American Ghost (21 page)

To save himself a half hour of annoying explanation, Hollis decided to wait till morning and go over the river and tell him face-to-face. Better yet, he'd take the article to him and let him read it for himself. That
was the ticket, Hollis thought, and as he undressed for bed, he made a mental note to stop by Walgreens on the way and refill the old pain in the ass's prescription for nitroglycerin—because when he read that last page, he would certainly need one. Maybe two.

Hell, Hollis almost needed one himself, and when he finally got to bed, he found himself too agitated to sleep. After a half an hour of tossing and turning, he gave it up and braved the cold hallway to fetch the printed pages. He sat up in bed with a glass of Absolut and read them again, start to finish, the unemotional disclosure on the final paragraph making him whisper aloud, “Damn.” Maybe Charley was right, he thought. Maybe some dumb Cracker still had them, sitting on his television, or on a shelf in his kitchen, a souvenir of a Big Night on the town.

The idea was so vividly disturbing that Hollis said to hell with it and rolled over and called Charley in West Memphis. He waited for twelve long rings till a blurred, old voice mumbled, “Hellow.”

Hollis didn't bother to identify himself, just told him briskly, “
Hey
. I'm coming by in the morning—got something to show you.”

“Who is this?” Charley muttered thickly. “Hollis? Whut time is it?”

“Two in the morning. I'll be there by six. Pack your bags; dress light. We're headed to Florida.”

After a small beat of silence, the old man asked in a clearer voice, “To Hendrix?”

As much as he was occasionally aggravated by the old pain in the ass, Hollis found himself smiling in the dark. “Yeah,” he said, satisfaction in his voice.

“Good,”
Charley affirmed, and that was it. He hung up.

Hollis was still smiling as he maneuvered the phone back to its cradle. Charley might be old as the hills and blind as a bat, but he was by God fearless, had always been.

•  •  •

By the time Hollis made his way over the steaming river to Arkansas, it was after six on a blistering-cold Tennessee dawn. The view from the
bridge was wreathed in a thousand pinpoints of light: passing barges, the old cotton warehouses, the commuters leaving Harbor Town, headed downtown. The Arkansas side of the river was immediately more rural, flat, mud-colored floodplain. He exited in West Memphis and made his way to Charley's apartment in a one-story assisted-living facility where he'd lived almost two years now, since he became legally blind and could no longer drive.

He could still see enough to get around and answered the door on the first knock, all dressed and waiting. Hollis didn't offer a word, just strode to the kitchen and slapped the article down on the table: “Lookit this.”

Charley was literate, but his reading was limited to how fast he could move a huge magnifying glass over a page. He was painstakingly making his way across the first paragraph when Hollis tired of waiting and impatiently flipped to the bottom of the stack. “There,” he snapped, “at the bottom.”

Charley was often tried by his brother's boorish impatience and made a noise of annoyance, though he was curious enough to obediently apply the magnifying glass to the page in question, the room perfectly silent till he got to the end, when he whispered, “John Brown-it,” a country exclamation that was the pious form of the Lord's name in vain.

“Where'd you git this thang?” he asked, flipping it back to the front and searching for a source with his magnifying glass.

“Off the computer,” Hollis answered briskly, snatching back the pages, ready to get on the road. “I got a phone number and a map. You ready?”

“Yessuh,” Charley answered without hesitation, as he'd been a widower for twenty-four years. His children and grandchildren were all grown, scattered from New York to Seattle.

He was collecting his walking stick and his suitcase—a handful of stuffed Walmart bags—when he paused to ask in a voice of mild disapproval, “We taking the dog?” Traveling with a dog had long been a point of contention between the brothers.

But Hollis wasn't one to be bossed about what he let ride in his own damn car and answered quickly, “Oh, yeah,” making it clear that any discussion of kennels and the difficulty of traveling with a 180-pound dog would not be tolerated.

