Really, these details have been published everywhere. The whole mess has gone to trial, and the murderer is sentenced to death. Bonnie and Molly needed no gifts to know any of this.
But still they persisted. They said my father was very sorry for something he'd done to me when I was 4 years old. He knew it was cruel, but it was the only way he could think to teach me a lesson. Bonnie and Molly, they held hands and said they saw me as a small boy, kneeling beside a chopping block. My father was standing over me, holding something wooden.
"It's a stick," they said, then said, "No it's not. It's an ax..."
The rest of my friends were quiet; Ina's weeping had effectively silenced their giggling.
Bonnie and Molly said, "You're 4 years old, and you're deciding something very important. It's something that will shape the rest of your life..."
They described my father sharpening his ax and said, "You're about to be..." they paused, "dismembered?"
I pour another glass of wine and drink it. I pour another. I tell Bonnie and Molly, our guides to the ghost world, please tell me more. I smirk and say, "No, really, this is fascinating."
Then they say, "Your father is very happy now. He's happier now than he ever was in his life on earth."
Oh, isn't this always the case. A little scrap of comfort for the bereaved. Bonnie and Molly are just the same sort who have preyed on grieving people throughout history. At best, they're misguided, deluded fools. At worst, manipulative monsters.
What I don't tell them is, when I was 4 years old I slipped a metal washer around my finger. It was too tight to remove, and I waited until my finger was swollen and purple before I asked my father for help. We'd always been told not to put rubber bands or anything tight around our fingers or we'd get gangrene and those bits would rot and fall off. My dad said we'd have to cut the finger off, and spent the afternoon washing my hand and sharpening the ax. The whole time, he also lectured me about taking responsibility for my own actions. He said that if I was going to do stupid things, I should be ready to pay the price.
That whole afternoon, I listened. There was no drama, no tears or panic. In my 4-year-old mind, my father was doing me a favor. It would hurt, chopping off my fat, purple finger, but it would be better than the weeks of letting it rot.
I knelt beside the chopping block, where I'd seen so many chickens meet a similar fate, and put out my hand. If anything, I was wildly grateful for my father's help, and resolved never to blame other people for stupid things I'd done.
My father swung the ax, and of course he missed. We went inside, and he used soap and water to remove the washer.
It's a story I'd almost forgotten. Almost forgotten, because I'd never told it to anyone. Because I knew other people wouldn't understand the lesson. All they'd see was my father's actions, and then label it cruelty. For 36 years it has been my secret. And my father's. And now these silly women, Bonnie and Molly, are telling it to me and all my drunken friends.
No way was I going to give them any satisfaction. While Ina sobbed, I drank more wine. I smiled and shrugged, saying it was all very interesting prattle. A few minutes later, one of the women fell to the floor, ill, and asked for help getting to her car. The party broke up, and Ina and I stayed behind to finish the wine.
It was disappointing, really, that stupid party. Watching my friends take this nonsense seriously. I can't explain Bonnie and Molly's little magic trick, but there's so much in the world I can't explain.
The night my father was killed, hundreds of miles away, my mother had a dream. She said my father knocked at her door, begging her to hide him. In her dream, he'd been shot in the side -- a year later, the coroner would confirm this -- and he was trying to escape from a man with a gun. Instead of hiding him, my mother shut the door in his face.
That same night, one of my sisters dreamed she was walking through the desert where we grew up. She was walking beside our father, telling him she was sorry they'd grown apart and not spoken recently.
That night he died, I didn't have any dream. No one came to me in my sleep to say goodbye.
Oh, I'd love to believe in an invisible world. It would undermine all the suffering and pressure of the physical world. But it would also negate the value of the money I have in the bank, my decent house, and all my hard work. All our problems and all our blessings could be readily dismissed because they'd be no more real than plot events in a book or movie. An invisible, eternal world would render this world an illusion.
Really, the spirit world is like pedophilia or necrophilia: I have no experience with it so I am completely unable to take it seriously. It will always seem like a joke.
There are no ghosts.
But if there are, my dad should damn well tell me himself.