American Ghost (6 page)

“So who's the old guy, with the horse?”

Jolie sat up a little to make sure they were talking about the same picture. “That ain't a horse,” she murmured. “That's my great-granddaddy and his mule, Old Grey.”

The blazed forehead and lanky ears looked pretty horsey to Sam, who peered closer. “How d'you tell the difference?”

Jolie's face took on a hint of amazement. “Well, try breeding them, for one thing.”

The remark meant nothing to Sam, who continued down the line, occasionally asking for clarification, though the old boy with the mule was by far the most interesting find. He was itching to ask her outright if she knew the location of the old turpentine camp that had gone by the strangely generic name Camp Six, but once he finished with the Rogues' Gallery, there was nothing to interest him but her legs, which were indeed distracting.

Family history, and history in general, suddenly seemed of small consequence, and with no more talk of mules and men, he took a seat in the only chair in the room: an ancient recliner upholstered in a beaten and faded olive plaid.

“So how are you holding up?” he asked solicitously. “With Lena gone? Vic says it's been tough.”

“I'm all right,” she said, so stoically it seemed automatic and hardly felt, then, in a closer stab to truth: “I wish I could cry.”

Sam had never met a buried neurosis he didn't like and asked, “Why can't you cry?”

She shrugged again—that small hitch of her shoulders so natural it was almost a physical characteristic, that
Who Knows?
denial of personal opinion, common among poor people in the South. “I don't know. I couldn't cry when Carl left either.”

Sam just nodded, still a little distracted by her casual state of undress that was setting off a purely sexual buzz in his head that hummed like a hot wire, making a true analysis difficult. “You mean your brother, Carl? Her boyfriend?”

Jolie grunted at the word. “Well, I don't know if I'd go so far as to call him her
boyfriend.
Carl's three years older than Lena—or three years physically. Emotionally, he's about eight.”

“That him?” Sam asked with a nod at the wall of photos of the dark-haired child who was obviously kin to Jolie, with the same thick block of hair and straight eyebrows.

She nodded. “Yeah, that's Carl. He doesn't have as much hair anymore. I think he's already losing it.”

“Aren't we all,” Sam murmured, feeling for the lever on the recliner and kicking out the footrest, making himself comfortable as he dug into the domestic history. “Yeah, she told me how you and her, you got in a fight once, when you caught them on the couch. Said you were pretty hot.”

Jolie looked utterly astonished and muttered, “She
told
you that? Good
God
—what a thing to tell.”

Sam found her puritanical tone disappointing (aye, heartbreaking, when coupled with her legs) and hastened to defend Lena. “Well, he
was
her boyfriend. And these things
do
happen—” He stopped short as Jolie obviously wasn't buying, her lanky hospitality literally folding up as she threw her feet on the rug and faced him with direct, gunslinger eyes.

“Yeah, it does. It happens all the time—but that don't mean it's right.” Then she asked, as if giving him the benefit of the doubt, “Did she tell you how old she was?”

“Sixteen? Seventeen?” he offered, and was cut off with a snort.

“Sixteen, my
butt
. She was
four
teen. She just moved here—was barely out of a training bra. And I wasn't hot with her, I was hot with my
idiot
brother, who was raised to know better. Daddy was—he was beside himself. He put Carl's stuff on the porch—sent him away that very night.”

Sam was a little shocked at the severity of the punishment for what sounded like a bit of minor philandering. “To where? You mean, like, military school?”

Jolie had the grace to look a little embarrassed at the query, sitting back and finding a sofa pillow to clutch to her chest. “Well, Bible college, if you must know. Claims to have got rededicated down there, but I don't trust him any further than I could throw him. Not where Lena's concerned.”

This was more to Sam's taste, wonderfully Southern and quirky. “Oh, well, I wouldn't worry too much with Lena. Last time I saw her, she was headed out with a surfboard tied to her roof. She seems to have escaped Hendrix, hymen or not. So there goes that theory.”

It was the kind of audacious remark you make to a potential girlfriend to see if she's on the same page with you, though Jolie didn't laugh.

