American Ghost (15 page)

Jeb shut the door once he had Jolie in, then went around the front of the truck and spoke in Carl's window, drily and with a close eye, feeling for a lie. “They say you found him. That it was a hunting accident.”

“It was,” Carl answered easily, considerably cleaned up from the night before, dressed in a coat and jeans and work boots, his eyes on the frosted window. “Probly some dumb shit on the paper-company property, taking sight-shots across the water. I told Uncle Ott they shouldn't go out the first week of deer season. Wonder somebody ain't shot every week.”

Jeb's expression didn't flicker at this fast bit of persuasion, he just barely nodded, then asked plainly, “You sure you didn't see no men in hoods out there? Any flaming crosses guiding yer way?”

Carl met Jeb's eye and answered without blinking, “All I saw was one scared Cracker who was freezing his balls off. And thet would be me.”

A shadow of a smile lightened Jeb's face at this bit of Hoyt hyperbole, though he wasn't sidetracked. “Did you hear the shot?”

Carl looked at Jeb in amazement. “Hell, yes, I heard a shot. I heard ten going down and twenty coming back. I'm telling you—the woods are full of idiots with guns these days. Go look at the walls at the camp—they're covered in stray shot. Looks like the walls of the embassy in Saigon.”

Jeb had already been to the camp that morning, had seen the pockmarked wall and talked to the clueless old men. He seemed satisfied at the answer and didn't push for anything further, just straightened up and told Carl, “Well, do me a favor, old son, and tell yo Daddy we got it covered here in town, not to be worrying it.” After a weather glance around the parking lot, he lowered his voice to observe, “Somebody on the river best be watching thet ass, is all I got to say. They'll have the feds in here before it's done.”

Jolie had been sitting quietly reading her protective order, trying to make sense of it, but finally gave up and asked, “Well, when can I see him, Jeb? If Daddy brings me, will they let me?” as if Sam were an R-rated movie that she could only view with parental permission.

Jeb looked a little pained at her naïveté and rubbed his neck. “Naw, shug, thet don't matter. You need to go home and sit tight till your court date—and what
ever
you do, doan be going around Hendrix crying and showing yo ass, gitting old Ott and your daddy upset. Y'know what I mean?”

Jolie didn't and asked the only question she'd ever ask about the night: “Who shot him, Jeb? Why would anybody want to shoot him? We were leaving next week. He never would have come back.”

Before Jeb could answer, Carl inserted flatly, “I'm taking her to Georgia,” without so much as a glance in Jolie's direction.

Jeb made no speculation on the shooter, just nodded at Carl and affirmed, “Good plan,” then tipped his hat and gave the truck a little slap on the door to send it on its way.

Carl ignored her entreaties (he was taking her
where
?) till he'd turned on Highway 90, when he answered in a fast, firm voice, “You cain't go back, Jol—got to move on. Lena ain't in the dorm anymore; has a couch you can sleep on till you git on yer feet—”

“But I cain't just run off without a word,” she cried. “What about Daddy?”

“Daddy's fine. I talked to him at breakfast, told him you got that scholarship after all; had to get there tonight or you'd lose it.”

“And he believed you?”

Carl snorted, “Oh, hell no. Give the Old Man some credit.” He felt around in his pocket and handed over a roll of assorted bills and change. “It's a hundred bucks—all he had, tucked away in a sock drawer. You got to call him tonight, soon as we git there, and convince him this was yer idea—going off to school, just what you always wanted.”

Jolie just stared at the money in her hand, then looked up. “He won't buy it, Carl. He knows—”

“Shit,” Carl muttered. “He'll buy whatever you tell him—he always has. Everybody knows you and Lense had a fight—Ashley heard it. I told him you broke up—dropped him like a bad habit—
shit,
he's probably relieved.”

Jolie tried to argue that, but he overrode her with simple contempt. “God, Jol—did you really think you could just do this thang, right in the sight of Hendrix—that Daddy could save you? Lense wasn't here to study the goddamn Indians—he was digging into the Hoyts and that goddamned useless old lynching. No,” Carl insisted at her denial, “that's what got him shot! Hell, Jol—how many fucking Indians you ever met in Hendrix? You thank that's what he was really here for? To hear Uncle Ott's old fairy tales?”

