By: Gary Smee [2006-06-14]

Ghosts

or The Dead Man Shares His Thoughts

When I get out on the face of the bluff, Dewey's there, and he’s anxious to get back to his meal and the warmth of the fire, hoping to ward off the evening chill that’s crept across the wide plain from the sea. He asks me if I’m having fun yet, and I tell him, of course, because it’s the jocular, semi-cynical thing to do, and that’s what Dewey expects me to say. He grunts in response, gets his rifle and his cigarettes and heads back up to the top of the hill.
 
There’s a foxhole dug into the side of the butte, but no one’s used it for some time. Mostly we sit on the edge, dangling feet and flicking cigarette butts into its depths, which right now are black and endless. I unwrap a stick of gum and chew it, and with a flick, the wrapper floats down into the hole. The night is young, and sitting on the face of the black butte, I watch the moon rise over the plain, the shadows fading into gray shapes, and a gentle breeze tickles my ear before it rustles the sighing grass.
 
The night is quiet, as the many nights before it have been. No dark shapes hunched in the tall grass, monsters or men, are waiting to strike. After a while, I can hear Chandis picking soft notes on his guitar, and his baritone voice humming to himself, but even that fades after a few minutes. I look at my watch, just after eleven, with little over an hour to go on my shift. The chill is deepening, so I hug myself to keep my body heat close. I can hear footsteps behind me, crunching down the goat trail we’ve carved in the hillside, so I look back but I can’t make out who it is, despite the moonlight. The figure raises a hand in greeting, and returning the gesture, I turn back to the wide plain.
 
"Albert, right?" says the figure, and I turn to see Michael taking a seat next to me on the edge of the foxhole. I tell him, Yeah, my name’s Albert. "Good. I scared the hell out of one of your buddies up there," he says and we chuckle. Is he here to haunt me? "No. I’m here to let you know there’s no hard feelings." That’s a relief. "I’ll bet," he says, and he picks a stalk of grass from the edge of the foxhole and chews the broken end. So no hard feelings? I ask. "None." We sit quietly for a few minutes, and the gray grass waves in the breeze, and the moon climbs higher and grows smaller as it climbs.
 
"You’ve got my letters, right?" he asks around the stalk of grass in his mouth, and I tell him I do. "You got them handy?" I reach for my ruck and dig out the letters, and hand them over. Michael opens them up, scans them one by one, and hands them back to me as he finishes each one. "It’s a shame I can’t take these with me. So many memories," he says and trail off with a sigh. "You got any regrets, Albert?" I tell him to call me Al. "You got any regrets, Al?" A few, I tell him, and I’m thinking specifically of Karen and the mess at home I came here to avoid. "You ought to do something about that," he says, "before, you know, this happens." He unfolds the letter from Marjorie. "Was there a picture with this?" I tell him no. "Damn. I’d have loved to see that awful picture again," he says. Awful? "Yeah, it was this terrible picture of my sister. She hated it so much, and I gave her such a hard time about it, it became kind of a running joke. That’s why she sent it to me," he pauses, and her picture, smiling sweetly in my breast pocket has a palpable weight to it. "We were old friends, Margie and me."
 
We’re quiet again for a while, watching the horizon. "This is really beautiful," Michael says around the stalk of grass in his mouth. I tell him I love to sit out here, most nights. Rain and snow create a problem, but most other times it’s pleasant. He turns to me, serious-like of a sudden, and he says, "Al, you got to know something." Yeah? "You got to know that on this island, carrying rifles and posturing for the women caught up in the frenzy of pussy and patriotism, man, all of that is worth exactly jack shit." I grunt, and he says, "You’re no killer, Al," and he pokes my shoulder with a finger, "you’re a fucking coward."
 
He jerks his thumb in the direction of the camp, "The only real killer in this crew is Ray; for the rest of you it’s a show. Pay attention, and you're all scared little boys doing what you're told so you can look tough." We’re all volunteers, I say, no one is making us stay. "You think Ray will let you walk out?" he says with a snort, "Are you man enough to face the other guys and tell them you’ve had second thoughts?" I didn’t respond, and he nodded, "That’s what I thought. Don’t worry about it, none of those guys are man enough to do it either, no matter what they say."
 
