The Old Gold Digger
By TJ Abba
The woman I interviewed asked not to be identified, and all names have been changed to protect the guilty. I will just say that she is a beautiful woman and the interview took place in her historic, magnificent home in central St.Augustine. I’ll call her Claudia.
“The funny thing about this—I mean odd thing—was that I saw the ghost that first time on Halloween, 1962. My husband and I were dressed as Elvis and Marilyn, of course. I mean, we already had the costumes, so I saw no reason to be anything else. Roy does a mean ‘Heart Break Hotel.’ So, we wore those, until we outgrew them, that is.
“St. Augustine is a small place really, so not much chance of fooling anybody anyway. I always recognized Steve and Doris even though they changed outfits every year—political motifs. Norman and Betty, too. It’s always the Disney characters. But with those shapes—they looked like twaddle dumb and wheedle Dee no matter what they wore.
“So, like I was saying, I saw this short little man and I thought he was dressed as Yosemite Sam. Then it hit me—shoot, it wasn’t a man—being that short, it was a woman, and figured it had to be Gracey. I started laughing. Her in that big old mustache. I looked around for Gus. You know, bless her heart, she never took a step outdoors without Gus—indoors either was the gossip, but I never actually saw them go into the rest room together. So, what if they did shower at the same time—that was a sixties thing.
“Anyhow, there I was in my full-blown Marilyn wig, the white chiffon dress with the pinched-in waist, and ankle-strap shoes—sans hose. I had just run out to empty the trash since Joey was in one of his teenage pain-in-the-butt ‘I-don’t-have-to-do-anything-you-say’ moods. So, I took out to the garbage while Roy was giving his mutton chops a last-minute layer of black mascara.
“I didn’t want to empty the trash, but I also didn’t want the stuff left in the kitchen. People were coming to the house later for drinks, and Sally will just look in anybody’s throw aways and I didn’t want her to see what was in mine. Not that we drank that much, but she does like to spread rumors—like she didn’t drink like a fish.
“I hollered, ‘Gracey. What happened to your arm?’ She had one of those hook things hanging from her sleeve. ‘They finally had to surgically separate you from Gus’s shoulder?’”
“She didn’t even wave. Right then I knew it wasn’t Gracey. The little ‘ghost’ puffed up like a bantam rooster. Its cheeks pouched out and it blew air so far I could feel it—cold and damp. The steam from his breath made a big circle of mist. He stepped through it and disappeared.
“I blinked twice, and just kept staring for a second then I dropped the plastic bag and ran like the devil. I sprinted screaming into the house, and Roy thought I’d been raped at the very least. It took forever to catch my breath. Of course, he didn’t believe me. Engineers. You have to draw them a damn diagram. I dragged him out through the yard and over to where the garbage cans were, all the time telling him about Yosemite Sam.
“Now of course, nobody at all was on the street. It was silent as a tomb. He didn’tsay a word but stalked to the house and opened the kitchen pantry door, held the vodka bottle at eye level and checked the mark he’d placed there. Elvis the detective. No amount of pleading and crying would make him believe me.
“I began to doubt my own self. It must have been some little kid playing a trick.They have those junior scientist kits. You know, the kind where you mix Kool-Aid, vinegar, and soda and it looks like some toxic bubbling brew that turns people into werewolves? So as the evening wore on, I started to think I had imagined the whole thing.
“The progressive parties went on until dawn. About five AM we came back to our place with various stragglers for drinks. Mary fixed breakfast for all of us. Anna Kaye took out her Tarot cards and predicted we would all be wealthy and so forth. We decided to have a séance. It was really quiet. We put our hands palms down on the card table and tried to make it walk. All of a sudden, we heard the garbage can clatter to the sidewalk and roll out into the street.
“Those of us who could still walk rushed to the street in back. There he was!
“I could have shouted for joy. Now they would have to believe me. Yosemite Sam with his one hook arm and the big drooping mustache. Betty Sue fainted. She is always ready to faint at the drop of a hat, and Bill picked her up as he always does. She is famous for the vapors. The rest of us stood and stared.
“‘What are you doing?’” Dr. Homer asked the apparition.
“The ghost didn’t answer. Harry March, the lawyer, asked the spirit, lawyer style, “‘Are you aware, sir, that this is private property and trespassing is a jail-able offence in St. Augustine?’”
“The thing then showed his other hand for the first time. It had a pickax in it. I hadn’t seen that before.
“‘You gold panning?’” Roy said.
“Now for the first time it looked directly at us and nodded its head.
“‘Well, sir, there’s no gold here,’” Harry said. “‘That story Ponce de Leon put out was just strictly PR. No gold here. No fountain of youth either.’”
“Harry sounded very nonchalant, but I can tell you, the sleeve on his Jonny Depp pirate costume was shaking like a leaf. The little ghost guy, in the meantime, looked visibly upset. He hit the fence with his pickax. Then I remembered. Dan Stoupher had come as another kind of ‘gold digger.’ He was dressed as a dance hall girl—Miss Kitty, I figured—and had a feather boa and a pot of gold nuggets.
“‘Dan, give him the gold,’” I hissed.
“‘Hell no. I paid a dollar a piece for those. That’s twenty dollars’ worth of fake gold there.’”
“‘Give him the damn gold or I’ll do damage to your ying-yang with my Ginsu.’”
“One look at my face told him I wasn’t playing around. He held the ‘gold’ out at arm’s length and was going to let it drop to the sidewalk when the thing created a little whirlwind of mist and spirited the faux gold away, along with his mustache, his hook, his pickax, and himself.
“‘Thank you, Dan,’ I said. ‘Next time, I’ll buy ten boxes of those Girl Scout cookies your daughter always sells door-to-door.’”
“Actually, his daughter didn’t even leave the house. Dan brought them to the office and blackmailed everyone in sight to buy them.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Homer asked the apparition.
“The ghost didn’t answer. Harry March, the lawyer, asked the spirit, lawyer style,“Are you aware sir, that this is private property and trespassing is a jail-able offence in St. Augustine?”
“The thing then showed his other hand for the first time. It had a pickax in it. I hadn’t seen that before.
“You gold panning?” Roy said.
“Now for the first time itlooked directly at us and nodded its head.
“Well, sir, there’s no gold here,” Harry said. “That story Ponce de Leon put out was just strictly PR. No gold here. No fountain of youth either.”
“Harry sounded very nonchalant, but I can tell you, the sleeve on his Jonny Depppirate costume was shaking like a leaf. The little ghost guy, in the meantime, looked visibly upset. He hit the fence with his pickax. Then I remembered. Dan Stoupher had come as another kind of ‘gold digger.’ He was dressed as a dance hall girl—Miss Kitty, I figured—and had a feather boa and a pot of gold nuggets.
“Dan, give him the gold,” I hissed.
“Hell no. I paid a dollar a piece for those. That’s twenty dollars worth of fake gold there.”
“Give him the damn gold or I’ll do damage to your ying-yang with my Ginsu.”
“One look at my face told him I wasn’t playing around. He held the ‘gold’ out at arm’s length and was going to let it drop to the sidewalk when the thing created a little whirlwind of mist and spirited the faux gold away, along with his mustache, his hook, his pickax, and himself.
“’Thank you, Dan,’ I said. ‘Next time, I’ll buy ten boxes of those Girl Scout cookies your daughter always sells door-to-door.’”
“Actually, his daughter didn’t even leave the house. Dan brought them to the office and blackmailed everyone in sight to buy them.
“But all in all, it was a good night. Sally didn’t get a look in my trash basket, Roy won first place for his rendition of Elvis, and I was vindicated as having actually seen a ghost.”