His words had enough of a ring of truth that Jolie was struck nearly dumb, a single memory silencing her: that of Sam, that first night, when she was still freezing him out, standing on the sidewalk, his voice dry and instructive (“. . . once lynched from that limb. Nightmare business”).

She finally found her voice, hardly more than a whisper. “I have to talk to him.”

Carl all but laughed in her face. “
Talk
to him?” He snatched the envelope from her lap and shook it in her face. “That's a restraining order, Jol, signed by a judge. They're handing them out like candy, all over Hendrix, building a case. They gone pin it on somebody, and that somebody'll be Daddy or Ott or anybody they please. Hell, Jol, didju even
know
this guy before you started running your mouth about all the Hendrix
shit
? What if he's a reporter? What if he works for the feds? Hell, they're reopening all this racial shit in Mississippi. Why d'you think they already assigned a judge?”

The surety in his voice made small tears run down her face, tears of grief at the awfulness of her betrayal. She closed her eyes, trying to stop them, but Carl was relentless.

He had no pity and advised her grimly as he wheeled onto the interstate, “And you can git that crying out on the road—'cause if Daddy
hears
one
wrong note in yer voice, it's over. You hear me? Jo
lee
? You understand what I'm saying?”

•  •  •

Jolie did indeed understand what he was saying and waited till Lena arrived the next night to find out what really happened on the river. Lena came in late, exhausted and distracted, her little Corona packed with everything she had left the summer before, along with a suitcase of Jolie's clothes, and boxes of shoes and makeup and whatever else she could throw in her trunk. She was obviously done with Hendrix, but made little of it, hugging Jolie tightly, and tearfully, then holing up in the bedroom with Carl for most of the night, her sobbing audible through the door.

Jolie patiently waited her turn, but even after Carl left for work the next morning, Lena would hardly discuss the shooting. She'd only whisper small hints about her part in the bloody evening: how they'd literally stumbled upon Sam in the dark, how there was so much blood, “on everything,” Lena told her in that low, distracted voice, “the boat, the truck. We couldn't tell where he was shot.”

To Jolie's fevered questions—had Lena
seen
anything? Heard the shot? Lena just cried, “God, Jol—d'you have to ask? You know what it's like out there at night. You couldn't see your hand in front of you.”

“Well, what were y'all doing down there that late anyway?” Jolie asked, but got no answer and didn't need one. They'd gone down there to use the old, abandoned bunkhouses for more than bunking, if she knew Carl.

No matter how hard Jolie pressed, that was all Lena would offer as Jolie paced and brooded and waited on her court date, which was a long time coming, the date set for December 18 on the first form, then moved to January 4, then January 26. She got the message from her father that Sam had called, but, on Lena's sobbing instance, didn't confide in him. Nor did she call Sam, on fear of arrest, or shouting, or shunning, or whatever they did these days to women who couldn't keep their mouths shut.

She was secretly glad the court had stepped in, and confident in her vindication, till a final stiff, formal envelope arrived from the sheriff's office. It wasn't a mass-produced court summons, but a crabbed, handwritten note from Jeb Cooke, informing her that the order of protection had been rescinded that morning; the shooting had officially been ruled accidental. There was no explanation, no mention of Sam at all, just a personal thanks for her cooperation, which nearly drove her crazy, as it said everything, and nothing at all.

She used all her and Lena's accumulated change to call the sheriff's office, time and again, till she finally got through to Jeb at his desk, and as far as it went, the news was good: Sam was fully recovered, back home in Miami with his folks. “His father's still on a tear, but he'll git over it—or he won't. I'm about tired of dealing with the old boy, to tell you the truth.”

Jolie understood from his chip-on-the-shoulder weariness that she was treading sensitive ground, but was too desperate to worry about annoying him.

“Well, d'you have his number, Jeb? 'Cause I don't have anything, down here, and Daddy said he called and it's been two months, waiting, and I didn't write it down because—well, Lena said I shouldn't call.”

