American Ghost

by Janis Owens

  “He’s really changed, Jol. He’s gotten serious with the Lord.”

  Jolie wondered where weekends at the beach with an underage girlfriend worked into his conversion, but was hardly in a position to point a finger, and when Carl showed up the next morning, she was glad to see him. It was impossible to be otherwise. Despite their constant snipping, they’d always been close, physically similar enough to be mistaken for fraternal twins, though they were three years apart. They were both tall, with the same dark hair and hazel eyes, and the same barbed humor—but where Jolie was withdrawn, Carl was brimming with good-old-boy confidence, famous for swooping home at odd hours.

  He’d come in that morning at four o’clock and, after bumming around the house awhile, had got tired of waiting for someone to wake up. He flung open Jolie’s door and jumped up on her bed and bounced around like a kid on a trampoline.

  “Jol-lee!” he cried. “I’m tired of waiting for you to git up! I want to hear about yer Jew boy—” The grin was wiped from his face when he realized someone was beside her, indiscernible beneath the cover. “Good God, tell me thet ain’t him!” he cried as he leapt to the floor.

  Jolie flipped back the cover to reveal Lena’s sleeping face. “Didn’t you see her car?” Jolie yawned as she got up and hugged him, not taking offense at the Jew boy, as it was par for the course with Carl, and not meant to belittle as much as needle the hell out of her. (In high school, she referred to Lena variously as “Lolita” or “yer child bride.”)

  Under less stressful circumstances, Jolie would have given it back to him in good measure, but she was too sleepy to bother with it and just yawned her way to the kitchen to check on the turkey that she and Lena had put in the oven before they’d gone to bed two hours earlier.

  “How late did you two stay up?” he asked as he joined her in the kitchen. “Lena’s out like a light.” Then, before she could answer: “You feel all right? You look kind of peaked.”

  Jolie just wrestled the enormous bird from the oven. “I been busting my butt for two days, getting ready for this thing. Somebody around here has to do the work.”

  “Well, I made coffee.” He leaned against the counter and looked around the cluttered, outdated old kitchen with a face of dry interest. “So how’s the Old Man? Any more fainting?” Brother Hoyt had been having dizzy spells lately and had actually blacked out on his debit a few months before.

  “He’s okay.” Jolie went about basting the turkey. “Moving slow, but moving. Too old to be putting up with your nonsense—so think on thet, while you’re here.”

  Carl was used to his sister’s lectures and made no reply, just stood at the window and watched the brightening dawn while he drank his coffee. “Well, speaking of nonsense—how the hell did you find yourself a Jew in Hendrix? You got your heart set on a white piano?”

  Jolie straightened and stared at him levelly till he relented with a grunt and asked in a milder voice, “So what kind of fellow is he? Am I gone have to go out to the campground and break his damn neck?”

  Jolie answered this with yet another flat stare, this one briefer, to show him what she thought of his redneck swagger. “He’s been after me to marry him for a month. Talked to Daddy and everything.”

  Carl nodded with approval at the news. “Well, I’m proud to hear it. Why don’t we go out there and roust him, take him to breakfast in Vernon? We got time. Hell, the sun ain’t up.”

  Jolie had been feeling wretched all night over Sam’s and her idiot fight, and for once she didn’t argue, just glanced at the clock as she manhandled the turkey back in the oven. “Well, maybe. If we can get Lena stirring.”

  “Oh, I can get Lena stirring,” Carl said with a wink, and set down his cup, though he paused to ask, “When you gone tell Deddy?”

  “Already have,” she told him as she shut the oven door. “He was okay. Kinda sad, but okay—about like he was when we lost Lena.”

  “Then what’s the problem? You look like hell. You’re not in the family way, are you?”

  “No. I’m scared.”

  “Of leaving?”

  “Of everything,” she admitted. “Just tired. And scared. God, Carl—he gets his underwear in a wad when people say nigger. What’s he gonna do after he meets the Hoyts?”

  Carl grinned at that. “Run for his life, if he has good sense.” Then, at the fall of her face, Carl offered, “Oh, hell, Jol—it’ll be all right. Me and Lena’ll be here, and Daddy’ll keep the blowhards in line. You just go out there and try to be happy. Everything else,” he promised, “it’ll all fall in line.”

