American Ghost

by Janis Owens

  He had long coveted Jolie’s good office and made a point of sitting on the far end of the long table so he could swivel in his seat and face her in debate with ponderous gravity, in a voice that was actually born in Cincinnati, but could go Kentucky colonel in moments of political expediency.

  “Well, Miss May-yah,” he drawled, “I can appreciate the gentleman’s request, but ah don’t quite see how it comes under the province of the City of Cleary. Didn’t the Hendrix Lynching happen in, well, Hendrix?” he asked with a rumble of amusement at his small jest. He left the unspoken portion of the question unspoken (by yo people) and sat there like a confused old owl, as if sincerely trying to wrap his mind around a puzzling mystery.

  He was famous for such old-school manipulations, and Jolie equally famous for outflanking him. She swiveled around and answered him to his face, with scant patience, “Well, I believe you’re right, Commissioner Wynn. But from what I understand, Mr. Kite was actually hung in Cleary, from a live oak on our own award-winning town square. The limb’s gone, but I’ll be happy to show you where it used to be, before the City had it pruned.”

  The admission was so open and odious, and so polar opposite to what the Garden Club and Historic and Beautification Board had sought to achieve with their time and money and fabulous renovation, that it would have drawn an audible groan if the ladies of both organizations hadn’t been too well-mannered to make such a public utterance. They blinked and sniffed and put their purses in their laps and stared straight ahead with such unbending efficiency that JW conceded the point with nothing but a small smile that said it all (Miss Mayor, you are headed back to the farm). Jolie accepted the stab and let it pass, then called a second time for discussion, this time with the gavel in hand.

  She was met with stark silence, even the garrulous old courthouse sitters too shocked to comment. They were blindsided by the fingers and the reward, but possibly even more stunned that a canny politician such as the mayor would make such an absurd misstep this far along in the game. She offered up another moment or two, then adjourned the meeting with a swift crack of the gavel, precisely six minutes too late to salvage her budding career.

  Four of the commissioners were smokers and could not have cared less if Jolie had publicly impaled herself; they just needed a smoke. They scuttled out like cockroaches, leaving Juddy to glower with wounded indignity, clearly having not absorbed a word of the proceedings after Jolie so bitchily refused to recognize him from the bench, his ass so high on his shoulder it was almost apparent to the naked eye. Being the eternal pragmatist she was, Faye paid no attention to the larger questions, but met Jolie at the bottom of the stairs with a terse “You go find Juddy. You hurt his feelings, and if he tells his mama, she’ll be on your neck for twenty years.”

  It was sound advice as far as it went, as Juddy was the golden boy of a large faction of landowning Crackers, whose matriarch was possibly the only woman in the county more territorial than Jolie herself.

  Jolie handed Faye the lapel mike and the folder and said, “I know.” She found Juddy among the smokers and pulled him aside and apologized, profusely and sincerely. When he failed to unfold out of his crossed-arm knot, she actually laid a little truth on him, lowering her voice to confess, “I’m having a tough little go of it this week. Got called out to Hendrix on a family emergency.”

  Juddy was local enough to understand this was not a good thing and, curious, asked, “Who’s the pimp? Who asked about the fingers? God, do we have more kooks around here than any little town on earth, or is it me?”

  “We got kooks,” Jolie admitted, then backed out and got away before the other smokers could circle and ask about the pimp and the fingers. She didn’t have the strength and left her car for morning and beat a fast, quiet retreat along the hedged sidewalks and across the newly treed, beautifully manicured courthouse square.

  She passed the old oak that had once bent under the weight of Henry Kite, pausing to look at the backlit silhouette for the first time in many years. The landmarks around it were unchanged since ’38. In the darkness she could imagine it precisely: the tree and the dust, the press of the crowd and the shouting. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the stink of the slaughterhouse—the blood and skin and rot of decomposition that Kite must have foreseen himself, being raised on a farm. A snippet of his last request returned to her: “I wish one of you white gentlemen would be Christian enough to cut my throat.”

