The Lovely Shadow (28 page)

When I came into the kitchen, Miss Lilly was
already awake and was standing by the sink, staring out the window
with tears running down her face.

“Miss Lilly,” I said, my voice cracking from
puberty and honest concern, “What’s the matter?”

Miss Lilly jumped when I spoke. Though I had
not been quiet on my entry to the kitchen, she had been so lost in
what she was looking at outside that she had not heard me
enter.

“Oh, Boo,” she said when she turned around
and saw me, “you like to ‘bout done scare me to death, Child.”

She turned back towards the window and
resumed staring out without saying anything else, so I approached
her and stood beside her, wrapping one arm around her back, and
looking out the window to see what she was staring at.

The kitchen window looked out towards the
pond and the willow tree where I still enjoyed sitting and reading.
At first, I saw nothing out there that seemed out of the ordinary,
but then I noticed that one of the residents of the pond—a large
gray goose that spent his summers lounging at the pond much the way
I did, and whom I’d named Howard—was running circles around the
base of the willow tree.

“What the Hell is that crazy goose doing?” I
muttered, more to myself than to Miss Lilly.

Miss Lilly diverted her attention from the
window to look at me for a second and said, “You don’ see, Boo? You
keep watchin’ you be seein’ in time.”

I glanced back at Miss Lilly and wondered
what that cryptic sentence was all about, but quickly shrugged it
off and returned my gaze to the crazy goose that was running
circles around the tree.

The longer I stared at the goose, the more I
began to think I might be seeing things. There appeared to be a
shadow—albeit a dim one—chasing the goose around that old willow
tree. I blinked hard a couple times and rubbed my eyes, but when I
looked again, not only was the shadow still there, but it was
darker and more prominent than it had been only a few seconds
before.

The longer I watched the more material the
shadow became, until it was no longer a shadow, but a fully solid
man that was chasing that old goose. I looked at him in wonder and
tried to figure out how I had not seen him to begin with.

The man was hard to make out from a distance,
but he appeared to be an older black gentleman, in his mid fifties
or early sixties. He wore a red and white checkered shirt, with the
long sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a pair of blue denim
overalls, and brown work boots.

His hatless head revealed a somewhat bushy
salt and pepper afro that covered his entire head except for one
small shining bald spot on the back, near the top of his head. I
could see from a distance that he wore a neatly trimmed beard, of
the same salt and pepper colors as his hair.

The man was running rapturously behind the
poor goose, every movement of his body displaying a pure
unadulterated joy, as he lunged and grabbed for the goose over and
over again with his long outstretched arms.

Occasionally, the man would leap into the air
and click his feet together with all the grace of a ballerina, and
seemed to hang in the air for just a fraction too long to look
completely normal.

I was mystified by the man. For one, why was
there a strange old black man running around on my aunt’s property?
For two, why in God’s name was he chasing a goose? For three, how
in the Hell was a man of his age able to keep up with the goose and
perform his lunges and jumps with a dancers grace and agility? For
four, why didn’t I see him to begin with? For five… well, in other
words, the situation completely baffled me.

As I have mentioned previously, since my
salvation from the basement I have seen a shimmering aura around
all physical objects. This aura extends only about an inch or two
around the entire perimeter of the object I am looking at and
appears to be primarily silver in color, though it has a multitude
of other colors swirling through it, like oil on water.

The single most baffling thing to me about
this strange man in the yard was the fact that he had no aura. To
anybody else, not afflicted with my peculiar vision disorder, the
man would appear completely normal, but to me, he just
looked…wrong.

“Miss Lilly, who is that and why is he
chasing Howard?” I asked, trying to sound casual rather than
fearful or weirded out, which was exactly how I was feeling.

Miss Lilly turned to me, still with tears
running down her chubby cheeks and decided to remain cryptic. She
said, “You don’ know him, Boo, but Miss Lilly knowed him long ago.
I ain’t been seein’ him fo’ a long stretch o’ time, but now him
back, now him done find me at last.”

Having successfully confused the crap out of
me, Miss Lilly returned her gaze to the window. I stared at her
with my mouth agape for several seconds before snapping it shut
with an audible pop.

