and I went through the house with Martha Hunter, Joe’s niece, and made a list of everything that seemed to be missing, and helped Martha lock up and board up the broken window, we had to run down to Hosmer’s Corner to help John Sargent chase his cows off the highway. It was a long afternoon.

I got home just in time for supper. As I walked in, I was greeted by the fine odor of baked apple and potatoes, and Meg’s brimming-over enthusiasm.

“Sam, the party was great. All the kids had such a wonderful time! But, Constance wasn’t there!” A brief look of disappointment crossed her face. “But I didn’t even think – if she has art lessons, they’d probably be on Saturdays. Oh, poor Constance – she was so excited about the party, too.”

“Oh, no!” I said. “She never mentioned the lessons to me, and I never even thought. Well, I hope she wasn’t too disappointed,” I said, pulling my chair up to the table.

We forgot about Constance in the exchange of anecdotes about our afternoon activities over supper, but I was reminded when I drove by the cemetery Tuesday afternoon and saw the familiar head, topped now with a wooley hat, bent over her sketchpad.

“Constance!” I called, waving, as I got out of the car. She waved back as I strolled over, taking big breaths of crisp fall air.

“Constance, Meg told me you weren’t able to get to the party Saturday. I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“But I was there!” Constance said, looking at me in surprise. “Didn’t Meg see me?”

“You were? But no…she didn’t see you,” I was confused; Meg was particularly looking for Constance – how could she have missed the child? “Well, it doesn’t matter. Tell me about the party!”

And Constance did, her eyes sparkling. “Constance, I’m glad you made some new friends!” I said.

“I am too – I haven’t had so much fun in so long!”

At supper that night, I told Meg she must have missed Constance at the party. “She was there, Megs – she described everything that happened, and named the game winners. You just must have not noticed her.”

“Well, I can’t imagine how. I’ve searched my memory, Sam, but I just don’t remember her. Oh well – but she had fun?” Meg asked.

“From the look on her face as she told me about it, I doubt she’s ever had more fun. Your party was a success!”

“I’m glad – but I wish I could remember her,” Meg was adamant. “Well, I will remember her next time I see her.”

I, too, thought it odd, but I shrugged it off. With her new friends, I expected to see less of Constance, but it wasn’t so. She was in her usual spot almost daily, sketching, even as the weather got cooler and cooler. A few times I caught sight of some of the town kids waving to her as they dashed off down the hill as I drove up.

“Now Constance – see, your friends know when it’s time to get home. It’s getting dark early,” I said to her one late afternoon. “You really should get home before this.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I just stay to watch the sun go down behind the trees on the other side of the Ridge,” she said. “In the winter, it’s so pretty, reflecting off the snow and pines. And I don’t have far to go.”

“So you come here even in the winter, eh?”

“Yes! I think that’s the best time,” she said, gazing off over the valley. 

True to her word, I often did see Constance perched there in the winter, sometimes trying to sketch through wooley mittens, other times just looking over the hills. In the spring, she and I delighted in the snow-braving crocus.

One night Meg said to me that Constance must have that view down perfectly. 

“You’re right, you know,” I answered. “I asked her about that once, and she said that there’s so much that changes every day, every hour, even, that she can never tire of looking at it. In just 15 minutes, she showed me what she meant – a bird in the sky that wasn’t there before, the colors of the sun on the clouds, a shadow on the church steeple. It was just amazing.”

“She’s an amazing child,” Meg agreed.

Mountain Ash Berries and Grape Leaves; Deb Marshall photo

III

Finally it was late June, school was out, and Constance was no longer at the cemetery. Meg and I decided she must have returned to Boston for the summer, and we couldn’t help thinking how terrible it was that she missed the finest season of the year on the Ridge. I mentioned it to the Chief one day.

“So, you’re still seeing Constance, are you?” he fairly sparkled as he grinned. “She must have taken quite a shine to you, son. Not many folks have seen that much of her. Well, don’t worry; I’m sure she’ll be back this fall.”

I certainly hoped so. Meg had accelerated her small-town involvement into a higher realm – she was now responsible for a lot of town fund-raising. The library was first on her list of needy organizations, and she embraced the opportunity to raise money and at the same time introduce a little culture to the town. She had organized an art show and sale, and counted on acquiring some of Constance’s sketches as a main attraction.

“Not only will the idea of a small-town child prodigy draw the interest of the richer seasonal residents, but it should help Constance gain a little confidence and some cash that I’m sure she could use. Art lessons aren’t cheap,” Meg explained.

“I’ll drive over to talk to her folks the first day I see she’s back,” I promised. “Don’t worry honey – I’m sure they’ll return in time for your show.”

And sure enough, two days before school began and a month before Meg’s art show,

Constance was back on her perch. I didn’t mention the show to her, since the decision should come from her parents, and I didn’t want to get her excited before I talked to them. The next afternoon, I drove over to the lower Ridge road, looking for Constance’s parents.

I didn’t find them.

