American Ghost

by Janis Owens

  He had less to say once they were out of town and into the deeper green of the hardwood forest that had once stood in an impenetrable wall, all the way to the Gulf, peopled by tribes so fierce that even de Soto had taken a pass on confrontation and detoured south. The stretches of mobile homes and hardtop and cultivated field had thinned the forest out, but in the floodplain, the shadow of the forest returned to life, overhanging the highway, which dipped in and out of low places, offering flickering glimpses of ponds and bayous, alligators and herons posed over still, green water.

  Hendrix itself was impossible to miss, built on the banks of the river in a day when water was considered more reliable transportation than bumpy earth. Hollis was sensitive to his brother’s blindness, and as they drew near, he resumed his travelogue. “The river’s high here, too—new bridge, goes way out. Wonder what happened to the old?” he asked, ducking to peer into the canopy as they passed.

  None of it was familiar to Hollis till they were at the heart of the old downtown, two blocks of abandoned brick and asphalt, when he finally caught sight of a building he recognized. “Why there’s the old commissary, surely. God, I remember going there with Papa, to get his pay. There’s a new post office—redbrick. ‘Hendrix, Florida,’” he read as they passed, “and an IGA—a little un, and a blinking light.” Then he realized they were out of town, back on open road. “Well, that’s it. Ain’t nothing out here but trailers. I’ll turn around, go back to the light.”

  A little more was in that direction, a BP station and a spanking-new Dollar General and a whole lot of trailers in between, the newer ones sitting high on concrete blocks per state floodwater regulation. The KOA was the only hint of modernity, an upbeat neon sign before the brown state sign that marked the entrance to the public launch. Hollis swung a U-turn and made a final pass, but the once-thriving downtown—that busy little brick-and-wood intersection of barbershops and moneylenders and saloons—had been reduced to the old commissary, which sat there, rotting and abandoned, on the grass-grown rails.

  Hollis hadn’t expected much, but couldn’t hide his disappointment in finding Hendrix—that mighty figure of his family mythos—nothing more than a sagging, scattered trailer park.

  He said as much to Charley, who snorted, “Whut d’you expect? Place has blood on its hands. Kite cursed it.”

  “Kite was a murdering son of a bitch,” Hollis retorted, as he had no love for the man. “He got what he deserved.”

  Charley didn’t argue the point, but muttered, “Nobody deserved what he got,” then said, with a tip of his head, “Turn round and go back to the launch. I want to see the river.”

  Hollis obeyed, though it was damned cold on the water, the Lincoln’s thermometer reading thirty-six. He let Snow out to pee and helped his brother tap his way down a gravel path to the edge of the dank, fast-moving water, which he sniffed with appreciation.

  “Specks is running,” he commented mildly.

  His brother was quick to nip that nonsense in the bud. “We ain’t here to fish,” Hollis told him plainly as he felt in his pocket for the slip of paper he’d brought from City Hall. “We got people to see—‘Melissa Cuffey Wright,’” he read, then looked up. “Name ring a bell?” Charley was the family’s Hendrix expert now that Tempy was gone.

  The old man thought a moment, then allowed, “Seem like I do remember a family of Cuffeys. Four or five girls—their daddy worked at the mill.”

  That was the most Charley could offer, which was regrettable, as the Lincoln’s navigation system wasn’t altogether accurate when it came to waterfront addresses. Hollis tapped in the address he’d snagged from the city computer, but the droning, mechanical voice kept telling him to turn left on a street that didn’t exist. After circling the post office half a dozen times, Hollis admitted defeat and stopped for directions. The moon-faced clerk was most accommodating, not only sketching him a map, but asking, “Are you going out to buy eggs? Because I don’t know if Miz Wright’s still selling—you might want to call first.”

  Hollis was, as usual, fast on his feet and immediately proposed to do just that and asked to borrow the clerk’s phone. He made the call right there at the counter and caught her at home. He asked if she was still selling eggs.

  “Brown or regular?” the old lady asked in an ancient, wobbly voice.

  “Either’ll do.”

  “Well, come on, then. I ain’t been out to collect ’em today, but if you doan mind waiting, I don’t mind looking.”

