Butch Averil’s father was a small-town lawyer. Not exactly Atticus Finch, though if you could ignore the fact that he looked more like Pee-wee Herman than he did Gregory Peck, there were similarities.
When residents of Lewiston, Montana, couldn’t afford to go anywhere else, they would often come to the house at night to talk to him. Thus Butch grew used to seeing the unmistakable signs of worry on people’s faces when they arrived, and the change, the look of hope in their eyes when they left. Not that his dad could work miracles, but he did listen. He tried to make Butch understand that listening was a powerful tool, and that, occasionally, Butch might want to shut up long enough to hear what the people around him were saying. As Butch grew older, he thought about the comment a lot, realizing it was as much an embarrassing commentary on his own teenage years as it was fatherly advice. He tried, as best he could, to take his dad’s advice to heart.
Shortly after eleven that night, Butch parked his Yukon in front of his house. As he hopped out, a man jogged across the street toward him. Butch stood his ground next to the driver’s door, keys in hand, not sure what the guy wanted. City living, in his opinion, was very different from the quiet of the mountains.
“Thought I’d introduce myself,” said the man. “Rich Novak. I’m the block captain. I live in the colonial revival.” He pointed.
“Sounds like you know something about architecture.”
“A hobby of mine. Anyway, I like to introduce myself to new neighbors. Ain’t seen you around before.” He was dressed in sweats, Nikes, and a hoodie, and had a thick, almost bushy mustache, the kind that always reminded Butch of a 1980s porn star. “So, we do meetings in my living room on the second Wednesday night of each month. You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Butch Averil.”
Novak walked up to the ROOMS FOR RENT sign on Eleanor and Lena’s front boulevard and straightened it. “Never thought old man Hammond would sell that place.” He nodded to Butch’s house. “It was on the market for a good nine months. I walked through it a couple of times. Ain’t in the best shape. I hope you didn’t pay and arm and a leg.”
“I didn’t buy it,” said Butch. “I’m renting.”
Novak smoothed his mustache. “That right? Hammond never informed me.”
Butch couldn’t help but notice the guy’s annoyance and figured he took his block captain status a bit too seriously. “I’ve spent a lot of years in construction, so I was able to make a good deal for myself. Reduced rent for agreeing to do repairs.”
Novak squinted at the plates on Butch’s truck. “Montana?”
“Yup.”
“Never been.”
“It’s the most beautiful place on earth.”
“If that’s true, how come you’re here instead of there?”
Butch shrugged.
“You an outlaw running from that law?”
“Maybe.”
“I see you’ve become friends with Lena. She asking you to buy her booze?” When Butch didn’t respond, Novak added, “I done it a couple times. Can’t be much fun living in that wheelchair. Eleanor’s nice enough, and I know she tries to help, but Lena strikes me as the original lost cause. And then there’s Eleanor’s son, Frank. That guy needs to seriously cut the apron strings.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning someone should tattoo the word ‘loser’ on his forehead. He needs to tell his mother to back the hell off. She’s nice and all, but she can be controlling. And she babies him. Even keeps a bedroom for him in the basement. The guy’s got a wife and a life. Why don’t she let him live it?”
Butch had formed similar conclusions, though he didn’t think it was right to share them with a stranger.
“Think about coming to the next block meeting,” said Novak. “It’s good to get to know your neighbors.”
“Thanks,” said Butch. He dug around in the rear of the Yukon until Novak had returned to his house and gone inside. Grabbing a brown paper sack, he headed up the embankment and crossed the grass to the rear of the Skarsvold house, pausing to remove a small flashlight from his pocket so he could shine a light on the stucco under one of the side windows. The kids he’d seen earlier had spray painted a single word in wavy black letters. “Evil.”
Coming into the open backyard, Butch approached the sunroom and tapped on the window closest to the street, the one missing a screen. The shade went up and Lena appeared, lights on behind her. Butch pushed up on the window as Lena pulled from inside. “I should fix this for you,” he said. “Make it easier for you to open.” He handed the sack through the opening.