  Most versions of the story omitted this small, telling detail, which to Jolie’s ears sounded perfectly authentic. Cagey and pathetic, it was the last request of a man who was a skilled gambler and knew the ways of his captors. Who, in his utter desperation and terror, had appealed to their most prized possession: their very whiteness—for all the good it had done him.

  She shook her head at the futility of it all and started home in the early twilight, her head down, her arms crossed on her chest. The motion detectors at her gate flickered on as she passed, lighting the walkway with its usual panoramic effect, like the Spirit of the Lord on the face of the deep. She let herself in the front door and turned the bolt lock behind her. She was unbuttoning her limp, wet jacket when she realized Sam was lying on the parlor sofa, a bottle of whiskey on the table beside him, a row of Ritz crackers in hand.

  “So how did it go?” he asked.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  He spoke so casually that Jolie was more startled than frightened, pressing her hand to her heart and murmuring, “My God. You scared the hell out of me. How’d you get in?”

  “Kitchen window,” he said without shame, pouring himself another shot of whiskey, obviously neither his first nor his second, his face flushed and relaxed. If he was not drunk, then he was comfortably oiled.

  He had two tumblers on the table and offered her one. She took it and killed it in a single throw—not in it for the taste but for the nice little sunburst of heat. Sam raised an eyebrow at the gesture. “So, I take it, not so well.”

  She was glad of the warmth of the spirits and extended her glass for a refill, holding this one close to her chest as she sank into a shabby club chair. Eyes closed, she offered a brief outline of the meeting, including the ending.

  If she expected praise, she was disappointed, as Sam just grunted, “Huh. I was afraid self-sabotage was in the works—almost went back and warned you.”

  Between the whiskey and the club chair, she was feeling warmer and less hemmed in. She worked her way out of the damp, wretched jacket and tossed it aside. “It wasn’t self-sabotage, it was self-serving. I wanted to be seen,” she confessed. “I’m tired of being a ghost.”

  Sam regarded her a long moment, then lifted his glass in toast, just as he had that first night at the café: “To resurrection.”

  Jolie had always liked his toasts and raised her glass in answer. “To resurrection,” she echoed with a smile that was tired and pale-lipped, but affecting to Sam. It was his first glimpse of the Jolie of their youth, wry and watchful, but not so very tough.

  “God, I’m glad to see that smile. I haven’t seen it since Thanksgiving night, when I left for the fish camp. You were so pissed,” he said in wonder, as if it still didn’t quite add up, her anger of a decade past.

  “I didn’t want you to go.” She finished the second shot of whiskey and held the tumbler to her chest, eyes closed, feeling the warmth.

  The details of that Thanksgiving evening were still vague to Sam, who asked, “Why were you so adamant? Was there talk”—he tapped his chest—“of what was coming?”

  She was drinking on an empty stomach and answered honestly, if a little vaguely, “There didn’t have to be talk. I knew I was losing you the minute you walked out the door. It broke my heart.”

  “How did you know?” he asked, setting down his empty tumbler and leaning forward as he did when engaged.

  She answered frankly, with her eyes closed, “Because women in Hendrix lose everything, eventually—friends, money, mothers. It’s a losing kind of pla
ce. You tremble every minute for your love.”

  It was the first time she’d said the word in twelve years and meant it, her face drowsy in repose, but peculiarly wounded, in a way that moved Sam to a bit of honesty of his own. “Well, God, Jol, you talk like we’re a hundred years old. It’s not too late—it’s never too late.”

  She bestirred herself enough to argue the point. “You’re married. Wes told us.”

  “Yeah—and divorced about as quick. All I got out of it was a kid, my son, Brice. He’s ten, he’s a sweetheart—does good in school,” he said offhandedly, as if genetically unable to mention his son without throwing out a bit of praise. “Don’t worry about me, I’m free, I’m good. And you’re just as well as free—just need to unlatch yourself from the millionaire dipshit and get the hell out of this mausoleum. Yeah, it’s beautiful, but God, Jol, what would your father think? Is it worth your soul?”

