Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  “So?”

  “So is that I seen how much money she keeps sending you.”

  Devin sat in silence. The shame he felt over cashing those checks caused a real and visceral need in him to drink. “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s been sending you money all this time? All these years?”

  “Never asked for a penny of it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I think it’s the same as stealing. From her. And from me.”

  “Neither stole nor asked. End of subject.”

  “You ain’t no better than them gypsies who come through and scam old people.”

  “I’ll have you know I donate half that money to a charity of my choosing.”

  “Bull.”

  “I don’t always cash them things anyway.”

  “Bull-shit. I seen the statements.”

  “You ain’t all wrong.”

  “I know I ain’t.”

  “That money ain’t hers to give.”

  “It’s out of her account.”

  “Her account? Shit. She didn’t do nothing for it. That’s daddy’s money.”

  “I wish you’d shut your smart mouth.”

  Scratching week-old chin stubble with one ragged nail, Devin faked being drunker than he was by offering Creedence a string of slobbery gobbledygook.

  “Lord have mercy. Listen to you.”

  Fighting to control laughter, he pinched his nose; tears ran down ruddy cheeks. More sibilant shit, his throat deliberately froggy and phlegmy, like a man drowning in his own juices. Whimpering, pleading, apologizing. Saying how broke up inside he was. Insisting how he still couldn’t get over it all. All while trying not to bust a gut, either in laughter, else from acidic bile the color of rust inside his gut, a stormy gastrointestinal squall line which a few morning beers could never temper.

  A hushed whisper: “Edward Devin Rucker, I ain’t never heard you this bad.”

  Devin’s merriment threatened to turn to genuine tears, like an unattended pot of mama’s grits boiling over onto the hot orange spiral of the stove burner. Taking off his shades and putting them on the plastic patio table covered in cigarette burns, he took a deep breath. “None of you know what ‘bad’ looks like, woman. Don’t forget that. But I know.”

  As he drank, belching, Devin listened to nothing. After a moment he realized he could hear his sister sniffling.

  “Forget Mama, which considering how sick she is—I think it’s cancer, by the way, but I ain’t sure. But, she might not last long enough for you to make it home. So, come home and do it to me.”

  “Do what to you?”

  “For me, I said. Do it for me.”

  “You said ‘to’.”

  “P’shaw. Are you drunk already?”

  “No. And don’t remind me of this sorry fucking state. The bars ain’t open out here yet.”

  Speaking of his physical condition, in the last year or so the weight had really come off. It probably had something to do with the fact of Devin rarely eating solid food. Every third day or so, he’d switch to screwdrivers or Sea Breezes to get vitamin C. Otherwise, he got by nibbling on dry toast, or, on a real good stomach day? Maybe a fast food hamburger, plain, no cheese, no condiments, don’t drag it through the garden, because that’s vegetables, and that’s good for a body.

  These Rucker women and their dramas. If some croaker had told him he was the one dying, finally, Devin would have danced a jubilant jig.

  He barked, “‘Do it for me?’ You self-centered little Edgewater County prick-tease. Mama’s a goner, but it’s all about you? Damn if you ain’t just like her.”

  “I can’t sit here on the phone all day going back and forth with you.”

  He cussed her bloody. Called her a dried up old biddy. Said he might have to come home just to spite everyone. She hung up.

  At the breaking of the line a flash of affection flitted in and out of his heart, a pale remembrance of love once held for Creedence, a sensation like actual emotion trying to claw its way out of the recesses of his abyssal insides. Devin, a besotted island unto himself, a vast, brackish sea of alone, but undeniable of his sister’s existance as the one and true life connection with meaning. The only one he’d allow.

  Furthermore: Devin, thinking that showing up back home for real could indeed serve as the ultimate fuck-you to them all. A lark. A hoot. Home again might possibly end up being the funniest, most entertaining stunt since the last time he’d been back in the Carolina midlands, when everyone got their drawers all bunched up at the old man’s funeral over the Rucker ruckus he’d perpetuated.

