If Fried Chicken Could Fly by Paige Shelton Page A

first time I came back. She says I’ve been ‘haunting’ her on and off since I died.”
    “You saved her from the fire when you first came back? You mean you were a ghost?”
    “Yep…well, understand that right now I don’t remember the fire; I just remember her telling me about it. The longer I’m here, the more I remember from when I was alive and from my visits as a ghost, but there’re no guarantees.”
    No guarantees? Apparently not. Ghosts weren’t really supposed to exist, were they? Wasn’t there some sort of rule that ghosts only belonged in scary stories and big imaginations? The fact that I just might be talking to one tilted everything I thought was real. Something suddenly becoming real that wasn’t supposed to be irrevocably changed my perspective about everything. I just wasn’t sure what my new perspective was. Confusion only scratched the surface of what I was feeling and thinking.
    “She says that she was only a day old when the fire broke out in her family’s home. They lived outside town in a two-room shack that got hit by lightning. I was…it’s hard to explain, but I was ‘pulled’ back, a part of me was anyway, and I somehow got her and her momma out of the fire. Thatwas the first time and the only time as a ghost, according to Missouri, that I’ve been able to physically move things.”
    “You don’t remember that?” I asked.
    “I remember Missouri telling me about it. At the moment I don’t remember doing it.”
    I’d heard the story of the lightning and the fire, but no one had mentioned that the ghost of Jerome Cowbender, the infamous bank robber, had been the hero who saved two of my family members. “You’ve been a part of Gram’s life since then?”
    “Yes. I come and go. It’s unpredictable but sometimes I come back when something bad has happened.”
    I thought. “The fire? Did the fire—pardon the pun—spark you to come back this time?”
    “I don’t rightly know, but Missouri and I will figure it out eventually. I know she was in the jail last night. When I realized why, I thought maybe I was supposed to help clear her name.”
    “Last night was less serious than today. Now Gram’s been officially arrested for the murder of Everett Morningside,” I said. “If you have any information that would clear her, you should probably tell me.”
    “I don’t have much right now, but maybe I’ll come upon something.”
    “How?”
    “Again, I don’t rightly know just yet, but give me a little time. Missouri couldn’t kill anyone, at least not if they weren’t threatening her or her family. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
    We?
    “Who, besides me and Gram, can see you?” I asked
    “I don’t know of anyone. I didn’t know you could until this morning at the school when you scared the spit out of me.”
    “I saw you last night. Were you outside the theater?”
    “Yes, I was looking for Missouri. I knew where she was, but I couldn’t get into the jail.”
    “Couldn’t?”
    “Yes, I tried pretty hard last night. I just can’t. I remember trying other times before but never made it in. Must have something to do with having been an outlaw.”
    I laughed, but it was uncomfortable. I was having a conversation with a ghost, a ghost of an outlaw who seemed pretty harmless at the moment and pretty matter-of-fact about his days of criminal behavior.
    It was the fact that I’d seen Gram look at him and talk to him that made me think I probably hadn’t lost my mind. If I’d been the only one to see him, I would have been more concerned about my mental stability.
    Even though I didn’t feel that I was one hundred percent aboard the notion that a ghost existed, I was ready to almost-all-the-way believe that
this
one did. And, if I really thought about it, a ghost residing in Broken Rope, Missouri, a place with a strange and deadly history, might not be too much of a stretch anyway.
    There was a good reason Jerome seemed so authentic; he was the real