  His voice had dropped to the level of an altar call, so compelling that Jolie blinked out of her drowsiness and sat up a little straighter. “You know, Sam, I don’t know what nonsense you’ve been hearing about me, but I own this house”—she yawned—“or co-own it, with the Bank of America. If it didn’t have historic exemption, I wouldn’t be able to pay the taxes.”

  Sam was more charmed than offended by her denial and answered patiently, his elbows on his knees, as if truly leading her to the Lord, “You don’t have to lie to me, Jol. I’m not gonna go tell on you to the Baptists. This”—he waved his empty tumbler—“is not the house of a public servant—and trust me, I know. I crunch numbers for the State. Somebody around here has money. Old, capital-gaining, accrued-interest money, and, baby, I’ve been to Hendrix. And I know what city governments pay. And that someone ain’t you.”

  If Jolie was used to one myth, it was that she was Hugh’s kept woman. Even Faye half believed it, though Jolie worked hard to dispel it. It was almost impossible to talk anyone out of it; the more she denied it, the more ridiculous she sounded. She was too tired to get into it, but made a stab at explanation. “You might recall that I was once a struggling young student of design. The only things that are Hugh’s are the rugs and curtains and sideboards. He’s been promising to move them for years, but he’s too cheap to hire a mover and he’s lazy as hell.”

  Sam wasn’t buying but was feeling chummy enough to indulge her. “Well, good. Tell him to move his shit tonight. I’m serious, Jol. Nobody’ll ever take you seriously till you break it off with the sugar daddy. One phone call,” he assured her, and even demonstrated, holding his thumb and pinkie to his ear, saying, “‘Hey, Hugh. It’s Jolie. It’s over.’ Then, click.” He hung up the imaginary phone. “All done. Free as a bird.”

  Jolie watched the performance with slightly raised eyebrows, then put him out of his misery, leaning in and confiding, “He’s my uncle, Sam.”

  She expected surprise, but not the look of mild disgust that wrinkled his face. “You’re sleeping with your uncle?” he murmured. “Well, that’s nasty, even for Hendrix.”

  Jolie stared at him a moment, then answered in the purest honesty, “You know, baby, if you ever get tired of the bureaucracy at the State, you might consider running for Cleary City Commission. I think you’d fit right in, like a hand in a glove.”

  Sam hadn’t grown much in the way of humility over the years and swallowed this insult with poor grace. He didn’t argue, but sat, grievously insulted, but beginning to come around, taking in the high ceiling, the ornate old woodwork, till it finally began to dawn on him, what she’d just told him.

  Such was his pride that he didn’t venture any more questions, but concluded in a light, bemused voice, “His father was one of your Big Mama’s men friends—the ones she ran around with when she was young; ended up ironing for when she was old.”

  Jolie raised her empty tumbler in a gesture of assent. “Bingo. And I’d appreciate it if you’d give him a little slack. He’s an anachronistic, controlling old pain in the ass, but he makes a stab at humanity from time to time. And I owe him.”

  Sam was less confident by then and offered hesitantly, “For the house?”

  “No.” She yawned. “The house was bribery, to run his city for him. But he once did a purer favor, for Daddy, a long time ago—after his second stroke, when we were broke, and I was looking for a job. Nobody in Hendrix would touch me with a ten-foot pole, and I was about to start cleaning toilets for a living when Daddy came home one night with big news: that he’d found me a good job, in Cleary, working for Mis-tah Alt man,” she said, mimicking her father with a smile.

  “And I don’t know how it went down. Daddy must have swallowed his pride and put on his good suit and went hobbling into town that morning to find me a job. Knowing Daddy, he didn’t call ahead—just appeared out of nowhere. Hugh’s old Holy Roller half brother from the woods, with a gimp eye and gimp leg, there to beg a job for his girl, Jolie. Hugh could have pretended he didn’t know him or brushed him off, but he told him to send me on, and he must have been sweet about it, because Daddy was so happy that night. He was over the moon.” She smiled. “And I’m sure it was just guilt on Hugh’s part, or noblesse oblige. But you know, Sam, I really don’t care what it was. It was having mercy on the poor and the powerless, and it won’t be forgotten. Not in this life, or the one to come. Not if I have anything to do with it.”

