Ghost in the Grove

It was near sundown that day when I stopped cutting wood and straightened up to stretch.  The mist was wrapping gray ribbons around the eucalyptus trunks and the sky over the western hills was turning pink.  I laid down my bow saw and looked up into the trees.  I saw a set of faintly glowing green teeth near one of the trees.  This startled me, a little.  I'd seen strange lights in the grove before, but nothing quite like this.

Lips, a nose and eyes showed up, floating near the teeth.  Next, the face filled in behind the teeth, then a beard showed.  Then his body appeared, dressed in a cutaway coat and fancy pants.  He glowed inside with a pale green light that showed through his clothing.  His feet floated near the branch he was sitting on.  The branch, like most eucalyptus branches, was nearly vertical, so the figure was sitting bolt upright in a horizontal position.  I laughed.  He blinked solemnly at me.

"Good evening, sir," I called up to him, trying to control my laughter.  "Who are you?"

"What is the cause of your unseemly merriment, young man?”  His voice was hollow, like he was speaking into a fishbowl.  He wagged a finger at me.  "Do control yourself.  When a deceased ancestor visits, the occasion ought to be treated with gravity.  It is an important event."

"I meant no offense, honorable deceased ancestor," I said as soberly as I could manage, "but you are sitting at right angles to the vertical.  Your placement does detract from the solemnity of the occasion.”  He wrinkled his forehead.  I guessed he was trying to figure out what I meant by right angles to the vertical.

"You are at right angles to gravity," I said.

"Oh.  One loses one's sense of gravity in the grave," he said.  His inner glow turned pink, and almost blended into the sunset.  He wobbled around a little, then righted himself and stood on a ribbon of fog.  He leaned his elbow against the branch.  He was about three inches off mark, though, so that his elbow stuck out beyond the branch.  I kept my face nearly straight.

"Am I now correctly oriented with respect to gravity?”  he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "Which ancestor are you?"

"Possibly yours.  I am Sampson Mercer," he said; "I bought this place in fifty-two from Gutierrez.  Gutierrez took it from the Indians.  Beautiful place then, grass as high as my head when I was on a horse lying down.  Who are you?  Are you one of my descendants?"

"I am Jim Hooker.  I'm not your descendant.  I married your youngest great-great-granddaughter, Molly Ann."

"You're already married?  How long?"

"About seven years."

"Drat and fustication!"  He was turning purple this time.  Gold sparks shot through him.  "I'm late again," he muttered.

"What do you mean, late again?"

"Last time I materialized in the 'Ought-Six Quake.  I was trying to make it for the turning of the century six years earlier.  I always wanted to see a century change.  I neglected to materialize my trousers that time.  Fortunately I was a bit off the mark, and landed in San Francisco.  A number of the living were rather deshabille (he pronounced it "deeshabble") at the same time, and I caused no comment."

"In seven years," he said, his discomfort obvious from the black dots floating in his apparition, "I presume you have made your marriage complete?"

I took a moment to understand that he was asking if we had consummated our union.

"Yes," I said, "we did that first thing."

"Oh.”  He looked a little sad.  "Quick work, young man, quick work.”  His glow dimmed.  "I suppose these things take some time.”  Some other thought hit him, because he began to brighten up and glow with a healthier looking green.

"Do you know the name of your great-great-grandmother?"

"Yes, her married name was Lucy May Martin.  I don't know what her maiden name was."

"Where did she live, do you know?"

"Mostly Kansas.  I think, but I'm not sure of this, that she came from Kentucky."

"Knob Creek area?"

"I really don't know, sir.  Kentucky is as close as I can come."

"Martin was her husband's name?"

"Yes."

"It could be.  The Law of Compensation works like that.  My best boyhood friend was named Martin.”  

He was puzzling over something.  I waited for him to tell me why he asked questions about my ancestors.  My neck was getting sore from looking fifty feet up in the air.  

"Sir," I said to him.

He snapped at me, "What is it, young man? You have interrupted my thinking."

"I wonder if you could come down out of the tree.  I very much approve of looking up to one's ancestors-in-law but my neck is stiff, and I think I can be properly respectful even when you are on the ground."

