Monk E. Mann story Neil Crabtree
Montgomery Edward Mann is known to me as Monk, though he’s been called many nicknames in his long and adventurous life. A true 20th Century Man, a generation ahead of me and my friends, his house in the middle of our neighborhood became where we would go when our parents were fighting or working two jobs or getting so wasted on drugs and alcohol they could not answer questions like when’s dinner or can I get twenty bucks. Somehow we’d end up at Monk’s, where he always had the grill going in his backyard and loved having someone to cook for. His wife Patricia would take care of us too, making sure we understood we were guests, not lodgers, and that she did not want us to interrupt her novellas no matter what. “Ask Monk,” she’d say, chasing me out of the TV room. Her smile cheered me up whenever I saw it.
Now, twenty years later, I still go to Monk. I’m a writer, and I’m determined to get my name out there, and make a living writing books and selling them self-published on the Internet, at Amazon and Ingram and Draft2Digital. Monk will read and line edit for me. He will encourage me, without really saying anything. “Cut out twenty-two paragraphs” he might say. “Clarify who is speaking.”
“This should entertain the masses,” was the one I came to visit him about. What did that mean? Is it good or bad? And of course, I just wanted to talk about it. Until I found out he had just exorcised a ghost for my cousin Kimmy. I thought her first husband Sander joked when he told me about it, so I headed over to Monk’s.
Sander sat in the easy chair, Monk in a recliner. They passed a joint between them. From where I stood it smelled like good dope. When I approached, Monk passed it to me as he exhaled a huge cloud. Grey hair trimmed, beard needing work, comfortable shorts and T-shirt, flip-flops, blue eyes getting red, Monk smiled and pointed to the sofa.
Sander got up and shook my free hand. ”Long time, cuz. Hit that, go ahead. I just brought it in and fresh ain’t even the half of it.”
“Thanks.” I did as I was told, tasting resin and sweet peppery smoke and my brain taking the elevator to the ninety-ninth floor.
“Did you see the ghost?” I asked Sander.
“Dude, I saw Kimmy jump around when the air-conditioner would kick on. And her new guy? Total pussy. Wanted to move to a motel during the psychic events. She’s been micro-dosing and, you know well as I do, she doesn’t have enough tread to keep on the highway.”
He took the reefer back. “Monk fixed it,” Sander said.
“Sit down,” Monk said. “Good dope, right? I’m rewarding myself after dealing with the supernatural. Turns out my Doors of Perception have become… louvered Florida-Room windows, let’s say. As much goes out as comes in.”
I sat down on the sofa near him. “Was there a ghost?”
“Depends. What do you mean by ghost?” he asked.
“A spirit, of someone passed away.”
“Like in the movies.”
I looked at Sander who grinned from ear to ear.
“Monk. Did you see a ghost? What did you do?”
“Did you bring any beer?” he asked.
“No. I do have a bottle of Anejo in the car. Want it?”
“Monk,” Sander said. “There’s a cooler full of longnecks right on your porch.”
“Right,” Monk said. “Thank you, Sander. Let’s see. You want to know about ghosts, right? Spirits of people who have passed away but remain somehow in or around the place they lived or even died. Do you know…they’re exactly like they were before they died.”
“Like what?”
“There are many people who have never once considered the idea, there is no God. There is no Heaven or Hell. Their religion kept them from exploring the freedom of taking responsibility of their own lives. When they die and find out it’s all bullshit, they feel the same anxiety. They don’t want to join the energy field and all its potential. They want to stay home and wait for Judgment Day. Being the one responsible for your thoughts and actions and actual self is terrifying, so terrifying, people get down on their knees and talk to empty rooms to make it go away.”
“Are you saying there’s no God?” I asked.
“No. I’m saying it doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
Sander stood up, still holding onto the nub of the joint, excited. “Don’t be saying there’s no God, Monk. I’m driving all the way home tonight and I’ll be praying the whole way. I’m stoned as fuck.”
Monk got up and got the roach before it burned Sander’s fingers. “I’m not saying there’s no God. I’m telling him about the ghost in his cousin’s house. But you’re right, I’m talking stoner philosophy while stoned with stoners. One thing, fellas. I’m thirty years older than you. I got to see a world that no longer exists, not as it was, I mean. The world you are seeing is not the world I saw. And my world was not the world my parents saw. By the time they taught me anything, it wasn’t there anymore.”