I looked back out the window and that saw the
man was sitting down beneath the tree, with Howard in his lap. The
man was looking towards the house and appeared to be petting the
goose.

“Well,” I said, frustrated with Miss Lilly’s
apparent desire to be mystifying, “I’m going to go talk to him, and
see what he wants.”

Miss Lilly turned to me with a broad, toothy
grin and one arched eyebrow and said, “You go right on ahead an’ do
dat, Child. But I gonna told you right now, him ain’t gonna be
talkin’ back.”

“Oh?” I asked incredulously, “Why’s
that?”

“Him on’y jes’ learned how to be showin’
hisself, he ain’t had no time to be learnin’ how to talk yet.”

Miss Lilly was driving me crazy with her
asinine half-answers and I decided it was time to tell her as much.
“Ok, Miss Lilly, I love you to death, but you are driving me
bat-shi…crap crazy right now! Can you please explain just what the
heck you’re talking about?”

Even though Miss Lilly was driving me
bat-shit crazy, I still respected her far too much to curse much in
her company.

Though I felt I’d pulled the punch at the
last second by not cursing, I still must have said enough to get my
point across because she finally gave me a direct answer; I almost
wished I hadn’t asked.

She looked at me with her cheeks still wet
from her tears and said, “Him dead, Johnny. Dat be my dead Louie.
Him done lost me when I move here, an’ though I been to de old
place lookin’ for him many time, I never find him, because him been
out lookin’ for me, an’ now him done found me.”

“When we done lost each other, him din’ know
how to make hisself visible, but sometime him could make hisself
into a shadow. Now him done learned to control his energy enough to
make hisself visible, but him got a long time b’fore him be
learnin’ how to talk yet.”

I stared at Miss Lilly with my mouth agape
for the second time in as many minutes, and turned my gaze back to
the man at the pond. I was just getting ready to challenge the
honesty of Miss Lilly’s answer when I watched the man fade rapidly
from sight.

When I say fade, I don’t mean to imply that
he walked slowly away until he was so distant that he was no longer
visible. I mean what I said; that he was sitting there, petting a
goose, and suddenly he just faded away until he was no longer
visible and the goose that had been sitting contentedly on his lap
suddenly found itself dropping about eight inches to the ground,
with nothing beneath it to hold it up any longer.

I gasped audibly and stepped back away from
the window, turning towards Miss Lilly as I did, and asked,
“Where’d he go?” In my panic, and my ever inconveniencing puberty,
my voice came out rather more falsetto than I would have liked in
that instance.

Miss Lilly smiled, even as she still cried,
and replied, “I tink him comin’ to say ‘hi’, an’ meet de fam’ly,
Boo.”

I wanted to tell Miss Lilly that I really
didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be meeting dead people so
early in the morning, but was distracted by the sudden overpowering
smell of pipe tobacco.

“Miss Lilly, do you smell that?” I asked with
a breaking, wavering voice that was bordering on panic.

Miss Lilly gave me one of the sterner looks
she’d ever given me up to this point in our relationship and
reached up to pinch her nose as she said, “Smell what? You bes’ not
be fartin’ in my kitchen, Boy, else Miss Lilly be findin’ a way to
plug up dat hole!”

“No I didn’t fart! I smell pipe tobacco. I
smell it real strong. You don’t smell that?”

My panic was growing as I suddenly remembered
back to my first summer at June’s and the smell of roses that
accompanied many odd happenings during that time. Although those
odd events had all been benign, that certainly didn’t necessitate
that any odd happenings that might occur under the scent of pipe
tobacco would not be more malignant.

Miss Lilly’s eyes widened as she exclaimed,
“Pipe smoke! You be smellin’ pipe smoke? Louie, Louie? You be in
here, Louie?”

Miss Lilly began frantically searching around
the kitchen for the invisible man, but evidently could not see him,
for she kept looking and calling. I, on the other hand saw him, but
was far too frightened to speak.

I suppose that to say I saw him may be a bit
misleading. What I saw was a shadow of him, right next to Miss
Lilly. I saw him appear there suddenly, right after I told Miss
Lilly I had not been letting off butt bombs in her kitchen.

