"'Til Death Doesn't Us Part"

‘TIL DEATH DOESN’T US PART

by Richard Wright

“Ok, fine. I’ll do it,” Jerry said. “But I don’t know if I can make it all night. I’m sure it’s just going to make me go stir crazy.” He looked down at the ground and actually wished he could have kicked a little dirt on her. But he restrained himself.

“Would you please just trust me for once?” Sally said, brushing her brunette hair out of her face. “I really think you will be surprised when it’s all done. You won’t know until you finally try it.”

“I have tried it,” Jerry argued. “Remember, you tried to get me to do this a few days ago and it was a lame suggestion then too.” 

“It was not,” she fired back. “You just couldn’t stand to stay all night long, or even for two whole minutes. You thought you would be bored and so you took off. But just remember who had the better time.”

Jerry’s face formed a slow grin. “Hey, I had a blast. I just wish I could have been there to see the people’s faces when they realized their garbage can lids had been superglued on.” He began to laugh out loud.

Sally let him have his moment, then said, “But you would have had more fun if you had stayed with me. You could have seen people here. They came by all night long, and they will again – trust me,” Sally pleaded with him.

The two of them had been friends for just over a couple of months, after they had both attended a party across town. Although they had known about each other for some time, since they went to the same high school, it was only that night of the party that they finally had a real conversation. She liked his build and jet-black hair, while he commented how nice she had always seemed to be. They even laughed together about classes they liked and teachers they hated. But they also learned they could not be more opposite in their personalities. Sally had always known that Jerry was more of a free spirit, whereas she was more quiet and not quite as popular as he seemed to be. Though she had friends and liked to be around others, she wasn’t as crazy as Jerry, and was never comfortable being the center of attention, which was his favorite place to be. Even if it got him into trouble.

Nor was she as fond of practical jokes, for which Jerry seemed to have a knack and about which he bragged constantly. She enjoyed the occasional surprise to a friend once in a while, but she didn’t crave joking around like Jerry did. His antics had even won him the nickname “The Joker” in school. 

But now they were here, together, tonight. Just the two of them. She had to make this work. It might be her last chance with Jerry. 

“Maybe you’re right,” he finally spoke. “I suppose I’ve never really given it a fair shot. I just don’t like being bogged down in one place for long. I have to be on the move, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I think the best way to torture you would be to tie you to a chair. Or chain you so you couldn’t move. That would drive you out of your mind.”

“HA!” Jerry laughed again. “But we both know you can’t do that.”

“Don’t remind me,” Sally said.

“Hey, it’s always worked for me. No one has ever complained….well, not for at least a week now. I seem to have hit a slump.”

Jerry was referring to his “streak,” as he liked to call it, of mischief around town. He was always seeking to get away with some silly thing or another. It was only a month earlier when he had managed to scare a cow out of the barn over on Farmer Henry Simpkins’ property and followed it as it ran down County Road 37, until he heard the cops’ sirens in the distance. Jerry left the cow running and fled before anyone could figure out what had happened. It was all over the paper the next morning.

Then just over week ago he had convinced the Father Gideon that there was an air-draft problem in the chapel on Cedar Street. Jerry would sneak in the back of the church during services and caused the candles to blow out. It freaked out the attendees, and disrupted Father Gideon’s train of thought during his sermons. But no one ever saw or heard Jerry. He was too quick and too quiet for them.

But now Sally was suggesting he couldn’t just settle down and stay with her in one place for one entire night. Well, too bad for her. Since she had thrown down this gauntlet, he would show her she was wrong. 

“So, what’s the deal then? What are we going to do here anyway?” Jerry asked.

Sally quieted her voice, as if someone else would hear them, even though there was no one around that Jerry could see. The sun was almost completely gone down the horizon, and the night winds were beginning to pick up.

“We’re just going to stay here all night–“

“--and do WHAT?” Jerry said, impatiently. 

“Scare people.”

“But that’s boring. You know I already do that. All the time.”

“Yes, but you haven’t done it here,” Sally said.

“Well, what’s the difference? Just because it’s finally Halloween and we’re in a graveyard?”

“No, silly, because you’ll be with me again.” She beamed her brightest smile at him.

He looked at her, and realized that he had always suspected she wanted to be more than friends. He admitted to himself that, while she was pretty enough, he just didn’t exactly feel the same way about her. 

Finally he said, “Alright, just this once. For you. But don’t get used to it.”

She moved closer, as if to touch him. “Jerry, why don’t you want to stay with me tonight?”

