American Ghost (9 page)

Sam had been on the river almost three months and had accumulated a wealth of research; had even forwarded the first draft of his official thirty-seven-page study to the museum, along with a voluminous box of miscellaneous notes, tapes, and pedigree charts, attached to the appropriate census. He'd also culled the record for the scant details of Morris's time in the area and pinpointed the approximate location of the old store—lost to the woods, with not so much as a foundation to mark it.

He'd not made any headway on finding Morris's grave, but at least had a mental map of the area for when he returned to the search at UF. He had obviously gone as far as he could go this round and would have pulled up stakes and left immediately if not for Jolie, who told him she loved him twice a day, but continued to drag her feet about taking it to the next level.

Sam was cut to the quick by her hesitance, forced to revert to sarcasm to convince her. “Well, it's not me, Jol—it's my penis. He's calling the shots these days, refuses to leave without you. It's so
annoying
.”

Jolie didn't laugh, but advised him with all seriousness, “Well, tell him to hush awhile. I'm moving as fast as I can. And who'll take care of Daddy if I leave? Carl? A nursing home?”

“Jol—you'd have already moved to Savannah if things had worked out. He doesn't want you stuck in Hendrix—and the term is almost over. I've got to get the camper back to Miami and file my great Indian study—and, shit, Jol, I don't want to leave you. Let me talk to him, in private. If he doesn't bite, I'll give it a rest and come back after Christmas and try again.”

Jolie finally gave in the weekend before Thanksgiving and let him call her father and request an official appointment with the pastor, like everyone else. Brother Hoyt didn't realize the import of the request and had Sam meet with him in the same place he met anyone in need of pastoral counsel: in the sanctuary on Sunday afternoon, when it was deserted, in the first couple of pews. El Bethel was too small to have a vestibule and opened right to the pews from the front doors, and when Brother Hoyt came in that afternoon, early, after lunch, he was amazed to find Jolie there, too, sitting quietly at Sam's side.

He'd eaten dinner with her in the parsonage, and not a word of the meeting had been mentioned. Only when Raymond saw them sitting there together, looking so shifty and cornered, did he realize what was upon him. But he didn't shy away from it, just sat down on the pew in front of them, Sam not making any mention of their afternoons at the river (heaven forbid), but just asking in all humility and sincerity for his daughter's hand in marriage.

The Old Man absorbed this incredible news with his usual calm, only asking one question: “D'you love her?” which was the same thing he asked all potential grooms, hardly ever the brides. In his experience, women were moldable to marriage and could be happy in any situation if there was security and love. Men were another matter. They had to start out in love, or it'd never last.

Sam was quick to assure him that, yes, he loved her and went on to speak of his bright future in academics, even produced the letter from Professor Keyes that mentioned the teaching assistantship and handed it over the pew.

Brother Hoyt hadn't brought along his reading glasses and gave the
letter the merest glance, then moved to his next question and asked if they'd set a date.

“Soon,” Sam stammered, glancing aside at Jolie, who was sitting there, pale and quiet, not offering so much as a word. “By the first of the year,” he added, the nearness of the date making the Old Man sit up and take notice, actually turn toward his daughter and peer at her a long moment.

“What's the rush?”

She wouldn't meet his eye, and Sam hastened to answer, “Well, I have to be back at UF by January, to start the winter term.”

Brother Hoyt's eyes were still on his daughter, his expression not unkind, almost teasing. “Well, sister? Ain't you gone say a word? You want to marry dis boy?”

Jolie was more devastated by his kindness than if he'd railed at her and called her names, for she had an inkling that he knew about the camper and the river. Maybe not in detail, but he wasn't an idiot, her father. He was a Hoyt. He knew about the mysterious lure of the fast-talking outsider, and all that it entailed. She couldn't speak for a moment; finally answered in a small voice, “Yessir. But I don't want to leave you.”

Brother Hoyt didn't argue, but nodded his head slowly, then reached over the pew and patted her leg. “It'll be all right, baby. It'll be fine.”

And that was about it.

