Poor ghost, p.17
Poor Ghost, page 17
For a moment, you hear nothing. Then everything seems to be spinning.
The poem ends:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand there at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die.
It’s a corny poem, you realize that, so you are surprised to find yourself weeping, openly and unashamedly. You try to calm your breathing, but when you look up at the nurses, they are all softly crying too.
51
After the lavender oil ceremony, the nurses quickly, seamlessly return to business. “Your father will go down to the morgue now,” one says. “Once you decide on a funeral home, have them get in touch with us.”
You nod and begin signing the paperwork attached to a clipboard that one of the nurses has handed you. Afterward, you thank everyone, take one last look at your father, and drive home.
You’ve been through this process all too recently with Connie, so you call your father’s attorney and schedule a meeting for the next day. You have a copy of his will, and since you’ve had power of attorney for the last two years, you’re pretty sure it won’t have been changed. Half of his total assets go to you, the other half to Victoria.
You call the same funeral home that “handled”—their words—Connie’s death. They email you a to-do list. You call Social Security and have his payments stopped. You call the local paper and the cable TV company and close his accounts.
Those three calls take an hour and a half, and you decide to take a break from the phone and drive to your father’s house to retrieve his bills, bank statements, and insurance policies.
Sitting in his driveway next to his old Camry, you think maybe you will donate the car to public radio. Your father would not have approved.
As you walk to the front door, realizing that you will have to do something about the house as well, you suddenly notice all its faults—the peeling paint, a cracked shutter, the bent downspout, loose shingles on the roof.
You let yourself in with the key he didn’t know you’d copied, and you’re greeted with the smell of mildew and old newspapers and burned meat.
This was never your home. You grew up in a larger house in Santa Barbara, but several years after you moved out, your father, who retired early from his job as a county code-enforcement officer, insisted that he and your mother move into a smaller home. She was never happy there, and time and lack of care have erased most of her presence.
In the living room, you plop yourself down on a dusty sofa with thin cushions and exhale. He’s gone now, this man who was too much there in spirit and never enough in person.
Cardboard boxes are stacked nearly to the ceiling. In front of them are stacks of the local newspaper, some yellowing from age. A roll of wire and a wire cutter sit on an end table. Clustered around them are pieces of wire approximately an inch long—cut for a purpose no one will ever know.
On your way here, you’d considered moving yourself and Jackson into your father’s house until Elineo and Álvaro de Campos are apprehended, but there’s no way you could live here. It would suffocate you.
In fact, just being in the house is making you anxious. You retrieve the documents the funeral home said you should have—bills, bank statements, insurance policies—which you had the foresight to store in a single plastic bin. Then you look around. There’s so much garbage to dig through, so much you will have to dispose of. You feel a wave of panic and hurry out of the house, almost forgetting to lock the front door.
52
Small though it was, you had a very moving ceremony for Connie. You and Victoria and Jackson went down to the far southern end of Goleta beach. Victoria read a gloomy poem with a line you still remember: “Here! Creep, wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind.” You both talked about how much she’d meant to you, and then you’d waded out into the cold waves and opened up the urn and scattered her ashes across the water.
But as far as you know, your father’s friends are all dead or no longer his friends, and having a ceremony for him feels hypocritical. After your breakdown at the lavender oil ceremony in the hospital, you’ve mostly just felt a sense of relief that he’s gone.
Consequently, the conversation at the funeral home is awkward.
The funeral director’s office is well lit. A competent painting of a barn on a hill hangs on the wall behind him; the metal bookcases are full of three-ring binders. There’s no trace of death here. You could be back in your own office at the insurance company, a space which you, too, kept mostly empty of personal information.
As you sit down, you tell the director that you’d like to keep expenses under control as much as possible.
“What I hear you saying is you’re imagining something modest for your father’s memorial service.”
“Actually, I was imagining no service at all.”
“Ah.” He continues smiling, although possibly a shade less brightly. “And how would you prefer to dispose of the cremated remains?”
“Can you just do it?”
“We can.” The smile continues to fade.
“Is that unusual? I don’t want to be disrespectful to my father.”
“It’s not the usual thing, but it certainly does occur.”
“And when can you give me a copy of his death certificate?”
“It normally takes three to four weeks to hear back from vital records. Are you in a hurry?”
“I want to sell the house and settle his affairs as quickly as possible. I just want it to be over, you know?”
“Of course.” The smile is a ghost of its former self. “Well, I think we can accommodate your wishes. They are, as I said, very modest.”
From then on out, he is all business, explaining his contract, showing you where to initial and where to sign in full.
It’s all over in a half-hour, then you are back outside. Presumably to allow for the operation of its crematorium, the funeral home is beyond both the Goleta and Santa Barbara city limits. Behind the parking lot, protected by a barbed-wire fence, stretch long rows of avocado trees. They look dry and unhealthy. It’s been a while since there was any rain.
