See? I’m not breaking any resolution.
They’d cleaned and re-stocked the rig and Dan was writing up the last run, which meant—at four-thirty in the morning of the first day of the year—Sol was off-shift until four that evening. Mind made up, already plotting out the route back to Madama Lopez’s townhouse off Pecos, Sol stopped at the payphone outside the lockers, and called Robbie.
He didn’t care that it was too early, or too late, or if he woke her up. Or he did care, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from dialing. He didn’t really want to talk, but he wanted to hear her voice something awful.
It rang and rang, going to the voicemail after five, and Sol leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, listened to Robbie tell him that she wasn’t able to answer, but to leave a message.
“Hey,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Hey. I’m running late, and…” Kept his eyes closed, mustered some truth. “I love you.” There was more to say, of course. “Hope you had a good night. I’ll see you soon as I can, chère.” It wasn’t much, he realized, it wasn’t nearly enough and it was much too late, but it’s what he had.
At least he didn’t have that damn drive to North Platte this time. No, this time there was a murderous ghost right close by, and no he wasn’t going to let it be, he wasn’t going to ignore its pleas for release. Not so much for the ghost—it wasn’t human, after all—but the Madama looked stretched thin, and their cardiac patient might have had a real MI for perfectly natural reasons, or she might not, but with these kind of crazed, furious ghosts, it was only a matter of time before everything went to shit.
The sun was coming up as he headed north, the Front Range painted pink with reflected light, ceiling high. He wondered why he wasn’t more nervous. After all, he’d only tried this once before, and memorably fucked it up. He hoped to even the odds this time; he told himself he knew what he was doing, had learned from the last time, wasn’t screwed up by heat and fever and flood, was going in cold and intact. In the back of the Wagoneer he had everything he needed, which was simply salt, a lot of it. Not much else was required, unless you counted balls. And talent. He hoped he had enough of both.
Luck. That was important, too.
All of that, plus a little bit of knowledge gleaned from a father whose definition of ‘explanation’ was ‘watch this’, and Sol had only seen him exorcise a fortuneteller’s ghost once, and that once had resulted in significant jail time.
For all intents and purposes, Sol knew, he was playing it by ear.
SOL, BEFORE
The house looked like it might walk away, feet in the swamp, head in the air. Already the mosquitoes were out in force, but Sol was nearly immune to them. He imagined his skin tough as a reptile’s, darkened from long days, from sun and sun and sun.
The shallow-bottomed boat kissed the dock, and at his father’s signal, Sol cut the outboard engine and jumped onto the prow with one foot, the other already heading for the uneven dock, prickly nylon rope no match for his summer-rough hands. He secured the rope between boat and cleat, loop and loop, magic figure eight, symbol of eternity.
Maman was taking her time coming down to the dock to greet them. She must have heard them coming: not much was moving on the bayou on such a lazy August evening, and they’d been gone for more than a week. His father was already taking the duffle bag from atop the Styrofoam cooler, which brimmed with shrimp and oyster, partial payment from the grateful Chaisson family for working their boats. For laying their grandfather to rest.
Sol was strong enough to take the cooler himself, and he met his father’s dark eyes, sparkling with the satisfaction of a successful excursion—money in his wallet, full chest of food, a well-executed interment. Sol pictured Neanderthals returning from the hunt with hearts full as theirs.
“Laisse-moi la boîte,” Sol said, nodding to the cooler, to the plastic Piggly Wiggly bags overflowing with shrimpboat clothing. Too serious. Papa was always telling him to lighten up. “M’man, elle t’attends. Don’t you keep her waiting,” he tried teasing. He’d earned the right. Besides, Aurie didn’t mind it.
Aurie glanced up, and Sol followed his gaze: the house was sturdy despite nature’s attempts to knock it down every season. Most every bit of it had been replaced once or twice. Even so, his father always said it had been in the family for generations. Maybe just the idea of a house was enough; the physical thing didn’t matter.
It was silent up there, no sound of dinner dishes being saved, or of Mireille singing Lutie to sleep, or Baz’s constant complaints of heat or hunger or boredom.
