Clay stood up a little straighter. “I have to… kill a ghost?”
Not kill. I believe she and I are beyond that mortal consequence. But you could force her into a… sort of… peaceful hibernation.
“Okay. And how does one do that?” The lack of blood was making Clay giddy-scared in a way he didn’t like. “Chase her around with a crucifix and a Dustbuster?”
I was thinking a bottle, Boyle replied, his voice as deadly serious as a doctor diagnosing cancer. You ever play Farewell Ghost, Clay?
Slowly Clay walked to the stairs, sat down, and reclined his head until it touched one of the higher steps. “I’m glad you think I’m cool enough to know what that is. But I’m just a friendless geek who lives with his daddy.”
Boyle chuckled. I figured a guy who dabbled in Ouija boards might’ve played other paranormal games too.
“No. Believe it or not, I didn’t even think ghosts existed a week ago.”
In life, I’d’ve had my doubts too—if I didn’t meet a ghost early on. After I ditched Chicago to ride the rails, I traveled awhile with this blues guitarist who called himself—
“Hollis Sapphire. I know. It’s in your biography.”
Biography?
“The first was published about a month after your death. There’s at least six more now.”
Boyle mumbled something that Clay didn’t catch, something about shameless capitalist greed, so Clay declined to mention the greatest-hits album and the live performance box set that had been released within a year of his demise. He set up a ride-share on his phone and while they waited, Boyle told him, I doubt the rest of this is in those chapters, but feel free to stop me anytime….
Hollis and I were cruising the Union Line out of Knoxville. I don’t remember the month, but it was summertime. Humid as hell, no relief. After we’d hopped aboard, we realized we weren’t alone in the boxcar. There was this other tramp in the shadows, bearded guy who went by Smiles. Well, we were a little messed up on Holl’s firewater, so it maybe took awhile to realize the guy wasn’t actually there. Bodily speaking. Unlike me, Smiles was a fully formed spirit—meaning he could be seen and heard. And you think I like to talk? All across the Volunteer State, Smiles rattled our ears about his trumpet playin’. Best in the land, no equal on earth, so on and so forth. In life, he’d crisscrossed the U.S., busking in subway stations and town squares and fairgrounds. Said his horn was plenty good enough to keep food in his belly—even woo a lonely lady or two. One night Smiles followed a groupie back home, not knowing she had a violent ex. At least till the guy was cuttin’ his throat in his sleep. The ex made the groupie swear not to tell or she’d be next, and he drove Smiles away in the trunk of his shitty DeVille. Laid him out, like a suicide, on the tracks outside Memphis.
“Shit. Did you report this?”
Who’d have believed us? Coming from where I did, it wasn’t the first murderer I saw get away. Ghosts like to confess things, I’ve learned—but who ever heard of one testifying in court?
Anyway, Hollis was sloppy-drunk and he started hee-hawing, like Smiles was puttin’ us on. So the ghost moved into the sun and lifted his beard, and that’s when we saw Smiles’s other smile. The guy was torn open one ear to the other.
I can still hear him telling me—here, Boyle’s voice took on a deep southern drawl—“Worse part was bleedin’ out while dat bastard tol’ me he was gone pawn my horn and whore wid duh profits.” It was a lousy way to go out and Hollis and I were sympathetic… the first five or nine times he told the story. For all his life adventures, though, Smiles was a one-hit wonder in the story department.
Despite himself, Clay laughed at the idea of growing bored with a ghost. “I’ll take a repetitive storyteller to a head-whooping poltergeist any day.”
We finally switched trains. But our friend had taken a liking to us, so he followed. I guess his anchor to this world were the tracks themselves ’cause each time we’d sneak off, there was Smiles again, waiting in the next car. Apparently we’d been too considerate, listening to him—most others just leapt off the second they realized he was a ghost. So he haunted us, to the end of the line and back again.
Boyle started pacing anew. That’s when Hollis explained about Farewell Ghost. This part isn’t in any biography. I’ve never told anyone—and a drunk driver got Hollis years before the rope got me.
Smiles told me when his grandmother was a girl in the bayou, there was this swamp spirit that wouldn’t quit harassing her. Lifting her dress up and so on, and it was her grandmother that taught her how to be done with him. It went by a different name than Farewell Ghost back then—some complicated Creole thing I’m not gonna attempt. But the concept is the same: It requires a vessel to trap the spirit, preferably something they’d loved in life. I don’t remember what the grandmother used for Swampy, but Hollis suggested we hunt down Smiles’ trumpet.
It was a long shot in a pile of long shots, but we were desperate, and magic things happen on the road, Clay—you’ll find out one day. Our third pawn shop in Memphis, the trumpet was hangin’ behind the counter. It wasn’t hard to miss ’cause Smiles told us he’d painted the horn to look like an open mouth, with a pair of lips and teeth and a real clit-tickler of a mustache at the top. And there it was, this side of our price range, if Holl and I combined worldly funds.
We brought that horn back to the train yard, and when we were underway we gave it to Smiles. The ghost was so grateful we felt bad for wantin’ to
