Ghost Brother: Outdoor Tales of the Supernatural

By Harry Guyer Jr.

Two brothers share adventures and a bond that not even death can break in Ghost Brother, a collection of outdoor tales of the supernatural by award-winning writer Harry Guyer Jr. Youll meet the old man, his ghostly brother Roy, and Roys little ghost dog Queenie as they ramble through the woods and along the streams of southcentral Pennsylvania.

Youll also encounter an old man plodding along what may be his final trail, a bowhunter who channels spirits of archers of the past, another who performs an act of kindness for a departed soul, a young girl who races for her life in colonial times, and other unforgettable characters.

Along the way youll learn such outdoor skills as catching suckers, carving walking sticks, finding mushrooms, calling squirrels, building turkey calls, cleaning snapping turtles, and other useful lore. Youll also get a taste of rural Pennsylvania of over a half century ago and even discover the best way to deal with a bully.

Most of the stories are based on actual events with a supernatural twist added. Suspend your disbelief for a few hours to enjoy Ghost Brother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493110926

Harry Guyer Jr.

Harry Guyer Jr. grew up in the ridge and valley eastern side of the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. His father was an avid hunter and fisherman, who instilled his love of the outdoors in his son. Guyer graduated from Shippensburg State College with a degree in English and taught the subject on both the high school and college level for 35 years. During this time he coached football, wrestling, and track and advised the high school conservation club. He has served as a scoutmaster, president of the local Trout Unlimited Chapter, and county and division president in the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs. He is active in his church where he teaches an adult Sunday school class. Guyer began writing as an outdoor columnist for the Bedford Gazette in 1987 and added a nature column a few years later. He has also written for Tri-County Outdoors, Pennsylvania Outdoor News, Pennsylvania Game News, and some other state and regional magazines. He also does slide lectures on wildflowers and other topics for local civic and church groups. A past president of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association, he is also a member of the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers Association and the Professional Outdoor Media Association, a national organization for outdoor writers. He has won nearly 50 writing awards in these organizations, as well as three Keystone Press awards. Living in Loysburg, PA, with his lovely wife Darla, Guyer enjoys hunting and fishing with his son Dan and his many friends. He also looks forward to spending time with his grandchildren Harrison and Pia.

Book preview

Ghost Brother

Outdoor Tales of the Supernatural

Harry Guyer Jr.

Copyright © 2013 by Harry Guyer Jr.

ISBN:       Softcover       978-1-4931-1091-9

                 Ebook             978-1-4931-1092-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 10/04/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

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CONTENTS

1.   The Sucker Hole

2.   Queenie

3.   Gifts

4.   Ironwood

5.   Chinese Chickens

6.   Catbirds and Kings

7.   Morels

8.   Crappie Day

9.   Bassin’ with Copperheads

10.   Mister Whiskers

11.   A Rocky Start

12.   Bushytails

13.   Midnight Hunt

14.   Spring Serenade

15.   Box Call

16.   Turtle Soup

17.   Trail to the Top

18.   The Bully

19.   The Christmas Gun

20.   Bowhunter Encounter

21.   Act of Kindness

22.   Opening Day

23.   On the Trout Stream

24.   Molly Gordon

Dedicated to my dad, Harry Ralph Guyer Sr.,

who always had time to take me along

Forward By Tom Tatum

Crafted from a series of award winning newspaper columns that chronicle the outdoor adventures of the old man and his ghost brother Roy, this anthology by Harry Guyer Jr. overflows with homespun humor and woodsy wit and wisdom.

Whenever the old man ventures afield, be it to collect ironwood for walking sticks, catch a stringer of crappies for dinner, or shoot a limit of squirrels or rabbits for his wife’s stew, his ghost brother Roy, along with Roy’s ghost dog Queenie, invariably appears to share the day’s jaunt and to gently reminisce about days long past. These spirits may exist. Perhaps they are merely figments of the old man’s elderly and overactive imagination.

In either case, Guyer skillfully conjures up a fantastic and often phantasmagorical realm of rural splendor, a narrative through which he conveys his expertise in hunting, fishing, and all things wild and wonderful. Guyer’s love and respect for the natural world is manifested in the words, thoughts, and actions of the old man and his ghost brother where each and every entertaining episode becomes a lesson in the fine art of living a simple life to the fullest.

This book is a must-read for all those who, like Guyer, share a profound affection and solemn reverence for our outdoor heritage.

Preface

I once saw a ghost. Really. My wife Darla and I were staying at an outdoor writer friend’s cabin in Maine. My friend and I had been getting up early to watch the sun rise while bass fishing on a nearby pond, Maine’s term for a small lake.

I woke before dawn, turned on a bedside lamp, and checked my watch. Before I lay back down, I saw Darla rise from the bed and walk out the door. Then I looked back at her side of the bed. She was still lying there!

Later that day as we were fishing, I asked my friend John if he had ever seen anything strange in the cabin.

Did you see Cousin Agnes? he countered.

I went on to relate my encounter with the apparition.

Yes, that was Cousin Agnes. I’ve seen here a few times myself. She’s friendly, however.

John went on to tell me how his cousin had bought the cabin and lived there with a friend for many years after retiring from teaching. John had spent many summers there and upon Agnes’s death had purchased the property from her estate. He added one chilling detail: Cousin Agnes had died in the room, and bed, where Darla and I had been staying.

We left the next day, never to see Agnes again. But she had planted a seed in my slightly warped mind. I transferred the haunted cabin from Maine to southcentral Pennsylvania. I transformed an old maid schoolteacher into a crusty old ridge runner and her much younger cousin into an old man, the ghost’s slightly younger brother.

I based the characters on my father and some of his friends. I based the incidents on actual occurrences and the brothers’ reminiscences on tales gleaned from years of listening to older outdoorsmen.

My first story in the series was an immediate hit with my readers. It also copped a pair of excellence-in-craft awards from the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association (POWA) and the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers Association (MDOWA). It was followed by further adventures of the pair and more awards, culminating in four POWA awards one year, at the time tying the record for a single writer.

I knew I was onto something good that people would like to read, so it was only natural that my first foray into book writing would be a collection of these tales.

So suspend your disbelief for a few hours and enjoy.

The Sucker Hole

Every spring my dad looked forward to the sucker run on Beaver Creek, that ran through our property. He would catch a mess of these fairly large fish, which Mom would fry up. He began taking my son Dan along when the boy was only three years old.

This tale was my first of the series. I just wish Dad could have read it.

The stars shone brightly as the old man stepped into the crisp, pre-dawn air. He made the trek down the driveway to retrieve his paper, then waited as his little white and brown terrier squatted between two bushes at the edge of the lawn. A chuckle rose in his throat as she made the snow fly with her hind feet. A dog’s the only critter that does ‘is business and then wipes ‘is feet, his brother Roy used to say.

Queenie had been Roy’s dog.

A glow lit the eastern sky, promising a fair day, welcome after a week of nearly daily rainfall. The breeze that struck his face was warm, despite the wet snow that covered the ground. The thermometer on the porch read forty degrees, downright balmy for a late-February morning. It’ll make fifty or better today, he said to no one in particular.

The smell of brewing coffee wafted through the kitchen door as he kicked his shoes off in the mud room. His wife was standing at the stove, snug-looking in her flannel robe and fuzzy slippers. D’ya want me to cook ya some breakfast? she asked.

I b’lieve I could eat a bite, said her husband. Think I’ll go sucker fishin’ today.

Sucker fishin’! You haven’t been sucker fishin’ since . . . . The sentence faltered in her throat, but the unspoken words rang out more loudly than had she said them: . . . since your brother Roy died.

It had been three years since Roy was found along the stream, his rod in hand and his hat pulled down over his eyes as if he were sleeping. Faithful Queenie lay at his side. His brother had been the one to find him, and he had taken it hard. Losing Roy—his fishing companion since childhood—had robbed him since of any desire to fish.

A nice mess o’ suckers’d taste good for supper, she recovered. You catch ’em; you clean ’em. But I’ll fry ’em up.

They finished their breakfasts with the tastes of bitter coffee and bland oatmeal in their mouths, but that of white, flaky sucker meat surrounded by crisp cornmeal breading dancing on the palates of their minds.

The morning hours flew by as the old man went about his chores. After a decade of chest pains whenever he overdid anything, he had learned to slow down, make every motion count, and rest frequently. Your ticker’s not what it used to be, the doctor had told him. Slow down and you’ll outlive us all. Too bad no one had told Roy to slow down.

Queenie was at his side throughout the morning. A one-man dog when Roy was still alive, she took to her new master immediately. She always seemed to be watching for her old friend, however. Now and then when a truck like Roy’s passed the house, her head would rise; but as soon as it passed without stopping, she went on about her business.

