The Grave of Kokomo

The grave of Chief Kokomo—a tall, stark column of granite on Purdum street not far from site of the old Cook Block and Brick Company—became a favorite for Stan Beal and Ted Saylor to ride in summer. They piloted their bikes toward the tree-lined banks of Wildcat Creek, sped down the ramp that opened from the block factory, wind cool on their faces, broke out on to River Road, swung on to Ohio Street, cut through Crown Point cemetery, and then rode to the monument. They were not into local history at that age, but the cenotaph instilled in them the closest thing to reverence for the dead boys their age could conceptualize. Quiet, resting from riding, they would sit on their bicycles and look up at the polished grey-stone monument and then would go off. A block or two away, their minds would revert to the usual concerns.

One day, years later, Ted told Stan that Jennifer Chang and Marci Lancer wanted to go out to the monument and try to see his ghost.

Stan was interested in Jennifer Chang, a pretty Chinese-American girl he had wanted to get a date with for a long time. Besides being in the coterie of classy, pretty girls in his high school, she was smart, a sharp dresser, and a capable athlete. He loved her glossy black hair, almond eyes, and pouty lips. He sometimes went to the girls’ basketball games to watch her play and would sit in the stands and marvel as she drove down court, dribbling through opponents with ferocious drive and with poise and grace.

He saw her in the hall between classes the next day. As usual, she looked marvelous. She had braided her hair and wore a white blouse, a short blue skirt, and patterned black hose. The very sight of her agitated him. She smiled.

“Hi, Stan. How’s the team?”

He leaned against a row of lockers.

“Not great.”

“Is Raymond still sick?”

Raymond Foster, their star player, top scorer, the spark plug for the team, had fallen ill. No one knew what was wrong with him but it seemed serious.

“He’s still out of it.”

“What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t have leukemia or something like that, does he?”

Raymond (he did not like to be called Ray) showed no outward signs of ill health, but his strength had dissipated so much that he could hardly walk. He had been tested by local doctors and sent for examination at the Indiana University medical school. Doctors there found nothing conclusive; both they and his home physician were baffled.

“Coach said the doctors have done tests but nothing is conclusive. No one can figure out what’s wrong.”

“Too bad.” Then she smiled, her lovely eyes twinkling with mischief. “I guess you’ll just have to take his place as the star player, hmmm?”

“I’m the only one on the team who is tall enough. Ted told me you’d like to go out by Crown Point cemetery and try to spot the ghost of Chief Kokomo.”

She extended her front leg and drew a slow circle with her foot on the tile floor. This simple movement made his pulse quicken.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’d like to take you if you want to. Ted and Marci can come along. I’m game if you are?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, and he knew she was playing her advantage. “Are you coming to my game tonight?”

“We have practice till six.”

“My game starts at 5:30. You can see the last half.”

“I’ll be there.”

She touched his hand and walked off. He watched her go down the hall until she turned into another corridor.

He was able to make the second half of the game. The Kokomo team won. Afterwards he hung around the exit for the locker room and tagged Jennifer when she came out.

“Great game,” he smiled.

Her eyes brightened. She seemed pleased to see him.

“I’m hungry. Can we go to Big Boy?”

Stan consented. He took her to the Big Boy on Markland and Apperson Way. He was surprised when she ordered a big burger and fries (most women as slender as Jennifer ate like birds). She said she was always hungry after a game. He complimented her on how well she had played.

“You know how to move the ball,” he said.

“You do too. I’ll be at your game. Can we go somewhere afterwards?”

He said he would like that a lot.

Two days later he saw Nick Farb, a guy Jennifer had dated for several months last year. They sat together at lunch and Stan told him what was going on.

“She seems to want to spend a lot of time with me,” Stan noted.

“She’s checking you out,” Farb replied.

“Checking me out?”

“She’s sizing you up and deciding if she wants to date you or not; basically she’s waiting to see if you say or do something stupid. She can’t stand guys who are dumbasses. Be careful.”

“I will,” he said, surprised at Nick’s frankness.

Stan went to practice that night. Raymond came but was too ill to play. He sat on the sidelines and watched.

Raymond Foster was tall—six-six at least. He had olive skin and dark hair and moved (and played) silently but with the driven intensity. He had a bad temper and had to watch himself so as to not get into fights and bad-mouth the referees (he had lots of technical fouls called on him). When someone offended him he would attack them. Often the only way he avoided fights that would get him kicked off the team was through his teammates restraining him. He was able, though, to channel his anger into the game and transform it into athletic energy and aplomb. As he sat there on the bench he looked like he could not even hold a basketball for very long.

