Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 2:41 P.M. HAST} A Dark Episode Revisited—At Last

Gentle Tweeter,

The last time I saw Papadaddy Ben was Halloween night, the night Nana Minnie died. His scarecrow ghost walked up to our porch in tedious upstate. Now, here he stands. He and Nana Minnie. Surely my education in Swiss etiquette would dictate a casual, easygoing way to inquire about the health of his book-squished, semidetached wing-wang, but I’m uncharacteristically without words.

It’s strange how the currently conflagrating Styrofoam volcano echoes the not-happy circumstances of our last fatal encounter. The furious release of polycarbon gases suggests the reek of that long-ago upstate comfort station. The heat of this searing plastic cataclysm recalls the scorching temperature of that summer afternoon.

Speechless, I adopt the detached mien that has so oft of late served me, that of the observant supernaturalist. As the child of former-Gestaltist, former-self-actualized, former-Euthonian parents, I recognize that if anyone ought to be feeling awkward in the present situation, it’s not me. My papadaddy played the dooky-brandishing predatory degenerate. Suppressing a lifetime of social conditioning, I resolve not to comment about the weather. Instead, I elect to remain silent and simply to observe my subject for signs of discomfort.

My terrible secret is not mine alone. It is also my grand-father’s. As I once waited in the “blind” of my toilet cubicle, ready to endure the worst, now let him suffer my probing gaze. In the stealthy manner of Mr. Darwin or Mr. Audubon, I make a cold inventory of the specimen at hand. I picture the stubby boneless finger that had so menaced me. The infinite tiny wrinkles that carpeted the finger’s spongy surface, and the several short, curling hairs that clung to it. I revisit the finger’s sour, not-healthy odor.

My nana is the first to speak. “We come on the whirligig. What a ride!”

I appraise them coolly.

My nana perseveres. “Ever since the day he died, Sweet Pea, your grandpa has wanted to see you again.”

I make no effort to reply. Let them name the horror. Let them apologize.

“That was a terrible day,” Nana Minnie says, patting her heart with one heavily tattooed hand. She brings one porcelain fingernail to her brow and scratches under the edge of her blond wig. “The day he died? Let me think….” Her eyes shift from side to side. “We both guessed you was headed for the traffic island out on the highway.”

Papadaddy, the toilet lurker, interjects here. “You asked about it at breakfast.” He says, “We was afraid you’d try and cross the freeway, so I decided to drive over there and keep a lookout for you.”

I remain steadfast. To judge from the angle of my nana’s cigarette, she’s upbeat, happy even.

“That nasty place,” says Nana, and she makes a face. “Your papadaddy was headed out to collect you when he had himself the heart attack.”

I amuse myself by idly looking at my wristwatch. I pretend to warm my ghost hands over the sputtering, guttering campfire that consumes the mortal remains of Mr. Ketamine.

“Died right on my own front porch, I did,” says Papadaddy.

“Right on them steps,” adds Nana. “He grabbed his chest and keeled over.” She claps her hands together for emphasis. “He’d stopped breathing for twenty minutes before them paramedics showed up and revived him.”

Papadaddy shrugs. “What’s left to say? Not to brag, but I went straight to Heaven. I was dead.”

“You was not,” insists Nana Minnie.

Papadaddy counters, “I most certainly was.”

Undeterred, Nana says, “After they shocked Ben’s heart, the ambulance folks wanted to ride him to the hospital, but he didn’t want no part of going.”

Folding his arms, Papadaddy says, “She’s embroidering this next part. That’s not what went on.”

“I was there, you know,” says Nana.

“Well,” Papadaddy says, “I was there, too.”

“We’d been married for forty-four years,” says Minnie, “and he’d never before talked to me that way.” She says, “Maybe he was in pain, but that ain’t no excuse.”

“How could I talk?” says Ben. “I was dead.”

Nana Minnie continues, “No, he was bound and determined to go find you, pumpkinseed.”

Here, Gentle Tweeter, a theory is slowly coalescing in my supernaturalist’s thinking belly.

“After that,” Nana says, “he was like a different person.”

“I was like a dead person.”

Just to clarify, I ask, “You’re saying the rescue crew used a cardiac defibrillator on Papadaddy?”

Nana says, “He wanted to go find you at that terrible public toilet.” She says, “He was pale and limping. Them paramedics figured he’d die again at any minute.”

Papadaddy uses the tip of one index finger to draw a cross on his chest. “I swear,” he says. “I died in your nana’s arms on that porch.”

The paramedics, Nana explains, revived him and made him sign a medical release form. He waited for them to leave, but the moment they were gone he’d jumped into his pickup truck.

Nana leans close to me and confides in a stage whisper, “He called me the C-word!”

“We’ve been over and over this,” Papadaddy says, placating. “I did not.”

She coughs. “You called me the C-word, and then you went off to find Maddy at that nasty traffic island.”

My grandparents, they Ctrl+Atl+Bicker. They sulk. The patient, observant supernaturalist in me is sorely taxed. Finally, seeking some resolution, I ask, “Papadaddy? Listen. Did you, by any chance, go to the byway restroom and get your elderly wiener ripped off?”

He looks at me, aghast. “June Bug! How could you even ask me that?”

“Because it happened!” Minnie shouts. “Some monster ripped up your privates and you bled to death like a pig!”

“That didn’t happen.”

“I saw your dead body!” Nana says, “Don’t they watch the news in Heaven?” Her gnarled hands frame large, imaginary words in the air. “All the headlines blared: ‘Movie Star’s Pa Killed in Toilet Torture.’”

At this impasse in what is obviously a well-rehearsed stalemate, even as the continent of Madlantis founders in deep seas and flame-bedecked Boorites dash past us like human comets, I realize I’ve been mistaken. It’s obvious: Papadaddy Ben’s soul floated away, and another spirit took possession of his former body. Some ghost or demonic force used the shock of the paramedics’ paddles, like a juvenile delinquent hot-wiring a car and taking it for a joyride. Like I just now used Mr. Ketamine’s corpse. This strange wiener-wielding corpse rustler is who accosted me in the upstate toilet. Not my precious papadaddy.

Thinking fast, I cagily redirect my grandparents’ ire by asking, “Nana, do you know what I miss most about being alive?” Not waiting for an answer, I blurt out, “Your delicious peanut-butter cheesecake!” To my papadaddy, I say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say good-bye when you died.” Pitching my words with an especially childlike sincerity, I say, “Thank you for teaching me how to build a birdhouse.”

I throw my chubby ghost arms around them in an awkward embrace as two red-tinted headlights approach. A strange automobile—spattered with blood, fringed with dripping strands of coagulated blood—cruises magically, silently up the steep side of the erupting mountain. At this most sweet moment of our reunion, a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car comes to a stop beside us.