Charley made another noise at that, as he had a few rigid opinions about Hollis and his big, white wolf dogs, none of them particularly nice. But there was nothing for it. Hollis had always loved dogs, since he was a kid. He'd kept mongrels back then. More recently (that is, for the past thirty years) he'd kept a succession of huge white beasts that he named, serially, Snowflake, every one of them. Though completely unstable in his relationships with women—four wives, last count, and untold numbers of live-ins and hangers-on—he was devoted to his dogs and treated them with lavish attention and respect.

He took them everywhere he went—work, vacation, errands around town. If their massive presence wasn't welcome inside, he'd leave them to stretch out on the leather seat of his Lincoln Continental, AC running in the summer, heat in winter. The current Snowflake was unusually large, who stretched out the full length of the backseat like an albino Saint Bernard, his spade-size, six-toed feet extending between the front seats, about six inches from Charley's head.

Traveling with such a beast struck Charley as typical of Hollis's over-the-top tomfoolery, but after a few more grouses and worry over finding an accommodating hotel, Charley decided to let it go, took off his bottle-thick glasses, and went to sleep outside Montgomery. He slept so long and soundly that he missed crossing the Florida line and was still dozing when they arrived at the house on First Avenue in Cleary. That turned out to be, truly, the last place on earth Hollis would have looked for a Hoyt: the old Altman place.

H
ollis was so astounded that for a long moment he sat there and silently regarded the enormous old house that looked amazingly well kept for its age. The exterior was painted a soothing bone ivory, with pale pink scrollwork inside the single dormer that accented the windows like a touch of rouge on a woman's face. He was thumbing a gloved finger on the steering wheel, wondering how a
Hoyt
had come to be living in such a house, when a Honda sedan pulled up beside him and a dark-haired woman lowered her window to call, “Excuse me?
Sir?
Are you here to see the carriage house?”

Hollis hadn't the slightest idea what she was talking about, then realized she was the owner of the establishment and had mistaken him for a guest. Hollis was famously fast on his feet, and without missing a beat, he lowered his window and answered with equally good manners, “Yes, ma'am, I am.”

“Well, park right there. They don't enforce the sign. I'll meet you at the front door.”

Hollis had paid no attention to the rusted
NO PARKING
sign, so he had no problem further ignoring it. He parked at the curb and left the heater running for Snowflake and Charley, who was sleeping with his head against the high headrest, snoring quietly. Hollis took care to shut the door without waking him, then put on his coat—a big, toffee-colored
overcoat with a plush fox collar he'd bought at Goldsmith's a few years before, which Kate called his “pimp-daddy coat.”

His hostess, a tall, pleasant-faced, young white woman with a helmet of dark hair and a country accent thick enough to cut with a knife, opened a wide beveled-glass door. “Hope you haven't been waiting long,” she apologized as she let him in. “I must have got my wires crossed—didn't know anyone was coming. Been here long?”

“Not too long,” Hollis answered easily, playing along with the charade as she picked a key off a hook on the wall and led him down the central hallway.

The decor seemed almost original to the house, with the predictable fainting couches, gilt-framed oils, and velvet portieres, all very rich and shabby chic. The most impressive thing about the place was the floors, miles of polished amber planks. “What kinda wood is this,” he asked, “yellow pine?”

“Actually, red cedar,” she answered over her shoulder. “The Altmans deforested half the Apalachicola in their day,” she confided with a wink, “but it smells like heaven when it rains. The carriage house is out back.” She led him through a side door to an old-fashioned porte cochere with a gravel drive so overhung with trees that even in January it made for a green, sun-dappled tunnel.

As she warned him of the step down, she seemed to remember her manners and extended a small hand. “Well, I'm sorry, I didn't even introduce myself. I'm Jolie Hoyt. Did you find us in the paper, or online? The B-and-B site keeps going down—I never know.”

Hollis smoothly lied, “Online. Is it taken?”

“Oh, no.” She waved him down the drive to a carriage house tucked away at the end of the tunnel, painted the same soothing ivory as the house. “We don't get a lot of weekday business—usually only rent it on the weekends. But I'll be glad to fix it up. Will it just be you, alone?”

“Me and my brother, Chollie. He's asleep in the car.”

She stopped and warned him, “There's only one bed—a king. I usually rent it on wedding packages, with the florist.”

