Ghosting

by Kirby Gann

  “We have a problem needs resolving,” Arley Noe says. “Now. Tonight.”

  “Let me handle this, blue boy.” Greuel’s hand slices the air with unlikely speed. His words come forth blurred around the edges but clear enough to understand, and his sacklike face quickly fills the compass of Cole’s sight, his voice a blunt grinding stone. “You have a beef with me motherfucker now’s the time to lay it down.”

  Cole’s palms turn moist. “You’ve always been right by me, Mister Greuel.” He doesn’t know what else to say. He never does, not when it matters. The old man glares, mouth stuck in a wretched twist. Cole knows more is expected out of him. “I’ve known you all my life. You, Spunk. Miss Clara. I don’t remember anything before I remember her being in my life, you know?”

  “Only reason we are talking. Why you are here and we are talking. Anybody else—” his hand rises again, slices the air again, a slower chop this time.

  “What do you want from us?”

  “Your mother—she’s got these ideas. Spend time alone like her and thoughts get into your head, you don’t know where they come from. I know because hell, I never leave this house. Lyda here, I don’t like her ideas. I don’t like what they hint at, and sure as fuckin’ Christ don’t like the idea of her mouthing off with these ideas somewhere else. I doubt you’re too enthusiastic about this, either. Young buck like you doesn’t need this shit, your head should be on what that doctor’s daughter got in her jeans, not with this here, am I right? It’s awkward.”

  At awkward Greuel’s throat seizes. His entire torso bolts forward, chest thumping the table as a coughing fit crackles behind his clenched fist. His eyes distend, redden, they glisten more with each successive spasm as his other hand seeks the bottle of water nearby. Despite the fit his eyes never leave Cole’s face. His head rears back and he nearly swallows the bottle plunged deep into his mouth and the water pools and overruns his lips. Arley Noe starts to rise but Greuel grabs his wrist, sits him down again.

  “I don’t look well and I don’t sound well but I assure you I am perfectly fine.”

  “Sure you are. I’m glad you are.”

  “Don’t give me that. Nobody’s glad I’m alive, including me.” He belches into the back of his hand, checks to see if anything had come up. “I’ve spent the last sixteen months readying things for after I’m gone and your brother’s been a big part of that, Lyda has it all wrong. I find any hand in this room touched Fleece Skaggs then that is one hand I will see nailed to a post in my front yard for all the world to consider. That boy was like a son”—here he glances at Spunk and Cole follows; Shady is pressed as far against the end of the couch as she can go while Spunk plays, grinning, whispering into her ear—“the kind of son I deserved.”

  He gathers himself, chews his lips and stares deeply at Cole, waiting as though a moment is needed to allow such pronouncements their intended gravity. In turn Cole watches the tics in the wild ham-gravy eyebrows, the capillary webs spidering the dark oysters below Greuel’s eyes.

  “I am only going to ask you once. Do you know where your brother’s at?”

  His mother touches his arm, and then withdraws. Behind him he hears the smack of a hand and Shady’s intense whisper—Quit it, Spunk!—against Spunk’s chortles of amusement, but nobody pays this any attention. The entire room feels intent upon him. But he has no answer, he has no answer to any worthwhile question he has ever thought, and he fights the urge to either stand and shout as much or else crumple into a ball beneath the table. Why would Greuel ask him like this? Doesn’t he have the answers already? His eyes seek the older man’s, briefly, before sliding into focus on his shiny, unshaven chin.

  “No, Mister Greuel. I sure don’t and I wish I did.”

  Greuel slaps the table again and rolls back. He turns to Noe, whose own eyes narrow at Cole as if having trouble deciding which part of him to eat first. “I told you,” Greuel says. “Can you admit I told you that much?”

  “I hear him saying it. That don’t mean nothing.”

  Greuel launches at Cole again. “Fact: your brother stole from me. He stole from me so it hurt. Go down to my stables, you see any horses there? No, it’s a five-star hotel where critters keep their paws warm all winter. I sold every one of them, even Clara’s Sadie Dame. This pains me in ways you will never understand. I have been denied. I want what’s mine.”

  “The horses?”

