Free Ghost Brother (Spooky Short Stories by Kathryn Meyer Griffith) by Kathryn Meyer Griffith Page B

about
the dog I ran over before I hit the tree. She loved animals and, for that,
would never have forgiven me.
    That was Gerald’s harebrained idea, too. “There you go…let’s
see how close you can get to that mangy mutt without flattening him.” I thought
I had it all under control and then the car had swerved on the rainy country
road and I’d felt it run over something. Thump. Thump.
    Oh, oh.
    “Oops. Darn. You hit ‘em anyway.” And Gerald had laughed.
He always laughed when something bad happened. He wouldn’t let me return and
help the creature, either. “It’s dead…what are you going to do–revive it?” More
laughter.
    That Gerald had such a cold heart.
     
    ***
     
    Unable to gain access to the house, I sat on the front
porch swing, the one I’d given Tessa for her last birthday, for a long time
trying to decide what to do next. I missed Tessa so much. It seemed as if I
hadn’t seen her in a long time.
    For a second or two I thought I heard her soft voice, her
sweet laughter on the wind. Oh, Tessa.
    We’d loved each other since our high school days. I’d met
her when she was fifteen and I was seventeen. She a sophomore and me a senior. She
was sensitive, artistic girl who made straight A’s while I was just a loser who
could barely pass my classes. I graduated by the skin of my teeth and often
wondered what she’d ever seen in me. I’d taken one look at her, she’d smiled
shyly, and I’d been hooked for life. I asked her out that first day and soon we
were inseparable. After high school, I’d gone into the Army and she’d waited
faithfully until I got out. We became engaged and got married. Sure, I had
problems I traced back to my service days fighting in a brutal desert war that
messed me up royally. For years afterward I had horrendous nightmares, jumping
up from bed and crashing through the house in the dark as if I were still on
patrol. It went on for years.
    Because during the war I’d killed. Mostly goaded on by my
brother, as usual. Gerald liked to kill. No wonder I had nightmares.
    But time went by and I got better. Well, better in that the
nightmares subsided and I found a job in a stove factory putting stoves
together. It was a job I hated and eventually I answered one of those over-the-road
trucking ads that promise you top money and every weekend home driving the big
rigs. They lied. The money wasn’t much at first and I was home very few
weekends. It was hard. Hard on my body, hard on my marriage.
    One day in a truck stop while waiting out a blizzard I
ended up talking to a guy who owned and operated his own eighteen-wheeler. He
swore by being his own boss and choosing his own loads, making his own schedule.
Said the money was better, too. He was getting ready to retire and offered me
his truck, a Peterbilt conventional , if I wanted it, for what I thought was a steal price. What can I say, the
guy liked me. So when I got home a few days later Tessa and I discussed it and
then we bought it. Put us deep in debt but Tessa worked an extra job to pay it
off. She was like that. Paid off our house quick, too. She hated to be in debt.
    It was a good truck and we made a fine living off of it as
the years went by, except those times when gas went sky high or when I didn’t
feel like working. Gerald often talked me into taking large hunks of time off
so we could have some fun. Life shouldn’t be all work, he’d say. So what if we
never had that new house out in the woods Tessa and I dreamed of or, so what,
if our bank account didn’t always cover our bills. Tessa found a way to make
ends meet by cutting back on things she’d wanted, clipping coupons, doing without
and buying used cars. Even then we still broke even. Tessa got a job as a
graphic artist at a local newspaper, making peanuts, and we limped on through our
life. Lousy job, they worked her to death but she was a good sport and never
complained. Just worked harder.
    I didn’t want children but Tessa did, so by and by, we