Spirited Solution
By Jerry Peterson
Webster was in no mood for the two uninvited guests who showed up at his office, even if they had his best interests in mind.
Ajax Bernard Webster poured two fingers of Jack Daniels into a less than clean water glass, then two fingers more. He hoisted the glass, then stopped to fondle it as he gazed at the silver-framed photo on his desk.”Are you going to drink that?”
It was late. Webster’s secretary had gone home hours ago. He was alone in the office, sure of it, yet he glanced about.
“Are you going to drink that whiskey?” the voice asked again, a cultured voice, a Southern voice, a man’s voice. “Well, if you’re not, I will.”
A hand came over Webster’s shoulder. It relieved him of his glass. Webster’s gaze followed the hand. He twisted around and found himself looking up into the face of a stranger. “Sir?”
“Beauregard Deauchamps Vandalia, at your service.” The man bowed slightly, acknowledging Webster.
“Vandalia?”
“Late of the Vandalias of Savannah and Morgantown.”
“Late? How late?”
Vandalia turned to the hoop-skirted woman sitting on Webster’s couch. She folded her fan and touched it to her lips. “Oh, I’d say 1863, wouldn’t you, Beau?”
“Ahh, Maybelle, your memory is far better than mine. Mine was blown away by that cannonball at the Battle of Waggonnaville.”
Webster swiveled his chair around. “You’re dead?”
“‘Twas a far, far better thing that I have done,” Vandalia said as he rambled to Webster’s side chair and flopped down to sip Webster’s whiskey.
Maybelle again worked her fan. “You were the noble one, although, love, your death left me in a precarious situation.”
“Yes, up here in this damnable Tennessee, trying to save our slaveless plantation.”
“Really, love, it was just a farm.”
“But an impressively large farm. Eight hundred acres.”
“What little help I did have went to quitting and, when it became too much for me, I joined you.” She reached for Vandalia’s hand. Their fingers entwined, and the two gazed into one another’s eyes with a warmth that filled the room.
“Excuse me,” Webster said, waving a hand at Maybelle. “You’re dead, too?”
“Quite.”
Vandalia sipped at his whiskey. “I always said the boys over in Lynchburg made the best. Mister Webster, may I pour you a fresh glass?”
“I think I’ve already had too much.” He covered his eyes, but after some moments peeked between his fingers. “You’re not really here, are you? I’m just imagining . . .”
Vandalia, dressed in a planter’s clothing of a century and a half ago, raised his glass in a smart salute. “My wife and I are very much here, sir.”
“Oh no.”
Maybelle folded her fan again. “Surely you’ve heard the stories.”
“That this house is haunted?” Webster laughed, first embarrassed, then the laugh turned hollow. “But they’re just tales the ancients tell on Halloween to scare the neighborhood kids. This house has been my law office for twenty-seven years, and I’ve never seen nor heard anything out of place in all that time.”
“That’s because you didn’t need us,” Maybelle said.
Vandalia put his booted feet up on Webster’s coffee table, one ankle crossed over the other. “Rule Nineteen of the IAASD.”
“Pardon?”
“The IAASD . . . the International Association of Apparitions, Specters, and Doppelgangers.”
Webster twisted an eyebrow upward.
“Oh yes,” Vandalia said, throwing a hand up, “we’re a very fraternal group.”
“Clubby,” Maybelle said, examining her buffed fingernails.
“And what is our membership?” Vandalia asked, looking to his wife. “Two-hundred . . .”
“. . . and forty-three at last count. Not nearly as many of us as the living believe.”
“Pretty well scattered about,” Vandalia said. “Rule Thirty-Six limits us to an area within one hundred feet of either where we died or our place of last residence.”
“Oh, there is an exception, love.”
“Yes, and a good one, too, or we’d become bored to death, Mister Webster. We are allowed to, uhm - how shall I say it? - to convene triennially for a three-day weekend.”
“Oh, and the partying. We do so look forward to it,” Maybelle said, fluffing her skirts.
Webster pulled the bottle of Jack Daniels over. He cradled it to his chest. “Not that I believe any of this . . .”
“Oh, sweet,” Maybelle said, gazing at Vandalia, “he doesn’t believe we’re real.”
