The Ghost of George Washington Read online

the van," said the first guy to the rest of us.

  "The name's Daniel, dickhead," muttered the curly haired guy and he stomped off to open the back.

  I looked intently at George's crumpled figure and wanted to help as the others lifted him off the ground, but my feet felt wooden like I couldn't move. A hand softly touched my back and a girl with an accent said, "It's okay."

  After George was placed in the van, everyone hurriedly reconvened at the dim light in front of the van. We were shivering in the rain and wind, but I'm sure none of us wanted to go sit in the van with dead George.

  "Can anyone get a signal?" asked the girl with an accent.

  No one could.

  "Look. We're probably almost there. I'll drive us the rest of the way there and we can get help then. We need to get out of this rain," said the boy who had been giving orders, his short-cropped red hair flattened to apparent baldness in the drenching storm.

  "Oh really?" asked the girl who had closed George's eyes, "Who made you boss? Another car will be along in a little bit. Let's just wait."

  "I know affirmative action means everyone gets to go to college now, but since you didn't notice, we haven't passed another car for over an hour. We were the last van up the mountain and no one is going to be out driving in this storm if they don't have to," the boy replied.

  "Affirmative action? You fucking racist piece of shit."

  "Everyone just calm down," a third boy spoke, his Southern accent oddly harmonious with his clearly Asian face, "Let's just take a deep breath and focus on getting there safely. You can hate each other later."

  "Did you not hear him?! I want you all to be my witnesses about what he said," turning towards the short haired boy she continued, "That kind of racist, fascist bullshit does not belong in college. It doesn't belong anywhere. You're fucking done."

  "Whatever, Shaniqua," smirked the boy, "I'm fucking driving there. If you want to wait, go ahead. Anyone else who wants to come with me can."

  "The name's Kara, you white trash motherfucker!" she shouted at him as he open the door and jumped into the driver's seat.

  It was then that I noticed the headlamps had dimmed to the strength of tiny night lights. I sighed as I heard the engine lamely turning over. The boy tried four times, and the last time the engine barely moved. The light of the headlamps was completely gone.

  "Fuck!!" yelled the boy, slamming the door behind him as he stormed off towards the road, Kara loudly snickering behind him.

  For a moment there was near silence. Even the rain momentarily let up and we realized how cold we had become as the typically submerged awareness of our own bodies, our own mortality began to creep back into our consciousness.

  "Look!"

  Her expression was too genuine for even our masterful deafness to ignore. The girl with the accent was pointing into the woods at a point in the darkness beyond a small trail from the road. And there flickering amid the dance of windswept trees was a small orange light, a beacon in the distance.

  "Thank you, Lord," said the Asian boy.

  "Wait a minute. It's probably some crazy Walter White hillbilly cooking meth in the woods. And what if we get lost?" Kara cautioned, "We'll die out here."

  "You're right, Kara. We will die if we stay out here in the rain much longer," said Daniel, squeezing the rain from his curly hair, "And dickhead is right, too. There's not going to be a car coming until morning. We're supposed to go right to our cabins. No one is even going to notice we're not there until we've died of exposure.

  "We don't really have a choice. Besides, worst case scenario, we have a look, change our minds, and come back to the van. It's not very far and I'll bet a dollar it's just at the end of this trail, so we won't get lost."

  He was right. The light was coming from the end of the trail, specifically from a small lamp in the window of a mossy cottage a few hundred feet from the road. A chimney released a small stream of gray woodsmoke into the black night sky and a wooden door beckoned as we stood mutely at the end of the trail.

  The red-haired boy could scarcely let the opportunity for insult pass, "If you wimps aren't going to knock, I will."

  But before he could say another word, the door opened and all of us, red-haired boy included, instinctively took a step backwards.

  A tall, imposing figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, its head nearly touching the top the frame, something long and dangerous held in its hand. As it stood there silently facing us, its feet planted firmly apart like the roots of a huge oak, I felt a very strong impulse to immediately turn and run. But then it spoke.

  "You folks look lost. Are you okay?" the deep, gravely voice of an old man intoned as he shifted slightly to the side of the door.

