Free Everybody Loves You by Ethan Mordden Page B

us apparently aren’t comfortable sharing quarters with … Well, if it were mice we could trap them. But what do we do with a visitation?”
    He nods. Nails in his mouth. Hammer. One side, other side, step by step. Start a thing. Finish it.
    â€œTom?”
    He lays in the last shingle, dumps the can of nails into the toolbox, toys with the hammer.
    â€œI know who it is,” he tells me. Why not? He doesn’t care what I think. “Visiting at night here? I used to know him.”
    â€œHey!” Little Kiwi called up to us from the poison ivy and tundra that holds the Island together between foundations. “Have you seen any ghouls around here? Bauhaus and I are the Ghost Patrol.”
    â€œHey, Little,” Tom called down. The notion of a fully grown (if boyish) man named Little Kiwi was more than he could accept. At first, Tom called Little Kiwi nothing, then compromised on the first half of his name, solo. No one, including Little Kiwi, seemed to notice. “Hey, come on up here with us.”
    â€œThere’s no stairs.”
    â€œChunk up on the fence there and we’ll pull you along.”
    â€œHey, this is great,” Little Kiwi ventured after Tom had helped him up. “The Ghost Patrol can really do a lookout up here.”
    â€œYou can see clear to five counties,” said Tom.
    Little Kiwi laughed.
    â€œWho wants a slug?” Tom asked. His term for beer.
    So we all sat on the roof and slugged beer.
    â€œTom,” said Little Kiwi, “did you see the ghost?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œCan I take your picture?”
    â€œNo, I don’t want my picture taken anymore.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI guess I took too many when I was young. I’m all pictured up by now.”
    â€œI want to get a photo of the ghost. What does it look like?”
    Tom went into his secret hell, but he stayed with the theme. “He’s a very sad guy. Very nice guy and very sad. Good-looking. It was hard to know what to do with him because his feelings always got hurt very easily.”
    â€œWhose feelings?” Little Kiwi asked.
    Yes, whose? Tom could have been describing himself.
    â€œHis name was Champ McQuest, and this was something like 1972. Maybe 1973. Champ McQuest.”
    Little Kiwi, not following the computation, looked at me.
    â€œHe’s recalling an old friend,” I said.
    â€œHe was so sad,” said Tom, “that no one could cheer him up. I gave him a massage for free once, to make him happy.” Tom shook his head. “Not even that.”
    â€œThen what happened?” asked Little Kiwi.
    â€œHe died out on drugs. That stuff’s so mean. He just got out of control with it.”
    â€œThat happened a lot then,” I put in.
    Tom nodded. “Everything was an experiment. Because you didn’t know what the end was. But it was the nicest guys who got wrecked the worst. You remember that, Little. The tough guys are still standing when the dust clears.”
    â€œI’m afraid to be tough.”
    â€œChamp had a lot of friends. Everybody loved him. But no one could figure out what was hurting him. Now he’s trying to tell us something. A message from the past.”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “You think that’s—”
    â€œI know it.” He looked at us, one after the other. “I knew him close and I know he’s what’s been coming around at nights here.”
    â€œWhy would he tell us anything?” I reasoned. “He’s trying to get to you, isn’t he? Maybe there’s something the two of you didn’t finish … Jesus, look at me talking as if there really were a—”
    â€œWhat are you three hayseeds doing up there?” Dennis Savage called. “Half the house is in a state of panic, I don’t know where our next dinner is coming from, and you’re on the roof guzzling beer. And Little Kiwi, I told you to lose that garbage