After practice, after Stan had showered and dressed, he found Raymond still sitting on the bench in the largely deserted gym. He sat down beside him.

The gym where the team played was huge—one of the largest in the state. A few people milled around here and there, but the vastness of the interior absorbed the sound so it was almost perfectly quiet. The two of them sat there for a long time saying nothing. The sky had darkened outside. Stan wondered if Raymond even wanted to talk, though in the silence he felt they were communicating. He waited for his friend to speak first.

“It’s all yours, Stan,” Raymond said. “I won’t be able to play. You play in my place. Do what I would do.”

“I wish I could. I wish I could be you. If I could give you my soul and let your come into your body, I would.”

Something like a vision entered his mind. Stan suddenly felt as if he were seeing—just for a second—the bank of Wildcat Creek, lined with trees, quiet there by Crown Point cemetery, a peaceful remote place where he loved to ride and, in younger days, and loved to walk the paths through the trees and along the creek bank.

“It will happen. Wait for the game. You can do it. If you’re willing, it can be.”

“I’m willing,” he said.

When he got home he called Jennifer and asked her if she wanted to go out somewhere.

“I can’t, Stan. I’ve got to study. But if you’d like to come over to my place, we can spend a little time together. You know where I live, don’t you?”

She lived on Plate Street—the nicer end of Plate Street, past the tracks, close to Hoffer. He drove over, found the address, and knocked on the door.

Her father answered. He was civil and friendly and talked about sports, how the Pacers were doing this year, as he led Stan to the back room. Jennifer was there. She wore a purple sequined costume with a very short skirt and long sleeves and light purple spangled tights; after a minute he realized it was a figure skating outfit and he remembered she did skating.

Jennifer looked this way and that and gave him a quick kiss.

“Good to see you,” she whispered. Then she said, “I was on my way back from skating practice when you called. I usually wear sweats to practice, but we have a show coming up and did a dress rehearsal tonight. I haven’t had time to change. Let me get out of this purple flirp outfit and we can talk.”

She went upstairs to her room. Stan went back in the front room and talked more with her father. Jennifer bustled down this stairs. She had put on a Kokomo High School sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and was barefoot. She came up and did what he had come to call the “daughter act,” hugging, kissing, and doting on her father—a thing he had seen many girlfriends do in situations like this—a way girls assured their fathers that they respected their authority and that everything was on the up-and-up with this new boy they had brought into the house. They went back into her study room. He sat in the desk chair; she perched on top of the desk.

They spent two hours together talking and studying. Her mother brought them tea and cookies. Her younger sister pestered her and flirted with him. He helped Jennifer with her math.

“This is embarrassing,” she said. “Asians are supposed to be good at math but I can barely add two and two and get it to come out right.”

Jennifer hardly ever mentioned her ethnicity. In fact, he had once seen her get snippy with another girl in class for making reference to her Chinese origins. Stan took her easy mention of it as an indication she was opening up, wanting to establish more familiarity with him. He was good at algebra and helped her with the problems she had to do as homework. At ten o’clock he sensed it was time to go. She and her family had been cordial and he did not want to spoil the good reception. He talked again with her father, thanked the mother for the cookies, and bantered with her younger sister. Jennifer went out to his car to say good-night to him.

He gave her a kiss—a real kiss, not the kind of quick, friendly kisses they had exchanged up to then. He was aware that they might be seen, so he let her take the lead. They kissed for several minutes. Cautiously he put his hand on her bottom; when she did not pull away or stop him, he squeezed and she murmured with pleasure. But he decided to stop there. Take it slowly. No reason to push his luck, he told himself.

They finished and leaned against his car. The night, full of stars and warm breezes, enveloped them like sheltering co-conspirators.

“I won’t be in school tomorrow. We’ve got a field trip to the Art Institute in Chicago, but I’ll back in time for the game.”

“I’ll see you afterwards.”

“Will Raymond be playing?”

“No. He’s too sick. But I’ll be standing in for him. I promised him I would take his place.”

One more kiss and he went home.

The game loomed large in everyone’s mind. They were playing Crispus Attucks, a tough, tricky team that usually beat them. The playoffs had begun; it was usually at this point that Kokomo was eliminated from the tourney. Without Raymond everyone on the team felt gloomy. A cloud hung over them when they assembled in the locker room for a pep talk. Stan remembered his promise to Raymond. He would try to be Raymond tonight—to put his own personality aside and be as much of Raymond as he could become. He wanted his team to win. If Raymond died, he wanted him to have this last victory.

