American Ghost (34 page)

When she heard the boat, she came to her feet by rote and helped
Jolie tie off, her face more aged than her silhouette, her nose and cheeks chapped from the wind, little raccoon circles of mascara below her eyes.

“Did you see Carl?” she asked when the motor was cut, her face apprehensive. “He was looking for you. Your clerk called yesterday. She said you needed to talk to him, that it was an emergency. Did you see him?”

“I did.” Jolie tossed up her shoes and blanket, then accepted a hand to the dock.

Confronting Lena was a different proposition from confronting Carl, and Jolie was casting about for a delicate inquiry when Lena burst out in unexpected confession, in one fast rush, “I burned down the shed at Bethel last night. I thought it was empty, didn't know there was a tractor in there—a John Deere.” She teared up at the name, as if it were the unpardonable sin to burn a name brand. “Carl is so mad.”

“He'll survive.” Jolie took Lena's cold hand and squeezed it. “Can we sit a minute? I have to go to work.” Jolie glanced at her watch. “Crap, I got fifteen minutes. Just sit a minute,” she begged. “Carl and Sam won't be long—”

“Sam Lense?” Lena asked in a voice little short of incredulous. “You brought him back to Hendrix?” She was so upset she began crying again, angry little tears that she brushed away with an impatient hand that made it hard for her to speak.

Jolie was moved by her fear, which was so deep and grounded that Lena trembled like a frightened dog. Jolie gripped Lena's hand tighter and found them a seat on the old fishing bench, gray and weathered by a century of summer sun.

Lena sat down obediently, but was agitated and clearly annoyed, chiding Jolie as if she were one of her children. “What d'you think you're doing, Jol? Your office called—they called
three
times. Faye is so worried, said you were out digging around the shed for something about that old lynching—and there was nothing out there, Jol. The place was falling down.”

Jolie began to see the picture now: Faye, in all her wheedling curiosity,
unwittingly lighting a fuse. Jolie saw no reason to lie and crossed her arms for warmth, her teeth beginning to chatter, not in fear, but cold. “Then why'd you torch it, Lena?”

“Because you wouldn't leave it alone!” she cried, more frustrated than fearful, as if confounded by Jolie's stubbornness. Lena dug out another wisp of Kleenex and angrily wiped her nose. “Isn't it enough Sam got shot? Who's next? Carl? One of the girls? When does it end, Jol?”

It was the first time Lena had ever hinted that Sam's shooting might be something other than accidental, her tone so matter-of-fact that Jolie could feel a slight movement of gears in her chest, as the conversation slowly moved into uncharted water. She was careful not to spook Lena and asked, “You mean it was intentional?”

Lena waved her away impatiently, as if the question was beside the point. “Who knows? Intentional, accidental—all I know is it happened. He was nosing around, asking too many questions. He was too close.”

“Close to
what
?” Jolie asked, her heart beginning to beat heavily in her chest as if she was closing in on a momentous revelation. “You mean the lynching?”

“Yes, the lynching, that's why he was here,” Lena said, returning to the old argument, “not for the Indians. That's why Travis shot him,” she added, with no inkling of the effect it had on Jolie, making her literally lose her breath, as if she'd been kicked in the stomach.

“Travis Hoyt?”
she managed, as he'd never occurred to her as the shooter—never, not once. He was one of Uncle Earl's grandsons, and too young, maybe seventeen that year, so young his father had to sign for him when he joined the Marines—not long after, now that she thought of it. Not long at all.

Her surprise was so evident that Lena dropped her Kleenex and asked her plainly, “You didn't know?” Then said, even more shockingly, “
Sam
knows.”

I
f Jolie was stunned before, she was now speechless, as Lena volunteered with that casual, matter-of-fact assurance, “Carl told him—he had to, before the statute of whatever ran out.”

“Travis?”
Jolie whispered. “You're
sure
?” as they were speaking of the same Travis Hoyt who'd sat at the Thanksgiving table with them at dinner that day, one of the redneck Hoytlings who'd ragged her about bringing him tea.