His shadow was not as dark as a shadow caused
by the sun and a solid object, but was instead, just a light gray
transparent form, in the distinct shape of a human being, standing
right next to Miss Lilly, with one transparent arm wrapped
familiarly around her back.

Miss Lilly finally quit calling for him and
instead looked at me accusingly and said, “How you be knowin’ my
Louie smoke a pipe, an’ why you be pullin’ my leg like dat—like you
be smellin’ him? Ain’t nobody done never smell de Shadow b’fore
anyway. I should’a knowed you were joshin’ me! Dat were a
mean-hearted ting you just done right there, Johnny Krimshaw.”

I was frozen with fear, and unable to make a
sound beyond the briefest “ahh…tss... ahh…derr…” until I saw big
angry tears leaking out of Miss Lilly’s eyes. She truly thought I
was poking fun at her about her dead husband, and she was deeply
hurt to think that I would do such a thing.

That shocked me out of my stammer and at last
allowed me to talk. “Miss Lilly, no! I am not lying, or teasing! I
can smell him! And now, I can see him too; well sort of see him
anyway. He’s beside you; his arm is around your back… and now he is
nodding, like he’s agreeing with me.”

And indeed the Shadow of Louie was nodding,
and offering me a thumbs-up gesture that was rather difficult to
make out, since it was devoid of any features or depth, and was
mostly transparent.

Miss Lilly continued to stare at me
doubtfully, not quite convinced that I was not trying to prank her,
until the Louie Shadow stepped in front of her (she did not see
him, but continued to stare through him, at me) and started picking
at her hair, lifting her bushy braids up in the air one at a time
and then dropping them.

Miss Lilly’s eyes widened once more as she
reached up and grabbed at her hair, and her gaze shortened, her
eyes nearly crossing, as she tried to focus on the invisible
phantom only inches away from her face.

She obviously could not see him as well as I
could, but she must have seen something, because she finally broke
out in a huge smile and began slapping the air in front of her,
like she was batting away a swarm of gnats, and said “Louie, you
ol’ devil, you bes’ be knockin’ off dat horseplay, or I gonna go
pee on you’s grave…again!”

Apparently Louie believed her, for he
immediately let go of her braids and stepped off to her side once
more. Miss Lilly broke into a deep laugh, puking her joy into the
kitchen in her usual way that always made me joyful right alongside
her, and said “C’mon, ol’ man, let’s go walkin’. We got us some
catchin’ up to do fo’ sho’!”

As her and Shadow Louie walked by me, Miss
Lilly stopped and touched my cheek tenderly, and said “Boo, I am so
sorry dat I thought bad of you, an’ said you was bein’
mean-hearted. I was no’ thinking right. I know you are de best
young man in de world an’ I love you wit’ all my heart. Please
fo’give me.”

I smiled honestly at Miss Lilly and moved
towards her and kissed her cheek, which was still moist with salty
tears and told her there was nothing to forgive. Then I turned
towards Shadow Louie and said “Louie, you better treat this young
lady right, and have her home before midnight!”

I offered the transparent shadow a wink and
expected no real tangible response, but for just one split second,
like the flickering of a fluorescent light when you first turn it
on, Shadow Louie pulled his energy reserves together and became
Solid Louie again.

Solid Louie looked at me with a huge smile,
his eyes twinkling with joy and mischief, and gave me a quick wink
and slight shake of his head before flickering back into Shadow
Louie. That brief glimpse was enough to convey to me that though he
might be dead, he would still ravage Miss Lilly in a most
un-gentlemanly way if only given the chance.

I immediately liked the old man and was able
to see why Miss Lilly had fallen in love with him. As they walked
out of the kitchen together, I said a silent prayer for them,
“Lord, please give him the chance. Amen.”

I stood in the kitchen staring out the window
towards the pond for several minutes, thinking about a lot of
different things.

Mostly I wondered about the ‘eye’ that Miss
Lilly had told me about. I could not discredit her claim that I had
the gift since I had been able to see the dead guy in my kitchen
even more readily than she had, but I did wonder what it would mean
for the rest of my life.