A Minister's Ghost by Phillip Depoy

pressed.
    â€œMister,” he sighed, “on Friday night we’re packed. There were probably a hundred people here. I can barely keep up.”
    â€œI understand,” I said calmly. “What’s your name, do you mind my asking?”
    â€œAndy Newlander,” he whined. “I’m going to change it. It’s not a good filmmaker’s name.”
    â€œWould you mind if I came by sometime this weekend and showed you their picture? See if you remember them?”
    â€œWhy?” He was suspicious. “Are they in trouble?”
    I took a deep breath.
    â€œDid you hear about the train wreck last night, over there in Pine City?”
    â€œNo.”
    In as little detail as possible, I explained to Andy Newlander why I wanted to come and see him. He agreed, more subdued than he had been, and we hung up.
    Outside the rain was clattering at the window, a wandering spirit demanding sanctuary. Distant thunder sounded, absent any lightning I could see, like muffled timpani played slowly. The room grew darker, and in the distance, I heard a train whistle blow.
    Â 
    I made my way downstairs, wandered to the back of the funeral home again looking for Donny. I was doing everything I could to get images of Tess and Rory out of my mind, but they wouldn’t leave. Like the girls themselves, their memories clamored for attention, each one cheerfully vying for full appreciation.
    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.
    â€œDo 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