Haunting of a Small-town Life

            When I worked at the wonderful fast-food franchise of Taco-chicken, I received a phone call from a woman whom I had never met. This woman asked a very specific question that I cannot at this time bring myself to repeat.  I cannot tell you this story.  But I can tell you the jist of it.  Please pardon the air of mystery, as there is really nothing mysterious about it, only regretful.

When this question was asked, I told the truth.  This truth caused her to cry and shout and carry on.  She hung up.  She called back.  She hung up.  She called again, but this time there was only the sound of her and another man shouting.  When she called back again, it was to inform me that she was coming to talk to me.  I remember kneeling at a chair and praying for grace.  I remember being calm.

When she came, I was shocked that she was my mom’s age.  She sat there with all her grey hairs and asked me more questions which were like the first.  All of my answers gave her the same conclusion, the same hard truth.  She asked me to drop by her home later that day to talk some more then left.

Later, the man I had told the truth about came in his black truck and and dropped a napkin on the counter.

“That’s all you need to know.”  He said, and walked out.  The scribbled, badly spelled words on the napkin expressed how much he hated me.

After work, I went to the woman’s house, which was a block from my own.  There she, the man and I talked.  I told the truth they shouted at each other.  I remember crying, feeling like a child being torn apart in a family feud.  For the first time in my life I was thinking I’m glad my parents divorced.

They asked me to come in to talk some more because their discussion was getting too loud.  One of the neighbors might call the cops they said.

“I can’t talk anymore,” I said “I’m sorry, I have to go home.  My mom will worry.”

I was seventeen.  These people scared me.  The situation scared me.  So I left.  I told my mom everything when I got home and cried in her lap.

From then on, I was scared.  The house where all of this had happened was easily visible from the both the living room and the back porch of my mom’s house.  It served as a constant reminder to me of what had happened.  Every once in a while when I was running errands about town, I would glance at my rear-view mirror and notice a black truck following close behind me.  I stopped walking at night.  Eventually I moved away.  Even now though, when I return home once or twice every few months, it haunts me—the ghost of a small-town life.