When people ask, I say it’s not exactly a ghost story. I have ghost stories, but this, well, it’s so much more.

I was nineteen and delivering pizza in Murfreesboro, a sad, squat city on the southern outskirts of Nashville. “Outskirts” sounds playful—rolling meadows and woolen clouds—but not this place. It was somber and marginalized. From daybreak on, the sun was just a hot smear and when it set, set like a dirge, there was even less relief. Every night, a rotten fog swept in over the fast food joints and acres of RV lots. And that was all of it. That was Murfreesboro.

I’d moved from the mountains of western Colorado, real Colorado, for a number of vapid reasons. For one, my older sister said we’d be living in the heart of Music City. She said my nights would be filled with patio bars, blues guitar and desperate cowgirls. But even as I pulled in, I knew all of that was wrong. Nashville was too expensive. Nashville’s suburbs were too expensive. Instead, Jessica had found us a concrete apartment thirty minutes off course. “Stop bitching,” she said. “When you want to party, find some ho in Nashville and crash at her pad.”

Domino’s Pizza was two blocks from our apartment. I averaged forty bucks a shift. This particular night, I’d been in Tennessee four months. Fall classes had started at the local university, started without me, and the campus was typically buzzing, but this night was unusually slow. I didn’t mind. I only needed cash for my gas tank. Most nights I spent in Nashville, and once in the city, I didn’t pay a dime. I was seeing a Club Eden stripper, an ex-army lieutenant, stage name Kali. She had five years on me and terrified me, but fit my imagined persona. I’d slink into the throbbing club and wait for her to finish her shift. Strutting past, she’d run a hand through my hair, but I’d stare down at my five-dollar Sprite. I couldn’t look at her in there. Under those swimming lights her ass cheeks were bruised and pocked. She kept her crotch completely shaved, but never well, the flesh grayish-purple, deaden. When I’d eat her it hurt my lips, left me nauseous—that’s graphic, probably too much information, but it’s the bigger concept I’m trying to convey. It was all a bigger concept, and at nineteen I was deaf, dumb and blind. Kali and me, we had our hair dyed jet-black, wore vinyl jackets, and blew all her tips on hotel suites, coke and expensive whiskey. Sitting on sprawling white beds, the curtains wide to the Nashville skyline, we ate Wendy’s and never used condoms. She told me two abortions and a raping uncle had left her barren, told me her strict code of monogamy was what allowed her to be a Catholic and a stripper. I knew she was lying, but that was part of the relationship. So I went to her. Went every chance I got.

—

Behind Domino’s was a bench where I hung out when shifts were slow. I’d read Tom Robbins, Bukowski, Camus. I liked what they said, but I didn’t believe a word. Three more brave idiots trading their eternities to flip off their Creator. Who didn’t want to? I did, of course I did, but at least I had the brains to know that the minute Death showed I’d scream for Jesus to forgive me.

Outside, reading, I’d underline passages and shake my head. I made certain to laugh loudly enough for my coworkers to hear. Those morons had acorn minds, no great destiny, but I told myself that I preferred them to a university full of sponge-brained sheep. The first week I’d arrived in Murfreesboro, I’d told my sister I was registering for classes, but instead found myself strutting around the student center in an anxious daze. Compared to my freshman year at my hometown’s tiny college, the MTSU campus was monstrous. I felt anonymous and plain. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to study, I did, but abroad. I’d say it all the time—abroad—but I didn’t have a clue what it entailed. Again, it was the concept, people back home picturing me sketching nudes in Florence, reading Joyce in some smoky Dublin pub. The truth was I could only sketch nudes off photographs, and I only knew James Joyce by name. Another reason I was in Tennessee was anywhere else I would’ve had to go it alone, but here Jess had already smoothed the path. My friends back home had no clue where I’d gone. East, I’d said. But when I went to register at the university, I found I could only stand outside the student center trying to appear original and defiant. I had home-pierced ears and oversized motorcycle boots, but there were plenty of guys swarming around looking much more stylishly enigmatic.

