Mary Louise

Joefan1

“So you’re actually leaving.” 

Joe nodded and finished tying his bedroll behind his saddle.

“Running away isn’t going to make it hurt any less, son.”

“Maybe so, but I have to get away for a while.” Joe turned and faced his father, pain and hurt written clearly on his face. 

“Did you say good-bye to your brothers?”

Joe nodded and led Cochise out of the barn. 

“Joe.” Ben called, following him out. 

Joe stopped and turned to face his father, a plea for understanding written on his face. 

“Take care,”  Ben said, pulling him into a hug. 

“I love you, pa.”

“Keep in touch.” Ben called out as he watched his son mount Cochise and ride off.

He had been riding for nearly a week, trying to sort things out in his mind, trying to lessen the hurt, but to no avail.  His father had been right.  Amy’s loss hurt just as much now as it did the day he left. Running away, being on his own hadn’t changed anything. ‘Perhaps it was time to go home,’ he thought, ‘or, maybe’ he reconsidered, ‘he just needed more time on his own.’  

He was deep in thought, trying to reach some kind of decision, when Cochise became skittish and started sidestepping. Joe pulled up and looked around.

“A ghost town,” he breathed as he sat gazing at the abandoned structures, letting his eyes drift from one decrepit building to another. 

“What?” he mouthed, suddenly becoming attentive and focused. He stared down the street, straining his eyes and scrutinizing every inch of the place, trying to catch another glimpse of whatever it was that had caught his attention. But there was nothing there; the street was empty.

“Gee Cochise, I must be losing my mind. I was sure I saw someone walking down the street.”

The paint nodded his head.

“You think I’m losing my mind?”

His four-legged friend shook his head.

“Oh, you thought you saw something too? Shall we go have a look-see?”  

Cochise shook his head, more emphatically this time.

. Joe chuckled and patted the horse’s neck. “It’s okay, boy. It was just our imagination working overtime.

He walked the paint down the street, soothing the fractious animal as he went along. Within moments,  he came to what must have, at one time, been a livery stable. The building itself was ready to collapse, but the small enclosure behind it was in good shape.

“What do you think, Cochise?” he asked, turning him out into the corral. 

The paint walked calmly to the nearest patch of grass and started grazing. 

Satisfied that the horse would be fine, Joe started down the street, intent on spending a few hours exploring and hopefully distracting himself.

He nosed around several buildings inside and out, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. They were simply old buildings, in various stages of disrepair. They had all been abandoned years ago.  The whole town, in fact, looked as if it had been deserted for decades. 

Ghost town or not, the place was proving to be dull and unexciting, and he was about to go back to the livery when a loud noise caught his attention. Once again, his eyes raked up and down the street, searching. But this time, they found the culprit. It was an old sign banging against a door. “Sheriff’s Office,” it announced to anyone who might be around.

Joe smiled. ‘Sheriff’s office, perhaps that will prove more interesting,’ he thought, and headed towards the lopsided sign. He had just about reached it when a strange feeling that someone was watching him crept down his spine. He stopped and looked around, scoping out the area—no one. He was alone. 

“Just my imagination,” he assured himself, and shaking off the disquieting sensation, he crossed the road to the jail house.

“Now this is more like it,” he murmured. The place was a treasure trove. There was a stack of old wanted posters piled to the side of the desk, and behind it, hanging on a hook, were the keys to the cell doors. In the top drawer, he found an old sheriff’s badge and an antiquated pair of handcuffs. 

Sitting at  the sheriff’s desk, badge pinned to his shirt, he was engrossed in the wanted posters when someone walked in, startling him. His head shot up, and he smiled. It was a little girl, not more than eight or nine years old. 

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

“Blackman Farm,” she told him. “My name’s Mary Louise Blackman. Are you a sheriff?”

Joe shook his head. “I found the badge in the desk.”

“I’m gonna call you Sheriff, anyway,” she declared.

“Then Sheriff Cartwright, it is,” he replied, going along with her game. And using his best sheriff’s voice, he demanded, “And what are you doing here, young lady?”

“Playing in the old buildings,” she told him, and then stared down at her shoes. “I saw you looking around in some of them and thought maybe we could explore them together.”  Making small circles with her right foot, she shyly added. “Some of them are real dark inside.”

“Well, as sheriff, I suppose it’s my job to show you around. Where would you like to start?”

“The old hotel,” Mary Louise answered immediately.

Hand-in-hand, the sheriff and the little girl strolled down the street.

“Here we are,” Joe announced and graciously opened the door for her. Giggling, she stepped through, into the hotel. 

The sheriff followed her in and glanced around the room. “Good choice,” he said, applauding her decision. “Shall we have a look at the front desk?”

“Ah, a register, do you think we’ll recognize any of the names, Mary Louise?” 

Stepping up to the desk, he leafed through the book. He was in the midst of trying to decipher the signatures when an icy draft surged through him, chilling him to the bone.

“Did you feel that?” he asked, rubbing his arms briskly.

Mary Louise hugged herself and nodded.

“There must be an open door or window someplace,” he told himself, “but where?” He wandered into the kitchen and looked around—the windows were shut, and the back door was closed. 

“Well, it didn’t come from here,” he mumbled to himself. 

“Sheriff Cartwright,” the little girl broke into his thoughts. “Can we look upstairs? I bet there’s a lot of interesting things up there.” 

