American Ghost (10 page)

“What?”

“You heard me. That's why they're so happy—think I've been
very
clever, snagged me a
catch
. They really do.”

This was unexpected, and indeed a little insulting to Sam, who only half believed it, arguing, “But I live in the crappiest camper in Florida. My father is a building inspector with the City of Miami. My mother works for HRS.”

“That doesn't have anything to do with it. Your father could dig ditches and it wouldn't make any difference. You know Sister Noble's daughter? The one in Chicago?”

“With the white piano?” he asked, for he'd heard a good bit about that white piano every time he ate supper with Sister Noble.

“That's her. Well, she wouldn't say it around you, but that's how she got the Cadillac and the white piano.”

“She married a rich Jew?”

Jolie smiled. “
Exactly
. That's why she tells you about it all the time—it's the measure of her daughter's success: not any piano, but a
white
piano.”

Sam wasn't sure he was so happy with this unexpected twist and sniffed, “Well, it's nice to know that I'm loved for my own sweet self.”

“You said you wouldn't get mad, and they
do
love you for your sweet self. I mean, you treat them like maybe they're human beings and step and fetch to please them, and that's all any Southerner asks. I'm saying that it's funny, all these little winks and grins I'm getting, as if I've done something
verrry
clever, landed me a
catch
.”

Sam drove along in silence awhile, then finally asked, “What would they have done if you'd brought home a black man?”

Jolie quit smiling at that. “I'd never bring a black man to Hendrix,” she told him flatly, with a finality that was startling.

“Why
not
?”

She'd lost her good humor and shook her head. “It'd be—” She paused, but didn't finish. “It wouldn't work.”

“Why not? There are plenty of rich black men in Miami.”

“It ain't about money—”

Sam cut her off. “But you said—”

“No,”
she insisted with an abrupt, almost ill-temper. “I
never
said it was about money. I said . . .” She paused. “Oh, never mind. I can't explain Hendrix to outsiders. It's hopeless.”

Sam was a little hurt that he—who'd been told how beloved he was by the locals—was now too
outside
to matter, to even comprehend the inside. He drove in silence down the wilderness highway, close to Hendrix now, almost to the church, and finally said, “Well, it's hard for me to believe that the
Sisters
are that racist. I've been here three months and haven't heard them rage on the local blacks—”

“That's because there aren't any,” Jolie told him bluntly. “There haven't been, for a long time.” She made one last attempt to explain. “They just grew up in a different day, Sam. I mean, Sister Noble, she's eighty-two. She remembers when they used to have Commemoration Day in Cleary, when the old vets from the Civil War used to march through town in their uniforms, the Klan marching by their side.”

Jolie paused, and Sam finally said, “Yeah?”

“Well, they're all like that—Uncle Ott and Uncle Earl and Daddy. They've lived through a lot. To them, racial things—they're not far removed, some historical footnote, but close,
really
close.”

“So you're excusing them for being racist because they're old? Because they saw the Klan march through town?”

Jolie was capable of a fierce protectiveness toward her father and the old folk at Bethel, and a steely edge crept into her voice. “I'm not excusing
anything
. I'm just trying to— Listen, have you ever heard of something they used to have around here called slavery?”

Sam pretended to think hard. “Oh, yeah. I think I read a line or two about it at UF. I think they had a war over it.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “Yeah, they did. And they
lost
a war over it, too. Did I ever mention that my Big Mama, she lived in a slave cabin?”

“A
slave
cabin? How old
was
your Big Mama?”

He said it as a small joke, though Jolie didn't smile, but answered with a straight, set face, “She was born in 1899, as a matter of fact. But you know, Sam, it was a funny thing about the war—they didn't come in and bulldoze the slave cabins the minute it was over. They left 'em stand around here. They found 'em mighty useful, believe
me
.”

“So what are you saying?” he asked as he pulled to a halt in the drive.

“I'm saying that Big Mama, she lived in this rinky-dink little slave shack on and off for
years—
a lot of people did, raised a lot of children in 'em—and it was
nasty,
makes Daddy's old shed look like a
mansion
. I mean, to them slavery isn't some far-off thing. It's real—a live,
strange
thing. It's the reason I'd never bring a black man to Hendrix.”

