Pennies for the Ferryman - 01 by Jim Bernheimer Page A

hospital. I’d never been there as a patient, but I’d visited any number of my friends, soldiers and ex-soldiers, there.
    One of the by-products of Mr. Bush’s war was an ever-growing network of castoffs trying to make our way back into American society, but I digress. As I said, the neighborhood around the hospital district is a less than inviting place, but Pastor Duncan parked in front of a liquor store, which was three doors down from a storefront bearing the placard “Ebenezer Church of Deliverance.”
    Well, just as there was an old-boys-network of soldiers, apparently there’s an old-boys-network for ministers, too. Pastor Duncan and I waited patiently on the sidewalk as the service inside the storefront church let out. More than a few of the people nodded at Pastor Duncan as if they recognized him. I got less polite looks, but as it was obvious that I was with the Pastor, I was given the benefit of the doubt.
    The only person left in the church when we walked in was a thin, extremely old black man, playing the piano. He was playing up a storm, moving from hymns that I recognized, to songs that I didn’t, all the while keeping a strong rhythm with left hand while beating out a melody with his right. As we approached he cocked an ear towards us and stopped playing abruptly.
    “Who’s there?” he called out.
    “Your old brother, Silas,” Pastor Duncan replied.
    “Pastor Reggie!” he exclaimed with glee. He went back to playing the piano, playing a quick few measures of some tune that brought a smile to Pastor Duncan’s face. He then stopped playing again, closing the cover on the keyboard before turning to us. Introductions were made, and we were five minutes into a three-way conversation before I realized that Brother Silas, as he wanted to be known, was blind, totally blind. “Twenty-twenty darkness” he called it.
    Brother Silas, it turned out, was a twofer – not only was he a member of the old-boys networks for pastors, but he’d lost his sight in the US Army, trying to defuse a booby-trap in a tunnel north of Saigon, which placed him firmly in the old-boys network for broken soldiers. We shared something else in common, beyond a fondness for stride piano and twelve-bar blues.
    He could see ghosts too and he could see me as well!
    We had much to talk about.
    It was four o’clock in the morning when Pastor Duncan dropped me off at my house in the ‘burbs. Mom wasn’t waiting up, but there was a pizza in the fridge waiting for me, which was as about as effusive as Mom was known to get these days.
     
    Days later, I found myself back at Megan Rosemont’s home. Elsbeth had given me the ‘all clear’ that Charlie would be out of town well into the evening, coaching a wrestling match.
    “Mr. Ross, so nice of you to drop by again – how are you?” she asked. “Please come in. Can I get you some tea?”
    “No thank you, I’m doing fine, ma’am. I figured since I was in the area I would drop in and see if you had any more strange occurrences.” I knew she hadn’t. Elsbeth already grabbed my attention, so there was no more need for the ‘gaslight’ nonsense.
    “Goodness, no! You must have scared whatever it was away,” she said with genuine warmth. “Kind of a shame too, somehow it feels lonelier in this old house.”
    “Well if it really is your granddaughter, I doubt that I’d scare her away for very long.”
    “I don’t know. Elsbeth was a very skittish young woman.”
    I asked if she wanted to talk about her granddaughter for something to pass the time. There was no need to look suspicious. After about twenty minutes, I asked if I could use her computer to check my email. Being the gracious hostess that she was, she allowed me to.
    I didn’t have to resort to any of my barely-existent computer hacking skills. She was set up to automatically log into her email account and sure enough, there were a pair of emails in her sent bin that had been saved for the purpose of making her