He grimaced.  "I'll do what I can," he said.  "I'm out of practice with my levitation, not to mention progressive and retrograde motions.”  He shut his eyes and twisted his face, the right half of it.  I let myself grin while he couldn't see it.  It was quite a relief.  Suddenly he shot a hundred and fifty feet to the top of the tree.  If his outline hadn't glowed I'd have lost him in the fog.  I almost laughed out loud again.  He was sitting right in the middle of the biggest buzzard in the grove, the one I call Old Crotchety.  Old Crotchety was asleep, and didn't notice Old Sampson.

"Will that do?”  he asked.

"You went up, not down, sir."

"Drat and fustication!  Let me think how to reverse this.  How far down are you?"

"About two hundred feet, I think."

"I'll try" he shouted to me.  He said the "try" in a loud voice as he went past my suffering eardrums.  He came to a halt in the ground up to his knees.

"There," he said, "right on the button."

"Very close," I said.  He ignored my equivocation.

Now that he was close, I could see that looked only a little older than the portrait of him we had hanging in our bathroom.  I should explain that we live in a mobile home.  Everybody else in my wife's family had a reason they couldn't hang this portrait of Sampson.  Sampson had looked right into the camera when the photographer snapped the picture, so he stares straight at everyone in any room where it hangs.  My wife's guilt saddled us with it.  Its frame must weigh twenty pounds.  The only stud I could find that was strong enough to hold it was in our bathroom.  Most visitors to our place stay in the bathroom no longer than necessary.  There are some benefits to ancestral portraits.

"Young man, I had planned to investigate you before you married my great-great-granddaughter, but," he shook his head, "it's too late for that.  You're married, regardless of my blessing.”  He sighed.

"I'd be honored to accept your blessing now, sir," I said meekly.  I hoped that was what he had come for.  I was getting cold, and wanted to go in to lay the fire.  Then he harrumphed.  I had never heard anybody harrumph before, and was surprised at how intimidating a sound it is.

"Young man," he said, frowning at me like those two brothers on the cough drop box.  "How many children have you begotten in these years of your marriage?"

"None."

"None!"  He almost squealed his astonishment.  It affected his levitation, too; his feet were about two inches off the ground.  I decided not to bother him with it just then.  He looked like he had enough on his mind.  He cradled his chin deep in his cupped hand.  I thought of Daddy Warbucks with a beard.

His next question threw me for a minute.

"Is my great-great-granddaughter subject to a lot of headaches? My wife was frequently plagued with them."

"No," I said, still puzzled about where the conversation was going.  "She hasn't had a headache in over a year that I know about."

"Harrumph!" he said.  "The family blood must be running thin, if she's all that virtuous."

It clicked.  I knew what he meant.  "We have a very satisfactory sexual relationship," I said.  He shuddered at the word "sexual."

"Then is one of you unable to have children?”  he said.

"As far as we both know we're both able," I said.

"Then the Law of Averages must be out of kilter.”  I could see by his puzzled frown he might feel sorry for us.  I hit him with birth control.

"We have prevented children," I said.

"How, abstinence?  It's not good for a young man."

"No, not abstinence.  Several years ago scientists invented a pill that interrupts conception.  It works-"

"Don't bother to explain the process.  It's unnatural."  He was two feet off the ground now.

"Unnatural? Perhaps; it sure beats abstinence, though."

"I suppose it does.  Abstinence weakens a man.  I was a strong man, despite Jennie's headaches.”  He winked a Victorian wink.  "Children are great fun, though, young man.  The womenfolk get all the bother.  You really shouldn't deny your wife the joys of motherhood.  That's what women are for."

"I don't deny her," I said. "She's the one that doesn't want children."

That stopped him cold.  He sank up to his shins in the ground, and his luminescence turned icy blue.  I could see the utter inability to accept the idea all over his face.  I let him struggle with it.

"What does she do all day while you're out in the fields? Fancy work?"

"I don't work in the fields.  I'm a poet."

"A what!"  He shot ten feet into the air, efflorescing a livid chartreuse, and then sank into the ground up to his waist.

"A poet," I said, in as soothing a voice as I could manage.

"Thunderation!"  His eyebrows sparkled fire.  "How do you eat?"

"With a knife, fork, and spoon, or chopsticks, if we send out for Chinese."  I deliberately misunderstood him.  I have a few touchy points myself, so Molly Ann tells me.