That bit of fine-talking was the reason we all loved the man. And he told us the key to his wisdom: Never share it on the Internet. He told all of us this in an email from his website. Then posted it on Facebook. Made total sense. The truth is beyond AI interceptions.
Monk wanted to talk. “I got to Kimmy’s house, an old two-story place renovated instead of torn down. The front yard , neatly kept. The walkway clean. The wooden steps up to the wooden porch in good shape, recently painted. Kimmy came out smiling, her boyfriend not so much. His hand felt wet when I shook it, like something he did not want to do. Kimmy led us inside after bullshitting a while. I could feel a weird vibe as soon as I crossed the threshold. A spirit of some kind, wanting away from this couple any way possible.”
“But there was a ghost?” I asked.
“There was an unhappy spirit there,” he answered.
“A dead guy, spooking them,” I said, trying to pin him down.
“A guy previously alive, now deceased, haunting that big old house?”
“Right.”
“Of course not.”
Sander stood again. “I’ve gotta eat something.”
“Patricia is out of town, but left me twenty-six different prepared meals,” Monk told him. “Eat as many of them as you can.”
“Don’t tell me twice,” Sander said, moving to the kitchen.
“You saw the spirit?” I said, wanting to get back on track. Stoned conversations tend to go all over the place.
“No. You feel a spirit, you don’t see it. I could feel an oppressed spirit.”
“And what did you do to make it go away?”
Monk leaned back, getting comfortable. “I told Kimmy and her boyfriend, Oswald, to go outside and walk around the block. He didn’t want to. Aha, my brain said. ‘And why not?’ I asked. ‘I have a fear of going outside,’ he said. ‘And a fear of being inside as well,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s a lot of fear to carry round’, I told him. ‘You’re scared all the time.’ ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed.”
I could see Monk warming up to remembering the moment.
“So, I tell him this. If he wants the spirit to go out of this house, he had to do as I say. He has to walk with Kimmy around the entire block, looking at the sky, the trees, the sunset, the flowers, and watch out not to step in any dog poo. He has to stretch after the first street, move his neck and shoulders around. After the second street, he has to hold Kimmy’s hand while they walk. After that, all he can do is shut up and listen. Kimmy is going to talk his ears off. Just keep walking and get safely back here within an hour.”
Monk laughs. “He says to me, ‘What will you do?”
“I told him that the fear so strong inside him has broadcast itself all over the house. Going out of the house weakens the received fear, to where I can remove it. It wants to be removed, to be un-afraid, just like he did.”
Monk sits up straight, like a professor to a student. “What if I can’t do it?” he says.
“Then I’ll tell Kimmy that the bad feeling comes from you. You go, it goes.”
“Damn, Monk,” I say. “Did Kimmy hear/”
“Nah. She was upstairs looking for her walking shoes. I needed him to understand I thought he was playing her.”
“And you think he was behind the psychic disturbance bullshit Kimmy ranted about?”
“He needed the ghost, more than the ghost needed him, see what I mean.”
There was more. “While they were gone, I went into their backyard, where Kimmy has a garden. Her trowel and little shovel were there. A green and pink Super Soaker. Bags of OrthiGro Topsoil. A wheelbarrow filled with compost. I knew then what to do. I went inside, and in the refrigerator, I found an onion and a green pepper, fresh. I took them outside and dug a hole and buried them, using lots of topsoil. I dug up a small marigold and planted it on top of the buried vegetables. When they got back, I showed them where I had returned the spirit to the Earth, where the spirit could be happy. Kimmy squealed. They laughed and I could tell the walk had done them good. They were free to drink wine, get laid, no one was watching. I got out of there as soon as I could so they could enjoy each other for a change. The bad spirit was gone.”
“Monk the Ghostbuster,” I said. “I talked to Kimmy. She sounded happy. She quit microdosing last week and went back to the gym.”
“A happy ending,” Monk said. “I suppose you want to talk about your new manuscript. Ask me anything. My psychic doors are now opened.”
