Help for the Haunted(30)

“Ladies and gentleman, meet Caleb Lundrum. Caleb was one of the first, and certainly one of the most powerful, spirits my wife and I encountered when we began working together in the years after we were married.”

[page]People leaned forward in their chairs. My father began to explain how he and my mother became involved in the case when a man in the audience, about twenty rows from the stage, stood. From where I crouched in the back, I made out a bit of his profile, though mostly what I saw was from behind. His hair was dark and unkempt. His shoulders, round and beefy. His jeans, sagging. “Excuse me,” he said in a slurred voice.

Earlier, when we turned into the parking lot of the conference center, my father commented to my mother that at least the weather had kept their detractors away. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. Rose, of all people, informed me later that at certain of their events, religious groups waited outside, shouting at the people who walked through the doors, calling them devil worshippers and sinners. My mother always felt genuinely confused by their venom, since she considered herself to be a woman of faith and did her best to live by the Bible. When this man first disrupted their talk, I thought maybe he was someone who had it out for my parents.

“You mentioned seeing ghosts in the movie theater when you were young,” he said, his tongue sloshing around his s’s. “But in the dark of a theater, there are all kinds of shadows and strange lights, especially if the projector’s still, you know, running. Isn’t it more likely that you saw something that looked like a ghost in the dark?”

People craned their heads around to see who had cut off my father just when he was getting to the good stuff. Rose and I watched too. My father removed his glasses, rubbed them on his yellow button-down, then returned them to his face. “At the moment, we are discussing Caleb Lundrum, whose image is here on the screen, so I’d—”

“Well, your friend Caleb looks to me like he might just be a problem with a camera flash. Or maybe you need to get your lens cleaned.”

Lookshhhh to me . . . Jussshht be a problem . . . Lensshhhh cleaned . . .

He acted so drunk it seemed put on. Still, his comment drew a laugh from the crowd nearly as big as the one my mother’s joke stirred earlier. My father kept calm and explained that the photo was taken with a special camera and that the image was most certainly not the result of a faulty flash or an unclean lens. As he spoke, Rose jabbed me in the side. “You know who that is, don’t you?”

I stared at the man, seeing only his unkempt hair, those droopy jeans. “No.”

“If ghosts are real,” the man said, cutting off my father again, “I mean, if they’re spirits who’ve been left in this world after their bodies have passed on, wouldn’t it be a huge epidemic? I mean, billions of lives have come and gone from this planet. So wouldn’t that mean there would be billions of ghosts wandering around taking up space?”

“Spirits don’t occupy physical space in the way that you and I do.”

“Oh, yeah? And how do you know? Do ghosts all go on a diet?”

The audience let out their loudest laugh yet. Now that the man’s tone had tipped over into aggressive, I waited to see if my father would match it. “Ladies and gentlemen,” my father said, “before we go any further, I may as well use this opportunity to introduce you all to my brother, Howard.”

The small crowd might not have actually gasped, but the news brought about yet another shift in the air of that auditorium. People twisted their necks around to see. As much as I wanted to get a better look too, I crouched lower for fear of being discovered. The last time I’d seen my uncle had been a few summers before when he rolled into the driveway on his motorcycle, making an unannounced visit and staying nearly a week. Nights, he spent watching M*A*S*H and Odd Couple reruns in the living room. Days, he passed out on the sofa. The clock that ticked not far from the cross on our wall made him jittery, and he insisted my parents stop it. “Feel like I’m living inside a time bomb,” I remembered him saying, though we were all so used to the sound it had no effect on us.

The visit came to an end one evening at the dinner table. My uncle, his mouth full of food, said, “This pork piccata, or whatever you call it, is dry. That’s what happens when the cook tries getting too fancy. Me, I like things simpler.”

“Well, if you like things simpler,” my father told him, not looking up from his plate, “get on your motorcycle and go find the sort of fleabag flophouse you’re used to.”

“Come on, buddy,” my uncle said. “Relax.”

“I’m not your ‘buddy.’ And don’t—do not, whatever you do—tell me to relax.” Still, my father kept from looking up. He cut a carrot, put it in his mouth. I thought he was done talking, but after chewing and swallowing, he continued, his gaze never leaving his plate, “Maybe I tolerated the way you and our parents treated me years ago. But I won’t tolerate it here in my own home. My wife worked hard to prepare this meal for my family to enjoy. So shut up and enjoy it too. Or, like I said, leave.”

My uncle waited a moment before balling up his napkin and tossing it on the table. He stood and walked to the living room, where he gathered his clothes quick as a burglar. The front door opened and closed. Outside, his motorcycle roared, the sound rising then fading as he sped away.

Only after Howie had left did my father stop eating. He, too, stood, then walked to the living room and locked the door before starting the clock. The house filled with that familiar ticking sound once more as he returned. Our cutlery clanked against our plates while we finished the meal without another mention of Howie or any conversation at all.