the TOE, A Ghost Story

Based on a "True" Story

By Estella McLendon

There were no cold spots or odd smells. I didn’t turn around and “it was gone.” I didn’t catch a glimpse of a figure standing behind me in the mirror. She didn’t tell me her name. But I know I’ve seen a ghost.

When I was six, we lived across the street from a large cemetery. That was the year my father had to take an ambulance to the hospital and my mother, in her panic, went with him and forgot I was home.

I was in the bathroom making pictures with strands of hair on a bar of soap when I heard my mother clamoring to call 911. I remember her frantic voice talking on the telephone as my father called to her from the front lawn. I remember the sirens whining in the distance, but I was scared. I stayed hidden in the bathroom until they faded away. When it all went quiet I went outside.

I saw my father’s bloody sandal on the sidewalk. The lawnmower he had been pushing was laying sideways on the half-finished lawn. Even though I was six, I was not afraid that my father could be dying or that I was all alone in an empty house. All I could think of was finding his toe. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through the grass.

I got to the edge of the lawn next to the street that separated our house from the cemetery. I looked across. There was an elderly woman on the hill watching me, with her hands propped under her chin. She waved when I saw her and I waved back, and then she motioned for me to come over. I crossed the street and went through the iron gate that smelled like blood and found her sitting under the shade of a big cedar tree. I dusted off my green knees and stood in front of her.

“Wew, you smell like grass! What were you doing?” she asked. She wore a pastel pink church hat and pearls. Her face was old, but not elderly. Her smile was youthful. I think it was her teeth. “I was looking for something,” I told her. “How old are you?” she asked. “Six. How old are you?” She sat up and adjusted her pink floral blouse. “How old do you think I am?” she replied. “100,” I said. I didn’t know. It just seemed like a nice round “old” number. “Nope, guess again.” “1000!” I said more enthusiastically. “Nope, I turned 120 today,” she said. I watched as her eyebrows narrowed and her eyes locked in on some blood I must have rubbed against on the lawn.

“Are you bleeding?” she asked. “No. I was looking for my daddy’s toe. He ran it over with the lawn mower and I want to find it before he gets home so the doctor can put it back on,” I said. Her eyes became shiny. “Well of course!” she exclaimed, clearly amused. “What else? He can’t go back to work without that can he? Come sit next to me!” She patted the seat. I plopped down on the mossy cement bench and stirred up her scent. Was it gardenia? Jasmine? No, honeysuckle! There on that hot summer day, we sat side by side smelling like grass and honeysuckle. Across the street, we could see the lawnmower laying on its side like a fallen soldier. “When you find his toe,” she asked warmly, “what are you going to do with it?” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Now I imagined seeing the severed toe. What would I do with it? “I guess I’ll pick it up and take it inside. I might have to wash it off first. It’ll probably be dirty.” “You are a brave little boy, you know? Not many children could handle seeing something like that,” she encouraged. I swelled with pride. It’s amazing what a few kind words from a stranger can do for your sense of worth.

Maybe even more than someone you know. For the first time, I noticed her staring at a rough marble headstone, resting just before us in the grass. “Who is that?” I pointed to the grave. “Why, that’s Barnaby H. Mullins. His birthday is today,” she said. “How can he have a birthday if he’s dead?” “Just because he died doesn’t mean he wasn’t born. A birthday is a celebration of someone’s birth. Death has nothing to do with a birthday,” she said. “Who was he?” I urged again as politely as I could. “We were in love,” she said delicately. “We were going to be married, but it wasn’t meant to be. He married someone else. A friend of mine in fact.” She touched the spot of my father’s blood on my jeans and smiled without looking at me. “You won’t understand until you’re older, but I’m going to tell you something precious. People will come into your life and only time will reveal their significance. Take Barnaby and me for example. If I had known just how much he would come to mean to me I would have never parted with him. He was the boy next door when we met. I had always imagined I’d fall in love with a soldier or a sailor, not him.” “You wouldn’t get to spend much time with a soldier or a sailor,” I said.

For a moment she looked at me thoughtfully.

“In this life, I knew before knowing that I would yearn for my true love, and so I imagined it would be for the kind of man who dies in war.” “What’s ‘yearn’ mean?” “It means, ‘to ache’,” she said, with certain pain. “Oh.” I thought for a moment only a little uncomfortable with the change that had come upon her. “Is my dad ‘yearning’ for his toe?” She laughed so hard she began to cry. When the laughter finally settled she looked at me and said, “Your mother will be home soon. I have a feeling if you look inside the lawn mower you might find that toe, but be careful. Go home now. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” I crossed the street into my yard and looked inside the lawnmower. Clumps of grass hung from the blades. I brushed them down and they fell to the ground. I didn’t see it at first, but as I got up to go inside, there it was in one of the lumps! I felt like I’d found the prize in an Easter egg hunt.

It was more mangled than I expected. I picked it up and held it out for the lady across the street to see, but she had gotten up and was walking away. I turned to go inside and just as I was about to close the door, my mom pulled up in a stranger’s car. She got out and hugged me and made a fuss over leaving me at home by myself. I showed her my fleshy prize, but she said it was too late; we didn’t need it.

I still have my father’s toe. It’s in an old cigar box where I keep mementos (no pun intended). There I also saved a yellowed local newspaper article I found in a thrift store when I was nineteen. It was a Sunday obituary dated October 16th 1921. The article read: “Her Tragic End” and there was a glamorous photograph of a woman with a youthful smile named Eleanore Moore who looked exactly like the old woman I’d met in the cemetery all those years before. According to the article, she was a failed actress who came back to this town when she was 24. She’d fallen in love with a man named Barnaby Hamby Mullins who was being investigated for her murder.

Curious to know, I went back to that cemetery one weekend when I had some free time. Under the giant cedar tree I could now read his name:

Barnaby H. Mullins Beloved Husband and Father June 1st 1893- Jan. 4th 1930

I asked the old caretaker where Eleanore Moore was buried. He pointed me in the direction near the back of the yard. As we walked he said, “I guess you know the story, huh?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I expected him to tell me about Eleanore.

“Sometimes people see an old man wandering around. Some people have even talked to him. They say he asks for ‘Ellie’, but then he disappears. I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing until the day I met him. I thought he was just visiting late. He was standing right over yonder.” He pointed to a lone standing headstone in the back just ahead of us. It stood proudly in a tight plot near the wrought iron fence that bordered the cemetery, which was overgrown with honeysuckle.

“That’s her,”said the caretaker as we approached the spot. “They say she threw herself in front of a train the day he got married. He paid for her headstone on account she was a suicide. Her family was ashamed and all. That’s why she’s way over here.”

I looked around. There were a number of plain flat graves scattered around like patchwork in a cement quilt. Her epitaph was one of the few still legible. I stooped down to read its engraving:

Eleanore Lynn Moore June 1st 1894-Oct. 6th 1921

“And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveler between life and death.”