Holding the back of her hand to her forehead, Eileen snatched up a copy of Woman’s World and began fanning herself. Sudden, eyes flying open, dropping the magazine to the floor and grabbing Devin again, now crushing him to her bosom, she wept, “That could have been my poor sweet little baby in that pool. You are not going back to that damn country club ever again.”
Devin, unnerved, pushed her away. “Let me go, now. I know where the deep end is. I know how to swim. And that’s my durn job—I got to go back.”
“You’ll never understand, not until you have your own children.”
Going upstairs, lying on his bed, he flipped through a collection of Poe stories he’d been reading. Now that his soul had been scrutinized by the glassy red eyes of a dead man, the dark nature of the material seemed less entertaining than horrific.
It could have been me.
Wondering about the nature of time and space, matters cosmological, spiritual. Unable to shake the big questions, pondering the notion of how long he might have until ending up floating in some pool. Thinking about the man’s body turning toward him, as though wanting to look at the boy who’d jumped into the water with him.
Devin, giving in. He felt afraid. He still did.
The next day, a screaming match with his mother about going to work. She’d tried to physically restrain him from leaving. And for his part, Devin felt unnerved and anxious about being where a man had died. The pool, drained and cleaned and now being refilled.
Not wanting to look into the water, to see the sun glimmering upon its surface.
With the pool cleaning underway Devin had no formal deck duties, and Mr. Raymond again dismissed him early in the day.
When he tried to discuss the events of the prior morning, his boss had shown no interest. “That ain’t worth none of your worry. Not now. Put it out of your mind.”
“I keep seeing that man in the pool.”
He patted Devin on the shoulder. “I was in Korea when I was a young man. Did you know that?”
“No, sir. Like on M*A*S*H?”
“Lucky I didn’t end up in one of them units. But I seen men suffer, men I knew, bleeding out into the snow all the way on the other side of the world, so far from my Mama I damn near cried myself to sleep every night. I couldn’t help the fellas no more’n you could help Albert Nixon. Only thing you can do is put it out of your mind.”
“I’ll try.”
“Go on and play. Enjoy your summer.”
Again through the woods, not especially wanting to go home but having no other place to go but Dobbs’s, in a neighborhood too far to ride to in the Carolina heat. Hoping instead for a deserted Rucker house: not only Dad gone, but Colette at the Fordhams for a picnic with little Shelby and her brother. With luck, his mother, off shopping instead of sitting in front of the television, or at one of her ELMS meetings.
Devin. Craving alone.
And yet not.
Pedaling out of the woods and onto highway 79, a quarter mile later along the shoulder and through the brick-gated entrance to his subdivision. He felt an odd stillness and sense of loneliness in the air.
A couple of turns to his cul-de-sac; upon arrival, Devin, noting a Lincoln Towncar parked in the driveway. Hill Hampton’s car. Uncle Hill, friend to Dwight and to all the Ruckers. Family.
Devin, not giving it two thoughts. Nothing too unusual about seeing Uncle Hill at the house. Except, perhaps, time of day.
Coming into the house and slamming the door.
Out of Devin’s line of sight came a cacophony of noise, banging around in the formal living room.
His mother, screaming out in surprise. “Who’s there? Devin?”
“It’s me, Mama.”
“Don’t you move.”
Devin, barreling on through the foyer to discover Eileen wearing only her robe, the same one she’d had on first thing. Her face, white as a ghost. Standing beside her was Hill Hampton, his shirttail out and checked sport coat off. Boots of finest leather, hand-tooled, lying willy-nilly on the floor like he’d kicked them off his wide pink feet in a hurry. The throw pillows from the couch, scattered around.
The two of them.
Together.
Devin, not comprehending. Not at first. Not letting himself.
Then, oh shit, a different fear: “What are y’all—”
“Well, looky here.” Hill Hampton, barefoot and stuffing his shirttail into his trousers. “What you know good, Devin? Your Daddy told me y’all was talking about riding over to look at cars for you, soon.”
