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The Ghosts of Green Lake
A Short Story
by Toni. Babcock
The summer of 1938 was hot and stifling. School was starting in five weeks and my cousin, Eddie, and I were both going into eighth grade. He was prankish and a trickster, but now he stood red-eyed and pale in the doorway of our kitchen. It’s a day I’ll never forget.
“My grandpa drowned this morning in Green Lake,” he said. The words tumbled out of his mouth and into the air like lead.
“What?” I asked dumbly.
Mom stood from peeling potatoes and brought her wet hand to her face.
“Oh my word! How did it happen?” she asked.
“He fell out of his fishing boat. He was drinking.” A flash of remorse spread over his face. “I should have been with him.”
I could see Eddie’s words cut sharp like a razor whip, leaving him sore open.
He stood there skinny and trembling, his brown eyes looking lost.
“It’s not your fault,” I told him, stepping forward. Eddie backed away.
“Dear boy, sit down. What can I get you?” Mom offered, trying to ease the pain, as if she could.
“No thanks, I don’t need anything. I just stopped by to tell you. I really have to go now. I’m sorry …” Eddie walked back out the door.
“Eddie, wait!” I said, but he didn’t respond.
“Loretta, let him be,” Mom said. “Give him time. I’ll call his mother.”
I watched Eddie from the back porch until his figure diminished and disappeared down the trail beside Pine Creek. When I turned around, Mom was already on the phone.
Eddie became sullen and hard to talk to as the weeks went by. People started to make a wide path around him. That’s what happens when somebody hurts too much. But I was determined to cut across that path, before whatever held Eddie prisoner hardened to a stone.
There was an old church pew that sat under the big red pine between our farm and the place where Eddie lived. It was where we waited for the school bus every morning. Our school was Green Lake Middle School, which sat up the bank from Green Lake. The same lake where Eddie’s grandpa drowned. That’s one reason I figured Eddie started skipping school. At least one or two days a week I sat on that old church pew alone. I used that time to think about Eddie—and pray.
Eddie started hanging around with LeRoy Hanks, the worst kid in class. That was when he started punishing everyone who really cared about him by being angry and rebellious. I prayed God would help me figure out how to rescue Eddie from himself.
Late in October Eddie was called into the principal’s office for rolling tobacco into cigarettes on school property. I knew I’d miss the bus home if I waited for him, but I wanted to wait, so I sat in a chair by the principal’s office and did a reading assignment.
It wasn’t long before the door cracked open and our principal, Mrs. Callaway, invited me inside.
“Come in, Loretta. I think it would be beneficial to have you here with Eddie,” she told me.
Mrs. Callaway was stately, and kind. Everyone looked up to her. She had bright blue eyes that grabbed you and held on, until she knew you got her point. Even the bad kids had a hard time being bad around Mrs. Callaway. She knew I was concerned about Eddie, and it made me feel proud that she invited me in.
I closed my book, stepped into her office, and sat in a wooden chair beside Eddie. Mrs. Callaway took a seat behind her desk, and began to tell us a story I had never heard.
“We had a teacher that taught in a one room school house that sat right on this hill before our new school was built. Her name was Miss Carlson. Eddie, have you heard of her?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of her. She was my mom’s teacher—and Billy’s.”
“Billy?” I asked him.
“My mom had a brother Bill who drowned in Green Lake during recess. He was ten,” Eddie said.
I started to feel goose bumps. “How come you never told me?” I asked him.
“I don’t have to tell you everything. Besides, my mom hardly ever talks about him. That was ages ago.”
“It was early winter,” Mrs. Callaway continued. “There was a good hard freeze on the lake for several days. Still, your grandmother wasn’t sure the ice was safe, but Billy wore her down with his begging, so she allowed him to take his skates to school. Unfortunately, the ice was too thin that day, and Billy broke through.”
Mrs. Callaway paused and looked at Eddie. “How hard was it for your grandmother to forgive herself for letting Billy take his skates?” Her eyes were questioning, and startling blue. Eddie just shrugged and looked down.
“I imagine it was terribly hard. And what of Miss Carlson? She allowed the younger children out for recess while she stayed behind with the older ones to review an assignment. I’m sure every time Miss Carlson looked down the hill toward Green Lake after that day, she thought of her decision to let them go. In spite of their regrets, both of these women had an important mission to fill. They had children to raise, and children to teach. People counted on them. They had to forge ahead, and not allow regret to destroy their futures.”
Mrs. Callaway caught Eddie with her eyes and asked, “Am I making sense, Eddie?”
“Sort of—I guess,” he replied, shifting in his chair.
Mrs. Callaway paused and her gaze softened.
“I say we take a walk, the three of us. Follow me,” she announced.
She didn’t wait for a response, but stood up abruptly. Eddie and I followed her cue as she led us outside the school building. We followed her over a slope, down toward the shore of Green Lake.
“What are we doing?” Eddie asked.
Eddie didn’t want to be that close to the lake. Not yet.
“You’ll see,” said Mrs. Callaway. We stopped walking, and sat down in a patch of grass. It was strange seeing Mrs. Callaway sitting in grass with her neat gray skirt and tidy white blouse. She was always so dignified.
“Eddie,” she said, “I know you are feeling anguish because you weren’t with your grandpa in that boat. But there is something else troubling you. What is it?” she prodded.
Eddie sat with his arms wrapped around his knees. Then he put his head down on them. “I hid in the barn,” he said at last. “Grandpa called me to go fishing that morning, and I didn’t want to go, so I hid. I figured he could take care of himself, but that was stupid. I didn’t go with him, and I wasn’t there when he needed me.”
“Eddie,” I broke in, “none of us are where we ought to be, every moment of our lives. Look, if you don’t believe God can forgive you, you’ll never forgive yourself, and then you might feel like hiding when He calls. Please, Eddie,” I pleaded, “don’t keep punishing yourself!”
Eddie looked up and stared straight ahead over the lake, but didn’t say anything.
After a moment or two, Mrs. Callaway stood up and announced, “I say we throw some stones.” She stood up, walked to the waters edge, and picked up a small rock.
“Regrets haunt,” she called into the wind. “They keep us from reaching our full potential. I say we cast them into the deep.” She hurled her stone out over the lake, and bent down to pick up another. I stood up to join in, while Eddie sat and watched.
Mrs. Callaway began to pick up smooth flat rocks to skip on the surface of the water. I wonder if she knew Eddie could skip a rock farther than any boy in Green Lake Middle School.
Eddie stood up, but kept his hands in his pockets.
“Look at her,” I said to Eddie. “Have you ever seen Mrs. Callaway having so much fun?”
I tried skipping stones on the lake, all the while wondering what Eddie was going to do with the regrets that haunted him. Maybe nothing we said really mattered. Maybe Eddie thought we were just being two dumb dramatic women. What if he turned around, went up that hill and walked away? What if he never forgave himself? My eyes started to burn. Then a stone whizzed past me and skipped out over the water. It was Eddie’s. I took a deep breath, and thanked God.
None of us talked much after that, not for a long while. We just kept casting stones out over Green Lake—me, Eddie, and Mrs. Callaway.
It all seems so far away now, that October day. But for me it was the day that God, me, and Mrs. Callaway finally broke through—and rescued my cousin Eddie back from the ghosts of Green Lake.
Toni M. Babcock is a freelance Christian writer from South St. Paul, Minnesota. She enjoys writing short stories, poems and essays that inspire faith in Jesus. As a former student of the Institute of Children’s Literature, she takes a special interest in writing short stories for children, sometimes using her own grandchildren as characters!
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