Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  “Ruck’s mental condition—it’s quite something.”

  “What else is he on? Pills? Powders?”

  “What are you, the heat?” Blowing out his lips. “Haven’t a clue, Sgt. Friday.”

  Shifting the focus. “You ever talk to Dobbs?”

  Guilt flooded into Billy’s gut, a dull spike. “Not as such. You?”

  “Not like I should.”

  “May we end this interrogation?”

  Roy Earl cast doleful eyes onto the sidewalk. Billy followed his gaze—cigarette butts, a crushed Spotted Banana cup, scraps of newsprint.

  “I’d like to catch one of these little dorks out here littering.”

  “Be worth it if you did.”

  “I’ll get Nicole to sweep up—I mean, Heather. These gals start to run together after a while.”

  Chortling. “Welcome to my world, dude.”

  “Lucky prick.”

  Billy, lowering his voice and shrugging. “What you want a motherfucking N-word to do?”

  Roy Earl, blushing anew. Frowning. “Like I said.”

  Billy set aside the issue of his self-evident sexual prowess to fill in the rest of the lousy details: Devin’s intention to intrude upon the conference in Texas. “Not to sound like I don’t want to help him, because I do—it’s the least I can do for an old friend—for Ruck—but, still.”

  “Heard that.”

  “But if the girl I’d loved—? If I’d watched her die right in front of me, on the side of the road?” The words caught. “Who knows what would’ve become of me.”

  Roy Earl reached across the table to pat his friend’s forearm in a series of exuberant, meaty smacks. “I’ll never forget that day. Me and you going to the hospital.”

  “No. Burned into the synapses.”

  “Not that I want to remember it, but I was sure glad to have you there.”

  “It’s what families do.”

  “I hadn’t seen you all spring. I had missed hanging out.”

  Swooning; her smell came to him. “Libby. An ethereal angel, then as now.”

  “So I listened to the Dead show just the other day.”

  Billy’s throat, like a vise. “Collegiate Coliseum?”

  “Man, it really holds up.”

  “Yes, it does. It surely do.” Folksy, hiding the shock and horror twisting inside him. “A barn-burner.”

  “Hell of a night.”

  And yet, Billy noticed, his old pal looked more chagrined than nostalgic.

  Wait: Had Roy found out what went down with Libby that night?

  Had he?

  Christ—Billy hoped not.

  He tried to speak again but choked off; a single sharp, weapons-grade sob escaped. This time Roy Earl’s hand stayed on Billy’s sleeve. Billy, placing his own huge paw on top, squeezing.

  His crying jags could be monumental. Gargantuan. If it happened in public, they’d put him away. He’d barely been able to hide these episodes from Melanie, as well the ritual masturbation and snuff films and other weird secrets Billy occulted from everyone.

  Some secrets he kept even from himself. Yeah. Mind=blown at the notion. All rather circularly self-reflective.

  Composing himself. “I don’t mind helping. But damn him, it’s the timing. I’m presenting a major paper on archival film preservation.”

  “I’m amazed at what you do. It’s so much more important than—all this.”

  “It ain’t show business. That much for certain.”

  “It’s academic, dude. It’s history. Me? They piss out what I sell within the hour.”

  “The work’s significant, sure; one only hopes to make a contribution to the general knowledge base.”

  “To me, what you do is heroic.” Now Roy’s turn to get choked up. Billy remembered big talk from him, an English major, of becoming a poet, not a smoothie salesman. “Look: once you and Devin get back, I’m here for him.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can. Have a cookout. We’ll listen to the Dead tape.” Roy betrayed a flash of consternation at how lame such suggestions must have sounded in the face of Ruck’s travails. “If everybody wants to get together.”

  “Yes: We will get Ruck back onto the narrow way. Straight and narrow, rather.”

  A buzzing sound; Roy Earl, cursing a vibrating Blackberry produced out of a cargo pocket. He squinted at a text message. Wrinkled his nose as though sniffing a funky sock. Slapping his hands together, a busy man, time wrap it up. “Gotta split. I’m treasurer of the neighborhood association. Time to go write checks.”

