by Janis Owens
Ott was too sick to help, and Obie was made to do the stepping, though he refused to go back alone after two trips. Something was out there, he said, the woods full of ghostly life, faceless shadows that skittered down the pig trails, alone and in families, heads down, not speaking. Ray went out on the porch and watched awhile, said they were headed for the tracks.
“No train this time of night,” Obie had answered, his face pale with fear of the shadows, though Ray was only speculative.
“There must be tonight.”
Ray was curious enough to wade into the woods and returned after a while with a set face and reported the ghosts were nothing more than their fleeing neighbors—black folk from Camp Six. “They torched the quarters—said you could hear Kite all over town, calling for his ma.”
Ott felt like doing likewise as the sharp, hot smell of burning resin began to fill the air as the night deepened, a familiar enough scent in the woods, but too close and hot now for normality, one which would forever in his mind carry with it the copper taste of terror. Obie was equally frantic, afraid the woods would catch fire and they’d be caught, like rats in a trap, but Ray refused to run, saying Ott wasn’t fit to travel.
Ray paced the yard till dawn, then loaded the family shotgun and took a seat on the front steps and grimly promised that if anyone showed up unannounced, he’d do to them what Henry Kite had done to Mr. Goss. “And thet includes Wayland Dorris and Mister Mitchell and Hubert Altman himsef,” he added in uncharacteristic defiance, as they were the names of the big bosses at Camp. The latter was their mother’s longtime employer, whose pants she was probably pressing in town, even as Ray spoke.
• • •
Jolie was pierced by an unexpected pity at Ott’s story, which was a world away from the braggadocio of the young bloods around town, but an accurate assessment of a truly evil day in the long history of the Hoyts, when in their passion to ascend they’d sold their birthright like Esau of old, had lost not only their honor, but their very identity, their history. They’d snuffed it out so efficiently that even now, seventy years later, secrecy and silence were their legacy. Maybe that was the curse of Henry Kite, she thought, the voiceless ruin of her father’s shed returning to her, forever lost.
She had one question, which she put to Ott in a voice hardly more than a whisper. “The storekeeper—did you know him?”
The old man seemed relieved she hadn’t taken him to task on any of it and answered quickly, “Not but to trade with him. He didn’t speak good English. His boy did most of his talking.”
Jolie nodded and thought that so he must have continued, till he passed down the story to his own son, and his son after that. Who came back to hear the details firsthand and nearly exited the town feetfirst himself.
“A bullet in his eye, over a pack of cigarettes,” Ott continued, with a wry shake of his head that was interrupted by a fresh outbreak of howling outside, so loud even Ott heard it and smiled dimly. “Why, thet’ll be Mr. Dais, right thar. You kin meet him.”
Jolie was feeling spooked about all these coincidental meetings and insisted on answering it herself, gingerly opening the door on a grim and unsmiling face: Sam Lense, hands in his pockets, jacket zipped to his chin. He was obviously in the grip of a mighty offense and ignored her completely in favor of her uncle.
“Ott?” he shouted in full-voice shout. “Could you call off your hounds? We’re about to have the mother of all dogfights out here!”
Ott was quick to oblige him, hot-stepping it to the porch and piercing the rising growl with a sharp little whistle that didn’t quite work its earlier magic. The pack was too agitated, the curs standing with stiff legs and bared teeth, the whole yard humming with a cacophony of musical growls as Hollis Frazier appeared on the mud path, taking long country strides. He was dressed in all his fur-coat glory, with Snowflake padding along at his side, making for such a strange and extraordinary sight that the hounds didn’t seem to know what to make of it. The white bear-dog was outside their range of experience—neither bear, nor hog, nor human, but some different creature altogether.
For a moment, the dogs held their ground, hackles raised and growls rising, then, being essentially track dogs, they seemed to think better of a hasty confrontation and turned tail and ran in abject retreat: bitches, puppies, and alpha males, straight under the porch in a businesslike rout, as if a drain had been pulled.
“I’ll be damned,” Sam said into the sudden silence.
