American Ghost

by Janis Owens

  Tad was the junior member of the staff, a tech genius with a degree in public service, who was putting a wife through law school at FSU. He was off on Mondays, his office a study in creative chaos, though his computer was a Mac Pro, loaded with every spy, search, and storage device known to man. Jolie applied the passwords and began punching, searching the web for the irritating piece of character assassination that had fallen into her lap that morning at breakfast.

  She thought she’d find it buried in some deeply encrypted file in some code-accessed database and spent the morning skimming individual files on the state archives. She uncovered much of the same old ground on the Hendrix Lynching, including the photo of Kite, tied to a tree, hanging between heaven and earth. This very image was often used as a stock photo to illustrate the practice of lynching, and Jolie paid it little mind, clicking quickly on till she came upon a poorly designed website on the Five Civilized Tribes, garishly colored, bracketed by a banner headline that flittered from ads for local real estate and cures for erectile dysfunction.

  The author’s name was proudly displayed: Samuel B. Lense, the University of Florida, the adjoining essay obviously culled from his great Indian study, with no clue from where or how the data had been drawn. It was just a disjointed pile of anecdotes, numbers, and hard history, occasionally divided by bold-faced subtitles, as if someone had scanned a file cabinet into a database. All of it was familiar—old Hendrix tales of Camp Six and the census, graveyard notes and tombstone inscriptions—until she came upon a heading provocative enough to make the hair on her neck stand up: “The Illustrious Hoyt Tribe of Hendrix.”

  She could feel the color rising in her cheeks as she read, this section much more casual and chatty, suggesting an immediate image of Sam lounging around the little camper in his underwear and dissecting the Hoyts with relish. There was a page or two of outlandish theory on the origin of the term Little Black Dutch, similar to the smart little explanation he’d given her that first night at the café. Much was made of the census and where the Hoyts appeared on it. Then the narrative broke off and was subtitled a final time: “The Hendrix Lynching.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jolie murmured.

  She expected an in-depth exposé of the Kite murder, but the section was brief and primarily dealt with odd details about the turpentine side of the Hammond Lumber Company, Camp Six. She vaguely remembered Sam’s being fixated on it, back in the day, and here he did indeed wax eloquent about how awful life must have been there, his distaste seasoned with a good bit of Olde European Socialism that made Jolie roll her eyes, even as she read (liberal and exploitive: now there was a guy!) till the final paragraph:

  In 1938 Hendrix became a name of infamy, after a particularly gruesome lynching of a local man named Henry Kite, who was accused of murdering a shop owner in cold blood, plunging the area into four days of racial violence where five people were hanged, including the mother and sister of the accused, the latter heavily pregnant.

  The violence predictably fell according to racial lines, the white men all employees of the Hammond Lumber Company; the blacks, turpentiners from Camp Six, who were far down the caste system, considered dangerous and expendable.* For many years Kite’s murder and the ensuing violence was shrouded in secrecy, the tree limb where he was hung neatly removed in 1975 by a city commission concerned with bad PR, though Hendrix natives have never denied their participation in what is considered the last of the spectacle lynchings.

  *Local families such as the Hoyts still boast of owning pieces of the rope, and his fingers, which were severed as souvenirs, can still be found in Hendrix, though one native regretfully added that most of them were lost, as they’d been taken into Cleary the day of the lynching and thrown on black citizens’ porches, in warning.

  It ended there, on something of a cliff-hanger, with no further annotation, or explanation of why the lynching was so thoroughly attached to the Hoyts. To Jolie, none of it was new, and the most that could be said of it was that it settled, once and for all, the great mystery of why Sam was there—truly to dig into the lynching. Why, she did not know—and why he’d waited this long to post his findings, she knew even less.

  What she did know was that she had surely been snookered, in a way that still rankled, making her sit back in Tad’s ergonomic chair and rub her eyes, wondering who told Sam about the rope, which, as far as Jolie could tell, was pure myth. She knew that it wasn’t either her uncle Ott or, God forbid, her father, if for no other reason than neither would have spoken of it with humor or spiced it with profanity. They’d certainly never discussed it with her, though she’d heard a good bit about it from Carl and her cousins, when they were young men intent on honing their reputations as Hendrix badasses. They’d heard all the details down at the fish camp on hunting weekends and took a lot of perverse, macho pleasure in rumors of the Hoyt participation, as evidence of their superior ferocity and strength. They might be dark and mixed and poor as dirt, but they didn’t take any shit from anybody, they bragged, and with a wink sometimes added a smug “Ask Henry Kite.”