  • • •

  So he’d promised, and so she had believed, against all good sense, as Hendrix wasn’t a garden-variety Southern hamlet, but the heart of darkness in such matters. Henry Kite’s lynching had cast a long shadow, and as late as 1965, the wooden city-limits sign had openly warned NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOUR ASS IN HENDRIX, FLORIDA—signed in happy script YOUR LOCAL KKK.

  But these sorts of things were part of the Silence, unacknowledged by the likes of Jolie Hoyt. She just waffled and bided her time, sending out a variety of contradictory messages, till the moment she stood by his gurney in the hallway of the ER in teeth-chattering terror and wondered, with the cool head of clinical shock, what kind of person she was to have sucked him with such fabulous disregard into the sinking gloom of Hendrix.

  She couldn’t say, just stood there mute, in the numbed violence of disassociation, till an ICU nurse happened upon her and, with little fuss or bother, escorted her to the empty waiting room. Carl was inexplicably gone, and with neither shoes nor a dime to her name, she paced back and forth for hours, through the break of dawn, till midmorning, when a familiar face finally appeared at the door, a deputy sheriff named Jeb Cooke, who’d once been married to a Hendrix cousin.

  He was a generation older than Carl and her, grizzled and bear-size and reassuring in his Stetson and leather jacket. He took off the hat when he saw her, not in respect for her as much as her father, who was a rare friend of the Law out in Hendrix. He motioned her to a corner of the hallway, where he presented her with a long, blue legal envelope, explaining that it was a protective notice. “A restraining order,” he clarified at her face of incomprehension.

  “For Carl?” she asked, so rattled she could barely speak.

  “For you,” he said, moving around to corner her, not in intimidation, but to shield her from the curious stares of the waiting patients. “Signed by the judge, hot off the press.”

  Jolie ripped open the envelope, but couldn’t make head nor tails of the block of close-typed legalese.

  “Why me, Jeb? I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I was asleep—ask Daddy.”

  Jeb just herded her to the exit, his voice lowered as he opened the door. “All I do is serve ’em. You ain’t arrested or suspected—just need to keep yer distance till your court date. Till then, no phone calls or sneaking in, or I’ll have to cuff you like a regular mug. You understand?”

  Such was her shock that Jolie didn’t argue with this edict of the Law. She just nodded quickly and followed him into the bite of a seriously cold morning, the approaching front fully upon them, the rim of the sidewalk edged in ice. Carl’s truck was waiting at the curb, the exhaust blowing in the cold. Jeb walked her to the passenger side and tapped on the glass for Carl to unlock the passenger door.

  Jeb handed her in, then spoke to Carl across the seat, as if in reminder, “Just keep yer distance, old son. The young man’s gone make it, but his daddy is sorely pissed.”

  Jeb shut the door once he had Jolie in, then went around the front of the truck and spoke in Carl’s window, drily and with a close eye, feeling for a lie. “They say you found him. That it was a hunting accident.”

  “It was,” Carl answered easily, considerably cleaned up from the night before, dressed in a coat and jeans and work boots, his eyes on the frosted window. “Probly some dumb shit on the paper-company property, taking sight-shots across the water. I told Uncle
Ott they shouldn’t go out the first week of deer season. Wonder somebody ain’t shot every week.”

  Jeb’s expression didn’t flicker at this fast bit of persuasion, he just barely nodded, then asked plainly, “You sure you didn’t see no men in hoods out there? Any flaming crosses guiding yer way?”

  Carl met Jeb’s eye and answered without blinking, “All I saw was one scared Cracker who was freezing his balls off. And thet would be me.”

  A shadow of a smile lightened Jeb’s face at this bit of Hoyt hyperbole, though he wasn’t sidetracked. “Did you hear the shot?”

  Carl looked at Jeb in amazement. “Hell, yes, I heard a shot. I heard ten going down and twenty coming back. I’m telling you—the woods are full of idiots with guns these days. Go look at the walls at the camp—they’re covered in stray shot. Looks like the walls of the embassy in Saigon.”

