Free Ghost Town by Richard W. Jennings

mail. The stamp had a picture of the queen of England on it when she was much younger than she is today.
    Dear Kid,
he wrote.
    At your suggestion, I have repriced the ghost camera at nine hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. Ill still give you ten percent off if you want it. The poetry book is a problem. I could print it for you when I print my catalog and it would be every bit as beautiful, but it would cost you. My guess is about three hundred dollars, but Id have to check with my printing manager, and at the moment he's fishing. In the meantime, send me all the bad luck talismans you've got. An undeserving world awaits its comeuppance.
    Your obedient servant,
    Milton Swartzman
    President and Publisher,
Uncle Milton's Thousand Things You Thought You'd Never Find
    P.S. The sample photo is excellent. Keep up the good work!
    P. IPS. If you come across any unusual vegetables, such as pumpkins or gourds shaped like famous people, please let me know. I'm always on the lookout for a rare celebrity squash.
    Dang!
I thought to myself.
Just yesterday I threw away a baby gourd that resembled the former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
    I need to pay more attention.
    That's what my motto should be:
Pay attention.
    Also,
What's the rush?
And
Plan ahead,
and
Take it easy.
    All of those.
    I need a motto notebook,
I thought.
    It's lucky my mother was trained in post office procedures, because I would not have known how to ship a boxful of objects resembling five dozen withered apples all the way to the middle of the Caribbean Sea. I did know one thing, however. If they represented as much bad luck as Milton Swartzman believed they did, they'd better be packed carefully.
    First, I wrapped each talisman in a page ripped from a catalog. Then I placed each one into a shipping box, gently, as if it were a mockingbird's egg, after which I filled the box with torn notebook paper. Then I placed the shipping box into an even larger shipping box, cushioned it all around with more paper, and sealed the whole thing airtight with nylon-reinforced packing tape.
    You could drop this parcel from the moon and it would survive the fall, I figured. Besides, its contents were harder than walnuts.
    The fastest way to get it there would have cost a fortune, so we settled on the patient way, estimated to take three weeks or more. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but...
    See? That's the problem with living in Paisley.
    There's nothing to do.
The mind is its own place, and itself

Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

—Milton (the Italian poet of long ago, no relation to Milton Swartzman)
    "Any word yet?" Chief Leopard Frog asked the next day.
    "Certainly not," I replied "I doubt if the box has even left Kansas."
    "Well, let me know the second you hear anything," Chief Leopard Frog requested.
    "Yes, of course," I replied.
    "I suppose I seem a little anxious," Chief Leopard Frog said.
    "More than usual," I admitted.
    "It's not the amulets I'm concerned about. They're easy to duplicate. It's the poems. They were my only copies," he explained.
    "Which copies?" I asked.
    "The ones I gave you," he replied.
    "You gave me copies of your poems?" I said.
    "You know I did," Chief Leopard Frog insisted. "I handed you a sheaf of papers while you were packing the box. Remember? You said, 'Thanks,' and I said, 'Don't mention it.' Remember?"
    "Oh," I said, suddenly realizing what I had inadvertently done but not wishing to reveal my blunder to Chief Leopard Frog.
"Those
poems. Sure, I put them in the box with the talismans. Don't worry about a thing. They're winging their way to the Caribbean as we speak."
    "Let me know when you hear something," he repeated.
    "You bet," I told him. "You can count on me."
    Not.

A Book Deal
    I ALREADY FELT GUILTY about lying to my imaginary friend about the chances of his poems ever getting published. Now, when I thought about it, I had no reason left to live. I was a total washout. A liar, a loser, and a