  “Civic leader as well as merchant class. Most impressive.”

  “Small business—man, I tells ya. Every time you turn around, there’s a hand reaching into your pocket.”

  “So long as you get a decent hand-job out of it.”

  “Right.” Bitter, sarcastic. “A hand-job nobody in their right mind wants.”

  On their feet: back-pounding, one-armed man hugs. Roy said into his ear: “I’m not gonna let you and sweet Creedence go through this alone.”

  Billy, so touched water again sprang to his eyes. Pernicious, these peskily genuine emotions. More bothersome in their own peculiar simmering way than the urges causing the dreaded, unavoidable accidents.

  To quell his nettlesome humanness, Billy fantasized again about the blonde counter girl Roy sent outside with a broom and a dustpan, swish swish, purposeful and glowing with youth and sufficient feminine vitality befitting a potential goddess. On his way down the sidewalk, Billy, snatched the broom handle from her and smashed her over the head, dragged her by the hair back to the condo where he would stick his entire head into her sopping, pliable innerness. Claw all the way inside, curl up, rest until suffocating from the gooey viscous pleasure, amber waves of film-grain fading into vinegar syndrome color shift, later crumbling into powder and blown wind-borne into endless nothingness; no more bothersome anything.

  Peace.

  Maybe that’s what Devin got out of drinking himself into incoherence.

  Consumed with the need to do forty massive bong hits before dinner and get his headspace together before the inevitable Melanie Eruption, possibly occurring within minutes, Billy, willing to bet his inheritance that she awaited him outside his building. Panicked, furious, a shadowplay of hyper-uncool emotion crawling across her strained, shining face. The girl had it bad for him.

  But, who could blame her? A tiger—Billy, not her.

  And later, the make-up sex, sure to be a pleasurable enough distraction. Melanie, helping him forget. Like every girl had since the day Libby had been taken away from him, on a wind black, bleak and unforgiving.

  To fuck. To forget. This was key.

  But not too hard, now. Don’t take your shit out on the rest of them. One or two, here and there, maybe?

  It’d been too long. Or not long enough. On the old accidents.

  Head spinning, like back when they got so beer drunk in the dorms and passed out. Spins.

  Now, Melanie, though, could appreciate—and take—a good solid sex-beating. Who came hard as Billy did. Who pinched his nipples and squeezed his balls—hard!—slapped at his erection—harder!—and dominated him, all of which somehow helped keep the accidents from happening. Walked on the dirty floor and then made him lick her feet clean.

  He had thrived under the whole role-playing rubric. This was how he got away with all the rough stuff. Safety words. Heh. Billy’s was ‘Hothouse Cucumber.’

  Wait—Melanie didn’t sound so bad.

  Yes; but. If being unfaithful to Libby didn’t sting so much—she was still The One, no matter who came along—he might consider keeping her. With the looming Ruck drama to come, however, ditching his rider, in the Delta blues sense, could wait until next week.

  Eleven

  Devin

  Devin, sick but purposeful, regained wretched consciousness early in the morning, got his bloody vomiting over with and started putting his gear together for high-speed travel.

/>   For once he knew, unprompted, what lay ahead.

  The end.

  Impressive or sad; he couldn’t decide which. Only a conclusion.

  The road. Had to get this part over with. Had to get somewhere and settled, soon as possible. Or he’d start detoxing. Remembering he needed to get on the road today was a sign he hadn’t gotten nearly drunk enough last night.

  Fuck. Way too lucid, yo.

  He cracked a beer, drank it. Felt steady.

  Steady enough, anyhow.

  He puked it up, drank another. That one settled in real nice. As did the next.

  The preparations already made, all left now the proverbial hitting of the bricks: gas tank topped off, oil changed, last Eileen check cashed. Ran around the corner to the convenience store, a cooler slap-full of ice cold beer stashed in the trunk, along with two liquors—one clear, one brown. With providence on his side the distilled elixirs wouldn’t be touched until stopping sometime later in the night, otherwise this road trip potentially brief.

