“But that’s who you mean.”
He held out his hands. “The Dead will be back next year.”
“I can’t believe you left me here.”
“I didn’t do nothing—Boo-Boo was supposed to pick you up.”
“So why didn’t he?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Why the freak can’t you say?”
A circular conversation. “Because we were all drunk as piss-ants already, you little turd. You didn’t miss anything but bullshit.” He jumped out of the chair and grabbed her by the arm, hard. “Now let it go before I pop you one like Mama.”
It would take more than a threat like that to scare her. Not in this house. “Let me go. Y’all were too drunk before the concert?”
He went back to his chair. “Pre-game got out of hand.”
Trying one of Mama’s tactics, rage followed by tears. Boo-hooing: “Don’t never again promise me something you ain’t gonna do.”
“Quit acting like it’s the end of the world.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You got to go.”
“You’ll be able to do what you want in a couple of years. There’ll be plenty of concerts.”
“Think so?”
“Course there will. There’s always concerts.”
“No—that Mama’s gonna sit by and let me do what I want.”
“Stand up to her—she’ll cave. Always does.”
“With you, maybe.”
“Bullcorn.”
Her guts twisted. “How do I stand up to Mama?”
Devin’s eyes turned cold. “Sneak yourself one of Daddy’s tallboys. Instant courage.”
“I tried that.”
Little placated by apologies or further discussion concerning the matter, now she wanted to call Roy Earl and bless him out, too. But, whomever the driver was to have been, Devin bore the ultimate responsibility.
She stayed pissy with him the whole, long weekend. He didn’t care, not with him and Libby wrapped up in each other. They didn’t need anyone else.
And Creedence had Dusty. For whatever that was worth. Letting him come back over again made Mama so happy she left a hundred-dollar bill in between the pages of the diary Creedence thought she had so carefully hidden under her mattress.
Now, don’t y’all do it again without him wearing a thing on this thing, Mama had scribbled on a note clipped to the bill. There will be time for that later.
The Christmas holidays brought winter weather which seemed harsh by South Carolina standards, with tension between brother and sister, son and mother, all colder than the frigid winds sweeping down from the north.
On Christmas Eve, Creedence overheard Dwight and Devin add to the mix with an argument that’d begun over matters unknown:
“Son of mine, I do not know what’s happened with you. You act like your mother and me’s the enemy.”
“Not you, Dad. Not you.”
Dark, angry, more so than she could ever remember seeing her Daddy behave. “Me and her done lived our lives for you and nothing but you, and your little sister—don’t you understand?”
Creedence noted how Devin’s voice shook. “There’s a lot I can’t explain. It’s—hard to—I don’t—it’s weird.”
“Quit trying to make up some story.”
“Oh—the stories I could make up, Daddy.”
“I figured you had more respect for me than that.”
Devin, ending the conversation with a teenage-boy grunt.
Later, when Creedence passed by his room she noticed him staring red-eyed and blank, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, drooling, insane and on the verge of an axe-murder spree. Devin, however, only looked as though he’d been crying—unusual for him. Most of the time he was like a stone. Except maybe with Libby, when his face looked more relaxed. His Libby-face.
Why didn’t she change around Dusty?
Why didn’t Mama change around Daddy?
Creedence, journaling that maybe she didn’t much want to figure out all these marriages and relationships and mess, hiding the diary in her new spot way up in a nook above the closet door in her room. And yet driven inside to connect, but not feeling it with Dusty the way she thought she ought to. But going along. For now. Going along to get along; if for no other reason than to keep Mama off her back.
It was okay. Devin was right. High school would be over soon. She would do what she wanted, one day. Mama’s hundred bucks would become the first of a secret stash Creedence—Chelsea—would use to leave all their stupid asses in the dust. Soon.
Forty-Four
Devin
Christmas break, bleak around the Meade house as well as home at the Ruckers. Devin, sneaking liquor every chance he got, which he hid by covering it with a beer or two. Libby didn’t mind a few beers.