He harrumphed menacingly.  "I meant, how do you make your living?"  He frowned ferociously.  He might have scared me a little if I hadn't remembered how he had looked sitting in the buzzard.  I decided the best thing to do was to keep him off balance.

"Molly Ann makes the living.  She works in the City, in San Francisco."

"Great God!"  He seemed close to weeping.  "For a woman of my blood--" He choked.  "For one of my blood to-to walk the streets--" He choked again.

I saw where his thoughts were.  I thought it was time to be a little rough.  After all, a man has to maintain his wife's honor, especially with his ancestral spirits-in-law.  

"Your imputation, sir, is calumnious, sir, and wholly false, sir, and unbecoming a gentleman, sir, let alone an ancestral spirit, sir!  I am no pimp, sir, neither a gigolo, sir, to live off the Prostitution of my wife, sir.  If you were not already dead, sir, I should kill you, sir, ancestor-in-law that you are, sir!"

He was backing up and sinking into the ground at the same time.  When I stopped talking, I put my fists up in a John L. Sullivan pose (I must confess I am sometimes a bit hammy).  He came to a halt with his head resting on a eucalyptus root.  He was glowing an embarrassed shade of pinkish-red.  He spread his hands out to placate me.  I saw the glow spread out underground about a foot under the eucalyptus root.

"Yes?"  I asked menacingly.

"It's--How--how does she make money?"

"She's a secretary.  It's quite respectable.  Millions of women do office work, and other kinds of jobs, as well."  I was softening a little.  Sampson was the color of potassium chromate in aqueous solution, which is the sickest yellow color I ever saw, and the main reason I gave up chemistry after the first semester.

"In my time," he said, "no decent woman left home to work.  Girls who went to the city wound up on the stage, or in the dance halls, or on the streets, all of which amounted to the same thing.  I didn't know what else to think.  And you write poems?"

"Yes."

"How do you do at that?"

"I think I write very good poems."

"Does anyone pay you for it? Do you do as well as Lord Tennyson?"

"I write better poems than Lord Tennyson wrote, and I've had two published.  I was paid a complimentary copy of the magazine."

"In other words you've earned exactly two magazines with your poems."

"No.  One magazine, with two of my poems in it."

"Incredible.  Do you do anything else to make money?"

"I was a clergyman for a while.  Sometimes I fill a pulpit."

"My father-in-law was a preacher.  He had eyes like two pins when he was angry, or when anyone came courting his daughters.  He never saved much money, though."

"I've read the family records about him," I said.  "Isn't he the unstable one who planted an orchard, built a house and barn, then moved on after a couple of years and started all over again?"

"Unsteady?  Maybe you could call him that.  He always kept his family fed and housed.  A very moral man, and faithful to the Scripture.  He was fruitful and multiplied and replenished the earth thirteen times, you know."

"Yes, I've read that.  No wonder there are too many people today."  Sampson ignored me.

"There is another Scripture you should have read," he said.  "Go thou, and do likewise."  I was silent, looking for a reply to his new attack.  Muddled as the spirit of Sampson was about many things like levitation, I had the hunch that the family tendency to cling stubbornly to an idea was a part of his character, also.  

"I was sent here to give you some information about rearing a descendant of mine who isn't even born yet, though he should be five years old.  Are you ready to do your duty as a man, get a job, conceive this child, and fulfill the Law of Compensation?"  Sampson's questions sounded very final and very solemn.

"If I got a job, Molly Ann wouldn't quit.  Even if I wanted a child, she doesn't.”  I heard the petulance in my voice, and silently castigated my weakness.  I started loading wood into the child's wagon I used to haul it across the road to our mobile home.

"It is essential for the rest of my soul that you two beget a child.  Go and get Molly Ann.  I'll persuade her."  Sampson was irritating me.

"She's in the City right now," I said, still loading wood.  "She comes home every evening.  Bus service makes that possible.  I doubt she'll come out to the grove to see an ancestral spirit.  It looks like it might rain before midnight.  You can come to the house if you want to talk to her."  

"It's not that, easy; I can't just come along."  He sighed.  "I haven't learned much about forward motion yet."

"Well, when you figure it out, our place is over that way."  I pointed, and set out, pulling my wagon load of wood.  I was cold, and the fog was beginning to drip off the eucalyptus leaves.  The sun was almost down.