  Jeb had already been to the camp that morning, had seen the pockmarked wall and talked to the clueless old men. He seemed satisfied at the answer and didn’t push for anything further, just straightened up and told Carl, “Well, do me a favor, old son, and tell yo Daddy we got it covered here in town, not to be worrying it.” After a weather glance around the parking lot, he lowered his voice to observe, “Somebody on the river best be watching thet ass, is all I got to say. They’ll have the feds in here before it’s done.”

  Jolie had been sitting quietly reading her protective order, trying to make sense of it, but finally gave up and asked, “Well, when can I see him, Jeb? If Daddy brings me, will they let me?” as if Sam were an R-rated movie that she could only view with parental permission.

  Jeb looked a little pained at her naïveté and rubbed his neck. “Naw, shug, thet don’t matter. You need to go home and sit tight till your court date—and what ever you do, doan be going around Hendrix crying and showing yo ass, gitting old Ott and your daddy upset. Y’know what I mean?”

  Jolie didn’t and asked the only question she’d ever ask about the night: “Who shot him, Jeb? Why would anybody want to shoot him? We were leaving next week. He never would have come back.”

  Before Jeb could answer, Carl inserted flatly, “I’m taking her to Georgia,” without so much as a glance in Jolie’s direction.

  Jeb made no speculation on the shooter, just nodded at Carl and affirmed, “Good plan,” then tipped his hat and gave the truck a little slap on the door to send it on its way.

  Carl ignored her entreaties (he was taking her where?) till he’d turned on Highway 90, when he answered in a fast, firm voice, “You cain’t go back, Jol—got to move on. Lena ain’t in the dorm anymore; has a couch you can sleep on till you git on yer feet—”

  “But I cain’t just run off without a word,” she cried. “What about Daddy?”

  “Daddy’s fine. I talked to him at breakfast, told him you got that scholarship after all; had to get there tonight or you’d lose it.”

  “And he believed you?”

  Carl snorted, “Oh, hell no. Give the Old Man some credit.” He felt around in his pocket and handed over a roll of assorted bills and change. “It’s a hundred bucks—all he had, tucked away in a sock drawer. You got to call him tonight, soon as we git there, and convince him this was yer idea—going off to school, just what you always wanted.”

  Jolie just stared at the money in her hand, then looked up. “He won’t buy it, Carl. He knows—”

  “Shit,” Carl muttered. “He’ll buy whatever you tell him—he always has. Everybody knows you and Lense had a fight—Ashley heard it. I told him you broke up—dropped him like a bad habit—shit, he’s probably relieved.”

  Jolie tried to argue that, but he overrode her with simple contempt. “God, Jol—did you really think you could just do this thang, right in the sight of Hendrix—that Daddy could save you? Lense wasn’t here to study the goddamn Indians—he was digging into the Hoyts and that goddamned useless old lynching. No,” Carl insisted at her denial, “that’s what got him shot! Hell, Jol—how many fucking Indians you ever met in Hendrix? You thank that’s what he was really here for? To hear Uncle Ott’s old fairy tales?”

  His words had enough of a ring of truth that Jolie was struck nearly dumb, a single memory silencing her: that of Sam, that first night, when she was still freezing him out, standing on the sidewalk, his voice dry and instructive (“. . . once lynched from that limb. Nightmare business”).

  She finally found her voice, hardly more than a whisper. “I have to talk to him.”

  Carl all but laughed in her face. “Talk to him?” He snatched the envelope from her lap and shook it in her face. “That’s a restraining order, Jol, signed by a judge. They’re handing them out like candy, all over Hendrix, building a case. They gone pin it on somebody, and that somebody’ll be Daddy or Ott or anybody they please. Hell, Jol, didju even know this guy before you started running your mouth about all the Hendrix shit? What if he’s a reporter? What if he works for the feds? Hell, they’re reopening all this racial shit in Mississippi. Why d’you think they already assigned a judge?”

  The surety in his voice made small tears run down her face, tears of grief at the awfulness of her betrayal. She closed her eyes, trying to stop them, but Carl was relentless.

  He had no pity and advised her grimly as he wheeled onto the interstate, “And you can git that crying out on the road—’cause if Daddy hears one wrong note in yer voice, it’s over. You hear me? Jolee? You understand what I’m saying?”

