American Ghost (26 page)

They'd gone after it with a holler, and Charley's papa had made his way back to the house, his dripping hand wrapped in a handkerchief, dizzy with blood loss, though he refused to find a doctor, or to leave himself, at least till his boys came home. He sat with one bloody hand pressed to his chest, the other holding a shotgun in a vigil so taxing that Tempy later swore his hair turned white in the space of a night. The night was so evil you could feel it on your skin, taste it on the ash that began to fall at dawn after they set the gum pots on fire. The flames roared and
lit up the sky, so bright that Papa's porch was as light as if in the midday sun, as the turpentiners and their families began their tramp to the train tracks, alone and in families, many wet from swimming the river.

As they paused for a drink at Papa's well, they whispered stories so savage that Papa became convinced that Charley and Hollis had been caught in town, that two of the corpses on display at the commissary were those of his sons. By midday he'd lost all hope and, in stark desperation, lit out to town to retrieve their bodies. When Tempy stumbled upon Charley in the crush at the station that morning, she nearly fainted dead away, thinking she was seeing his ghost.

She had hugged him and Hollis fiercely and hustled them off to another train—a regular one, with a porter, that she paid for with hard cash, which took them straight up the Mississippi to shelter with some of their father's Arkansas kin. The trip north was interminable, and Charley would remember it to the end of his days, sitting at the smeared window of the old coach that smelled of coal heat and cracked leather. A cousin joined them in Vicksburg, yet another shivering survivor of Camp Six. While Hollis slept on Tempy's lap, the cousin whispered details even more nightmarish than the stories told at the well. How they'd caught Kite the night before and taken him to the river to kill him; how you could hear his screams for miles around, unintelligible at first, till he'd started calling for his mother, over and over,
“Ma! Ma!”
—his voice echoing over the pungent smoke of the burning pine.

Charley was old enough to have cursed Kite himself by then, for bringing this nightmare upon them, but the story of his end was so horrifying that it made Tempy start crying again, and even got Charley to bawling, not for the murdered Kite, but for his papa. For a black man to have gone back into town that night was suicide, and the cousin claimed to know for a fact that Buddy was dead, as she'd seen his cut-off fingers with her own eyes, stoppered up in an old gin bottle. A white man was showing it off around town, souvenirs of the kill.

Charley had no reason to doubt her word, and he and Tempy and their Arkansas kin had grieved his parents as dead for nearly a month,
till they unexpectedly appeared on his uncle Ned's doorstep the first day of December with nothing but a valise between them and the clothes on their back. By Christmas, all of them were there, except for Tempy's husband, Johnny, who'd insisted on staying, not wanting to give up Tempy's share of the farm. He'd survived awhile, a few months at least, till a runaway mule had overturned his wagon and broken his neck—or so they heard. Such “accidents,” though, were common in Hendrix after the Trouble, and for all they knew, he'd ended up at the end of a rope like Henry Kite.

Tempy remarried eventually, and though she never returned to Florida, she and Charley's mother spoke of their lives on the river with a wistful longing till the end of their days. He could remember them rocking on the porch and recalling old family names, their faults and credits, their exact connection to the larger Hendrix clan. Over time, these stories took on mythic proportions that annoyed his papa, who had no love left for Hendrix and disapproved of such sentimental nonsense. They never farmed again. Charley took a job working on a boat on the Arkansas side of the river, where both his parents eventually died, his mother in '58, his father in '73. Only when he was dying did Charley's papa ever voice a single wish about the Trouble: that he could've got his fingers back before he left Florida so they could be buried decently with the rest of his mortal remains.

“Don't begrudge the skin I lost from my leg,” he said of a shin wound he'd got in the trenches of the Argonne Forest, “but I do begrudge them fangers.”

He made no more of it, as he wasn't a whiner, their papa, though the seed of a bizarre plan to retrieve the fingers took root in Charley's mind. When Hollis came home from Germany for their father's funeral, Charley tried to talk him into going back then, but Hollis wouldn't hear of it. They argued it for three straight days, till their aunt Tempy caught wind of Charley's plans and had all but taken to her bed with horror, making him promise he'd do no such thing.