Now, you might wonder how a cop in a small town could not find someone who lives there – has lived there – for any length of time. After all, it’s a small town. There simply aren’t that many places to look. But, I hadn’t been down all the dirt roads and long driveways in town – not at that time, anyway. I will say that after my failure to find Constance’s parents, I made a point of checking out every house in town in company with the Chief. But I hadn’t done that yet, not then.

I thought I knew where she lived. I had been on most those roads – the lower Ridge road was pretty much deserted, in these days. There were a few summer cottages, a hunting shack or two, and two deserted farmhouses. There was also the long dirt drive with the stone marker that read, under the moss that grew over it, “Stearns.” It seemed obvious that this was the place.

Old Building; Charley Freiberg photo

At the end of the driveway was an old farmhouse that hadn’t been lived in for at least 100 years. Somehow I had misunderstood the direction of Constance’s home. The Stearns on the stone marker referred to some older, long-gone family. Next morning, I asked the Chief.

“Chief,” I said. “Meg wants some of Constance’s sketches for the art show. I saw Constance yesterday afternoon – she’s back. But when I went down to the place on the old Ridge road that I thought was her folks’, I discovered I was wrong. I need to talk to them about the show – where do they live?”

The Chief just stared at me for a long moment. “You’re joking, aren’t you?” he finally asked.

This irritated me. The Chief had never given me a straight answer about Constance, and I needed one, now. “No, of course not,” I frowned. “Why would I be joking? Is her artwork no good?”

A long pause. “Sam…son,” the Chief said. “I really thought you knew.” A long pause. “You can’t get any of her artwork. Sam – you went to the right house.”

Now I was mad. “Chief, don’t pull my leg about this. It’s important to Meg, and could be to Constance, too. Come on, where do they live?”

“Sam – Constance died 125 years ago. She was a promising artist. Her parents moved here one fall from Boston, to let their kids grow up away from the city. Constance was sickly, and they hoped the country air would improve her health. It seemed to, because she apparently was healthy through the fall and winter. But come late spring, she took ill again, and died after wasting away through most of the summer. That’s why she’s never seen in the summer. You found what’s left of the Stearns’ house – the family packed up and left soon after Constance was buried in the Ridge cemetery.”

“Come on, Chief. The town kids play with her. If she were a ghost, they wouldn’t see her, would they? Give me a break,” I snarled.

“I don’t know, Sam. Some of the kids do see her. Very rarely, an adult sees her,” the Chief answered sadly.

I stared at the Chief for a few moments, got up abruptly, and left.

That afternoon I went as usual to the cemetery. I stood a long time on the road, gazing over the hills, and watching Constance as she sketched. Finally, I had to ask her.

“Constance, show me where you live,” I said.

She looked surprised. “I live down there,” she said, waving vaguely towards the path through the pines.

“Take me there.”

“I’m very busy. Why?” she asked, nervously, I thought. “I’ll take you another time, all right?”

“No,” I answered firmly. “It has to be today. It’s part of my job, Constance, to protect people in the town. I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you live. Also, I need to talk to your folks.”

“No,” she said, slowly. “I can’t. You can’t. I…”

“Constance, look at me, honey,” I said gently, searching her face. “I can’t talk to your parents because they aren’t here anymore, isn’t that right?” She nodded. “It’s ok, I understand. Now, show me where you live.”

“If I do,” she whispered, “you’ll never come to talk to me again.”

“Yes I will. Constance – I’m your friend, and nothing will change that.”

She thought for awhile, then slid off the headstone. “I’ll show you, but you can’t come,” she said. I nodded. “Just show me, then come right back,” I answered. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”

Slowly she moved, almost drifted, I thought, around the headstone she most often used as a seat. She stood with her back to the stone, looking over the Ridge. Then, she slowly faded away.

I took a deep breath. It was true, then.

In a few moments she was back. I tried to smile at her. She had a paper in her hand that she held out to me.  “I want you to have this,” she said. I swallowed hard and reached for it – and it was solid under my fingers. I held it tight. “Now, it’s getting late, Constance. Go home before it gets dark. I’ll shut my eyes and count, and see how fast you can go.”

She giggled, and we played the Goodbye Game. When she was gone, I spent a long time looking over the hills and valley.

Wall; Charley Freiberg photo

IV

It’s been two weeks now since I found out where Constance lives. I drive by the cemetery on my usual schedule, and she’s usually there, sketching away busily. As always, sometimes I stop and chat, other times we just wave.

The paper she handed me was a sketch of the cemetery and Ridge in fall. A young artist sits perched on a gravestone, sketching; a cop in uniform stands nearby, watching. It’s signed by Constance, and titled “Friends.” It’s an amazing likeness, and as well-executed as Meg and I ever dreamed her art would be.

Meg wants to know whether I talked to Constance’s parents yet. Time, after all, she says, is growing short.

How am I going to tell Meg?

  END  

Full Moon over Pleasant Lake; Charley Freiberg photo