  Jolie groaned to think of it, as a good many of her loyal constituents were from families who’d been run out of Camp Six and had settled up the road in Cleary, where they’d been absorbed into the local black community. They had contributed high cheekbones and green eyes to more than a few honey-skinned homecoming queens. They knew who they were, and she them, and as long as she treated them with the same respect as she did every other man, woman, and child, they put up with her. They even swayed the vote in her favor after she took to the churches. It made for a delicate balance, and she’d be hard-pressed to talk her way out of it if Henry Kite’s name resurfaced in any sort of public forum. She wished this tricky bit of political reality had occurred to her in her extreme youth, when she had been so caught up in sharing the magic of her elusive ethnicity with Sam Lense.

  She was sitting there, tapping a nail on Tad’s cluttered desktop, when the in-house line buzzed, so obnoxiously loud that she nearly jumped out of her skin. She dug around the paperwork to unearth the phone and found Faye on the line, Jolie’s right hand and longtime city clerk, who was at that moment deep in the electric-bill drama, her voice harassed.

  “What arre you doing, nosing around back there? We’re dying up here. Can I give Farris a refund out of my purse, or do we really have to track it? I mean, Jol, we’re talking four dollars.”

  Faye had come up the ranks in a more human, less regulated time, and with great regret Jolie told her, “You have to do it on the program. Have Tad come in early. I know it’s a pain. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Well, good,” Faye said in the honeyed tones of a South Georgia native. “We are floundahing up heah, could use a hand—and you have a visitor most insistent to see you. A black gentleman,” she said in a mildly strained voice, as if having to stretch her neck to see him over the counter. “I don’t think I know him.” She added, after a pause, “Neither does Tamara.”

  Tamara was the deputy city clerk Jolie had hired shortly after her election to—finally, forty-four years after the Civil Rights Act—integrate the city desk. If the man was black and Tamara didn’t know him, he wasn’t from Cleary.

  A great weariness settled on Jolie’s chest when she realized who it was. “Does he have a fur collar?”

  “Yeah, and a hat. Looks like a congressman or something. Who is he?”

  “New renter,” Jolie said shortly, and thought about dismissing him with a time-honored dodge—telling him she was busy or at breakfast or due at a meeting. But she was known to give audience to all comers, including (and especially) Cleary’s minority community. If she turned him away, Tamara and Faye would do even more eye-lifting. Between them, they were kin to everyone in the state and quick on the scent of scandal. “Send him to my office, then buzz me in five minutes for a meeting.”

  Faye easily agreed, as this was standard procedure with walk-ins, who regularly captured Jolie around town and unloaded their angst over a multitud
e of injustices—not just inaccurate electric bills, but zoning irregularities, fees for Pop Warner football, the illegitimacy of the Federal Reserve, and the like. As a rule, they didn’t require action, but a compassionate ear, which she was happy to provide, as long as they could fit it into a five-minute visit; otherwise she’d never get anything else done.

  She closed down the website and hurried down the hall, hoping to be seated when he came in so she’d have the psychological refuge of the enormous desk. But Faye was quick on the draw and already waiting at the door with Hollis Frazier, whom she introduced in the over-the-top Bainbridge, Georgia, drawl she reserved for VIPs. “Missus May-yah, this is Mis-tah Fra-zah, from Mem-phas, to see you.”

  Jolie didn’t offer the old man a handshake—she was too peeved with his duplicity for that. She directed him to the leather visitor’s chair, then thanked Faye and took her seat behind the football-field expanse of desk, which had once belonged to Hugh’s banker father. It provided a nice psychological buffer between her and her citizens—a yard and a half of polished oak. Hollis Frazier seemed unaffected by the high-gloss barrier, taking in the well-appointed office and massive desk with great amiability, as if he found it endlessly amusing, a Hoyt ruling the roost in Cleary.