He pulled slightly apart from her and glanced away.  “I just….I don’t really like to…you know…get close to people. Not like that. I never have, Sally. It’s not you, it’s just—“

“—I get it,” Sally replied. She turned slightly away from him so he couldn’t hear her deep sigh. Then turning back, she said, “Well, even so. I think we will have a lot of fun here tonight. It’s right up your “Joker” alley. I promise not to get in your way…although we would have more fun doing it together.”

“Fine,” Jerry said. “Just don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I don’t like that. If something I want to do bothers you, then you’ll just have to go your way and let me go mine. Ok?”

While his words stung a little, she nodded and said, “Ok.”

They had to wait a while before the first people showed up, and they didn’t look much younger than Jerry and Sally. Obviously, they were only a small bunch of other teens trying to prank other people on Halloween. But Jerry had promised he would stay and try.

So he and Sally came up with a plan. They would each hide behind a different headstone and wait until someone came close. Then, they would wave their arms and make ghostly wailing sounds while slowly rising to their feet and see how many people they could scare. The full moon was out and its dim glow through the dark clouds cast the perfect level of light around the barren premises. 

But no one even came close to where they were. So, they tried moving closer to those other people to see if that helped. But that didn’t work either. The teens who broke into the cemetery were obviously more interested in scaring each other than in being scared by someone else. It’s like Jerry and Sally weren’t even there. Jerry had never felt so ignored. So after a while he gave up.

“See,” he told Sally, “this is LAME.” He watched as the little punk kid in front of him took off running after some girl in a tight sweater, threatening to ‘get her,’ wondering how such idiots were actually smart enough to break in without getting caught. Jerking his thumb after the kid, he said, “I told you this was a dumb idea.”

“Now wait, don’t quit on me,” she begged. “You promised.”

“Yeah, but come on! I’ve been more excited watching paint dry.”

“I know but…it’s not quite midnight yet. That’s when the real fun happens.”

Sarcastically, Jerry replied, “You mean, more fun than THIS? Oh yay.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she whined at him. “I can’t control what other people do, I can only control what I do.”

The wind picked up a little more, growing louder, and leaves started to rustle heavily around where they stood together. The oak and willow trees on the property began to dance against the sky in the motion of the breezes. This would have been a perfect time to make another plan, but neither of them felt like talking anymore.

Yet Sally couldn’t give up now. Her own real plan could not be foiled. It had to work tonight or she could lose Jerry forever.

Finally she spoke. “I’m sorry, Jerry. This was supposed to be way more fun. This is not how I though this night would go.”

Jerry sighed. “It’s ok. You can’t help it. You and I are just too...I don’t know. We just define fun in different ways.”

She looked down at the ground. “I guess you’re right.” 

Somewhere in the distant night, they heard a dog bark. After another moment, Jerry said, “Look, I think I can still salvage this night, if I can just go somewhere else. We can hook up again some other time.”

Suddenly Sally looked up. “Jerry, you can’t do that. Please, please just stay here with me.” She leaned closer to him, wanting so much to just hold him close to her.

Jerry looked at her, at the longing in her eyes. He felt so awkward. How could he say what he wanted to without hurting her? He measured his words carefully: “Listen, Sally. I think I know what you’re trying to do. I think it’s what you tried to do the night of that party.” He paused. “Sally….I owe you an apology. For that night. I am so sorry about what happened…..what I did. It was wrong. And most of all, it wasn’t fair to you…it should never have happened.”

They continued to stare into each other’s eyes. She could not look away, and she would not let him look away. When he tried, she pivoted her head so he would keep looking at her. She knew it wouldn’t be long now.

“Jerry,” she said, “I understand. Please don’t blame yourself. I don’t blame you at all. It was an accident and I’ve forgiven you.” She noticed a tear starting to form in one of his eyes. “There was nothing you could have done to avoid what happened.”

“I could have laid off the drinks,” he said. “I fooled myself, and I guess I fooled you too. When you asked me for that ride home, I said sure, just to prove I could handle it. I wanted to prove I was ok to drive….but I wasn’t.” He looked down at the ground and Sally noticed he started shivering.

Sally’s kept her voice calm. “I actually knew you’d had a little too much that night, Jerry, and I could have refused to go with you, but I trusted you would be ok. I wanted you to be ok. I just wanted to be with you. To have you take me home. It was something I had actually dreamed about ever since we first talked…” Her words trailed off as she glanced down too.

Then, through the darkness, they heard the sound of the clock tower at the entrance to the cemetery as it begin to peal its loud chime bell. Midnight had arrived. At first, the bell sound startled them, but with each chime they both relaxed. After the final tone sounded, they were looking at each other again. Jerry now had tears in both eyes, and Sally was smiling at him.

