The June Featured writer is Garrett Rowlan

Please feel free to email Garrett at: garrettrowlan@att.net

THE HOST AND THE GHOST
by Garrett Rowlan

One night as I watched my father about to kill a woman, a finger entered my field of vision and pointed at the television as we sat watching a late-night movie. We were the last two people staying up at the rest home.

“I knew him,” the old man said, indicating the television. He was a new tenant in the independent-living wing. “I knew your father.”

The ghoul jumped on the screaming actress. She went on to obscurity, and my father to the half-life of a character actor. He was dead now.

I looked at my companion. His face in the phosphor light had the seamed texture of a walnut shell.

“You knew him how?”

Around us the convalescent house was quiet, the babble of the television in the community room the only sound. Six nights a week I’m on duty, the day and swing shift caretakers alternate for the seventh night. They say that five thousand steps a day is key to a long life, well here I am in my sixties and plodding at night with my Ipod playing, playing while I turn the patients in the middle of the night so that they won’t develop bed sores or talk the disoriented ones out of their nighttime terrors or comfort the lonely by participating in delusional conversations with dead ones. I’ve been doing this for five years. It’s the sort of job you end up doing, and my next stop, after I sell the house I have inherited, will be to be a resident myself.

Mister Pat Pinkel, as the old man had introduced himself, told me that he had acted with my father in a stage version of Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men at the old Coronet theater on La Cienega, which was on the other side of LA from us. I told him my father had died and I was going to sell the house after the tenant left.

He pointed at the TV. “Something I never understood about this movie.” It was The Host and the Ghost, a B-movie from the late fifties. “If he’s a ghost how come he can physically attack people, and be shoved off the balcony at the end?”

“I guess some ghosts can die a second death.”

When I got off duty it was breaking dawn and I drove over to the house. I had left when I was eighteen. Now I watched the window. Mildred, who had been my late sister’s lover and my father’s caretaker, looked out. Maybe she saw me, maybe not. I didn’t care. She knew I wanted her gone. I knew she was leaving. She and Carol, my late sister, had moved in when father began to get confused. They established a toe hold, a beachhead. I was still a long haul driver then, sleeping most nights in the back of my cab. 

I drove to my apartment. It was hardly much bigger than my truck cab, a converted laundry room shaped like a wedge. It wasn’t home. Home was what I left at eighteen. I had signed a minor-league baseball contract because some scout saw me strike out fifteen batters in a seven-inning, high-school game. I made the majors but only lasted fifty innings, due to injuries. I quit when I was thirty and soon started driving a truck. Pills and alcohol helped me cope with the road, with marriage, fatherhood (my daughter lives in Philly), and divorce. I quit the road at fifty-five, got off the pills, and ended up working at the nursing home.  I regarded my truck driving like I regarded my employment in the rest home, as something I was suited for without particularly loving.

Two weeks later, Mildred, the tenant, was waiting outside. She was a thin woman in her fifties. Too bad she was a lesbian, I thought, not for the first time. “Where will you go?” I said.

“I’m staying with my mother,” she said, as if she didn’t relish the prospect. “After that, I don’t know.” She looked back at the house, sighed, gave me the keys and left.

I entered the house. In the front room, I found a picture of my father, Carol, and Mildred. It must have been taken a few weeks before Carol’s death. They were posed like an imperial family after a coronation. Carol didn’t look too well, in spite of the makeup. She died a year ago, collapsed after dinner. Father died two months ago in a hospital. With them gone, the house was all mine.

I took the picture of the three of them down, tossed it on the couch. I walked around, kitchen, living room, hallway, bathroom, bedrooms. I had been here infrequently, and never alone since I was eighteen. What I noticed, as I walked, was the faint smell of cigarette and phlegm, the marshy smell that reminded me of my father. It was as if that smell had seeped into the walls. Had that smell been here before?

Outside, the shed that had been Carol’s workspace—she made jewelry—was empty except for three boxes. I took them inside the house. One contained scrapbooks, family memories. I leafed through the pictures and saw my father at the family table with a beer or two beside him, a cigarette, a Chesterfield, held fuming at ear level, and a canted smile like a car stuck in a ditch. A happy man, you would think, except for the eyes that seemed detached, imported from someplace else. My mother too looked detached, and already looking to leave. They divorced when I was twelve.

