Free Fine Spirits [Spirits 02] by Alice Duncan Page A

legs before getting out of bed. This wasn't as heartening as it might seem, since it probably meant he'd had to get up in the middle of the night and take a dose of the morphine syrup he got from Doc Benjamin.
           Billy's morphine use had increased during the past year. I feared he'd become addicted to the drug, if he wasn't already. But he needed relief from his pain, and morphine gave it to him. Therefore, I tried not to worry too much. Even though it was stupid and fruitless, I couldn't stop wishing there was another answer to Billy's pain. But I feared that, as long as he still lived, there wasn't.
           At least he hadn't awakened in the night crying out, thinking he was still in a foxhole in France and being shot at by the Kaiser's army. I've read that terrible nightmares are another symptom of shell shock. It seemed to me that Billy had enough to bear without nightmares, but nobody'd asked me.
           Mrs. Bissel called bright and early that morning, before I'd donned more than my combination underwear. I threw on a robe and dashed to the kitchen, hoping I'd beat our other party-line friends (I use the term loosely) to the telephone. I should have known better. Mrs. Barrow had the fastest pick-up in the West. I swear, the woman sat next to her telephone twenty-four hours every day, just waiting for the phone to ring so she could eavesdrop.
           After I'd shooed her and a couple of other people off the wire, Mrs. Bissel asked breathlessly, “Did you determine anything during your meditations, Daisy?”
           Gosh, I'd forgotten all about telling her I'd meditate on the matter of her haunted basement. Not that I ever meditated on anything, but I might at least have done some hard thinking about her problem and come up with a plan of action. Lack of thought had never stopped me before, and it didn't stop me then.
           Rather than flat-out lying to her, I said, “I need to visit your home again, Mrs. Bissel. The spirits can be elusive.” And I could be forgetful.
           “Of course, of course. I expected you to come again today.”
           The chorus of houndish woofs in the background made me smile, which made me perk up slightly. Until I looked out the kitchen window and saw the rain again. Thanks to heavy winds, the torrent's downward path had been pushed sideways. It was darned hear horizontal at the moment.
           I sighed, wondering if the Model T would make it up the hill. Then again, why bother with the automobile? It wasn't a closed-in machine; I'd probably drown if I tried to drive it all that way in this hideous rain. I knew from experience that the Model T didn't like rain any more than it liked hills, and I'd have to drive on at least one unpaved street. Asking it to tackle rain, hills, and mud together might prove fatal to the motorcar, if not my humble self.
           Perhaps Brownie could take me in the pony cart. I could rig up some sort of cover for it. Maybe. Then again, Brownie was a recalcitrant beast at the best of times. I wouldn't put it past him to sit down in the middle of Lake Avenue and refuse to move at all if I asked him to pull me uphill in the rain.
           It would be better to take a red car. At least the cars weren't completely open to the elements, and if I took Pa's big umbrella, I might stay moderately dry, except for my feet, but I could wear rubber boots. They weren't exactly fashionable, but sometimes elegance had to bow to practicality. And, as an added benefit, I wouldn't have to crank up the Ford and pray it would start, or coax a balky Brownie to do his duty and pull the pony cart. The red cars ran up and down the various hills in Pasadena and Altadena on their little tracks, and all I had to do was hand the driver a nickel to avail myself of their services.
           Mrs. Bissel must have sensed my thoughts, because she said, “I'll have Henry run down and pick you up in the Daimler. I don't