Devin, backing out of the room. “What. Are y’all doing. In here.” Narrowing his eyes at Uncle Hill. His inner voice, verbalizing itself unbidden: “This—I can’t figure this out.”
“Uncle Hill brought papers for Daddy to look over. On the new Cadillac we’re looking at—thinking about—maybe buying. And—” This lie seemed to pain her. “And about a car for you, next year.”
“That’s right.” Hill tried to seem casual about sitting down to yank the boots onto his wedges of feet. “I sure appreciate you rubbing my feet, Eileen. She’s been doing that for me since we was all in high school together. But Devin, the 86 model-years will be rolling off them trucks in a week or two, and if I was you? I’d tell old Dwight to let you test drive one yourself. In fact, I’ll tell him that myself. I’ll insist. We don’t need to wait for no learner’s permit to get you behind the wheel. Not in Edgewater County.”
“There now.” Eileen, swishing past Devin in her robe and making for the stairs. “Thank you for bringing those papers over for Dwight, Hill. We’ll—we’ll see you on Sunday for the cookout,” his attendance a regular occurrence: the Ruckers, the Hamptons, going back many years. Devin despised Uncle Hill’s two meathead sons—McNabb, after the famous championship Redtails basketball coach, and McIntire, maiden name of one of the grandmothers. They had thankfully gone off to college at Clemson, where both played football. Were going to the pros, to hear Uncle Hill tell it. These days usually only Hill came over, though—his wife Lenore had died several years before.
Uncle.
Hill.
Devin fell against the wall in the short hallway leading to the kitchen. The frame of his 6th grade portrait jabbed him in the shoulder. His heart, beating in his ears like a bass drum.
Hampton, his cheeks splotched the color of a beet, paused at the front door and called back. “Wait, Devin: You happy working at the club? If you ain’t, we can put you on down at the lot. I know finding that boy in the pool like that must’ve been awful.”
“Bye, Hill.” Eileen, hollering from the kitchen. “Can’t wait to see the new car.”
It all sunk in. “Damn, y’all.”
“Devin.” Hill Hampton held out his arms encased in seersucker, shirttail still half untucked. “Please.”
Two simmering gray blobs boiled in Devin’s line of sight, obscuring Uncle Hill’s fat, freckled face. “You just better go on.”
“I will. I will, now.” Hill Hampton, out the door. The engine of the Towncar roaring to life. All but peeling out of the cul-de-sac. Devin, ignoring a line of patter from his mother about helping her decide about supper, skulked up to his room.
On his bed, staring at the ceiling, a sickening sense of his mother he’d never felt before—thinking of her as a woman.
And Uncle Hill. As a man.
“Ye, gods.” Devin, revolted. Unable to stop imagining it. He forgot about the dead man, at least while the sun was up.
The next day, a Saturday, he helped his father rake pine straw in the back yard and asked: “Daddy? Are we getting a new car?”
Dwight, laughing, said, “No, son. Not just now.”
“We’re not even planning to look?”
“Not unless your mother said something.”
“Or test drive? Or nothing?”
“What’s this all about?”
“Uncle Hill said the new Cadillacs were coming in next week.” Dwight’s was an ’82.
“He’s been on me to t
rade. When’d you see Hill?”
Devin shrugged. “Can’t remember.”
Dwight mussed his son’s hair. “I know what this is about.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. And I think it’s fine.”
Devin, his mind a blank—they had to be talking about two different things. “Well, dang.”
“Putting the cart before the horse, though,” prideful rather than in annoyance, “thinking about that learner’s permit next year. That’s my fault. Guess I put it in your head the other day, though. Didn’t I.”
“Uncle Hill said he’d let me test drive a car sometime soon. That’s all it was.”
“That rascal. My boy’s growing up so fast. All in good time, son. My sweet son.”