“Well, this is the first time he’s seen us, my dear.”
“Perhaps proof would be in order?”
At that suggestion, Vandalia pulled himself upright, his feet going to the floor. With Webster watching, Vandalia gave his head a sharp twist and lifted it from his shoulders. He set his head on the coffee table and, from there, winked at Webster.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Mister Webster, if it weren’t for that damned Yankee cannoneer blowing my head off, I wouldn’t be able to do this. Rule One Hundred Sixteen, IAASD members aren’t permitted to play tricks on live beings, not even on dogs who sometimes become overly curious.”
“Not fully true,” Maybelle said. “We are permitted to frighten mice. Twice I’ve demoused this house.”
“Quite right, my dear.” Vandalia saluted his wife, his hand coming up to where his brow would have been were his head not on the table.
Webster took a quick nip from the bottle. “Just to steady myself,” he said. He waved at the detached head. “If you would, please.”
“Not at all.” Vandalia grasped his head by the ears and planted it back on his shoulders. He gave his head a twist to the right, then to the left. “If I don’t lock it into place, I lose it at the damnedest times.”
Maybelle laughed, fluttering her fan. “Once we were in the garden and you bent over to inspect the rhubarb . . .”
“And I lost it, didn’t I, dear?”
“Took me a full two minutes to find your errant knob rolling about among all those leaves and the brambles of the berry patch. Love, had you not kept whistling ‘Dixie,’ your head would still be out there.”
Webster nipped again from his bottle. “Should I be asking why you’re here?”
“Here?” Maybelle asked, spreading her hands, indicating this room in what had at one time been the mansion of the Vandalia Farm, before the land and the other buildings had been sold off.
“Yes.”
“We both chose,” Vandalia said, “quite independently of one another, to come back to our last place of residence. And fortunate that we did because we’ve been able to spend all these decades together.”
“No, I mean here ,” Webster said. ” Now .”
“Ohhh.” Vandalia leaned back in his chair.
This time it was Maybelle who leaned forward. “You need our help.”
“The hell I do.”
Vandalia clacked his tongue. “Sir, such language! Maybelle and I - we are gentle people.”
“You’re goddamn ghosts.”
“That does it.” Vandalia rose. He went to a coat closet and rummaged through a chest-of-drawers in there until he found what he was looking for. When he came out, he held a pair of leather gloves. “Cur, apologize to the lady or I shall have to challenge you to a duel. And let me tell you, I was an excellent swordsman in my day.”
“I thought you couldn’t frighten or hurt people.”
“The second exception to Rule One Hundred Sixteen. In the instances of honor.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Vandalia stepped forward. He slapped Webster hard with the gloves, the blow disheveling Webster’s hair. “Then a duel it is, and with cavalry sabers. Those over the fireplace.”
Maybelle worked her fan, a cooing smile on her lips. “Oh, I do so love the drama.”
Vandalia strode to the fireplace. He took down the sabers and examined their hilts. “Confederate swords, excellent. The finest steel from Birmingham.”
He tossed one to Webster who remained fixed to his chair, his Jack Daniels bottle clutched more closely. The saber clattered to the floor. “You’re crazy.”
Vandalia stepped up to Webster. He laid his blade against Webster’s neck. “Pick up your weapon, sir. If you fail to do so, subsection fourteen of the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules permits me to take your head.”
“You are crazy!”
“A pity it would be, and damned painful.” Vandalia flicked his blade and it made the slightest cut, enough to draw blood.
Webster’s hand snapped to his neck and when it came back tinged with red, he looked aghast.
“Well?” asked Vandalia.
“I - I apologize.”
“Accepted,” Maybelle said, smiling.
Vandalia took a lace handkerchief from his pocket. He drew the blade through the cloth, removing the several drops of blood that had clung to it. “So you are a gentleman when forced to be one, hmm?”
“Now as to our help,” Maybelle said.
“I don’t have anything that calls for help.”
Vandalia turned the picture frame and admired the woman’s features preserved there for all time. “Handsome.”
Webster snatched it away. “My wife.”
“We know.”
“And we know how much you miss her,” Maybelle said. “A motorcar accident, wasn’t it?”
A twinge of memory flickered at Webster’s eye. A tear formed.
“We never had such noisesome and dangerous conveyances in our day,” Maybelle rattled on.
“A horse might throw us or run away with the carriage,” Vandalia said.
Maybelle stiffened. “Rarely happened.”
“Remember your Uncle Bonaparte?”
“Uncle Boney tippled a bit.”
Vandalia’s head snapped back in laughter. “You could wring buckets of moonshine from old Uncle Boney. On one of his tippling evenings, he fell from his horse into a well and drowned.”
“Beau,” Maybelle said, tapping her mate with her fan as he wafted by, “this is not helping Mister Webster.”
“As always, my dear, you are forever correct.” He swept on around Webster’s desk to lean on the back of Webster’s chair. “Maybelle was not completely honest with you when she said we could not travel more than one hundred feet from where we died or from our place of last residence.”
Webster slid lower. “You said something about a triennial gathering.”
“There is another exception, but it requires that we petition the grand council of the IAASD . . . when we suspect those whom we’ve come to care for might harm themselves.”
Webster glanced up over his shoulder. “You’re saying you two dead souls care for me, and after you tried to slice off my head?”
Vandalia leaned down. “Child’s play.”
“Hah!”
“No, really,” Maybelle said, leaving her seat on the couch. She drifted over and settled on the edge of the desk. “Remember last week? You tried to kill yourself.”
Webster stared at her.
“We heard you grieving for your dear wife.”
Vandalia helped himself to a cigar from Webster’s breast pocket. He stuck the cigar in his mouth, then patted his own pockets, searching for a match. “It’s true. So we petitioned the council to ride with you, and they approved.”
“That night, you went to the cemetery,” Maybelle said. “We were with you.”
“And we were with you when you drove home.” Vandalia took a match from the center desk drawer and lit his cigar. He puffed away until he had a good burn going. “You stepped down on that thing you call an accelerator, remember? And you steered your vehicle toward a bridge abutment.”
“But I didn’t hit it.”
“That’s because I wrestled the wheel away from you.”
“I didn’t see you.”
Maybelle put the end of her fan beneath Webster’s chin and lifted until the two looked in one another’s eyes. “You didn’t see us because you weren’t ready to accept us. You weren’t ready to accept our help.”
There was an electricity in Maybelle’s gaze, in the way she spoke, something that Webster had not experienced for years. He turned to the photograph on his desk. It, too, radiated, the garden and his wife appearing to be alive. He had taken that picture. She seemed to be motioning to him, beckoning to him.
His hand, without any willed effort, rose up and moved toward the photograph until a fingertip touched the surface. There was a liquid rippling, like mercury disturbed. Webster startled, pulled his fingertip back and looked at it. A silver liquid mounded up on his fingertip.
“Your souls have touched,” Maybelle said. “You’ve missed her so.”
The liquid spread down Webster’s finger. He watched it, warmed and entranced.
Vandalia laid his cigar aside. He reached across the back of Webster’s chair for his wife’s hand. “We understand why you want to be with her. It was the same for us.”
Once more, Webster’s hand moved mechanically toward the photograph. The fingertips touched, and went on through as the surface again rippled.
“It’s time, dear one,” Maybelle whispered.
Webster’s hand, his arm and his body, too, followed his fingertips through and into the photograph. The image changed. No longer was Webster’s wife alone in her eternal garden, for beside her now stood a man, Webster, in his weary courtroom suit, his necktie askew, his arm around her waist. Their heads touched, both with easy smiles upon their faces.
Maybelle squeezed her husband’s hand. “I think the council will be very pleased with this one.”
“Spirited Solution” is copyright © 2006 Jerry Peterson and appears her for the first time with the author’s permission.
Jerry Peterson is a member of: Tuesdays with Story, a writers group in Madison , Wisconsin ; the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association; the Knoxville ( Tennessee ) Writers Guild; and the Mystery Writers of America.His work has appeared in The Mid-Atlantic Almanack and the anthologies Migrants & Stowaways , Crossroads , and Manhattan Mysteries . He is also a frequent contributor to Creativity Connection , a University of Wisconsin newsletter for writers.