53
That night, you are dreaming in Insuranceeze. Service line occurrence as used herein … replacement cost items do not apply to the following personal property. Then you are in some nightmare courtroom where a client is suing you for misrepresenting a clause that has invalidated an entire policy. You are guilty as sin, and all the onlookers know it. As he is about to rule against you, the judge raises an enormous gavel, and it is then that you hear Connie’s voice.
You wake immediately and sit bolt upright in bed. It’s dark, but a bit of moonlight slips through the slats of the blinds. You look around for her, but of course she’s not there. She’s not anywhere.
Still, the words she spoke, in what you are acknowledging now must have been a dream, are clear: Follow him.
54
In the morning, you decide to look for whatever Kerry Cruz had been seeking in your backyard. It’s dry and chilly, and you put on a pair of work gloves so you can poke around in the thorny leaves of the holly bushes near the gate.
You’re just about ready to give up, when you feel something solid through one of the gloves. It’s partly wedged beneath a crack in the exterior wall’s plaster sheathing, and it takes a while to get hold of it. Finally, gingerly, you grasp the thing between your thumb and forefinger and pull it out of the bushes.
It is a pistol, a very small one, almost like a toy. But the moment you pick it up, you can feel it has a heft to it. The grip is marked by an oval with the word “Browning” in raised letters.
The sun is shining, and you hold the gun up against the sky. The tiny barrel has a patch of rust near the muzzle.
Your first impulse is to call 911, but what about all the questions and suspicions that are sure to come raining down on you? What will Elineo think when the internet tells him he has been right all along?
Still, you try to imagine a rational conversation with the police, one in which you explain how Kerry Cruz came snooping around, and why you didn’t bother telling anyone about his visit. Granted, you couldn’t know that he was looking for—what? A murder weapon? Whatever you say, you’re going to be embroiled in the Poor Ghost story once again, only this time you’ll be an actual suspect. Maybe, the police—and everyone else—will think you were involved in bringing down the plane.
On the other hand, are you really going to hide what is obviously a crucial piece of evidence? If Kerry Cruz is involved in the downing of the plane, and you say nothing, you will be letting him get away with a horrendous crime.
You realize that your breathing has become fast and erratic. You’re feeling lightheaded; before you pass out, you plop yourself down cross-legged on the path that leads to the gate. The concrete feels cold beneath your jeans. You bend over, resting your forehead against your clasped hands.
Then you remember that Kerry Cruz’s card is still in your wallet. Poor Ghost is just a phone call away.
SANTA BARBARA CHRONICLE
* * *
Murder Suspect Still at Large
* * *
Tue Dec 21, 2021 | 10:00 AM
* * *
Area law enforcement continue their search for first degree murder suspect Elineo Amis, 38, of Santa Barbara. Amis is accused of murdering his six-year-old daughter, Esther, on December 6, by throwing her from the More Mesa bluff onto the More Mesa beach, seventy feet below.
* * *
Bystanders reported that prior to the murder, Amis, owner of the Surfin’ for Jesus surf school, claimed his daughter was “infected by serpent DNA.” Afterward, Amis is alleged to have said that he committed the murder for Stuart Fisher, the late singer of the band Poor Ghost, whose plane crashed near Santa Barbara on September 21.
* * *
On December 7, Amis was reportedly seen in a grove of trees near the bike path at Patterson Avenue and Atascadero Creek. On December 10, he was sighted at the loading bay behind Costco in Goleta, and on December 15 several people claimed to have seen him in and around the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Calle Real.
* * *
Sheriff’s spokesperson Claudia Hartmann said the department believes Amis is still somewhere in the Santa Barbara area. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to call the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. Amis is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached under any circumstances.
POOR GHOST: AN ORAL HISTORY
2010–2013
Everything Good Is on the Highway (2011)
US Billboard Peak Position: 1
KERRY CRUZ: It was three years since Hillsdale Boulevard, and we’d been doing our usual thing: Gregg jamming with other musicians, Shane doing his businesses—some succeeding, some not so much. Stuart was doing Stuart. After Holly, he never wanted to have a partner for very long, and he loved having the freedom to just move from one place to another on a whim. During that time, I believe he was living in Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Sonora, California.
I was raising my family. I kept the house in Hancock Park, but my wife and I bought a kind of gentleman’s ranch up in the San Gabriel mountains just south of Antelope Valley. We had a big old farmhouse with some horses, a little bass pond with a creek running through it. All these orange and yellow and purple wildflowers on the hills in the spring. And just an hour and a half from LA. Pretty sweet deal. I’m always happy to come home.
ED WINGFIELD: I’d already told them: Look, you did your artsy album that peaked at number 51. Now it’s time to get back in the game and make a record that people actually want to purchase. But of course, that was the problem. By 2010, the record industry was basically in tatters. People wanted their music for free, and the internet was happy to oblige. The moment you released something, it was pirated and a million people downloaded it for free.
