American Ghost (19 page)

Sam considered the advice a moment, then sat down his cigarette and unbuttoned the top of his dress shirt and gave a little Hendrix-scar peep show—enough that Wesley cursed, long and with feeling.

He asked the usual questions: who did it, and why; questions Sam tended to avoid, as there was no answer. He told him the bare details, which Wes found as astounding as the scar. “You mean you went hunting in the swamp with a drunken crew of Hoyts while you were shagging Jolie on the side? Shit, son, anybody ever tell you about the lynching they had down there? What they did to that ol' boy?”

“Yeah, I heard,” Sam admitted as he buttoned his shirt, but it wasn't enough.

The Hendrix Lynching had become one of those historical moments that could not be discussed without the inclusion of a few more salacious
details, which Wes supplied with the vigor expected of a man who shopped L.L. Bean: “It wasn't just an ordinary hanging—it was a circus; in the paper, beforehand. Invitations issued, like a goddamn baby shower. They were swamp-running savages, the Hoyts—butchered him like a hog.”

“
They
did it? The Hoyts? You got proof?” Sam asked, but got nothing but a shrug.

“It wasn't a secret,” Wes countered. “
Shit,
everybody was in on it. Ask Carl. He knows. Everybody does—
hell,
people kept Kite's fingers and toes for souvenirs. They sold goddamn postcards, at the drugstore.”

Wes was too flustered to add more, just ran a hand through his hair and advised, “I'm sorry if I stirred anything up. If I was you, I'd just let it go, forget it. It kind of shook me up, Carl turning on a dime like that. I told Mama on the way home, and she said that was
it,
with her and Hendrix. She wasn't ever going back. If I was you, I'd do likewise.”

T
hough she was careful to hide it, Jolie was undeniably shaken when she learned that Sam was living in Tallahassee, little more than an hour down the road, and had never called, never bothered to drop by and prove he was even alive. She was perplexed enough to discuss it with Lena, who was still cagey about the shooting and offered no particular theories on either his job or his indifference, other than a hitch of a shoulder and a wry “Maybe he's afraid. Gosh, Jol, can you
blame
him?”

Most people would have bought the argument, but to Jolie, it didn't ring true. Since when had Sam Lense been afraid of
anything
?

She might have worried it more, might actually have picked up the phone and called him herself, if her father hadn't been so obviously in decline, felled by a third stroke weeks later, this one appreciably worse, paralyzing him on his left side, so he could no longer speak. He lingered another few months, till a final heart attack felled him, with no warning, in the middle of the afternoon. The hospice nurse was on hand and had him transported to the hospital in Cleary, in critical condition.

They located Carl easily enough, though Jolie was less easy to put a finger on, as she was at the moment of Ray's attack sitting on a third-story balcony of a condo she was redecorating in Destin, eating a ham sandwich and watching a school of dolphins leap by in Choctawhatchee Bay. Though by no means a rare sight on the Gulf, this particular pod
caught her eye, made her forget her sandwich and pause to give them her full attention as they leapt in tandem in the glittering surf, up and down, in joyous abandon. Their unrestrained delight fascinated her, and she watched till they were nothing more than a flash of silver in the distance. She was gathering the trash from her lunch when the foreman of the construction crew came to the door with an urgent call from Hugh, who told her that her father had a heart attack. She went straight to the hospital, where the doctors were cautiously optimistic about his regaining consciousness.

Jolie didn't argue the matter, though she read the dolphins as a final message from her father that he was leaving her now, going home with abandon, leaping out with joy to a deep and mysterious sea. The image sustained her through the two-day vigil on the ICU, till Wednesday night, when even the most optimistic doctor admitted Ray was beyond retrieval. On Thursday morning, she and Carl let them unhook the respirator and held Ray's hands while he took his final breath, with Carl unexpectedly coming apart when the machine began to flatline, his sobs echoing down the hospital halls. Jolie was, as usual, the stoic and didn't shed a tear, just leaned over the bed and kissed her father good-bye, whispered to him to swim
hard,
one day she would see him again.