“What?” he asked. “What’s with the grin?”

She began to spin around with her arms waving above her head. “Oh Jerry! You did it! You stayed. I’m so happy!” She clapped her hands in front of her chest.

Jerry just stared. “I don’t understand.” 

Sally cheered again and again, while Jerry just looked on, confused. “We did it, Jerry. It’s finally over.” 

“What are you talking about?”

Then, from behind him, a deep, gruff voice spoke. “Well, congratulations, Sally.” Jerry whipped himself around, and saw a large older man standing before him. He had salty gray hair and wore a uniform with large golden buttons down the front. “Hello, Jerry. It’s nice to finally meet you – face to face.” The man’s cold eyes made him look as if he were about to offer a scolding lecture. 

“Who are you?” asked Jerry.

But the man stayed silent, staring. “Jerry,” Sally said, “I would like you to meet Mr. Daniels. He works here in the cemetery.”

Jerry studied the man’s face some more and said, “Wait….have I seen you around here before?”

“Not unless you have eyes in the back of your head, Sonny. But I’ve certainly seen you, fleeing this place. You’re a hard man to catch.” Then to Sally he said, “I’m glad this finally worked tonight, Sally. I really am too old for this.”

Then, Mr. Daniels spoke to Jerry again.  “You see, Jerry, you have committed multiple violations against the rules. I have come to finally set things straight with you. Normally, when a person dies, their spirit can be free to go lots of places. It feels quite liberating, in fact, once a spirit is free from its host body.” Then his tone turned more serious. “Unless, of course, that person did something awful in life – like take another life, or two. Then, the rules are different. Those people don’t just get to flit around to wherever they want whenever they want. They get confined to one place only, and they have to stay there.”

Jerry looked at Sally, not fully understanding. She said, “Jerry, you hardly got here when you became so excited to leave that no one could stop you. Ever since your body was put in the ground, Mr. Daniels here has tried to catch up to you, to keep you in your place. But he never could. So, he came to me and asked for my help.”

Now Jerry understood. “So that’s why you wanted me to stay here tonight. You knew that by midnight on Halloween I would be caught.”

Mr. Daniels said, “I’m sorry, Jerry, but those are the rules. I am here to put you where you belong – forever.”

“Wait,” Jerry protested. “You mean I have to stay here, in this graveyard, forever?”

“Yes, Jerry,” Sally said. “Right here where you were placed, two months ago.” She pointed down, and Jerry looked down and read the headstone, the one with his name on it.

“Nooo,” Jerry began to wail as panic set in.  He looked back at Mr. Daniels. “I can’t do this.”

“Oh please, don’t complain to me,” Mr. Daniels bristled. “It’s only because you were not in control of your senses and had an accident that you aren’t being confined to somewhere else for all eternity. But, you did take a life, along with your own – that night of the party, when you and innocent Sally here drove off the road and…well you know what happened. You were there.”

“But Jerry, there’s good news,” Sally piped up. “You don’t have to be alone. You’ll always have me. I will be right here with you, right here in this cemetery, and you and I can finally be together.” 

Jerry looked back at Mr. Daniels. “Wait,” he protested, “this isn’t fair!”

“Enough!” yelled Mr. Daniels.  “You may not have liked following rules when you were alive, but in death, you WILL do what you are told! Now, be gone!!”

With that, Mr. Daniels threw both his hands over his head and Jerry’s ghost suddenly poofed into a cloud of smoke, which spiraled downward into the ground in front of his headstone. And then, all was quiet.  

After a moment, Sally and Mr. Daniels began gently floating along together to another near-by headstone. “Thank you, Mr. Daniels,” Sally smiled at him. “I cannot tell you how happy you’ve made me.”

He smiled back as they came to a stop. “My pleasure, my dear. I cannot tell you how happy you’ve made me. Upper management gets so impatient with me when I can’t keep those wilder spirits under control. Maybe we need tighter spirit security at the perimeter fences. Anyway, I’m glad you’re finally going to get what you deserved in life, but never had. Enjoy your boy, Sweetheart.”

And with that, Mr. Daniels waved his arms over his head again, and Sally’s ghost also poofed into a cloud and spiraled down into the dirt in front of her own headstone, where her body had also been buried just two months earlier, right after the accident that killed her -- and Jerry too. 

Now, the two of them could remain together forever in this graveyard, as friends for sure, and maybe even one day as lovers. Sally was convinced that Jerry would eventually come to see things her way. After all, now that he would never be able to leave her again, she had all of eternity to work on him.