Wilted, I took out my pipe, loaded some pot, and posed. Hoards of registered students filtered past, sniffing the air. They’d frown or flash me a hang-loose sign. I didn’t know these people, but their affirmation of my existence was enough. Instead of classes, I was obviously meant for archetypal statements of artistic rebellion. I propped a boot on a short, concrete wall, rested an elbow on my thigh, and stared deeply into the distance. At some point, a beautiful girl, pens and paintbrushes twisted in her hair, stood next to me. She said nothing, so I gave her a half-smile and she returned it. “You know,” she said, and gently, like comforting a skinned-up child, “we all smell it, but that’s not very intelligent, now is it?”

I stared her down, wracking my brain for some witty come-back, but then she was leaving. How great would that be, I thought, if Security showed up right now? A couple of fat, Confederate hicks trying to tackle me? I’d been a track star since junior high, hurdles, middle-distance. I could run a quarter-mile in fifty seconds. I’d zip past that bitch so fast the pens would fly from her hair.

—

A big order came in at dusk. No one wanted to run four pies eleven miles out to the edge of the delivery area, so I said fine, I’d do it, but then I’m calling it quits. The pizzas in my backseat, my music up, my window down, I aimed my old Toyota wagon for BFE. Murfreesboro, the town, okay maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe it wasn’t so boondocks, but it was sure guilty by association. Past the city everything went to shit. The woods took over, mobile homes sagged, sidewalks dove. All the asphalt turned to weed-tufted paths lined with rusty barbwire and dead-ended in rubbish-strewn hollows. This world wasn’t naturally wild, understand, but feral. It had a worn, abused aura. For centuries people had struggled to live here in some bitter cycle of ignorant use, destroying their livelihoods, and so the nature on these properties, when it revived, sprouted thorny and jaded. My hometown, Gunnison, it was the sticks, but it was wild and pristine, its outskirts National Forest and BLM land, wholesome mountains, clear trout streams. The land I passed beyond Murfreesboro, I know now that it has its own weary beauty, but at that age I couldn’t see it, couldn’t see past my idea of the inhabitants as genetic defeatists, the sons and daughters of brooding racists, incestuous, stupid. The pine forest and dark basins where abandoned pickups rotted in ponds, I knew they were checkered with lost Civil War battlefields, but I didn’t know how to feel anything about it. An older guy I worked with spent his weekends bushwhacking thickets, armed with a machete and a burlap sack, unearthing cannonballs and uniform fabric. He got so excited he was almost crying one night. He said he found a femur with an imbedded bit of iron grape-shot. I was outside with my book and he wouldn’t leave me alone. None of that war crap interested me. Or, no, that’s not entirely true. The dude’s emotion did. His passion. It was like Dad’s, a gushing wonder, and at that point in life I was terrified to wonder. I associated it with naivety, with a lack of confidence and resolve. And then there was the competition. I could only see the world as measured against me, my existence dependent on my individuality. I had to prove myself as not my dad, but yet greater than him. He’d always wanted to be a philosopher, an adventurer, but he’d given up, given in, went to pharmacy school, everyday counting pills with gritted teeth. Still, though, sometimes I’d imagine, while out on a delivery in those sad woods beyond

Murfreesboro—and I was imagining it this particular night—Dad coming to visit. I could picture us perfectly, not talking, but working side-by-side, machetes and spades, sweating, grinning, digging up cannons and bloody bayonets.

Fifteen minutes driving and my crude highway shot out from a low, tangled marshland, shot out from the shadows, and, suddenly to my left stretched an odd expanse of bluegrass sod. It was as sculpted as a golf course and caught me in the chest. Without thinking, I eased off the gas to soak it in, my arm out the window, a cool scent of dew and alfalfa. Obviously it was the future site for a cluster of cookie-cutter homes. The developer had already paved a road, a wide, black stream looping out into all that lush.

But that was it, no other progress. No lot flags or electric meters, just one single house at the far end, a tall, pink number with a green roof and white trim.

At the road’s entrance stood one of those landscaped hillocks with a fancy sign. I don’t recall the place’s name, but it was the subdivision on my ticket. Around the sign were floodlights and manicured hedges and jagged, half-buried boulders. I drove in as the day dwindled just beyond the pink house, a soft-orange sun melting into a row of black oaks.