  This time Devin, like, actually wanted to arrive alive.

  To catch up with Billy.

  Bidding adieu to the apartment; what meager belongings he owned to be left behind. Flushing the door key down the toilet. Intending to leave the dump wide open for whomever wished to try their luck with the evil spirits dwelling inside.

  Or, do you carry your troubled spirits with you?

  An old saw. Something his mother or grandmother probably used to say.

  Devin, starting out the door, but going back to pick up Prudy’s dish. Rinsing dust from the ceramic bowl and wrapping it in a red bandanna, reverent, he wedged the artifact into a safe corner of the trunk. Saying to himself, got to remember where it is. Can’t forget. Can’t let myself forget, ever again.

  A rush of sick memories: waking up the day after discovering the cat’s death, her body lying curled and cold, under the bed where she’d gone to die. Drinking it all away. Until awakening again.

  And reliving the horror.

  Devin, bundling the stiffening corpse into his backpack, a faded, threadbare Army knapsack he’d carried since adolescence. Shaking and sick, driving until he on the other side of Denver from dusty flat Commerce City, where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains began in earnest, and behind them, the big peaks.

  Getting as far as Golden, at the edge of the mountains. Never ever taking the canyon road, the Golden Gate parkway, up into the hills. Too dangerous even for a shaky old hand at driving plastered like Devin ‘Ruck’ Rucker.

  Sometimes he liked heading on up to Boulder, taking 93 on past the big brewery looming over the tourist-trap town and up through the flatlands to the college town, and thinking about Millie being there and what she was doing but never looking her up; drinking, watching the carefree kids going about their business, then toodledo-ing his way back down the parkway and onto I-70 and out to Commerce City, where the real glug-glugging could begin: at Chubby’s, in the apartment, anywhere he didn’t have to travel too far for a decent place to puke and pass out for a few hours. But always taking the straightforward and safe path to Boulder, the flat highway. Never attempting the scenic route up and round through Nederland, a beautiful but challenging drive. He’d driven up the canyon road in the past, following South Boulder Creek. Sure—but with Millie. Back in the day. But not since.

  Not in this condition.

  What about today? A big day. The cat dead, and all.

  Not drunk. Not hardly at all. Not yet, anyway. That would change.

  Why not?

  A voice saying, Go for it, tough guy.

  Keeping one eye on the backpack with Prudy’s body, he passed through Golden until taking the highway turnoff to the west. After a micro-hesitation he hit his signal to take the canyon road, which began to twist and turn and rise in its snaking track up into the hills.

  He’d thought about it a thousand-thousand times: getting hammered as shit and attempting this drive. But never doing it. Tempting fate, that. Too easy a way out.

  Shaking and nearly incapacitated by the rampaging need for a bracer, Devin drove, gripping the wheel of the Jetta which seemed to protest on the inclines, the engine whining and knocking; Devin, fearing he’d leave more than Prudy up here in the hills. Wondering if the transmission would finally drop out of the undercarriage. But it didn’t.

  Devin, chewing the insides of his cheeks and thinking about the rum in his pocket and the dead cat in the back seat under the blanket. Negotiating the turns with confidence and a modicum of unlikely grace; the mountain air came tinged with the scent of fire. A controlled burn, probably.

  He pulled into turnouts a few times to let tailgating nitwits be on their hurried way. He wouldn’t be rushed.

  This, too important.

  This, to be done right.

  Not to have an accident, no; taking the Golden Gate road a test and a testament and statement of purpose and intent and invulnerability, which Devin, perhaps alone among all the peoples and humans of the world, seemed to possess. Why else was he still around?

  Preternatural, his ability to survive car crashes and falls and alcohol poisoning.

  God, that old rascal, he musta got himself a plan going.

  But for Devin? The plan was to bury the cat. Anything else, like his own death, could wait.

