American Ghost (27 page)

Carl had been fascinated by them. He used to take them out every time they went over, though when he asked whom they belonged to, Sister Wright wouldn't tell him. She didn't like the children messing with them and would take them away and put them out of reach on a higher shelf. “Doan know. Somebody from Camp, I expect.”

“Well, why're you keeping 'em?”

“'Cause they ain't mine to throw away.” The answer had seemed as nonsensical at the time as it did today.

Jolie could remember the exact shelf where Sister Wright had put them out of their reach—the only one high enough to fit a long-necked bottle. Jolie went right to it, but found nothing more than a collection of old, tissue-filled hatboxes, ancient issues of the
Progressive Farmer,
and stacks and stacks of crochet patterns. She was
positive
it was the right shelf and gave up after a moment when Hollis Frazier's voice boomed at the door, confident and country-loud. She quietly shut the wardrobe, then slipped back to the kitchen and transferred the eggs to cartons with quick hands. She took them to the living room, where Sister Wright was standing at the door talking with Mr. Frazier, apologizing over a price increase thanks to the high price of scratch.

“But they're fresh,” she assured him, “right out of the chicken's butt,” a line she often used with tourists from the campground, who always appreciated a little local color.

Mr. Frazier was enough of a sport to offer a polite guffaw, though the smile disappeared when Jolie appeared at the door and handed him the carton with a small bow. “Here you go,
suh.
A dozen best large.”

The edge in her voice was lost on Sister Wright, who gave Jolie an
appreciative peck on her cheek and told him, “Delivered by the mayor hersef.” Then she asked Jolie, “You got change for a twenty?”

“No, ma'am, I don't,” Jolie answered with deliberate firmness, as she needed to speak to Mr. Frazier a moment alone, and Sister Wright kept her egg change in a jar high on a kitchen shelf.

“Be back in a jiffy,” she said, then disappeared down the hall, the hem of her long robe dragging behind her.

Jolie waited till she was out of earshot before she stepped outside and pulled her coat close around her. “Fast work, Mr. Frazier.”

Hollis had recovered enough of his composure to answer with equal mildness, “I could say the same to you, Miss Hoyt.”

Jolie acknowledged the compliment with a dip of her head and put aside the pleasantries to tell him plainly, “Leave her alone,” with no particular threat in her voice, just a reasonable request among adults.

He answered with equal ease, “I ain't here to harass anybody. Just want to get
my share of mine.
” He used the old Hendrix phrase broadly, with relish.

If he was expecting an argument, he was disappointed, as Jolie just met his eye with her father's directness. “They ain't here. I just looked.”

For a moment, Hollis didn't get it. When he did, he was so startled that he stammered, “Papa's fangers? They were
here
?” Until that moment, he hadn't been sure that this trip was anything but a fool's errand, a shot in the dark so dim that it was hardly explicable.

“Somebody's were.”

“In a gin bottle? The middle ones? Right hand?”

She huddled deeper in her coat. “It didn't have a label—just clear glass, and a metal cap. I don't know about the gin part. Carl might know.”

“Would Mr. Lense?” Hollis asked sharply, and finally hit a pocket of reaction.

“Sam Lense doesn't know
shit
about Hendrix,” she said sharply. “You can deal with him, or you can deal with me. But you can't do both.”

Hollis was an old hand at the game of love and raised an involuntary
eyebrow at her passion, which was far more than a professional disagreement among colleagues.

“Who shot him?”

Hollis got an immediate response, snapped quickly, as if she were used to the question and had a standard response. “Couldn't tell you. Wasn't there.”

Hollis tended to believe her, but felt compelled to point out an obvious truth. “Anybody shoots at me, I'll shoot back.”

“I would advise it,” she agreed in that brisk, no-nonsense voice. “Just keep me out of it. Keep
every
body out of it,” she said, with uncommon conviction, “if you're serious about this thing and not just playing some political scam.”

Hollis had rather liked the mayor till then, for her spunk and wiliness, her iron pragmatism and flat green eyes that reminded him of his beloved aunt Tempy. He liked her less at her pathetic drive to keep it quiet and asked her plainly, “Who you scared of, Miss Hoyt? The white folk, or the black ones?”