She left the hysteria to the Hoyt men, who never cried at anything unless one of their kinsmen died, then carried on with primal emotion, sobbing and inconsolable and most inconveniently drunk. Jolie did what she could to manage them, a thankless task not made any easier by the cattle call Carl's celebrity made of the modest funeral. The overlong, overbright service wasn't a tribute to her father as much as a tribute to Carl's ability to draw a crowd. On and on the speakers went, one more glittery than the next, by the end of it making Jolie wish she'd joined her uncles in their drink-a-thon.

The after-funeral gathering had been limited to family only, and members of El Bethel, and the difference couldn't have been starker. The service was all capped teeth and Fake Bake; the family supper was held on rickety tables in the fellowship hall, overlooked by faded, kindly lithographs
of Jesus. Lena sent the girls home with a nanny so she could sit with Jolie and the last of the old Sisters, Sister Noble and Sister Wright, who'd cried like widows at the service, but regrouped in the warm light of Jolie's and Lena's attention.

They hadn't grown any more tactful with the years and wasted no time in offering a critique of the celebrity speakers, deeming their sermons canned and uninspired, and predicting Carl would soon go to fat, “just like his deddy.”

They said it in Carl's full hearing as they were mighty suspicious of his new wealth, and overweening popularity, and spent the afternoon making not-so-veiled references to Carl about the perils of riches and the eye of the needle. They were scarcely less blunt with their darling Jolie. For even out in Hendrix, rumors were beginning to circulate about her and her illustrious boss man, Hubert
Altman,
of all people—and it wasn't natural, that one wasn't.

Sister Wright didn't like it a bit and asked Jolie point-blank whatever happened to thet Yankee boy she user court? Thet Sam?

Before Jolie could answer, Lena smoothly intervened, telling them that Sam was doing fine. He was married, living in Tallahassee, working for the state.

“Well, I declare,” the old woman intoned with great sorrow. “He was a well-spoken young man—would have made a better husband than
some
I could name, who got more
money
than they got good
sense
.”

Their old-women meddling made for a bit of comic relief on a trying afternoon, and when Hugh came to the door at four and hesitantly knocked, Jolie almost called,
Coming,
darling,
just to see Sister Wright's expression.

She didn't out of consideration for Hugh, who wasn't too comfortable in Hendrix in broad daylight and would rather be pilloried than stay after dark. He wouldn't come inside, but told Jolie that he was done, meaning that he'd finished the last chore of the florist: moving the flowers to the fresh grave, covering the gash of orange dirt so it wouldn't offend the sensitivity of visiting mourners.

Jolie was feeling a rare affection toward the old pain in the ass, for his care with her father's flowers, including a huge spray of ivory lilies he'd arranged himself, from the Altman family—an unexpected gesture that had been the talk of the after-funeral dinner. She gripped his hand and told him, “Thank you, Hugh. You've been great.”

He appeared marginally pleased, told her he'd be back at the end of the week to pick up the stands and sets, a small reminder that Jolie was only supposed to take off a week from work, due back bright and early the following Monday. Punctual on such matters, Hugh showed up late on Saturday afternoon on the way home from a wedding in Vernon.

He went to the graveyard first, to gather his stands, then dropped by the parsonage, supposedly to see how Jolie was doing, though he couldn't help but make delicate inquiries about her plans to return to work on Monday, and if they were still on go. She assured him they were, for with Lena's help she'd almost finished cleaning out the parsonage. They had come upon all manner of strange objects in the task, including a bottle of merlot that some misguided accountant friend of Carl's had sent her father for Christmas.

She offered it to Hugh, who pronounced it generic, but drinkable, and asked if she would mind opening it. “I've been going like a house afire all week,” he told her with a hint of reproach at her absence, “could use a glass, if you don't mind.”

Jolie cared not at all, but warned, “We don't have a . . . cork opener, or whatever you call it.”

“No worries.” He produced a key chain that had a wine key on it.

He opened it with skill and poured himself a generous serving in an old jelly glass, the only glass containers that hadn't been packed. She refused a glass of her own and drank cold tea instead, not in the jumbled house, but on the back porch, which was lovely that time of day, the sun to the west long and golden, turning the adjoining fields a rare shade of celery green.