“That'll be fine. Me and Chollie shared a bed thirteen years, growing up. But I do have an inside dog.”

Like the good country girl she appeared to be, Ms. Hoyt didn't flinch at the idea of housing a dog. “Oh, we're pet-friendly. The backyard's fenced, but if he gets after the cats, you'll have to put him inside.”

She opened the door as she spoke, to a good-size carriage-house conversion, with the same amber floors and butter-colored walls as the house, but slightly less fusty, the bed tucked away in the alcove of the dormer, a pine table by the window, with pressed-back chairs.

“Sorry it's so arctic,” she told him as she disappeared into a hall closet. “It has an oil heater, warms up fast.”

With an immediate thump an oil heater came to life behind the wall, along with the wafting smell of kerosene that struck Hollis with an unexpected stab of nostalgia. He was used to odorless electric heat in Memphis and hadn't smelled an oil-burner in a long, long time.

“There's a half kitchen and a full bath, and a private garden if you smoke—not much to see this time of year, a few old japonicas—and a Jacuzzi in the bathroom.”

She had started down the hall to show him, but Hollis already knew he wanted it. He felt for his wallet and asked, “Do you rent by the month?”

He got a raised eyebrow, though she was willing enough. “Well, I don't see why not. It goes for a hundred ten a night. I don't know what kind of deal we can cut for a whole month—”

“How about a hundred ten a night?” Hollis asked as he extracted his wallet.

Ms. Hoyt didn't appear to be too swift on mathematics, and after a moment she asked, “You mean thirty-three hundred dollars?”

Hollis smiled at her emphasis. “Sure. Cash.” He peeled off $100 bills with a practiced hand, like a dealer in Biloxi.

He stopped at thirty-three and found his hostess staring at the money in wonder. She looked mildly discomfited by the sight and hesitantly asked, “Well, can I ask you something? You promise you won't get mad?”
At his nod, she lowered her voice. “Well, you're not wanting to . . . deal out of here, are you? 'Cause I cain't have that. I got children living across the street and right next door.”

Hollis found her honesty unexpected and refreshing. “No, ma'am. I ain't a drug dealer. I own some barbecue joints, in Memphis.” He felt in his coat pocket and produced a business card. “Coby's Barbecue, in Annesdale. You can call and check me out, if you want.”

She glanced at the card, then pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks. “Well, I am so sorry. That is the most insulting thing I've ever asked anyone in my life. I don't know what came over me.”

Hollis was not easily offended by candor and just patted the fur lapels of his coat. “It's the collar. My daughter calls it my pimp-daddy coat.”

“Well, that's kind of you to say.” She fanned her face with the card. “Do you still want the room? I mean, you'll be comfortable here. I'm really not as backward and swamp-running as it might now seem, but actually considered pretty cool and tolerant. You know—renovated old house, vegan menu. Very hip.”

Hollis barked a laugh, as it was precisely what he'd been thinking, making for one of those pleasant little moments of connection, when you realize you're in the presence of a kindred spirit, a potentially good friend.

He assured her that he did indeed still want the room, and as she walked him back to his car, she went over the usual rental details: how many keys he got, and where he should park. “And it does include breakfast. I usually do pecan waffles for my newlyweds, but I'll come up with something. D'you and your brother like homemade sausage? I'm talking
hot
. Habanero
hot
?”

“The hotter the better.”

“Then you're gonna be in heaven tomorrow because I happen to have a freezer full of my uncle Ott's private collection most people won't touch, it's too dang hot. Are either of you allergic to nuts?”

“No. No allergies.”

“Well, good. I had a guy keel over on me last year, one of my newlyweds. Took one bite of pecan waffle and went into anaphylactic shock. Deadly allergic to nuts, apparently. Don't know why the
heck
he took a bite of a pecan waffle. Sure you don't want to wait inside?” she asked as they reached the sidewalk. “There's a good fire in the fireplace. You'll have it to yourself.”

“Naw, I got some—errands to run,” Hollis lied as he backed around the car, wanting to talk to Charley alone before he introduced him to their charming hostess. “I'll be back”—he checked his Rolex—“by seven.”