Nicholas walked into the bathroom and continued to the far end where he stopped, staring at a picture of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins hovering around Elvis at the piano in Sun Studios in Memphis. Then, we heard a strange, far-away loping sound, as if a horse were waking across a clay court. The lights dimmed and slowly changed hue from yellow to indigo, and then Nicholas picked up a ladle (that Georgia had taken to the bathroom, for what reason I don't know) with one hand and my sunglasses with the other. He turned to his right, ever so slightly, showing us his profile, put the ladel 'neath his lips, and sang, "Blue moon/You saw me standing alone/Without a dream in my heart/Without a love of my own." Except that wasn't Nicholas singing. That wasn't his voice we heard; yet, the words, the sound emanated from his mouth. He turned completely 'round, facing us, and sang the next verse. And then the yodel.
The blue, effervescent, Jimmie Rodgers-style yodel. Nicholas pulled the ladle further and further away from his mouth, and yodeled in a voice not his own. He looked lonely. He looked heartbroken. He looked blue.
His yodeling then ceased, and he let his ladle hand slowly fall to his side. The clip-clop music faded, and Nicholas turned back to the picture, put the ladle down, took off the shades and put them down, and the light changed hue back to yellow. Nicholas then turned to us and said, "Well, guess I was wrong. No ghost." He stretched and yawned and said, "I think I'm ready to go to bed." We led him to the trundle couch-bed, and he lay down, and he fell asleep almost immediately. I told Penny that I thought that I should probably sleep with him. She nodded agreement. She said she was going to check on Georgia, and she went to the bedroom. I got into the trundle bed with Nicholas, and I fell asleep.The next morning broke, and we hastened to ready ourselves to leave, for I wanted to follow a different route home, one that would take us by the following haunted towns:
- Thaxton
- Troy
- Houston
- Mantachie
- Ecru
- Nettleton
- Toccopola
- Pontotoc
- Tupelo
- Columbus
- Macon
Why all those towns? They're all haunted. Ghosts have been spotted at different sites in all those towns, and I had planned enough time into our itinerary for us to be able to stop, take pictures, interview locals, dig through county records, and unearth graves in every one of those bergs...and we'd still be able to be home 'fore midnight rolled 'round.
My plan hit a few snags, though. We woke up too late, for one, and then we took too garsh-darn long leaving (partially because Georgia decided to color Patrick's towels using a wide assortment of crayons), no matter how we hastened. See, I had planned on us catching breakfast on the road, leaving Oxford no later than eight. Instead, we caught lunch on the road, and left Oxford shortly after noon. All was not completely lost, even though I had to scratch half the towns from my itinerary.
We'd been travelling about thirty minutes when I realized that I hadn't seen any signs of Thaxton or Toccopola on the highway. In fact, I had just started seeing signs advertising Lafayette County such-and-such, Oxford community this-and-that. Oxford?
"Uh-oh," Penny said.
"Uh-oh what?" I asked.
"I think I told you to turn, uh, the wrong way back there. We're headed back the way we came."
We turned around, and I scratched more towns from the list. I then asked Penny to check our little friend Off the Beaten Path (by Marlo Carter Kilpatrick, now in its sixth edition, where ours is the third), the handiest travel guide we've ever had, to find the number for the Tupelo Automobile Museum, to see what time it closed, as I wondered if we'd make it there in time. She checked, but she never gave me the number. Why? That sucker is closed on Mondays. Doggone! Well, scratch Tupelo from the list. Why go there now, with the museum closed, when we'd just have to go back another year, just to see the museum and nothing else. Darn. Might as well scratch Columbus, too. And Macon. Going that route now would be a waste of time and gas. We'd have to take a more direct route home.
I was now down to just three more towns left on the list: Thaxton, Toccopola, and Pontotoc. I knew we'd have enough time to stop and explore one, but all three? The phone rang. It was Penny's friend (oh, and if she reads this, then she's my friend, too) Angie Bobo, calling to talk work, school, and Boston Butt. Go figure. I saw the sign for Thaxton up ahead, and I tapped Penny on the shoulder, trying to get her to notice, and she waved me away. I thought she was waving the town away, telling me not to take it, to just keep going; but she told me later that she didn't know what I was talking about--she thought I was just bugging her, and she was trying to shoo me away like I was Cousin Mosquito.
So, I kept driving straight. A few more miles down the road, I saw the sign for Toccopola, but Penny's still on the phone: shampoo, rinse, repeat. One town left: Pontotoc. The exit appeared, and I took it, for it's now our quickest way home. I was still happy and eager, as Pontotoc offers many haunted sites, such as the City Cemetery, Bethel chuch, the Emmanuel Baptist church, the Lochinvar mansion, and the Save-A-Lot. The Save-A-Lot, Penny asked me when I showed her the intinerary several days before? Yes, dear. The Save-A-Lot. Story goes--and the story's widespread, now, garnerning more-and-more attention each day--that several years ago, back when the store used to be Wal-Mart, that a young man had a tragic wreck at night in the parking lot. Now, whenever workers stock beer in the store, they hear tire squeals and see flashing lights. The story's been disputed because Pontotoc's a dry county, but hey--there's always bootlegging. It happens, people, oh how it still happens.Penny (finally) hung up the phone, and we drove through Pontotoc, Penny looking for us a place to eat, while I was looking for the Save-A-Lot. We passed what looked to be a restaurant, for we saw people eating inside. I voted for finding the Save-A-Lot first, but the numbers wer against me, and we ate inside the restaurant with no name. We walked in, and we saw trucker-hatted (even the ladies) and pine-straw bearded (even the ladies) patrons stare at us, as if we were pariahs of distaste. The waitress came and stared down at us, too, Copenhagen leaking from the left corner of her lips, saying only, "'Spose you gon' want a high-char--ain'tcha?" In the corner, an eight-foot plaster-of-paris statue of Vegas Elvis stood, carrying a real hollow-bodied guitar onto which someone had scratchily carved in large letters, "Only Jesus is King." We walked through the buffet line, sat down, and I became overwhelmed with deja-vu. Had I been here before? I wasn't sure of that, but I sure knew that I didn't like this feeling. I told Penny how I felt, and she told me that she didn't like it either. We ate, paid, and left.
We weren't so sure about the mental stability of the people of Pontotoc, so we decided to skip the minor haunted places on my itinerary (the Save-A-Lot would have to wait) and just visit Lochinvar instead, since it's on our route home.
We pulled in the long gravel driveway and saw that the mansion looked uncared for, at least its overgrown yard. There's a gate there, and Penny hopped out of the Jeep to see if it was locked; it wasn't. We went slowly up the driveway, and Penny and I discussed how grand and beautiful the mansion looked--especially in comparison to its surroundings. How did the owner let the yard go like that? Was the owner even still alive? Maybe he died. Maybe...he's still in the house...still dead! Nicholas then told us to lock his door and not roll down his window again. We pulled around the driveway to the right and parked the car. Penny stepped out and started to walk around back, but we heard a bustle in the hedgerow, and we were alarmed; could this have been a spring clean for the May Queen?
Penny jumped back in the Jeep, and she told me to crank the Jeep and go. I asked her if anything was wrong, and she told me that she heard the piper calling her to join him. We winded down the road, the shadows of Lochinvar taller than our souls. We rolled down the windows, and we listened very hard, and the tune came to us at last: "Show Me the Way to Go Home."
We were tired, and we wanted to go to bed. So we went home. And went to bed. Well, Penny and the kids did anyway. I came down to my office, got on the computer, logged into eBay, and bought the stairway to Heaven. It cost me only $375.
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