Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  Affection tinged with curiosity: “Billy! You look—so good.”

  They hugged, brief and platonic. “Never better, toots. Never better.”

  The flickering TV set behind the bar, catching his eye, displayed war news and nonsense about the election. Billy never looked at the news, in print or on TV, not unless it was pop-culture related.

  His father, of course, as a high-toned corporate DC operator never stopped hanging on every word coming out of the newsreader’s mouths, in the polling, the punditry whispers on the wind. Having milked lobbying on the front end of the deal rather than after serving in office, the man was running for congress soon, and wouldn’t the family business be looked after then, boy. Bill Senior, as he often told his son, succeeded because he took none of this world too seriously; that life is a game from which one should stay detached so as to avoid disappointment when the invariable shit hits the fan.

  Knowing Nicole as a diehard lefty, Billy, pandering: “You think that silver spoon frat-boy will get himself reelected?”

  She suffered a look like nausea. “Kerry will wipe the floor with Dumb-ya. I’ll freaking leave the country if he doesn’t.”

  “Word to that. What a clusterfuck. They didn’t even find any WD40s over there in Iraq.”

  “No,” she said, frowning a little. “They did not.”

  “It makes you embarrassed for the U. S. to be a player on the world stage. With all our technology, wealth, capital, manifest destiny, all that crud, you telling me we couldn’t have at least faked some nerve gas canisters somewhere? For appearance’s sake? Amateurs, dude.”

  “Right. Wait, I mean—what?”

  “I tell ya, I just don’t know about this country anymore.”

  “So, do I see a guitar in hand?”

  “I’m afraid you do. It’s time.”

  “Well, all right then. Lupo’s is honored to welcome you back.”

  “It’s been a hot minute.”

  “I remember.”

  Billy’d first met Nicole when she’d been a librarian at SEU like him, but after inheriting some money from a grandparent (Oh! Billy thinking with impatience, How lovely that must feel!), she’d followed her dreams by investing a fifty-percent stake in the floundering Lupo’s, thereby keeping it going into the new century. A music lover, Nicole believed that Columbia, a troubled market for live music venues, could ill afford the loss of yet another hip room. An enormous sea-change of a career move, academia to merchant class plying the hospitality trade, but she’d succeeded.

  Nicole, holding an extra special place in Billy’s heart simply by giving validation to his youth: “I still recall a few Meat Mallet shows from back in the day,” she never failed to remind him. “Wild times inside these old walls.”

  “You had a punk boyfriend back then, as I recall?”

  Nodding. “Went to all those shows—the all-ages early ones, the late nights here and at house parties.”

  Billy remembered it all well. “Back in the day.”

  “We thought y’all were going to break out.”

  “We was bad; but we was not nationwide.” A smile of gratitude, strained. “Alas, it didn’t happen.”

  “But as I got older, less punk and more of a Swimming Pool Q’s, REM, Let’s Active kinda girl.”

  “I hear the ghostly sound of jangly guitars. Once I heard the Dead, I grew out of the whole punk scene, too.” Enough small talk. “So here’s the deal: I need to see who’s doing what tonight. Get the lay of the land.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Let’s put me down in the middle of the bill. That cool?”

  “Just sign in on the sheet after some others arrive.”

  “But I’m special.”

  “Yeah yeah.” Winking. “That’s what my mommy told me, too.”

  “Touché,” in phony contrition. “All right. I’ll wait for the signup. Like everyone else.”

  “That’s the spirit. Don’t try to control it. Let it flow.”

  “Let it grow.”

  “There we go. Now I gotta get back to work.”

  A beer delivery guy came bustling through the door, a stout fireplug of a driver manhandling a handtruck burdened by the considerable weight of two fresh Stella Artois kegs.

  “You’re late today, Freddie,” Nicole said, gesturing to Billy. “We got thirsty customers in the house already.”

  “Traffic’s a mess all the way the heck up Blossom. Dumbasses digging the new sewer over the other side of the Market hit a water main.” He went to hand her yet another invoice. “They gotta get this road work finished.”

