Out on McHenry Avenue not far from downtown Modesto, I waited patiently for my wife to return to the car. I checked my phone. It was 4:45 p.m. on a cloudy autumn afternoon. She said she would be ready to go by that time, but you know how it is. Sometimes hair appointments last longer than expected. I returned to reading my novel. It was a fantasy about a peg-legged leprechaun named Horatio Printup, the only known American-born leprechaun in recorded history. I checked my phone again. It was five o’clock sharp.
“Where the heck is she?” I asked out loud to myself.
“Well, she sure ain’t here in the car with us,” a gravelly voice answered.
Startled, I jumped up so hard that I banged my head on the ceiling of the car. I turned around, but there was no one in the back seat.
“Look in the mirror; that’s where I am,” the voice told me.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the image of an elderly, baldheaded chocolate-brown African-American man. While I studied his image, he held up his hands. He only had nine fingers.
“Are…were you my grandfather? My grandfather Earl, also known as “Nine? Because of the nine fingers?”
“That’s right; I was your mama’s father. I was too busy runnin’ the streets and hustlin’ while your mama was growin’ up. I looked out for her in my own way, and I always made sure she had nice clothes and shoes, but I never lived with her and your grandma. Down south, in the 1930s life wasn’t all that good, but I made do, just didn’t leave no house, or nothin’. I heard how she left for California when World War Two was goin’ on, and I woulda gave her some money for the trip, but she was long gone ‘fore I knew ‘bout it.
Me and your mama, we was reunited a couple of years ago after she died, you know. She forgave me for not bein’ around that much when she was a little girl, but her mama, your grandma, well, she still kinda annoyed with me. That won’t last too much longer though, ‘cause out here, everybody forgive everybody sooner or later. We even gets to the point where we forgive ourselves.”
“But why are you here right now?” I asked him. I was over the initial shock of hearing his voice, and his presence in the mirror did not seem to pose a threat.
“All I can tell ya is the same two things all of us can tell the living. Number one, live your life to the fullest; and number two, do what you can to make the first thing come true. That’s all I needs to tell ya. I’ll see ya when you get here.”Then he disappeared from the mirror, gone from the plane of earthly existence and back to the afterlife.