The second box contained my father’s personal effects, his pictures from his acting days, he had been a lanky fellow with a lantern jaw in the manner of Royal Dano or John Carradine with a basso voice and a countenance that could look positively scary when he didn’t shave his dark beard. He did stage work too and even a film or two, though he really made his dough when he bought into a string of dry cleaning places.

The third box contained miscellaneous stuff, including the one memento he had saved from me, a baseball, souvenir of my first and only major league hit, a double against the Phillies in the old Veteran Stadium. He had seen it on television, and I had given it to him when the road trip was over. That was a good memory, as if he had finally accepted me. I wondered then that if I had gone on to true major league stardom if our relationship would have been different, if he had been able to find in me the acclaim that he had hoped for, but never really achieved. Neither did I, of course, and therein lies the tale.

At the bottom of the box was a rubber band holding a piece of paper around a cassette tape. The paper read, in my sister’s handwriting, “For whom it might concern, this is a recording of my father’s voice. He talks about his experiences.”

The radio in the kitchen had an in-built cassette tape player. I slipped the tape in the slot and hit play. I heard my sister’s voice.  “Father is growing worse,” she said. “I want to get down his memories before they are lost forever. I wish David was here more to help.” 

I stopped the tape. We had issues about this: Why didn’t I help take care of him? I was a convalescent hospital attendant, worked six nights a week. It’s what I did, and didn’t want to do it during the day. I mean, you don’t invite a doctor for dinner and start telling him your physical problems. It’s not right. Anyway, I thought that age alone wasn’t accountable for his deterioration, the smoking and the drinking and the late hours, which the athlete inside me disapproved.

I pressed play. His voice was raspy from cigarettes. His words slurred from booze. I recognized the part he played, the aging actor narrating past adventures. He was phony to the end. An old feeling of disgust shook me like a bad wind.

He told his Hollywood stories, dropping names like small coins: Judi Dench, Jack Lemmon, “Jack and I always had a good laugh when we were together.” Christ! I thought. You didn’t hear me saying I had a beer or two with this or that famous ballplayer.

“Saw myself on TV yesterday,” he said on the tape, “on the Retro Channel.”

He rambled on, the TV episodes where he played the heavy, Gunsmoke, an episode of Mike Hammer, et cetera. His voice seemed to seep into the house like rain into roots. The harmonics of memory summoned the tarry scent of cigarettes. I remember how my father would smoke in the bathroom, sitting on the can and flicking the ashes between his legs and finally dropping the butt when he was finished, flushing optional. The sight of an unfiltered cigarette butt floating in a pool of urine is one I remember from my childhood.

I returned to the rest home that night. Mr. Pinkel was staring at the television. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m okay as a Dough Jay,” he said, snapping into life. “I remember that commercial. I auditioned along with your father. I got the job. Pillsbury Dough Jays never took off.” He made a fair imitation of the commercial, thumb and index finger touching, eyes winking. I remember my father watching that commercial and swearing, cigarette fuming. He had auditioned for it and lost.

“You too had a history, didn’t you?”

Pinkel nodded, a little evasive.

“What was your opinion of him?”

“Nice guy,” he said, with a brisk intonation that seemed more to sidestep than answer the question.

“But not always nice,” I said.

“We had some problems,” he allowed.

“Like what?”

He made a dismissive wave, turned his attention to the television.

I clicked on my iPod and made the rounds.

The next morning, I went straight to my father’s house and slept for three hours. Waking, I made coffee and stood in the front room and looking through the curtains at the street. I jumped at the sound of a voice.

My father’s: I must have turned on the cassette tape and forgotten I had, because from the kitchen I heard him talking, “Pat Pinkel,” he said. “What kind of fag name is that? He got the role of George and I had to play the dim-witted brother. People saw that play, agents, producers, and I could hear them in the audience whispering to themselves about me, ‘Character actor, nothing more.’”