“Monk, what does your comment mean: ‘This should please the masses.’ Does that mean it could be a bestseller, or does it mean it’s written for morons?”
“It can be both.”
“Literary fiction or commercial fiction.”
“You simply need to address your audience and their prurient interest. Use these three phrases: heated loins, rock-hard, and swollen tips. Add them to the romantic scenes between characters. Your Amazon rating will go up two hundred per cent. Change Categories. Include Erotic. Porn on eBooks is the trend.”
“I don’t want to write pornography. I’m a serious writer.” As soon as I say it, I start to laugh. Monk too. “Loins,” I say, “That what Joyce did. Portrait of the Artist. Stephen would be tremendously excited by the word loins.”
“Being banned as Obscene was the only way Ulysses sold any copies,” Monk said. “Joyce sold books to people who did not read them except to look for the naughty bits. I’d call Joyce a serious writer.”
“Artist, he called himself. Am I an artist?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I don’t know either,” I said.
“Joyce studied aesthetics. Philosophy. Languages. But he never knew how to market a book, even when professional advice was given to him. The first editions of Dubliners were all bought up and burned in the streets of Dublin. Now they have statues of him everywhere. Loins.”
Sander came in, with a big platter of prepared meals he warmed up. The smell hit us stoners like a magnetic wave, lifting us up by our noses. The platter held five prepared meals, each in its Pyrex container, nuked somehow and smelling of warm home cooking.
“Monk, your wife sure can cook,” Sander said. “I was scarfing down a meatloaf and mashed potato plate when Kimmy called. Oswald has moved out. She wants to know if I’ll come over and watch a movie with her.”
“I thought burying the ghost got them more together,” I said. I picked a chicken and rice meal with sweet green peas on top. There were sliced pimientos in the yellow rice, my favorite. Monk picked a pork chop meal, with Stove Top stuffing and sliced carrots. Sander had a chicken parmigiana with red sauce and melted cheese over spaghetti, and we saw he had sprinkled red pepper flakes over the top, his personal fetish.
“That was three weeks ago. Hey. She’s been with that dweeb for months,” Sander said. “She needs a Manly Man.”
“You always were the romantic,” Monk said smiling. “And look at this platter. Now I won’t be ordering UberEATS for a change. Patricia will be delighted to see her food got eaten.”
“Monk’s trying to convince me to write pornography,” I told Sander.
“Great fucking idea. Mommy Porn is all the rage. Kimmy has Fifty Shades of everything on her Kindle, loves the stuff. Wanted me to tie her up one time. I offered to just gag her. She got mad.”
“Did she mention the spirit?” Monk asked.
“She says sprouts are coming out of the ground. Is that a good thing, she wants to know.”
“Tell her the spirit has returned to its roots,” Monk said.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” I asked.
“To us, it’s funny. To Kimmy, it fits in with her world vision.”
Sander chewed and swallowed a huge chunk of chicken. We all ate with the enthusiasm of High Times devotees.
“This is great. Dinner with a pornographer and a ghostbuster. Then let Kimmy get her revenge sex out of her system. Life is good,” Sander said.
“Count your blessings,” Monk said.
Life goes on. Weeks later. I’m adding heated loins and rock-hard to all my Amazon manuscripts. Turns out Monk had researched red-hot buzzwords and come up with the top three for Search Engine Optimization. SEO searched my new title descriptions, my added categories Sexy Thrillers and Erotica, and I sold more than I had all year. I thought Monk was joking that day. Nope. He’d done his homework. My homework. Amazon lets you change your online books for free, change the descriptions and categories and even the cover, if you do the work yourself. I was about to call him with the good news when I saw he’d called me three times since I turned off my ringer. Kimmy twice in five minutes. Uh-oh.
I call Kimmy first. “James, come over here please. Something awful has happened,” she says right off.
“What’s the matter, Kim?”
“Oswald. He’s dead. They shot him right in the backyard.”
“Who shot him?”
“The police. Monk is on his way. Sander is here, thank God. There’s cops and medics everywhere. I need your help.”
“I’m on my way. Stay with the guys.”
“Bye. Hurry.”
