The Man in the Saffron Uniform

It was the Tuesday after Easter, and the rain had turned the gravel driveway into a quagmire. I was visiting my aunt Clara at her crumbling farmhouse, a place that smelled of mothballs and old wood smoke. After a heavy meal of ham and scalloped potatoes, we sat in the parlor, the only room with a working fireplace, and the conversation drifted to the dead. Clara, my mother’s sister, had always been the one to see things, though she never liked to talk about it.

‘It started four years ago,’ she said, staring into the flames, her hands wrapped around a cold cup of coffee. ‘On the anniversary of Uncle Merton’s death. I was coming down the hall from the bathroom, and I saw him—or something—standing in the conservatory. That room’s been locked since Mother passed, and the furniture’s all draped in sheets. But there he was, a man, wearing a pale yellow uniform, like a railway porter’s, with no face. Just a blank, smooth head.’

I shifted on the worn velvet settee. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a trick of the light?’ I asked. My own mother, who had joined us over the phone, spoke up from the speaker on the side table. ‘She’s not the only one. I saw the same thing twice. Once in the hallway of our house, and once by the garage door, right before I went out to throw away a soda can.’

Clara nodded. ‘The second time, I was doing the same thing, headed to the mudroom to take out the trash. I saw it again, standing by the old root cellar, same faded yellow suit, same face like an egg. I told my brother Dave about it, and he just said, ‘Oh, that’s Uncle Merton.’ I laughed and said, ‘He never wore yellow, and he never worked on the railroads.’ But Dave said, ‘What did he wear every day at the canning factory? The same dull yellow coveralls they gave him for his shift.’

The phone crackled, and my mother added, ‘Those coveralls were a kind of saffron, not bright, but like the color of dried turmeric. He wore them every day for thirty years. And the factory closed down long before he died, but he kept a pair in his closet. He used to say they were his lucky clothes.’

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the damp air. ‘Did either of you ever see it move?’ I asked.

Clara shook her head. ‘No, it just stood there. But the second time, I felt like it was waiting for something.’ She paused, and the fire popped. ‘I think it’s still here.’

The next morning, before I left, Clara asked me to help her check the lock on the conservatory. She claimed she’d heard noises from inside the night before, a rhythmic tapping, like a fist on a window. As we pushed the heavy door open, a gust of stale air hit us, carrying a faint smell of metal and salt, from the brine they used at the cannery. The sheets were still draped over the furniture, but on the floor, near the far window, was a small, yellowed photograph. It was of a young man in the same saffron uniform, standing in front of a factory gate, a faint smile on his face.

Clara bent down and picked it up. ‘This was in Merton’s Bible,’ she whispered. ‘He kept it hidden. I’d forgotten.’ I saw the back of the photo was blank, except for a faded date and the initials ‘M.H.’

‘He’s buried in that uniform,’ I said, my voice hardly above a whisper. ‘I remember at the funeral, the mortician had put him in a gray suit. But my mother said, ‘No, dress him in his work clothes.’ The undertaker tried to argue, but she insisted.’

Clara’s hand trembled. ‘So what we saw was a ghost wearing his own skin, his own daily covering,’ she said. ‘But why now? Why after four years?’

That’s when we heard it again: a soft knock, coming from the wall behind us. Not a rapping, but a dull, repetitive thump, like the rhythm of a machine. It seemed to come from inside the walls, moving slowly toward the conservatory door.

We didn’t wait. We ran out of the room and slammed the door. As we stood in the hallway, catching our breath, I saw through the window that the rain had stopped, and the sun cast long shadows across the lawn. And in the glass of the window, I saw a reflection: a figure in saffron, standing beside us, with no face, but with its head tilted, as if listening.

Neither of us spoke. We just turned and walked to the car. As we drove away, I looked back at the farmhouse, and I could have sworn I saw a pale yellow shape in the upper window, watching us leave. The next week, a letter arrived from Clara. It said that the tapping had grown louder, and that she had found a pile of yellow lint on the conservatory floor, like someone had shed a uniform there. She hadn’t gone back in since.

I never went to visit her again. I moved across the country, but sometimes, when the light is low, I catch a glimpse of a man in a saffron uniform standing in a doorway, waiting for someone to acknowledge him. And I know that the ghost isn’t just a memory, but a duty left undone, a uniform that still needs to be worn.

Now, I’m writing this from my new apartment, and I just made the mistake of looking out the window. There’s a man on the fire escape, wearing the same pale yellow coveralls, and he has no face. But he’s holding something: a old tin lunch pail, the kind they used to carry to the factory. He’s tapping on the glass with it, in that same rhythm, like a heartbeat. I’m unsure if he wants his photograph back, or if he wants me to put on the uniform and take his place. But I’m terrified to find out.

The phone rings. It’s Clara. I know it’s her because I hear that same rhythmic tap in the background. She says, ‘He’s been with me all week. I’ve decided to bury the photo in the garden, under the roses. That’s where he proposed to your grandmother.’ But as she says it, I see the man on the fire escape tap the glass harder, and I realize: the photograph is not the only thing he’s lost. He’s lost his purpose. And he won’t rest until he finds it.

I put the phone down. The tap tapping continues. And I know that soon, I’ll have to answer.