by Ron Rash
IT’S FIVE THIRTY when the phone finally rings. I’m three shots into the whiskey, quickening my search for the glow first felt on a Sunday at Panther Creek.
“I know why you’ve been calling,” my brother says. “I read the paper too and all I have to say is forget about it. What happened no longer matters.”
“Yes, it does,” I answer. “You told me you put her on the bus to Charlotte.”
“Listen, Eugene, we’re not talking about this, with each other or with anyone else, ever.”
“You and I are, and now.”
“If you’ve got enough brain cells left to understand that I know what’s best, never,” Bill says, with a harshness I’ve heard directed at me only once before.
“We’re talking about this.”
“Are you hearing me?” my brother says. “Just being on the phone is . . . Listen to me, hang up and keep your mouth shut and never mention her to me or anyone else, ever.”
“I’m not doing that,” I answer.
For a few moments there is only silence.
“Okay, Eugene,” Bill sighs, “but not on the phone, in person.”
“Where?”
“My office.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’ve got surgery at eight, but I can meet you at eleven, unless I’m needed in the ER.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
“Well, you have to, and don’t call again, or e-mail, or talk to anyone about this, even if they bring it up. Just be here at eleven, and you damn well better be sober.”
I hang up and pour another shot of whiskey in my glass tumbler. Night drifts into the neighborhood, veiling first the street and sidewalk, then my neighbor’s yard and house. The streetlight comes on, hesitates, flickers. So too memory: A summer night when Sarah was three, carrying her out of the house and onto the porch steps. Goodnight, moon, we both said, and Sarah, pointing at the fireflies, More moons, more moons. It was something I’d have written in a notebook a year or two earlier, but by then my weekends and evenings spent writing had ceased. I’d rationalize it wasn’t the drinking that kept me from writing; it was my choosing to be more to Kay and Sarah than a clacking typewriter behind a closed door. But that was just another lie.
I check the kitchen clock again. As I refill the tumbler with ice and whiskey, I try to calculate the hours until I can talk to my brother, but I keep losing count. Besides, don’t I already know who was responsible for what happened to Ligeia Mosely? I’d been at Panther Creek when the threat was made. I was the one who’d brought her there in the first place.
CHAPTER FOUR
In San Francisco, the Summer of Love occurred in 1967, but it took two years to arrive in small-town Appalachia. There had been a sighting on the interstate of a hippie driving a multicolored minibus in February, duly reported in the Sylva Herald, but otherwise the counterculture had been something strange seen on TV, exotic as a penguin or kangaroo tree. That June the only hints of change were a couple of UNC students who’d returned from Chapel Hill with shaggier hair. Our grandfather didn’t allow our hair to touch our collars, but Bill wouldn’t have worn his long anyway.
On the Tuesday after we’d met Ligeia, Grandfather sent us on our weekly rounds to deliver messages to patients who didn’t have phones. They tended to live out in the country so we often passed the town’s swimming pool on the way. Bill slowed to look at the girls sunning themselves.
“I thought Ligeia might be out there.”
“She doesn’t look like she lies out in the sun much.”
“That’s true,” Bill said. “You’d think every girl from Florida would have a serious tan.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t mind being different,” I said. “That’s not such a bad thing.”
We finished our errands but as we drove back, Bill turned right instead of going straight into town.
“I thought we’d see if Ligeia does live up here,” he said. “If she’s outside, we can ask her to sneak out a little of her parents’ whiskey.”
We crossed Panther Creek Bridge, then turned left onto Chestnut Road. We passed a few nice two-story farmhouses in the bottomland but as the road wound upward, trailers and weatherworn houses appeared, often with rusty car husks and broken appliances in the side yards. Some of these people were on welfare. We never delivered messages to them, and even when they made appointments themselves, Grandfather demanded Shirley send paying patients back to the treatment rooms first. On some days, he refused to see welfare patients at all.
“Her parents would want a good view,” Bill said as we passed another shabby house and yard, “so they’re probably up top.”
The road curved and we passed another small A-frame, MOSELY neatly painted on the mailbox. The grass was cut and the house newly painted, but the lot was small, with nothing to look out at except trees that blocked any long view. A classmate of mine, Bennie Mosely, lived here. His dad worked on the county’s DOT crew, as did Bennie during the summer. Mr. Mosely was a lay preacher as well. In middle school, Bennie and I hung out together at recess. Hopeless athletes both, we were always among the unchosen, so we sat on bench ends waiting for the bell to ring. We’d even spent a few nights at each other’s houses.
The road continued another quarter mile, but no more homes appeared. This land had been recently clear-cut, the stumps like stones in a country graveyard. The road curved a last time and there were only woods in front of us.
“Maybe she didn’t leave until after we had,” I said as Bill turned the truck around.
Then, as we passed the Moselys’ house again, Bill slowed. A green bathing suit hung over a clothesline. No one was outside, and though Bill slowed even more, no one came to the door or window.
“So that’s Ligeia’s vacation home,” Bill said as he sped back up. “Did you catch the name on the mailbox?”