  It’s a frog-steady stare he drops on Cole now. He stabs the water bottle at his mouth again but gulps mostly air, the plastic breathing with each seething slug. Without word Arley Noe rises and heads down the hallway in his smooth and strange gait, as if he itemizes every step, counting down from a finite inventory. With the break Cole checks out Shady, who has subdued Spunk’s obnoxious tendencies, leaving him grinning meanly, his head and hips miming a strange dance in repose, like a party raves in his head and he wants to milk every last second of it.

  When Noe returns with more water Greuel chugs it greedily, two fingers pressed against the left side of his face. Bell’s Palsy is a recent affliction. Still the water trickles out, following the curve of his rusty first chin. He clears his throat again with an awful scrape.

  “So tell me what you do know.”

  Grady Creed leans a shoulder against the hallway corner, green beer bottle in hand, and taps sturdy fingernails against the glass, a small hammer chiming a bell.

  “What did you give her?” asks Cole, indicating his mother.

  Lyda’s smile shifts between melancholy and contentment. Her eyes study the rims of her lower lids (What is it you see? he wants to ask), her shoulders curved even more deeply inward. She whispers apologies—Cole can’t tell if the words are directed at him or simply said aloud: she is sorry, she says, sorely sorry. In the next instant her eyes look weepy, but no tears fall.

  “The lady was agitated when she got here. I give her something to ease the upset,” Arley says. He regards Lyda with the dispassion of a researcher evaluating blind-tested volunteers. “I don’t know. Maybe it was too much juice, you can’t always tell what somebody’ll take and she’s a dry reed, that one.”

  “She doesn’t spike,” Cole says.

  “I’m fine, motherfucker,” slurs Lyda. The words come out as muller . . . flokker. Creed and Greuel laugh, and even Arley Noe is stirred enough to crease the lean flesh of his cheeks.

  Now a tear blossoms to full flower. The blurred mascara and bunched lashes present her eyes as dark bursts of mourning. “Don’t you all laugh at me,” she says. “I know this feeling don’t last forever.”

  “Your mama’s fine. If we wanted anything done it would be done to her by now,” Greuel says.

  Creed shifts his weight and draws heavily from his bottle, the beer sloshing audibly; despite willing against the urge Cole’s gaze darts to him and discovers Creed returning a stare with intense, careful eyes.

  “I don’t know anything you guys don’t, is my guess.”

  “Try me.”

  Cole tells about the burned-out car. We know that, Greuel says, palm patting the table. Cole tells of the empty rooms at the top of the seminary. This is not news, says Greuel, voice rising and palm smacking the tabletop harder than before.

  “Yeah, but the thing is the dogs, the dogs are still there.”

  Greuel stares, implacable, the toad on its lily.

  “You say he’s a son to you, then you know he wouldn’t leave those dogs behind to starve, I don’t care if he planned to rob you of everything you got.”

  “Dogs’ll find a way,” says Noe. “What they got them snoopers for.”

  “What’s a few dead dogs against the rest of your life on vacation?” asks Greuel.

  “It would be a lot, to him. He wouldn’t do it. He’s wild but Fleece isn’t cruel.”

  “News to me,” Greuel intones, extracting a snicker from Creed. “So what am I to divine from this bit of information? Your brother takes my run, he’s hiding in Pirtle County to keep them dogs fed?”

  “Maybe h
e arranged something with that caretaker,” offers Shady from across the room.

  “The caretaker,” Greuel repeats as though to note the detail. “We talk to him yet? What’s he say?”

  “You don’t have to worry about him,” answers Creed.

  “I decide what I worry about. What about you, Cole—you ever meet this caretaker?”

  “Sure. Fleece knew him. Knows him.”

  “He get you high?”

  “Fleece?”

  “Come ON!”

  Cole pictures the trash bag pulled from the closet, big Hardesty hoisting it aloft, resin shining on the dark green plastic like a cola spill, light-green dust settling in the late sunlight. He shrugs, nods. Arley asks him if it was any good.

  “Not as good as yours. He said he got his from a cousin up near Cincinnati.”

  It’s his first bald lie. Speaking it he feels a tremor in his belly, the suspicion of a first step toward failure. Can these men see him? Can they tell from here he has to make it up as he goes? From the lie he offers the last bit of truth available to him.