Just before lunch, the old man shouldered his pitchfork, stuck an old band-aid tin in his vest pocket, and whistled to the dog. The pair walked the quarter mile to the neighboring farm. His neighbor waved at him from his tractor seat as he passed, but no words were spoken. Seeing the pitchfork, he quickly deduced the purpose of the old man’s visit, and no permission needed to be asked nor granted.

Old man’s goin’ fishin’, his neighbor thought. Good. He’s needed to get out this long time.

Against the calf shed lay a manure pile, from which the old man would extract his bait. Lured near the surface by the chemical heat, the worms were shiny and lively. A few turns of the fork yielded two dozen—more than enough for an afternoon’s fishing.

Unable to stifle his excitement, he mounted the board fence that surrounded the calf run a little too briskly, and the result was a dull ache that ran its course from his chest to his jaw. He stood for a moment and the pain subsided. No need for a nitroglycerin tablet. He’d just have to remember to take it easy. Don’t wanna lay myself up an’ spoil my trip, he thought.

Back at home, the old man reached a pair of battered steel fly rods from under the eaves of the summerhouse. He shook the dust from the level wind reels and inspected the braided line. It was still strong, but the attached leaders were rotten.

From his rusted tacklebox he pulled a fresh spool of six-pound test leader material. After sliding quarter-ounce slip sinkers onto the braided line, he replaced the corroded swivels that kept them in place with new brass ones. To these he tied a yard of leader, knotted with two perfection loops. Onto each he fastened a pair of #10 long-shanked bait hooks.

He stuck the tag hook of each rig into the cork grip of each rod handle. A small chip of wood covered each upper hook. He placed his can of worms and tackle box into a clean spackle bucket and slapped on the lid of the combination seat/carryall. He was as ready as he’d ever be.

Dontcha want some lunch? his wife called to his back.

I’ll get somethin’ when I come back, came over his shoulder. Too much exercise on a full stomach, and the pain would return.

Be careful. Catch lotsa fish.

The walk down the worn path to the creek took him and Queenie less than five minutes. Going back up the slight grade would take longer, especially with a bucket of fish. The warm sun was taking most of the snow, and the stream was high and roiled. At the Ol’ Sucker Hole he placed his bucket under the old willow tree and leaned his rods against the trunk.

On the bank before him stood a trio of standers—forked stick rod holders—from the past summer. Some of the neighbor boys had probably left them there. Two of them were still good, so he repositioned them and rested a rod in the crotches. Then he baited each hook and underhanded the lines into the slack water at the base of the ripples, then tightened both lines with a turn or two of the reels.

Sitting on the bucket with his back against the old tree, he waited, his eyes glued on the pair of lines that reached into the water.

A low growl came from behind the tree. It was followed by Queenie, her ears back, her teeth bared, the hair along her spine standing straight up. What’s the matter, girl? See a squirrel? The dog relaxed at his words and positioned herself between his feet, peering around his knees occasionally.

A tap shook the right-hand rod. The old man leaned forward, cupping his hand under the rod handle. Another tap, and he lifted the rod sharply. The hook cut through only water.

You always was too impatient ta be a good sucker fisherman. The voice was familiar, but it took him a minute to place it. Roy. Queenie’s tail thumped against his shins, and a soft whine escaped her throat.

He looked around, but he was alone. Only the gentle sighing of the south wind could be heard. He adjusted the bottom worm and recast.

His mind returned to other days. Days when he and Roy would bring home great stringers of suckers, then spend half the night cleaning them. In addition to the many white suckers would be the occasional tabby sucker, kept as a joke and cleaned for the cats. Now and then they would catch a fat redfin, prized for its pink flesh. Horny chubs would be tossed up on the bank for the mink and coons.

Another tap on the right-hand rod broke his reveries. This time it was followed by a slow pull. His answering jerk set the hook solidly. After a brief battle, a foot-long white sucker lay gasping on the bank. Queenie left her sanctuary between his feet long enough to bark at the fish. He strung it on a piece of baler twine, which he tied to the third stander.

That’s better. Roy’s voice again.

I s’pose you’d have a stringerful by now, the old man answered.

Prob’ly would.

Huh!

Rebaiting, recasting, and waiting. Soon another sucker joined the first on the stringer, than a third, a fourth, and a fifth.

You’ll soon have a mess, said Roy’s voice.

Already have, came the reply. "It don’t take nigh so many to