He struggled painfully into some clothes, trying to stand as little as possible. It wasn’t so bad as long as he sat or lay down, but to stand up was torture. He managed to get some coffee made, and sat down on the piano stool to drink it. He looked around the room. The cups and glasses from the night before were still scattered about. Thank God they had moved the table back to its usual position. He shuddered at the thought of what it would be like to try and move it in his condition. As the pain subsided again, he doodled a few bars on the piano, then flipped on the player. The old machine turned and wheezed and began to play “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”.
That was too sentimental for this early in the morning. He removed the roll and inserted another, the Gershwin one. Immediately, the piano began again to play “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”. Howell stopped the mechanism and looked on the roll. “Gershwin Plays Gershwin” was clearly printed on the paper. Surely, George Gershwin had not written the old Irish-American tune? Puzzled, he tried another roll – Earl Hines. Same tune. Howell shut off the piano. The goddamn thing must have some sort of mechanical memory that got stuck; now it was repeating itself, like a windup music box. He suddenly needed a drink. Forgetting his back, he started for the kitchen and the bottle, then fell to the floor, shrieking, as the pain swept through him again.
When he could move again, he got gingerly to his feet and, using a peculiar, Quasimodo-like gait, he made it to the station wagon and pointed the car toward Sutherland. He had passed a doctor’s office half a dozen times, and now he needed a doctor. After half an hour with old Readers Digests and Guideposts, he was ushered into the doctor’s examination room, where he related what had happened to him.
“What the hell is the matter with me, Doctor?”
“Incipient middle age,” the doctor replied, filling a syringe.
That was not what Howell had wanted to hear. “So what can you do about it?”
“Not much, to tell you the truth. I’m going to inject a muscle relaxant into the area, and I’ll prescribe a pain killer. After that, hot baths a couple of times a day and plenty of bed rest.”
“For how long? When is this going to clear up?”
“A few days, a few weeks, who knows?” The doctor stabbed at him with the needle.
“Jesus, what kind of prognosis is that?” Howell howled.
“Best medical science can do, I’m afraid. I’d send you over to the local chiropractor for a little wrestling match, but I just sent him down to Atlanta for a laminectomy the other day.”
“For what?”
“Back surgery,” the doctor grinned. “Last resort, of course.” He scribbled something on a pad. “Take one of these every four hours for the pain. They’re a sort of artificial morphine, so don’t get too enthusiastic with them. Come and see me in four or five days if you’re not better, and we’ll give you another injection.”
Howell hobbled out of the place, got the prescription filled, and stumbled into a booth at Bubba’s. The place was buzzing with locals in for mid-morning coffee, and after a moment the lawyer, Enda McCauliffe, plopped down across from him.
“How’s it going, John?” he asked.
“Just terrific, Mac,” Howell replied, popping one of the pain killers into his mouth and washing it down with coffee. “I’ve just come from the doctor’s, and I think I’m crippled for life.” He told the lawyer what had happened to him.
“Well, that’s just awful,” McCauliffe commiserated. “You know what I’d do if I were you?”
“Suicide?” Howell asked.
McCauliffe shook his head and seemed to suppress a laugh. “Not yet, anyway. Mama Kelly.”
“Mama Kelly?”
The lawyer nodded. “The old lady has something of a reputation in these parts for healing – you know, warts, cross-eyed kids, the lame and the halt – that sort of thing. Of course, none of your better people would ever stoop to that.”
Howell blinked at him. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? You’re not really suggesting that I do that.”
“Seems to me you come under the heading of lame and halt, and anyway, you’ve had an invitation, haven’t you?” McCauliffe sipped his coffee and grinned a wicked little grin. “Couldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t think I’m that bad off,” Howell replied. The pill was beginning to work, now, and he was feeling a little light-headed with it. “Don’t worry, I’ll tap-dance again.”
“Suit yourself. I’ve seen folks down for months with that sort of thing, though. 'Course, being a writer, you make your living on your ass, anyway.“
“With my mind, buddy.” Howell ordered some eggs and another cup of coffee. “Say, you’d have loved it up at my place last night. We had a regular seance up there, some people from across the lake and I.”
“Oh?” McCauliffe looked both interested and wary.
“Oh, sure,” Howell said. He told the lawyer about meeting the two couples on the lake and about their experience after dinner. He didn’t mention the girl at the window. As he spoke, McCauliffe’s expression began to change from interest to derision.
Howell continued, “The bloody dining table, which must weigh two hundred pounds, actually spelled out a name – a word, anyway. Came right off the floor at one point. And this morning, all my player piano will play is ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’.”
McCauliffe put down his coffee cup, suddenly irritable. “Oh, come off it, John, who’ve you been talking to?
“I kid you not, Mac, that’s just the way it happened.”
“What was the name or word the table spelled?”
“Rabbit. As in bunny.”
McCauliffe was still irritable. “Now look, John, you’ve had your fun, but this has gone far enough. I don’t want to talk about this any more.” He picked up his check and started to rise from the booth.
Howell put a hand on his arm. “Look, Mac, I’m not telling you all this to get you riled. It honest to God happened, at least, I think it did. Could I make all this up?”
McCauliffe slumped back into the booth and mopped his brow. “No,” he said cautiously. “No, you couldn’t make it up.”
“Mac, is there something you’re not telling me? Has anybody else around here ever had a run-in with this sort of thing?”
McCauliffe gazed over Howell’s shoulder through the window and out across the mountains. “Not for some years,” he said finally. “At least, not that I’ve heard about.”
“Tell me,” Howell said, not entirely sure he wanted to know.
McCauliffe looked back at him, then out the window again. His eyes seemed to go out of focus. “I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “True story, not a ghost story. As much of the truth as I know, anyway. As much as anybody knows, I guess.” He called to Bubba for another cup of coffee, and when it came, he sat back and started to talk.
“I told you about the Irish community that used to live in the valley. My family was among them, Bo Scully’s, several others hereabouts. Well, just after the war, late ‘46 or early ’47 it was, I guess, Eric Sutherland started to put together the land for the lake, and, of course, that meant all of the valley. There was a lot of resistance in at first, and for a while, it looked as though Sutherland might not make it. Since it was a private, not a public project, he couldn’t take the land by eminent domain, he had to buy it outright. He had a couple of Atlanta banks behind him, though, a lot of money. One or two families capitulated, then, finally, the rest of them. All but one, a family called O’Coineen. They wouldn’t budge.”
“I suppose Sutherland brought pressure to bear.”
“Oh, he had been doing that all along. The local bank was with him, of course, and they held a lot of paper in the valley. The worst pressure on the O’Coineens came from the other families, though.”