He braced himself on the back of the old pew and came massively to his feet, handed Sam back his letter, and told him that he'd have to pray about it—for them to keep it to themselves till then.

Sam also came to his feet and assured him they would, and since it was still barely midday, he and Jolie went out to the campground on some pretense, to be alone. They didn't head straight to the camper as they usually did, but just sat on the pier in the slant of the noonday sun, which wasn't as brutal as it'd been in August, having grown mellow and golden with the closing of the year. They were both a little overcome with the enormity of what they were doing and sat without speaking till Jolie finally commented in a mild voice, “I almost fainted when he asked
us what was the
rush
. If you'd have said that idiot thing about your penis, I would have dropped dead.”

Sam stared at the black water. “If I had said the word
penis
in front of your father, our troubles would be over. Because mine would have fallen off.”

Jolie smiled, then laughed aloud, as his old Sam-humor was a great joy to her.

“Well, I do love you,” she told him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. “When are you gonna tell your parents?”

“Oh, I don't know,” he sighed, his eyes still on the water. “I was thinking next week, but hate to spoil Hanukkah.”

“What's Hanukkah?” she asked, with such innocence that Sam expelled another long sigh.

“Ah. Nothing. Little winter festival my mother is fond of.”

“And telling her will ruin it?” she asked, so lightly that Sam blinked back to the present.

“Not ruin,” he assured her. “Complicate.”

He insisted on calling them immediately, to demonstrate his goodwill, though he did ask that Jolie not mention she was from Hendrix.

“Why not?”

Sam sighed. “Let's save something for New Year's.”

All in all, the call went well, all polite absorption at this point (“Oh? Really? So
soon
? A pastor's daughter? How
nice
”), which Sam figured was the emotional equivalent of clinical shock, the hammer blow to the thumb that doesn't hurt for about three seconds, then, oh, yes. It hurt a lot. It
howled
.

But he was the baby of the family, the nonconformist who'd spent twenty-four years outflanking them. He rubbed his neck when he hung up, told Jolie with a wan smile, “See? I told you they'd be fine.”

Once the hurdle of informing their parents had been cleared, they went about tying up the loose ends of the fall semester so they could marry as soon as the maid of honor (Lena) and groomsman (one of his
brothers, though Sam was less picky) could be depended on to show up at either El Bethel or the courthouse in Cleary after Jolie's last exam in mid-December. Sam would be gone by then, or soon after; Jolie would transfer to UF for the summer semester, or maybe in January, if the right strings could be pulled. That was the plan—to be gone by January in a quick and simple flight, one complicated by the holidays, which were rigorously celebrated in Hendrix, hamstrung by all manner of tradition and family gathering.

Both Carl and Lena were coming home for the annual Thanksgiving feast Raymond traditionally hosted at the parsonage, which filled the little house to the rafters with cousins, in-laws, exes, and more than a few hunting dogs. The menfolk did the outside cooking—the turkey-smoking and the pig roast—while the women did the inside cooking and arranging and stepping and fetching. All of it came at a most inconvenient time, the week before finals, keeping Jolie in a stew of irritation and sleeplessness that made her snappy with everyone, including Sam.

He picked her up from school as usual the day before Thanksgiving, on a sterling-clear afternoon, as muggy as July, though a front was due by morning, and the first frost of the season had been forecast. Jolie was nearly done with the labyrinthine preparations of a Hoyt family feast—mountains of red potatoes peeled, corn bread crumbled, celery and yellow onion and free sage chopped. She ate a green apple as he drove her home and tried to give him a preview of what to expect of a Hoyt Thanksgiving.

“—probably thirty or forty, at least. Aunt Kibby went up to Tennessee, Daddy says, but Uncle Ott and Uncle Obie will be there, and all their wives and children and grandchildren and all their exes and stepchildren and hunting buddies, who'll only stay long enough to eat. They won't come unless it's raining or turns cold; they'll be wantin' to get back to the woods before dark.”