  As it often happened in his life, a sudden sea-change, a thunderclap, the turning of a page. A plan; a destination. For once.

  He called back. She answered. “Yes, yes,” his diction now clear and precise. “I believe that I will come home, dearheart. Yes indeed-y. As you wish.”

  Officious. “Fine. How, and when?”

  Devin, ready to get moving, but not about to give anything remotely close to resembling a firm ETA. “Don’t fret about the whys and wherefores, girlie. You’d get lost in the details.” Purring and oozing charm, his words now a mellifluous, basso profundo Barry White incantation. “I’m-a be there before you know it. Ya big brother—he’s coming home.”

  “Thank god. If you mean it.”

  “Say what I mean and do what I say. Count on it. Et cetera.”

  But Devin, his stomach stabbing with cold: Back home meant Libby. Even if she were dead.

  Wait—that’s a metaphor. She’s with Dobbs.

  Libby, her name holding an implication of wickedness and abandonment not unlike that of his own wretched mother, and all of her ruinous and pernicious foolishness. Still having a score to settle with both of them, but especially Libby—maybe once there in Edgewater County he’d track her down. Finally have matters out with his ex.

  For keeps.

  “You taking the bus, I hope?”

  Absolutely, he lied. “No way I’m getting behind the wheel.”

  “Fine. Dusty’ll pick you up from the station in Columbia, if he needs to.”

  Devin, cringing at the thought of her husband Dusty. He’d warned his sister to move away, far away, before something like Dusty happened, but Creedence, unheedful of his valuable and studied advice. And now? Stuck married to that sad-sack chubby Wallis turd, the only boyfriend she’d ever had; his sister, trapped running over the same old sandy, pine needle-strewn ground, so bored out of her mind she couldn’t think of a blessed goddurn thing to do but call and monkeywrench his perfectly cozy, comfy trajectory of unrepentant alcohol consumption.

  “And you listen to me,” she continued. “You better not worry us by not coming after all—we don’t deserve to be treated that way. There’s too much at stake this time.”

  “Reckon you probably don’t.”

  “‘Probably’?”

  “Put it this way: The situation’s taken under advisement.”

  Creedence, telling him to hush with his mess.

  The siblings paused, neither hanging up. At last she continued. “Wait—I got some other news, too.”

  “Mercy.” Cracking open a fresh beer, quiet as possible. “Go easy.”

  “We’re pregnant, finally.”

  Ouch. Horrible news. “Well, I be dog. A joyful occasion. Good job. And so on.”

  “Dusty’s so happy. We both are.” Sucking in a shaky breath. “And so I want to say how I’d like to believe my baby’ll have an uncle to play with one day, and to love, and to look out for her. One who loves her back.”

  “Sounds like a fairy tale.”

  “Just think about things like that. There’s a future for this family now, Devin. Please,” voice breaking. “Don’t turn into a story I have to tell my child about one day.”

  Back out on the balcony, Devin peeked over carefully to see a college dude in a Colorado Rockies jersey, hair corkscrewed and face puffy from last night’s party, walked out stunned by the mysteriously cracked windshield of his Toyota. The kid wh
ipped his head around everywhere but up at Devin. He stalked away, stabbing at his phone and threatening the endless expanse of prairie-dog pockmarked American scrubland how You fratboy bastards went too far this time.

  “Whoa, that’s a noble aim. Proud of ya. Didn’t suspect for a minute old Dust-ball had it in him.”

  “I only wish,” her voice breaking, “you could bring back little Prudy with you. She’s still okay—isn’t she?”

  A bucket of cold pig blood, dumped onto his head like that of Stephen King’s oppressed literary Carrie. Rage threatened to pass his lips. Devin, instead managing syllables sounding like DUH followed by GAH.

  “Devin: tell me. How is Prudy?”

  His inner vision flaring with coruscating fire-white light, Devin cussed with vituperative invective into his flip-phone, shut it with a vicious snap of finality, threw it across the room.

  Now, dang it—Prudy being dead wasn’t Creed’s fault. But, but, fuck that girl for invoking the cat’s name, unbidden and out of the blue like that. Was she trying to kill him?