  Hollis assured her that he didn’t mind waiting in the least.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jolie drove straight to Sister Wright’s from City Hall, hoping to intercept the Fraziers. She beat them by a good ten minutes and was immediately relieved when she pulled into the rutted, old drive as no one appeared to be home. No smoke came from the chimney, no light from the back bedroom. The usual riot of begonias on the porch rails were reduced to brown thread by the frost, even the old azaleas black and burnt at the tips.

  Jolie knocked twice and was ducking to peer in the window when she finally got an answer—a little yodel from the back of the house, the old-timey call of visiting neighbors on a farm. Sister Wright answered in her robe, her eyes lightening to a wide smile when she saw who it was.

  “Why look a here,” she cried, “my girl Jolee.”

  She was never a giant among women and had shrunk to the size of a child in old age, though her grip was strong as Jolie enveloped her in a bearlike Pentecostal hug. “Well, if you ain’t a sight”—Sister Wright smiled up as they parted—“wearing them high heels, big and rich, just like yo brother—though I wisht he’d quit that begging for money, week after week. It embarrasses me to death.”

  Jolie’s hug turned to a squeeze of laughter as no one could give it to Carl like the old Sisters, who faithfully trooped down to sit in his front pew and star in his sermons when invited on holidays and homecomings, but were still the bane of the High and Mighty and never shy about voicing a personal opinion.

  “You and me both,” Jolie told her, kissing her hard head. “You and me both.”

  “What you doing out and about this time of the day? Everybody says you about run thangs, over there in Cleary.”

  “Come to see you.” Jolie smiled. “Want me to build you a fire? It is turned a little chilly.”

  “Naw, shug, just git you a cup of coffee. I got a man coming for eggs—need to run out to the coop. Won’t take but a minite. I’ll turn on the stove, we’ll warm up quick.”

  “Well, go pour us both a cup while I run gather the eggs.”

  Sister Wright made her usual protests as she followed Jolie to the door—about her ruining her shoes and being too dressed up for the coop. She finally gave up and stood there at the screen and called, “Well, keep an eye on thet rooster, shug. He’s a cross old thang. Git you a stick and swipe him on the haid.”

  Jolie had gathered many an egg at the Wright place as a child and found the baskets right where they always were. She wasn’t intimidated by the decrepit old rooster—an upstart Rhode Island Red, who was too cold to be overly territorial, his pinfeathers drooping. He fixed Jolie with a beady eye and let go a reedy crow when she dragged open the gate, but allowed her in the coop with nothing more than a little flapping, his chickens a fat, placid lot, feathers puffed against the chill. She gathered the eggs with both hands, murmuring the old chicken murmur (“Move over, old girl—there’s a good chicka”), till she finished the line with an even two dozen. She was dragging the gate closed, warning the rooster, “Git on, old son. You spur me and I’ll fry you for supper,” when a gleaming town car slowed for a cautious turn in the drive.

  She cursed under her breath at Hollis Frazier’s efficiency and hurried back to the kitchen, which smelled heavenly from the coffee percolating on the counter. Sister Wright was already going to the door, and without a sound Jolie slipped down the hall to a tiny room that had once been a section of the back porch, now a catchall for all sorts of vintage plunder. As childre
n she and Carl used to play hide-and-seek in a huge walnut wardrobe, man-height and filled to the brim with tulle-draped hats and yellowed hankies, old robes and gowns, and one item that used to freak them out: a long-necked, syrup-size bottle, half-full of murky liquid, wherein bobbed a few little objects that Sister Wright once explained were “fangers.”

  Carl had been fascinated by them. He used to take them out every time they went over, though when he asked whom they belonged to, Sister Wright wouldn’t tell him. She didn’t like the children messing with them and would take them away and put them out of reach on a higher shelf. “Doan know. Somebody from Camp, I expect.”

  “Well, why’re you keeping ’em?”

  “’Cause they ain’t mine to throw away.” The answer had seemed as nonsensical at the time as it did today.