Aurie shrugged. “Le char, yé pas ici. Mireille, I think she’s out, maybe.” He was right, Sol saw: Maman’s old Pontiac, gray and mossy like a stone on wheels, wasn’t in its usual spot by the raised road. Papa’s two-tone Chevy pickup sat alone, slightly bereft.
“Peut-être,” Sol repeated softly. If you say so.
His father shouldered the duffle bag, was on the dock and Sol handed over the cooler. It was heavy, all right. He didn’t complain. His father had brought him on this job and that had been enough for Sol. You didn’t complain when your father said you were a man.
There were two chairs on the dock and as Sol tipped the outboard clear of the water, cleaned the prop of weed, Aurie sat, opened the chest of iced shrimp, fished around and came out with two beer cans, dripping briny water. He passed one to Sol, then cracked his open with a satisfying psht before leaning back in the chair. He looked tired, Sol decided, as well he might. Hard work, what the old man did.
“Next time, Sol,” Aurie said finally.
It wasn’t criticism, it was encouragement. Still, Sol lifted one shoulder uncomfortably, lowered himself onto the opposite chair. A pelican softed across the jade water. “Bien sûr, Papa.” The beer tasted vaguely shrimpy. It didn’t matter, it was cold and it had been given to him by his father without having to ask. “Mais…” Let it rest there, an unspoken question floating across the water, just like the bird.
“Mais quoi?” his father asked, rubbing his short beard with oil-stained hands. Hands that could do so much. Sol felt utterly inadequate, suddenly, looking at them.
“But… It’s nothing,” Sol said, shifting his attention to the moss-choked cypress beyond the house. “Merde, Papa. I’m never gonna get it.”
Aurie laughed into the mosquito-fogged air, and Sol would remember that sound in later years. The laugh was delighted. Confident. “Espère, gars. You’re gonna be le traiteur after me. You got the feel for it, Beausoleil. C’est pas facile, what we do. It’ll come.”
Sol snorted through his nose, took another slug of beer. “You make it look easy.”
“And ma mère, she made it look easy too.” He reached out a broad hand, tapped his eldest son on a sun-dealt knee. “She woulda liked you. A lot. But ghosts, especially ones dat don’t want to go? They’re never easy.” He waved his hand in a decisive motion across the horizon. “Jamais.”
The Chaisson grandfather, for sure his ghost hadn’t wanted to go. The elderly man had been ailing, which was partly why Aurie had been called, to heal if he could, ease the passage if he couldn’t. Later, on the margins of a huge community fish fry celebrating pépère Chaisson’s life, Aurie had once again shown Sol how it was done. And he had made it look easy.
They drank in silence as the sun eased over the sketch of trees screening the gangly house from road. A vehicle hummed along the highway, but it wasn’t the Pontiac, they could both tell that even from a distance. Aurie finished his beer first, slapped a biting bug from the back of his neck. Sweat stained the chest of his faded red t-shirt, made the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival mascot imprinted on it look like it’d been shot. Sol smiled quietly.
“I think maybe she’s getting you some cake,” Aurie said, popping open another beer. He offered one to Sol, but he wasn’t finished his first yet, so he shook his head.
“Cake?” Like it was a foreign word.
Aurie was looking at the sky; it’s what you did here, especially as
hurricane season approached. Rely on the radio weather reports, sure, but the sky usually told you what was going on. Aurie chuckled, slow and lazy. Sol warmed to the sound of it, love dressed up as mockery. “Mais, your mother’s always saying how hard it is to bake a cake in this goddamn heat. Didn’t grow up with this climate, her.” The opposite of a hothouse flower, that’s what Papa called her. “Probably drove all the way up to Houma to buy you one.”
“If she took Baz, that cake won’t last the ride back,” Sol observed, drawing another long laugh from Aurie. “Besides, she said that she was gonna read my fortune this birthday.” He set the almost empty beer can on the dock, opened his hand with a grin. “She wanted to read my palm, but I asked for the tea leaves.”
The laughter stilled. The chair creaked slightly as Aurie came forward. “Ça c’est d’la merde, you know, that stuff. Total bullshit.”
“Papa,” Sol said, turning in his seat, surprised. “I can see ghosts. So can you. Who knows what’s possible.”
