Loose Leaves Of Family Trees

St. Johnsbury, Vermont was a town filled with strange people. The middle school kids had names for some of them in particular. There was Mr. Mini, who was a regular at the local drug store. He would come in every other day and buy a large Hershey’s bar and pick up his prescription, the top of his head just reaching the counter top. Near that same drug store, was a stoop where the bearded lady sat everyday and smoked. She didn’t have a beard really, only a few goatee hairs strangling from her chin upon chins, but they were quite long. You saw Rockin Rick near the movie theatre, a washed up groupie in leather who chased you down to sell you his new EP. Big Red, who wasn’t really strange, he was just big, and would catch your eye with his long flowing red hair. He would usually pass the town’s Dunkin Donuts, which was a well-known place to get free donuts or cocaine, but only after eleven. Amongst many others, like High-pockets, Floyd, Monkey and even Wes, there was Ghost.

Many people in the town saw her each day. But she was not known. It was a strange thing to spot the cowering hunchback. One might catch her across the street with her note pad out. But no one ever stopped to ask who she was. Some had their own ideas about her.

Jordan Manslen saw her everyday while he worked at Ken’s, the brick oven pizza shop in the heart of the small town. She would walk down Eastern Avenue past the dry cleaners and lean on the metal pole near the truck dock. She would stare at him, and others, and occasionally take her note pad out and write things down.

“She’s crazy,” he said as he stretched a powdered ball of dough in white, snowflake flour. He was a rugged man, heavy set and muscular. “Always watchin everybody and staring,” he scratched at a line of skin down his eyebrow where hair never grew and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

“I’m waiting for her to die,” replied Ron. Ron had been working the shop for almost fifteen years, before the new manager had taken it over. He moved to the front counter with a fresh, hot pot, and poured Wes a third mug of coffee.

Endless coffee was the rule at Ken’s, so Wes was in just about everyday. He would come in at ten with a new paper, buy a coffee, and drain the house till one. It was eleven now, so he was sure to be back for more. Meanwhile he would play a song on the jukebox, tinkle on the yellowed keys of the old moaning piano in the poolroom, and of course sip coffee.

“She just walks around,” Jordan said as he scooped the thick red sauce. “I see her taking notes all the time. She a snoop.”

“What time did you say the Lyndonville order was for?” Ron leaned his back against the glass dessert case and patted his stained apron, searching for his Winston cigarette box.

“They want it for three.”

“Okay.” He found the box and showed them off to Jordan. “I’m gonna step out.”

Jordan looked out the shop window as the Ghost slowly moved down the sidewalk. Her name was fitting. The lines of time were scratched across her face, and ghostlike fingers of white hair reached upwards. She wore a soft-blue jacket that hung down past her feeble knees. No one had seen her in anything different. She wore it in the summer, and in the winter.

It was true what they said; she was strange. Ghost was isolated amongst a town of people. No one spoke to her, children were afraid of her. She moved her white shoes slowly, scraping them with little strength, and disappeared, as a ghost should.

Floyd wasn’t even sure who she was exactly, and he knew most of the people in the small colonial town. He was known to be quite a flirt amongst the middle aged women. At eighty-three years old, he was still walking everyday in his tan trench coat, smoking heavily and playing the organ at the old-folks home. Everywhere he walked he saw a face he knew, and he would trap them in a conversation.

“Well hello. I know you’re busy but,” or “hey how are your folks now, ” He would say.

He had seen Ghost amidst his walks and she had questioned him many times about some of the locals. He would answer them politely, “The Bennets, well they moved here about three years ago. Yes. Oh Yes. Their youngest, well he can’t be older than fifteen. Yes, I believe so” he would answer. She didn’t speak much else though, only questions. He found her to be a lonely sort of creature. He thought it was very sad when she died.

It was the week after spring when she was discovered. The snow was breaking, leaving veins of mud through the white ground. The mailman had collected the few advertisement magazines and brochures addressed to the small white shack, and walked onto the porch to leave them in the metal bin next to the door. He saw her figure in the rocker, looking forward towards the hill leading to the middle school with a barn owl in her lap. She was watching the town. Still. Her blue coat-collar swayed a bit in the wind. The owl flew away when the mailman tried to make small talk. He tried for quite some time before he realized she was dead, her body stiff with rigamortis. It was later decided that she had been outside the whole weekend, and the mailman supported it by admitting that the house rarely received mail.

The middle school kids called her, Ghost. Jordan Manslen called her a nosey spy because of her staring and note taking. But after the local Sheriff went through her brittle cottage, everyone in the town knew her name was Ruth and the contracted bulldozer was postponed for six weeks. Inside, the sagging, damp living room was stacked and strewn with over three hundred composition notebooks filled with names, addresses, pictures and daily activities of different townspeople. Her walls were covered in lined papers, push-pinned to display her latest discoveries of people in town and scandals. There were myriads of newspaper clippings and even some artifacts attached to names. She had mapped out whole family trees. In a town of 7,000, over 5,000 different names were collected with dates spanning over the forty-six years she had owned the home. Another 800 persons were discarded, nameless with only descriptions and dates. Amongst the crinkle and loose leaves of floating papers and stacked notes, was an old, brown newspaper clipping from a Massachusetts Gazette, framed in glass.

The Northhampton County sheriff’s Office is still investigating the disappearance of two-year-old Thomas Seeks who went missing Saturday the 23rd from his home in the middle of the night.

Northhampton County Chief Criminal Deputy Scott chamberlain confirmed early Wednesday that the boy was spotted in a brown Dodge Manaco sedan at a gas station in Essex county, Vermont, heading north.

According to his mother Ruth, Thomas is approximately 40in. tall and 42lbs. He has short black hair and brown eyes. Thomas has a scar on his left eyebrow from a recent fall. He was last seen wearing a baggy blue shirt.

Please contact the Northhampton police department with any news of the child.