The developer had laid sidewalks on both sides, white concrete and bright curbs. I cut the volume on my stereo and coasted, under my old tires the fresh, black asphalt babbled.

The driveway to the pink house was the same bright white concrete as the curb. I tossed my car into neutral and wrenched the emergency brake. The pizzas were divided into two bags, these big insulated sleeves with plastic pouches on the front for the ticket order. Like always, I checked the bill again before heading up.

I rang the doorbell and waited a good two minutes, but nothing happened. The porch had been recently coated, I could smell the pitch and varnish, could feel it tacky on my soles. Again, I rang the bell. This was long before cell phones were common, ’93, so I couldn’t do anything but sigh and lug the pizzas back to my car. I honked my horn a few times. I wasn’t even annoyed, just playful. Maybe it was the sod, the unusually cool evening, but I felt sedated even though I hadn’t smoked anything yet that night. Not a big deal. Besides, I was paid an hourly wage and reimbursed for mileage. I had no plans for after my shift, either. If earlier I had been thinking about seeing Kali, driving into Nashville, at this point I’d decided against it. No, I’d just go home, maybe drink a few beers, cook a burger, challenge my eleven-year-old neighbor to Scrabble. Everything aside, I had no good reason to stay in Tennessee and it was getting more apparent everyday, but even though in my heart I wanted to return to Gunnison so badly, my pride wouldn’t hear it. So, I guess I was waiting, like if I held out long enough, if I laid low and didn’t make too much noise, all the big, hollow words I’d left back in Colorado would slowly grow into themselves.

—

Backing out of the drive, I shoved my car into first and was pulling away when I caught movement in my periphery. From the open front door, a man waved at me with both arms. He looked middle-aged, well-put together, with glasses and combed hair and a nice button-up shirt. Giving the guy a salute, I reversed back past his drive and pulled on in again. I hopped out, grabbed the pies and headed to the front door, but he’d closed it. And not a crack, he’d closed it, locked it. I rang the bell and waited twenty seconds before pounding. I even shouted a bit and put my ear to the door, but then stormed back to my car and chucked the pizza bags in the backseat. Once again, I backed out, but stopped at the end of the drive. Squinting up through the watery blue glass along the top of my windshield, up above the pink garage, standing there, staring down at me, framed in a shadow-dimmed picture window, was the man I’d seen. But he wasn’t alone. Beside him stood a woman in a long dress and, next to her, two boys and a girl. They weren’t laughing, weren’t doing anything, so I raised my hands like, “Hey, what the hell?” Did they think I’d leave the pizzas on the porch? I checked the ticket again. There was no name and it wasn’t a pre-pay, so I climbed out and pointed to the front door, but the only one to make a move was the tallest kid. He nudged his brother, and the brother nudged him back, and the mom looked over at them and said something, and the boys stopped horsing around.

I blew them a kiss and jumped in my car. Dropping the gas pedal, I revved the engine and popped my clutch. My front-wheels peeled out, jerking me backwards, leaving black marks on their fresh concrete.

I smoked my pipe on the way back and muttered to myself—real funny, real fucking funny. Pulling to the side of the road, I ate one of their pizza slices. Then I started to feel sick. So I prayed. I was still praying then, a little, talking to Jesus aloud. There was no one else I could talk to about God, about spiritual matters, about guilt. I knew everything my parents thought, all the scriptures they’d use. Jess, she could care less one way or the other. When I’d say guilt, she’d tell me to get over it. That pretty much ends a conversation. If I talked to Kali about God, about guilt, she’d tell me I was thinking too much. If we were high, she’d lose her temper, swing pool-cues at my head. More than once she had her enormous bouncer friends confiscate my fake ID, punch me in the gut, and drag me from the club, but she always came rushing out, mascara dripping, hands and pockets full of cash, full of coke, handing my ID back and begging forgiveness. She’d lick my neck right there on a busy sidewalk, grinding on me in front of scowling, conservative tourists. I needed it all. She’d whisper how sexy I was, how she loved my body, my skinny legs. David Bowie legs, that’s what she called them. Or Sir Lawrence Olivier legs. And only with her, did I not wear my long-johns. Christ, the long-johns! The things you forget. Just the thought, now, fifteen years later, makes my ears burn. This was a gimmick I’d used since high school, under my jeans, trying to make my legs look stronger, my ass more muscular. Even in that summer, in the Southern heat, I wore them. I could get away with it in the bitter, Gunnison winter, but in the new humidity my thighs boiled with ingrown hairs—everybody sing now: Oh, the things we do for love!