"I need something to center on," he pleaded.  It got to me.  He wasn't my an ancestor-in-law.  Maybe he deserved his chance at Molly Ann.  Maybe she deserved to meet him.  I don't entirely agree with her about parenthood.

"What sort of something?"  I asked him.

"Something that belonged to me when I was alive.  A book, or pen or even a paper flower, not that I ever had any paper flowers."

"There's a hair wreath over our mantel."

"That was never mine.  The womenfolk braided that thing from their own hair.  Something else."

"What about your portrait?"

"That would be excellent.  You have that? Why didn't that go to the eldest son?"

"The eldest son didn't want it; the youngest daughter did."

"It was the only one I ever had made.  Jennie thought it a good likeness."

"It is.  That's how I recognized you for an ancestor-in-law."  Actually it made him look much more imposing than he did in the ectoplasm.  Perhaps that was the fault of his materializing abilities.  I couldn't judge; he was my first materialized ancestor-in-law.

"I'll center on that," he was dissolving into the fog and the night.  "I'll meet you at your house.”  The last thing to go was his green teeth.  I noticed one had a gold cap.  It twinkled in the last ray of the sun.

At home, I poured myself a shot of bourbon, checked the bathroom to see if Sampson had showed up yet.  Since he hadn't, I promptly forgot about him.  The longer I was away from him, the more likely I thought I had dreamed him up in some eucalyptus induced haze.

Nothing happened for three days.  That's how long it took him to cross the road.  It was a Friday night.  Molly Ann had just gotten in from work.  I was in the kitchen working on supper, stuffing mushrooms with shrimp, when she came out of the bathroom.

"Okay," she said, "how do you do it?"

"Well, I mix the ketchup with the shrimp, garlic, cayenne, just a touch, onion juice--"

"Not that.  I mean the other."

"What other?”  She studied my eyes for a moment.  "What is it?"

"That man, or whatever it is, standing in the toilet."

"In the toilet?"  Then I guessed.  "I haven't seen it," I said, "but I'll guess that it's the ancestral spirit of your great-great-grandfather."

"My ancestral what?"

"Your ancestor.  He said he'd drop in."

"Back up.  You're leaving something out."

"About three days ago, I met your great-great-grandfather Sampson, in the spirit, at the edge of the grove.  We had quite a visit.  He said he'd drop in soon.  When he didn't come right away, I figured he couldn't make it.  His senses of time and space are a little shaky.  I didn't expect him quite this soon, and certainly not in the toilet."

"Are you sure this isn't some trick you're doing with a camera?"

"No, it isn't.  You know I'm not clever with things like cameras.  Your great-great-grandfather returned with a message for us."

"What message?"

"I'll let him tell you."

"Does he have to stand in the toilet to do it?"

"Ask him that.  He's your ancestor."

"That's irrelevant.  Get him out of there.  I want to use the bathroom."  I sighed, and put down my shrimp and mushrooms.

"Come on.  I'll try," I said.  We went into the bathroom.  There was Sampson, in his Prince Albert cutaway, smack dab in the middle of the toilet tank.  I turned to Molly Ann and said, "But he's not using the part you want to use."

She failed to appreciate my humor.

"Get it out of there!".  She had that tone in her voice that she gets when she thinks a joke has gone too far.

"Sampson," I said, "this is your great-great-granddaughter, Molly Ann.  She wants to use the water closet you have materialized in.  Can you zap up or move forward or something and leave the room?"

"Water closet? In your home?"  His shock was obvious.  "In my day we did such things out back.  We had a special building for the purpose.  How unsanitary to have such a facility indoors!"

I had a hunch he was about to start a lecture on basic sanitation as practiced in Victorian California.  I wasn't interested.

"Sampson," I could see Molly Ann getting grimmer and grimmer under pressure, "you'd better leave this room.  We can talk better in a few minutes in another room."

He disappeared in a shower of purple sparks right through the roof.  I left the bathroom hurriedly, and Molly Ann slammed the door.  Sampson was re-materializinq in the family room next to the fireplace.  The purple sparks were still running along his green phosphorescence.

"She's a woman with a mind of her own," I said.

Sampson said,  "Harrumph.  We taught women their proper place in my day."