She was so adamant that Charley had backed off, planning to return
when she died, which was a long time coming, as Tempy was tough as a pine knot and lived to a ripe old age of ninety-three. Charley was already losing his sight by then, and though Hollis lived across the river in Overton Park, he was too wrapped up in his money and his women to take off a week to drive to Florida. Hollis told Charley that he would just as soon spend a week in hell.

•  •  •

But the seed was planted, and when Hollis came upon the old names on the Indian site, he knew it was time to get his ass in hand and do the right thing. Once en route now to Hendrix, Hollis put aside his bickering and described the passing scenery for his blind brother in an offhand monotone: “New roof on the courthouse; tin, looks like. Maybe aluminum. Hell of a lot of car lots, and fast-food joints. God, a scat of 'em. Fat bastards,” Hollis muttered, as these same franchises were his most vicious competition back in Memphis, the $2 whores of the restaurant industry. “City Hall is where Buddy Smith used to live,” he said as they made the edge of town. “The millpond's still here—a restaurant in the icehouse. ‘The Catfish House,'” he read as he passed the sign, “‘$4.99 Special.'
Huh
. Bet it's thet farm-raised
crap
.”

He had less to say once they were out of town and into the deeper green of the hardwood forest that had once stood in an impenetrable wall, all the way to the Gulf, peopled by tribes so fierce that even de Soto had taken a pass on confrontation and detoured south. The stretches of mobile homes and hardtop and cultivated field had thinned the forest out, but in the floodplain, the shadow of the forest returned to life, overhanging the highway, which dipped in and out of low places, offering flickering glimpses of ponds and bayous, alligators and herons posed over still, green water.

Hendrix itself was impossible to miss, built on the banks of the river in a day when water was considered more reliable transportation than bumpy earth. Hollis was sensitive to his brother's blindness, and as they drew near, he resumed his travelogue. “The river's high here, too—new
bridge, goes way out. Wonder what happened to the old?” he asked, ducking to peer into the canopy as they passed.

None of it was familiar to Hollis till they were at the heart of the old downtown, two blocks of abandoned brick and asphalt, when he finally caught sight of a building he recognized. “Why there's the old commissary, surely. God, I remember going there with Papa, to get his pay. There's a new post office—redbrick. ‘Hendrix, Florida,'” he read as they passed, “and an IGA—a little un, and a blinking light.” Then he realized they were out of town, back on open road. “Well, that's it. Ain't nothing out here but trailers. I'll turn around, go back to the light.”

A little more was in that direction, a BP station and a spanking-new Dollar General and a whole lot of trailers in between, the newer ones sitting high on concrete blocks per state floodwater regulation. The KOA was the only hint of modernity, an upbeat neon sign before the brown state sign that marked the entrance to the public launch. Hollis swung a U-turn and made a final pass, but the once-thriving downtown—that busy little brick-and-wood intersection of barbershops and moneylenders and saloons—had been reduced to the old commissary, which sat there, rotting and abandoned, on the grass-grown rails.

Hollis hadn't expected much, but couldn't hide his disappointment in finding Hendrix—that mighty figure of his family mythos—nothing more than a sagging, scattered trailer park.

He said as much to Charley, who snorted, “Whut d'you expect? Place has blood on its hands. Kite cursed it.”

“Kite was a murdering son of a bitch,” Hollis retorted, as he had no love for the man. “He got what he deserved.”

Charley didn't argue the point, but muttered, “Nobody deserved what
he
got,” then said, with a tip of his head, “Turn round and go back to the launch. I want to see the river.”

Hollis obeyed, though it was damned cold on the water, the Lincoln's thermometer reading thirty-six. He let Snow out to pee and helped his brother tap his way down a gravel path to the edge of the dank, fast-moving water, which he sniffed with appreciation.

“Specks is running,” he commented mildly.

His brother was quick to nip that nonsense in the bud. “We ain't here to fish,” Hollis told him plainly as he felt in his pocket for the slip of paper he'd brought from City Hall. “We got people to see—‘Melissa Cuffey Wright,'” he read, then looked up. “Name ring a bell?” Charley was the family's Hendrix expert now that Tempy was gone.

The old man thought a moment, then allowed, “Seem like I do remember a family of Cuffeys. Four or five girls—their daddy worked at the mill.”