She just met his eye levelly and commented in a dry voice, “You two must have had you a right long talk after you dropped me off from the beach.”

“Not long”—he smiled—“but instructive. All about the Sisters. And the rules—which, I must say, she didn't seem too worried with breaking.”

He said it in a tone of mild challenge that Jolie rose easily to answer. “Yeah, well, the thing is, with Lena, she ain't really from around here. She's got three married sisters and a rich granny in Naples and can come and go around Hendrix pretty much as she pleases. Not all of us got that luxury—you know what I mean?”

Jolie said it with those level, unblinking eyes that were daunting in their absolute certainty, the same expression that had thwarted him
through many a screen door in Hendrix. But he had never minded sparring with a half-dressed woman and smiled. “No living in a trailer, putting a crease in the mayor's dress pants, for Jolie Hoyt?”

“No ironing for the rich folk. Not this Cracker.”

Sam laughed aloud, as he had sprung from a long line of socialist-leaning Democrats and found her hard-nosed defiance just delightful, the stuff of birdsong and hot baths. It made him comfortable enough to lean in and kick down the footrest and ask in a tone of confidential confession, “Well, listen, Jol—can I ask you something? A favor?”

At her nod, he asked, “Could you go put on some clothes? I mean, that butt-hugging robe is just
freaking
me out—it really is. If your father comes in, I'm gonna have a heart attack and die on the spot. And he'll know what killed me.”

She looked moderately peeved at the request, feeling for the zipper and working to zip it up. “Mrs. Lucas gave me this robe. She wears 'em everywhere—wears 'em to the grocery store.”

“Yeah—and South Beach women wear bathing suits with the ass cut out of them, but I can't handle that either. Just go get dressed, before the Old Man comes in. Please.”

She exhaled a breath but went to the bedroom and shortly returned, dressed in a respectable church-girl cotton dress that closed in the front with a long row of pearl buttons. She was still buttoning it when she walked in the room, apparently trying to allay his fears about her father.

“Don't worry about Daddy. He's not so rough once you get to know him—the nicest Hoyt around. Ask anyone. Especially a Hoyt.”

She paused for a reply, but Sam had momentarily been silenced by the sight of her buttoning her dress with that intimate, casual femininity that affected him worse than the slip.

He didn't hear a word she said and blinked. “What?”

“Daddy,” she repeated, her hands on her hips in a fetching kind of dominatrix pose. “He's not that bad. He's out in the shed—come on, I'll introduce you.”

“What's he doing in the shed?” Sam asked, coming slowly to his feet.

“That's where he hangs out when he's not doing his preacher duties, or running his debit.”

“His
what
?”

“His
debit,
” she explained in a tone of great patience as she went to the kitchen, moving the bubbling pots to the back of the stove. “He just preaches part-time. He's also a policy man.”

Sam's expression turned to disbelief. “Your father is a
bookie
?” he breathed.

“
No.
A
policy
man. He sells life insurance, burial policies—you know—to poor people, for a dollar or two a month, for death, dismemberment, whole life. He collects his debit twice a week, and it's huge, from Wakulla to Wewa. He knows everybody—all the beekeepers and fishermen and old farmers who never go to town. That's who you need to talk to, not the city people in Cleary. They're idiots.”

Sam was taken aback by the
death
and
dismemberment
and, in a slightly lowered voice, asked, “So is he gonna be all right? That I'm Jewish?”

Jolie paused, pot holder in hand, and looked at him with great interest. “Is that what you are? Jewish?”

“Yeah. Sure. What'd you think?”

“I don't know,” she said, returning to the stovetop. “Cuban, maybe Greek. Where'd you get the light eyes?”

Sam was familiar with the term—yet another echo of Melungeon folklore, where light eyes and small feet were prized. “Couldn't say. My grandfather was Lithuanian. Maybe a few Cossacks worked their way into the gene pool.”

It was a common piece of smart-assery in Jewish circles, but taken as honest speculation by Jolie. “Huh,” she said as she finished with the pots and tossed the pot holder on the counter. “I didn't know there were any Jews left in Miami. Mr. Lucas says the Haitians have taken over.”