At the Sunday cookout, Devin, watching Uncle Hill and his mother’s every interaction with a keen discernment. Seeing in their darting, furtive eyes the nasty truth. At least Hill had had the sense to bring a beard, a woman he knew from Columbia. Devin’s Mama made such a production about welcoming her to the fold it was like watching a Broadway play. Devin, seeing his mother’s layers, her little fibs and exaggerations, with a new lens.
Secrets which he had held close for five years, now. They burned him up worse than finding a dead stranger in the pool. But he didn’t have nightmares about his mother. That sordid mess he truly did do his best to push out of his mind.
But ever since, eaten alive with all this grim knowledge. From the dead man in the pool, Devin, unable to articulate any verifiable wisdom, other than an ability to describe the condition of post-life dead-eyed meat; with his father, wanting to tell him the sick and true-truth about what he knew, but unwilling. Believing this both an obligation but also a prohibition, the breaking of which an unimaginable impossibility—looking into his father’s eyes and telling him.
How. Could. He. Do. It.
Easy—he couldn’t.
Not making it over to the car lot to test drive cars anytime soon, but a different sort of venality and bribery began that week—his mother, plying him with unexpected money. Slipping twenties into the pockets of his shorts and under his pillow. No notes. No words between them. No exchanges between them regarding Uncle Hill, other than Devin’s occasional piercing stares across the dining room table.
“What’s this money for?” he finally asked her one day.
“Extra,” she called it. Her eyes, hooded, opaque. Like always. “Just our little secret, extra little deal type-deal. You save that money. Spend it on something you want. Something special.”
Devin, a year passing, another momentous season of change: sixteen, a birthday celebrated with new girlfriend Libby Meade. Prior, vivid tragedies fading in the face of sensual exploration with Libby.
A transplant from Delaware, her dad was an engineer at the Sugeree River Station. Libby herself, a doll, an absolute angel, smart and witty and sexy, dark-eyed, petite, matching Devin book-for-book, except maybe for the sci-fi. A slightly jaundiced eye about the world; cynical like him, but a sweet cynicism. He could not have prayed for a more compatible soul.
Libby. The coolest girl he’d ever met. So different from the belles and chubby rednecks and ignorant poor farmer’s daughters of Edgewater County. After that terrible summer, the only time Devin really felt safe—and loved—had been with Libby.
One afternoon he played her Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. Singing along to ‘Buckets of Rain,’ the lines about loving the ‘cool way she looks at him’. She had blushed and smiled.
Later, he’d find out about her family problems. Darkness in the past. But together, life was all fresh and innocence and felt like rebirth from the summer before him. A respite. A way out—Libby.
Love.
And sure enough, upon that sixteenth birthday milestone, Devin, receiving his car—a midnight blue Mustang straight off the lot of Hampton Motors, sticker in the window, huge red ribbon, new car smell, tires shiny, a stick-shift, a fastback, one of the slickest new cars in the county, in Uncle Hill’s words.
Indeed—Devin, standing with his hand on the fender, felt awe.
Getting away now seemed tangible.
Freedom beckoned.
Uncle Hill, his mother, father, Creedence, and Libby: the young girls stoked and wound up and excited beyond reason, his sister doing one of her crazy involuntary dances Devin called the herky-jerk. The lot of them, all looking to him for a reaction.
His voice, coming small and timid. “Thanks, y’all. It’s amazing.”
Dwight slung his arm around his best friend’s neck. “Uncle Hill picked it out for you personally.”
“That I did, Devin. Had it shipped down from Charlotte just yesterday.”
Devin, meeting Hampton’s eyes. “Thank you.”
A warm smile. “Nothing but the best for my boys—all my boys.”
Devin extended his slender hand, swallowed whole by Uncle Hill’s lion’s paw. Leaning in, letting Uncle Hill give him a big backslapping hug, followed by his father, who wanted to do the same.
“Take her around the block, son.”
Cutting his eyes at Eileen, who had busied herself pulling off the oversized ribbon. Devin grabbed Libby’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Creedence all but shouted, “Oh my god, please, please can I go, too?”
Devin, laughing at his crazed little beanpole of a sister. “Sorry. First ride’s for me and my girl. Next time.”
