The dirty soccer ball flew over the wall into the Confederate cemetery. 

"Well?" said Jimmy, after a little while. "You gonna go an' get it, or what, Bobby T?"

"Huh? No way! I ain't goin' in there," said Bobby T, shaking his head. 

"You's the one done kicked it in there! We cain't keep playin' without a ball."

"I ain't goin' in no boneyard! You can go!"  

"I ain't the one done kicked it in, why should I be the one who goes an' gets it out?" 

"I'll get it," said Macy, interrupting the bickering boys. "If you all is scaredy cats."

She walked away from the cluster of children and along the high walls of the cemetery where the branches of the large, black oaks fanned out their limbs. It was late summer and the golden sun was low in the sky. It was getting on towards eight in the evening.

Macy suspiciously eyed the chain on the cemetery gate hanging through the bars like a necklace with a padlock for a pendent. Pulling the gate back and forth, she managed to create enough of a gap at the bottom for a skinny nine-year-old with brown pigtails and freckles like herself to crawl through. 

Inside the graveyard, she stood up and brushed off the bits of grass and gravel stuck to her knobby knees. 

The tall, weathered-white gravestones were lined up in straight lines, like a set of blank dominos, or teeth. Judging by the weeds clamouring around the bases of the stones, the groundskeepers only did the most basic of mowing and clipping between the rows, and left the rest to nature and the insects. 

"If you are a lookin' for your ball, young Miss, you're five rows short!" called a voice. 

Macy halted, then went further up the gravelly central path, counting.

At row five she stopped. The soccer ball was leaning up against one of the gravestones only a few feet away. 

Picking it up, she looked around, shading her eyes. 

"Where are you?" she called.

"If we are aimin' for absolute accuracy, you are standin' on me."

Macy looked down and saw only her canvas sneakers and grass. "Huh?"

She heard a laugh from somewhere. A deep, gentle laugh that had nothing mocking in it, but was more delighted than anything. She turned left, then right, attempting to locate the sound. "Come on, where are you really? Quit makin' fun."

"Don't I get a thank you for helpin' find your very intriguin,' if rather poorly-tended, ball?" 

Macy cocked her hip and set the soccer ball against it in a posture of childish annoyance. The sonorous laugher rang out again. 

"You are welcome to read my visiting card, young Miss. It's the headstone your ball came 'a bouncin' up against."

Macy took a step back and peered at the stone. "Jebediah M. Witherspoon.  1832 - 1863. 4th Cavalry," she read aloud.

"At your service." 

"You're makin' that up! I may be a kid, but I ain't stupid. Where are you REALLY?"

All Macy heard as a reply was a laugh that gently faded into the sounds of the evening wind picking up and roaring in the waving leaves of the surrounding oaks.  Macy shook her head, kicked the back ball over the wall, and went to rejoin her friends.

A few days later, Macy returned to the cemetery and found the headstone again.

"Mr Witherspoon? Hello? Mr. Witherspoon?" 

It took a while, but eventually she heard the voice again. "Is that the self-same young Miss with the abscondin' ball?"

Macy sat down on the grass and stared at the inscription on the headstone. "I got some questions for ya." 

At first, she wanted to know what it was like to be dead, but Jebediah quickly tired of the subject. There wasn't much to tell. "As borin' as burnt hoecakes. Ask me somethin' more entertainin'." 

It turned out that he much more preferred to talk about his life, what things had been like and where all he'd been. He'd been a big traveler. He missed hearth fires, clean bed ticking and horses. Card games, he missed card games, too. 

The next time she visited, Macy brought a pack of cards with her and they played some games she knew, but then Jeb taught her new games and soon they were playing Euchre, Black Lady and Poker. Macy dealt for both of them and put Jeb's cards down on the grass in front of his stone. He'd then say which card she should draw for him when it was his turn. 

"Hey, wait a minute! Are you lookin' at my cards?" Macy cried, clutching her cards to her chest, as they were playing Poker one overcast afternoon. 

"Why would you think that?" 

"'Cause you just won five times in a row an' I don't know exactly were you are! How do I know you ain't cheatin'?" 

"A gentleman never cheats at cards with a lady, Miss Macy. Pay an ol' Southern gentleman some respect. Or, at least respect his Poker playin' abilities, if you please."

As their friendship grew and deepened, Macy told Jeb her secrets. 

How she had stolen a pencil case out of the desk of a girl she didn't like and put it in the desk of another girl she didn't like. How she thought Micky Thompson was really cute, even though he had buckteeth. How she thought her parents might be getting a divorce because of an argument she'd overheard, and that worried her.  

Jeb listened, laughed and commiserated. But most importantly, he never talked down to her or made her feel like a dumb kid. He treated her like an equal. A novelty for Macy.

And he told her things about adults. How they lie to others and themselves. How they can act horribly to the people they care about the most. How you can almost never trust their intentions. 

