THE WEARY GHOST OF UNCLE DOUG

I woke up in the middle of the night and there he was, sitting on the edge of the bed in the moonlight from the window, in his lumberjack shirt, staring off. I was about to scream—but he looked so sad, sitting there shaking his head.

“Uncle Doug?” I said.

He gave a long sigh.

I got up on my elbows. “What’re you doing here?”

Another sigh.

“What’s the matter? Tell me.”

“A friend of mine,” he said, still looking off, “I forget his name . . . this was long ago . . . told me to buy up all the shares I could in a young company . . . a camera company . . . and do you know the name of that camera company?”

“Kodak,” I said.

“And I was going to. I had fifty dollars at the time and I was going to buy fifty dollars’ worth of shares in Kodak, at eighteen cents a share. That’s a lot of shares, Tommy.” He looked at me. “But do you know what I did with that money? Instead?”

“Went to the track,” I said.

He looked off again. “Someone else had given me a different tip, you see. I still remember the name of the horse: Gypsy Queen. I put fifty dollars to win on Gypsy Queen, and do you know where she finished? Where my Gypsy Queen came in?”

“Eighth,” I said.

“In a field of nine,” he added, and sat there shaking his head.

I sat up further. “Uncle Doug, you told me that story a hundred times while you were alive. You’re not still going over that now, are you? You’ve been dead for ten years.”

“Gypsy . . . Queen.”

“Uncle Doug?”

“There’s nothing else to do here.”

“Where . . . exactly are you?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“So you just wander around regretting you didn’t buy shares in Kodak?”

He nodded.

“That’s awful. Can’t you just let go of it?”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“You want to go around beating yourself up till the end of time?”

“You don’t understand, Tommy. Otherwise I’ll just drift away, just . . . merge. Jesus, I hate that word.”

“Merge with the elements, you mean?”

“With the sky and the trees and the sheep and the sheep shit and the goddamn flies on the sheep shit—yeah, all that.”

“But that’s a good thing, Uncle Doug. That’s . . . you know, organic.”

He looked at me. “I don’t ever want to forget myself.”

“But . . . you’re miserable.”

He turned away. “Nevertheless.” He sat there looking off, stubbornly.

I had an idea. “How about if I promise I’ll never forget you, Uncle Doug—how would that be? Then you could let go and I’ll still be here remembering.”

He sighed. “I am awful tired, Tommy.”

“I would think.”

“So,” he said, “what would you remember?”

“Well, let’s see . . .”

“I ever tell you about that time I was in the service? What I did to that smart-assed corporal?”

“Knocked him ass over teakettle, as I recall.”

“What about that smart-ass of a foreman I had?”

“Ass over teakettle. You’ve told me all your stories, Uncle Doug, and I promise I’ll never forget them. They’re easy to remember. So you might as well go ahead and . . . you know . . .”

“Join the sheep shit?”

“You might as well.”

He sat there looking off. Then he suddenly thrust his sleeve at me. “Speaking of sheep, feel that material.”

I felt it.

“That’s pure wool, Tommy. One hundred percent.”

“You can tell.”

He took his arm back. “I want you to always remember me in this shirt.”

I promised.

“And winking at you, like this,” he said, giving me a manly, crow’s-footed wink.

I promised I would always remember him in that shirt, winking at me exactly like that.

“And maybe saying something, something like . . . let’s see . . .”

“‘If only I bought those shares in Kodak.’”

He looked at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just . . . I was just . . . I’m sorry.”

He leaned closer. “I’m gonna tell you something, Tommy. Little secret. I never liked you very much. I always thought you were kind of a smart-ass.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, hitting back, “I always thought you were kind of a sonofabitch, Uncle Doug.”

He laughed like hell. He liked that. “In this shirt,” he said, holding out his sleeve again. “Feel that material.”

“I just did.”

“Feel it again, dammit.”

I felt it again. “Yeah,” I said, humoring him, “they don’t make shirts like this anymore.”

He sprang to his feet. “They don’t make men like this anymore,” he said, poking himself in the chest. “Y’know that?”

I glanced at my alarm clock. “Uncle Doug,” I said carefully, “I don’t mean to be rude, okay? But it’s after three in the morning. I have to get up in a few hours. So . . .”

He nodded, and sighed, and sat down again, heavily. “Must be nice,” he said.

“What’s that.”

“Being alive. Must be awful nice.”

“Not all that nice—getting up at six thirty in the morning to go to work with hardly any sleep, for example,” I said to him, hinting.

But he wasn’t listening. He was thinking about something. Then he looked at me with this wild sorrow on his face. “I blew it,” he said. “Do you know that? I blew it, Tommy.”

“Kodak, you mean?”

“Not Kodak, I’m not talking about Kodak, I’m talking about . . .” He stared off hard, looking for what he was talking about. Then his face softened. “I remember,” he said quietly. “I was about your age, working construction. It was lunch break. I was sitting by myself on a girder at the top, twenty stories up. A nice day out, big blue sky, the city laid out below, me in the middle, eating a ham sandwich, with a thermos of coffee. The sandwich had a lot of mustard on it, Tommy, the way I always liked it. I sat there swinging my legs . . . eating that sandwich . . .”

I waited for more but there wasn’t any. “Huh,” I said.

He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “Remember me, Tommy.”

“I will, Uncle Doug.”

“In this shirt.”

“I won’t forget.”

He stood there for a moment looking around. Then he gave me a manly wink, and was gone.