Source of the bleak: A revelation in which her father faced a mortal challenge, a family crisis into which Devin found himself swept: cancer had been diagnosed just after Thanksgiving. That drunken sot, her father, had come up with Stage IV lung and liver, the disease progressing unabated, but the family, her mother Eunice and brothers Kevin and Harold, older and established adults with their own families—Libby called herself an ‘accident’ baby, born ten years after the next youngest child—still managed to put on a shiny, happy, holiday façade anyway.
The father, as Devin judged, was a complete asshole—as though he hadn’t hurt his family enough, now putting on this cancer drama. Libby, informing Devin her dad had suffered alcohol-induced anger management issues, hadn’t painted a kind picture.
No wonder she was always encouraging him to lose the Ruck persona. The hard-drinking cynic. World-weary at nineteen. Libby had had enough of this persona already.
Devin, lucky she had stuck with him. A reason to not drink as much. He needed one—a reason. Not a drink.
He took a drink instead.
Libby, her older brothers and the Meade parents along with Devin, all gathered around a tinseled tree under decoration on Christmas morning after the gifts had been opened at Devin’s house, which his mother had insisted upon. First among mothers. The only reason Devin agreed is he knew one of the Meade brothers wouldn’t arrive until lunchtime. She’d won nothing, had gotten nothing over on him.
Frank, shaky but participating by hanging ornaments with his wraithlike fingers, suffered a sheen on his face of perpetual surprise, as well as an occasional shadow: Realizing, maybe, this would be the last holiday.
“You don’t recover from what I have,” he’d told Devin outside as part of a speech about being sorry for keeping Libby’s boyfriend at arm’s length. “It’s in my bones, too.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Meade.”
“You want to know what fucked feels like? Do you? Well buddy, this is it.”
Maybe he couldn’t say any of that to the people inside the house—Devin, a near stranger. Frank’s intimacy made him feel like a member of the family, in a way, for the first time.
In any case, quite a change in temperature. Frank hadn’t always been so kind.
One night after dropping Libby off, he’d popped out of the hedges to accost Devin by the Mustang parked along the street in the newer subdivision where the Meades lived, closer to the nuclear station where he worked. Frank might have been a drunk, but he held multiple degrees and made six-figures, which in Edgewater County was real money.
Barely intelligible, bleary-eyed and red-nosed, exhaling a bitter cloud like he’d been gargling pure ethanol, in this guise Frank got in Devin’s face to warn that Libby was special. That it wouldn’t be just any little smart-ass Edgewater County redneck good enough for his little girl. That South Carolina was not a place to which he’d wanted to come in the first place, but money—he kept calling it ‘mammon’—had ruled the day. Doing so for the good of his family. Devin, if he were smart, would watch his good-old-boy, cracker ass around the Meades.
“I have stories that end with the hospital. I have stories that end with jail,” he boasted, poki
ng two fingers into Devin’s chest. “You don’t fuck with me.”
Devin, who had been yelled at by his Mama with such vituperative invective that it took a lot to scare him, didn’t flinch. “If I get out of line,” trying to sound like some bad-ass movie character, “I’m sure she’ll give me the boot herself.”
Frank laughed. “She’ll choose correctly. She possesses the wisdom of the ages, that girl. No question. Like the woman of the wilderness. A fecund, white goddess.”
Whatever that all meant.
“But you, son? You’re nothing but vaginal feces. All of you are. You realize that?”
“I’d like to think that I do.”
“Fuck you know about anything?”
“Well,” Devin had said, running short of subtle back-talk. “There’s the rub. I really should be getting on home.”
“Get off this property. And if you come back, I won’t be calling the law, son. We’ll be handling it right here ourselves. Understood?”