Ott hadn’t seen him in twelve years, but didn’t greet him, all his attention on Snowflake, whom he regarded with a countryman’s reverence, going down the porch steps and asking Hollis in his usual muted shout, “Now what sorter dog is thet? An albino shepherd?”
“A Great Pyrenees.” Hollis held out his hand for a shake. “Hollis Frazier.”
“Louder,” Jolie called from the steps. “He’s deaf.”
Hollis nodded and repeated his greeting, and this time Ott shook his hand and asked, “You kin to Mr. Dais?” Black people were so rare on this end of the river, surely two of them, showing up in the same decade, must be kin.
“He’s a Frazier,” Jolie shouted from the porch. “Buddy Frazier’s son, I was telling you about.” Then to Hollis: “This is my uncle Ott! He knew your papa, back in the day.”
Hollis’s face broadened into a magnificent smile. “Well, how ’bout thet?” He took off his hat in a country sign of respect, clearly pleased to make the acquaintance of a living, breathing character from his mother’s memories: Ott Hoyt.
The runt of the Hoyt boys.
The kindest of them, Tempy used to say.
Chapter Twenty-five
Jolie’s job as all-around interpreter was sidetracked by Sam, who was more than a little annoyed by her abrupt departure, which had resurrected painful memories of her Great Abandonment of ’96. He pinned her on the steps and asked, “Why’d you go running out like that? What am I—the village idiot?”
Jolie was none too comfortable with his presence at ground zero, not fifty feet from where he had once been shot, and made a small effort at appeasement. “We might want to discuss this in private.”
But he was a man with a grievance and snapped, “Private my ass. What’s with all the sneaking around? What are you running from?” he demanded, so insistent that Jolie was forced to do the unthinkable: tell him the truth.
“Somebody torched the shed,” she told him in a low voice, a weather eye on the old men, who were bent down, petting the dog.
Sam’s irritation was gone in an instant, replaced by a flash of that old galloping interest. “Your father’s shed? Who would have done that? Who would have even known?” Then in a reflective murmur: “God, it’s like there’s a secret police out here, dogging your every step.”
“Yeah, and I know the name of this particular Nazi— the same devious son of a bitch who foisted me off to Savannah twelve years ago.”
“Ott?” Sam offered blankly.
“Good God.”
Sam couldn’t resist one more try. “The Klan?”
Jolie held up a hand for him to stop with the guessing and told him plainly, “Carl Hoyt.” She glanced at her watch. “Whose plane should be touching down right about now.”
“No, it’s not. He’s here.”
Jolie looked up. “Here, where?”
Sam nodded at the river. “The dock by now. We passed him, not five minutes ago, on Vic’s pontoon, headed here. Looking for you.”
Jolie started backing to the path. “Keep an eye on the old boys. No,” she said when Sam tried to argue. “I’ll be right back.” She turned and bounded down the steep, slick path, through the fir smell of the old cedars to the sagging dock, where Carl was securing Vic Lucas’s old party barge to a rail.
Jolie was so mad she called ahead as she went down the path, “Why, there he is—Hendrix’s newest pyromaniac, the Reverend Carl Hoyt!”
He straightened up when he saw her, but didn’t dignify the gibe with an answer, just finished tying
off the boat as Jolie mounted the shifting and sinking old boards and faced him. “I saw what you done this morning, and it is beneath contempt. It is despicable. Burning Daddy’s stuff like it was trash. What are you afraid of, Carl? That your precious flock’ll find out what your old Mayberry hometown is really about? Or that your old kinfolk killed a pregnant woman?”
“Neither,” he told her mildly. “And quit hollering in my face. I ain’t deaf.”
“Don’t even try to deny it,” she insisted, moving when he tried to sidestep. “That’s your real calling, ain’t it, Carl? To clean this family up with your little stories, your sermons, your fancy damn suits. Did you even look at Daddy’s stuff before you torched it? It didn’t mean shit to you, did it?”
Like all the Hoyts, Carl could only take so much abuse before he reacted, his eyes glinting, “Well, listen, Jol—if you were so into Daddy’s stuff, why’d you keep it stashed out here in thet old shed all these years? Why’n you move it into that fine big house in town, with Hughie and the rest of the Altmans?”