What happened, as we know, was that bands began making their primary earnings from tours instead of recorded music. Ticket prices shot up. At concerts, merch was hawked like crazy.
So, I got to thinking: What about a live album? Even if people steal it, they’re going to want to go out and see PG play, and some of those people who see them play will want to buy the album, especially if it’s a box set with a full-color booklet, and whatever else you can think of to put in there. That was the impetus for Everything Good Is on the Highway.
GREGG MORGAN: Like most rock bands, we started out as a live band, and we toured to support every album. We knew what we were doing, and that was definitely one of the sources of our staying power, being able to kick ass on stage. I think it’s fair to put us in the company of Springsteen and U2 and Petty, when he was around. We have a loyal fan base that will always come out and listen to us play.
So, in the summer of 2010, we did this tour with Al Schmitt as our recording engineer. Al was famous in the studio—Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna—all these huge records and Grammys and so forth. But he’d never recorded a live album, and we told him if he did ours, we’d also give him a producer credit.
SHANE REED: Stuart, of course, just wanted to do new material, like Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps. But Ed and I convinced him that the best live album would be a retrospective of our career—a greatest-hits album, but with the extra energy of our live shows.
STUART FISHER: I was thinking of Rust Never Sleeps, an opportunity to bring out new material in the context of a live performance. It’s a rare thing, which to my way of thinking doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, but I was outvoted by the rest of the band.
ED WINGFIELD: I think the number of units Warner Brothers shipped prove I had the right idea.
GREGG MORGAN: The next argument was about whether or not to include “Spaghetti Bolognese and a Can of Coke.” That was one of our signature hits, but we hadn’t played it live for a long time. Shane and Ed definitely wanted it on the album, but Stuart was like, “No way. I do not want to be remembered for that song.”
STUART FISHER: I won the “Spaghetti” debate. If I never hear that song again, it will be too soon.
GREGG MORGAN: Personally, I like to tour. My only marriage lasted about five days. I’m just not suited to settling down, or being told when I have to be home at night, or what I have to do. So, yeah, I like my place in Laurel Canyon, but I have a year-round caretaker, and if I get to rock and roll, I’m just as happy living out of a hotel room for six months. In fact, it’s a lot easier, in a way. Everything comes to you. As long as you show up on stage when the lights go up, and you know all the licks to your songs, you’ve got it made.
KERRY CRUZ: Ed decided making a movie of the tour would be just the “synergy” we needed to put the album over the top. I thought, Why not? even though, God knows, I wasn’t crazy about all the touring. I hate to fly.
ED WINGFIELD: Stuart wanted D. A. Pennebaker to direct the concert movie. He loved Dylan’s Don’t Look Back, of course, and Monterey Pop. I believe Pennebaker also did movies about Alice Cooper and David Bowie. And maybe Jerry Lee Lewis? Didn’t matter, though. Pennebaker wasn’t interested. He said he didn’t like the band’s music, and that was it.
I ended up hiring Rex Myers, the music-video director, and his movie obviously had a lot to do with the success of the album. We gave him a 20 percent cut of net, but he had to take on all the financial responsibilities of making the film. It turned out that everybody was a winner.
STUART FISHER: In a way, in a studio album you get to hide yourself somewhat. You really control every second of what people hear, and, with all the overdubs, you can cloak those things you don’t want people to see. Obviously, plenty of “live” albums have a lot of overdubbing, but with a live concert and a movie about playing live, you’re kind of out there in a way that often made me feel uncomfortable.
SHANE REED: In a studio album, when you’re the drummer, it’s easy to get lost in the mix. Sometimes, depending on the engineer, that happens literally, but what I mean is the listener’s attention is focused on the singer and the lyrics and the melody. But when you’re drumming live onstage, up on a riser above the rest of the band, you really stand out. People notice you, and they realize how important you are to the overall sound. A rock band without a drummer isn’t a band.
GREGG MORGAN: When I watch Everything Good Is on the Highway, or even just listen to the album, I have good memories. I think about the four of us being together, and, my god, it’s like how many years have we been doing this, and we’re still kicking ass and sounding pretty fucking good for a bunch of old geezers.
KERRY CRUZ: I love that part in the middle of “A Million Reasons Not to Tell the Truth” when Gregg is wailing on his solo, and this woman gets up on stage, and in about ten seconds strips totally naked, then does a swan dive back into the crowd. Then Gregg’s solo gets even more manic until he collapses on stage in a welter of feedback.
GREGG MORGAN: That naked lady thing was still earlyish YouTube, but talk about a viral moment. I remember Nancy O’Dell discussing it on Entertainment Tonight, how it had set feminism back fifty years.
JERRY DIMGARTEN: For me, the most intriguing footage was the backstage stuff. It reminded me of those bits in Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust movie when he’s changing costumes while Mick Ronson plays a long solo onstage. You get the sense of the band as performers, almost like Broadway actors, who are remembering their lines and their licks before they go out and give a crowd-pleasing show.