  She said it with her old level-eyed flatness, no longer a very young woman, and never as beautiful as she was powerful, with that implacable idea of right and wrong she’d inherited from her father. The sheer force of it made her striking in an ageless, mythic way that eclipsed modernity completely, made her seem like an old, forgotten goddess, a displaced Circe, capable of mischief and capricious devilry. But also capable of metamorphosis, of turning men to their true nature.

  Sam was sober enough to respond with a smile of his own, one of capitulation. “Well, I like your style, Jolie Hoyt.” He came heavily to his feet. “Give me a call sometime when you have an opening on your dance card. I’ll take you down to the City Café. Buy you a shrimp special.”

  “You’re leaving?” she asked, taken aback by his unexpected capitulation, in the awkward position of being too drunk to rise steadily, but not drunk enough to beg. “You can’t drive, you’re half-lit. You can sleep on the sofa.”

  Sam wasn’t buying and answered, not unkindly, “Jol. I’m not sleeping on a hundred-year-old, four-foot couch while the woman I love sleeps one floor above, alone, in a billionaire’s bed. It’s demeaning. It’s emasculating. I’ll sleep in my car. Then I’ll wake at dawn and drive to work and drag my unfucked carcass through another day of crunching numbers for the State, which is my miserable lot in life. I’ll be fine,” he said, with such resignation that Jolie was thrown into a great quandary, gripping his sleeve and wishing she hadn’t drunk on an empty stomach.

  “Hold up a minute. Let me think,” she whispered, so unsteadily that she embraced him, first for balance, then pleasure, her face pressed to his warm neck, which smelled of the same drugstore cologne (British Sterling?) that he used to wear in their camper days, that evoked just the warmest memories.

  He circled her waist with his arms as he used to do at the camper, though before he would have felt under her shirt and got a handful of a breast. As it was, he just gripped her waist and whispered to her hair, “You need to go to sleep, Jol. You’re drunk.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” she confessed to his neck, then added in a small, petulant voice, “You just don’t know what it’s like, growing up in this little church world, where everything is prescribed and in order and it’s black-and-white and good and evil, and right and wrong. And then you leave that little world and nothing is black-and-white, and at every turn in the road, you have to stop and decide, is this right or wrong?” She drew back. “It’s so confusing.”

  He combed back her bangs with his thumb. “It’s called adulthood, and it’s your call. Do I stay or do I go?”

  Jolie just blinked at him, pale and exhausted, then
returned to his embrace. “Just promise you’ll never leave me again, with a sink full of dishes, to go fishing with my cousins. It really did break my heart.”

  She was so sincere that he smiled finally and parted enough to assure her to her face, “I won’t break your heart.”

  He kissed her, long enough, and deep enough, but she had a hard time tasting him under all the bourbon. She wasn’t sobered up enough to get a real sense of him till halfway up the stairs, with the dim hallway looming above, the transoms to four different passageways gleaming. He paused and breathed, “Which one of these bedrooms is yours?”

  She smiled at him in the darkness. “Bubba, all these bedrooms are mine. Take your pick.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Jolie appeared at City Hall the next morning at nine sharp, with her game face on, braced for whatever the day might bring. She found Faye and Tamara long at their desks, fielding call after call from curious constituents who wanted to get the official lowdown on exactly what the mayor had said at the commission meeting about Henry Kite and the oak tree. Was she sure it was the one in the corner? Their daddy had always said it was the big one, in the back?

  Between calls, they wandered into Jolie’s office with their coffee and offered all manner of doomsday scenarios about race riots and lost elections, till Tad came in at eleven and put them to work on less mundane matters: cable bills and the like.