Listening, I smelled again that rank cigarette smell I associated with my father. It was stronger now, almost a stench. I turned, trying to locate the source. I didn’t need the coffee to be wide awake.

“I have never been impressed by God-damned athletes,” Father was saying, “Some muscle-bound bohunk making a million dollars while the real talent, the real entertainers, the actors and actresses, have to struggle. Take my son, for example, of course he never made a million, never made a fraction of it. He could not throw a strike to save his life, much less his career. I saw him pitch once when he was with the Dodgers, gave up four hits and two walks in two shaky innings.” I heard that distinct crackle of him taking a drag on his cigarette. “Couldn’t throw a strike to save his soul.”

The scene of cigarettes grew stronger as I walked down the hallway. I was breathing heavily, my heart pounding.

Entering the bathroom, I looked down into the toilet and saw a cigarette butt floating in a pool of urine.

I had to leave. I went to my apartment and stared at the ceiling until sleep found me in the late afternoon.

That night, I found Patrick Pinkel where I usually did, sitting in the main room and watching television.

“What sort of problems did you have with my father?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t he like you? Beside the fact that you played George on the stage and he got the lesser role of Lennie. He said so on tape.” I told him what I had heard. I wanted the truth, I said.

“We had an affair,” he said. “I mean, your mother and I.”

My parents divorced when I was twelve. “Best decision I ever made,” Mother later said. She moved out of state and remarried.

“She was unhappy,” Pat Pinkel said.

I remembered from my bedroom the sound of shouting, doors slamming, and my sister, two years younger, crying in the next room.

“He was an abuser,” Pat said. “She needed a refuge.” He shifted in his chair, mistaking my stare for an accusation. “I didn’t seduce her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just the opposite.”

I made a decision, then and there. I wasn’t going to face father alone.

“Get your rest,” I told him. “You and I are going to take a field trip. I want you to see the old house.”

On the next morning, driving, I told Patrick what had happened yesterday. He didn’t seem surprised.

“Too many horror movies,” he said. “He did The Host and the Ghost and Gunsmoke where he was a revenant gunslinger in Dodge to challenge Marshall Dillon for Miss Kitty’s hand. James Arness shot him before the last commercial. Being a ghost is a role he had rehearsed.”

“How come he didn’t manifest before now?”

“Probably everything was okay until you came.”

We arrived. The house was quiet, but not for long. The tape started up from the kitchen while we were having coffee.

“The real artist owes nothing to society,” the tape said.

“That sounds like your father, all right,” Pat Pinkel said, after the fright settled in his eyes.

“He owes nothing to anyone but himself and his artistic expression.”

“Your mother hated that sort of bullshit,” Pat added.

So did I, right now. I stood and went to the kitchen. The tape turned and on the kitchen table I saw a beer bottle and filled ashtray I had not noticed before. My disgust mingled with shock.

Father went on about athletes, how dumb they were, how they got so much acclaim simply for being able to hit a baseball or throw a football or shoot a basketball.

“Of course the untalented have a way of getting their way. Take that no-talent Pat Pinkel who only got to play George because he was taller and thinner, and this after having fucked my wife, who seems to have forgotten her martial vows.”  

“As you forget yours,” Pat said, his voice quivering as he stood. “Many times over, well before she strayed.”

“And was cast for a Pillsbury Dough Jay commercial because he looked the part, a little twerp who probably was the reason why that product line failed.”

“You had rings around your eyes from drinking. You didn’t look wholesome.”

“Wholesome!” the voice shot back. The cassette player bounced with the effort. “Was Shakespeare wholesome? Was Chaucer? I’ll show you wholesome.”

From the back of the chair, where I had rested it, the picture of my father, Carol, and Mildred came hurling at Pat. I managed to knock it aside, where it tumbled to the corner. My finger bled where it had hit the frame.

“Shit!” Patrick said. The chairs were starting to move toward us.

“This way,” I said.

Pat and I hustled down the hall while my father roared.

“Wholesome is for little minds!”

We reached the bathroom and shut and locked the door behind us. I went for a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding.