Backing out of the driveway, peeling out, he caught glimpses in the rearview: of Creedence standing with her arms extended in disappointment but also his father, who shouted in anger at the youthful display of automotive machismo. Devin, knowing a lecture awaited his return: about safe driving, about not showing off and being careful, especially with a passenger in the car.
Libby, in the passenger seat for the first time but not the last; this, a weird, vaguely fearful thought which came to him sudden and cold and that he could not figure out to save his sorry life.
Shivering in his cramped dorm-bedroom, smoking and cursing the names of a dead man and his mother and her not-so-secret lover, Devin, remembering all as though five minutes ago. Wakeful after his nightmare, he needed to stop running the past through his mind and get down to the books—if he didn’t take Dobbs’s advice, his grades this semester would be shit.
Devin, ready for a beer, not studying. In drinking one he ruminated about the upcoming Grateful Dead concert, and with it the acid Billy said he’d get if anyone wanted an authentic 1960s-esque Deadhead experience.
Unsure about exploring some weird hard drug scene, but Devin, maybe participating anyway, if only for the shear risk, more than the thrill. Death was real. He seen it. And Devin, fearing no consequences from taking a pussy-assed party drug. Or pulling heroic, bravado shit, like driving around drunk as piss but still arriving alive.
Maybe the night with the acid would be the night: One last big blowout, and then done. No more anxious fretting. None of this guessing game of wondering where Devin’s pool awaited, and when he’d jump into the shallow end and break his neck.
Devin, nodding and serene; no one more ready than he to finally be grateful. Hell, he’d celebrate by going to class, for once. The ones he hadn’t already ditched that day, of course. It had been a late night. With one or two under his belt, however, he had enough gut to put off the real partying until later.
Speaking of the concert, at Libby’s news Devin became livid:
“You’re ‘going’ with Billy?”
“He asked me to be his date.”
“What in the freaking shit is that supposed to mean?”
They met for burgers, fries, and Libby’s indulgence of a chocolate shake at a cacophonous lunchtime fast food joint. She claimed to suffer a budding addiction issue. “These shakes,” she said, “are killing me.”
“C’mon. What’s this Billy nonsense?”
“He asked, I’m going.”
“I heard you—but what does it mean?”
“He asked. I accepted. Are you deaf?�
�
“But we’re all going together.”
“Well, he asked me like a proper gentleman, and so I said yes. Why should I have said no?”
Devin, seething, hot blood rising in beer-swollen cheeks. “You’re breaking up with me. Over Billy?”
“You’re being melodramatic. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Anger. “Don’t insult me like this.”
“It’s like Billy himself says. We’re all friends. He’s a big-hearted goof.”
Devin, familiar with Billy Steeple and how he operated with women, felt as though a bucket of ice had been dumped into his gut. “He wants to goof your panties right off.”
“You sound like my father. And you know how I feel about that.”
“Sorry.”
Libby’s turn for rank annoyance. “But you’re right—nothing’s going to happen. We’re to all party together, go to the concert, and that’s that. You’re overreacting.” The half-smile, beaming at him. “Billy, whatever he is—well. He’s not my type.”
She took a moment to consider. A smoldering, sexy look that sent a thrill and chill down his spine. “You know who I’ll be going home with.”
“Sounds like we’ll be up all night afterwards on the acid.”
“We will.” Libby had done acid at fourteen back in Delaware. “It’ll be better than drinking.”
“Nothing’s better than that.”
“You’ll see.”
Devin, feeling possessive. “I want us to live together. Or, I guess. I’m asking. Would you like to?”
Eyelids aflutter. “That’s so sweet. When?”
“Next year.”
Libby clutched herself. “Um. Wow.”
“Well? We love each other—don’t we?”
At that statement, she snapped to attention. “All I’ve wanted is for you to show it more often. Like you used to.”
“When you said that about a date, it was like a corkscrew to my heart.”
“People don’t go on one date and then fall in love, like in the movies.”
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 20