Even Hugh seemed touched by the charm of the place, commenting after a moment, “I can't imagine this was so bad a place to be raised.
You had the river and the woods, a green, rural childhood. Lovely vista, across the fields,” he added with a wave of his jelly glass.

“It was all right, kind of lonely. And it was
Hendrix
.”

She didn't have to elaborate, as Hugh was local-born and knew all the stories. He sipped his wine and agreed, “Ah, yes, Hendrix.
Such
a reputation. You'd never think, to hear the talk, that it was this lush and green, actually quite peaceful. I must say, when I was setting up at the church, with the old pulpit, the wooden floors—I found Hendrix quite charming. Harmless, even.”

Jolie smiled, as even she had been touched by a whisper of nostalgia over leaving the shade of the old swamp, which in some ways was the most beautiful spot on earth, a ruined Eden.

But she would never be as sentimental as Carl and would only shrug, saying, “Well, I don't know about harmless. The first great love of my life left here in an ambulance, shot in the back.”

Like the true small-town boy he was, Hugh thrived on gossip and immediately perked up, wanting more. When nothing was forthcoming, he asked after a delicate sip of wine, “Was he a
local
boy?”

Jolie smiled at his shameless prying. “No. He was a Miami boy. A Miami
Jew
.”

“Oh, my,” Hugh drawled lightly, obviously impressed. “That was very
brave,
of
someone,
” he allowed, unable to resist a gleam of delight at this fascinating revelation (oh, the joy of telling his friends in New Orleans, who knew about Jolie already, from his many colorful stories), though he tried to cover it with compassion, overlaid with his usual dry humor.

“So I assume he survived—or does El Bethel have a Jewish section I'm unaware of?”

Jolie decided maybe wine would go better with the conversation than tea and, fishing out another glass, allowed him to pour her a bare inch. She was not overly fond of the sharp, sour taste, but enjoyed the warmth and after a few sips assured him, “Oh, he still walks the earth. Has a job with the state. And a wife and a son. And a bad marriage, apparently.”

She paused at that, as the part about the child was recent news, passed on to Carl by the ever-attendant Wesley Dennis, who'd come to the funeral with his mother. Jolie thought herself no longer affected by Sam at all, but hearing that he'd had a child by another woman had hit her badly, made her so bitter that she couldn't carry the light tone any longer, even with Hugh. “Women carry the Hendrix curse,” she offered drily. “Men seem to get out all right.”

Hugh digested it in silence, finished his wine, and offered to pour her more. When she refused, he poured himself another glass and sat back and mused, “So that's the secret of Jolie Hoyt: a broken heart. The tradesmen in Destin, and a good many local boys, have asked me about you. You seem so alone, so solitary, for someone so young. I've been telling them that you were a churchgirl, devoted to your father. Heaven knows what I'll tell them
now
. Where will you go?” he asked, as Jolie's days in the parsonage were limited, now that the parson was a citizen of the graveyard.

She shrugged. “I don't know. Carl and Lena have offered me a room in their stucco mansion, which is generous, I'm sure. But I'd have to go to his church, and that would truly drive me insane, listening to all his homey Hendrix tales, while he prances around in that idiot watch and designer
socks
.”

She halted a little unsteadily as she was talking to the Gucci king. But Hugh was truly too self-absorbed to take such a jab personally and just nodded sagely, as if he certainly understood her reluctance to join forces with Carl.

“He does tend to romanticize the place,” Hugh allowed, then with a mild cut of his eyes asked, “Have you ever thought of moving to Cleary? I happen to know that one of the wonderful old houses downtown will soon be on the market for the right buyer—which is to say, someone who won't immediately bulldoze it and build a Pizza Hut.”

“Which one?” she asked with interest, as she had done small decorating jobs on most of the houses on Silk Stocking Row and knew their varied histories.

“The old Altman place,” he told her with a small smile. “You might have heard of it. Not as stunning as the Thurmon mansion or the Jamison house, but well built and sturdy. Not air-conditioned upstairs, but always cool in the summer. Mother used to say that it was built over a cave.”