“Écoute bien, Sol,” Aurie rumbled, voice taking an edge. “What your maman does, that’s not magic, hé? She makes some extra money doing her thing, but it’s all guesses and being smart about people. Harmless.” Sol knew his mother felt differently about it, said it was a calling as much as Papa being a traiteur, but Sol kept his mouth shut because Aurie wasn’t making conversation. “A real fortuneteller, you have to watch out for her. She’s using a maudit ghost, she’s not doin’ anyone any good, not even herself.” His mouth twisted in his beard. “That ghost, it’s the same as her slave. It’s not what we do.” Aurie looked to his son, and Sol nodded agreement.
It was getting dark now, and Sol knew his mother didn’t like driving at night.
Close by, somewhere in the darkness that was not the highway, that wasn’t the cemetery across the highway, Sol heard a splash, a struggle. Silence. Aurie got up, beer in hand. He gestured to the cooler. “You think you can carry that all the way up?”
Sol grinned, knew his teeth would be a gleam in the dusk, a mood-breaker. “You afraid of a few ’gators, old man?”
Then, clearly in the new silence, they heard it: a whimper, a cry. Papa. The in-drawn snotty breath of a frightened child. “Reste ici,” his father commanded, dropping the bag, listening but still moving, putting the beer on the dock, going for the stairs. The noise had come from the house above, from the darkness.
Though his father had just told him to stay put, Sol wasn’t of a mind to do it. He was days away from fourteen, was nearly as tall as his father, had earned a place in the gifted class in school, learned fast, had already seen plenty of all that was strange in this world. He’d been tapped as his father’s successor and his father was a fine traiteur, the best in the parish. Sol wasn’t going to be left on the dock like a child.
Taking the wooden staircase two steps at a time, Aurie looked back, once, but Sol couldn’t see what was in his face, and that was probably just as well.
The house was full of ghosts.
They were scudding like clouds from room to room, drifting through doorways, seated on Maman’s rocker, on the staircase, one listlessly running a hand over Papa’s closed fiddle case. Sol stopped in the shadow of the front door, open to the night bugs, but Aurie had halted in his steps and the room was so cold Sol could see his breath.
One ghost, two tops, that was all he’d ever seen at the same time. Inside the big room where his mother altered Sol’s outgrown clothes to fit Baz, where Lutie played with her ragtag mob of thriftstore Barbies, Sol counted seven ghosts, a ridiculous number.
They weren’t paying any attention to him, or to his father. They seemed bored, depleted, waiting. One ghost that had once been a young woman, blouse stained with dark blood, hand lacerated, sat on the stairs leading to the bedrooms. As Sol watched, it knocked on the riser as though expecting an answer. A hollow booming noise, and Sol’s palms were suddenly clammy; he wiped one against his chest.
Aurie dropped to his knees, hand splayed wide on the boards, ready to get rid of them, get rid of them all, asking for no help because…because…Because he knows I can’t do it, Sol thought, standing in the doorway behind his crouching father, eyes wide.
Immediately, the ghosts seemed to know what was up, and they turned, almost in unison. Readying themselves, Sol understood, not knowing what he was seeing, never having known ghosts to work in tandem, as a team. To do what? But as they rushed Aurie, rushed the traiteur, their intent became evident.
Aurie was thrown hard against the wall as one of the sketchy ghosts—solid enough for tasks like this—picked him up by the throat and threw him like he was a stray cat found at the Sunday roast. Aurie’s body made an enormous crash, a framed print dropping to the floor and shattering. Aurie followed it, slumped among the glass, dazed, but only for a moment.
“The cupboard!” Aurie cried, struggling to his feet and gesturing to the stairs, where the ghost of the woman waited. “Go get him, he’s in the cupboard!”
The ghosts moved. Turned to Aurie, sightless and intent and riled. All except the ghost on the stairs, which came to a stand as Sol did as his father asked. The child’s voice had cried ‘Papa’, but Papa was busy, so Sol would have to do.
Behind him, Aurie once again bent to the floor and the ghosts came for him. A diversion. Sol, intent on the cupboard, didn’t see what happened next, but he heard the sound of furniture being moved, long scrapes, banging of a window in the frame, the high-toned wail of wood bending and then breaking.
