Ellington

My boyfriend, Pee Wee, and I were in the hunting camp on the levee north of Vicksburg. We were the only ones in the camp that morning, and it was a beautiful warm day.

Pee Wee had been out in the woods early and was taking a shower in the bathroom down the hall. I was sitting on the couch in the living room using the light from the window to put on my mascara. I put the wand up to my eye and looked up into the mirror. It was one of those moments that you don’t really see anything move, but you know something is different so you look toward it.

I glanced at the window in front of me and found myself looking at a man dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He was standing only a couple of feet away—I could have reached out and touched him. I locked eyes with him and could see every detail of his face, every hair on his head and every stitch in his shirt. And then he was gone.

I sat there for a moment, not afraid, just stunned and trying to figure out what I had just seen. Who was this man? Has he been here all along? Why would he appear to me?

I had only been dating Pee Wee for about three months, and I wasn’t yet comfortable talking about my interest in the paranormal. Even though I had read a lot, I hadn’t experienced much personally, and I just wasn’t quite sure how to tell him what had happened. I shook it off and got up and moved to the dining room table to finish my makeup.

A minute or so after I sat down, I thought Pee Wee was coming toward me from the hallway, although I still heard the shower water running. With the mirror to my face, I saw him moving toward me peripherally, and I asked him why he didn’t call out if he needed something. Glancing up, I expected to see Pee Wee, but instead it was the man in the white shirt. He walked up to me at the table, we locked eyes again, and then he was gone.

About an hour and a half later, someone drove up and told us that Pee Wee’s sister, Bettye, was trying to reach us and that we needed to call her. There was only one phone in the camp so we walked to the cabin where it was, pulled the phone out to the front porch and called her. It wasn’t good news, I could tell.

When he got off the phone he told me his best friend Bill had passed away. We walked back through the camp, and Pee Wee talked about him. They had lived next door to each other and became best friends. He asked if I had known Bill, and I told Pee Wee that I’d never met him.

Pee Wee loved Bill like a brother, mainly because when Pee Wee and his wife were divorcing, and everyone in the little town of Tallulah turned their backs on him, Bill never did. When his church told Pee Wee he would no longer be teaching Sunday School and should not come back to worship, Bill quit going, too, without ever saying a word to Pee Wee.

Then, as Pee Wee was prone to do, he started telling one funny story after another about their antics. Bill worked hard and fast and could literally run circles around Pee Wee. Bill was the kind of man who would pick through his garden in the morning and have it pulled up and something else planted by the evening. Pee Wee badly teased Bill and once, threatened to buy him hair curlers because he would let his hair get too long before he’d get it cut.

Suddenly, I remembered the man I had seen standing in front of me that morning. I asked Pee Wee, “Was Bill tall, about 6 foot, 2 inches, broad built but not an ounce of fat on him?”

“Yes,” he said, and kept talking.

“Did he have tanned skin with bright, beautiful blue eyes and long black eyelashes?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, looking at me funny, but kept talking. “And he had dark hair that he combed straight back. It was too long, it hung down below his collar, and he had a really deep widow’s peak. And he was really good looking,” I continued.

Pee Wee stopped walking and looked at me. “Yes!” he said loudly, obviously confused.

“He looks American Indian. Was he?” I asked.

“I thought you said you never met Bill!” Pee Wee cried out.

“I’ve never met him.” I said, “Until this morning. I think he came to tell you goodbye.”