“Mosely,” I answered. “I go to school with Bennie Mosely. He lives there.”
“So Ligeia’s his sister?”
“Bennie’s sister is your age. Her name is Tanya.”
“I remember Tanya,” Bill said. “She dropped out our senior year, which surprised me, because she was a good student. Maybe she got in ‘trouble.’ You know what that means?”
“Yes, Bill, I know what it means,” I answered. “It means anyone who’s pregnant.”
“Not anyone, little brother. It’s almost always a female.”
“That’s real funny,” I muttered, and turned to look out the passenger window.
“Anyway, the last time I saw Tanya she was working at Hardee’s. Do you know if she still works there?”
“How should I know?” I asked, still looking out the window. “I don’t know much about anything, right?”
“Quit being so damn sensitive, Eugene,” Bill said, “just because Mom . . .”
“Just because Mom thinks I’m what?” I asked when Bill paused.
“Nothing,” Bill answered, more softly. “Look, I was just kidding around, okay? This weekend the beer’s on me.”
We were on the four-lane before either of us spoke again.
“Tanya’s still working at Hardee’s,” I said. “She’s the manager.”
“We need to stop by there then,” Bill said. “I’m wondering if Ligeia’s just pretending to be from Florida.”
“What are you going to say to Tanya?”
“I’ll ask about a couple of classmates,” Bill answered, “then work around to saying I saw someone in her yard I didn’t recognize.”
I waited in the truck while Bill went inside. When he came back out, the look on his face appeared caught between grin and grimace.
“What did she tell you?” I asked when he got in.
“A lot,” Bill said, “a whole lot.”
AT SIX O’CLOCK I watch the news on the Asheville station. Robbie Loudermilk, the county sheriff, asks anyone with information about Jane Mosely to contact his department. It had taken a week to identify her, he tells the reporter, and then only be
cause dental records matched up with a 1969 missing person’s report. No clothing or jewelry was among the remains, only shreds of a blue tarp. Loudermilk usually ambles about in an aw-shucks, Andy Griffith sort of way, but as I know very well, that can change into the tight-lipped anger I see now. He and Bill had played baseball together, and been friends before my accident. There is no mention of leads or when Ligeia was last seen alive.
Another memory comes, not of the final time I saw Ligeia but a week before she disappeared, something mundane yet vivid. The mystery of memory. There’s surely some scientific explanation for why the brain decides Don’t let go of this. I’ve read novels and cannot recall a single character’s name and yet I remember a red bicycle glanced once in a hardware-store window, a mole on a stranger’s chin, a kitchen match lying beside a hearth. These remain, as does Ligeia reaching into her locker, a book crooked in her arm sliding free.
Of course, who can forget that first love, or first sex, or first drink—especially if they all occur together. I also remember how, after Ligeia had left our lives, I’d worried for months that she might reappear and tell Bill what I’d never confessed to him. But after a while nostalgia supplanted guilt and our summer at Panther Creek became more a tender coming-of-age story, a summer of love complete with bucolic setting.
Before today, when had I last thought of her? I have to think for a minute, then recall it was a month ago during a TV segment about South Beach. A woman with long red hair mixed a drink behind a posh bar. Younger than Ligeia would be, but it had brought her to mind. I’d wondered if she’d ended up like me or settled into a good life, perhaps with a husband and children. When the television show switched to a crowded boulevard, I’d studied the passersby for a glimpse of her, unlikely as it was.
Despite the whiskey, cold spreads from my chest to my fingertips, because now I never need imagine or search for her again. Any surmise was answered when a bank on Panther Creek crumbled after a hard rain, exposing blue tarp and bone amid the mud. I finish my last drink and walk upstairs to the bathroom I’d once shared with Bill. My bathroom now, my house, because after the divorce and my being fired from the community college, I’d come to live here with my mother, who’d been diagnosed with leukemia. It’s your house now, Eugene. I’ve already got the deed transferred to your name, Bill had told me after our mother’s funeral. You deserve it for looking after her these last two years.
But that was not true. Bill and Leslie had done as much, visiting every weekend, setting up appointments and paying for the various doctors, the medicine, everything else that ensured our mother’s last days were as comfortable as possible. Bill’s tenderness toward our mother, how he sat with her for hours, how he prayed with her, reaffirmed how much he’d changed because of Leslie. He was an exemplary husband and father, and a wonderful uncle to Sarah, never forgetting a birthday, helping her find summer jobs. He’d paid for her braces and later her college when Sarah refused the money I’d offered. As my daughter had told me numerous times, Bill was more of a father to her than I had been.
My mother agreed that Leslie’s effect on Bill had been all for the good, but she also believed Bill became a better person because our grandfather’s influence on him ended with Bill and Leslie’s engagement. Despite what our mother and father had done, or perhaps because of it, one of our grandfather’s stipulations was that my brother and I couldn’t marry until our schooling was complete. Grandfather had been true to his word. When Bill entered Bowman Gray, he’d paid his own way with student loans and what Leslie made as a lab technician. As far as I know, Bill and Grandfather never spoke after he’d told the old man, face-to-face in his office, of the engagement. Grandfather hadn’t attended the wedding and Bill had not attended our grandfather’s funeral. The only reason I’d have gone would have been to throw dirt on the son of a bitch, Bill had told me, the bitterest comment I’ve ever heard him make.