Anyway, the prayer worked.  Jesus, please make my stomach feel better. I drove on, the ache vanishing and got my thoughts back to that fucked-up family in the pink house. I decided they couldn’t screw with me unless I let them. Nobody could. I ended up back at headquarters, and I told the other drivers my story. We were clustered in the back stockroom where you fold the pizza boxes, four or five of us reeking of grease and leaning on the cool, steel prep tables. This was where we always vented, eating botched orders, sometimes passing a pint of Wild Turkey. I thought they’d laugh, or at least shake their heads and call it a lame stunt, but instead they stared at me, all of them, no different than the damn family in the window.

“Come on,” I said, “was that not the most fucked prank ever? A whole family messing with me? And not a bunch of white trash, either—why?”

The Civil War guy, with his round glasses and big beard, set down his slice of pizza. He shook his head, slowly. “That’s terrifying.  Your whole story.  It gives me shivers.”

I laughed. “Come on!  Come on now!” but suddenly the guy was right. My stomach went hard and my fingers felt loose and cold. Handing over the order slip for the four pies, I asked my manager if I could go. She frowned and rubbed at her lips. She’d gotten a call, she said, about twenty minutes back, concerning this delivery. “The man told me that you never showed, but—whoa, now, Nate, hold on. No need to get all bent out of shape. I checked out the ticket, and, then, see I found I’ve got a note on my desk saying this has happened before, saying not to deliver out to that subdivision. So, it’s not on your shoulders. It’s all my fault.”

—

At home I had that acid ache in my legs, that feeling like I had to keep moving my arms, keep popping my knuckles. I packed my pipe, but didn’t smoke it. I was scared, scared that I’d go suddenly crazy, that I’d climb up on the apartment roof and throw myself off. I needed to tell Jess my story, but she wasn’t home. She had a life in Murfreesboro, friends that were kind to me, always welcoming, but that I couldn’t seem to click with. I went into her room and sat on her bed. I knew what she’d say. She and Dad, they were the logical ones, knew how to measure the world with reason. Instead I called Mom and the first thing she said was that she’d been praying for me, that the Lord had me on her mind.

“He’s got his angels all around you, Nathan, but they need you to believe, not me.”

Like always, more scripture. And like always, I got mad. I said something that I knew would make her hang up. Probably Jesus’ name in vain. She hung up. I almost called Kali, but didn’t because at that moment it made sense. I was just one of many to her. All those bouncers, those guys at the club, I could see her peeling their condoms off, I could hear her saying, “You don’t need this,” and tossing them onto a giant pile of Wendy’s debris.

I dialed my girlfriend back home. Actually, that summer Natalie was at her parent’s house in Dallas. Her brother answered and told me what he always told me, that Natalie was out on a date with a rich football player, and that I didn’t deserve her. “When I’m old enough,” he said, “I’m gonna kick in your faggot face.” He was twelve. I told him I couldn’t wait. I told him I definitely deserved it. After that, I tried a few more people, old high school girlfriends, but couldn’t get through to anyone. I had a few beers. Finally, my one local friend called. He was just leaving work. He came by with more beer and we sat on my front stoop in the dank night. I calmed. I forgot about the family, the delivery. Spotted slugs emerged from the grass, oozed across the dirty walkway, and disappeared. This buddy of mine, he was a pale guy with short legs and a large belly. He asked me how work was going and it all came rushing back. I wanted to tell him about the pink house, but I couldn’t figure out how to start the story, make it sound as crazy as it really was. And the longer I waited, the more I thought about what happened and how to tell it, the more scared I got. Then I was up on my feet, my keys squeezed in my fist. “I need to drive around, come on, let’s get in my car.”

