In the corner of LaSalle Historic Village, next to the utility shed, on the golf cart, is where Larry Benstrada eats his lunch. The golf cart is the only part of LaSalle Village that isn’t haunted.
Lunch is usually this pea and noodle casserole his grandma taught him how to make when he was little, or quesadillas from El Rancho, and lunch is 2am.
Before Larry gets to the golf cart, which belongs to maintenance, not security, he stops in the trash behind the LaSalle Village Snack Shop and brings a dustpan full of discarded bratwursts to throw over the fence for the coyotes.
The boss saw him digging bratwursts out of the trash on a security tape once and asked if Larry was doing ok.
“Feeding the coyotes,” Larry told the boss, “keep ‘em from roaming the grounds.”
The truth is that Larry just likes coyotes, wolves, raccoons.
Sometimes a coyote will howl just as Larry sees an apparition in the candle shop or the general store or on the carousel and Larry will shake, and almost pinch a nerve in his neck looking around, even after 14 years as night security.
But once he realizes it’s just a coyote and not a frontier ghost, he relaxes and admonishes himself, because though some of the ghosts have spoken to him, none of them ever howled.
The night is warm, with just enough of a breeze to make you think of ghosts, and Larry is eating his casserole out of his Tupperware with a metal fork he brought from home, then he’ll walk the perimeter and go back to the guard shack at the gate for the rest of the night, til Alex from Operations comes at 6am to get the little village ready for the tourists.
Larry is superstitious and has to save three peas from his casserole to eat last.
It makes lunch a challenge on nights he’s not eating cold quesadillas from El Rancho, for which he doesn’t have a superstition.
Larry tosses the brats over the fence, and watches for the coyote eyes, then pokes at the bowtie pasta in the tupperware, making sure he can see at least three peas.
On nights there are only two left-he’s never messed up so bad he has been down to one-something always goes haywire.
Once a tweaker came in looking for antique lightbulb filaments, another time a drunk driver hit the LaSalle Village sign.
Larry is trying to get a tendril of cold but melted cheese into his mouth with a hunk of bowtie pasta when he hears a noise by the carousel.
The carousel is the jewel of LaSalle, about 60 percent original, once part of Port Huron’s Turn of the Century fair, built by a guy who apprenticed in Rhode Island under Looff.
The carousel ghost doesn’t talk, like the candle shop ghost, who says “Hi, Colonel,” in a very cheery but really scary voice.
Larry sets his tupperware on the passenger seat of the golf cart.
He begins to walk slowly. He has a radio, with one direct line to the Bay County Sheriff's Department, and a baton, and pepper spray.
Larry hates tweakers. If it’s a tweaker he will call the Sheriff after he pepper sprays ‘em if they don’t run first. Sometimes they wanna talk. They’re way worse than ghosts.
The ghost is a couple.
Except it isn’t a ghost.
It’s a woman and a man, and the man strokes the woman’s hair like she’s an angel who landed at his feet.
They giggle.
Larry backs up and gets himself behind the aluminum downspout of the Prayer Meeting Hall, incongruous against the original wood, but necessary to preserve the structural integrity of the original walls.
The couple doesn’t belong there, but they certainly seem to mean no harm to the small village, and certainly not to each other.
Larry watches silently as the couple dance, play, disrobe on the carousel.
He could stop them.
He should stop them.
Briefly he hopes that a ghost will scare them off.
Then he wonders if a coyote will get to his golf cart and finish his lunch.
He wonders if he could teach a coyote the three pea rule.
Larry feels a little dirty, but it’s his job to keep the attractions, both authentic and repro, safe.
He knows that kids climb all over that carousel with belts and zippers scratching it, getting it covered with snot and puke.
Naked bodies aren’t going to hurt it.
Larry briefly panics that the couple will see him watching and be mad at him.
He belongs there and they don’t, but still…
Larry has lost track of time, lost track of almost everything except a light malaise over the possibility a coyote carried off his lunch.
When the couple finishes…and the way they touch each other Larry doesn’t believe they are entirely finished, the man helps the woman put her clothes back on.
The man helps the woman put her clothes back on.
Larry winces.
In the few times he’s ever been with a woman it never occurred to him.
At 53 in Bay County, Michigan, he considers that he might never get another opportunity.
The couple holds hands as they make their way out of the small historical village, and the man rubs the woman’s hair yet again.
Larry watches them go, walking past his empty guard shack.
He returns to the golf cart.
The Tupperware is on the seat, seemingly untouched.
Larry pulls the fork from it and sticks the fork in the breast pocket of his uniform.
Grabbing the open Tupperware, he walks toward the fence, and flings the contents over it for the coyotes, abandoning for one night, his superstition.
***
I made this story free in honor of breaking the 1800 subscriber plateau. Most of you are of the “free” variety, and I get it. But if somewhere in your swear jar or your sofa, you can scrape up 7.50 for a full month’s subscription, it would go a long way toward me keeping up daily fiction on Substack, even after I crack the 1000 story mark later this month.
Thanks for being here,
Jimmy
A dream state in this story, such compassion expressed in so many ways. I could see this park and his rituals made him so real. Tormented by them to complete them daily in order to have a sustainable existence every night. Loved this story.
Breathtaking story telling. I was immediately transported into this world and can still feel the night air around me. I’m reminded of lost loves?