Tom Funk

FICTION

Unholy Ghost

Why do they call this stuff discovery? Litigation, the law profs said, is about the search for truth. OK, so—truth? This crap’s a waste of time. I read a three-paragraph police report, pick out the names of the witnesses, and relist them under “Potential Witnesses the State May Call to Testify.” Any high schooler could have told you that without this form, but the rules say we gotta list them. So we do.

Then I scribble “None, investigation continues” in the answer box to the other four questions. Truth be told, there wasn’t much investigation to begin with and there sure ain’t gonna be any continuing. But this is the search for truth, so we lie about continuing to look for it. That just covers our backside in the event we forget to put somebody’s name down.

Answering overdue discovery was not my favorite way to spend a Friday night. I owed Sinkler a favor, he covered my call when I had the “flu,” so here I sat.

It wasn’t really Friday night. It was ten after four, and in this joint they don’t lock the doors ’til 4:30. Everybody else had already headed out. It was just me, Mary Alice Snickton, the world’s most compliant legal assistant, and this stack of forty-five case files teetering on the brink of falling into my lap. Why we haven’t gone to e-filing is a question some stiff in accounting will have to explain to St. Peter. Meanwhile, I lived in fear of an early burial under paperwork.

It was then that Mary Alice announced a “defendant” was in the lobby. Most of the time I would have told Mary Alice to have her hit the bricks, but weighing the thought of plowing through forty-four more discovery forms against listening to the pleas from one more miscreant, I let curiosity get the best of me.

When she rounded the metal bookcase separating me from Mary Alice, I could tell this would be interesting. The woman was thin and short. I thought she was tiptoeing ’til I looked down and saw how high her heels were. She stared so wide-eyed you would have thought she’d seen a ghost, which it turns out, wasn’t too far from what I was about to hear. Her smile was broad and exposed a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth, but there was no self-consciousness about her for that or anything else. She greeted me like I was her long-lost friend from high school. It was obvious high school had been a long time ago. She sat her gold sequined purse down and threw back her curly, over-gelled hair. She sat and crossed her bone-thin legs. I noted the silver sequins on her heels clashed with the gold of the purse.

She leaned forward and placed one set of press-on nails to her chest. “I’m Barbara Jean Thornwhistle, hun, pleased to meet you. So sorry it’s under these circumstances. All my friends call me Babs, but you don’t have to … What’s your name, honey?”

I tried to gather my wits and recover from the glare glinting off the sequins on her purse catching the sunlight that was beaming in from my office window.

“Ah, well, it’s Farmington … Ben Farmington. Assistant State’s Attorney for Gillett County.”

She tossed her head back again, trying to move the saturated bangs off her forehead, but they remained plastered there.

“Your lovely assistant says you’re the prosecutor against me. Is that true, dear?” she inquired gap-mouthed.

I flipped open the file before me and glanced over the charges. “Yes, you’ve got one count of shoplifting a loaf of bread from the Piggly-Wiggly over on McBride. What can I do for you?” I continued, hoping she noticed the teetering pile of discovery files and would get to the point.

“I know this looks terrible, hun. I never thought I’d find myself sitting across from a prosecutor’s desk having to explain myself. I do hope you’ll indulge me. I’ve come to believe that this terrible situation in which I find myself is not of my own doing.”

Before I could answer she had bent her reddened face towards the purse and dug into the bag, retrieving a wad of tissue that looked previously used but was called into service again to staunch the flow of tears that had erupted.

I breathed a sigh of resignation. My plans of getting out anytime soon had just disappeared. “Go ahead,” I mumbled.

“I don’t know if you recognize the name Thornwhistle, but until recently I was married to the Reverend Phillip Johnny Bob Thornwhistle, pastor of the Gillett Holy Ghost Revival Center and host of the Revive Us Again program on AngelAirwave.com?” She raised her oversized eyebrows in expectation.

“Uh … not sure I’ve seen that one,” I mumbled.

She batted her eyes and shook her head in disappointment. “Well, that’s OK. It’s not on TV anymore because Phil, who I call the Reverend, fell into sin with his secretary and let the Devil convince him it was OK to empty out the ministry bank account and take her on a mission trip to Cancun!”

She paused, staring wide-eyed, letting her mouth drop open again, apparently waiting for a response. I was determined not to give one, thinking that would only delay the end of this. Instead, I stared stone-faced straight ahead, keeping my prosecutorial objectivity intact, and waited for her to continue.

“The ministry Board of Directors, being the good men of God that they are, took control of all the accounts, and suspended Phil’s access.