“It’s past midnight, man, and we drank too much.”

“It’s not a long drive and I’ll go slow.”

“Go slow to where?”

I sat back down then because if I’d kept at it I knew I’d have to admit that I was too afraid to drive out there, even with him. We drank some more, drank fast, and then when I wanted to play Scrabble it was too late to wake up the neighbor kid. Peter. That was the neighbor kid, but for the life of me, I don’t remember this guy’s name. He was two years older than me and his face looked like Morrissey’s. That was his whole thing. People were always telling him the resemblance was eerie. I remember it made the guy feel good about himself. He said I looked like Adam Ant, but it didn’t have the same ring. For some reason, I think my friend sold cars at a Ford lot, but I can’t be certain. I do remember he rented a room in his parents’ house. His walls, his doors, even his ceiling, were slathered with WANTED posters, overlapping mug shots of vacant-eyed criminals because his dad worked for the post office. What else? I remember his girlfriend was still in high school and he wanted so bad to get married, was always bringing it up. Anyway, I never talked to him again, not after I moved home, but that night, after my creepy delivery, we stayed up until it was nearly light. We sat on my stoop and made plans for him to visit Colorado.

Or why didn’t he just move out there with me? He and his girl? I told him of the vistas, the deep canyons, how there were only five stoplights in Gunnison and how the nights up there, up in the mountains, got so cold your eyelids froze open. My buddy kept trying to change the subject, his voice distressed, like the picture I’d painted terrified him. I told him it was an air-tight plan. My Toyota, sure, she had over two-hundred thousand miles, but she was a wagon, spacious, and we could weave all over the country. We’d start with New Orleans and then over to Big Bend, and then hike down into Carlsbad Caverns. My Toyota, she’d been in our family for years and who knows how many trips. Dad and Mom in the front, and me and my sisters sprawled out in the back. Dad would make this huge bed for us. He’d lay down the backseat and smother it with foam mattresses and layer upon layer of blankets. At home, up until even twelve and thirteen, I was always having nightmares and wetting my bed, waking up not knowing where or who I was, but in the back of the car, my sisters packed around me, I’d press my ear to the carpeted wheel-well and slip in and out of the most perfect sleep—the humming asphalt, the steady click of pavement. When I awoke, at whatever National Park or historical site Dad wanted to explore, I always felt ready.

—

At some point early that morning, Jess came home. In the blue glow, she stepped out of her car and walked cautiously toward us. She’d been partying in Nashville and her clothes were slack, her hair tangled and high. It wouldn’t break her heart when I left—she’d act like it, but it wouldn’t. She said nothing to us, didn’t even make eye contact. She cut a wide loop into the grass, out around our beer bottles, and went inside.

My armpits were damp, my forehead hot. I heard the air conditioner rattle to life and I told my buddy I’d see him later.

Inside, my sister was out cold, curled on our torn sofa. The radio was on. I shook her and told her to get in bed. She said no. The song playing, I’d heard it plenty but never listened to it. Right then, though, that’s all there was, the Counting Crows singing, “Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand, said she’d like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis.” Kali’s real name was Maria, and at this point in my life, I didn’t believe in coincidence. I believed in God and I hated Him, but I believed in Him. Pulling the comforter off Jessica’s bed, I covered her, then sat beside her and let myself cry as the song played out. It was a message from God, all of it, the whole night. “Maria says she’s dying, through the door I hear her crying.” The room closed in. I’d drifted too far. I knew what the song was saying. Drugs, fucking, lying, sinning—it was saying I had AIDS. There would be no France, no Italy. At home, in my small town, riddled with lesions, I’d wither away. I’d cry out to Jesus and he’d take me back, but a blood test was a waste. There’s a point when you turn your back on God for just so long, when you actually start to feel that guilt is natural. I stared at my sister’s hair and decided that when she woke up we’d drive over there, out to the pink house. We’d bring knives and flashlights, and kick in their front door if we had to. Because it didn’t matter if they were ghosts or just assholes, all that mattered was we were coming for them.

Story by Nate Liederbach
Photography by Adam Hobbins