CHAPTER 36: Ghost hunting in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Now… Billie loves her road-dawg companions, her bandmates, but she doesn’t always go along with Jack and Professor T’s rigidly rational mindset. Case in point, she doesn’t automatically dismiss ghost stories swirling around in the cultural soup. When the gang was in Oregon and Jack’s nephew, Jason, was going on about local hauntings, Billie wanted to believe his story was legit, not just another hackneyed tale of wealthy landowners trying to scare people away from some environmental atrocity like those Scooby-Doo episodes. So as the Bus rolled into Vicksburg, Mississippi, Billie pitched a haunted house diversion. Her first idea was to visit Auburn, the Grand Mansion of Natchez, Antebellum home of Lyman Harding. But the advertised tour was way too expensive, and besides, Natchez is nearly two hours down the Mighty Mississip from Vicksburg, so the gang turned their attention to a more affordable spectral diversion at the McRaven House.
A waiter at the local Cracker Barrel pointed the Forks to McRaven because its ghostly reputation was featured on A&E and the Travel Channel. An authentic pre-Civil War home with a complete way-of-life tour and pioneer kitchen. National Geographic called it the “Time Capsule of the South” whose area gardens served as Confederate soldiers’ campsite/field hospital. Billie was eager to hear about the famous and infamous people of McRaven and why their spirits never seem to leave.
But first, the business at hand: focus-group interviews at Hinds Community College.
“Are you just going to sit there?” Buck was arranging chairs in a circle for the session.
“Hey, i got us here safe and sound…you can do the grunt work.” Billie wasn’t going to let the aggression stand unanswered. She gave Buck the finger, and he gave her a flirtatious wink.
Jack was watching this exchange and began to suspect there was something brewing between his favorite drummer and the new guy. He wanted to warn against potential discord that could occur between the members of this close-quarters group. After all, Jack had seen how things can spiral out of control when girlfriends/boyfriends join bands on the road. In fact, the Forks’ standing rule was to prevent significant others from getting involved with the band’s business or even riding along with them. The Forks were proper ambassadors of the “church of rock and roll,” including strict adherence to the first rule…what happens on the road, stays on the road. Of course, that was the ‘90s for Billie, the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s for Jack and Professor T…old-hat now, and Jack wasn’t going to stand in the way of what seemed to be developing between Billie and Buck. Jack knew Billie’s story and he hoped this romance might actually turn out good for her.
“Has anyone seen my gloves?” Professor T was protective of his guitarist’s hands.
“Are you serious?” Jack was quick to remind his comrade of the band’s chosen genre. The fact that it amounts to a slightly updated version of 1970s punk…a gritty business at best. “What self-respecting Punk guitarist goes around wearing ‘wuss-pads’ for their street-fightin’ hands?”
“Hey! I’m a punk scholar…a new breed,” said Professor T with a wink. “I leave scrappin’ to the roadies. You can join the fray if you want, but if i’m gonna have to slap a bitch, i’m gonna do it with my gloves…ON!”
Professor T did have to get mixed up with the shenanigans from time to time. There was that night where a groupie from Great Bend, Kansas, had a jealous boyfriend that traveled to one of the band’s gigs in Collier. He decided to sneak up on Mork Thompson during a break and grab him by the hair from behind. The future scholar impressed everyone in that roadhouse with a roundhouse kick that dislodged the jealous boyfriend’s hand. The two stood looking at each other for a tense moment, but the drunk’s friends pulled him away as it seemed fairly obvious they were outnumbered. Collier was a regular stop for the popular cover-band Mork was in at the time.
After the last encore, and while the roadies were tearing down, Mork stepped outside to catch a smoke and mingle with the crowd. He was surprised to see two rows of guys facing each other, and they all looked pretty tense as if there was some sort of nuclear détente. Mork looked on from a distance waiting for something to happen when a familiar face motioned him to join the lineup. Apparently, there was going to be a gang-rumble over the jealous boyfriend’s wish to beat Mork to a pulp, a move stymied by several local supporters lined up to defend him.
“Well, alrighty then,” Mork T said pulling his white load-out gloves on. “Let’s dance if we must,” he said while internally questioning his occasional after-gig carnal choices.
The rumble never got started because on Mork’s side was someone with a notorious reputation for putting folks stupid enough to get in a tangle with him in the hospital with grave injuries. And he was lined up directly across from the jealous boyfriend. Someone whispered in the jealous boyfriend’s ear, and that was that. The Great Bend crew decided the row wasn’t worth the expected outcome. They slinked off with their tails between their legs, and Mork was spared the trouble of potentially getting blood on his white load-out gloves.
Lighting a cigarette, Mork muttered to nobody in particular, “make friends with the biggest, meanest bad-asses in your social circle, and you’ll never have to get blood on your gloves.” Once the danger had passed, he joined the load-out effort, rolling cables.
Fast forward, back to Vicksburg, at the McRaven tour: Billie imagined a ghostly confab taking place on the astral plane. Of course, her travel mates were not on the same page. Billie imagined an inexplicable cold breeze but chose not to mention it in order to avoid the reliable shower of skepticism that would surely follow.
Billie constructed the scene in her imagination…a sudden, chilling giggle through the room. She imagined a spectral trickster, a little girl floating on a wisp of Spanish moss. She imagined a cackling sound like wind chimes in a graveyard. Then a chorus of ghostly laughter filling the McRaven House, echoing through the empty rooms. Of course, nobody heard it because it was all playing out in Billie’s fertile imagination. Besides, they were too engrossed in the tour guide’s monologue to notice Billie’s wide-eyed attention. In Billie’s imaginings, the trickster’s eyes were gleaming with mischievous delight, pulling on the drapes, flitting from chandelier to chandelier.
“What was that?” said Billie. “Who pulled on the curtains?” She was trolling for reactions. “Did anyone feel that?” Billie shivered as if recoiling from a sudden chill. She thought she saw Professor T twitch and wondered if he wasn’t silently haunted by the McRaven spirits as well.
He wasn’t… he was trying to remember where he might have stashed his white gloves.
NEXT WEEK: Sweet home Alabama
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