"My mother-in-law claims she gets her independent streak from her father's side of the family," I said.  That was a sneaky shot.  Sampson is Molly Ann's father's ancestor, and that side of the family has always been proud of its independence.

"Harrumph!" I could feel Sampson beginning to build a real anger.  Besides, there were gold sparks shooting along with the purple ones in his phosphorescence.  "I should think for stubbornness she takes after her mother's people."

I didn't point out to him that he could hardly know what Molly Ann was like from a two minute confrontation under adverse conditions, or even know what Molly Ann's parents were like, since they hadn't been born the last time he was around.  I was afraid he'd set fire to something if he sparked too much.

Molly Ann came out then.  "You can shut that thing off now."

"I can't shut it off since I didn't turn it on.  This is your ancestor in the ectoplasm."

"Just what I don't need after a hard day at the office is an ancestral visit, in or out of the ectoplasm.  Sampson, go back, wherever you came from."

"I can't." Sampson was subdued; just green phosphorescence with only occasional purple sparks.

"Why not?"

"I have unfinished business with you."

"Can't it wait until after supper?"  I asked.  "The mushrooms will get soggy if we don't eat right away.  You're welcome to try some, if ectoplasm can eat."

"It can't.  I'll sit here by the fire and wait.  I have all eternity."

"Forget the shrimp.  I guess it's not every day I have a visit from my ancestors.  What message do you have for me, Sampson?"

"I an much displeased," he began in a manner suitable to royalty, "that you have not borne a child by this young man.  He informs me it is because you take a medication to prevent conception.  Is that true?"

"It is.  I don't want any children.  I don't want the bother of raising them.  "

"That is unwomanly." Sampson was off on a purple spark binge again.

"Call it whatever you want.  I don't want any children and I'm not going to have any children.  Period.  Now, you've delivered your message.  You can leave.  Thank you." Molly Ann turned her back on Samson.  "Now let's eat those mushrooms and shrimp."

"Young miss!" Sampson was all purple and gold sparks again.  I wondered if the sparks were an ectoplasmic manifestation of high blood pressure.  Molly Ann ignored him.  "Harrumph!" he went.  That got her attention.  She turned back to him.

"Sampson--" She got no farther.

"Young miss, you will speak when requested to do so.  Now is the time for you to listen.  You will have a child by this man because I command it.  You will make this family atonement so that I may rest easy in my grave.  Do you understand?"  Sampson was nearly screaming.  His voice still sounded hollow and horrible.  I backed away from Molly Ann and Sampson.  I don't believe in interfering in family discussions, particularly when there's a chance of getting hurt.  I expected Molly Ann to start throwing things at Sampson.  Not many things make her really angry.  Being talked down to is one that does.  She surprised me.  She laughed a long laugh, like she'd heard the most ridiculous joke.

"Sampson," she said to him, "you sound just like I would imagine an ancestor would.  I have just one question.  Why is it any interest to you whether we have a child or not?"

"Great-Great-Granddaughter, it is so I may rest easy in my grave.  You are impertinent and pert, and I am gladdened to know that the family spirit is yet much alive.  You will make an excellent mother, once you curb your independence."  Sampson was trying very hard to maintain his dignity.  He was pale and watery looking, as if he were losing hold on his ectoplasm.  I guess laughter is hard on ghosts.

"I will not be a mother, Sampson.  That is final.  You will have to find some other way to be laid to final rest."

"You don't understand!"  Sampson was beginning to plead like a like a small child, all dignity gone.  "Destiny requires a child from the cross of my blood and this young man's blood.  It is commanded.  I was to have married his great-great-grandmother, Lucy May, and I left her and married your great-great-grandmother instead.  Now it is for the two of you to fulfill destiny.  Then I can rest easy in my grave."

"Sorry, Sampson," Molly Ann said firmly, "but I am not going to have a child.  You can take that refusal and leave.  I'm not sorry for you.  You made your own problems.  Live with them, or be dead with them, or whatever...  I'm hungry.  I want to eat my supper."

"I'll stay here until you conceive the child!" Sampson was sputtering purple sparks again.  I knew how frustrated he felt.  When Molly Ann says "no" she usually means "NO!" and there's no changing her mind.