It was similar to the accusation Sam had made at the church the night before, and it hit a little too close to the bone for comfort, making Jolie back up a step and snap, “You’re no brother of mine.”
She turned on her heel and would have left, but Carl stopped her with a quiet voice.
“It was Lena,” he said, so unemotionally that Jolie turned.
“What?”
“Lena. She burnt the shed.”
Jolie stood there, apparently unbelieving, till Carl added, “My plane didn’t touch ground till eight thirty this morning. When did I have time to git to Hendrix, much less torch the shed?”
He was believable in his immobility, and after a moment Jolie stammered, “Why? There was nothing out there but Daddy’s old shoes, and sermons. I looked yesterday. I was just there.”
“I know. Your clerk called the church. Said you’d run out like a bat out of hell, heading to Hendrix, and Lena—it freaked her out. She called and called but couldn’t get up with you—thought you’d get yourself killed down here. She always thought you’re the one they wanted to shoot, back when they nailed Lense—that bullet was meant for you.”
Jolie gaped at him. “Why? Because of the Kite lynching—the fingers?”
“What fingers?” Carl asked with a look of great foreboding.
“The ones at Sister Wright’s—you know, in the back room.”
“In the gin bottle?” He had that face of wild disgust, not at the fingers as much as Jolie’s incessant digging into the darkest corners of their shared past. He looked to be about at the end of his pastoral rope, and in a voice nearly pleading, he asked, “Why you wanna keep digging all this shit up? Don’t we have enough real-life crap to deal with, without plowing up all the family crap? It’s ancient history. It’s dead.”
“Not to me,” she answered with a directness that only made him madder.
“And that’s all that matters, ain’t it? What the baby girl wants, she gets. Hell, Jol, you ever thought of the rest of us? You got one man shot, and Lena out torching houses, and the moment any of this shit hits the papers, you’ll be out on the sidewalk—and for nothing. A pack of fish-camp tall tales—and it’s over, Jol. It doesn’t matter, and it never mattered.”
Jolie just held up her hands as she had with Hollis at her desk and answered quietly, “It matters to me. Where’s Lena? At the house? Is she answering her phone?”
“At her pop’s, waiting for us,” Carl answered, harassed and red-faced as he followed Jolie to the boat. “She won’t come on the river no more—and she won’t talk about it,” he warned.
But Jolie had made up her mind to settle this once and for all. She kicked off her muddy heels, tired of dealing with the damn things, just tossed them in the jon boat, then shimmied in after. Carl called from the dock, “Well, go easy on her, Jol—and don’t be running your mouth about that ratty old shed. She didn’t know Daddy’s stuff was there.”
Jolie ignored him, yanking the pull till the motor finally fired. Carl followed her as far as the listing dock would allow, shouting even more unheard advice and instruction as she concentrated her energies on turning the boat and nosing it upstream, tougher going with the current against her. The little motor whined with effort, coughing and catching. She finally caught a glint of an RV in the woods and spotted a small, familiar figure perched on the far end of the private dock.
From the back, Lena looked hardly aged, but as straight-shouldered and waiflike as she’d been at fourteen, brightly dressed in a red knit cap and scarf and a down vest of some sort of upscale outdoor-wear—Orvis or L.L. Bean or the like—her hair darkened with the birth of her children, but still gold enough to glint in the sun.
When she heard the boat, she came to her feet by rote and helped Jolie tie off, her face more aged than her silhouette, her nose and cheeks chapped from the wind, little raccoon circles of mascara below her eyes.
“Did you see Carl?” she asked when the motor was cut, her face apprehensive. “He was looking for you. Your clerk called yesterday. She said you needed to talk to him, that it was an emergency. Did you see him?”
“I did.” Jolie tossed up her shoes and blanket, then accepted a hand to the dock.
Confronting Lena was a different proposition from confronting Carl, and Jolie was casting about for a delicate inquiry when Lena burst out in unexpected confession, in one fast rush, “I burned down the shed at Bethel last night. I thought it was empty, didn’t know there was a tractor in there—a John Deere.” She teared up at the name, as if it were the unpardonable sin to burn a name brand. “Carl is so mad.”