“Sure, I'm sure. I was sitting right there—and it happened so quick. And you know how it was that day, at dinner—all that teasing and poking fun, all of 'em, going at each other. Me and Carl, we took Daddy's boat to go down to the camp. But, God, it was cold that night, ten times colder than today, like, fifteen degrees. Felt like fifteen below, and all around you could hear gunshot—deer hunters, zinging around. We were thinking about turning back when we came on Travis and Bill Goin, and Bill's little brother. You know, the short one . . .”

“Chuckie?” Jolie offered.

Lena nodded. “Yeah. Chuck Goin. They were finishing hunting for the day, out spotting deer and drunk as the seven earls, shining the spotter on us and catcalling, till Carl threatened to come up out of that boat and beat their butts. But it was still okay, they were just messing around,
giving us a hard time.” Lena paused and gave Jolie a cagey look. “You sure you wanta hear this?”

At Jolie's nod, Lena shrugged. “Then they started in on you—about how high-and-mighty you thought you were—going to college, giving it up to the first man who threw his hat in the ring. And, God, it made Carl mad. He was about to come out of that boat. But it was still just a goof, really, Travis and him calling back and forth, ragging each other like they always did. Then one of them, the little one, with the spotter, he must have saw something downstream because he shined it down there, said, ‘Now, what do we got
here
?'”

Lena paused, her nose beet red from the cold, though her small face was still blank with disbelief, her voice slightly lower as she dug deeper in the memory. “And it was so crazy, Jol—it happened so quick. I mean, one minute I was sitting there telling Carl to let it go, that they were just drunk, and then Travis—he put his rifle to his shoulder and
boom
—he took a shot. I didn't know what was going on, about jumped out of my skin, and Carl—he jumped out of the boat, right into the river, after Travis. He was only maybe three feet from the bank, but the water was so high, so fast, it was like jumping into white water. Travis took off like a rabbit, but Bill helped me drag Carl out—close to the dock, about froze to death. That's where we found Sam, just up the path—never would have seen him, but he'd dropped his flashlight and it was still on.”

Lena lowered her voice even further, to a bare whisper. “And even then, we didn't think it was that bad, thought he'd nicked him on purpose, as a goof. But the bleeding—it wouldn't stop. It got on everything—our coats, the boat. We couldn't tell where he was shot.”

Even as she spoke, the pontoon appeared at the bend, the sound of the motor displaced by some trick of the wind so that they could see it before they heard it. Carl was steering, Sam aside, talking to him, their faces averted. Lena's face registered relief, and she came immediately to her feet. “Thank God,” she breathed, though Jolie wasn't half as sanguine.

She came to her feet, too, but paid no attention to the pontoon, gripping Lena's lapels and asking to her face, “Why wouldn't you tell, Lena? You lied to me.”

Lena seemed emboldened by the return of the menfolk and pulled away with scarce patience. “Tell
who
? My dad, who had to live out here? Or that judge? Or that
idiot
deputy? They were already trying to pin it on Carl or your daddy or poor old Ott—the crazy old Hoyt brothers, out on another killing. And he was okay. The doctors—they got him in time,” Lena insisted. “He was fine.”

“He almost
died,
” Jolie cried, shock giving way to a cold rage that made her voice tremble.

Lena wouldn't budge. “So did
Carl—
and so did
I,
trying to get him in the boat—and we didn't have nothing to do with it, Jol! It wasn't
our
fault he came out here lying and digging up all that nasty crap and got everybody so
pissed.
”

“Then why didn't you tell me, Lena? Why didn't you and Carl just come in that night and say, ‘Hey, Jol, your boyfriend got shot, take care of it'?”

“Because we
loved
you,” Lena answered with equal passion, “and you're too
Hoyt,
” she said, spitting out the name like an expletive. “You can't let anything go. You still can't, till this day. Look at us,” Lena cried. “Here we are, still talking about it! Twelve years and we're still talking!”

Jolie was conscious of the fast approach of the pontoon and determined to leave before Sam arrived. She yanked up her shoes and told Lena, “That's because it's not over.”