The crowd was huge but he managed to spot Jennifer, wearing school colors, sitting in the midst of a group of pretty girls. She smiled, waved, and threw him a kiss. He gave a thumbs up for her and for his team. Tonight he was starting.

At the jump, one of the opposing team members easily batted the ball toward a team member. With speed and alacrity that amazed even him, Stan made a move and got the ball, broke from the press and went down for a slam-dunk. The opposing players were amazed. The crowd roared its approval. Their opponents treated this as an anomaly, a streak of good luck they would soon erase, but Stan stole the ball as they moved it down court and went in for an easy lay-up. The Kokomo team caught the spirit and soon began to play with demonic intensity. They took the lead and widened it. By half-time they were up by twenty. Their coach took Stan aside.

“Beal, what’s going on? You’re playing like you’re possessed.”

“I am,” he said. “I want to win this game—for Raymond and for our town. I want us to go to state liked we did in ‘62.”

“Keep playing like that and we will.”

In the second half Crispus Attucks tried new strategies but Stan seemed to sense what they planned to do and was there to disrupt, steal the ball, and interdict their plays. Coach had warned them that their opponents would try to whittle down their lead, and while they offered a challenge for perhaps the first five minutes after the half they soon lost spirit and ended up losing the game by a twenty-five.

The crowd was wild with elation. Sheriff’s deputies had to keep people from mobbing the team in general and Stan in particular. His parents broke through the crowd; his mother kissed him and his father was near tears. The town had overcome the largest obstacle to the state championship and he had led them. During all of this he looked for Jennifer but could not find him.

As he was getting dressed after the shower, his cell phone rang. It was Jennifer.

“Stan, you were wonderful tonight,” she said. “But I couldn’t get near you. I went home. Do you want to come over afterwards? I thought of going somewhere, but people will button-hole you, don’t you think? If you come over to my place we won’t have that problem.”

“That will be great, Jennifer. Coach said the press wants to talk to me and get some pictures. So I might be a little late, but I’ll be there.”

He came out of the locker in the vastness of the gym. Several representatives from different newspapers—the local paper but also The Indianapolis Star—interviewed him. He gave standard answers but also emphasized that identifying with, even playing vicariously for, Raymond Foster, somehow charged him with unexpected power and concentration.

“I want to be him on the court and I play as if I were him. This means a lot to me and seems to give me an energy and aggression I never felt before.”

Raymond, it seemed, was doing a little better. There was hope he might now recover from his illness, but no way would he play this season. The team’s hope, and the community’s hope, was pinned upon Stan Beal.

After he finished the interview he saw Raymond. They embraced.

“Great game,” he said.

“I’m playing it for you—as you.”

Raymond laughed. He looked less weak and walked now with some energy. His face did not look pale or his eyes weak.

“You don’t want to be me,” he said.

“I wouldn’t mind. There are only two things I really wanted in life. One was to play as well as you.”

“What’s the other?”

“There’s this girl,” Stan replied, his smile sly.

“Ah. Well, maybe Jennifer will be nice to you,” Raymond said, joining the joke.

“Let’s hope so. If I could have both of things, I think I’d be willing to just turn my life over to someone else and walk away while everything was perfect.”

They chatted more. Raymond left. Stan told his parents he was going to visit some friends before he came home.

His father came close to him. “Don’t be drinking,” he warned. “If you get caught, you’re off the team. We’re going to the State Championship, so play it cool.”

Stan said he would not drink. He got in his car and drove to Jennifer Chang’s place.

He arrived. She greeted him at the door. She wore a long-sleeved singlet from a road race and a denim skirt. Again, she was barefoot. She told him to come in.

He walked in and looked around. The house was quiet.

“Where’s your family?” he asked.

She smiled. “In Chicago. They’ll be back Sunday night. I thought we needed a little privacy.”

After that night they met frequently. Jennifer was the most practical woman he had slept with: she always found secure locations for their times together, had condoms when he forgot to bring them, carried in her purse lubricants and material with which to clean up, and carefully thought out alibis in case anyone questioned them. She responded passionately to him; her uninhibited way of making love (not the restrained, guilt-laden style he was used to from the other girls he had known) startled and amazed him. After they were finished, they always talked—a thing he liked. They talked for long periods and about lofty topics. She said she hated men who were stupid and did not know how to carry on a conversation. As winter passed, as the basketball season wore on, they became a recognized couple at high school. He took her to dances and she attended all his games. The other girls in school, she told him, envied her for dating a star basketball player.