Jolie said it with rare passion, yanking up her book bag and opening the door with a jerk, her face down, more flushed and furious than the argument warranted.

Sam called for her to stop, but she kept going, so quickly that he was barely able to catch her. “Why are you so pissed? I'm the one who should be mad. I'm the token Jew.”

But she refused to be drawn out and felt for her house key with a distracted “Nothing. I'm just sick of talking about it. Listen, I got a thousand things to do—I need to get moving. I'll call you in the morning,” she promised as she unlocked the door.

“You don't need me to help?”

She made a noise at the word. “No. You've
helped
enough. You've helped
plenty.
”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing,” she murmured, then unbent enough to add, “Just do me a favor, Sam, and don't get too moon-eyed over the Hoyts, and Hendrix, and our
glorious
past.”

She said it with such bitterness that Sam repeated, “What the
hell
's got into you?”

“Nothing's got into me. I just can't believe you been here this long, and talked and talked, to everybody, and you still don't git it.”

“I git that I love you,” he mimicked with a chin-out belligerence.

She didn't react to it at all, only looked at him with pity. “Yeah? And since when has love done anything for anybody in Hendrix—but make more gheechies, and more shacks, and more raggedy-ass children in the free-lunch line?” She didn't wait on his answer, just hoisted her book bag to her shoulder. “Thanks for the ride.” Just like that, the door shut; she was gone.

I
t was their first (and only) fight, one that kept Sam tossing and turning most of the night, as a fast-moving front dipped down from the Carolinas and collided with the warm Gulf winds, producing thunder and lightning worthy of Zeus. In an hour, the blanket of humidity that tented the river was blown away, replaced with the kind of dry, brisk air he used to lie in bed and dream of back in August. Even then he couldn't sleep, but lay there in his narrow, little bunk and tried to pinpoint exactly what he'd said that had set Jolie off. He hadn't been paying that much attention, hadn't meant to insult the old Sisters, though he was disappointed that their acceptance of him was based on little more than a racial stereotype. Jolie might think it odd and charming, but he knew from experience that such generalizations were shifting sands, that it only took one wrong move by him for them to go from happy acceptance of the Rich Jew to seething contempt for the Shifty Jew, the Cheap Yid—the possibilities were endless.

The more he thought about it, the madder he got, and not until almost dawn did he finally get to sleep, only to be wakened at first light by a savage pounding on the door, and a rough, unfamiliar voice calling, “Sam? Sam Lense? Boy,
git
yo ass out here, right now!”

Some primeval part of his brain must have been expecting such a thing, as he hit the floor running, pulling on pants and searching
for a weapon, wondering how close Vic Lucas would be that time of the day.

Whoever was pounding on the door—and there was more than one from the sound of it—meant business, and with no place to hide he braced himself in the flimsy doorframe, then kicked it open with one mighty blow.

There was a fast, solid thud and a yelp of pain from someone behind the door, but he didn't stop to investigate. He bounded out, taking five gazelle leaps toward the road before he saw Lena standing aside, laughing, in jeans and a fuzzy lime-green sweater, Jolie beside her, looking not nearly as amused, also in jeans, and an oversize flannel shirt she'd filched from him the week before. “It's a joke!” Lena cried, then said to someone behind the door, “Are you all right?”

The flimsy trailer door swung shut and a good-size young man stood, yelping profanity and clutching his right hand. “Damn, son, you nearly took my hand off.”

“Lucky he didn't take your head off,” Jolie observed drily, then introduced them offhandedly, a little distracted, “Sam, this is the Idiot Carl. Carl, Sam.”

He was larger in person than he'd appeared in his high school pictures, clearly his father's son in size, six-two, well over two hundred pounds, with the Hoyt eyes, braced with good-natured laugh lines and ruler-straight brows.

He seemed to bear Sam no ill will for his injured hand, just flexed it a couple of times, then held it out for a shake. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, his smile, when he finally bestowed it, as charming as his sister's.