Their estrangement was to my benefit. When Grandfather’s will was read, my mother received the house she lived in and also half his savings. The rest, including the money from the sale of his office, house, and land, went to me. Bill’s sole bequest was the Rembrandt print now hanging on his office wall. I’d offered to give Bill half but he refused. So I was left with enough money to buy all the wine and whiskey I’d ever desire.
CHAPTER FIVE
The mystery of your mermaid has been solved,” Bill said as we pulled out of the Hardee’s parking lot. “She is from Daytona Beach but staying with the Moselys for the summer. She’s seventeen years old and Mr. Mosely’s niece. According to Tanya, Ligeia’s been giving her parents all sorts of grief. She ran off to a commune last summer and it took them a month to find her. Tanya says the parents want to get Ligeia away from ‘bad influences.’ They don’t even allow her to be in town except for church.”
Then it was Saturday and we’d finished waxing and buffing our grandfather’s office. As we cooled off next to the air conditioner, Bill leaned forward, head down, nodding slightly as he deliberated. I thought how rare it was for him to be indecisive.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go out there tomorrow,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“I don’t think she’s a bad person,” I said.
“I didn’t say she was, Eugene, but what Tanya said . . .”
“You think we should be scared to be around her?”
“I’m not saying that,” Bill answered.
“I’m not scared of her,” I said. “Besides, I checked in the closet Wednesday when you were with Grandfather,” I added. “There are plenty of Valium and Quaalude samples.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Bill said tersely.
But you can, I almost answered. Bill leaned forward again, and then nodded as he took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said, and left me in the front room to watch for Nebo.
When he returned, his open palm revealed a packet containing two white pills.
“Prescription filled,” he said. “But we’re not going to be stupid, little brother. This prescription has no refills.”
The next day we loaded the fishing gear but didn’t drive straight to the stream. Bill stopped at the convenience store outside town and came out with a brown paper bag, in it a six-pack of Michelob and a bottle of Strawberry Hill.
“Try not to let those beers shake much,” he said, handing me the sack. “Of course with all that Aqua Velva you splashed on your face, my Aqua Velva, I might add, you could probably get drunk just licking around your lips. Anyway, it’s aftershave, not cologne, Eugene. If you want to smell good for a girl, use British Sterling or Jade East.”
A car pulled up beside us and Bill motioned for me to put the bag on the floorboard. Renee Brock, whose father owned the jewelry store, got out of the car and went inside.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bill said, backing up the truck. We turned onto the four-lane and headed toward Panther Creek.
Something could happen today that I will never forget, I told myself. Or it won’t happen. I was thinking that too, because I could simply walk upstream and fish, leaving Bill at the pool. My heart quickened as we turned onto the gravel road and then the logging trail. We parked and walked through the mountain laurel to the stream.
“Looks like we got here first,” Bill said as lifted the wine and six-pack from the grocery bag. “Put them in the stream, but not where they’ll wash away.”
I set the cans and bottle in the water. A trout leaped in the pool’s center and a ring rippled outward, giving me a bull’s-eye for a cast. When I turned to get a rod and reel, Bill’s face was perplexed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Like they say, if it feels good, do it, right? And with Leslie way up in Virginia. I know we’ve been dating awhile but it’s not like we’re engaged.” Bill paused. “Anyway, Ligeia probably won’t show up. Even if she does, she might decide you’re more her type. Isn’t that what hippies are into, feelings and expressing yourself? According to Mom, that’s y
ou, not me, right?”
When I didn’t respond, Bill took a thin foil packet from his front pocket and handed it to me.
“So here,” Bill said. “You know what it is, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You know how to put one on?”
“Sure,” I said, though not so sure.
“Make certain you do put it on, little brother. Even if hippies believe in free love, that doesn’t mean they can’t get pregnant. They can get other things as well.”
“I know that. I’m not a kid anymore, in case you haven’t noticed,” I said, taking the condom. “What about you?”
Bill patted the front pocket of his jeans. I put mine in my pocket too as he walked over to the stream and pulled two beers free from the plastic ring, tossing one to me.
“Since, as you say, you’re not a kid anymore.”
I held the can but made no move to pull the metal tab.
“That’s all right,” I said, holding the beer out to him.
“I figured you were lying about not ever drinking,” my brother said, “but damn, not even once?”
“No.”
“Go ahead and pull the tab,” Bill said. “It’s not a hand grenade.”
The tone in his voice, part instructive, part exasperation, was one I’d heard too often. When a curveball’s thrown, don’t rock back on your heels, he’d chided me when I tried out for Little League. But I had always rocked back. That’s okay, he’d told me after I failed to make the team. It’s just not who you are. He’d said it with a pat on the back, maybe even meaning well, but it rankled then and did so now. On such a hot summer day, the can’s chilled dampness felt good on my palm and fingers. Surely its cold contents would feel even better sliding down my throat.
