The Ghost of Jack Holloway

Jack Holloway stares at me through sixty years of dust. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you see fashion trends come and go and come again, but you can’t ever go wrong with a white shirt and a few buttons undone. Doesn’t hurt that Jack was twice handsome as the devil.

“That’s the original missing poster photo,” Mara says in awe. I tap the photo on the side of the box to get rid of some dust and hand it to her.

“I took it the day he went missing.” July 16, 1961. Sunday. It rained in the morning but the humidity was blowing out by the afternoon, leaving blue sky and towering white clouds. Steve and Luna and Jack and I lounged on the front porch with the ceiling fans swirling lazily overhead.

 Mara holds the photo up reverently and I see there’s something written on the back in my neat handwriting, so tiny I can barely read it now. Fiat Justitia.

I swallow the lump in my throat and turn back towards the boxes, looking for more prints. Being a pre-digital photographer means having boxes of photos piled up in a spare bedroom.

“What can you tell me about that day?” Mara asks, holding out the photo to me without flipping it over. I put the picture down firmly on my lap, my hands absently pressing over Jack’s face.

Mara adjusts her recording equipment and waits expectantly. I lean back against the cane chair she carried up from the parlor and try to picture that day from a distance, like a photographer with a wide-angle lens.

It was my grandmother’s house back then. My father died in France during the Battle of the Bulge and my mother never quite recovered from the shock. She left me with Grandma Jean, her husband’s mother, in ’46 and remarried in ’47.

The house looked like a school girl’s toy: a perfect buttery yellow Victoria dollhouse with symmetrical windows that come to sharp points. The porch stretched across the front of the house and in the summer the transoms were always open for the breeze.

Grandma Jean kept an old gardener who didn’t do much besides cut the lawn and keep the wildflowers in their beds. There was a carriage house, a machine shed, a livestock barn further back behind the tree line, and three other small outbuildings were still standing (the summer kitchen, a garden shed, and the old smokehouse). By the early ‘60s, Grandma Jean rented out the majority of the 300 acres to a neighbor to farm and he made use of the machine shed. The carriage house was converted into the garage for the Studebaker Verna drove Grandma Jean to church in, and I parked my Corvair in a spot behind the house.

The smokehouse was where the cats had their kittens and the garden shed still serviced the gardens. The livestock barn was filled with junk – the trappings of three generations calling the farm home and not doing much to modernize it. We were sliding into gentrified poverty, I suppose.

“And Jack?” Mara interrupts. “Tell me more about your relationship.”

I fix her with the stare I always used on my students and she settles back down. She seems like a nice enough girl, just a little impatient. Though maybe her podcast listeners don’t like to listen to the ramblings of old women and she’s chasing ratings.

“Jack and I grew up together. His grandmother was a dear friend of mine. We didn’t exactly run in the same circles as we got older, but it’s a small town.”

Mara shifted like she wanted to ask me to share something more salacious, but she’s trying not to prompt me on tape. She probably doesn’t know, but I have Internet and when she contacted me about her podcast, I did my research.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation said there were 609,275 open missing person cases in the United States last year. Missing person records are retained indefinitely…unless the individual is located. Some leave of their own free will, to escape abusive relationships or to avoid prosecution for crimes. Others are the victims of accidents.

Or foul play.

Sometimes, there are no solid clues for law enforcement to follow. Not a trace remains…except for the empty spaces in the lives of their friends and families.  

My name is Mara Reed and this is “One Less.” Each season we talk to family and friends of missing persons to try and help them reach closure. So that there’s one less empty space.

She skyrocketed to fame in 2017 when one of the cases she covered in the podcast was actually solved based on information from her interviews. A missing veterinarian had been murdered by a farmer over an unpaid bill. Turns out the farmer fed the vet to his pigs. Mara happened upon the famer after a cancer diagnosis. Feeling the hot breath of one’s maker is always a strong motivation. It landed Mara a TV show on one of those true crime channels and she wrote a book about the experience.

Mara, and everyone else, likes sympathetic victims. Young moms and loving dads, dutiful daughters and stalwart sons. The vet was a newlywed. And the more mysterious the disappearance the better. Jack Holloway is a prime candidate for the podcast. A handsome son of a small-town fire chief who followed in his dad’s footsteps. Jack even made national news the year before he disappeared for rescuing a pregnant woman from the third floor of her burning home. His adoring half-sister, Ginny, still writes letters to the Pennsylvania State Police and runs a Facebook page dedicated to his disappearance.   

“What have you heard about that night?” I ask, abruptly changing the subject.