Lena passed him a twenty. “Will that cover it?”
This was the second time Butch had bought her a bottle of Old Crow bourbon. It was one of the cheapest brands, though it didn’t taste too bad. He’d been living next door since mid-November. Right away, he’d seen her on the front porch and walked over to introduce himself. She’d offered him a cigarette and told him to sit. She explained that, as long as weather permitted—and sometimes even when it didn’t—this was her nightly ritual. She said that her sister’s head would explode if she smoked in the house.
“Want to join me for a nip?” she asked, her deeply lined face looking hopeful.
He was tired, but felt sorry for her, on her way to sit out there all by herself. “You own a good coat?”
“And wool socks and a fur cap with earflaps. Fashion is my life.”
He grinned. “Okay. But I can’t stay long.”
“Why? You got a hot date?”
Laughing, he whispered, “Only with you.”
“Good man.” She lowered the window and then the shade.
After climbing the crumbling cement steps up to the porch, Butch held the screen door open as she wheeled herself out, a grocery sack in her lap.
“Will you get rid of these for me?” she asked, handing him the sack.
Inside, he found four empty liquor bottles. “Okay.”
“Don’t say anything to my sister.”
“My lips are sealed.”
Pulling a flask and two paper cups out from under her coat, she poured them each a generous inch. She offered him one of her menthol cigarettes, but Butch declined, a move that always seemed to disappoint her.
“So how’s the job search going?” she asked, lighting up and looking blissful as she sucked in a lungful of smoke.
“Interviewed for a good one yesterday. I’ve got my fingers crossed. I should hear by the end of the week.” He sat down on the wood railing, but got up when he felt it shift and then crack under his weight. “Your house could use a little work.”
“More than a little,” said Lena. “But there’s no money. El and I live mostly on social security and what we make from renting rooms. Welcome to the joys of old age—in other words, penury.”
“Do you both own the house?” he asked, settling down on a painted metal chair, more rust than paint.
“Yeah.”
“Why not sell it?”
“Out of the question.”
“Because?”
“It’s holy. Our great-grandfather built it, that’s why it sits kind of crooked on the lot. It used to rest on thirty-five acres of prime farmland. The point is, the house is supposed to be passed down through the family ranks unto the mists of eternity. I grew up here, you know. There were four of us kids. Me, El, our youngest sister Pauline, and our brother, Dan. Dan and Mom died in a car accident when I was still pretty young. I guess you could say Mom never liked driving on highways. She hit a guardrail one night when she was ferrying Dan back from a hockey game, which caused the car to swerve into oncoming traffic. End of Mom and Dan.”
“You talk about it so … easily.”
She tossed back a few swallows of the bourbon. “It happened. Nothing I can do about it now.”
Butch wondered if, when he was an old man, he’d be able to talk about his life with such apparent equanimity. “So you’ve lived here ever since you were a kid?”
“Hell, no,” she said, tapping ash into a saucer resting on the floor next to her wheelchair. “I had a life once. Lena Skarsvold was a wild child.” She made her eyebrows dance. “Hard to believe that now, looking at me in this damn chair. Arthritis can end your life as you know it.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
She grunted. “My hips, my knees, my shoulders, my spine.”
“Isn’t there something a doctor can do?”
“Hell. I was given a bunch of prescription forms of ibuprofen. Not only didn’t they help, I ended up in the emergency room with a bad bleed in my stomach. I almost died.”
“What about medical marijuana?”
“You have to be on death’s door in this state before they’d give it to you for pain.”
“Opioids?”
“Nah, I’d rather drink and smoke and end my life awake, buzzed, and happy.”
She had a point. If nothing else, drinking was her decision, none of his business. “You know, those kids I saw by your house earlier tonight, they sprayed the word ‘evil’ under one of the side windows. I thought I could paint over it tomorrow.”