The season was going better than he could ever have dreamed—or his coach or the people in his city. They had gotten to the sectionals. And, to the delight of all, Raymond began to come out of his torpor. He played one quarter of a game using his amazing coordination, along with his height, to put the Kokomo team ahead so far they never lost the lead even when he sat out. The next game he played more. As the team advanced, he played as he had before—in for most of the time and strong all the way to the closing buzzer. His doctors were puzzled. They had not been able to diagnose the cause of his past weakness and now they were notable to ascertain how he had snapped out of it.

It was at this heady time that Jennifer said she wanted to go out and see the grave of Kokomo—and attempt to spot his ghost.

March had been warm, though the night they drove down to the monument a cold rain drizzled from the sky. Stan was in love with Jennifer; she had been loyal to him so long that he thought she must feel something for him as well.

As they crossed the Ohio Street bridge and headed on to Sycamore, he thought about the way his life had gone. The two things he really wanted in life had come to him: the team was winning, thanks to Raymond recovery, and had a good chance of winning state; he was dating Jennifer, the most beautiful and accomplished girl at his school. For once in his life he was content. He had everything he had ever desired. He wanted nothing more.

They pulled up to the monument. The cold rain fell. Stan pulled on baseball cap; he wore his letter jacket. Jennifer had on a hoodie and shorts. They got out of the car.

“Spooky,” she commented.

They stood still, looking and listening. The granite obelisk was not in a desolate area. An open field with scrub trees lay behind it, but houses, lights blazing in their windows, surround it on three sides.

They stood in silence for perhaps ten minutes.

“My feet are getting wet,” Jennifer finally said, “and I’m cold. Let’s go.”

She turned to get in the car.

That was when Stan saw something.

Just beyond the monument he saw a grey specter—tall, hair long about its shoulders, a loincloth and buckskin chaps, chest bare, arms muscular, and looking straight at him.

He stood, rooted to the spot.

He jumped when the horn on his car went off. Jennifer had leaned over a touched it.

She opened the door and leaned out.

“Come on. I’m freezing. There’s no ghost.”

He wanted to say he had seen something but did not want to make her angry. He remembered what Nick Farb had told him. If he said he saw a ghost she might think he was stupid. He could still see the shadowy form through the murk of night and the slicing rain.

He turned and got in the car.

“I thought I saw something,” he said cautiously.

She threw her head back and laughed.

“Don’t try that on me.’’ She looked more serious. “And don’t try to scare me. I don’t like that. If you make me look for a ghost then scream to scare me—if you do anything like that—I’ll be very upset.”

He decided to back off. He drove her home.

When he got there Jennifer’s mother made them hot chocolate. He younger sister pestered them; her father was gregarious.

“Where did you two go?” her sister asked.

“We went down to the grave of Chief Kokomo—as if it’s any of your business,” Jennifer answered.

“Did you see him?” her father smiled.

Jennifer grinned. “He did,” she said, pointing mischievously.

“Probably I saw somebody’s headlights,” Stan said, and that was the end of it.

Still, he knew he had seen something.

Later on he kissed Jennifer good-night but did not drive home. He drove back to the monument.

The rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking up. Stan parked and got out, leaving his car running. He saw the figure once more—Kokomo—this time less spectral, more solid and human-like. Oddly, he was not afraid. In fact, he felt drawn to the figure. He walked up and stopped only a foot or so from him. Kokomo turned to him.

It was Raymond.

After a long silence, Stan spoke.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Raymond looked straight at him.

“Is it?”

Stan felt fear descend on him—but calm as well.

“No,” he said.

“You see it isn’t. For me to dress in these garments just to fool you or play a joke on you or make you laugh would be blasphemy.”

Stan vaguely thought he should run away but found himself rooted to the spot.

“I need to turn my car off,” he said.

“No you don’t,” Raymond replied.

He looked around. To his shock, he saw himself sitting at the wheel of his car. He spun around to face Raymond.

“What’s going on?”

“I think you know.”

“Hell’s bells,” Stan burst out, “will stop this goddamned riddle talk? ‘I think you know.’ ‘Is it?’ Tell me what’s going on here, damn it.”

Raymond looked hard at him.

“You tell me.”

Stan suddenly knew.

“You’re going to kill me?”