I don’t know why I try to write fiction. Real life is stranger than anything I ever imagined. Loins don’t even enter into the equation. I got my shit and headed out the door.
The scene was as she described. Cops and medics everywhere. I parked down the street outside the police barriers. As I walked toward Kimmy’s house, I saw a gurney being wheeled out near the open back end of the EMC vehicle. The patient was covered head-to-toe in a sheet that had straps across the chest area and legs. Kimmy cried standing there, watching the body being loaded for transport. Sander had an arm around her shoulders, and Monk stood next to them, talking to a uniformed officer. He pointed to me and the officer gave a sign for the cop guarding the perimeter to let me in.
Kim saw me and waited for me to approach before coming to give me an embrace. I felt her sobbing. Kimmy was still a beautiful woman, and I remembered what a powerful crush I had on her early in my high school years. Our parents forbade any concept of kissin’ cousins I entertained and sent me away for a year until I got over it. Holding her and trying to convey warm love now seemed so strange, a flashback of something I had flashed forward in a dream twenty years ago.
“Oh James, it’s so horrid,” she said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Sander and Monk joined us. “It’s kinda an accident,” Sander said.
Monk shook his head. “Accident? Try police over-reaction,” he said. “Oswald had come to get some things he’d left. Kimmy had changed the locks. He tried the doors and then went round to the windows looking for one to open. The nosey neighbor over there saw a man trying to break and enter and called the police.”
“He was in the back garden,” Sander said. “He was using Kimmy’s Super Soaker to water the plants. Cops arrive and he turned toward them holding the big Super Soaker and they opened fire. Eight times. They shot him eight times.”
Kim sniffed. “I use the Super Soaker because the hose doesn’t reach, and with the Soaker I can do all the hanging plants without dragging my little ladder around.”
“He was watering your garden?” I asked.
“He was shot watering the sprouts where Monk buried the spirit,” she said. “He was still laying there next to them when we got here. He hadn’t even been covered yet. It looked so awful.”
“Man, don’t ever turn to the cops holding anything,” Sander said. “They shot a guy holding his cellphone last week. Ain’t no Dirty Harry in these parts.”
The cops wrapped up their procedures and came over. Kim signed several report forms Monk looked over first and gave them back. Gradually the cop cars and EMC vehicles all took off. Police tape barriers still hung from tree limbs. Tape on the ground where Oswald had been shot. Dark spots, blood probably.
“You can’t stay here,” I said.
“She’s coming with me,” Sander said. “Her stuff’s there. Her comforter. She can’t sleep without her comforter.”
She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be all right. But Monk. Please get that spirit plant out of here. I don’t know how but I have a feeling the spirit made this happen.”
Monk nodded. “Of course I will, Kim. We’ll cleanse the area. James will help.”
She came to tell me goodbye. “Did we ever imagine anything like this, all those years ago.” In her eyes, I saw the teenage girl I’d loved come and go. “But you really need to start answering your phone,” she scolded me. “You told me you’d always be there but I called and called.”
“I’m a doofus,” I said. She smiled. Her father had always called me Doofus.
“Monk, thank you for coming. Get Doofus to help. And…” she looked around. “Damn,” she said. “The cops took my Super Soaker.”
“Come on, girl,” Sander said. “I’ll get you a real hose with nozzle you can use everywhere.”
They left and Monk and I stood there. “Let’s head around back,” he said. “There’s a digging tool I can use.”
“To remove the spirit,” I said. “Look, I’m going to go get some beer. We can put the spirit in the bag and throw it away down the street.”
“You’re not leaving me alone here,” he said.
I could see he was serious. “Are you scared?”
“Fuck you,” he said, and turned and walked away to the back. I knew Sander and Monk would be calling me Doofus from now on. I could picture Oswald in the backyard, walking around not sure what to do. Something inspired him to pick up the Super Soaker, not knowing the cops were on the way. He watered the spirit plant, for whatever reason. He heard someone behind him and turned to see if Kimmy was back and ended up face-to-face with Doctor D. Eight shots hit him. What did he think at the very end? Did he feel the victim of cruel fate? Or did he welcome the end to all pain, all fear, all love lost and never regained?