“Unfortunately, it cut off the only access I had to any income. The Reverend and I had agreed it would be best for me to stay home and raise our girls, and since his first book released, it was the Lord’s will that I didn’t have to work outside of our home. That seemed like such a blessing to our girls having their momma there 24/7 and all. When Philista, our youngest, went off to college there wasn’t any reason for me to go back into the marketplace, the books having sold so well and the Lord blessing us so greatly with the TV ministry and all. Phil said, ‘just keep staying home and doing your charity work,’ which I’ve been involved with down in Mexico. Little did I know he was taking Stevie Dawn Phelps down there. That’s his secretary, you know.”

She paused, waiting for me to recover from the presumed overwhelming shock. But the only thing overwhelming me was the feeling that I’d be trapped here with that mountainous stack of discovery ’til the clock struck midnight.

“Sorry about your marital issues, but what’s that got to do with these charges?” I flatly stated.

“Well, dear, my point is Phil left me high and dry. I mean I had the Lord to lean on, and He never left my side, praise be, but I had nothing to live on. I hadn’t worked for years and what I knew was ministry. But half of our supporters thought I musta been in on the scam and weren’t gonna give a dime to any church that I was a part of. So I didn’t really have a place to go.”

She paused and stared at me, fishing for something to help gauge how much sympathy had been generated by her tale, but I wasn’t about to loosen the stoic freeze frame I had locked my face in to. It was my best bet of ending this as early as possible.

With a slight sigh, she continued, “I had thoughts of applying for a secretarial position, seein’s how I’d done that back in the day before I met Phillip. But then it occurred to me that it would make it impossible for me to get down to Mexico when it was time for our semi-annual charity visits. That’s where my heart was. So I just kept up my contacts with those good folks down there and used up the savings that Phil hadn’t pilfered outta our bank account. It wasn’t long before that dried up.

“I didn’t want to go beggin’ to the government, but what could I do? But I still couldn’t make ends meet. It’s not easy to go from havin’ six figures available to living on the government minimum.

“Well, long story short, there was too much month and not enough check for Babs! … Know what I mean? Hun, when you’re used to Hello Fresh or the local Chinese place delivering your meals daily, it just ain’t easy to get used to having to scan the weekly shopper for coupons!

“Anyways, when I got back from my trip to help the little orphans down in Cancun, I found I was way short. August’s got thirty-one days. I hadn’t eaten for the last four of them. I just decided I had to go to the store. That’s when ole Satan gotta hold of me. There’s a reason he’s the “father of lies,” ’cause he told me a whopper! Had me convinced that if I’d just name the meal of my choice, the Lord was gonna provide one of His saints to buy me a bag of groceries! So I threw on my Crocs, grabbed my purse, and fired up the Corolla, and even though the tank was about past the big E, I made the parking lot, thinking I should take it as a sign of the Lord’s blessing.

“I ain’t one to get too greedy, so I told the Lord I’d settle for a ham ’n’ cheese. You can look at that video they got of me, and all you’re gonna see is a three-dollar package of Oscar Mayer sliced ham and a small package of Kraft American cheese. I had a five-dollar bill put back for emergencies, and I figured I could get the ham ’n’ cheese with that, and the Lord’s people would provide bread and maybe some mayo.

“But, hunny, there are twenty-four aisles in that store, and I went through every last one of them, praying and shouting inside my head that the next corner I turned was gonna reveal an elder or a deacon waiting with a big smile and a twenty. Turned out it was all a lie straight from the pit! The Lord had not given me a word! I was led by that growl in the pit of my bowels to think He was gonna provide, but all he provided was disappointment, and more stomach acid than I could handle.

“I had a vision of that ham ’n’ cheese on a piece of pumpernickel. I could taste it as I wheeled the cart past the bakery, smelling all that fresh baked dough, the fancy high-end breads, as I kept my eye straight on the discount bin. Surely, I thought, there would be somebody offering to lend me even a dollar or two to take home some stale, half-squashed white bread. But no! The Deceiver worked it so I was alone in the aisle, just me and all that Sunbeam.

“Well, I fought the urge hard, but ole Scratch was bound to make me do his bidding. He put a powerful notion in me that I could fit one of them smaller loaves inside this purse,” she said, quickly grabbing the sequined handbag and shaking it towards me.

“I shouted ‘No! Get thee behind me!’ And I turned to walk away from that discount bin, when suddenly I felt this dark wave of blackness overtake me. My mind went blank, and my vision got so cloudy everything was just a blur. I felt icy hands lift me from the floor and next thing I know’d I was floating over to the bin! He didn’t set me down gentle neither; he throwed me smack up against that bin. I had to grab the side to keep from falling into it. My hand landed right on a loaf of $1.49 Sunbeam, and next thing I knew I stuffed it into my bag.

“I barely got my bag zipped when I looked up and seen that youngster with the pimply face and apron look at me with his jaw dropped open. The next thing I knew he was runnin’ off to get his manager, and she wasn’t even polite about making me open up my bag. There it sat—one loaf of Sunbeam right next to my extra set a nails and my little pocket New Testament.”