Sam had studied the Hoyts from afar so long that he was actually looking forward to seeing them assembled,
en famille,
an overwhelmingly masculine microculture, as Jolie had, at last count, eight uncles, and
twenty-three first cousins, mostly male, who ranged in age from fifteen to forty-three. Such was their devotion to hunting that they had hardly appeared since Sam had been there and weren't expected to appear till deer season ended in February. Jolie didn't seem to mourn the absence as she was more like a sister than a cousin to the larger clan, a spoiled, mouthy sister who treated her younger cousins with the same eye-rolling dismissal she did Carl, referring to them as the
Hoytlings,
and seldom missing an opportunity to comment on their unvarnished idiocy.

“They never leave the woods?” Sam asked.

“Not the first week of deer season. They've had the dogs out since September, but this is the first week they can actually shoot,” she explained. “Brace yourself, because they'll be coming straight from the woods, in camo and boots, full of this overflowing machismo—
niggering-
this and
niggering-
that to try and impress you.”

“Why would they think that'll impress me?”

“Because they're idiots.”

She left it at that, sidetracked to discuss the supper they'd had the night before with Sister Wright, queen of the El Bethel Sisters, a spunky little woman of definite Muskogee stock who was related to the Stricklands on her mother's side and had made it to the formal tribal roll.

Like all the Sisters, she was the soul of generosity, and before dinner was through, she had given Sam many gifts: a dozen brown eggs, an angel-leaf begonia, and a big square of something she pulled out of her refrigerator, which turned out to be a huge square of processed cheese.

He hadn't opened it till he got to the camper, but now he asked Jolie, “Why did Sister Wright give me a big chunk of Velveeta last night?”

“It ain't Velveeta—it's commodity cheese. The government gives it to poor people—they pass it on to me and Daddy all the time, pay tithes in it. It's better than Velveeta; makes good grilled-cheese sandwiches. How's your begonia?”

“Alive, so far.” He wondered aloud, as he often did, about how generous they were, the poor people of Hendrix. “They won't let you leave empty-handed—your father has given me four Bibles, a sewing kit, and
four Independent Life fans—Sister Turner gave me a straw hat—and they hardly know me.”

Jolie smiled. “They know you enough to know they like you, and around here, if you like somebody, you give them stuff. It's saying you're one of them. They're giving you a piece of them.”

Sam had already described the practice (a local form of potlatch, as far as he could tell) in his just-dispatched paper, but continued to go to Jolie as the first source for all things Hoyt and Hendrix. “Why do they like me?” he asked, pleased, because he liked them, too: their eagerness to talk and their long memories, their weird and passionate convictions.

“Well, mostly because you treat them with respect,” Jolie explained. “You don't look down on them because they're poor; neither did Lena. That's why they loved her—rooted for her back when she was after Carl.”

“Are they rooting for Sam and Jolie?” he asked with a smile.

Jolie answered oddly, with a short bark of laughter. “Oh, yeah. They're pulling for Sam and Jolie.”

An unpleasant note in her laughter made Sam glance aside. “What d'you mean by that? Are you sure they're oaky? With the Jewish thing?”

Jolie had been asked that at least one hundred times and assured him, “They're cool with the Jewish thing. They're
mighty
cool with the Jewish thing.”

Again, he heard that odd undercurrent and insisted, “What d'you mean by that? What's the strange smile about?”

She suppressed the smile. “Nothing. It's an old hick thing, hard to explain. And it's kind of insulting.”

But Sam was only more intrigued and pressed, “Come on, Jol. You got me curious.”

By then, Jolie had come to enjoy sharing all the little strange corners of the Hendrix mind, but still hesitated on this one, glanced at him slyly, and asked, “Promise you won't get mad?” At his emphatic nod, she added, “Well, before I tell you, you got to remember that Sister Wright, and all the Sisters, they're poor old country women, never lived outside of Hendrix—”

“I told you I'm not gonna get mad,” he insisted with growing impatience.
“What?”

She shrugged, then confided in a mild, amused voice, “Well, to them, you're not just Sam Lense, nice guy. You're also”—she paused—“Sam Lense, rich Jew.”