“I sort of wish you hadn’t asked me over here,” Pat said. “We old people need diversion, see different things, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

I looked at the toilet, where two cigarette butts floated in urine, along with a small stool that looked bloody. It was Father’s revenge.

We heard footsteps, pounding down the hallway followed by a pounding on the door.

“Open the door!” Father shouted. “I have to go.”

It was not the first time he had wanted me to hustle out of the bathroom, and as a child I had, dutifully. It occurred to me now that I had never really confronted him. I had endured his bullying because I knew I was getting out as soon as possible, even before the major league scouts came sniffing, which left only my sister Carol to endure his anger, his sense of failure, and of privilege denied.

“Only place you’re going is to Hell!” I screamed, “Go to Hell!”

“I’m there all ready, and you’re going with me.”

He pounded on the door. I had an idea. I flushed the toilet.

The sound diminished his voice. “I have to go!” he repeated, but now it was fainter. He left, I thought. I heard the footsteps retreat. We waited five minutes and left the bathroom.

I stepped into the hallway, and Mister Pinkel behind me. We took a step toward the front door when I heard father’s voice.

“You can’t flush me away, idiot!” We turned. “You were never grateful.” The voice resounded from the kitchen. “Not like Carol. Carol was grateful. Carol realized what a true artist was like.”

“She only flattered you,” I said. “She was living off you.”

We heard his footsteps coming our way. They were regular, loud, and flat, like someone doing a goosestep in 2/4 time. I backed down the hall, Mister Pinkel behind me. The pounding of my heart was like a steel fist banging at my throat. Father rounded the corner.

Death didn’t sit well on him. The skin was waxy and hung in ugly baffles from his bones. The eyes were red and lidded, the nose misshapen like a melting glop of ice cream, and dewlaps hung from the jaw like oversized curtains. Only the mouth resisted the gravity of the grave. It was fixed in a taut, mocking smile.

He wore off-the-rack black. It was just the way he had looked in The Host and the Ghost. The movie had scared me when I was young, and he scared me now, only more so.

He stunk of cigarette and piss; the stench made breathing hard.

I had backed up to the door to my old room, the last on the left.

“I was only successful in this house!” The ghost slithered down the hallway. “At least Carol knew she was a failure. You pretended you could achieve something. Ha!” He made a mocking laugh. “Couldn’t throw a strike when you had to, not even to save your soul.”

I saw, as I looked in my room for some place to escape to, the old baseball I had retrieved from the back shed. I grabbed it, reaching inside the doorway. I threw the ball. Father, nearing, didn’t expect that. The ball bounced off his spectral head. He collapsed.

“You see,” I said, standing over him, “I could throw a ball to save my soul.”

Father nodded, faded in the floorboards.

We walked into the kitchen. The beer and the filled ashtray had disappeared. The tape of his voice had gotten tangled, and I had to yank it away from the capstan so that it tore. I threw it away.

I drove Mister Pinkel back to the retirement home and went back to my small apartment. I didn’t return to the house for a few days. When I did, I found no recurrence of my father. No smell, no voice, no hurled objects: I had fought back for once, and had vanquished him.

Oddly, I began to remember him fondly, the catch and chess we played when I was growing up, the movies he took me to. As I recollected, it seemed less important to sell the house. My small apartment took on a comfortable quality I had not noticed before, the way everything was in its allotted space, and the Trader Joe’s just down the block.

It was there I saw Mildred one afternoon.

“How’s life with your mother?”

Her expression said it all. “Ask me something else.”

“Because I was thinking,” I said. “There’s no pressing need for me to sell the house right now. And I’ve decided I’m not going to live there. If you would accept a small raise in your rent, would you consider returning?”

Her eyes held the answer, even before the smile lit her face. It was a win-win-win: myself, Mildred, and a pervert ghost that might as well have a little fun, I thought.

Garrett Rowlan is a retired Los Angeles substitute teacher. His recent publications are a story in 300 Days of Sun and an essay on film-going in Chicago Literati.

His website, garrettrowlan.com, contains links to published work.