Two lives in one, two deaths in one

When she was a living, breathing creature, nobody paid much mind to Freddi.

In her 36 years on planet Earth, she’d attended more than a few parties, mostly invitations from well-meaning co-workers at her accounting firm. A few flirtations here and there, sure, but once she started in on 401(k) plans or capital gains, eyes glazed over. When she first set her eyes on the cowboy at her favorite barbecue joint, all thoughts of finances were tossed aside as quickly as short ribs gnawed to the bone.

He seemed destined to appear here and there in her life: She was quite certain she’d caught a glimpse of him sampling barbecue sauces in a gift shop when she was rushing across Kansas City International Airport to pick up her sister and her brood. And she’d spotted her black-hatted hunk riding a horse at one of her favorite haunts (so to say), the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm historic site in Olathe.

Her true passions in life were clearly shared by this Kansas City native, and that would be the rich history of 19th-century Kansas City, and what the city was known for now: barbecue. On this day he was dining on a platter filled with the very finest — from short ribs to brisket, pickle nestled atop toasted bread.

He grinned up at her, sauce slightly smeared across his chin.

Oddly, he seemed to flicker in and out of her vision. He was there and then, in a blink, he was gone.

Oh, she thought in her final moments, gazing at the last bite of a brisket sandwich. What guts it would take to go say hello.

In the end — and it was — she figured it could have been her fault. Call it a passion for burnt ends and short ribs. Call it the curse of genetics. All 307 pounds of Freddi felt a sharp pain in her chest, and the next thing she knew she was floating above a crowd at her own funeral. Aside from her parents and her sister, who was chasing after her three small children, few seemed to mourn Freddi.

It was mid-October, prime barbecue season, when Freddi was pulled from her nirvana.

Stuck between Earth and a place she could only imagine would be bliss, she tried to fit in as a quintessential ghost on a quest to find her brown-eyed, sloppy-faced dream guy. The one she now knew was not of the old world she once plodded through.

She had a few strikes against her. First, she was bit young to be hanging with some of the famous ghosts in Kansas City. To them she was an upstart, and there’s nothing like being snubbed by a ghost to humble a woman. Or whatever she was.

Frankly, if Freddi were a jack-o’-lantern, she would have been carved by a child’s hand. Standard features, pleasant but bland look (think triangle eyes, turn the triangle upside down for a nose, crooked grin).

This was new territory, and she was ready to finally give that face some character. And find her man. But how?

Freddi overheard rumors of an exclusive party where all of the city’s most popular ghosts congregated and decided to follow a group of well-dressed, dead, inebriated socialites into the historic Savoy Hotel after midnight. She passed through an unmarked door on the fifth floor and collided with Walter Cronkite, spilling his cocktail.

“Excuse me,” Walter said coldly, returning to his conversation with President Truman and Walt Disney. The men eyed Freddi with unveiled disgust, gravitating toward the thinner female ghosts — former tuberculosis patients and prostitutes, no doubt, thought Freddi bitterly.

She waited for Charlie Parker’s blaring saxophone solo to end, and shouted, “I’m looking for a handsome cowboy!”

Jean Harlow, as glamorous and radiant as ever, giggled, “Me too, honey!” The other ghosts laughed, and resumed their drinking and dancing.

Freddi grabbed Jesse James’ arm. “I need to find a brown-eyed ghost who wears a black Stetson hat and loves barbecue and sometimes haunts KCI and the Mahaffie Farmstead,” she said. “Do you know him?”

Jesse snarled and pointed a gun at her bloated midsection. “Let go of me.”

Freddi clung to his sleeve defiantly. “Please help me! I’m a certified public accountant. Maybe there’s something I can do for you. Do ghosts still have to pay taxes?”

Smirking, Jesse holstered his gun and leaned closer to Freddi, whispering, “Listen, lady, you’re at the wrong party. You need to mosey on along to Arabia.”

Freddi drifted out the window and looked down on the quiet, dark city streets. “I don’t know anyone in Arabia,” she said to herself, “unless …” She eagerly followed Grand Boulevard to the Arabia Steamboat Museum and slipped through the locked front doors.

Freddi floated down the empty halls, pausing at each of her favorite displays: the remarkably well-preserved jars of pickles and fruit pie filling; perfume bottles meant for the wealthy wives of lucky gold prospectors and railroad barons; restored leather boots and beaver-fur coats — all recovered in 1988 from the 1856 steamboat wreckage in a cornfield where the Missouri River used to flow.

Freddi smelled barbecue sauce before she glimpsed him, materializing inside the display case in front of her, his feet filling a pair of 160-year-old boots.

“It’s so good to see you again,” the cowboy said, reaching through the glass and gently stroking Freddi’s cheek.

If Freddi hadn’t already been dead, his sudden, tender touch would surely have killed her.

“I didn’t know where to find you,” Freddi sputtered. “Jesse James told me.”

