Why won't that clown play Roy Orbison anymore?   He looks half-asleep, he could use a little Rock 'n Roll.  Truck drivers, they'll run over anything or anybody.   No, I am not holding a grudge, just feeling a little testy about this trip.   And it's boring in this cab tonight, looking at tar stretching between snow banks.  I ought to go talk to Kenny on the roof.  He says he likes it up there, but I know better.  He gets jealous when I space out, observing truck drivers.  Don't know what his problem is, they pick their nose and scratch their nuts, mostly, though I've watched one masturbating on the Interstate.  Kenny doesn't understand scientific curiosity.  He never sat in an anthropology class, probably can't even spell anthropology.  Never mind, he'll get an education, I'm on his case and we have lots of time.   I have no choice.   What kind of intelligent conversation can I expect from an aging fart who delights in the rush of a sixty-mile-an-hour blow going through his innards for hours on end.

     "I'm a sensation seeker," he says.  More like a reincarnated beagle, the kind that hangs its head out of car windows.  And just as dumb.  The man never needed wind to have air flow between his ears.  What's one to do? It seems like a ghost can't be too choosy when it comes to company.

     I still don't believe it.  With all the blood that must have been spilled in car or coach accidents on this highway and all the fighting since the road was a trail between the hunting grounds of the People of the Dawn and the fur traders' settlements on the Saint Lawrence, you'd think there would have been enough violent deaths to have   a ghost behind every boulder on the forest floor.  I'm still looking.  Back when I was trying to figure things out I started at the most likely place and I searched the rooms of the Glory.  Still standing then, though quite drafty.  Could a hoodlum have been punched to his demise over a round of drinks in the tavern?  Would a long-harassed kitchen wench have gored a cook and pushed him to his death over a roaring fire in the cavernous hearth?  What about upstairs, under the oak timber of the mansard rooms. Could an adventuress have slipped hemlock in the medicine cup of her drowsy husband to despair with great cries and go on to Quebec with his horses and his gold?  Wasn't even a stable boy laid for good by the kick of a mule?  A coachman dragged by a team spooked by the howls of a pack of wolves and brought here to lose the last of his blood to the lancet of a traveling quack? Not even a drunk lost to DT far from home?

     No sir.  Not a soul.  Nothing, but a fleeing shimmer one time behind the spider webs in the crumbling staircase.  In my early ghost days, nights, I hadn't yet thought to refrain from the cumbersome assuming of my human form.  I didn't know the tingle of a pole dance on the shaft of a moonbeam, the enchantment of being but a shade in a waterfall rainbow, the perverse pleasure of spreading in icy haze over the wandering hands of boys lost in guilty yearnings on a summer afternoon.  Later, as a better-adjusted spirit, I learned to recognize the lazy veil that we are when the burden of our sorrow stills our caring for material appearance.  I went back through the collapsing walls of the Glory's to find nothing but mice where stair treads had fallen to make a tidy nest.  Wandering in the silent wreck, I called and begged, I cried my loneliness, I howled, only to flush a bat in a garret and a thousand swifts from the chimney.  Hoodlum or adventuress, whomever dwelled in the staircase shimmer was one unfriendly ghost.  Or perhaps it was gone. Just gone.

     That's why I couldn't quite believe my good luck when this guy pumped three slugs between Kenny's shoulder blades.  Right before my eyes, on my very own hill.  The thrill of it.  And there was the poor devil face-down in the ditch, the big car speeding off, tires shrieking, steam rising from the wet tar.  The thrill of it!  Joy, oh joy, I knew that at long last I had found myself someone to talk to.  For eternity.

     E. T. E. R. N. I. T. Y. Picture a slew of skeletons in white and red tutus on a football field by the River Styx:

     "Gimme an E!... Gimme a T!..." ETERNITY, The BIG E!  With brain-fried Kenny.  Just like the "till death do us part" business actually, an orgy of overblown expectations followed by grim reality. How long can you listen to someone's bull?  Try eternity.

     You have to make your own entertainment, look for new thrills, new stories.  Suits me, I always was the roaming kind.  That's what got me into trouble to begin with on that damn hill. Maybe I got stranded that night, but the guy was ditched.  The son-of-a-bitch never told anyone, as far as I know, but the last laugh was mine.  Guess who levitated Ex-Lax into the wedding cake mix at the bakery --talk about a feast of spirit over strength-- when he married the Boisombre town slut.  Christ, whoever heard of a nuptial benediction aboard a potato harvesting machine. A brand new one, for sure, but please!  I had to spice up the proceedings.  Hitched a ride aboard this very truck, the Potato Rocket they call it.  Regular service from Boisombre to Boston and back. I have been on fun rides on the Rocket.  Emil likes his rock 'n' roll.  Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Elvis, golden oldies.  Golden elderlies, really.  The stuff was already old in my bobby sox days.  God, I feel ancient.  I wish this man would put some music on.  What's wrong with him?

     He might be missing that fast niece of mine.  I would!  For all of eternity I won't forget the two-backed jig they did the night they met.  I was shimmering discreetly by Emil's gold satin bowling jacket on the hook behind his seat when they headed for the bunk.  When they got into it, I had to go in and lay on his back.  Boy, what a treat to find out Gail liked a roll in the hay as much as I ever did.  I always felt a bit guilty about it.  Not anymore now that I know hot blood runs in the family.  That's one advantage to being a ghost; you get to figure out genetics.  Lucky I had a good start in what's-his-name's class.  I would have graduated then if I had wanted to tackle Lifetime Fitness.  And General Botany, again.  Lifetime Fitness I just couldn't face.  In retrospect I surely didn't need it!  Then I couldn't get my Botany credits transferred from Franconia College.  They had gone out of business. Kenny couldn't believe that one.

     "This is America, Suzanne, colleges don't go out of business."

     "That one did."

     "Well then, they must have kept those records.  They have places for those things, babe.  Your botany credits, they are sitting somewhere.  Probably in a cavern in Colorado, an old Air Force command post.  They have to use those joints for something."

     Sure. I won't go looking however.  Having had no choice in the matter, it's fortunate that I'd rather continue my education in a non-traditional fashion.  It is true that ghosts can't turn the pages of books very easily.  Never mind carry the damn things.  Then we can't taste or touch.  But oh, ghosts can watch!  Ghosts can wait!  Ghosts can plot!  Ghosts fly!  Ghosts can dance, ghosts think and agonize, rant and cry, scream epics in the thick of gales, climb snowbound peaks to loosen avalanches of words from dizzying heights in perfect cadence and rhymes. Ghosts have time for grammar.  They are the A+ students in the impossible dreams of frustrated professors of English.

     Think of Kenny, up there in a trance, riding atop three orange lights, good ol' Double-negative-Kenny soon to be Kenny Strunk-and-White.  I will see to it though it will be a challenge, the man isn't interested in self-improvement presently.  He's sad, scared, still stoned, perhaps forever in contemplation of an eternity of paranoia.  Forever high, though ghosts can't smoke.

Next, THERE GOES KENNY'S EVERYTHING