Her reply was a truly Tempy-like glare, though she answered quickly enough, “Both. And collateral damage, to people who never did
anybody
any harm—like the ole girl inside, or your papa, out minding his own business, working his own field.”

“Or somebody's sweetheart, getting shot by a poacher 'cause he talked to the wrong people?”

He thought she'd argue, but she just looked at him wearily, her face pale against the black of the wool coat. “Or an idiot from the university getting shot in the back because he didn't know what the hell he was doing. And if you want to guarantee you never see your papa's fingers, just keep dropping his name. It's about as welcome around here as
Henry
damn
Kite.
”

Hollis was practical enough to see her point, and after a moment's hesitation he slipped his hat back on his head. “Then you can take it from here. But if you cross me, little girl, I'll tell everybody in Cleary more about the Hoyts than they ever wanted to know.”

She didn't wither at the threat, but rolled her eyes the way his daughters did when he said something outdated and dadlike. “Can I let you in on a secret in local politics, Mr. Frazier?” she asked. “There
are
no secrets. I'm one step up from trash, and everybody knows it. And the day I quit toten their water is the day I get sent back to the farm.”

Hollis laughed despite himself; it was too true to do otherwise. “Well,” he said when he got the better of it, “we'll be at the house if you need us.” He made his way down the rickety steps to the car.

Charley was as curious as an old hen. He'd made out snatches of the conversation on the porch, enough to know they were onto something, but wasn't close enough to make out any faces. “Was that Miz Hoyt? Did she find them?” he asked with all apparent sincerity, as if it might be as easy as that.

Hollis was used to Charley's optimism and handed him the eggs. “Not yet. But she's working on it.”

“You know who she is, don't you?” Charley asked in continuation of the old Southern game they'd been playing since they left Memphis, of tracking the roots of the living back to the neighbors and families of the long-lost community of Camp Six.

Hollis, though not as good as Charley, was learning. As he backed the town car down the drive, he answered, “Probably one of Coy Ammons's great-greats. She got thet Ammons height. That sass.”

Charley grunted his agreement, as he'd pegged Jolie as the offspring of a Hendrix survivor two minutes after he met her; not from her looks (which for him were too dim to decipher), but her voice, her homemade sausage, her entire air of welcome. It wasn't a matter of mechanical hospitality that Southerners, black and white, dished out to paying guests, but that strange and inexplicable connection that comes when you walk in a stranger's house and feel right at home. That's why he'd spoken so plainly to her about their quest—what was the point of deception? The Hoyts were high-flying fools, with their fish camp, their green eyes, and their big talk, but nothing more than pawns of the bosses when it came right down to it. They knew it, and everyone else did.

“Yeah, one of Coy's,” Charley murmured as they pulled out of sight and he turned back in his seat, “or maybe Sincy Hoyt's—any of them girls.
Living
in town.
Stepping
for the white folk,” he said, mimicking his granny, who said it of any Hendrix girl who'd abandoned the comforts of the family hearth to chase the hope of a better life in town.

Hollis made a noise of agreement, and with no pause, but as if in continuation of the thought, Charley asked, “Did you brang a pistol?”

W
hen Jolie went back inside, she found Sister Wright still in the pantry, painstakingly counting out $19 in change from an enormous old Mt. Olive pickle jar. “You can put your money away,” Jolie said with a wave of the twenty. “I told him your eggs were so rare and organic that twenty dollars a dozen was a steal. Old city
goof,
he believed me.”

“Why the
Law,
” Sister Wright cried, and wouldn't believe her till Jolie walked her out to the porch and demonstrated that his car was gone.

“You have no idea how expensive eggs are these days,” Jolie assured her. “It's the Atkins diet. Everybody's eating 'em, day and night.”

Sister Wright had enough native good sense to know she was being maneuvered, but was used to Lena's and Jolie's generosity and undeniably pleased with the unexpected windfall. She pocketed the twenty, then asked Jolie if she wouldn't mind taking her to town to “pick up a few thangs,” as she could no longer drive and was at the mercy of the young folk to cart her around town.

