It was back when we lived in the little house. It was a sharecropper’s house on a large farm in the red clay area of South Carolina. A strange thing happened on that late summer afternoon. I was eleven years old and attending Bradley Elementary School. It was the time in my life when I could have been considered the “boy scientist”. I was intrigued by the possibility of space travel, no doubt fostered by devouring issues of Collier’s Magazine and its stories of space travel as predicted by Werner von Braun. I had been trying to make black powder for a rocket that day.
The day of the week was Thursday. I remember it was Thursday because Daddy had been to the grocery store that day on the way home. Thursday was also the day he got paid. It was a warm day with a temperature in the nineties. (I had started recording daily weather conditions in my scientific journal.) The late afternoon thunder clouds were beginning to form in the previously cloudless sky. Mama, my younger sister, and me, were sitting down for supper when Daddy came into the kitchen carrying a bag, a small brown grocery bag. It did not seem to be very heavy, but then Daddy was a big strong man. At over two hundred pounds and over six feet tall he earned the nickname,” Big Jack”. He set the bag on the table and announced, “I brought a special surprise today!”
I elbowed my way past my sister to get closer to the bag. “What could it be?” I thought.
Daddy’s big calloused hand reached into the bag and pulled out the biggest Coca-Cola I had ever seen! It was the twenty-six ounce size.
“Put some ice in some glasses, Mama, and we’ll enjoy this surprise”, he said.
Mama went to the Frigidaire, got a tray of ice, and put some cubes in each of the four glasses. All
That Coca-Cola sure tasted good as we stood around in that little kitchen. I always liked the way the foam on top of the Coke tickled my nose. Mama had been cooking supper, and It was really hot in there.
Before we could finish our treat a bolt of lightning struck the big cottonwood tree beside the back porch, and the lights went out in the kitchen. (We had the lights on because it had been almost dark when Daddy got home.) Now we were in total darkness. As it often is before a deluge of rain, it was very quiet. For some reason, in our family, you were expected to remain seated and very quiet during a thunderstorm, almost reverent.
“I hear something,” my sister whispered to me.
“Yeah, me too. It’s called thunder,” I responded.
“No, something else. It’s like someone whispering. Like Sh…sh…sh,” she said.
I listened intently for a few minutes. I heard it too!
But not to allow my fear to show, I said, “I think that might be the ghost!”
“A ghost?” I could hear the fear in my little sister’s voice…and I loved it!
“Yes, Grandma said that the old man that died here always spoke in a whisper. Like this:’ I see y-o-u…!’” I whispered.
From across the room I heard Mama say, “Stop scaring your sister!”
“But Mama…”
“Don’t ‘But’ me,” Mama said. I knew that the next time she spoke to me she would use my full name and that would mean I was in real trouble. Daddy hadn’t said anything. He was deaf in one ear and we never knew whether he didn’t hear us or just didn’t care to respond.
We continued to hear the noise as the storm raged outside. It seemed to rain forever, but it didn’t.
Then, suddenly, the lights flickered and came on. I looked on the kitchen table at the remaining Coke. My throat was dry.
“Mama, can we drink the rest of the coke?” I asked.
“Share it with your sister,” she said.
I grabbed the bottle and unscrewed the top. The mysterious noise stopped.
Proudly I announced, “I found the ghost!”, which really wasn’t a surprise since I was a budding scientist!
T
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