  Jolie found his enjoyment more patronizing than otherwise and tried to move things along with a little honesty. “Not to be rude, Mr. Frazier, but my clerk will be buzzing me in about three minutes for a meeting. Was there something I could help you with?”

  Hollis couldn’t help but smile at her ill-temper, which gave her hazel eyes a truly Hendrix glint. “Oh, I think you know how you can hep me, Miss Hoyt,” he answered, though Jolie really wasn’t sure what he was after and held up her hands in a gesture of acquiescence, indicating that he was free to ask.

  After speaking so plainly with Sam Lense, he’d given up all hope of anonymity and didn’t beat around the bush. “I’m here on the matter of Henry Kite.”

  To her credit, the mayor didn’t wince at the name, but nodded briefly, as if she was braced for the question. “How so? I mean, what are we talking here? Reparations? Access to courthouse records? Pray be frank, Mr. Frazier. I do have other city business to attend to.”

  Had Hollis not seen the real Ms. Hoyt the day before in all her down-home, hospitable glory, he would have been put off by her briskness, which was painfully correct and unyielding. But he knew her game, and if she wanted to play hardball, he was willing and able. “Well, according to eyewitness accounts, there are certain souvenirs—supposedly of Kite’s—still circulating around Hendrix. Two of ’em belong to me. Or rather, me and my brother.”

  “Two what?”

  “Fangers,” he told her plainly, and held up his right hand with the middle two fingers bent to demonstrate. “Middle ones. Right hand.”

  After three years in public office, Jolie was used to the gonzo requests made of the mayor of a poor, black-belt town, and like her father before her, she could exhibit iron control when she wanted to. She didn’t blink at the strange request, but answered impassively, “Well, what makes you think I can hep you, Mr. Frazier? I’m the mayor of Cleary. I understand Henry Kite was killed down in Hendrix, long before my time.”

  Hollis Frazier nearly smiled as he told her, “Mr. Lense assured me you could.”

  Jolie was feeling far from happy with Mr. Lense at the moment, but didn’t betray it openly, just murmured, “Mr. Lense,” in a small undertone, then smoothly came to her feet. “I’m sorry, sir, but I think you are mistaken. You need to go over to the archives, at the capitol. They have a wealth of local history—and the staff to indulge you.”

  She emphasized the word to stinging effect and, for the first time, drew something other than politeness from the manicured old man, who sighed hugely at her evasion, even as he rose to his feet. He replaced his hat on his head with great deliberation and seemed on the point of agreeable departure, but paused in the doorway. He glanced down the hall, as if making sure they were alone, then chided her in a small singsong, “Miss Hoyt, Miss Hoyt—don’t even try thet high-handed white-woman shit wid me. I know who you are— how you come to be sitting behind that big desk, ’stead of an ironing board.”

  Jolie had heard similar statements often enough before and didn’t blink. She remained unyielding, so that Hollis unbent enough to add, “I’m a reasonable man, Miz Hoyt, and willing to pay for your time. Ten thousand, cash. It would mean a lot to my brother,” he thought to offer, as it was the by-God truth.

  But the ironing-board comment had possibly gone a little over the line, the mayor’s face immobile as she cast a weather glance up and down the hallway, then leaned in and confided, “My grandmother was a whore, Mr. Frazier. I am not. But feel free to go on down round Hendrix and talk to anyone you meet. Ask whatever you like,” she added with an edge that crossed a line of its own, making Hollis lose his good humor and all trace of a smile.

  “Is that a threat, Miss Hoyt?”

  She didn’t dignify the question with a reply, but turned on her heel and went down the hall to the clerk’s counter, calling, “Faye? Could you draw Mr. Frazier a map to Hendrix and give him Jimmy Tarleton’s home number?” To Hollis, she added in her finest civic voice, “Mr. Tarleton is the chair of the Historical Committee. Perhaps he could assist you with your research.”

  She was too angry to talk and would have ended it there, but he stopped her with a final question, aimed at her back, which rang out down the high hallway. “Miss Mayor? What happened to the limb?”