"They’re stuck, you’re stuck, and there are only two ways out: getting killed, or sneaking off like a coward. Chances are, the former will get you before you work up the courage for the latter." He laughs, but it’s a hard, brittle sound, "People are dying and they’ve got no idea what for; not for freedom or civil rights or anything; they’re just dying. You think this whole mess is about making the people on this island free?" That’s what I’ve been led to believe, I say. "You need to open those eyes, Al," he says, "you need to let your subconcious mind develop some alternate theories than what you’ve heard, because the whole story has nothing to do with any of that."

Who the hell are you to tell me what I need to know, I ask, you know, out of curiosity. "The cosmos have been opened up to me, now that I’m a part of them." He raises his arms over his head, saying, "I see things, Al, and I know things. I’ve got the unlimited means of the universe at my disposal." So you can knock this cryptic bullshit off and tell me what you want to tell me, right? "No, man, the cosmos has rules against that." Well, fuck you then, I say conversationally.
 
"Look at me, Al. I’m supposed to be in my prime here, well on my way to being a fucking doctor or a lawyer, but none of that matters now; nothing matters now. You know why? Because I’m dead. My life has been given in vain for a cause I understood vaguely before, and understand too well, now that I can’t change anything."
 
"I asked you about regrets earlier? Let me share one of mine. I got caught up; I was drafted, but I was here. I didn’t run off like some did when they got their draft notices. I had a real clear idea of what it meant to love my country; I figured service was part of that. After all, how could a patriotic citizen let revolutionaries split up his country just because they didn’t want to be a part of the group anymore? So I went; I climbed on a big silver greyhound bus and I came to the war, and I learned that my idea of patriotism was different than the government’s, but I adapted to what they wanted from me. I believed what they told me, about what was going on, and the reason this whole shitty ordeal was happening in the first place. I ignored the holes in their story, because it was PR to keep us from questioning too much. I let it slide in the name of love. You ever been in love?" Think so, I say. "Rough ain’t it? If I could just go back, if I could unmake one decision? I’d have stayed the hell away from that bus. I’d have run with the rest of the cowards, who were braver than me, and I’d have lived at least a little while longer." He looks me in the eye and says, "Patriotism is great and all, but it’s like the love of a bad woman, if it’s even love at all. It’s getting your ass kicked every goddamn day by every man she brings around to parade in front of you with. It’s heartache and pain, man, and she doesn’t do it because she loves you. It’s hate, and it’s a dark fucking hate at that."
 
"I’m dead because I couldn’t get clear, and if you can’t get clear, Al, you’ll end up just like me. They’ll surely spend your life as frivolously as they spent mine." Michael swings his legs out of the foxhole and stands. "Don’t think I’ve told you more than you already know. I haven’t told you anything I’m not permitted to tell. I’m telling you that whether or not you find out what is really going on, the longer you stay, the more likely it is you’ll end up a meal for forest critters." He brushes the dust and debris from himself and marches down the hill onto the plain. He stops at the bottom of the hill and turns to stare at me for a moment. I can hear footsteps on the path behind me, and I know it’s my relief, Wade or Tim most likely by the volume, and I straighten up and arrange my gear as Michael watches below me.
 
"You listening to me, Al?" he asks, and, looking up, I tell him, yeah, I’m listening. "Sure you are," he says and turns with a wave of his hand and walks off into the tall grass across the plain toward the sea.
Officers&Narcissism [2006-06-14 01:26:18] König Prüße, GfbAEV
Again taking off on an irrelevant tangent, but just offering this as a bit of military trivia. I read a study that had correlated narcissism with officers. The study said that officers tended to score high, but that narcissism did not necessarily make them good officers. So, I was thinking about the kind of officers who like fancy uniforms and pearl-handled pistols vs. the kind of officers who wear camo fatigues or OD greens, and I think that I'd tend to trust the latter more than the former.
Civil war. [2006-06-14 02:52:08] Hatless Jack
I always wondered what it'd be like to have another American or Oktober Revolution styled war. Most civil wars are just ethnic butchery, but to actually have a vicious, bloody, bare-knuckled national throw-down over matters of ethics and national philosophy is absolutely incomprehensible. Also: utterly personal. Far more personal than the pissant wars and peacekeeping efforts we've been involved in lately.