“I–well, we can come back to that afternoon,” she says. “I know that Jack started to hitchhike home because his car wouldn’t start. He made it to the gas station which was closed, but there were some teenagers in the parking lot who saw him get into a rusty black Ford pickup truck drive away. That’s the last time confirmed sighting.”

“He rode to the gas station with Steve and Luna – my school friend Luellen Dierdorff and her boyfriend Steven Stover. Jack asked them to leave him at the station so he could hitch to work.” I pause. “Steve died in ’96 or ’97 from lung cancer. Luna’s in a nursing home down in Altoona.”

Mara nodded. “Steve passed in November 1997. Mrs. Meyer, Luna, her family said she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.”

I know the intimate details of Luna’s condition, but I don’t tell Mara that. I talk to Luna’s eldest daughter every month. It’s a lot of work taking care of an aging parent with memory loss and I think she likes to vent.

A photo was sticking out of the box where I’d gotten the one of Jack. I pluck it out and hold it up for Mara, “Steve and Luna.”

“And Jack.”

I slide my thumb over so it wasn’t hiding his face. “And Jack of course.”

We were just messing around with my new camera—Verna and Grandma Jean picked it out for my twentieth birthday the weekend before. I snapped one of Steve on the porch steps, gazing out into the yard. He was lanky with freckles and hair already starting to thin. His dad ran a dairy and I never saw Steve in anything but jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt.

The light was good, so I posed Luna in front of the clematis that climbed the end of the porch. She always chased the latest fashion and her bouffant made her four inches taller. Later, she married a boy from out of town and didn’t come back much.

The photo I shot of the trio was out at the gate to the fields. The house sits close to the road with the outbuildings and the lawn surrounding it, then there’s a line of trees about thirty feet wide before you break through to the barn, shed, and fields. The path through the woods could be blocked off by a gate, but it was rusty and the wild honeysuckle and grapes had such a tight grasp on the gate, we couldn’t close anymore.

“Here?” Luna asked. She scrambled up onto the top bar of the gate and sat with her knees together, hands folded primly. “Come stand with me, Steve!”

They’d been officially “dating” for two weeks and she was glowing. Steve was a little less obvious, but he didn’t protest. He tucked his arm around her waist and kicked one foot back against the gate. I snapped a photo, but before I could get another Jack stepped into the frame.

“Me too,” he laughed.

I didn’t see it until the woman down at the drugstore developed the pictures, but Luna wasn’t smiling in the second photo. Jack’s hand was on her thigh.  

“Why didn’t you give Jack a ride home?” Mara asks.

I start to pack the photos away. “My grandmother was basically an invalid. We had a housekeeper who helped me care for her, but Verna was off on Sundays.”

“I’m not sure how much more I can tell you,” I continue. “Steve was a volunteer firefighter and that’s how he and Jack became friends. We were all just visiting that day.”

Mara nods. If she’s disappointed, she hides it well. “I really appreciate your time.” She hands back the other photo and smiles unassumingly. “No pictures of you?”

I firmly shut the box. “No.”

Mara lets me lead her around the house and gardens, showing off my roses and sunflowers and dahlias. I tell her stories about the pieces of furniture passed down through the generations and my time teaching math to high schoolers.

“I have everything I need here,” I say, gesturing to Verna’s vegetable garden which I’ve kept up all these years.

“Never wanted to travel?” Mara asks. We’re standing near her car, a Honda with New York plates.   

“After Grandma Jean died, I thought about selling and moving to town, but this place has so much history. And you can’t beat the peace and quiet.”

Mara chuckles. In the late afternoon light, she would’ve made a pretty subject. Dark curly hair, no fussy makeup, a beautiful Jewish nose.

“It was wonderful to meet you,” she says. “I’ll send you a link to the podcast when it’s out.”

“Thanks, dear.”

Mara shuts off the recorder and starts to get into the car. I can’t hold back from saying, “Jack wasn’t a good man. He knew he could get away with things because he was handsome and popular. And he took advantage of it.”

Mara searches my face like she’s going to ask me to elaborate. In the end, all she says is, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I watch her back out of the drive and turn left before I walk slowly to the empty house.

Jack’s ghost keeps me awake for the first time in years. No matter which way I toss and turn, he’s there. Watching me from the window seat, standing in the doorway, leaning over me so close I can smell the cinnamon gum on his breath.

I finally get up before sunrise and dress slowly. My childhood bedroom is upstairs, but a few years ago, traipsing up and down every day got to be too much. I sleep in the old den Verna and I converted into a bedroom for Grandma Jean when she couldn’t walk any longer. The irony isn’t lost on me.   

I forgo breakfast and go out the kitchen door to the backyard. The mist sits low on the hills and my feet get wet in the grass. The boy should be coming by today to mow.