  Jolie could remember the exact shelf where Sister Wright had put them out of their reach—the only one high enough to fit a long-necked bottle. Jolie went right to it, but found nothing more than a collection of old, tissue-filled hatboxes, ancient issues of the Progressive Farmer, and stacks and stacks of crochet patterns. She was positive it was the right shelf and gave up after a moment when Hollis Frazier’s voice boomed at the door, confident and country-loud. She quietly shut the wardrobe, then slipped back to the kitchen and transferred the eggs to cartons with quick hands. She took them to the living room, where Sister Wright was standing at the door talking with Mr. Frazier, apologizing over a price increase thanks to the high price of scratch.

  “But they’re fresh,” she assured him, “right out of the chicken’s butt,” a line she often used with tourists from the campground, who always appreciated a little local color.

  Mr. Frazier was enough of a sport to offer a polite guffaw, though the smile disappeared when Jolie appeared at the door and handed him the carton with a small bow. “Here you go, suh. A dozen best large.”

  The edge in her voice was lost on Sister Wright, who gave Jolie an appreciative peck on her cheek and told him, “Delivered by the mayor hersef.” Then she asked Jolie, “You got change for a twenty?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Jolie answered with deliberate firmness, as she needed to speak to Mr. Frazier a moment alone, and Sister Wright kept her egg change in a jar high on a kitchen shelf.

  “Be back in a jiffy,” she said, then disappeared down the hall, the hem of her long robe dragging behind her.

  Jolie waited till she was out of earshot before she stepped outside and pulled her coat close around her. “Fast work, Mr. Frazier.”

  Hollis had recovered enough of his composure to answer with equal mildness, “I could say the same to you, Miss Hoyt.”

  Jolie acknowledged the compliment with a dip of her head and put aside the pleasantries to tell him plainly, “Leave her alone,” with no particular threat in her voice, just a reasonable request among adults.

  He answered with equal ease, “I ain’t here to harass anybody. Just want to get my share of mine.” He used the old Hendrix phrase broadly, with relish.

  If he was expecting an argument, he was disappointed, as Jolie just met his eye with her father’s directness. “They ain’t here. I just looked.”

  For a moment, Hollis didn’t get it. When he did, he was so startled that he stammered, “Papa’s fangers? They were here?” Until that moment, he hadn’t been sure that this trip was anything but a fool’s errand, a shot in the dark so dim that it was hardly explicable.

  “Somebody’s were.”

  “In a gin bottle? The middle ones? Right hand?”

  She huddled deeper in her coat. “It didn’t have a label—just clear glass, and a metal cap. I don’t know about the gin part. Carl might know.”

  “Would Mr. Lense?” Hollis asked sharply, and finally hit a pocket of reaction.

  “Sam Lense doesn’t know shit about Hendrix,” she said sharply. “You can deal with him, or you can deal with me. But you can’t do both.”

  Hollis was an old hand at the game of love and raised an involuntary eyebrow at her passion, which was far more than a professional disagreement among colleagues.

  “Who shot him?”

  Hollis got an immediate response, snapped quickly, as if she were used to the question and had a standard response. “Couldn’t tell you. Wasn’t there.”

  Hollis tended to believe her, but felt compelled to point out an obvious truth. “Anybody shoots at me, I’ll shoot back.”

  “I would advise it,” she agreed in that brisk, no-nonsense voice. “Just keep me out of it. Keep everybody out of it,” she said, with uncommon conviction, “if you’re serious about this thing and not just playing some political scam.”

  Hollis had rather liked the mayor till then, for her spunk and wiliness, her iron pragmatism and flat green eyes that reminded him of his beloved aunt Tempy. He liked her less at her pathetic drive to keep it quiet and asked her plainly, “Who you scared of, Miss Hoyt? The white folk, or the black ones?”

  Her reply was a truly Tempy-like glare, though she answered quickly enough, “Both. And collateral damage, to people who never did anybody any harm—like the ole girl inside, or your papa, out minding his own business, working his own field.”

  “Or somebody’s sweetheart, getting shot by a poacher ’cause he talked to the wrong people?”

  He thought she’d argue, but she just looked at him wearily, her face pale against the black of the wool coat. “Or an idiot from the university getting shot in the back because he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. And if you want to guarantee you never see your papa’s fingers, just keep dropping his name. It’s about as welcome around here as Henry damn Kite.”