Fuck Iraq and Vietnam. War shouldn't be something you can just pick your ball up and walk home from with minimal consequences. It should be like the American Civil War: "Your philosophy is wrong and we're here to kill you because of that. Now, if you'll excuse me I need to burn down your city."
Pee! [2006-06-14 03:06:15] König Prüße, GfbAEV
During the Civil War, the ladies of Richmond, Virginia saved their pee to make explosives!
Blah blah blah [2006-06-14 10:50:14] Wyatt
It's called a watch, not a shift. It's called that because you're supposed to be watching for the enemy, not sitting around on your shifty ass. Not that sitting around on your shifty ass isn't a time-honored military tradition, but terminology is important to the soldier because language is one of those things that makes you part of the team. On the other hand, terminology is the least of what's wrong here.





Wyatt, buddy, calm down. [2006-06-14 15:28:25] FGS
It's a watch to soldiers, and these guys are not soldiers, per se. More like civilian militia, and if you don't mind me taking some creative license with what civilians know about nuts and bolts terminology, then they call it a shift. It's boring, and sometimes really unpleasant, so they think of it like work. A lot of people work shifts, even poor, terminology-ridden soldiers. Ask me how I know.

I'm looking for criticism, so if you'd like to share with me exactly what you think is wrong with what I've written here, I would be delighted to hear what you have to say, unless you're going to tell me you disagree with the opinions expressed by the characters.

Seriously, lay it on me.
My suggestion [2006-06-14 16:41:03] Sean
You should change the line "I tell him to call me Al" to "I tell him he can call me Al." Possibly have Michael suggest that Al call him Betty.
Do do do do, do do do do [2006-06-14 17:25:40] FGS
Michael strides off into the night playing a fake trumpet.
Freak, buddy, don't call me buddy [2006-06-14 22:42:35] Wyatt
My problem is that it's tell, tell, tell and yet the author still has to come in afterwards and explain, explain, explain. Oh, and it's boring. Even last time, when they were shooting people. This time I couldn't get past the first couple of paragraphs after the ghost entered. I hate that mystic crap. I even hate the TOWN of Mystic*. But what the fuck do I know? My shit probably deserves much harsher criticism.


*Mystic is not even a real place, it's a marketing gimmic. It's half Groton, half Stonington. Doesn't even have its own zip code. And the only thing you can buy there is overpriced clothing and bad food. And the fucking Seaport is so expensive you have to take out a second mortgage just to get in.
Mystic, Conn. is where all of the mercenaries go to retire! [2006-06-15 02:13:50] König Prüße, GfbAEV
I liked these stories. See, for me it's being able to let my mind drift into it, and I get pictures of what's happening, so it's almost like a Twilight Zone scenario. I think that's the whole trick to reading and enjoying fiction.
I didn't really read it as so much mysticism. [2006-06-15 02:25:06] Hatless Jack
I just assumed the narrator was snapping. The ghost apparently has access to all the information the narrator has, but isn't allowed to give any information the narrator does not have. It's not really a helpful "here's all the information you need to avenge my death" Hamlet type of ghost but rather one of those pussy introspective Christmas Carol ghosts that only tells you what you already know in your heart.
Combat Fatigue and Hallucinations [2006-06-15 02:41:07] König Prüße, GfbAEV
There's a dueling ground not far from here. I was working nearby. More than two-hundred duels were fought on that site. Sometimes, in the early morning mist I could see two guys in funny old clothes but shirtsleeves turning and drawing a bead on eachother. I'm sure it was just my imagination.
Kids and narrative [2006-06-15 12:42:54] Sean
I got the idea that it was just a bunch of kids who didn't know what they were doing. How that situation could have arisen though is up to the reader I guess. If the conflict has gotten so bad they're handing a gun to every 15-year-old and pointing them in the right direction with no training or leadership, you'd think conditions would be a lot less pleasant. We're talking insane-leader's-last-stand here.

I also thought the conversation with the ghost was really Al having a conversation with himself. That ghost did get a little preachy, though, and it sort of felt like one of those moments where the author uses a character to speak directly to the reader. That could have just been because this installment was only about 1500 words. As part of a larger piece, it wouldn't seem like the dominating part of the story.

As with all of FGS's writing, I thought it was good and enjoyed reading it.
and you thought YOU were furious [2006-06-16 13:46:22] posthumous
I like it so far. I like the idea of untrained incompetents with guns shooting at each other. I think it resonates with so much present day reality.
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