Jolie had seventy-eight new e-mails on her BlackBerry, but was glad to oblige, as it gave her an excuse to nose around downtown Hendrix, which, if possible, looked worse than it had when she was a child. It had become the kind of charmless little sprawl that should incorporate
and write a comp plan, snag a few block grants before it deteriorated into an out-and-out shantytown. She didn't entertain any messiah-like hope of returning and taking on the job herself, for if she'd learned one thing in city government, it was the futility of trying to bring order to a town that had no groundswell of support, no mandate, for change. She shook her head at the overflowing Dumpsters, the stunted trees, and the general air of poverty and decay, reflecting that this was the real curse of Henry Kite. This tired and pointless disorder stood in stark contrast to the beauty of the river and the woods.

She waited till they'd returned to the house and were putting up the groceries before she broached the real reason for her visit and nonchalantly asked Sister Wright what had happened to those old fingers she used to have in that old bottle, in the wardrobe. “The ones Carl was always looking at,” Jolie asked casually, making it sound innocent and intimate, something they'd laughed about at the dinner table.

“Back in thet plunder in the bedroom, I reckon,” Sister Wright told her easily. “Ain't seen 'em in a long time. Never would a seen 'em, it have been up to me.”

“Well, whose were they? Brother Wright's? Did he lose 'em at the mill?”

Sister Wright paid her little mind. “Naw, shug, they come with the wardrobe, when his mamer died. All that mess back there—it come then.”

“Well, d'you mind if I nose around back there? See what I can find?”

Sister Wright was used to Jolie's and Lena's love of vintage plunder and told her, “Go ahead, shug. Will you stay to eat? I'm making pork and yellow rice.”

She didn't have to ask twice, as the Cuffey sisters were famous cooks, and Jolie had been too rattled that morning to eat her own breakfast. “Go easy on the hot sauce” was all she asked, as she was a famous wimp where local peppers were concerned.

Sister Wright said she would, and while she heated up her iron pans and filled the little house with the savory smell of butter, saffron, and sautéed onions, Jolie went through the old wardrobe, drawer by packed
drawer, uncovering a treasure trove of vintage slips and hats, yarn and crochet patterns, but no gin bottles. She was
positive
this was the right wardrobe and couldn't imagine who'd have been bold enough to swipe a set of human fingers.

She was close enough to Sister Wright to ask her that very question as she ate her pork and rice, which was a staple, there on the river. Yellow rice cooked with chunks of fresh pork, heavily seasoned with pepper and saffron, making it more Caribbean than Southern. In deference to Jolie, Sister Wright had made the mild version, which they ate on TV trays, so she wouldn't miss her
stories
(that is, her soap operas).

Jolie waited for a commercial before she brought up the fingers again. “Well, d'you think Lonnie, or any of his boys, might have got 'em?” Lonnie was Sister Wright's only son who lived locally, a contractor in Bonifay.

Sister Wright's attention was on
As the World Turns
as she answered aside: “Naw, shug. Lonnie wouldn't fool with them old thangs.”

Jolie was feeling increasingly thwarted and was not even sure these were the right fingers, given that this was Hendrix. “Well, did you know any Fraziers around here, growing up? A colored family? Had a farm?”

Like all Southerners, Sister Wright was always glad to recall some old name from her youth and thoughtfully wiped her mouth on a dish towel. “Well, Dicy Hitt married a Frazier—a soldier, from Tennessee. Wadn't from around here.” She returned to the television. “Didn't stay long.”

She didn't specify why they left. The boastful boys and the white folk in Cleary might rehash the details of the lynching, shake their heads in mock-dismay at the mutilation, and gawk at the oak where they hanged him, but here at ground zero, where the smoke had circled, and the corpses stank, nary a word was uttered.

To Jolie it was confirmation that she was on the right track, and after making her good-byes to Sister Wright (with many assurances she'd come back Easter with Lena and go to church with her), she went out to her car and tried Carl's office again.