  "Uh, hello. I'm Austin and we're students at College of the New America. Um... we...." the axe in the old man's hand glinted and the red-haired boy noticeably lost his train of thought.

  "Students?" said the old man and he stepped outside into the rain after first setting the axe down inside the cottage, "What are you doing out here in this storm?"

  "Our driver was taking us to the cabins at the top of the mountain and he had a heartache. He died," explained Kara blankly, "He's back at the road and we can't start the van."

  "Yeah, do you have a phone we can use? Or maybe you could jumpstart the van?" finished Austin.

  "He's dead? I'm sorry. That must have been very upsetting," the old man furrowed his brows, "Well, I don't have a phone. And I don't have a car. I don't even have electricity. However, what I can offer you is shelter and food for the night. Then tomorrow morning you can flag down a car on that road. How does that sound?"

  "That's nice of you. But do you have a neighbor with a phone or a car? The college is expecting us tonight," answered Austin.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't have any neighbors. My land is surrounded by National Forest for many miles. The nearest other people are about 25 miles further on the road up the mountain. It's remarkable that you've landed on my doorstep, really. But if you want to try other options, be my guest."

  There was a moment of indecision. One part of my brain remained afraid of him, living in the woods alone as he was. But there was also something strangely reassuring about him. It was almost as if he had been expecting us.

  We did not know each other well enough to confer or trust in each other, but still we shared an unspoken hesitancy until the Asian guy responded in his syrupy Southern drawl, "I would be very thankful to spend the night here, sir."

  And, that was that. We all filed in through the door in the silent consensus of a herd.

  The cottage was surprisingly large on the inside. Wooden logs formed four sturdy walls far apart, with many cabinets and shelfs built into them. A cast iron wood stove radiated heat from the center of the wall opposite the door. Iron pots and pans hung above the stove on metal chains, and a large wooden table surrounded by four benches was nearby.

  "The outhouse is outside and to the right about thirty paces," the old man said, gesturing as he spoke, "I will get beds and dry clothes for you from the cellar."

  He lifted up a heavy board by an iron handle, exposing a very dark chamber underneath the floor. He grabbed a lamp from a shelf on the wall and, taking a long splinter of wood from the wood pile, opened the door of the wood stove to thrust it into the burning coals inside before lighting the wick. Lamp in hand, he descended a surprising number of steep stairs and disappeared into the cellar below.

  "Whoa. Look at this," Daniel said. On the wall were dozens of dusty framed photographs of the old man posing with a variety of important looking people, a few of whom I recognized.

  "Holy shit, that's Reagan," said Austin as he pointed to a picture of the old man in a pressed business suit decorated with medals shaking hands with the former president.

  "There's Clinton. Who is this guy?" wondered Kara aloud.

  "This must have been his family," the Asian guy said, picking up a three-panel frame with faded black-and-white photographs of a very young version
of the old man, his arm around a beaming wife and three young kids.

  "They must all be grown up by now," Daniel noted.

  "They are," we turned around and saw the old man carrying a towering pile of linens, "Even their children are all grown up."

  He set the linens on the wooden table close to the fire and gently took the frame from Wayne's hand, setting it back on its shelf carefully, "That was a long time ago. A very long time."

  He smiled briefly at us and then picked up a large cloth sheet from the table. Pinning it in three places to hooks on the ceiling, he sectioned off a small corner of the room.

  "You can change into these clothes. They are simple pajamas, but they will keep you warm and they're much drier than what you're wearing now. I will make a stew for you all," he said, taking a large copper kettle down from the ceiling and began washing it at a cistern positioned over a drain near the door.

  "That's okay," Austin said, "My coat kept me dry."

  "As you wish. So tell me, students. What are your names? Where do you come from?"

  "I'm Austin. I'm from Portland, Oregon. What else do you want to know?"

  The old man finished washing the kettle and replied with a faint smile, "Whatever you'd like to share."

  "Well, I'm going to CONA to study Computer Science. I like to do CrossFit and am a competitive IPSC shooter. I was president of the Young Republican Club at my high school, although they were mostly a bunch of cuckservatives."

  "He's a racist," interrupted Kara.

  "I'm not a