Dead Schmed

There
was only one thing to do. I made my way cautiously home, sat down at my
computer and printed out a copy of Deathwatch. A pair of Hush Puppies
appeared atop my monitor, but I refused to look up. After a time, they
disappeared. I printed it all out, single space, ten point type, lugged
the manuscript over to Kinko’s, where I had them print and bind one
hundred copies of the one hundred twenty-nine page, single-spaced
manuscript. Cost me twelve hundred dollars. I insisted that the woman
at the counter keep a copy for herself. Imagine her delight.
I
stacked the books in my office, lit a cigarette, poured myself three
inches of Scotch, and stared at the boxes full of Deathwatch, trying to
enjoy my new sense of uneasy immortality.

“It won’t work, Pete,” the ghost announced. His voice had a tinny quality.

I looked around the room, but couldn’t find him.

“Here,” he said.

I
realized that his voice was coming from my computer speaker. His
digitized face peered out at me from my monitor in two hundred and
fifty-six colors, his blind eye spinning.

“I should delete you,” I said.

“That’s
up to you, Pete. Won’t make any difference, though. It’s not like you
can change things. What’s going to happen has happened.”
“Immutable future, huh?”

“Up here, they call it predestination.”

“I thought that concept had gone out of fashion.”

“Not really. But we apply it more narrowly now. My fate, for instance, is preordained.”

“That’s because you’re already dead.”

“True.
But it’s not considered polite to point that out. Your fate, however,
is different from your destiny. Your fate is to die. Your destiny is to
die forgotten. You can print all the books you want, Pete. You’re still
going to die.”

“But my books will be here.” I pointed toward the pile of spiral-bound manuscripts. “In print.”

“A technicality, Pete.”

“Don’t you listen to him,” said another voice.

I turned and saw a new ghost sitting in the doorway.

“Grandma?”
I closed my eyes, opened them. She was still there, folded into her
wheelchair, checkered woolen throw over her lap, hawk nose, downturned
mouth, watering eyes, curly gray hair, hands like talons gripping the
armrests of her chair. Her dark gaze was fixed on the computer monitor,
on Smed’s astonished face.

“Turn that thing off,” she snapped.

I hit the off button on the computer. Smed’s face imploded, leaving a blank screen.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“The
hotel,” she said. Grandma Dink had lived her last few unhappy years in
the St. Francis Home, which she always referred to as “the hotel.” No
one ever knew for sure whether it was her sense of humor or her
Alzheimer’s.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

She did not
reply. She was staring out beyond the walls, possibly into her past.
She hadn’t heard me. “Grandma?” Apparently, death had not improved her
hearing. I raised my voice. “How are you?”

“They feed you hosts.
Nothing but hosts,” she said, returning her attention to the present.
“A slice of good ham would be nice. You’d think they’d give an old
woman a slice of ham and a pickle for lunch.”

“I have some pickles,” I said.

Dink leaned forward. “Speak up.”

Louder. “Would you like a pickle?”

She shook her head. “Too late for that now. But I could use a Kleenex.”

I handed her a tissue, watched her dab at her watering eyes.

“I waxed the woodwork,” I said. “Johnson’s Wax.”

“Took you long enough.” She examined me, a sour expression on her crumpled face. “I hear you’re a writer now.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been writing much lately.”

“Your grandfather said he read your books. He said they weren’t bad, but you used a lot of cuss words.”

I nodded. “That’s the way books are these days, Grandma. He really said he liked them? He never told me that.”

She raised her chin, pointed her prominent nose at the computer. “Has he been teasing you?”

“He says he’s been haunting me.”

She snorted. “He’s having fun with you, Pete.”

“I’m not having much fun.”

“I’m not surprised. Do you know what he did one time? The time he and Tuck went duck hunting?”

“What did he do?”

“Took
all the boy’s shotgun shells, emptied out all the lead shot, and
replaced it with peppercorns. That boy couldn’t hit a thing. He about
went crazy out there on the lake, every time he’d shoot, the ducks
would just keep right on flying. Then Smed would yell, ‘What’s wrong
with you?
Can’t you shoot straight?’ Of course, every time he
shot, the birds would come tumbling down. That was your grandfather,
Pete. They came home, that boy’s face was long. I swear the man could
be cruel as winter. When your grandfather finally ’fessed up he laughed
so hard I thought he was going to die right there in my kitchen.”

“Then it’s not true? About all my books being out of print when I die?”

“I
don’t know and I don’t care. But if he comes back and starts filling
your head with peppercorns, you just reach out and pop him. You know
how to do that, don’t you?”

“I’ve done it before,” I said.

“Next time, do it before he opens his mouth.”

“OK, Grandma.”

“Let
me tell you something else. When you get old and they come to take you
away, you better pack yourself a weiner, cause they’ll be wanting to
feed you mush.”

“OK, Grandma.”

She stared hard at me, rivers flowing from both eyes.

“Send me back to the hotel, Pete.”

So I popped her.

 

 


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