  Hollis was practical enough to see her point, and after a moment’s hesitation he slipped his hat back on his head. “Then you can take it from here. But if you cross me, little girl, I’ll tell everybody in Cleary more about the Hoyts than they ever wanted to know.”

  She didn’t wither at the threat, but rolled her eyes the way his daughters did when he said something outdated and dadlike. “Can I let you in on a secret in local politics, Mr. Frazier?” she asked. “There are no secrets. I’m one step up from trash, and everybody knows it. And the day I quit toten their water is the day I get sent back to the farm.”

  Hollis laughed despite himself; it was too true to do otherwise. “Well,” he said when he got the better of it, “we’ll be at the house if you need us.” He made his way down the rickety steps to the car.

  Charley was as curious as an old hen. He’d made out snatches of the conversation on the porch, enough to know they were onto something, but wasn’t close enough to make out any faces. “Was that Miz Hoyt? Did she find them?” he asked with all apparent sincerity, as if it might be as easy as that.

  Hollis was used to Charley’s optimism and handed him the eggs. “Not yet. But she’s working on it.”

  “You know who she is, don’t you?” Charley asked in continuation of the old Southern game they’d been playing since they left Memphis, of tracking the roots of the living back to the neighbors and families of the long-lost community of Camp Six.

  Hollis, though not as good as Charley, was learning. As he backed the town car down the drive, he answered, “Probably one of Coy Ammons’s great-greats. She got thet Ammons height. That sass.”

  Charley grunted his agreement, as he’d pegged Jolie as the offspring of a Hendrix survivor two minutes after he met her; not from her looks (which for him were too dim to decipher), but her voice, her homemade sausage, her entire air of welcome. It wasn’t a matter of mechanical hospitality that Southerners, black and white, dished out to paying guests, but that strange and inexplicable connection that comes when you walk in a stranger’s house and feel right at home. That’s why he’d spoken so plainly to her about their quest—what was the point of deception? The Hoyts were high-flying fools, with their fish camp, their green eyes, and their big talk, but nothing more than pawns of the bosses when it came right down to it. They knew it, and everyone else did.

&n
bsp; “Yeah, one of Coy’s,” Charley murmured as they pulled out of sight and he turned back in his seat, “or maybe Sincy Hoyt’s—any of them girls. Living in town. Stepping for the white folk,” he said, mimicking his granny, who said it of any Hendrix girl who’d abandoned the comforts of the family hearth to chase the hope of a better life in town.

  Hollis made a noise of agreement, and with no pause, but as if in continuation of the thought, Charley asked, “Did you brang a pistol?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  When Jolie went back inside, she found Sister Wright still in the pantry, painstakingly counting out $19 in change from an enormous old Mt. Olive pickle jar. “You can put your money away,” Jolie said with a wave of the twenty. “I told him your eggs were so rare and organic that twenty dollars a dozen was a steal. Old city goof, he believed me.”

  “Why the Law,” Sister Wright cried, and wouldn’t believe her till Jolie walked her out to the porch and demonstrated that his car was gone.

  “You have no idea how expensive eggs are these days,” Jolie assured her. “It’s the Atkins diet. Everybody’s eating ’em, day and night.”

  Sister Wright had enough native good sense to know she was being maneuvered, but was used to Lena’s and Jolie’s generosity and undeniably pleased with the unexpected windfall. She pocketed the twenty, then asked Jolie if she wouldn’t mind taking her to town to “pick up a few thangs,” as she could no longer drive and was at the mercy of the young folk to cart her around town.

  Jolie had seventy-eight new e-mails on her BlackBerry, but was glad to oblige, as it gave her an excuse to nose around downtown Hendrix, which, if possible, looked worse than it had when she was a child. It had become the kind of charmless little sprawl that should incorporate and write a comp plan, snag a few block grants before it deteriorated into an out-and-out shantytown. She didn’t entertain any messiah-like hope of returning and taking on the job herself, for if she’d learned one thing in city government, it was the futility of trying to bring order to a town that had no groundswell of support, no mandate, for change. She shook her head at the overflowing Dumpsters, the stunted trees, and the general air of poverty and decay, reflecting that this was the real curse of Henry Kite. This tired and pointless disorder stood in stark contrast to the beauty of the river and the woods.