"Do whatever.  I'm going to eat my supper.  After that maybe I'll call up same friends and have them come look at you like you were some freak in a side show." Sampson harrumphed again, but Molly Ann paid no attention.  She grabbed my elbow and steered me into the kitchen.

Sampson muttered in the family room while we ate supper.  I wasn't quite sure whether he was sobbing or harrummphing or both.  Molly Ann was thinking.  Then she got an inspiration over dessert (brandied pears from a tree family legend claimed Sampson had planted).

"Exorcise him," she said to me.  "You're a clergyman."

"I'm not sure how to do that.  Presbyterians have never been much into the departed spirit dismissing business.  That's always been the specialty of a different denomination."  Sampson harrumphed a little louder.  "I'll try, though.  Even though he is your ancestor, and nice enough, I don't really want him for a permanent mantel ornament."

I had only a vague impression of what an exorcism rite included.  I had read one once in Latin in my grandmother's Missal.  I remembered mostly that it needed a bell for ringing, a candle, and a copy of the Bible, so I collected these items and brought them out and put them on a card table.

"What is all that paraphernalia, young man?"

"It is exorcism equipment, Sampson."

"Exorcism?  Do you understand that could be painful to me?"

"I don't care.  Molly Ann and I want you out of here.  We're not willing to have a child to do it."

"There is nothing reasonable in a healthy woman's refusing to bear a child," Sampson snorted.

Molly Ann snorted.  "That is more reasonable than an ancestral spirit in a Twentieth Century family room."

"Be quiet, both of you.  I've got to do an exorcism.  I want to do it right."

Sampson was quiet, glowing pale blue, with only an occasional silver and purple spark.  I told myself I really could exorcise him.  I almost fooled myself into believing it.  I hoped I fooled Sampson.  I sent Molly Ann for my pulpit gown.  I heard her brushing the dust off it.  I hadn't used it for several months.  I frowned at both of them.  They stayed quiet; the gloom that falls over my face when I put the black robe on kept them both quiet.  Then I lit the candle, and put it on the card table between the Bible and the bell.  Molly Ann shut out the lights, which made the whole thing look very eerie.  She has quite an eye for artistic details.

"In the name of the King of the Universe," I chanted, and rang the bell three times with my left hand, "I abjure thee, Sampson," three more shakes of the bell, "to be gone to rest and eternal peace."  The bell again.  I put my right hand on the Bible.  "By all that is holy, by all that is sacred, by all that is true religion, I send thee to thy grave," the bell, "there to rest forever untroubled until the Judgment Day."  I rang the bell three times as before.  

I closed my eyes and began to intone my phrases.  "Sampson, go as the candle flare goes when the light is blown out.  Lord, now let your servant Sampson go in peace, according to your gracious word.  Amen," ring of the bell, "amen," ring of the bell, "and amen."  Ring of the bell, and under it a startled sound.  I opened my eyes and looked at Molly Ann.  She was staring, astonished, at the mantel.  Sampson seemed to be choking on something.  Two phosphorescent figures, one on either side of him, took shape.  They were female, dressed in the ruffled dresses of a hundred years ago.

"Young man," Sampson said triumphantly, "you'd have exorcised me forever, if you hadn't made one mistake.  Hold the bell in your right hand next time.  When you hold it in your left it reverses everything you say.  Now I'm here for good, unless you have that child."

"Sampson," the voice was strange to me, "are you meddling again? I thought you had learned your lesson in that earthquake."  I wasn't sure who she was.  Molly Ann knew, though.

"Welcome, Great-Great-Grandmother Jennie," she said.  "Maybe you can do something with Great-Great-Grandfather Sampson.  He demands we have a child."

"He was always a strong family man."

"Now, Jennie."  I could tell that Sampson didn't have the upper hand with his wife he'd claimed he had.  She ignored him completely.

"Who is that woman on the other side of you, Sampson?"  I asked.  I almost regretted asking; purple sparks started shooting through his ectoplasm.

"That, young man, is your great-great-grandmother, Lucy May."

"Oh, the one you were supposed to marry instead of Great-Great-Grandmother Jennie, Great-Great-Grandfather?"e;  Molly Ann sounded sweet and innocent.  I knew Sampson faced trouble.

"What, Sampson," Jennie said sternly, "is all this about?"  The two ancestresses glowered at each other.

