PART ONE
I AM THE EATER OF GHOSTS
CHAPTER ONE
Griffin Chalks had been told that he would hate retirement. That he wasn’t independent enough for such a venture. “Give it a week,” they—the eponymous “they”—said, “and ol’ Grif’ll have a part-time job.” He’d seen it before. Deacon Royce, who’d once been a star quarterback, then worked insurance, had gotten a job tearing tickets at the local cinema, just like a teenager. He sat at the box office, a single senior citizen amongst a nest of chatty high schoolers.
Not me, Griffin thought. I’d sooner die than work part-time at some entry-level kiddie job! No, I reckon retirement will suit me fine. Yessir.
Unfortunately, some cliches hold truths.
It had been seven years—take that, naysayers—since Griffin had retired on his seventieth birthday. And now, for the first time in those seven years, Griffin Chalks was finally awake at night, feeling lonely and pointless.
Seventy-seven was a strange age, he mused. Some aged hard, like him. Others were still bouncy and active, as if they could fight off the horrors of eighty and the hard-to-reach ninety.
He sat on his porch. The sun had just slipped behind the Ozark Hills that rumpled the landscape across from his house. Tilting back in his rocking chair, he tried to remember the last bit of fun he’d had.
Eloise had brought the grandkids around for Christmas. That had been nice. He’d been overjoyed to see Mary’s face spark up when she opened her presents.
But it was April now. He realized, with trembling terror, that he hadn’t seen his daughter or grandchildren in—he did a quick count—three and a half months.
If Prudence was still alive, the children would visit more often, he thought.
A gloomy sadness curled over him. He sank back in his rocking chair and looked toward the stars, as he often did when thoughts of Prudence Haymore struck him—and no matter how many years they’d been married, he always thought of her with her maiden name. He couldn’t explain it, but he’d always known her to be Prudence Haymore before they’d wed. And he didn’t mind that Eloise had kept her maiden name—hyphenated—when she married Boris Norton.
He may have been an old man, but Griffin wasn’t tied to the old ways. He’d seen numerous geezers get frustrated with the ever-changing world, but Griffin had been observant in his youth. He recognized that change was constant, even if it was different. And Griffin didn’t need to
understand everything to accept it. In fact, he’d been alive during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. He’d seen radicalism shift and morph and replace itself. The ideals his generation had fought for were now outdated. So what? He was simply lucky to have been aware of it all.
His thoughts had strayed.
They so often did.
What had he been thinking of?
Maybe a beer would help. He reached over and pulled a can from his six-pack. Popping the tab and taking his first sip, he watched the net of stars above his home.
Oh, yes. Prudence.
If his wife was still alive, he was sure Eloise would be visiting more often.
But isn’t that unfair?
How so?
She’s a busy girl, Griffin. She’s got three kids and a husband to tend to. And with the economy as it is, she also has to work a job! Women can’t afford to stay home anymore. That’s another thing that’s changed.
Don’t say that out loud.
It was true. Eloise was working multiple jobs between her home and her career. More than Griffin could ever imagine. All his life, he’d only worked at one place, and that was Dick’s Auto Shop. Hell, it’d been Dick Duffin himself—the man, the myth—who had hired Griffin back when he was just a sprout.
“You ever worked on cars before?” With his thick Maine accent, it sounded like “ca-ahs.”
“No, but I’m a quick learner.”
“Learn this. You break it, you bought it. You don’t fix it, you don’t get paid, yeah?”
“Sure.”
“I ain’t got time ta babysit. Fincher will show ya the ropes. Though I reckon you’ll mostly stay behind the reg. You can count, right?”
Griffin’s head swirled.
It took a second to translate “reg” as register.
“Yes, sir. I can count. I’m good at math.” It was the one thing Griffin was good at. He was failing English and history and skating by on loose C’s with the rest. Numbers always made sense to him. They were tangible and applicable, unlike similes and metaphors, which evaded him.
“You know who Fincher is?”
“Black guy, right?”
“Yeah. We give him a hard time, but he’s one of the good ’uns.”
It was a different time, Griffin thought with flinching shame.
Griffin stayed out of Dick’s hair. He stood behind the register and filled out receipts for oil changes, engine repairs, and tire swaps. Sometimes, Fincher stood by him just to ensure he was doing it right. When the two had downtime, Fincher took Griffin into the shop and showed him how things were done.
“Someday, this’ll be easy as breathing,” the old man claimed. “But you just stand by and watch now, you hear? Don’t fiddle with nothin’ because nuthin’ needs fiddlin’ with.”
It was strange, thinking back, which parts of his memories Griffin could hold on to with crystal clarity. Like how Fincher had pronounced nothing two different ways in one sentence. One snappy and the other drawly. The differences between “nothin’” and “nuthin’” were vast and slight all at once.
“Do I gotta go to school for any of this?”
“More formal places might tell ya to, but not Dick’s. I ain’t had a lick of school my whole life, and I’m doing just fine here.”
“Good.”