“Probably pulled his gun on you, too.” The cowboy smiled, exposing imperfect teeth that Freddi found endearing.

“Yes…”

“Do you have any idea how special you are?”

“Um, no,” she said, his intense stare making her blush. “Well, OK, I’m good at balancing books. And eating barbecue. Only I can’t figure out how to eat anything now. The food falls right through me,” she babbled. “It’s not nearly as easy as Slimer makes it look in Ghostbusters, when he stuffs all those hot dogs in his mouth.”

The cowboy’s anguished look sobered her. “Remember reading about the man who left his mule tied to some sawmill equipment on the Arabia?” he asked. “Who let his mule drown?”

Freddi nodded.

The cowboy stifled a whimper. “I never meant to leave Buckley! The boat was sinking so fast and …” He stomped his boot. “I couldn’t save him.”

“You’re the guy with the mule? You can’t beat yourself up over that. You and everyone else on the sinking boat were rescued. It was a miracle!”

“I lived for 32 more years after Arabia sank but always missed Buckley. My wife gave me that lazy mule on our wedding day.”

“I’m so sorry,” Freddi said.

He sighed. “I never wanted to leave Kansas City, but I needed help raising my daughter after her mother died. That’s the only reason we were on the Arabia in the first place. My sister invited us to live with her in Omaha.”

“Omaha’s not so bad,” Freddi teased.

“I missed my wife,” he said, tears in his eyes, “and her cooking. She made the best barbecue sauce.”

“She sounds like my kind of woman,” Freddi said.

“Elfrieda, you need to know the truth.”

“Please,” she said nervously, “call me Freddi.”

“This is gonna sound crazy, but hear me out,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “Your soul is fractured, inhabiting two bodies — two times — at once. At least it was, until your heart gave out last week. When you were alive and thought you were dreaming, you were actually seeing brief glimpses of your other life, over 150 years ago.”

Freddi broke out in goosebumps, recalling the vivid dreams she’d had, like scenes from the Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder novels she obsessively read: dancing prairie grass, covered wagons, chickens scratching in the dirt, cows mooing in the distance, a tiny clapboard house with a mule grazing out front. In one particularly haunting dream, she had watched a beautiful girl with chestnut curls wearing a patched gingham dress toddling toward her and stretched out her hands to catch the child — deeply tanned, strong, bony hands. Her hands.

Freddi stared at her plump, pale hands and shook her head in disbelief. “How is that possible?”

The cowboy grasped her clammy hands. His callused fingers caressed her skin. “I’m your husband in 1856,” he said. “Levi Woodson.”

Levi supported her wide back, stopping her from collapsing — no easy task, considering that Freddi outweighed him by at least 130 pounds.

“I don’t know what to say,” Freddi gasped.

She lifted the hat from Levi’s head to get a closer look at his face. “I cut your hair!” she exclaimed, stroking the familiar curls at the back of his neck before she could stop herself. “The other me cut it, I mean.”

“Elfrieda,” Levi said imploringly, “You have to come home now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come back to me,” he said, “and Josie.”

“Who’s Josie?” The moment Freddi spoke her name aloud, though, she knew exactly who Josie was. “Oh my God. Please, take me to her!”

Levi’s body started to shimmer and fade. He pulled her into a tight embrace and spoke urgently.

“It’s already happening! Just listen to me. Keep on listening. Your whole life, you felt like something was missing, like you didn’t belong. There was a void that you filled with food.” His words stung in spite of the genuine concern behind them. “That’s how my wife feels, like something is missing. And the visions she has of your modern-day life are terrifying to her. Josie and I can’t help her. She thinks she’s possessed by demons. She’s going to…” Levi’s hand disappeared.

Freddi tried to feel him, to reach any part of him. She thought she could still see his burning eyes and focused only on those. Levi called to her, as if from a great distance. She was nothing but mist, wrapped in his voice, as the floor dropped out below her and the walls melted away.

“She’s going to kill herself while Josie and I are down at the river. You have to stop her — stop yourself! Come back to us, Elfrieda Woodson!”

Freddi looked down at her tan, bony hands, feeling dazed but more solid than before.

Her heart pounded in her chest; warmth flooded her body. She was light and strong, and alive. A heavy knife dropped from her trembling palm. Alive, she thought, staring in confusion at the knife on the floor. She knew she was forgetting something and picked up the knife reflexively, still prepared to slice — what? There were no vegetables, no slab of meat on the table in front of her.

She was certain that Levi had just taken Josie down to the river to watch the passing steamboats. Elfrieda could still feel their kisses imprinted on her cheek.

She smiled and relaxed and tried to remember what she had planned to serve for supper. Maybe some smoked pork — with spicy, sweet tomato sauce, just like she was always dreaming about but had been unable to perfectly replicate in her crude kitchen.

It couldn’t hurt to try again, Elfrieda thought, lifting a pot onto the stove.

This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Two lives in one, two deaths in one."