  “Paddy can sign for them,” referring to her bar manager, a barrel-chested man who whistled while prepping the speedrails and fruit garnishes for the long night of drink-slinging ahead. Paddy, slicing citrus fruit with flair and panache the same way Billy had seen him serve customers, was a no-question, god-damn pro. Had worked in joints over the Market, and other places, too, for decades. A lifer, as Paddy put it over the last few months of Billy hanging out and getting pissed at this and other bars in the neighborhood.

  Billy, a froggy Louis Armstrong voice. “Paddy, my man? You here is a righteous individual. Has I ever tolds you that? Has I? Has I?”

  “It’s all you, son,” bumping fists. “Wet your whistle?”

  “Hit me with a Crown, neat, and—”

  “—a ‘brown bomber’ on the back,” meaning a heavy English ale called Newcastle. “Right?”

  “Guess that makes me a regular.”

  “Afraid so, my friend.”

  Billy, in the months since Devin’s miraculous awakening and return to sentience and sobriety, haunted the numerous watering holes as his friend once did. Carrying the muddled and sputtering torch of forgetfulness, maybe, Devin had seemingly chosen to put down.

  Paddy poured Billy a measure of the Crown. He tilted the bottle back and added a dollop on top. Not quite a double, but almost.

  He placed the drink on the bar. “Where’s that hot piece of chicken of yours?”

  “Eh—laid up with woman shit.” The truth was that he’d told Melanie he didn’t want her ass there tonight. That it’d make him too nervous. “She’s a dragon lady right now.”

  “On the upswing of that cycle, I bet that same dragon eats you alive. In a good way, I mean.”

  “I can’t lie.” Billy and Paddy clinked glasses, the barkeep having a diet soda instead of a cocktail. “She’s a real tiger.”

  “We call that in life a trade-off.”

  Swooning with momentary vertigo, Billy stole a glance at the storied stage against the far brick wall, at the lights in the ceiling, the mixing board, the PA; picturing being on those boards warbling out his three open mic tunes, staring pie-eyed down into a viper’s nest of drunks catcalling and hurling rotten vegetables, nabobs having no sense of history and respect for his legacy, of the youthful brio he’d demonstrated in the punk band, not to mention all the post-show tail he’d gotten without any accidents. Credit where credit due!

  Shaking off the uncertainty, he strove to remember how fun it’d been thrashing around on that stage in a state of pure adrenaline, and yeah, afterwards, getting so much pussy he couldn’t hope to remember them all: drunk girls, bar girls, punk girls, sorority girls like Melanie.

  Every woman in town, it seemed, but the one who had mattered.

  And the ones who didn’t? Easy—they ended up in the Green Hole, or out at Congaree Heritage Trail in one of the deep, algae-choked ponds out there.

  Accidentally.

  If they weren’t careful—if he weren’t careful, that is. Billy, a sip of the draught beer followed by the Crown with nary a grimace. Chasing the liquor with another slug of brown ale. He was on his way to feeling relaxed. Ruck had not been wrong about the hard stuff. Wonder drug.

  “Think we’ll pack them in tonight?”

  Paddy gave the for-now quiet club a squinted glance. “Hope open mic gets us a decent pop tonight. Open mic night, though, working stiff like me’s gotta c
omplete with the tip jar onstage.”

  Oh, you poor thing. You should feel what hell it is with such a modest trust fund as mine. “How’s biz?”

  “Been a weird semester around here—the students, they ain’t drinking like normal, the little bastards. Not even turning out for touring bands.”

  “They don’t have money like we did back in the 90s.” Billy leaned in, whispering. “It’s the Republicans. You know what happens when they get in power. Trickle-down my dimpled ass.”

  “Heard that. But, I’m pretty sure they’re all crooks. Don’t matter which letter’s beside their name. Especially when it comes to the big guy.”

  “We got a real genius in there now, boy.”

  Paddy, disgusted. “And what’ll it be like in ten years when my kid is ready to go to school up the hill? Ten-thousand a semester? Twenty? A hundred grand in the pot before you even get started in the world? Or what, go in the freaking Marines like I did, so they can send him off to another war off in the desert shooting at towelheads? Bill, we gotta do something. This country’s a mess.”