"Oh, you're that Sampson," said my ancestress.  "My how you've aged, or should I say matured?"  My ancestress sounded a lot like my wife, sweet, innocent, and full of danger.  Sampson was pitifully uncomfortable He was sparking pink and blue and sickly yellow-green.

"Ladies, I have been true to both of you, after my fashion," he said.

"Oh, quit prattling like a stupid third rate poet, Sampson," Jennie said.  "You don't do it very well, and it solves nothing.  Why were we called here?  And why did you never mention Lucy May to me?"

Call it gender bias.  I felt Sampson needed a rescue, so I spoke up.

"I called you here," I said, "though what I meant to do was get rid of Sampson.  I'm sorry for the trouble I caused."  I was, too, especially the trouble I'd caused myself.  I had a hunch three spirits could be harder to exorcise than one.

"And?"  Jennie turned to Sampson.

"And what, my dear?"

"What about Lucy May?"

"I can tell you about that," Lucy May said.  "One spring day in 1850, Sampson came riding up to my father's farm, and oh! he was so handsome he fair took my breath away.  He stayed the summer, and we became betrothed.  It was a harvest moon in September, I remember, when he quenched the ember of our love.  He mounted his horse and rode away.  I never saw him again, though I watched all the bitter winter for his return.  I had a letter from him in 1851 that said he had wed another."  Lucy May was crying.  Jennie was crying.  Sampson looked miserable.  Molly Ann looked like she could either cry or giggle.

"Sampson, for shame!"  Jennie was very hurt.  "To abandon this poor child and to marry me under false pretenses.  This is even more upsetting than your unseemly leering at those undressed women in San Francisco during that earthquake business.  For shame!"  By this time Jennie had her arm around Lucy May and Lucy May's head was on Jennie's shoulder.

"Men are such brutes at times," Molly Ann said.  I thought it prudent to say nothing.  "Noble ancestresses, do you know that Sampson has threatened to haunt us until we have the child?"

"Men are always wanting children to make them feel important and to prove that they are men," my ancestress replied through her tears.  "My Luke got twelve on me.  Raising that many led me to an early grave."  As I remembered family history, Lucy May had been eighty-five or ninety when she died.  I chose not to remind her of it.

"Whatever are we to do with you, Sampson?"  Jennie asked.  The question sounded very rhetorical.  I had a hunch Jennie had an idea all worked out.  It didn't look good for Sampson, or for his eternal rest.

"You know, dearest Jennie," Sampson said, "that because I failed to have a child of destiny with Lucy May, that our descendants must make up the deficit even unto the third and fourth generation.  It is so written.  It is the Law of Compensation."

Molly Ann started laughing, a very relieved laugh.  "Sampson," she said between laughs, "you know your Scripture, and it does say even unto the third and fourth generation.  Jim and I are off the hook; we're both fifth generation."  I started laughing too.

"Late again, Sampson," I said.  He was a very pale blue glow now.  Laughter was hard for him to take.

"He usually is," Jennie said.  "I think we'll all be going now.  He won't haunt you any more.  I'm pleased to see that my descendant is so strong of mind, and that she has married an understanding man."

"And I am pleased that a descendant of mine is so handsome," Lucy May said.  I appreciated her compliment, though I doubted her ectoplasmic sight.  I've looked in the mirror often enough.

"Go back into the eternal shadows," I said, "and rest, though if you want to come visit us again sometime, we might have quite a chat.  Please give us some advance warning, though.  Goodbye."

The three figures were fading.  Jennie and Lucy May were arm in am, two Victorian schoolgirls plotting bedevilment.  I felt sorry for Sampson.  He was a faded thin, blue, and hunched over.  All his "harrumph" had gone.

"We may come back sometime," Jennie said.  "I'd like to see the new fashions.  Goodbye!"

"Goodbye!" Molly Ann called after the fading figures.  The two women turned and waved, then disappeared.  Sampson, hunched over, just faded.

That was two months ago.  This past week Molly Ann has been sick every morning.  She's going into town to see a doctor.  I've begun searching the want ads for a job.  Last night we both dreamed we heard a chuckle and a harrumph.  If it's a boy, we'll name him Sampson, I guess.  I don't know what name we should choose for a girl, though, Jennifer or Lucy.