The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll

Author:Jonathan Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2008-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

Half an hour later he said he was hungry, so German made him a fat peanut butter sandwich. She remembered to put it on white bread and cut off the crusts, because Ben disliked bread crusts. There was also a can of root beer in the back of the almost-empty refrigerator, because all his life he had liked the drink, so she gave that to the boy too.

They all sat at the kitchen table, the two women watching little Ben Gould devour the sandwich and unself-consciously belch his way through swallowing soda much too fast. He seemed very pleased with himself after every burp.

“So, Ben, how did you get here?”

Through a very visible mouthful of gummy tan peanut butter, he managed to say, “I rode a song.”

“You wrote a song?”

“No, I rode a song. That’s how I got here: I rode a song.”

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged, as if to say, “That’s your problem.”

Working to keep the impatience out of her voice, German asked, “Could you explain it to me?”

He put the sandwich down and took a long swig of root beer. “You like that song ‘Under My Thumb.’ When it came on the radio, I rode it here.”

“But how? How do you ride a song? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know; you just do it. It’s real simple.”

“Where did you come from? Where were you before here?”

“Crane’s View.”

German had earlier told Danielle that that was the name of the town in upstate New York where Ben had grown up.

“You rode a song from Crane’s View to here?”

“Yeah, I already told you.” He pushed the last piece of sandwich into his mouth and shook the soda can to hear if there was any more left inside. “You want me to show you how to do it? Have you got a radio here?”

“On top of the fridge.”

Although he’d been talking to German, the boy turned and looked at Danielle. “Turn it on and find a song you remember. One from when you were little.”

Danielle shoved her chair back and stood up. She walked over to the refrigerator and switched on the radio. Twisting the round dial, she surfed quickly across a sea of stations while German and little Ben watched her.

“What am I searching for?”

“A song you remember from back when you were a little kid.”

Because her back was to them, they didn’t see Danielle smirk at the slim chance of that ever happening. As a child, she was almost never allowed to listen to music in the house. Her parents were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses who firmly disapproved of “the sound of other singing.” As a result, the family radio was turned on only so that they could listen to worship services broadcast from California that her parents particularly enjoyed. The only song Danielle really remembered from her childhood besides the ones in the Sing Praises to Jehovah hymnbook was the famous spiritual “Oh Happy Day.”

As she kept surfing through the radio channels, she thought what a wild fluke it would be to find that one song on the radio right now.

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