“No. I’m taking your life and making it my own. It’s how I’ve lived these hundreds of years. But ‘taking’ is not the right word. You gave me your life. Do you remember?”

He remembered the night they had talked in the field house. He licked his lips.

“Not fair,” he said.

Raymond laughed.

“Not fair? Stan, you know it’s fair. Every fifty years or so I have to have a new life. You’re it. It took so long I was wondering if, after all these years, it was finally going to end. Then you came along.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You’re dead already.”

Stan looked back at the car. He saw himself slumped over the steering wheel. He turned his frantic gaze back to Raymond.

“Don’t you see this was your destiny? You were delivered.”

“Who delivered me?”

“The Manitou—you call him God, though he’s quite a different kind of being from what you think of when you use that term. Why do you think you rode your bike to the monument all the time when you were a kid? Why do you think you connected with the woman of your dreams through someone saying she wanted to come here and try to see me? It was all ordained, Stan.”

He stood there disoriented. Finally he looked up at Raymond.

“What now?” he asked.

Raymond smiled.

“Follow me.”

They walked away from the memorial. The scrub three had given way to huge old-growth sycamores and maples. Raymond moved adroitly through the dense grove as if following a path, though there was no path. They walked at a good pace for ten minutes until they came to a broad clearing.

They were on the banks of Wildcat Creek. The moon had broken through the clouds. He noticed how the waters of the creek were not murky greenish-brown, as he had always known them, but so clear he could see the bottom even now, at night. Huge trees rose on either bank. Before them stood ten or twelve dwellings made of twigs and mud. Smoke curled from their rounded tops. Two women bathed in the river, talking and laughing as they washed each other. A man squatted by an open fire. He was roasting some kind of grain. The smell of earth, wood smoke, food, and the human body, came to his nose.

“This is the answer to your question,” Raymond said. “This is what’s next for you. People said I was violent—and, yes, I do have a temper. Eventually they expelled me from the tribe. I took some people—mostly women but a few men—and started my own village. When the whites came, we were friendly; we got along with them and married into their tribe so that we became indistinct as a people. But the original village is timeless. This is where you’ll be.”

“How long?”

Raymond laughed.

“Wrong question, Stan. Time doesn’t exist for you. You’ll be here—I won’t even say ‘forever’ because ‘forever’ implies a sequence of moments. You’re here, now, and it is. I don’t think you got a bad deal, really.” He gestured at the women. “They need husbands. You’ll have children. You’ll like it here. You are a settled spirit because you were willing to give your life to me. This is your reward for that.”

The moon cast its light on the village nestled by the bank of the creek. The women went to separate huts; the man took his roasted grain inside another shelter. Stan felt his heart give consent. It would work. It was all right. Yes—it was what was meant to be.

He looked at Raymond, who put his hand on his shoulder.

“We’re brothers,” he said. “More than that—more than blood brothers even. More than can expressed in human language.”

Again, Stan looked at the moonlit village.

He felt at rest. He felt he had come home

At 2 a.m. police responded to a call complaining of a car illegally parked near the monument to Chief Kokomo on Purdum Street. When they arrived, they found Stan Beal dead, leaning against the steering wheel of his Grand Am.

The town reeled in shock. Jennifer Chang, who had to be sedated for shock and hysteria, eventually supplied the explanation that became the official verdict on Stan’s death. The two of them, she said, had gone to the memorial to look for the ghost of Kokomo. She remembered how Stan had thought he saw something but she did not want to stay. He must have gone back to investigate, sat in his car, and been overcome with carbon monoxide fumes while watching for the ghost. No one thought it was suicide. Stan was a well-adjusted boy from a happy home, a star athlete, and dated a girl he loved. The coroner ruled it an accidental death.

Hundreds of people turned out for the memorial service in the Field House. Raymond, looking fit and healthy, gave the eulogy. Stan’s parents sat on the front row, along with Jennifer Chang, who was dressed in black and sobbing. Raymond spoke, often pausing due to emotion. He told how Stan was an incomparable young man, one whose strength and spirit were so strong and determined that he himself had often wished it were his own. They would go on, he said, and win the state championship.

“We’ll do it for him,” he said. “His spirit is here”—and with this he thumped his chest for emphasis. “It is here in the town he that meant so much to him, along the banks of the creek, resting in the trees and on the granite stones of the place he loved so dearly. We will not disappoint him. We never will forget his life.”

The crowd that filled the Field House, hundreds strong, murmured its concurrence.

They never would forget his life.

- David W. Landrum

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