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Authors: Phillip Depoy

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BOOK: A Minister's Ghost
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The recollection that won out and occupied me as I stood in the doorway staring at their coffins and wondering where Donny had gone concerned the snapshot on Lucinda's mantel.
Several years ago there had been a carnival in Blue Mountain just before Halloween night. Everybody in the county was there. In some
folk communities, schools are often one of the gathering places for secular entertainment. Nearly everyone had children or grandchildren in the county school, and if they didn't, they knew someone who did. So the Fall Festival was held on the school grounds.
The air was crisp as an apple, filled with the scent of burning leaves. Trees in the school yard were riotous: red leaves, rust reeling downward in crazy spirals of autumn air. They rained onto wooden booths, pony rides, milling crowds. A huge hand-painted sign that said
Welcome to Your Fall Festival
stood tall in the yard. It was decorated with red witches, white goblins, and happy orange jack-o'-lanterns, a product of the cooperative efforts of the lower grades.
Down in the cafeteria, teachers had assembled a haunted house, a sad affair of torn sheets, darkened windows, and grown adults dressed in Halloween costumes. Bowls of grapes passed for eyeballs, plates of cold cooked spaghetti masqueraded as conquerer worms. Lucinda wanted to go, but I demurred.
“Do what you like to a school cafeteria,” I told her, “it requires more than imagination to forget the smell of coleslaw hanging in the air.”
Skid, a lighter version of the man with whom I'd just spoken, had dressed himself as a reptilian monster wearing a clerical collar and black suit. Billed as the “Preacher from the Black Lagoon,” he occupied the festival's dunking booth.
For a dollar, anyone could throw a baseball at the target, and if that target was squarely hit, it might send the monster plummeting into a tub of icy water. The monster would howl, and the children would scream.
I considered the situation from the monster's point of view. There he was, minding his own business, not bothering anyone. One second he's sitting warm and dry, the next he's dunked in cold October water, without a warning or a prayer.
Such is life.
Just before sunset everyone had gathered near a bonfire to judge several contests, among them the jack-o'-lantern carving. I fought my urge to tell anyone who would listen that originally the purpose
of the carved pumpkin had, indeed, been to make a lantern, and the lanterns were used throughout the autumn months. Only on All Hallows' Eve were the lanterns made into faces, and then the idea was to frighten away the spirits of the dead, or to light their way so they wouldn't get lost.
Instead, Lucinda and I wandered among the quarter acre of severed orange heads, marveling at the craftsmanship and enthusiasm all contestants had mustered.
There were nearly fifty entries, arranged in rows and glowing in the fading evening light. Some were nearly as big as doghouses, carved mean: scowling eyes, razor teeth, howling mouths. Some had old felt fedoras on, making them look like hoboes, vacant wandering souls. One had a patch over its left eye. One was carved to look like a medieval hellmouth, as I explained to Lucinda, and inside it were melting toy plastic soldiers playing the part of tormented sinners.
The biggest, fiercest one had been made by the son of Pastor Floyd Davis, the Methodist minister. It was as terrifying an image of Satan as I had seen anywhere, complete with carrot horns, a rotted-eggplant tongue, and peeled white turnips embedded in it that looked very much like blind eyes.
Tess and Rory had stood at the far end of the last line, a small cardboard box between them. They refused to let anyone look in until the two judges—Pastor Davis and a school science teacher whose name I didn't know—got to them.
The judges made their way up and down the long rows of jack-o'-lanterns taking notes, conferring humorlessly, and measuring. Everyone had stopped whatever they were doing and come to watch. Booths were shut down. Skidmore stood close by, wrapped in a blanket. The cafeteria was empty.
The scene was, in fact, something to see: fifty leering pumpkin faces lined up, candles glowing warm inside, everyone standing around, silent as the grave, waiting for the decision of the judges.
Someone standing beside Skid said, in hushed tones, “Usually the bigger the pumpkin, the better the chance of winning. That's why they're measuring.”
Contestants really wanted to win. The main prize was from E. P. Waldrup's Cash and Tow: a month's worth of free gas, an oil change, a tune-up, and a choice of one item, any item, from anywhere in the yard. This was quite an offer, because some of the “items” in the yard were entire cars.
The Palace had thrown in four free movie tickets, good anytime. And Miss Etta's diner was offering free pumpkin pie for a year, in keeping with the situation. That Miss Etta only made pumpkin pie once a year did little to dampen enthusiasm for it. Miss Etta made very good pie.
Many of the local boys had put a good deal of effort into winning.
My eyes were on Tess and Rory and their little cardboard box. It was like a baby coffin. They were barely able to contain their excitement, laughing and whispering to each other. Pastor Davis was still measuring his son's hellmouth when the science teacher made it to the end of the line and demanded to see the girls' creation.
Rory sighed, leaned down, and opened the top of the box.
“Floyd,” the science teacher gasped, her face transfixed. “You'd better get over here!”
Pastor Davis wound up his tape and hurried over, clearly irritated by the disturbance in the solemn proceedings. But his expression took on a beatified look of wonder when he peered down into the cardboard container.
“Lord Almighty, girls,” he said softly.
People around began to close in, pressing on every side, trying to peer down into the box.
“What is it?” someone whispered.
“You're not going to believe it,” the science teacher intoned.
The girls beamed.
Slowly Pastor Davis bent over and pulled out the carving the girls had made.
It was no bigger than a child's head, made from a baby pumpkin. Everyone froze.
In the fading light, licked by amber cast from the bonfire, every one of us witnessed a living, human face. The pumpkin had smiling
eyes, a gentle expression filled with love. The fire's glow gave the eerie impression that the face was constantly changing features, shifting, looking around at everyone. It was clearly alive.
“It's Judy,” Lucinda whispered.
The girls had not carved a demon or a devil, but one of the kindest faces I'd ever seen, apparently the perfect image of their favorite babysitter, Judy Dare, a little person from Chattanooga who lived in Blue Mountain. I'd met her once at Lucinda's church, barely four feet tall, beautiful. The jack-o'-lantern that depicted her face was not a contrivance to scare away evil spirits, it was a hand-carved tribute, a labor of love; a sacred object designed to invite saints and angels. It was a work of art.
We stood transfixed. None of us could believe what we were seeing. Judy's orange face smiled, winked, sighed in the flickering light.
“Well,” Pastor Davis said finally, “you girls really did something here.”
Tess lit the candle inside, and Cousin Judy's face radiated the joy of life, beamed like the soul of a real woman.
Lucinda rubbed her eye and sniffed.
“This is just like those girls,” she managed. “Everybody else was trying to see who could make the scariest, the meanest—that wouldn't even occur to them. All they've got in them is love and kindness. They carry on so about Judy; they still visit her all the time. I mean, look at that little face.”
I think I put my arm around Lucy then, or maybe I just had the impulse to.
Ordinarily the winner of the pumpkin-carving contest would have been shouted out by the judges, rejoined by much cheering. That year everything was quiet. Pastor Davis fished in his coat pocket and simply handed over the paper that gave the girls their prizes.
There was a lot of smiling all around.
Lucinda got the girls to stand with their carving in between them. She took a quick snapshot. Everything went slowly back to normal: the pie booth sold pumpkin pies, caramel apples were stuck on sticks,
girls held hands with their boyfriends; the sun began to set. Everyone took a turn walking by the Judy pumpkin.
After the sun slipped past the horizon, a chill wind came up. It suddenly blew over the large sign in the school yard, and everybody began to gather things up, in a hurry to get home.
“Might rain,” Pastor Davis offered as he passed us, helping his son carry the fantastic devil head to their truck.
“Judy is the girls' babysitter, right?” I asked Lucinda as we headed for my pickup. “Do I remember that correctly?”
“Yes.” Lucy nodded. “They call her their aunt, but she's really just a neighbor, lives on the same street as they do.”
“I have met her, haven't I? She's the one you introduced me to at your church.”
“I believe it was at a church dinner once,” she told me, nodding.
“Can you believe I barely remembered that?” I fumbled for my car keys. “You'd think I would remember a little person at that church.”
“Judy's shy. Probably why she isn't here tonight. Sometimes even when she's around, you don't notice her, which isn't hard to imagine, little as she is.”
“I hope she sees this pumpkin, though.” I opened the passenger door. “The carving, I mean. Don't you think she'd be flattered?”
“I can't imagine she wouldn't be,” Lucinda said, climbing into the cab, “but I don't really know her.”
Thunder rattled the sky, and thick, cold globs of rain began to pelt my truck. I got in quickly, cranked the engine. In the rearview mirror I caught sight of several men, Skid included, making sure the bonfire was out. Beside them I saw Tess and Rory carrying their little cardboard box, running, laughing, stumbling toward their little orange Volkswagen parked under a chestnut tree.
 
