Rufe Taylor’s Ghost
by John Tullock
I first laid eyes on Rufe Taylor when I was just a little
feller. He was a friend of my grandfather’s, and lived about a mile from us. My
grandfather and I would sometimes walk the gravel road to pay him a visit. He
and Grandpa would sit on the front porch and whittle while they talked
politics.
The porch ran all along the front of the two story house. The
house had been built out of bricks made on the site out of the Tennessee clay,
and the floor was supported by chestnut beams that ran from the front edge of
the porch all the way to the far edge of the back porch. There were two rooms
on the first floor and two on the second, and the kitchen was out back. The
kitchen was open on three sides, with a shed roof made out of galvanized steel,
penetrated by the chimney pipe for a massive, wood-burning cast iron range. Rain or shine, warm or cold, Mrs.
Taylor cooked and did the household laundry out in that open kitchen. The house was mostly free from extraneous
ornament, standing plain and foursquare upon the earth, much like its owners.
Two massive oaks shaded the porch. They looked to be older than the house.
I grew up and left home to go to college, and eventually
forgot all about Rufe Taylor. When the highway department built a new four lane
highway within 100 yards of the Taylor house, the cross road that my
grandfather and I had followed became “Rufe Taylor Road,” with a green and
white metal sign on either side of the intersection and black asphalt paving
over the gravel. By the time that beautiful old house was torn down to make way
for a brand new Taco Bell, most of the residents of the community had forgotten
all about Mr. Taylor. Ask a random stranger why the road bore his name, and
they likely couldn’t tell you.
Nowadays, I don’t get up home much. Other than to visit the
graveyard near Decoration Day, when all the graves are bedecked with flowers, I
don’t have a lot of reason to visit. I am an old man now and most of my family is
gone. But the week before Christmas a minor bit of business necessitated a
return to my old home town, and I stopped into that Taco Bell for lunch. My
companion and I were sitting at the table looking at our phones, when a
movement caught my eye. I looked up, and at the table across the aisle sat Rufe
Taylor. Dressed in a pair of Duck Head overalls and a blue flannel shirt, he
looked to me no different than the last time I had seen him. What? Maybe 50
years ago. He was whittling; long, thin shavings of red cedar peeling from the
stick in his calloused hands, and falling--somewhere. There were no shavings on
the floor.
For a moment, I thought I was having a stroke. I read that
strokes sometimes produce hallucinations. Then Rufe Taylor nodded at me. He
paused whittling and spoke.
“You’re Clarence Boswell’s grandson ain’t ye?”
Nobody else in the room seemed to notice. I nodded, somewhat
meekly.
“Speak up, boy! You know I been half deef since that heifer
kicked me in the ear. Speak up!”
Aloud, I said, “Mr. Taylor?”
No one looked up from their nachos, including my companion.
It was as if Rufe and I were in another place altogether.
“That’s right, boy. Rufe Taylor at your service.” His eyes
twinkled.
“What are you doing here,” I asked, “And why can’t anyone
hear us.”
“It’s a long story, boy, but don’t worry. Nobody can hear us
or see me unless I want them to. It’s one of the perks, I believe you young-uns
say.”
“Perks of what?” I was almost in shock. It was the strangest
situation I had ever been in.
“Why, of being dead, of course. Here, sit and listen a
spell.”
He reached out and seemed to touch my forehead with that
piece of cedar he had been whittling on. I could hear his voice inside my head,
as he began to speak again, and I found that I could finish my lunch during his
soliloquy.
“Now, boy, you remember what I used to say about my false
teeth? They hurt me quite a lot, and I used to say I didn’t have a hankering to
actually go to Hell, but I reckon I’d like to get close enough to throw these
damn teeth in.”
I noticed he was a toothless ghost.
“Well, sir. I had a bad pain in my chest one day, and passed
out, and when I woke up, I was standing right in front of the gates of Hell.
Lordy, it was hot and the smell of sulfur like to have choked me to death. This
nasty looking little varmit was standing there. He reached out like he was
going to grab me by the arm, and all at once the sky turned so bright I couldn’t
see and I found myself standing at the Pearly Gates.
“Now this is more like it, I thought to myself, and I walked
right up to the gate. I had figured out by this time what had happened to me,
and I was looking forward to seeing Mama and the girls again. The gate was
locked, but there was a little angel standing there with a clipboard. He looked
me over and said, ‘Taylor, is it? I am afraid there has been a bit of an error
and you were sent down below by mistake. Something about your teeth. But never mind
about that, we have determined that you must return to Earth. You will go there
as a spirit, and may enter the gate only when you have done a good deed to
redeem yourself.’ And with that, I found myself right back here, on the porch
of my house.”
“How does that explain how I can see you?”
“I’m a-gittin’ to that. The angel also told me I would have
to get someone to help me in the physical world, someone I knew when I was
alive. You are the only person that has been by here in fifty years that I
recognize. Everybody else is as dead as I am.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Down by the creek yonder is a big sycamore tree. Can you
see it?”
I turned and looked toward the creek. The deathly white
limbs of the tree projected above the rest of the growth.
“Yes, I can see it from here.”
“Down at the base of that tree, between hit and the creek,
they’s a rock. It’s big, but not so big a man can’t move it if he’s a mind to.
Under that there rock is a Mason jar with some money I saved up after I sold
that holler down yonder to Lamar Johnson, back in 1976. I was going to buy my
youngest daughter a house for her wedding present, but I died before she found
a husband, bless her heart.”
I once knew the daughter. She taught school for years, never
married, died more than a decade ago.
“And what do you want me to do with the money, assuming I
agree to dig it up?”
“Why, give it to my church, of course.”
He went back to his whittling like the matter was settled.
My companion asked if I was ready to hit the road. He had heard nothing at all.
When I looked back toward Rufe, there was nothing there but the laminate-topped
table.
A few days later, I put a garden spade and a canvas shopping
bag in the back of the car and drove back up to Greeneville. I parked at the
side of Rufe Taylor Road, just around the curve from the Taco Bell. Grabbing
the spade and bag, I stepped into the woods and walked the dozen yards to the
edge of the creek. I followed the creek bank until I arrived at the sycamore
tree. Sure enough, there was the rock. I struggled to move it, and finally
found a stick that I could use to lever it up. It tumbled down the bank and
landed in the creek with a splash. I paused, hoping the noise had not attracted
anyone’s attention. All clear.
Digging down with the spade, I encountered something solid
under about two inches of the rich, black soil. It was a pale blue Mason jar
with a zinc cap. Inside was just over $1000 in gold coins. As collector’s
items, they were worth at least ten times their face value. I shoved the jar in
the shopping bag and headed back to the car.
When I got back to Knoxville, I found a coin dealer who
would take the coins, handing me a check for $12,358.00. Not long after that,
the Cross Anchor Cumberland Presbyterian Church received an anonymous donation
in the same amount. As it happened, the church was needing a roof, and the tiny
congregation was at a loss as to how they would come up with the money.
Next time I went to Greeneville, I stopped at the Taco Bell.
I ordered some food, sat down at the table, and looked over toward where the
beautiful old Taylor home once stood. Sure enough, there was Rufe sitting on
the porch with his whittling. Mama was cooking out back, and his daughters were
playing in the grass under one of the giant oak trees. He looked up at me and
grinned. He had teeth as white as the sycamore tree’s branches. I grinned and
waved, in so doing gathering an odd look from a couple of the customers.
And when I looked again, there was nothing there but the
parking lot.