“We certainly can.” Joe assured her, putting thoughts of mysterious cold drafts out of his mind. The two had nearly reached the top when a loud crash resonated through the building.

“What the heck was that?” Joe mumbled.

“You wait here,” he told Mary Louise, and headed towards a small room off the lobby. Opening the door, he looked around. Books, a myriad of books were scattered around a little sitting room. He stepped inside and prowled about, searching for some probable cause of the chaos, but once again found nothing.

‘That’s odd,’ he reflected, his gaze returning to the numerous books strewn about the floor. ‘Something must have caused them to fall.’  As he stood there lost in his thoughts, a sense of foreboding passed through him, leaving him disconcerted and feeling a bit spooked.

“Oh, it was just a bunch of old books falling off the shelves.” Mary Louise announced, breaking into his musings as she strolled into the room. 

He regarded the calm, unruffled child and scoffed at his own reaction.  

‘If you’re not careful, Joe,’ he thought, ‘you’ll start believing in ghosts.’

“Yes, just some old books.” he seconded Mary Louise’s observation. “Shall we continue our investigations upstairs?”

“Which room would?”  Joe, having caught sight of a man ducking into a room at the far end of the hall, stopped in the middle of his sentence. 

“Hey there!” he shouted. 

Rushing down to the room, he threw open the door and looked around. No one. He searched the entire room, under the bed, in the closet, anywhere someone might hide—nothing. Slowly, he exited the room and started back down the hall. He hadn’t taken five steps when he heard a creaking sound coming from inside the room. He turned, glanced back into the room, and stared. He stared at the chair, rocking back and forth. He stared, mesmerized. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the curtains, the ones behind the bed.  They were fluttering. He strode over, yanked them aside, and released the breath he had been holding. The window was partially opened.  

“The wind,” he muttered. “It was only the wind.” 

Closing the window, he walked back to the chair, stopped the movement, and waited. The rocker remained motionless. 

“Joe, you’re a simpleton,” he admonished himself, abashed at having let his imagination run amok again. Then shaking his head, he chuckled at himself. He could well imagine his brothers reactions if they ever got so much as a whiff of how he had been letting his thoughts run riot. He’d never live it down. They’d hear the two of them laughing all the way to Virginia City.’ 

As he thought of his brothers, a  sensation of melancholy came upon him. He missed his family. He missed his pa, he missed Hoss, he even missed old Adam.

  ‘It was time to go home,’ he decided.

“Mary Louise,” he called, then turned and almost tripped over the child.

“Where did you come from?”, he demanded, taken aback by her sudden appearance out of nowhere. He was positive she hadn’t been there just moments before.

“I followed you down the hall.” 

Joe looked into the innocent blue eyes and relaxed. 

‘I’m really letting this place get to me,’ he thought. Smiling at the little girl, he took her hand, and the two finished their exploration of the hotel.  

“Is there any other place you want to see?” 

Mary Louise nodded. 

“There’s something I want to show you,” she said, and led him to the remains of an old, collapsed building. 

“I was playing in the building when it fell down,” she told him, pointing to a pile of bones under the rubbish. “My folks don’t know I’m here. Please tell them, so I can go home.”

Joe stared in disbelief. “Stop joking, Mary Louise. It isn’t funny,” he scolded.

“I’m not joking, Joe,” she cried. 

“My locket and diary are buried under there. Get them, and you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

“How do you know my name is Joe? I never told you that.” 

“Amy told me. She said you were a good man, and you’d help me get home.”

She looked up at him, pleading. “Please, promise me you’ll make sure I get home.” 

“Promise me,” she repeated, and her body started to shimmer. 

Stunned, Joe could only nod. 

Mary Louise smiled.

“I have a message for you from Amy,” she told him. “She says to stop grieving and get on with your life. It’s making her sad to see you so downhearted.” 

  Smiling, her voice edged with shyness, she added, “Good-bye, Sheriff, and thank you. Amy was right. You are a good man,” and disappeared before his eyes.

Joe stood gazing into the empty space where Mary Louise had been standing, doubting his senses. It was just too preposterous. Yet there were bones under that building, and they looked to be those of a child. Hesitantly, he reached under the rubble, searching. When he pulled his hand out moments later, he had a locket and a diary in it. He opened the book. Inscribed on the inside cover was        Mary Louise, 

Blackman Farm. 

That evening, Joe rode to the little farmhouse. He gave the Blackmans the diary and locket and, as gently as possible, told them about the bones he had found in the old ghost town. He spent three days at the little farm, helping them put Mary Louise to rest and listening to their reminisces about their daughter. 

    *******************************

Joe led Cochise into the barn and bedded him down. “Happy to be home, Cochise?” he asked. 

The horse looked at Joe and then happily chomped on the hay in his stall. 

“Me too.” Joe murmured.

He gave the horse a last pat and walked up to the house.

As he stepped through the doorway, three sets of eyes looked his way, and for several seconds, everyone just stared. Joe stood there, looking down at the floor, trying to think of something to say. Suddenly, he felt himself being pulled into a hug. The smell of pipe tobacco and aftershave inundated his senses. “I love you, Pa,” he whispered. 

Joe did tell his family about his adventures in the ghost town, and his brothers did roar with laughter. But he never told anyone about his encounter with Mary Louise or about the message from Amy.