  “His mags?”

  “The what?”

  “His rims. He had those expensive mag wheels. They’re not there, I looked.”

  “The boy remembered his rims.” Arley Noe’s bottom lip peels below yellowed teeth in amusement, the lips twisting his mouth into a kind of sickle, “I’ll be damned to say it Greuel but isn’t that Fleece Skaggs?—skedaddles with a whole season run but you can’t leave behind mag rims you paid good money for.”

  “First I heard of it,” mutters Greuel. He turns to Grady Creed, smacking his knuckles against one another. “You care to explain how a car perv like you missed this little detail?”

  “Dang, boss, I didn’t take a comb to the thing. Anybody could see it was his car and all burned up. Didn’t think there was anything else to know.”

  Greuel returns to the matter at hand. A new sheen shimmers on his cheeks, sick-yellow and agleam. “What else?”

  “He went off for you. Next thing I know, nobody’s heard from him, there’s his car.” Beside him Lyda nods twice in measured motion, nodding in agreement or in the effort to raise her head he cannot tell. The movement requires a great deal of her concentration, endeavor, and time. She sniffs a heavy amount of mucus and swallows. “We got our questions too, you know. What’ve you scoundrels done to my boy?”

  “Oh enough, Lyda. Sing a new song.”

  “How’m I to know you didn’t do nothing to him?” Her voice has grown thick; it descends to a whisper at the end.

  “Because I don’t have my reefer! Where the hell is my reefer I want to know! I got no money and no reefer. Do you have any idea what kind of sore corner this dumps me in?”

  “Whole situation’s a damn mess,” Arley agrees.

  “Where you think your brother would get to?”

  “Fleece? Hell Mister Greuel, I wouldn’t know, honest to God.” It comforts him a moment to speak the truth even though it’s a truth he finds no comfort in.

  “Guess. Free associate. You all got family in Glasgow, right?”

  Lyda’s head rears back with a dismissive snort. “Second cousins of mine, they’re in Fountain Run, Fleece don’t know them. They’re not worth knowing!”

  “What could he do with all that pot in Glasgow?” asks Cole.

  Greuel taps his bottle back and forth before him, sliding it an inch one way, an inch the other. His teeth work his lips as though to chew the meat off, and Noe bends to Greuel’s ear and whispers too quietly to be heard. Greuel’s face folds at the listening. Sweat bursts upon Cole’s neck once Arley Noe backs off, smiles. “What?” he asks.

  “Blue Note thinks we could save time and flush out your brother if we got Mule and his toolbox in here, let him work on you some before mom. He’s concerned for our reputation, I think.”

  “People start thinking they can get away with product without punishment, why, then what do we have?” muses Noe, rubbing the words thoughtfully as with his fingers. “You get one man asking why’s he need to pay today, maybe he’s short, needs credit. Next one hears that and now he wants to renegotiate terms. And on down the line and next thing you know, you can’t pay money to the people you owe. All a sudden you’re looking at the wrong end of a pistol held by some kid who seen too many movies.”

  “I never could abide chaos,” Greuel says.

  “Chaos is not conducive to business,” Arley agrees.

  Their faces express disbelief at the prospect, heads shaking slow and side to side in rhyming tandem. There is not a sound in the house save the hiss of smoking wood punctuated by sharp gasps in the fire—both Cole and his mother start at the crash of one log crumbling as it rolls from the grate. No one else moves, and Cole can sense them beyond the table out of his sight forcing themselves still, like small creatures who by instinct swallow breath and freeze as they await a predatory beast to pass. Creed’s still leaning in the hallway with his beer; Spunk reclines on the sofa with a palm over each eye, big feet crossed at the ankles; Shady has drawn her knees to her chin and remains as far from Spunk as she can manage. It’s like a spell has been cast, leaving Cole as the single being capable of animation, agency, among the still-lifes around him.

  He is alone here.

  A peculiar image blooms within his mind, a vision from years ago of watching Fleece parse pills from sandwich bags into separate small teacups for their mother. He had been whistling a grim mournful tune—what was it? Cole had said, I don’t understand why you give her that, she’s fucked up and you’re helping her stay that way. Fleece had answered that she was so deeply fucked up she needed the pills as much as she needed to get straight. Supplying her was the only way he knew how to help.