  His heart pounded and the snakes under his skin, they began wriggling with aplomb. Truth: He’d sooner die than go home to South Carolina. Instead: Devin, needing to go and get extra superduper intoximacated.

  But wait, wait, wait—to get their goats but-good? And make it stick this time?

  Go home for real.

  He chuckled through the shakes and the churning stomach-sickness. Show his ass to them all like he done at Daddy’s funeral, but up the ante. Toss down a handful of Devin-change, that’s change in which they could believe, onto the gaming table felt. Double down on it all. That would show their disloyal cracker asses.

  What specific act of betrayal this campaign of revenge centered around, he could not currently recall. But he had a long drive ahead, and time to mull the reasons for wanting to put his fist through someone’s ignorant face as soon as he saw them again.

  But which someone?

  Dobbs.

  Billy.

  Libby herself, the disloyal little so-and-so.

  His mother.

  Ooooh.

  Getting warm.

  Giving this familiar puzzle a toss precipitated a wave of the nightmare detox shakes, but Devin nonetheless managed a wry, dry laugh fraught with rueful intent—a road trip lay ahead. But this time, it would be the last one.

  First? A drink, but only a bracer or twelve; however much to ease the wrinkles out of his slacks, get the hands steady enough to not only plan out a safe route back home across the country—safe for whom?—but to actually get behind the wheel, say grace to the God who looks after innocent drunks and little children, and hit the slab for home. What could possibly go wrong?

  Four

  Creedence

  Brushing a salty tear from the corner of her eye with a flick of a pale, freckled finger, Chelsea Colette (Rucker) Wallace stifled a scream, holding back the ire against its will. She touched deep, weary creases in her brow above heavy auburn eyebrows. Her phone, still spinning on the slick countertop where she’d tossed it after Devin had hung up on her.

  Reflux crawled up her gullet. She belched, spat into the sink. Overwhelmed for no good reason—when hadn’t he acted like this?

  Sounded strange hearing Devin call her Creedence, though. Chelsea, rarely thinking of herself as that anymore, not since losing her Daddy. Chelsea, this sounded like a woman’s name. Creedence? A skinny ugly dumb redneck girl stuck in Edgewater County, South Carolina. Stuck stuck stuck. Maybe Chelsea, on the other hand, would one day get herself free. They’d called her Colette as a child; her middle name. It had always felt inauthentic. What was wrong with using her first name? Lord, but her mother was a mess.

  Eileen, in failing health for real, though. That much true about what she said to Devin. The weight loss. The fatigue. Her pallor. The trips to the bathroom, frequent. And yet, the woman wouldn’t admit to her own daughter that all those mysterious treks down to Columbia were to see doctors.

  It was more than speculation. One of the guys in the body shop at the dealership, or rather his wife Felicia whom Chelsea had been in school with since the first grade, had told her that yes, Eileen had been in a number of times to see Dr. LaFreniere, but also that privacy laws were such that to say more could cost her a career. But that she was sorry—so so sorry, those extra so’s like knife wounds in Chelsea’s gut—and to let their family know if anything they could do.

  Friends. She could count on Felicia more than her own people. Sad and pitiful.

  Chelsea, almost shitting a brick—nobody in the healthcare industry would say ‘sorry’ that way if whatever was wrong with Eileen Rucker wasn’t serious, damned serious. If it wasn’t cancer from all those horrid cigarettes, she’d be surprised, mighty durn surprised, ladies and gentleman watching at home, if it wasn’t terminal.

  For once, the sister could understand her brother’s need for a stiff drink.

  Other voices in her head besides that of her mother: the babbling televisions and radios at the car dealership running constantly like a harsh, constant wail of white noise, the words spoken by the newsreaders and actors only half-noticed as she sat behind the switchboard in the Hampton Motors showroom, a glassed-in cubicle on a small stage, elevated. Her work: sending people and phone calls this way and that way, all day, every day, a task so all-mighty highfalutin’ that on most days she ended up wanting to curl in a corner of the break room and croak from the boredom.