  Billy, feeling for the bartender. Wondering why in God’s name anybody bothered having children anymore. Why we had to talk about politics again when Billy wanted to think about songs and singing and banging beaver without it getting out of hand, he had no idea. The one-idea devil—the television—pumped the narrative into people’s heads 24/7 now. No wonder it’s all they talked about. “Whole shebang’s collapsing under the weight of its own brief history.”

  “You can thank the president for all that, and the rest of his chums.”

  Billy, scoffing in disgust. “Strutting little popinjay.”

  “But Kerry, Bush—? Same shit, different piles.”

  “How so?”

  “The both of them was in Skull & Bones at Yale together—that shit’s fishy.”

  Billy, shrugging, decided on the fly to conceal his own family ties to such organizations. “Thought it was gonna be Howard Dean, anyway.”

  Paddy, brightening. “But then, Dubya’s frat brother Kerry miraculously wins Iowa, and they started running that scream—the Dean scream. Again. And again. And again. Motherfuckers had it in for him—made him look nuts.”

  “But why?”

  “They wanted Kerry. Or, somebody did, anyway.”

  “In any case, Bush won’t win. It’ll be nice to have a different bonehead reading off the TelePrompTers.”

  “Meet the new boss—?”

  Billy, head throbbing, gulped down rest of the brown ale. “Say, leave my tab open, Paddy? Back in a bit—I’m doing the open mic tonight.”

  “Saw the guitar. Awesome, bro. Can’t wait.”

  Quitting Lupo’s Billy headed over to Roy Earl’s smoothie stand and then the coffee shop, but his friend had already gone for the day from both businesses. Billy, alone, useless, bored and empty but for the cool buzz he’d managed to achieve, strolled the perimeter of the area, window shopping, sneaking discreet tokes from his one-hitter dugout.

  Wanting to invite someone—anyone—who actually cared about him.

  Billy, pushing away the incessant thoughts about Libby.

  Succeeding; her face replaced by that of another girl.

  A girl he hadn’t seen in months.

  A sudden, naughty idea.

  Billy, placing a red alert, person-to-person, emergency call to Chilton, South Carolina, and not to Devin ‘Ruck’ Rucker, either, who of late had been mysteriously standoffish. Maybe it was because Ruck was sober and Billy was anything but. Nah. Must be over Libby. The jealous fuck. He should get over himself, Ruck. That’s what Billy thought.

  Creedence, on the other hand? Now she was something over which to get oneself, if one knew what Billy meant in euphemism, which would be nice, because he didn’t.

  All he knew? Something naughty with her, as naughty as it got. An urge. A compulsion. And thus a call.

  Fifty-Eight

  Creedence

  Chelsea, as during adolescence, spent most of her time alone and sketching until her hand ached. Newly motivated, she had managed to coax muscle memory into a fruitful remembrance of a time when such endeavor had seemed worthwhile.

  As for the part of this discipline she considered therapy, she’d begun working on a special piece—a practice run, yes, but one over which she nonetheless labored with focused intensity, adding shading and detail and layers, striving for accuracy rather than impressionism: Glancing squint-eyed into the mirror and back at the burgeoning self-portrait, the first she’d ever attempted.

  Cautiously pleased at the result—a damned fine likeness of a not-unattractive face. If she could allow herself this small indulgence, please.

  The process of rediscovery had begun over the summer while Devin lay about the house ‘getting his sea-legs back,’ as he kept calling it. Eileen, despite her obvious frailty, had catered to them both with her own brand of maternal, laser-like attention and effort.

  Devin, all but unable to walk at first after his coma, now regaining his strength. Joking and laughing, gamboling with unselfconscious zeal around the house or yard with his cane, smoking, his spirits seemed light—but he had always been good at hiding himself, his darkness, behind a veneer of black humor.

  Creedence had watched from the window one day as he’d tried to take a few running steps. Gasping as her brother nearly fell over. But Devin didn’t seem frustrated. He merely nodded like, okay. Lit another cigarette.