Sam shook hands by rote, still a little shaken, then was enveloped in one of Lena's tight spider hugs, and her run of piping chatter: “I never got home at all last night—stopped at Jolie's to help her cook—like, sixty people are coming. I told Big Daddy—you need to divide and conquer next year. People'll have to eat on the porch. . . .”

She was clearly excited by Carl's return, her face high-colored, her eyes as light as a child's at Christmas. She might have stood there, with
Sam in his boxers, and talked till lunch if Jolie hadn't intervened with a glance at her watch.

“Lena—baby, you better go get the ice. Make it twenty pounds,” she told them as they departed. “We'll pick you up in the truck. Ten minutes. Hurry.”

Sam went inside and sat down on the unmade bed, Jolie following, closing the door behind her and apologizing for her brother. “I'm sorry I'm kin to such an imbecile. If I'd have known he was going to do that, I'd a left him home. And I'm sorry I was so grouchy yesterday. It's too much, feeding all the Hoyts at one go. It always gets me on edge.” When Sam still didn't speak, she asked, “Are you all right?”

He looked at her. “That scared the
hell
out of me.”

Jolie tried not to smile, but it was hard; he looked too annoyed, positively pouting. “Well, I told you I was sorry. He's a big practical joker, my brother. It's one of his annoying traits. One of
many.
”

“And I'm not a rich
Jew,
” Sam added with that same petulance. “I been thinking about it all night, and it really
pisses
me off.”

Jolie tried even harder not to smile. “I never said you were. And I told you it'd make you mad.”

He lay back on the bed and rubbed his eyes. “Well, how would you like it if my brothers said I was marrying you for your
tits
?”

Jolie finally smiled and lay beside him. “I'll give you fifty dollars if that ain't
exactly
what they say, the minute they lay eyes on me. Or think it, anyway.”

Sam covered his face with his pillow. “Well, I'm not going to anybody else's house for supper. And I'm not taking any more
cheese
.”

She got the pillow away from him and kissed him, long and light. “That'll teach 'em to mess with old Sam Lense,” she murmured.

He lost his ill-humor pretty quickly and was trying to roll her into place, but she wiggled away. “No—not now. No time. I need to go by the IGA for Jell-O—and I have to get home and check on the turkey. D'you want to meet the Hoyts smelling like sperm? And they're coming right back—”

He obeyed, albeit reluctantly, asking as he dressed, “Well, what's got into Lena? She's like a kid in a candy store.”

“She and Carl are back on.” Jolie perched on the edge of the bed and not looking too happy about the reunion. “She pulled in at midnight; kept me up half the night yammering about it. Claims he popped the question and she said yes.”

“To marriage?” Sam felt for his shoes. “Isn't that kind of quick?”

“They've been dating since Lena was fourteen.”

“That is barbaric,” he muttered offhandedly.

“That is Hendrix,” Jolie answered drily, as if stating an equal fact.

•  •  •

The house was already full when they got home. The tiny living room, dining room, kitchen, and both porches were cramped with a collection of rickety, mismatched church tables and equally ancient folding chairs, so flimsy that the buffalo-size patriarchs deemed them unfit for use. “Baby, thet thang'll fold like a pocketknife, I set my fat tail on it,” her uncle James complained when Jolie tried to seat him in the dining room.

She redirected him to the living room, where her father and three of his brothers ate dinner sitting squashed on the groaning, old sofa, four abreast, using their shelflike bellies to rest their plates. In a tradition as old as the river, the men ate first, with the women serving, and the children sometimes not eating till a third or fourth seating (inspiring the old advice: take a cold potato and wait). The only modern concession to this ancient custom was that female outsiders—girlfriends and miscellaneous pickups—were allowed to eat with their dates, though this was a relatively new twist, and if any of the men needed something not in immediate view—pepper sauce or ice or extra napkins—they had no compunction in sending any available woman to the kitchen to fetch it, even if they didn't know her name (
sweetheart
and
baby girl
would suffice).