My guilt was Jack’s companion last night. I didn’t lie to Mara, but I didn’t tell her the truth either.

I thought Jack Holloway was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Like a movie star, but better because he was here and paying attention to me. All afternoon I kept catching him watching me, a crooked smile on his face.

My roll of film was full, so while Luna and Steve were strolling in the gardens—necking in the garden—Jack and I took the camera into the house. I was hyperconscious of my straight brown hair frizzing in the humidity and the jam on the hem of my skirt, but when we got inside, Jack closed the door behind us and told me I was beautiful. He kissed me and the butterflies in my stomach leaped for joy.

“Shhh,” I giggled, pushing at roving hands. “Grandma Jean will hear.”

Jack bit playfully at my ear, hands still going lower. “I can be quiet.”

We fell back against the bottom of the stairs laughing and shushing each other. I’d only ever kissed two other guys and neither of them compared to this. I felt like a woman, sexy and desirable and lightheaded from the thrill. Still, when Jack unbuttoned my skirt, I shook my head and tried to scoot away from him.  

“Come on,” he said, following me. He pushed me back onto the floor and kissed me harder. He bit my bottom lip hard and laughed when I shoved him back.  

“No, Jack. Get off of me.” Something in his face startled me and my senses were shouting. I tried to laugh it off. “Not on the floor where anyone could find us.”

“Then take me up to your room.”

“No, Jack. That was our first kiss–”

Again he was pressing his hands on my shoulders, keeping me on the floor. “You know you want to.” Then one hand was undoing his belt and he wasn’t listening to me anymore. “Jack–”

I squirmed and kicked and started to scream. He slapped one hand over my mouth. “I like a fighter.”

I don’t remember much after that, but I imagined I was above it all. I looked like someone who fell down the stairs.

When it was done, Jack got up and held a hand out to me as if he was going to help me up.

“Get out of my house,” I managed, pulling myself up on the banister.

“I was going to say we should do this again sometime, but suit yourself.”

He strolled out the front door and hailed Luna and Steve who are getting ready to leave. The backs of my shoulders were throbbing and my hands were shaking, but the only emotion I felt was anger—and that’s not even a strong enough word. Towering rage built as I watched through the screen door. Jack carried on chatting with Steve, smiling at Luna, existing.

That’s when I decided he had to die.

I pause at the rusty gate, now entirely hidden by weeds, to catch my breath. I knew Mara wouldn’t be able to check my story with Steve or Luna and that’s why I added the bit about Jack going to work. I breathe deeply and listen to the early-morning forest sounds before I keep walking.

Jack parked behind my car, so I ran through the house as fast I could, careful to tiptoe past Grandma Jean’s room. The red T-bird was right outside the kitchen door.

As a kid, I always liked to watch the gardener tinker with the mower and it wasn’t hard to find the spark plugs. I pulled them out and used the knife to scrape up the socket and plug before putting it back so it didn’t look tampered with at first glance. I ducked inside as Steve and Jack came around the house.

Jack was bragging about the damn car but when he leaned in through the window to rev the engine for Steve, it didn’t start.

He cursed and popped the hood, messing around for a minute before he said, “Can you give me a ride home? I got a girl waiting; I’ll deal with this wreak later.”

I was panting, trying to decide what to do next. The floor creaked behind me and I spun around. Luna was staring at me open-mouthed. I had blood on my skirt and a knife in hand.

“What happened?” she breathed. “Not–Jack?”

I nodded once.

“His car won’t start. We’re giving him a ride home.” She started to reach for me but stopped when I flinched. She stared at me for a long second. “We’ll drop him at the gas station. He can hitchhike the rest of the way.”

She didn’t need to tell me I wasn’t the only one. She also gave me a plan. I nodded a second time and she left, slamming the front door. Grandma Jeans stirred in her room but didn’t call out. From the parlor window, I watch them leave.

Luna was rigid in the center seat; Steve drove and Jack had his arm out the window. He waved.

I’m out of breath again by the time I get to the barn and it takes two tries to get the door open. I’ll have to remind the boy to mow back here, too. It’s light enough now I can pick my way through the junk by the sun streaming in through the cracks in the siding.

In the back of the barn under the old army tarp is my dad’s 1939 Ford pickup. It’s been parked since 1961, but I could probably get it to run if I needed it. It always started when I needed it.

I don’t need to fold the tarp back to check. I know the bones are piled on the passenger seat, the wrists and ankles still tied together with baling wire. The knife is in the bed, its handle dotted with blood.

 “Go back to hell, Jack,” I said. “Maybe I’ll write that nice young woman a letter so everybody knows you aren’t worth searching for.”