Devin, for once liking the cut of the man’s jib—Frank’s boozy bluster dovetailed nicely with his own ripening, cynically burgeoning worldview. He decamped with haste, hoping Libby had locked her bedroom door.
The next day he’d of course seen Frank again, who held no memory of the prior conversation. Shuffling around the Meade household in a bathrobe, hungover, eyes and nose scarlet aircraft beacons, complaints of a wicked cold that’d come upon him, he greeted Devin with relative bonhomie and good cheer.
“Young Mr. Rucker,” he’d said, bidding Libby to go fix them both cups of coffee. “I’ve been wondering where you’d gotten off to.”
But now Frank was dying, which made him more interesting to Devin than anyone else but his daughter. He’d watch closely how Frank handled Death when it arrived. Devin was keeping a registry, he’d decided. That way when it was his time, he’d be ready for anything.
Outside at the curb as Frank smoked and coughed and watched as Devin dragged the last bulging black bag full of cast-off wrapping paper.
Pulling a pint of cheap scotch out of his bathrobe, Frank took himself a good nip. Furtive, a small gag and cough. But another before starting to put it away.
He paused. “Oh—you want a snort, son? It being Christmas and all?”
“Might be a touch early for me.”
He was starting chemo next week, he’d said earlier. What did he have to lose now by continuing to drink? “Suit yourself.”
Devin, marveling yet sorrowful at Mr. Meade, who, with cancer in his guts and bones, could still stomach hot scotch. “Changed my mind.”
Handing him the bottle. “That’s the ticket, son.”
The liquor, hot and harsh, exploded in Devin’s stomach. Good.
“Gonna tell you something, young Mr. Devin. Something none of them know.”
The idea of secrets sickened Devin. “Sure.”
“I knew I was beat before I ever got the diagnosis. Knew it sure as I’m standing here. Almost from the first time I drank—it was when I was your age, so don’t make a habit of it, now. But as for being sick-sick…? Like this. I knew for real months ago. But I didn’t tell anyone. Not until I had no choice. Want to know why?”
Devin, irritated at such news being kept from loved ones, couldn’t say that he did.
Frank glanced up to the shining Christmas day sun. “You think I lack self-awareness?”
“How do you mean?”
“I know what’s it been like to live with me. When I let myself know, that is.”
Devin again took the scotch from Libby’s father’s hand, the skin mottled and dry. Unscrewing the cap, he took another pull. Wincing at the burn. “That does kinda hit the spot.”
“Like I said—don’t make it a habit. Not this early. Always try to wait until noon, at least.”
“You can depend on me, sir.”
“Take care of her, you hear me?”
“Libby.”
Nodding. “If you would. My little Frances Elizabeth.” The liquor in his gut has steadied him, given him a happy glow. “You know she was a surprise to us, don’t you?”
“I’ve heard the family legend.” Devin handed him the bottle. “She’s everything that makes sense to me about this world.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, nodding and seeming relieved, Frank gestured for them to go back inside for Christmas dinner. “So you’ll handle things, then?”
“Things?”
“Whatever she needs. The boys, now, they have their own families, and their mom, I suspect, will go and live near one of them. They’ll have each other. But my daughter, she’ll need someone.”
“I told you—she’s my life.”
Inside, Devin lacked conviction—he didn’t feel in control of himself, much less of the world. But he gave no hint. Learning to show scant emotion around his mother had given him a carapace of stolid stoicism sufficient to mask the persistent anxiety and paranoia only alcohol quelled.
At the kitchen door, comrades in booze, they shook hands.
“Thank you, son.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her—I promise. I’ll die myself, first.”
Frank Meade’s funeral, much sooner than anyone anticipated, only six weeks into the spring semester.
Back in Edgewater County at the newer Memorial Gardens near Chilton rather than the old cemetery downtown. February, gray, threatening rain. A funeral day like out of a movie.
Later than night, Libby, asking Devin to drive her back to the cemetery.