“Yeah, that's what everybody says. But there are a few enclaves of the Hebrews left—trust me.”

Jolie smiled, hand on the doorknob, and asked, “What'd y'all do? Take to the swamp and lie to the census men?”

She said it with mischievousness so pointed it was finally, overtly seductive, as if she were offering her wit like a family secret, a sensual treat. The force of it made him stop in his tracks and stare at her with a strange foreboding, a gut certainty that this was a woman he'd love the rest of his life. The sureness of the thing was astounding, though he was an old hand at protective covering and answered lightly, without missing a beat, “Moved to Boca. Took to the condos.”

“Oh, well.” She laughed. “Same difference, I guess.”

Sam just blinked at her and agreed: same difference, he guessed.

T
he shed that Jolie's father used as a workshop was tucked away in a far corner of the churchyard, in what had once been a tobacco-drying barn, the kiln still intact, though the hooks were long removed. He'd reclaimed it from the foxes and the field mice in the bad years following his wife's death when he'd needed a place to grieve in private, away from the eyes of his young children. Over the years, it had become his unofficial office and sanctuary, where he worked on his sermons, notes, and his unending, esoteric projects, which were eventually abandoned and packed away in man-high stacks of boxes that nearly filled the musty, windowless room.

Jolie negotiated the maze with the ease of a favorite child, following a dim dirt path to an army-surplus desk in the corner, where the old man sat at his books, completely engrossed till Jolie was upon him.

“Hey, Pops—supper's almost ready. This is Sam—you know, Lena's friend, from the campground?”

The Old Man's size had not been exaggerated—six-three or -four, with a girth that filled the small room, though he wore the sagging clothes and belt of a larger man. He was much older than Sam had expected, age and the stamp of poor health evident in his sagging jowls, and wheezing breath, though his preacher voice was trained to the old-school pulpit, and he fairly boomed his greeting as he struggled to
come to his feet and present a plate-size hand. “Pleased to meetchu, young man.”

Sam had braced himself for a distracting facial deformity, but the bad eye was nothing more than a small strabismus that made him appear to be thoughtful, whether he was looking at you or not. If anything, it made him more approachable, as flawed and welcome as his greeting, which was obviously sincere and open, but nearly impenetrable to Sam's Miami ear. Not Southern as much as gibberish, a linguistic stew of colonial Anglo, African, Appalachian, and God knew what—maybe actual Mobilian, a Muskogean-based pidgin English that had once been widely used on the Gulf coast, now thought to be extinct.

On Jolie's urging, her dad immediately returned to his seat, with an apology. “Sorry. My laig's been giving me a fit. Did Laner git off?”

The question was directed at Sam, who listened hard, but could make little of it. He instinctively turned to Jolie, who'd hopped up to sit perched on the edge of the old desk, utterly at ease in the spidery gloom.

“She's all right,” she answered, “just a little homesick,” then got to the matter at hand. “Well, listen, Daddy—Sam was sent here to study the Indians, but nobody'll talk to him. I was thinking you could take him on your debit and introduce him around. You know—out in the forest, and at church.”

The Old Man turned an eye on Sam, and answered, not unkindly, “I didn't know there
was
such a thang as Injuns in this forest.”

“Sam says there are,” Jolie insisted. “He says the Hoyts aren't Black Dutch at all, but just a bunch of old Hendrix gheechies, trying to pass for white. He's working on an article for
National Geographic.
Wants to put you 'n' Uncle Ott on the cover.”

She grinned slyly as she said it, as this was the way the larger Hoyt family showed affection for people they loved, by teasing them mercilessly,
trying to get their goat,
it was commonly called. As one of the patriarchs of the clan, Raymond was used to abiding by its less commodious customs and paid her no mind, though Sam could feel his blood turn to ice water in his veins.

“She's joking,” Sam stammered. “I'm not a journalist, just a grad student, with the Museum of Natural History, working on an application the Creek made for state recognition. The
Muskogee
Creek,” he added in a final, desperate tag, hoping it might ring a bell of recognition.