  She turned, her eyebrows politely lifted, her face a serious hue of deep red. “Pardon me?”

  “The limb, where they hung Henry Kite. The tree’s still there, but the limb’s gone. Me and my brother, we wondered what’d become of it.”

  Faye and Tamara looked up at the name like hounds on a scent, first at the stranger, then the mayor, who answered easily enough, in that smooth politician’s voice, “Why, I believe the commission had all those old oaks pruned—oh, years ago. Perhaps Mr. Tarleton can help you on thet, too. He’s also a member of the Beautification Board, which oversees Arbor Day, and the like. Good day, suh.”

  If he made a reply, she didn’t hear it, retreating to her office and physically restraining herself from slamming the door. She got it shut without violence and for a moment stood with her back to it, obeying the golden rule of the female politician (never let them see you cry). She drew a deep breath, able to control her tear ducts, though the rest of her body wasn’t so obedient, her hands shaking as if she had the plague.

  She held one in front of her, small and white and boringly Pentecostal; no polish, no acrylic tips; the hand of a woman who knew how to fry a chicken and strip a floor. She looked at it as if it were an alien member, shaking independently of her reason, as she had nothing to be so terrified of, not really. The impudent son of a bitch had her by the short hairs politically, but he didn’t have the power to actually harm her. She’d learned a lesson with Sam Lense and made a point of being invulnerable. She had no local lovers or ailing father or mismatched children or hungry mouths to feed. She was young and independent and well connected and secure as anyone could be in these uncertain times.

  It took her hand a few minutes to accept her head’s reasoned argument, and when she finally got a grip and quit shaking, she sat at her desk and buzzed Faye, asking her to put in a call to Hubert Altman in New Orleans, and another to her brother, Carl.

  “Try him at the church and house, both. Tell him I need to talk to him—to call me at home, or here. Or listen, tell him I’m going down to Hendrix, to call me on my cell.”

  “What about the planning meeting?” Faye asked. “It’s scheduled for six—and you’re meeting with Glen at five thirty.”

  Jolie cursed under her breath. “I forgot. That idiot cell tower.” She blew out her breath in exasperation. “Well, call Glen and tell him I might be late—that it’s a family emergency, can’t be helped.” She was moving to hang up the phone when Faye lowered her voice to ask, �
��Well, what did the ol’ gentleman want? Did he say Henry Kite?”

  Jolie closed her eyes at the name and dissembled with little skill. “Yeah. He’s a history buff, here on business. Owns some barbecue joints in Memphis, thinking of opening one here.”

  Faye was too old and too blunt to be drawn into such an apparent lie and had begun to say as much when she broke off their conversation to speak to someone aside in a bright, cheerful drawl, “No trouble atall. You ah certainly welcome.” She came back to the phone after a few more pleasantries and resumed in a normal voice, “That was him. Nice old fellow, very polite.”

  Jolie straightened up. “You mean Mr. Frazier? He’s still here?”

  Faye answered with her earlier strain, as if again stretching her neck, this time to watch him leave. “Yeah. Needed to check his e-mail. I sent him back to Tad’s.”

  This kind of accommodation was typical for Faye, who was a student of the old Southern School of Feminine Charm, where if a rich man asked you to saw off your leg, you’d oblige with a smile. Jolie didn’t bother to curse, just slapped down the phone and ran to Tad’s jumbled desk, where his computer was returned to the screen saver.

  She brought up the search history, where the digital trail she’d blazed was still there: Kite+Ott Hoyt+Hendrix; then Kite+Melissa Cuffey Wright+Hendrix; and last but not least Raymond Hoyt+Hendrix+Henry Kite. Below were two additional searches that Frazier must had done himself, both people searches in Hendrix, one for Ott Hoyt; the other, Melissa Cuffey Wright, along with her address on Wright Circle. When Jolie saw them, she did something that as a daughter of Raymond Hoyt she was seldom known to do: she used the Lord’s name in vain, briefly and sincerely, the emphasis on the damn.

  She deleted it all, then went back to retrieve her purse and coat, pausing at the clerk’s counter long enough to tell Faye, “Ask Carl to meet me at the church.”

  “His church?” Faye asked, feeling for a pencil.