Tramping through the darkness up the gentle slope and finding Frank’s grave, fresh—the smell of rich, tilled earth, of the impending springtime, of planting season. The ground, his resting place for all eternity. A plot next to him, secured for his wife.
Frank Meade, Devin thought, left body intact; whereabouts of soul, unknown.
Libby, silent, clinging. “It’s over.”
“What did that asshole do to you?”
Shaking. “Nothing that’s worth saying out loud.”
“Then you made it, babygirl. You made it through.”
Libby, striding with head held high, already halfway into the next row of graves. Calling back after Devin, who lingered.
Libby, echoing across the hillside of grave sites. “Shall we go?”
“Yeah. Getting the creeps.”
“The next scene is the one where I move on,” she said.
Frank had been wrong about one thing—Libby didn’t need Devin. One look in her resolute eyes the day her own father got put into the ground told Devin all he needed to know about the love of his life. Tough dame. That much he understood.
Forty-Five
Billy
At last, Billy’s best opportunity to petition Libby in person came in a chance encounter on the street, late, after another raucous Meat Mallet gig outside dingy rock club Slim Lupo’s, punk pogo, sprays of beer, hardcore thrashing for an hour or so. All of it had left him empty. Going through the motions. Quitting.
Lurching out of the stage door and down a short alley, hunched over, rolling his heavy bass amp, shiny and black, the nicest piece of equipment of any member of Meat Mallet, or for that matter of the precursor band called Choking Hazard, Billy had yelped with surprise:
Devin and Libby, arm in arm, appeared wraithlike from around the corner. Her beautiful eyes, popping open. She drew close to her man.
Awkward.
Billy, emitting a series of squawking sounds outside Mucky’s beat-to-shit step van, realized he had club-ears, shouting at the top of his lungs from the near-deafness he’d suffer for most of the next day. The band had inherited the van from the Turnbull family business, a successful and longtime plumbing concern down in Charleston. Wealth or not, how anyone had come to such a proletarian and scatological career Billy hadn’t a clue, but proof may be found in the pudding, and the Turnbulls lived in a mansion South of Broad, the old money part of Chucktown. The plumbing, maybe a front for Southern-fried organized crime. Who knew.
Who cared.
Libby.
Smiling and going for nonchalant, but his breaking, high voice, Billy knew, blew his cover. “Just had a fantastic gig inside.”
“Cool, dude.”
“What about y’all?”
“We caught Miller’s Crossing at the Bijou.”
Billy had seen it earlier that week, but halfway through had fallen asleep. “Those Coen Brothers—geniuses. Damn their eyes.”
“Time will tell,” Libby spoke up. “It wasn’t as satisfying as Blood Simple.”
“Brilliant movie, there.”
“I couldn’t half figure out what was going on,” Devin said.
“You dozed off, is why.”
Devin, Billy; secret, sleepy comrades in arms.
Libby, fake-yawning. “Well. I’m tired. C’mon.”
Billy, watching an opportunity slip away, blurted, “Libby, please—there are things which simply must be said.”
“Tell them to my boyfriend.”
“Just let him say his piece,” Devin said, weary. “So we can get on our way.”
His heart thudded. “Is it all right with you, Ruck? Five minutes?”
Devin, belching: “Told y’all what I think.”
Libby, steadfast. “And the answer’s still no.”
Billy knew his desperation pitiful, but his inhibitions, tempered by alcohol. “It feels wretched to beg.”
Libby, glaring with simmering animosity. “If it means I’ll be allowed to go home, fine. I have a headache.”
Devin, bowing, went across the street to wait. And, as Billy knew, to keep an eye on them both.
Passing in and out of the orange ovals cast by the streetlights, Billy and Libby strolled up the block. She stayed about four feet away from him.
“If you touch me, I’ll scream. I swear I will.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Libby stopped and hurled herself around. Her eyes, flaring. “So what do you want?”
“Don’t be that way, please.”
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 33
