The students laughed and the teachers had to quiet them down.
“And whiter than snow was my fine and luxurious mustache, formerly a source of constant pride. Some say it was my downfall, my famous pride. Others say that I did not have a downfall. On my death certificate, in the space provided for cause of death, the coroner made the unusual notation, ‘No cause.’ Why he did so is a mystery to this very day. But my humble existence was not always gloomy for me. I lived during an exciting period in our nation’s history. I had adventures and fell in love. This is my lively story.”
________
3
An abandoned playground is a gothic wonder, especially with frost on the ground and a lone grown man sagging in the saddle of a swing. Now imagine that the chinless, pale man, with teeth that stick out a little under an elaborate ginger moustache, has pale bulging eyes and holds to the chains of the swing, motionless. And now imagine him wearing a suit of plum-colored velvet and the soft white rabbit-skin gloves of a murderer. A purple silk top hat rests on his lap. His walking stick leans against one metal leg of the swing set’s frame. His overshoes and pant cuffs are covered in a greasy black slime that glitters with speckles of frost. The few slim trees are black and bare.
“Is this swing taken?”
Stanley turned his big, sad head and saw a girl.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Not at all!” said the girl. “I like the way you talk. Like a movie where people wear clothes.”
“Should you be speaking to a stranger?”
“I’m sixteen,” said the girl. “I’ll be sixteen soon. Legally, I can talk to whoever I want. My parents live overseas for some reason.”
“I’m not comfortable talking to you,” said Stanley. “Let’s just sit quietly in our separate swings.”
“Wait, who are you being?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m fourteen,” said the girl. “I’m telling you because you probably figured it out already. Don’t you recognize me?”
Stanley didn’t look at her. He rubbed his nonexistent chin with his soft glove. He had not arranged for transportation because Jane Abbott, the new owner of Butter House, was supposed to meet him here. He had expected to ride back with her. But she was almost an hour late and there was no way to get in touch with her.
“I was in the class today,” the girl said. “So I couldn’t be sixteen. I thought you were really good today and informative about interesting subjects. That’s why I asked you who you’re being. Like, am I talking to William Butter right now?”
“No,” said Stanley.
“Could I?”
Stanley looked at her. She was a kind girl with a plump, chapped face. Her lips were shiny from an application either medicinal or cosmetic. Her hair was straight and gave the impression that she did not care about it one way or another. She wore a leather jacket with numerous attachments. Her nails were painted a very dark red. She wore a lot of rings that looked like tin or plastic, and the cat-eye glasses of a bygone era. She seemed harmless, or at any rate an improvement over the rough boys who had tricked him into stepping into the slippery, sinking patch of black grass in which the school’s septic tank was acting up.
“Did you have an interest in William Butter before my performance today?” he said.
“No, do it as William Butter,” said the girl.
“Have you long entertained an interest in my person?”
“That is so cool.”
“Cool in what manner?” said Stanley as William Butter. “I am not acquainted with this usage of the word.”
“So, like, what’s it like to smother somebody?” said the girl.
“I cannot say.”
“You cannot say or you will not say?”
“A fascinating distinction, yet I must leave your curiosity unsatisfied. In the time period and social milieu I occupy, it is most improper for a young lady to speak of such ghoulish fancies.”
“I wonder what it’s like to get smothered,” said the girl.
“I am no longer William Butter,” said Stanley. “I am back to being myself. I don’t wish to continue this conversation, I’m sorry.”
Cookie was basing the curious girl on Cat-Eye Girl, the student who had shown them around.
In the end, our heroine, Jane Abbott, discovers that William Butter, her ancestor, was innocent. A guest high on laudanum had fallen into a drowse, allowing Butter’s large raccoon to rest on his face, resulting in suffocation. William Butter was so dedicated to his raccoon that he refused to incriminate it, fearing that it would be euthanized.
Writing from a woman’s point of view was going to rejuvenate Cookie’s spirit and stop him from being a hack. It was going to unleash his genius. But the pie company called in need of an emergency supplement. Cookie tried to tell them he was through with pies for good, but they said, “Nobody writes about pie the way you do.” They said, “I don’t even like pie anymore, and you make me like it with your words.” They offered to pay him more. Cookie said all right. He didn’t tell his wife because it was shameful and desecrating, like committing adultery with the pie company.
At some point they stopped paying him with money and started paying him in pies. Cookie hid the boxes from his wife and ate the pies in the middle of the night while she slept. They had a weird aftertaste, like dust.
4
Cookie ended up calling the class he taught “The Art and Science of the Ghost Story,” which meant nothing. It met on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour and fifteen minutes.
The first day was easy. Cookie went around the room asking each of his twelve students to describe the last ghost he or she had seen.
There was a sad old man who stood at the foot of a bed.
There was a blue light that floated around.
There was a kindly woman who sat on the edge of a bed.
“I haven’t seen a ghost since I was a kid,” said this one kid, this kid named Dennis Guy.
“Do you remember it?” said Cookie.
“Aw, hells yeah,” said Dennis Guy. “It was this shadow man. He looked like a shadow, and he lived in the wall of my bedroom. And he had these ten little shadow monkeys who would help him.”
“Shadow monkeys?” said Cookie.
“They were these little shadows about the size of a spider monkey, and they hopped around like monkeys. One night, I left a plate of food on my dresser, and the shadow monkeys came out of the wall and ate it.”
“Now, see, that just sounds crazy to me,” said Cookie.
The class was taken aback.
“Hey, you think this is bad?” asked Cookie. “I should tell you about the time I made an old lady cry.”
The students didn’t seem interested.
“I called her at home later, to apologize. Her husband said she had ‘taken to bed with a little brandy.’ That’s what he said! ‘Taken to bed.’ He said, ‘a little brandy.’”
The students still didn’t seem interested.
“It was a fiction writing class, the place where I made her cry, the old lady. I had her in an archery class, too. Once she said, ‘The arrows make such a lovely plop when they hit the target.’ Lovely plop.”
He looked at them. He couldn’t tell whether they understood that “plop” was the wrong word. So was “lovely.” So was the combination “lovely plop.” He supposed it didn’t matter.
“I don’t care,” said Dennis Guy. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. This isn’t what I want to do anyway. I plan to wear a turban and go around reading rich socialites’ minds. And then when I get enough money I’m going to go out where there are actors and be an actor.”