  Finding what seemed the right turnout, finally. Parking the car and gathering the rucksack and other accoutrements including a pint of Bacardi 151, Devin followed the track of a stream back under the highway, into the wooded hills stretching above. He and Millie, hiking the trail many times. They’d even made love in the woods, once, next to the flowing mountain brook.

  Memorable; sober days, then.

  Millie begging him to say, I love you.

  Devin, unable. Unwilling.

  Climbing, the land becoming steep. Carrying his pet, cooing reassurances. His body, aching with the effort. Stopping at several points to rest sore, spindly legs.

  The stream: Colorado mountain water scrubbed pure and clean by the stones over which it ran cascading foamy and white down tumbles of falls, the sound clean and purifying. Once making it to a level run of the stream—here the water placid, the surface like glass—Devin, hacking into the stony ground near the bank with a small gardening spade. Stabbing at the wet, sucking mud, grunting. Sweat rolling down his brow, stinging his eyes, the physical labor feeling good, meaningful. Digging a hole, harder than he’d anticipated.

  Into the damp hole she had gone.

  Covering up Prudy’s body with the thick mud.

  Clasping his lips shut to stifle curses that threatened to claw through his cheeks.

  Devin, his back and knees on fire, threw the spade end over end into the forest behind him, staggered into the river up to his knees and struck the water’s surface openhanded, shouting and raging until his clothing soaked through and cold. Hurling curses at the sky, an inexhaustible torrent of vituperative invective.

  Spent, wet, he dragged himself to the bank. Lay immobile atop the grave. Wished for death. Doing so had never worked.

  Pulling himself together, he produced the pint of rum out of his jacket, a special treat he’d brought to follow up the burial. Cracking the tax stamp seal—a marvelously wondrous sound—and chucking away the cap, he choked as the powerful liquor exploded on his palette. Devin, managing to drain the bottle in four enormous gulps.

  His stomach, ravaged, convulsed in protest. It all came back up into the river.

  Devin had wept at his failure to get drunk with a modicum of competence. This idea, almost worse than the notion of Prudy being dead. What, indeed, could he offer the world but this one and true talent?

  He’d driven on to Nederland to have a pitcher or two of beer, enough to steady himself for the trip back out of the mountains to his lonely flatlander’s apartment where he could drink and drive with impunity. It had been going on unabated for however long, now.

  Not that much longer. Devin would be dead soon, too. Because without the cat, what was l
eft? And yet, years later, he waited still.

  Devin, in the parking lot of the apartment complex, and for the last time, smoked and considered the sandy earth blowing across faded asphalt by wind mournful and easterly. He cracked two PBR tallboys, not giving a shit who saw. Chugging them both in about five minutes, one after the other. Throwing the cans on the ground, but picking them up and putting them into a blue recycle bin. He wasn’t a litter monster, belching loud and long there on the asphalt. Only thirsty.

  Feeling centered.

  For once.

  The Jetta, getting to be a beater, but cranking right up. A sign—a positive one.

  Devin, another cold beer poured into a silver coffee mug, now ready. Screwing the lid on and stashing the vessel down in the cup holder with a hand as palsied as a Parkinson’s victim, he pointed the nose of the Jetta hard east on I-25 and drove into the true flatlands. Later, he turned south, toward Texas, and the promised apotheosis of reconnection, and retribution, with the ones who had done him so wrong. Soon as he remembered not only which ones, but what they had done to him.

  Twelve

  Creedence

  “Well, I’m not sure what I would do, darling.”

  “Wouldn’t you? This is a quite a change.”

  “Hush your mouth. Before I hush it for you.”

  Mumbling. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “Shit. You young’uns don’t know your butts from holes in the ground.”

  Their lines, all but rehearsed. They talked to one another so much there was nothing for it but to recite routines like the folks on the TV babbling its soap operas, commercial breaks and terror alerts about the war, or whatever theatrical plays were showing that week on the news channels.

  Eileen Rucker spoke between puffs of a slender feminine cigarette, its smoke blue and rich with menthol and toxins. She coughed after every toke yet kept puff puff puffing away. “Sometimes men get funny when there’s a little one on the way.”