I’m jogging down Tompkins Ave. and I spot a kid in a white t-shirt and khaki shorts.  I pass him as he walks up to the doorway of the liquor store and waves to whoever’s in there.  I run a little farther, not much farther, and turn around.

As I run back I see him on the sidewalk waving to cars as they pass.  The drivers wave back like they are part of a quickly-moving parade.  I wonder if this kid knows all these drivers.  How small is this town?

As I come closer to him he sees me over his shoulder and puts his hand out for me to give him a high five on the way past.  I’m not really sure what to do here.  If he was homeless I’d ignore him, but he’s the liquor store kid.  That’s different.

He takes his hand away before I get to him, though, and starts running with me.

We run for a few yards and he starts talking.

“How are you today?”

“I’m good.”  I’m not good, actually.  I’m running.  That doesn’t count as good.  But I want to continue the conversation.  But then I figure I’ll be honest with the kid.

“I hate running,” I say.  He laughs.  I think he sees the irony here.

“Look, there’s the cemetary.” He says, as we pass by the entrance. “I used to go there with my dad.”

I’m out of breath, but I can’t turn this conversation down.  “With your Dad?  Why’d you go there?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Why’d you and your Dad go?” He doesn’t answer so I try to change the subject, “What does your Dad do?”

“Burial.  You know, like, he puts vaults in the ground.”

His father is the gravedigger.  I need to stop running and concentrate on this kid for a minute.

“Let’s walk for a minute.” I say.

Another jogger – a lean, shirtless college kid – runs by us.  The liquor store kid holds out his hand for a high five.  The college kid has the same what-do-I-do-here look that I probably had, and I half-expect the kid to start running with him now.  But the college kid passes us by with a hesitant high five.  He’s probably wondering what the hell is going on.

The kid is still waving to cars as the pass, so I start waving with him.  The weird part, or, at least, one of the weird parts, is that the people really are waving back.

“You’re your own parade, kid.” I say.

He looks out on the street with the maturity of experience and says, “It’s busy today.”  He nods his head for emphasis.  He looks like a farmer talking about the harvest.

He must be thinking about the college kid and asks, “Why do people go jogging?”

“To look good for girls.”  It’s the best answer I could think of.

I’m more interested in this grave-digging thing, though.  And I ask him if the cemetary is haunted.

“Aw, no.  I go up there every night. It doesn’t bother me.”

I find that part intriguing, but I let it pass.

“Do you know how many people are in there?” he asks me.

“300?”

He gives a look of shock.  “Yeah, 300.  You’re pretty good.”

“I hear that house up there is haunted – the pink one.”  I say.

Actually, I’ve been feeling spooked ever since I got to this town.  Cortland, NY is a little town in the Catskills.  The place is littered with old, abandonded mansions, and I’m certain my apartment is haunted.  My roommates and I are having terrible dreams at night.  A few nights back I saw a child, a child not too much older than this liquor store kid, beat another child to death right in front of me, while other kids faces were melting all around them.  It was enough to wake me up in the middle of the night.  When my girlfriend was here last week it took her a whole day to shake the nightmare she had one night.

I did hear that the big pink mansion at the bottom of the hill was haunted.  The people that lived there the year before would come home after work to find all the stuff in their closets taken off the shelves and thrown on the floor.

And now I find a lonely kid outside the liquor store that spends every night in the cemetary, and every day waving at the cars that pass it.

He doesn’t answer the question about the pink mansion at the bottom of the hill.  He’s started reading signs out loud.

“Celebrating 100 years of Corland history,” is on a sign on the outside of a big, brick house with greek letters Sigma Alpha Nu on the outside.  The state college is two blocks up the hill from here.  The big pink mansion is, these days, a sorority house.  That’s a horror flick waiting to happen.

“Ok,” I say, “I’m going to run home.  What’s you’re name?”

“Josh,” he says.

I start to leave, but turn around to say goodbye. He’s not there.

Just kidding.  But that’d be a better ending.

creative writing