“Don't they look peaceful?” Donny said from behind me.
Startled, I turned his way quickly.
“Sorry, Doc,” he went on, “I didn't mean to sneak up on you like that.”
“That's all right, Donny,” I said, recovering. “I was just remembering them, something they did a couple of years ago at the school.”
“The pumpkin-carving contest.” Donny nodded sagely.
Even though I grew up in Blue Mountain, knew most of the people there as family, I never ceased to be amazed at the way everyone knew everyone else's business. Or that everyone occasionally exhibited a rough clairvoyance.
“You remember that?” I asked.
“Me and Dover had a entry,” Donny said simply.
“The year the girls won, you and your brother entered a jack-o'-lantern?” I found it hard to believe. It wasn't the sort of thing the boys were likely to do in those days.
Steal
a pumpkin, throw it at a passing neighbor, even give one to their sister, Truevine, in the hope of talking her into making a pie—these were more in line with their general wont.
“We had the biggest one there,” he said in hushed tones. “We were sure we'd win. We wanted the stuff from Eppie's yard. You know. Funny what you want when you're a kid.”
I turned again to look at the side of his face. In his dark suit with the glow of the fire from inside the room painting his face with amber light, I saw a new man, different from the wild boy who'd hunted pigs and snakes. This was someone of substance. Sometimes the job makes the man.
“Would you be offended if I said I was proud of you, of the transformation you've made, Donny?”
“What?” He tilted his head. “You're proud of me?” His face went boyish and I wasn't sure if he was going to smile or cry.
“You and your brothers have really done something here,” I went on quickly, “and I expect there are quite a few people in town who see the changes you all have made. In yourselves and in this place. It's good work and it deserves to be recognized.”
“Thanks, Dr. Devilin.” He studied his shoes. “That means a whole lot.”
“You got the girls ready in a hurry,” I said, stepping away from the coffins. “Is the family coming soon?”
“Anytime now.”
“Oh.” I jumped. “Well, I'll be going, then.”
I headed toward the door. It wouldn't do for me to run into the parents at the funeral parlor. I was hoping to catch them at home, maybe the next day. I had some questions for them, but I certainly didn't want to intrude on their moment with the bodies. No need making the investigation any more difficult than it already was.
“When's the funeral?” I asked Donny, fishing in my pocket for keys. “Do you know?”
BOOK: A Minister's Ghost
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ads

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