  Not amusing. Not with Mama croaking.

  Forget it. That couldn’t be true. It was fine.

  When not staring at the showroom television screens tuned to Fox News and ESPN, pointing, or punching line 1 or 2 or 3—Sales, Service, Parts—Chelsea now had her own computer and could sit quasi-discreetly surfing around to internet celebrity gossip sites and other online destinations. After going down the rabbit hole of links, she’d gotten caught up in UFOs, 9/11 conspiracies (what a crock), One World Government paranoia, faked moon landings. After a couple of hours of such surfing she’d feel dizzy from worrying about the Elites and their nefarious plans for humanity, so much she had to finally make herself stop reading and thinking about the idea of a cabal of humans controlling everything and everyone, earthly power wielded with godlike consequences, the shadowy puppet masters laughing at all whom they called the Great Unwashed. Chelsea, intrigued but unable to accept that the government would do things to hurt their own people. Insisting that the nature of reality was indeed how it appeared as depicted on TV. Her mother, agreeing.

  Then, a new tangent, one ongoing, reminded by the cloth tube hanging on the wall into which she shoved all the plastic grocery sacks: after stumbling across a story about a giant island of plastic crap floating around in the Pacific Ocean, Chelsea had begun to read and learn about environmental problems. How plastic wasn’t going away, but instead broke down into pellets tiny shrimp out in the ocean mistook for food, mutating from eating the plastic or dying off. How, since those tiny shrimp were a minuscule but crucial base of the entire food chain, a potential catastrophe of future worldwide nutritional privation loomed…

  What was anyone to do?

  Nobody was going to stop using plastic, driving cars, and running AC units, particularly in Edgewater County, so hot in the summer that people called the Carolina midlands the armpit of the South.

  But impossible to ignore, these fears of food running out or the world getting too hot or too cold: Chelsea now had her own legacy to consider in the form of a daughter.

  Or maybe a boy.

  Certain to be a little girl, though.

  One like her.

  Another me. Another person.

  To replace Mama.

  Once she’s gone.

  Eileen’s beloved and only daughter groaned.

  The phone rang, scaring a scream and a poot out of her.

  Mama. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got him on the phone?”

  “Did I stutter?”


  Chelsea’s mother, a burst of weeping. Mama Eileen had gales of grief at times. They came and went, almost like she could turn it on and off like a play-actor. “Is he—? Did you—?”

  “Yes, Mama. I lied to him and told him you were sick. That he better get home soon, if he was gonna see you again. It made me want to puke. But I lied for you.”

  Her tears, evaporating. “Good. That little shit. He doesn’t deserve anyone to tell him the truth.”

  “I also told him about the baby. Thought that would help.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Remembering his nastiness. His disdain. “He sure sounded happy. Hoping it’d be a little nephew for him to play with.”

  “Nephew? P’shaw. If it ain’t a little girl, it’ll be the first time I was ever wrong about anything, Colette. Won’t it.”

  “Sure, Mama. Whatever you say.”

  Digging around in the fridge and suffering innocuous small talk and enduring waves of her Mama’s dry, choking cough, Chelsea begged to be let go and was, but only with great reluctance. They talked three times a day, usually saw each other once or twice. Mercy.

  Stooped over in lounging pants and oversized Jeff Gordon T-shirt, one of Dusty’s, Chelsea’s house-clothes hung loose, threadbare and stained, fuzzy bedroom slippers worn, stinky. She grabbed a head of iceberg lettuce out of the crisper, the bag of carrots, half a tomato left over from the sandwich Dusty had taken to the hardware store for lunch that day. Trying to eat better, all these salads. Half the time it was still pizza and burgers. Not much of a cook. Her mother had never had the patience to teach her.

  Thinking: Maybe this will bring meaning. Us having made a baby.

  Us.

  She barked a laugh. Caught herself. Suffered a bout of revulsion at that one awful remark of Devin’s.

  About the daddy.

  Of the baby.

  Just morning sickness, her twinge of nausea, only a few hours late today.