Macy began to think Jeb Witherspoon was the most charming, wisest man she'd ever met, and grew to hate leaving the cemetery to go home.

Macy's frequent trips to visit her friend did not go unnoticed by her mother. "What are you doin' down there?" she asked, as Macy set the table for dinner one evening after she'd come back from talking to Jeb for a few hours. 

"Playin' cards with a ghost." 

"Don't sass me, young lady! I asked you why you keep goin' down there?"

"I ain't sassin', I'm tellin' the truth. I met a ghost. He lives there. I go and talk to him. Sometimes we play cards." Macy jutted out her bottom lip. 

Her mother sighed, and continued rattling the mixing bowl. "Don't forget to set out forks."

* * *

When school started up again, Macy asked all the other kids about ghosts. She told them they did exist, that she knew one personally. Some of the kids believed her, others didn't. 

"Ain't no such thing," said Jimmy. 

"Is too such a thing," Macy answered back, pointing her sandwich at him menacingly. 

"My granny saw a ghost once, so I believe Macy," said Bobby T, sucking hard on his juice-box straw. 

Macy's class was assigned a project called "My Hero". They were to bring in a picture of the person who they most admired, who meant the most to them, and tell the class why. Macy borrowed a Polaroid camera from a neighbor and took it with her to the Confederate cemetary.

"Say cheese," she said, aiming the camera at Jeb's headstone. 

"Is that what photographic cameras look like nowadays? No black cloth over the head or lightin' of magnesium powder?" 

"Magnesium powder? What's that? No, you just gotta press this button." 

After it had been spit out of the machine and shaken, Macy held up the photo so Jeb could see.  "A startling likeness," he declared. "I've never looked more handsome."   

A week later, standing in front of her class, Macy held up the Polaroid.  

"This is my hero an' best friend, Jebediah Maurice Witherspoon. He fought bravely in the Civil War an' died in 1863. He's my hero because he's the smartest an' funniest an' most wonderful person I have ever met. He knows lots of games an' tells really good jokes. He's a real Southern gentleman an' they don't make them no more. I'm gonna tell you all now a funny story about how he traveled down the Mississippi on the paddle-steamer Natchez III in 1852. . . "  

A few days later, Macy was called out of class and set down to talk with a lady she'd never seen before. The lady wanted to know all about Jeb. When they met and what sorts of things he told her. Many of the questions Macy found confusing. 

What did Jeb look like? No idea. 

Did he ever say scary things? Things that made her feel bad?  He'd told her a little bit about some of the battles he'd been in, but he kept the gross stuff out 'cause of her age. That kinda scary?

Did he ever touch her or ask her to touch him?  What? You cain't TOUCH a ghost! 

Such strange questions. 

"No," said Macy's mother later. "I'm not havin' her put on medication." Her voice was loud and floated out of the office to where Macy was sitting on a bench, swinging her legs. Other snippets escaped from the office, like no, she ain't and I know she thinks that! and kids all got themselves an imaginary friend, so what? 

* * *

"They think you're my imag'nary friend."

"An excellent misconception to leave them in."  

 "You're my best friend, an' I love you so much, Jeb. I don't want everybody to think you don't exist." 

There was silence for a while, punctuated only by the rattling of falling orange leaves as they floated down from the branches above and settled on the grass and the tops of the tombstones.

"Miss Macy, you are the most charming companion a man could wish for. You are a bright, and may I say, astoundingly brave, young lady. But you are also nine years old. And I am afraid you have more insight into a few particular things that the adults around you do not. I foresee difficult times to come if you talk too much. . . but how 'bout a quick round of Black Lady before you go?" 

* * *

Two months later, Macy's parents sat her down and explained that they would be getting a divorce. Until things were settled, Macy and her mother would live with her grandparents a few states away.

Macy looked from her father to her mother.  "I don't wanna leave Jeb." 

"He can come with us. It'll be a 'lil hard at the start, but he'll settle in just fine," Macy's mother said, smiling tightly.

But Jeb said, "I haven't been able to set foot out of this graveyard since they carted me in in '63. I'd love to come with you, see a bit more of the world. But I seem stuck here."

After the move, Macy never returned to the Confederate cemetery. As she grew older, shreds of doubt that Jeb had only been a figment of her imagination, as everyone thought, began to take hold in her mind, but a flower of belief continued to exist in her heart.  She kept the over-exposed Polaroid of his headstone in a black frame on her mantlepiece as a reminder. 

Despite several long-term relationships, Macy never married. She always found herself secretly comparing her boyfriends to Jeb, and knowing none of them could ever compete.  

"Problem is, I've met my perfect man," Macy would tell her friends, "And I'm afraid he ruined all the rest of them for me." 

They'd all had their good points, but they just weren't  . . . Jeb.