  • • •

  Jolie did indeed understand what he was saying and waited till Lena arrived the next night to find out what really happened on the river. Lena came in late, exhausted and distracted, her little Corona packed with everything she had left the summer before, along with a suitcase of Jolie’s clothes, and boxes of shoes and makeup and whatever else she could throw in her trunk. She was obviously done with Hendrix, but made little of it, hugging Jolie tightly, and tearfully, then holing up in the bedroom with Carl for most of the night, her sobbing audible through the door.

  Jolie patiently waited her turn, but even after Carl left for work the next morning, Lena would hardly discuss the shooting. She’d only whisper small hints about her part in the bloody evening: how they’d literally stumbled upon Sam in the dark, how there was so much blood, “on everything,” Lena told her in that low, distracted voice, “the boat, the truck. We couldn’t tell where he was shot.”

  To Jolie’s fevered questions—had Lena seen anything? Heard the shot? Lena just cried, “God, Jol—d’you have to ask? You know what it’s like out there at night. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you.”

  “Well, what were y’all doing down there that late anyway?” Jolie asked, but got no answer and didn’t need one. They’d gone down there to use the old, abandoned bunkhouses for more than bunking, if she knew Carl.

  No matter how hard Jolie pressed, that was all Lena would offer as Jolie paced and brooded and waited on her court date, which was a long time coming, the date set for December 18 on the first form, then moved to January 4, then January 26. She got the message from her father that Sam had called, but, on Lena’s sobbing instance, didn’t confide in him. Nor did she call Sam, on fear of arrest, or shouting, or shunning, or whatever they did these days to women who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

  She was secretly glad the court had stepped in, and confident in her vindication, till a final stiff, formal envelope arrived from the sheriff’s office. It wasn’t a mass-produced court summons, but a crabbed, handwritten note from Jeb Cooke, informing her that the order of protection had been rescinded that morning; the shooting had officially been ruled accidental. There was no explanation, no mention of Sam at all, just a personal thanks for her cooperation, which nearly drove her crazy, as it said everything, and nothing at all.

  She used all her and Lena’s accumulated change to call the sheriff’s office, time and again, till she finally got through to Jeb at his desk, and as far as it went, the news was good: Sam was fully recovered, back home in Miami with his f
olks. “His father’s still on a tear, but he’ll git over it—or he won’t. I’m about tired of dealing with the old boy, to tell you the truth.”

  Jolie understood from his chip-on-the-shoulder weariness that she was treading sensitive ground, but was too desperate to worry about annoying him.

  “Well, d’you have his number, Jeb? ’Cause I don’t have anything, down here, and Daddy said he called and it’s been two months, waiting, and I didn’t write it down because—well, Lena said I shouldn’t call.”

  A long, loaded pause ensued, then Jeb answered, gruff and levelheaded, a fifty-four-year-old Hendrix boy offering advice to a barely legal church girl, “Well, I’m glad to hear you finally growing some sense. I expect you done all the talking you need to do with that young man . . . No, I do know him,” he insisted when she indicated otherwise. “I worked the investigation, Jol—and I don’t know exactly what he was up to, but it ain’t what he told you, about the damn Indians, or whatever that bull was.”

  Jolie’s heart began its furious pound, though she could only whisper, “What d’you mean? He’s just in school, Jeb. Like me.”

  “The hell he is. He’s a grown man, Jol, around here digging up dirt on that old lynching, copying records and newspaper clippings, talking to people—taping a few of ’em. He was playing you and the little blonde Carl’s been going with. You girls ain’t old enough to be going with grown men. You need to be more careful who you take up with.”

  Jolie’s temper was still a hot one, enough that she answered swiftly, “I didn’t take up with him, Jeb. We’re getting married.”

  But Jeb was as unbelieving as Carl. “Hell, Jolie, you ain’t getting nothing. All that love talk, it’s what pimps say to runaways in bus stations—the old pimp hustle. You ever meet his parents? ’Cause they don’t recall ever meeting you. And they’re none too happy their golden boy got mixed up with a Hendrix girl, I can tell you that.”

  Jolie was too humiliated to answer. She stood there, phone in hand, till Jeb was sure his point was made. He softened then. “Baby, just mark it down to the school of life and let it go. That kinda thang—it happens every day. Be glad you got a second chance—lot of Hendrix girls don’t. Hell, I gotta tell you that? Take a look around at the next reunion and tell me how many happy women you see.”