“Don’t like school?”
“Not much.” Griffin had shrugged his shoulders.
“What do you not like about it?”
“I mean, it’s okay. I struggle with classes. I don’t like waking up early. I liked math until they started puttin’ letters in it.”
“They put letters in math? Like what? A plus B equals C?”
“That’s it.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Besides, I don’t have many friends there.” Griffin was fifteen, scrawny, and his face was quilted with acne. He wasn’t nerdy enough to be bullied, but he certainly wasn’t a popular teenager.
“Is that why you tried getting a job? So you could socialize?” Fincher asked in a way that confused Griffin. He couldn’t tell if the old man was sympathetic or was chiding him.
“No. I got the job because Dad said I needed to work,” Griffin said. He flushed red, realizing he sounded like a little kid instead of a man. Although he was fifteen, he felt he should be grown by now.
“You oughta have friends. Hell, I ’member having a whole group of guys I hung out with when I was yer age. We’d hit the town and raise so much hell . . . Ah, but those times were more dangerous for kids like me. Raising hell is a little different nowadays, I’m sure. You ever go cruising?”
“Cruising?”
“Kids do it all the time. They just drive up and down the town and all around it. Playin’ their music loud enough to wake the dead.” Fincher winked. “I’d be mad if I hadn’t gotten up to worse shit in my youth.”
“I don’t have a car yet.” He didn’t have a license either, but he didn’t bring that up to Fincher.
“That what yer first paycheck is goin’ toward?”
“And every paycheck after.” Griffin smiled bashfully. “Dad said if I wanna drive, I oughta earn it.”
“But you do have a license, right?”
“Right.”
Fincher fished his keys out of his coveralls and tossed them. Griffin fought to catch the jangling keys. When he had them looped around his finger, his face was painted with shock.
“You don’t mean—”
“This is a loaner. You go out tonight and make some friends, and bring the car back without a scratch, and thank me later, yeah?”
“What if—”
“If you ding it up, then you know who to hand yer first paycheck to.” Fincher smiled.
So, thought Griffin as his rocking chair squeaked him back into the present. It was Ol’ Man Fincher who was to blame for everything that happened in the summer of nineteen sixty-one. It was his fault I met Orville and Eunice . . .
Everything bad and beautiful about that year began . . . because I wanted to go cruising, and an old man trusted me with his car. He didn’t even ask to ride with me for a trip around the block, just to make sure I could actually drive. I was lucky my dad gave me lessons.
From inside his house, Griffin heard the telephone ring.
Despite the advancements in technology, he still had a landline. Eloise had bought him an “old person cell phone” for his birthday one year. Some shrimpy piece of plastic with buttons that were too small and an assortment of annoying sounds it liked to make at odd times. Eventually, he’d gotten so angry at the thing that he threw it across his lawn. When it struck the trunk of a cedar tree, it detonated like a landmine. He’d had to pick the bits of plastic out of the lawn before running his mower again, or else he worried that the chips would shoot out like bullets! So, with apologies to Eloise, he’d stuck by his tried-and-true landline telephone.
Slowly and grumpily, wondering who would dare call at whatever time of night it was—it was really only nine, but it felt so much later—Griffin hoisted himself out of his rocking hair. On plodding feet, he went to the door and nudged it open with his shoulder, carrying his half-full beer in one hand and letting the other dangle.
“I’m comin’!” he shouted, as if the person on the other end of the line could hear him. “Hold yer horses!”
The phone rang blaringly. He scooped it up and looked at the caller ID. It read Caller Unknown in blocky text. Frowning, Griffin considered declining the call. It was probably just a robot anyway, looking to phish him out of what little he owned.
Despite the advancements in technology, he still had a landline. Eloise had bought him an “old person cell phone” for his birthday one year. Some shrimpy piece of plastic with buttons that were too small and an assortment of annoying sounds it liked to make at odd times. Eventually, he’d gotten so angry at the thing that he threw it across his lawn. When it struck the trunk of a cedar tree, it detonated like a landmine. He’d had to pick the bits of plastic out of the lawn before running his mower again, or else he worried that the chips would shoot out like bullets! So, with apologies to Eloise, he’d stuck by his tried-and-true landline telephone.
Slowly and grumpily, wondering who would dare call at whatever time of night it was—it was really only nine, but it felt so much later—Griffin hoisted himself out of his rocking hair. On plodding feet, he went to the door and nudged it open with his shoulder, carrying his half-full beer in one hand and letting the other dangle.
“I’m comin’!” he shouted, as if the person on the other end of the line could hear him. “Hold yer horses!”
The phone rang blaringly. He scooped it up and looked at the caller ID. It read Caller Unknown in blocky text. Frowning, Griffin considered declining the call. It was probably just a robot anyway, looking to phish him out of what little he owned.
Despite this, his finger hovered over the TALK button. He was pressing it before he’d even realized what he’d done, and then he was holding the phone up to his ear, which was crosshatched with wiry, white hair. Slowly, he licked his dry lips...
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