That was the most Charley could offer, which was regrettable, as the Lincoln's navigation system wasn't altogether accurate when it came to waterfront addresses. Hollis tapped in the address he'd snagged from the city computer, but the droning, mechanical voice kept telling him to turn left on a street that didn't exist. After circling the post office half a dozen times, Hollis admitted defeat and stopped for directions. The moon-faced clerk was most accommodating, not only sketching him a map, but asking, “Are you going out to buy eggs? Because I don't know if Miz Wright's still selling—you might want to call first.”

Hollis was, as usual, fast on his feet and immediately proposed to do just that and asked to borrow the clerk's phone. He made the call right there at the counter and caught her at home. He asked if she was still selling eggs.

“Brown or regular?” the old lady asked in an ancient, wobbly voice.

“Either'll do.”

“Well, come on, then. I ain't been out to collect 'em today, but if you doan mind waiting, I don't mind looking.”

Hollis assured her that he didn't mind waiting in the least.

J
olie drove straight to Sister Wright's from City Hall, hoping to intercept the Fraziers. She beat them by a good ten minutes and was immediately relieved when she pulled into the rutted, old drive as no one appeared to be home. No smoke came from the chimney, no light from the back bedroom. The usual riot of begonias on the porch rails were reduced to brown thread by the frost, even the old azaleas black and burnt at the tips.

Jolie knocked twice and was ducking to peer in the window when she finally got an answer—a little yodel from the back of the house, the old-timey call of visiting neighbors on a farm. Sister Wright answered in her robe, her eyes lightening to a wide smile when she saw who it was.

“Why look a here,” she cried, “my girl Jo
lee
.”

She was never a giant among women and had shrunk to the size of a child in old age, though her grip was strong as Jolie enveloped her in a bearlike Pentecostal hug. “Well, if you ain't a sight”—Sister Wright smiled up as they parted—“wearing them high heels, big and rich, just like yo brother—though I
wisht
he'd quit that begging for money, week after week. It embarrasses me to death.”

Jolie's hug turned to a squeeze of laughter as no one could give it to Carl like the old Sisters, who faithfully trooped down to sit in his front pew and star in his sermons when invited on holidays and homecomings,
but were still the bane of the High and Mighty and never shy about voicing a personal opinion.

“You and me both,” Jolie told her, kissing her hard head. “You and me both.”

“What you doing out and about this time of the day? Everybody says you about run thangs, over there in Cleary.”

“Come to see you.” Jolie smiled. “Want me to build you a fire? It is turned a little chilly.”

“Naw, shug, just git you a cup of coffee. I got a man coming for eggs—need to run out to the coop. Won't take but a minite. I'll turn on the stove, we'll warm up quick.”

“Well, go pour us both a cup while I run gather the eggs.”

Sister Wright made her usual protests as she followed Jolie to the door—about her ruining her shoes and being too dressed up for the coop. She finally gave up and stood there at the screen and called, “Well, keep an eye on thet rooster, shug. He's a cross old thang. Git you a stick and swipe him on the haid.”

Jolie had gathered many an egg at the Wright place as a child and found the baskets right where they always were. She wasn't intimidated by the decrepit old rooster—an upstart Rhode Island Red, who was too cold to be overly territorial, his pinfeathers drooping. He fixed Jolie with a beady eye and let go a reedy crow when she dragged open the gate, but allowed her in the coop with nothing more than a little flapping, his chickens a fat, placid lot, feathers puffed against the chill. She gathered the eggs with both hands, murmuring the old chicken murmur (“Move over, old girl—there's a good chicka”), till she finished the line with an even two dozen. She was dragging the gate closed, warning the rooster, “Git on, old son. You spur me and I'll fry you for supper,” when a gleaming town car slowed for a cautious turn in the drive.

She cursed under her breath at Hollis Frazier's efficiency and hurried back to the kitchen, which smelled heavenly from the coffee percolating on the counter. Sister Wright was already going to the door, and without a sound Jolie slipped down the hall to a tiny room that had once been a
section of the back porch, now a catchall for all sorts of vintage plunder. As children she and Carl used to play hide-and-seek in a huge walnut wardrobe, man-height and filled to the brim with tulle-draped hats and yellowed hankies, old robes and gowns, and one item that used to freak them out: a long-necked, syrup-size bottle, half-full of murky liquid, wherein bobbed a few little objects that Sister Wright once explained were “fangers.”