  But Devin, so much like his old self, cutting the fool and messing with everyone’s heads. He’d freeze in the middle of a sentence and throw his eyes wide, shaking and pretending to have hair-raising flashes and visions. And busting out laughing whenever Creedence or Mama would rush over asking, what’s wrong.

  He’d say, I’m like that old fella in The Dead Zone, bugging out his eyes and talking of having visions, like of assassinating the president and saving the world. But laughing: “Nah, nah—I’m just messing with y’all, now.”

  “Well, I wish you’d quit.”

  “Sheesh. At least it’s an act, and not nothing worse.”

  Nobody needed such a reminder.

  Devin, his hair growing out where they’d had to drill a hole in his head to let out the pool of dark blood that’d formed after his tumble down the stairwell at Billy’s, still smoked like a fiend. But at least he didn’t drink.

  Devin. Lucky son of a gun. Living through it all, coming out of the coma stone sober and already detoxed. Hadn’t been seen to touch a drop since.

  A miracle, everyone said.

  All of it. “It’s like that car wreck, Colette,” her Mama whispered after they finally got Devin home from the hospital. “The policeman told us he was surprised any of them lived through it. And now this fall, cracking open his head. Merciful god in heaven. My little angel—that’s what Devin always was.”

  Right—his latest crisis had done so much for her mother. Now that he was home and better, she didn’t seem half-sick anymore herself. Still thin as a twig, but with so much fresh responsibility Mama had picked up a late-life head of steam. She talked of running for ELMS treasurer again in the spring. Spoke of many future events and plans.

  And, as her daughter had wished, Devin took up most of the mother’s attention.

  But all living together again. Under the same roof. And that was downright surreal at times. She sometimes expected to see Daddy sitting in his recliner looking at television.

  In private moments, Chelsea—Creedence—poured over all of the old notebooks and sketchpads she’d pulled from a cardboard carton shoved up in the attic. Going through them page by page, lifting the paper up by the corners as though a meticulous archivist examining the original text of fragile, decomposing historical records. Some drawings made her smile, while others evinced winces. Many were not-bad, in her opinion. Or so she told herself.

  Others tugged at heartstrings, drawings bringing back sweet memories of family pets, most of whom now lay in eternal repose beneath the lush Bermuda grass of the ba
ck yard, their lives memorialized in granite; the same as Big Ma-maw and Pa-paw and Daddy and Libby, all lying in their own eternal interment down the road.

  Her Mama kept on her to make sure she’d see to the tending to the care of all family related grave sites, and on more than Decoration Day, too—year-round maintenance—once Eileen one day passed away. Chelsea didn’t hold no truck with any of it. She wanted to get on with her own life, not think about dead people.

  Such talk seemed to annoy Devin, who’d sit out near the pets’ stones in the back yard in a lawnchair, reading and smoking with fiendish and greedy abandon—his only outlet, Chelsea guessed.

  But, all in all? Her brother seemed like himself. Other than him looking more like sixty than thirty-six, having his face sitting across from her at the supper table almost passed for old times.

  Eileen, Devin, in a race to see who could become skinnier.

  With Eileen going on all sorts of ‘errands’ Chelsea suspected were her own doctor’s appointments, some of which seemed to leave Mama so tired she couldn’t move, that left it to her to deal with Devin’s own visits.

  His astounded doctors continued in a state of amazement at his recovery—weak as a kitten at first and needing physical therapy to be able to walk, with liver and kidney function in decline and who knows what else, in a matter of weeks he had regained lucidity and a high degree of mobility. Devin—his old self, albeit skeletal and wrinkled, cracking wise and seeming unburdened by all that’d come before, told the medical professionals he believed only a divine intervention—a Higher Power—could be assigned a credible responsibility for this obvious miracle, and for all to kneel, as he now did, in due gratitude.

  At last, he said, enough doctors. She kept after him about doing further tests, but his latest bloodwork showed improved numbers on the vitals. Furthermore, once he could mostly walk again he seemed unconcerned, and so neither she nor her mother pushed him.

  And, of course, he got taken to meetings, put through the ringer of substance abuse rehab. Chelsea noted, however, how he didn’t attend as many AA meetings anymore. Not as often in the first two months home.