“He’ll survive.” Jolie took Lena’s cold hand and squeezed it. “Can we sit a minute? I have to go to work.” Jolie glanced at her watch. “Crap, I got fifteen minutes. Just sit a minute,” she begged. “Carl and Sam won’t be long—”
“Sam Lense?” Lena asked in a voice little short of incredulous. “You brought him back to Hendrix?” She was so upset she began crying again, angry little tears that she brushed away with an impatient hand that made it hard for her to speak.
Jolie was moved by her fear, which was so deep and grounded that Lena trembled like a frightened dog. Jolie gripped Lena’s hand tighter and found them a seat on the old fishing bench, gray and weathered by a century of summer sun.
Lena sat down obediently, but was agitated and clearly annoyed, chiding Jolie as if she were one of her children. “What d’you think you’re doing, Jol? Your office called—they called three times. Faye is so worried, said you were out digging around the shed for something about that old lynching—and there was nothing out there, Jol. The place was falling down.”
Jolie began to see the picture now: Faye, in all her wheedling curiosity, unwittingly lighting a fuse. Jolie saw no reason to lie and crossed her arms for warmth, her teeth beginning to chatter, not in fear, but cold. “Then why’d you torch it, Lena?”
“Because you wouldn’t leave it alone!” she cried, more frustrated than fearful, as if confounded by Jolie’s stubbornness. Lena dug out another wisp of Kleenex and angrily wiped her nose. “Isn’t it enough Sam got shot? Who’s next? Carl? One of the girls? When does it end, Jol?”
It was the first time Lena had ever hinted that Sam’s shooting might be something other than accidental, her tone so matter-of-fact that Jolie could feel a slight movement of gears in her chest, as the conversation slowly moved into uncharted water. She was careful not to spook Lena and asked, “You mean it was intentional?”
Lena waved her away impatiently, as if the question was beside the point. “Who knows? Intentional, accidental—all I know is it happened. He was nosing around, asking too many questions. He was too close.”
“Close to what?” Jolie asked, her heart beginning to beat heavily in her chest as if she was closing in on a momentous revelation. “You mean the lynching?”
“Yes, the lynching, that’s why he was here,” Lena said, returning to the old argument, “not for the In
dians. That’s why Travis shot him,” she added, with no inkling of the effect it had on Jolie, making her literally lose her breath, as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Travis Hoyt?” she managed, as he’d never occurred to her as the shooter—never, not once. He was one of Uncle Earl’s grandsons, and too young, maybe seventeen that year, so young his father had to sign for him when he joined the Marines—not long after, now that she thought of it. Not long at all.
Her surprise was so evident that Lena dropped her Kleenex and asked her plainly, “You didn’t know?” Then said, even more shockingly, “Sam knows.”
Chapter Twenty-six
If Jolie was stunned before, she was now speechless, as Lena volunteered with that casual, matter-of-fact assurance, “Carl told him—he had to, before the statute of whatever ran out.”
“Travis?” Jolie whispered. “You’re sure?” as they were speaking of the same Travis Hoyt who’d sat at the Thanksgiving table with them at dinner that day, one of the redneck Hoytlings who’d ragged her about bringing him tea.
“Sure, I’m sure. I was sitting right there—and it happened so quick. And you know how it was that day, at dinner—all that teasing and poking fun, all of ’em, going at each other. Me and Carl, we took Daddy’s boat to go down to the camp. But, God, it was cold that night, ten times colder than today, like, fifteen degrees. Felt like fifteen below, and all around you could hear gunshot—deer hunters, zinging around. We were thinking about turning back when we came on Travis and Bill Goin, and Bill’s little brother. You know, the short one . . .”
“Chuckie?” Jolie offered.
Lena nodded. “Yeah. Chuck Goin. They were finishing hunting for the day, out spotting deer and drunk as the seven earls, shining the spotter on us and catcalling, till Carl threatened to come up out of that boat and beat their butts. But it was still okay, they were just messing around, giving us a hard time.” Lena paused and gave Jolie a cagey look. “You sure you wanta hear this?”