Hoping I could bring this melodrama towards its conclusion, I sat up suddenly and interrupted. “So you admit you took the bread?” I blurted before she could get another word in.

“Oh, hunny,” she continued, her plaintive eyes staring into mine, “I ain’t gonna lie about it. It was my hand that stuffed that loaf in my bag. But Ben, what you gotta see is that it wasn’t my idea to take it! It was that ole demon that was guidin’ my hand! I was so weak from hunger I couldn’t resist him. If I’d a had an ounce of strength in my bones, hun, you gotta know I’d a fought him off. But I was just so weak, and that ham ’n’ cheese was gonna taste so good, and he was so bound and determined to get me to sin he lifted me up and threw me inta that bin!”

The tears were coming fast and furious, and she put that overused Kleenex back to work. I sat back in my chair and tried my best to keep the smirk off my face. As she gathered her composure, I composed a response I thought was neutral enough not to offend and yet got my rather obvious point across.

“Ms. Thornwhistle, what forces beyond this world might have been working on you when you put that loaf of bread in your purse is nothing I can really give any consideration to. In my job, I have to consider what your part in this situation was, and in terms of the human involvement in this situation, I think you just told me that you were the only human involved in the theft of the Sunbeam. Is that a fair assessment?”

She wiped what was left of her eyeliner from below her eyes and gathered up the Kleenex for one colossal blow. “I guess you’re tellin’ me that the fact that Satan overpowered me and made me take that loaf ain’t gonna make any difference? I grabbed it, so I’m guilty? Is that it?”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am,“ I mumbled.

“Well, guess I shoulda expected that …. No offense, but y’all just don’t know the power of Satan.” She shook her head and grimaced as she stood. “Thank you kindly for your time, Mr. Farmington …. I just hope you never have to struggle with the Prince of Darkness the way I have.”

“I sure hope not, ma’am,” I responded. She nodded and kept walking past my cubicle.

After she disappeared, I had thoughts of telling Mary Alice what I’d just heard. After all, it’s not every day you hear “the devil made me do it” as a defense.

Instead, I resolved to get back to the stack of discovery files hovering on the verge of collapse on the edge of my desk. But after filling out two forms, I found myself still lost in the story I’d just heard. Opening the Thornwhistle file, I found a flash drive sitting in a plastic sandwich bag. It was marked “Piggly-Wiggly in-store video.”

Why not? I asked myself. Might as well take a look. I popped the flash drive into my PC tower and waited for the video to start.

I was treated to a grainy screen full of horizontal lines that suddenly morphed into a shot of an aisle in a grocery store, soundless but clear enough that I could see a bin with the Sunbeam logo at the end of it. As I watched, a woman in a pink sundress with a gold sequined handbag and Crocs pushed a near-empty cart. It was obviously Ms. Thornwhistle. She appeared to be talking to herself.

Then, suddenly she bent over, hands on the cart, the back of her head bowing toward the ground. I thought I saw her legs begin to quiver. It was then that the horizontal lines began to reemerge and shoot across the middle of the screen, blocking my view of Ms. Thornwhistle, save for her legs from the knee down and her feet. I slid my hand across to my mouse and tried to adjust the screen.

As I did, it looked like Ms. Thornwhistle’s legs and feet suddenly just disappeared, and the screen went so bright I could see nothing but a grainy yellowness, sort of like what you see happen in those old atomic explosion films. Then the flash of grainy yellow slowly disappeared and the horizontal lines were left, blocking the view of most of the screen.

I blinked from the brightness of the flash, and when I readjusted my eyes, the horizontal lines faded and left me with a clear view of the aisle again. Now Ms. Thornwhistle was flush against the Sunbeam bin, bent over the side of it like she’d tried to jump in. As she pushed off from the bin, she stood up and stuffed a small loaf of bread in her handbag.

I sat mouth agape from what I had seen.

My ears picked up the click of Mary Alice’s heels. She smiled as she poked her head around the corner. “See you Monday, Ben, I’m going home,” she said.

“Just a sec!” I nervously blurted, pulling the flash drive from its port and stuffing it back in the bag. “I’ll walk you out.”

“I thought you had a bunch of discovery to get out. Did you get all that done?” she queried.

“Nah,” I replied, “I need to get outta here. It’ll wait.”

Tom Funk is a retired judge, having served in the state court of Illinois. He presently practices law on a part-time basis as a pro bono volunteer attorney for a legal aid organization. He has been published in Spitball, Altarwork, Cowboy Jamboree, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Mystery Tribune.

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Photo: ‘Drink RC!’ — ‘Southern Living’ Exhibit at the NPS Interpretive Center Lowndes County (AL) March 2019, by Ron Cogswell, CC BY 2.0 Deed, via Flickr.com. Cropped and modified by Veronica McDonald.