A long, loaded pause ensued, then Jeb answered, gruff and levelheaded, a fifty-four-year-old Hendrix boy offering advice to a barely legal church girl, “Well, I'm glad to hear you finally growing some sense. I expect you done all the
talking
you need to do with that young man . . . No, I
do
know him,” he insisted when she indicated otherwise. “I worked the investigation, Jol—and I don't know exactly what he was up to, but it ain't what he told you, about the damn Indians, or whatever that bull was.”

Jolie's heart began its furious pound, though she could only whisper, “What d'you mean? He's just in school, Jeb. Like me.”

“The hell he is. He's a grown man, Jol, around here digging up dirt on that old lynching, copying records and newspaper clippings, talking
to people—taping a few of 'em. He was playing you and the little blonde Carl's been going with. You girls ain't old enough to be going with grown men. You need to be more careful who you take up with.”

Jolie's temper was still a hot one, enough that she answered swiftly, “I didn't
take up
with him, Jeb. We're getting married.”

But Jeb was as unbelieving as Carl. “Hell, Jolie, you ain't getting
nothing
. All that love talk, it's what pimps say to runaways in bus stations—the old pimp hustle. You ever meet his parents? 'Cause they don't recall ever meeting you. And they're none too happy their golden boy got mixed up with a Hendrix girl, I can tell you that.”

Jolie was too humiliated to answer. She stood there, phone in hand, till Jeb was sure his point was made. He softened then. “Baby, just mark it down to the school of life and let it go. That kinda thang—it happens every day. Be glad you got a second chance—lot of Hendrix girls don't. Hell, I gotta tell you that? Take a look around at the next reunion and tell me how many happy women you see.”

•  •  •

Jolie was too whipped to argue, her memories of Sam's steadfastness and his sweetness poisoned by grave, stomach-churning doubts that rose and fell like the tides. Round and round she went, through Carl and Lena's wedding in March—one that made a curious turn for the righteous after the two went to the altar the week before their wedding, confessed their sins, and triumphantly returned to the faithful, flags flying.

They entreated Jolie to follow, to repent and renew her mind and find refuge in the old sanctuary of El Bethel. But she wasn't as guilt-ridden as she was perplexed and isolated, waiting on a sign and still clinging to hope. Then a small bit of damning evidence appeared unexpectedly, almost exactly where it began: in the sagging old kitchen in Hendrix, where she'd first opened the door and let him into her life.

It happened in early August, almost a year after he first appeared, when she was forced to return to Hendrix after her father had his first
stroke—this one relatively minor, though his heartbeat fell so low they had to put in a pacemaker. Jolie came home as soon as she heard, on an interminable Greyhound bus ride, with stops at every little hamlet and crossroads from Savannah to Cleary. She got in at midnight, in time to see him and hold his hand and pray with him and assure him she wouldn't leave till he was home. She hitched a ride with her uncle Ott back to the parsonage and got there just after dawn on an uncharacteristically breezy morning, a hurricane somewhere off the coast well downstate, but still capable of ruffling the red cedar at the cemetery.

She let herself in with her key and found the old house strangely familiar, just stuffy, closed up for the coming storm. Her father was a creature of habit and hadn't moved so much as a doily in her absence, the place smelling of old wood and damp flooring, and, against all expectation, of home. Jolie wandered room to room, intrigued by the stopped-clock stillness of the place: high school pictures of Lena and her still jammed in the frame of her vanity mirror; the green tile in the bath as arsenic as ever; the same worn blanket on her bed, still flipped back from the last night she'd slept there, eight months before.

She hadn't eaten since she left Savannah, and while she made toast, she stood at the kitchen counter and went through a stack of junk mail that had come to her in care of her father—credit-card applications, magazine subscriptions, and glossy, useless college brochures. She was pitching them away, one piece at a time, when she came upon a small, jet-printed envelope addressed to
Ms. Jolie Hoyt, Hendrix, Florida
. The return address was Miami, and the moment she saw it, that old impatient pound returned to her heart.

She opened it with shaking hands and found a strange university letterhead, and a single, well-placed paragraph that read: