Freddy's Dead--Or Is He? A Short Story

By Raanan Geberer

When Freddy McFerrin, the longtime editor and columnist for the Allston-Brighton-Brookline Weekly Journal, died after a stroke and heart attack at the age of 70, everyone was sad—in the newsroom, in legislators’ offices and in the community. Since I’d worked at the paper for 15 years, I, too, was in mourning.

Everybody who’d been active in local public life for the past 25 years knew Freddy. He was tall and thin, and we rarely saw him without his tweed jacket, his tweed cap, his long tan overcoat and his cigar. And who could forget his stock phrase, uttered when he was surprised, shocked or otherwise taken aback: “Well, Madre D’Dee!”

Freddy, who made no secret of his dislike for organized religion, didn’t have a funeral, but he did have a memorial service that was attended by several hundred people. “There were three things Freddy was totally devoted to—the Boston Red Sox, the Massachusetts Democratic Party and Old Log Cabin bourbon, not necessarily in that order,” his wife told the crowd. “And I encourage everyone to drink up, because if there was anything that Freddy hated to see, it was someone with an empty glass.” The crowd laughed.

 Freddy was born on Governors Island in New York Harbor, which was an Army base in 1934. As an Army brat—both his parents were officers—he moved around a lot as a kid. He spent some time in Hammond, Indiana, where the events immortalized in Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story took place, “although Shep and his friends were of course a lot older than me.”

He came to Boston to study journalism at Boston U’s School of Public Communication on Commonwealth Avenue, and also got heavily involved in the early civil rights movement—he wrote letter after letter imploring the Red Sox to sign their first Black player. Afterward, he worked as a reporter for the old Boston Traveler. When the Traveler went out of business, he became a public relations person for Massachusetts Bay Life Insurance. He always told people he left Massachusetts Bay Life because they moved and he didn’t want to commute to Framingham, but some people whispered that the company asked him to leave because of his heavy drinking. He ended up at the Weekly Journal, a community newspaper, soon afterward, and for the last 25 years of his life he called it home.

In his column, “News Notes,” Freddy commented on some of the issues affecting both the local areas we covered and the greater Boston region—with a twist. For example, when the Red Sox won the pennant after almost 100 years in 2004, he wrote about how well the police handled the traffic situation. A decade earlier, he had been a staunch defender of rent control in Brookline, pointing out that if it were repealed, that would make it much harder for students to obtain off-campus housing. Freddy usually called upon me to copy-edit his columns. When I cautioned Freddy about misspelled names or sentences that were too long, he didn’t seem interested. “On to the next thing!” he shouted in a mock-flourish.

Increasingly, after George Bush became president, Freddy turned much of his attention to national politics. “The minute he started repealing all of President Clinton’s executive orders, especially about the environment, I knew Bush was part of the radical right!” Freddy fumed, waving his arms. One time, when a particularly nasty thunderstorm was looming, he looked out the window and joked, “It’s so dark outside, it’s blacker than a Republican’s heart!”

Closely related to Freddy’s passion for politics was his being a history buff. The top of his always-messy desk usually had a few copies of U.S. Heritage and History magazine. One day, he walked over to my desk with a huge book that was obviously an antique. “Kid,” he said with a big smile, “This is a Brighton Town Directory from 1873, when Brighton was still a separate town. It lists all the residents, house by house, all the businesses, all the taverns. I brought it to the Brighton Neighborhood Association meeting last night and they went nuts over it!”  That directory provided him with material for several weeks’ worth of columns.

But there was another side to Freddy. Although he disparaged conventional religion, at heart he was not only a person of faith but a mystic. Every morning around 10:30, we’d see him throwing the I Ching at his desk, and we knew to hold any calls for him until he finished. He loved to talk about the time, back in the ‘60s, when he took a three-month leave from the Traveler to study Zen with Alan Watts on the West Coast. His office bookcase contained copies of the Gnostic Gospels and The Tibetan Book of the Dead next to the books on history and politics and the old volumes of U.S. Heritage and History.

Then, there was the matter of his doppelganger. Several people reported seeing, around the neighborhood, a man who looked and dressed almost identically to Freddy. Katherine, one of our reporters, once caught up with him. “Do you know you look just like Freddy McFerrin?” she asked. “Yeah,” the man answered in a near-whisper, “I know!” He quickly turned a corner, and when Katherine tried to follow him, she couldn’t find him. He had seemingly vanished.

After Freddy died, the doppelganger seemingly died, too. No one saw him again—except once. A young reporter decided to do a feature on the Dugout on Commonwealth Avenue, which had been one of Freddy’s favorite watering holes. Along with the article, he took a few pictures. When Katherine, who was now the editor, saw one of the downloaded photos, she almost fainted. There, at the end of the bar, was the doppelganger—or Freddy—tweed cap, tan coat, cigar and all.

Life went on at the paper without Freddy, but about two years after he died, I had the most vivid dream I’d ever experienced—almost as if it were in 3D. Freddy walked into the office and announced, “I’m Freddy McFerrin and I write columns. Where in blue blazes is my computer?” We’d moved his 1993-vintage, pre-internet desktop to the basement soon after he died. “Never mind,” Freddy said, “I’ll take this one. Let me start typing.” The other reporters and editors stood around him in shock, wondering how this was possible. When I woke up, I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn’t move for at least five minutes.

Two months later I had a similar dream. Freddy came back to the newsroom. Although the dream was just two months later, he appeared older than he had in the previous dream—he had less hair and was more wrinkled. This time, he just sat down at the computer and began typing without announcing himself. “He used to be here and now he’s back,” Katherine explained to two new reporters.

But these dreams, startling as they were, don’t compare to what happened to me a few days ago. After a long day, I took a little walk near the reservoir on the way home. I’d received one message. When I put the phone to my ear, I was terrified. There was Freddy! There was no mistaking his distinctive, gravelly voice. “Kid,” he said, “I know you and your wife have been thinking about where to go on vacation this year. May I recommend the Virginia part of the Blue Ridge. I know you went to the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, but this part is also noteworthy—it has the Peaks of Otter….” He didn’t finish the sentence.

I froze—I’d just had a psychic experience. I hadn’t talked about my vacation plans with anyone except my wife. How could he know? I looked at the phone number and recognized a Chicago area code. What would happen if I called it back? When I did, it was almost comforting to hear the operator’s voice: “The number you have dialed is disconnected or no longer in service.”

I put the phone away and headed for the liquor store on Cleveland Circle. Tonight I was planning to work on one of those tedious freelance articles I sometimes wrote for that electronics magazine. To make things go easier, I often bought a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. But once in the store, my arm, as if it had a will of its own, reached for Old Log Cabin bourbon on the next shelf. Well, I thought, this is interesting.

When I reached home, I heard myself telling my wife, “You know those vacation plans we’ve been talking about? Well, I suddenly thought about Virginia—you know, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Remember the great time we had when we visited the Blue Ridge in North Carolina? …. Oh, Madre D’Dee! There’s Bonnie on top of the bookcase! What a fascinating cat! I wonder what in blue blazes she’ll do next….”