  “Mister Gruel,” he begins, breaking the spell, “I can prove we don’t know where my brother is or what he’s done.”

  “That’s a tall order, boy. How do you propose to do that.”

  “I’ll make it up for him.”

  Cole!—his name slips from Shady’s mouth like an expression of pain.

  “You leave my mother alone. Let me take over for Fleece. You’re out a driver, right? I’ve even got contacts none of you sell to yet.”

  “Hey he’ll surprise you, Papa,” Spunk breaks in. “I trust Cole with anything, I’ll speak for him.”

  “Your word means squat, son. Breaks my heart but it’s true.” He glowers at his fat hands flat on the table. “This isn’t the unemployment office. I got my own problems.”

  “Maybe I can help with them,” Cole says.

  Greuel’s scowl simmers with impatience and yet also, Cole thinks he can see, legitimate consideration. He’s afraid to look at Arley Noe and try to guess what could be read there, and moreover he feels he must keep going: “You said yourself you want out. Let me get some deliveries in for you, set up some deals in the city. I can do this. I can make this happy.”

  Greuel’s face has lost the scowl and now appears drawn by fatigue and exasperation. “Whole set-up is weirder than tits on a bishop,” he tells his fingernails. His eyes roll upward. “What you think, Arl, you’re the one has to deal with him.”

  “I don’t care for the kid. But you know that.”

  “I vouch for him,” Spunk bursts again, “Cole’s all right, Daddy, you know he is.”

  Greuel pushes the water bottle around, droplets of condensation catching the headlight on one side, the firelight on the other. He grabs the bottle in his fist and brings the fingers to the left of his mouth and gulps deeply several times, chugging the water like a frat boy downing whisky on a dare, emptying the thing. Instead of setting the bottle down he hands it to Noe.

  “This here’s no part-time job, kid. You don’t wing this. It becomes your life, you understand? It’s a long haul from this to that scuba school I hear you on about.”

  “I understand what I’m doing,” Cole says, looking over his mother shut deep behind her own shut eyes. What do you see there, he wants to ask her again.

  “This would
n’t mean either that if I turn up Fleece he’s in the clear. This does not change my problem with your brother at all.”

  Cole doesn’t answer him; he’s nodding, hardly hearing what Mister Greuel has to say anymore, he can feel the discussion subsiding to its end and he has them almost out of this house. He keeps nodding, even as Greuel shakes his head again side to side at the sight.

  “Tits on a bishop,” he mutters. He pushes back from the table and eases himself onto his feet, grimacing with the effort. At close to full height he composes himself into the semblance of the man he used to be. The man just casts a field of unease around him—it’s his gift. Cole fights the urge to drop his gaze, to let it fall to the table, his mother, anywhere else.

  And then Greuel nods. He nods—but it’s a nod of resignation, perhaps disappointment, even sadness. “Well, why the fuck not,” he says. “Why not.” He pats Arley Noe’s shoulder and nods again to everyone before turning down the hallway and the far stairway there that leads to the bedrooms upstairs. Creed quickly clears way for him. They all watch as the sick man shuffles to the steps, grasps the balustrade, and painfully begins the process of climbing one at a time.

  Everyone watches him leave except for Arley Noe, who remains focused upon Cole. He looks as though he’s trying to startle his face into some particular expression and finds it refuses him, it won’t settle on only one.

  “I never claim to know another man’s thinking,” Noe says in his dragging sandpaper voice. “I’m not as thoughtful as our Mister Greuel. But understand: I do not owe your family one thing.”

  Spunk is on his feet shouting welcome. The outburst upsets Lyda’s daze, and her wide eyes startle about the room and the people in it as though she has awakened from a fine sleep into a place she does not recognize. Cole undergoes his buddy’s slaps and high-fives while he reassures his mother with his other hand clasped gently on her neck. Shady, though, has not moved or looked up from her hands clenched about her legs. He waits for her, silently urging her to see him even as Creed begins to usher them out—but she is stubborn in her refusal, keeping her eyes downcast while falling into step with Lyda. The door opens and February’s eager wind greets them with bitter cold.