Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

The figure ceased to blend. It seemed to seep outward from the wall again, taking on a distinct, even portly form, which began to walk back toward him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with voting for the Western Grain Stabilization Act.’ It will stabilize the whole economy of the region without costing the taxpayers anything. Because, you see, you have to consider the multiplier effect, which in the case of a farmer is a factor of three; therefore-”

“No! No! Don’t give me twaddle about multiplier effects. Have you talked to the farmers? Have you asked them what they want? You have to approach this in a spirit of compromise, to-I thought you said you weren’t in politics.”

Milton drew himself up. “I’m a graduate student in Canadian history. Naturally I follow politics,” he said, warming to the topic.

The apparition smiled complacently. “Quite an opportunity for you-talking to me!”

“Uh… well…” Milton hedged.

“Politics. I can certainly set you straight about that.”

“Er-the fact is-”

“Have you read my book? Industry and Humanity? ”

“I find it most helpful at times,” said Milton carefully.

“Should think you would.” The late prime minister nodded.

Milton forbore to mention that he found Industry and Humanity most helpful when his worries about course work had reached such a pitch that he was unable to sleep, and found himself speculating on whether there was an alternate universe in which he had returned a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s Malafrena to the university library. About the time his musings turned dark and he began to wonder whether one could be digested by one’s bed, he would flip on the light with shaking hands and lose himself in the soothing monotony of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s prose style. This treatment never failed to work: soon he would awake to the clanging of his alarm clock, the book still in his hands. As an alternative to sleeping tablets, Mackenzie King was without equal. As a political mentor-Milton Palmerston, contemporary Liberal, questioned his value.

“… probably know more about politics than anyone else alive,” the apparition was saying.

Milton blinked at this. “But you’re not alive,” he pointed out.

“Do you think the voters would hold it against me?”

Milton considered the members of parliament presently in office. “Probably not,” he conceded. “Er-you weren’t thinking of standing for North Waterloo again, were you?”

“What? After I got the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act passed and the ingrates voted me out in 1911? I should hope not! I was thinking of my other old job-prime minister, you know.”

Milton nodded, wondering if perhaps reading Mackenzie King had not, after all, been safer than tranquilizers. It seemed to produce its own hallucinations.

“I suppose they still need me,” mused the late prime minister. “How are things going with labor? And the French-are we getting along better internally now? I suppose I’m sorely missed among the Liberals?”

Milton’s instincts toward courtesy to deceased heads of state battled with his pedantic desire to make political pronouncements. God knows he didn’t have much of a chance to do either, but the urge to make political pronouncements proved stronger. With the dim suspicion that he might be following in Cassandra’s dainty footsteps, Milton spoke.

“The fact is, sir, you’re not considered sound. The modern Liberal consensus is that while we respect your-er-place in history and all that-well-as my professor put it last term: ‘You can follow Mackenzie King just so far.’ ”

Having delivered this pronouncement, he looked up to see the apparition rapidly fading in and out-the spectral equivalent, he supposed, of taking deep breaths. After a few moments, the oscillation subsided, and a very substantial-looking statesman fixed him with a most uncompromising glare. “Indeed!” The apparition began to pace about the room, in the exact spot where Milton’s mound of notes and reference books had been erected; he did not trip on them however, but merely walked through them, as if they, not he, were ethereal. Milton’s eyes strayed to the note posted on his wall: EXAM TOMORROW! He really must study, and since the exam did not cover the Mackenzie King era at all, this interruption could do him no good whatsoever. He wondered at the propriety of evicting a deceased prime minister from one’s room. It wasn’t covered in Robert’s Rules of Order , he was sure of that.

The unwelcome visitor continued to pace.

He glanced at the clock. Two A.M. Exam in six hours. Milton considered exorcism. What would one use to banish the ghost of a Liberal prime minister? He dived for his Diefenbaker text.

Before he could locate a sufficiently inflammatory passage, the ghost discovered a newspaper that Milton had been saving to line his leaky boots. He bent down and studied the front page carefully: unemployment statistics, a picture of an overcrowded nursing home, an article on inflation.

“I see you’re having another Depression,” he remarked.

“Actually, it’s my nerves,” Milton confided. “I can’t sleep, but I’m taking sedatives and considering lightening my class load.”

“I was referring to the country!”

“Oh.”

“There was a Depression during my term as well,” said the ghost. “I got the country out of it, of course!”

Milton nodded. He decided not to mention that Mackenzie King’s solution to the Great Depression was called World War II. There was always the chance that even an oblique reference to the Führer might bring him goose-stepping into the room to join the debate. There were the neighbors to consider.

Mackenzie King plodded to the laundry-laden armchair and sank down on-or rather, through-the pile of clothes. He put his head in his translucent hands. “What a disaster!” he moaned. “I am the only one who can possibly save Canada-and I’m dead!”

Milton considered the problem; perhaps he could profit from providing assistance. If there were such a thing as ghosts, then perhaps spirit-writing was also possible, and he could persuade a grateful Mackenzie King to get his impending exam ghost-written, as it were, by Diefenbaker. Unless, of course, the Liberals’ imprecations had been correct, in which case Dief was now residing in a much more tropical region than Ontario.

“Do you see much of Diefenbaker?” he asked casually.

“What? Old fellow? Rides a unicorn? That’s not important! Pay attention. I am trying to save the country!”

“Well,” said Milton doubtfully, “perhaps you could do it in an advisory capacity. Are any of your favorite mediums still alive?”

“I’ve tried that. I’ve spelled out messages on the Ouija board until my head spun, but my contacts couldn’t even get an appointment with-” He waved his hand. “You know-what’s-his-name.” The apparition shook his head dolefully. “Once I even appeared at a government reception. They mistook me for Larry Reynolds.”

Milton sighed. He supposed that he would have to help: saving the country took precedence over passing History 604, but he didn’t expect any gratitude for it. Nothing ever went right for him; he’d known that at the age of six, when he bit into his chocolate Easter Bunny and broke out in hives. How could the Dominion of Canada possibly be saved by a shortsighted, mild-mannered, pedantic, mediocre-He looked again at Mackenzie King. Then again…

“Could I suggest a compromise?” he ventured.

The ghost brightened visibly upon hearing the magic word. “Compromise?” he said eagerly.

“Yes. I was thinking that instead of meddling-er-intervening directly in domestic policy, you might tell your ideas to me, and I could see to it that someone in Parliament hears them.”