“No, leave it there. The world might as well know who we are.”
“You’re joking, right?” He studied her face. “How did the idea that your house is haunted get started?”
She gazed at him over the rim of the cup. “It is haunted. It’s a simple fact.”
“You believe in ghosts?”
“You think that’s crazy?” Tipping the cup back and emptying the contents, she settled more comfortably into her wheelchair. “The first time I realized something strange was going on was when I was living in an apartment over on Rice Street. I would leave in the morning, making sure all the windows were closed and locked. More than once, when I got home, I found the window in my bedroom wide open. At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on. The only person with a key to the apartment, other than me, was the landlord, and he was never around, even when I needed something. And then, at night, my bedroom would get freezing cold, even in the dead of summer. The spirit world is real, Butch. Real and dangerous.” She poured herself another few inches of bourbon and downed it, wiping a hand across her mouth.
“Has that happened here, too? The thing with the window?”
“No. But there’s other stuff. I don’t like to talk about it. It scares me.” She pulled her coat more closely around her shoulders.
“But how did the kids in the neighborhood find out?”
She held up a gnarled finger. “My fault. See, someone wrote an opinion piece in the Saint Paul paper about one of those TV shows that investigates ghosts. The guy called it bullshit. I wrote one in response, calling the guy’s opinion piece bullshit, and believe it or not, it got published. A few weeks later, a man knocked on our door, wanting to talk to me. He was writing a book about hauntings in Minnesota. I told him about my experiences. Signed something that gave him permission to use it in his book, but then I thought better of it and asked him to exclude my comments about our house. I assumed he would. But when the book came out, there it was. People in the neighborhood began talking. Eleanor freaked. And now, we’ve become ‘the official’ haunted house.”
“Have you ever actually seen a ghost?”
She hesitated. “Maybe.”
“Do you think all houses have ghosts?”
“I don’t know. But this one does. Another reason to drink.” She held up her cup.
Butch hadn’t even tasted his. He had work to do tonight and couldn’t afford to get juiced. Hearing the front door open, he glanced up to find Frank standing, or perhaps more accurately, looming in the doorway.
“I heard voices,” said Frank, opening the door and stepping outside.
“Go away,” said Lena. “This is a private conversation.”
“Are you two drinking? I smell alcohol.”
“It’s Butch. He’s a real boozer. Show him your cup.”
Butch held it up, at the same time noticing that Lena had hidden hers, as well as the flask, in the folds of her coat.
“Now, run along, Frankie.” She flicked her hand at him dismissively.
“You should come inside. It’s too cold to sit out here.”
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
He glared at her for several seconds, then turned and went back inside.
Lena waited until the door was closed before saying, “He’s Eleanor’s spy.”
“You’re kind of hard on him.”
She shrugged. “Let me give you a piece of advice. The world consists of two categories of people: your friends and your enemies. It’s your life’s work to place everyone into their proper slot.” She held up the flask. “More?”
“I think Frank’s right. I’m cold. Maybe it’s time we both turned in.”
She blew smoke into the air. “Drink more. You’ll warm up.”
“No, really. It’s late.”
“Okay. You run along. I’m a tough old biddy. I’ll stay out a while longer.”
He lifted up the grocery bag of empty bottles. As he rose from the rickety metal chair, she touched his arm.
“Tell me one thing before you go. Is Butch your real name?”
“Pardon me?”
“Butch. Is it a nickname?”
“I don’t like my given name.”
“Which is?”
He cleared his throat. “Eugene.”
“Ah. Got it.” She nodded. “Hey, before you go, as I think about it, maybe you should paint over that graffiti on the side of our house. No use advertising our sins.”
“Your … sins?”
“Ghosts hang around for a reason, not just because they like the cut of your jib.”
He had no idea how to respond. “I’ll look for some stucco paint tomorrow.”
“Super duper.” When he’d reached the sidewalk in front of the porch, she added, “Night night. Eugene.”