Lena yelled at her back, as did Carl, and Sam, who were yards away from docking. Jolie had no intention of waiting around for yet another round of denial and explanation. She felt equally defeated by all of them and went to her car as quickly as her idiot heels would permit, wishing she had hurled them in the river when she had the chance.

She was tired, freezing, flat-haired, and furious and would have made a clean getaway if she'd been barefoot. Sam caught her at the car, windblown
and pink-cheeked, but relatively warm in his coat. He didn't bother to try to stand and argue, but slammed himself in the passenger seat.

“That's why I came over,” he said, “to make sure you know about Travis. Carl was supposed to tell you, God, six years ago.
Shit,
I knew you'd be
pissed.
”

Jolie was too livid to answer and too tired to get into another round with anyone. She felt as if she'd gone ten rounds with Joe Louis and just concentrated on getting to town, so glacially silent that Sam had no choice but to continue his defense in that querulous voice, as if she had argued.

“And I wouldn't be too quick to point a finger about keeping secrets from the rest of the class if I was you. You were MIA, missing in goddamn action. All those weeks I was hooked to an IV in Miami—did you ever think about doing something really modern and
outré
like actually
picking
up the phone and calling?”

She was finally provoked enough to answer, without turning, her eyes on the flying ribbon of highway. “
No.
I never did.”

The reply was insulting in its brevity, its shameless honesty; so much that Sam didn't speak for a moment, but watched her across the seat with less fury than his old curiosity as they hurled along the highway.

He had long ago lost his fascination with the Hoyts, and their contradictions, but was, finally, curious enough to ask, “Why not?”

He asked it honestly, without rancor, and inadvertently resurrected the Jolie of the Campground, the Queen of the Paradox: pale and dark, devout and savage, headstrong but pliable as a child. She offered him a mere glance as she confessed, “Because I
loved
you. And I did
everything
I could, to protect you, and I
couldn't
.”

The candor in her voice was inarguable, so much that Sam's jaw softened. “From
what
?”

She offered nothing but an angry shake of the head and a sharp tap of her knuckles on the side window, indicating the passing woods that grew close to the highway, flat with a tropic excess in the palmetto and vine-wrapped palms.

“From Hendrix”—he pressed—“or your idiot cousin? Because that little shit'll never step a foot in Florida again.”

He said it with great confidence, but Jolie was hardly convinced, provoked enough to snap, “You don't know that. You took a pass. You're as bad as Lena. You're worse than Lena.”

“I took
nothing
. Shit, Jol, I work for DCF. D'you think I don't know how to prosecute a felony? When you get to town, call the lead detective—the old guy from Hendrix, who used to be married to someone.”

“Jeb Cooke?” she asked, incredulous, as she still occasionally saw Jeb around town and never a word had he spoken of the matter.

“Yeah, Cooke. He works for the highway patrol. Was happy to hear it, but it was too late. The statute of limitations had expired. Carl thought it was six years. It was three, for assault with a deadly weapon. Shelton concurred.”

“
Shelton?
Who's Shelton?”

“My brother,” Sam said as the exurbs of Cleary began to pass. “He's a lawyer, in Coral Springs, does real estate—closings, shit like that.”

The mildness of the answer brought a truly crazy cast to Jolie's eyes. “You went to a
real estate
lawyer? With attempted
murder
?”

Sam's expression was equally crazy, not least because she hadn't slowed for city traffic, but continued to sail along, darting between cars. “Will you slow down? You're gonna kill us both. And who am I? J. Paul
Getty
? You think I have a fleet of lawyers on speed dial, waiting on my calls? Shelton wanted to send me to a civil rights lawyer, but,
shit,
Jol—it wasn't racial. It was
tribal,
” he proclaimed with his old anthropologist confidence. “It was more about me poaching one of their women than some racial
shit.
It was a lot of things,” he corrected at her noise of disbelief as she slowed for downtown. “I shouldn't have walked into such a thing in a lie—should have come clean that first night I saw you. And I shouldn't have fucked you—you were too young and your father trusted me and it was exploitive,” he continued, on a fast, soul-bearing little roll that Jolie brought to a halt.