Sol clutched the cupboard’s knob and yanked open the door. He caught the scent of shit and urine and boy-sweat, then Baz leaped forward into his arms, sobbing. His brother was disheveled and big-eyed, all spindly legs and tanned skin, bright bluegreen eyes rimmed red.
The ghost on the stairs, the young woman covered in blood, noticed them, moonwhite eyes turned, glowing, malevolence like a cold northern wind. Sol had time to set Baz down on the threadbare rug, but that was all.
The ghost moved like stop motion film, like it wasn’t attached to the regular rhythms that governed life as Sol knew it, and he supposed that made sense on some level. Les fantômes, they’re not like us.
Even as its sharp fingers tangled in his hair, stroked his scalp like a rake, ready to snap his head back, he knelt down as he’d been taught, hand against the floorboards, finding the hum of life around him. Sol dug deep. It’s in my damn house, he thought, anger shocking through him. He moved beyond it, couldn’t feel the ghost’s hand on his head, couldn’t feel the cold. It’s here, in our house and it’s after Baz.
And so, for the first time in his life, he sent a ghost on its journey and though that was far from easy, he made it appear effortless. Found the rhythm of life, connected himself to it, declared his angry intention, gave it a way out. Sol’s deadroad shivered in the darkness, bold silver against brutal shadow, wavering but there. The ghost’s mouth parted, its hand clenched, but Sol’s hair was short and the ghost did not have enough grasp on this world. It unraveled down the road soundlessly as Sol watched, astonished. He swallowed, once, lips pressed together, so scared he banged the floor loudly, no taps these, hard enough that his hand burned with the effort.
When it was done, he raised his head, too surprised to be pleased, too frightened to be proud. The ghost was gone, and he’d been responsible for that. Only a second, then he whipped around, coming to his feet, hands held wide.
Aurie stood behind him, framed by the door, Baz shivering in his arms. All the ghosts were gone; his father had seen to that. Aurie shook his head, seemingly unscathed by his run-in with the wall, with putting down six ghosts, solo. Eyes on Sol, too spent and furious and fearful to give even a nod of acknowledgment.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Baz was crying into Aurie’s shoulder, a wail. He was held tight; Aurie’s knuckles were white, clutching his youngest son’s shoulder. “They’re gone, I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t—” and Aurie said he should get him clean, but Baz started screaming, “Not upstairs! I don
’t wanna go! Don’t make me!”
Instead, Aurie brought him into the kitchen where he stripped Baz down, washed him in the sink as though he were a baby, draped a tablecloth over his shivering body. Sol stood in the doorway, silent, a cloud of dread descending on him now that the immediate danger of the ghosts was dealt with. No time to feel any sense of accomplishment, no time for any words of congratulations. They had moved past that marker, past the time when such a distinction mattered; it was unimportant, given the now.
“Shhh,” Aurie said, rubbing Baz’s wet head with his wide hand. “Parles, Basile. Tell me. Slowly.” But it wasn’t in Baz’s nature to tell anything slowly, so it all came out in a disjointed rush, French and English and Franglish, Cajun and Acadian, all those words running together.
Out of the mass of words, only one thing truly registered with Aurie: “Mireille, she left?” he questioned, voice low. “Why?”
Baz shook his head, tears tracking down his face. “It was my fault, I shoulda stopped Lutie from doing it. My fault, Papa, blâme-moi.”
“Luetta?” Aurie looked perplexed, like his daughter was the last person in the world that would upset anyone. There was a lot about Lutie Papa chose not to see, Sol knew. With her seven-year-old’s inflexibility and determination, with her big serious eyes, Lutie had a way of making you do stuff you didn’t want to do.
Baz took an unsteady breath and told the rest, about pet ghosts and fortunetellers, about cemeteries and singing.
As he spoke, Sol noticed the last thing, the thing he would remember clearly when all the other details about this terrible day had receded into a hazy memory: a white saucer, parted from its teacup long ago, on the kitchen table. And on it, in the very center, a narrow gold band, their mother’s wedding ring. Sol looked up at his father, still holding the feverish and wet Baz, who was now demanding something to eat, and made a motion to the table.
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