Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  The beach and the night, now a thousand centuries ago. So present, Libby. Real enough in his mind to still touch her.

  If only.

  In the backyard? Only granite and crabgrass, skeeters and flies. He dropped the butt into the grass of the pet cemetery and ground the stub into the dry green blades.

  Licking his lips, Devin went to get out the lawn mower, to change the oil and cut this shaggy yard. And to think about nothing while he done it, too, pardner. If he could manage it.

  Cats, cats, cats—much fun had once the women sought to learn of Prudy’s ultimate disposition. It had been the only time Devin had let himself have a good solid weep, all three of them together, over the story of Prudy’s decline and the decision to say goodbye at the vet out in Colorado. Like all the other cats here in Chilton here under the grass. Like normal. That’s right.

  Before he could get going good on the yard work, Devin watched as his mother, waving for his attention, came hobbling onto the deck with two glasses of iced tea.

  “Edward Devin Rucker—pick up that cigarette butt from the ground where my babies lay in repose. You little heathen.”

  Spitting and cursing, he nonetheless policed up the butt, stuck it into the deck ashtray, a rusted Charles Chips tin like they used to have delivered back in the 80s. Half full of sand, it stunk now of ash and nicotine rather than salty snack food. Sat by the wooden steps, which were slippery after a rain.

  The steps Creedence said she fell down.

  By accident.

  Devin kept meaning to reopen the file on that case.

  Mama set down the two tall sweating glasses of tea on the glass patio tabletop. Each beverage was graced with a slice of lemon and a sprig of fresh mint from her own herb garden.

  “Devin, darling?”

  He leaned forward on his cane at the top of the steps. “Yes, mother dear?”

  “Why on earth do you wander in this yard every day?”

  “Trying to keep off the roads.”

  “It’s perfectly safe in this neighborhood.”

  “Yeah—but it’s hotter out on the asphalt.”

  “Oh, p’shaw. Stubborn as ever. Come have a cold drink with me. It’s so muggy today I’m liable to melt,” she said, coughing. “Sit with me a spell.”

  Devin, pacing on the deck. “Fall weather’ll com in when the State Fair starts. That’s what Daddy always said.”

  “Your daddy would’ve known.” She lit a menthol. “Son, I can’t stand the way you don’t hardly never sit down and relax. Standing there with your hands in your pockets. Hobbling back and forth on them bad legs of your’n.”

  “I spent a lotta time sitting before. I reckon.”

  “Like you’re always late for something. Or waiting for somebody.”

  “I am waiting on something.”

  She asked what.

  “For you to quit watching my every move and commenting on it.”

  “You hush that smart mouth and sit down.”

  Devin, relenting, opened the patio umbrella, a bright floral print of deep burgundy and brilliant green, cranking the handle, a sound effect. Sweat trickled down into an eye. He sat.

  He and his mother sipped their tea, sweet as candy. They put down the heavy glasses in unison. Clunk.

  “Sure is hot out here. Mercy-me.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  Eileen, humming to herself. Working up to it: “I know we ain’t talked much all summer, since you woke up. I know how you haven’t felt like it.”

  “No’m.”

  “But I thought—we could talk about some things.”

  “I’ve talked it out enough already with them pill-pushers and head-case quacks.” Devin, a fresh butt scissored smoldering between fingers stained yellow, indelible, by nicotine; his mother, lighting her own menthol version. “Remember? You paid for it.”

  “But them doctors ain’t your mother, son. I’m the only one who really loves you. Who knows you.”

  “We talk every durn day. Sometimes that’s all we do.”

  “I noticed you ain’t been going to your meetings like you did at first.”

  A slow burn. “You don’t see me pounding cold ones, do you? Sitting in front of the TV every night with you and Creedence? Ain’t like you can hide it.”

  “No.”

  Truth was that on many days, he still felt as thin and unreal as when he’d been drinking. Thinking about Libby, about Prudy. Wondering about the point of sobriety.

  “Dry as a bone. Trust me. I—I ain’t crazy no more.”

  Eileen, aghast. “Son, you wasn’t never crazy. If you want to see that, go downtown and watch Howdy Shull,” a notorious Edgewater County fixture, “marching back and forth with slobber hanging out of his mouth.”

  “Medical science would tell ya there’s range on these things. But whatever.”

  “You just had a little alcohol problem. You didn’t work on it too good for a long time. But now you have, and you’re over things. It’s all better, now.”

  Smiling at his mother, a sickly, insincere expression. “Ah, but Mama dearest, the first thing they tell you is you don’t never really get over being an alkie. Part of the acceptance shit, or whatever. Accepting that I’m weak, weak, weak,” mocking, fluttering his hands toward the sky. “That I got character flaws and shit. Yep yep. All packaged and inventoried and evaluated like a pallet of Spam fresh off the truck at the Wally-world.”

  “There’s always a way to get over things.”

  “Mama: Let me ask you something.”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Did you love Daddy?”

  “Well, Devin. I never in all my life.” Her impugned Southern dignity, palpable. Eileen, fanning at cluster flies. Sticking out a defiant chin. “What possesses you to ask me such a thing?”

  “Sometimes I wonder, is all.”

  “Maybe you do need to talk some more to a doctor. That’s the most foolish thing I ever heard come out of that filthy mouth.”

  Devin, hating her, but losing his ire like a piffle of sour breath whooshing back out of a child’s party balloon. He’d thought she was about to spill the beans about her obvious illness. “When we gonna talk about you?”

  “Me? There’s nothing to talk about. My children are the ones who need to talk through their various travails.”

  “Nothing to discuss?”

  That Eileen fury reared its head. “I swear, but you children are driving me to distraction. There ain’t nothing wrong with me. There’s never been anything wrong with me. If there was? You’ll be the first to know.”

  Hightailing his ass inside, Devin slammed the sliding glass door with finality; the conditioned air hit his damp skin, a cold shock to his system. Sure that she’d get up and follow him. Acting like nothing had happened, fussing around about dinner.

  Cats, a brood, wandering in and out of his field of vision. Trying not to look at Prudy’s food dish, which he’d placed without comment amidst the expansive collection of bowls found in strategic places throughout the house of now nine cats.

  Phone ringing, Devin, startled, snatched up the handset from the granite breakfast-bar. “It’s your nickel, start yapping.”

  “Dude.”

  His eyes rolled to the heavens—Billy. Not again. Devin, having a hard time of late talking to his old friend, who, for all the other issues, had become a bad influence to a man in recovery.

  “What it be, beau?”

  “Everything status quo up there?”

  Noting a slight slurring of his friend’s words. “Doing the best we can.”

  “Doing all right—with it all?”

  Chuckling at all this concern from everyone. “Legs getting strong.”

  “I—didn’t mean that.”

  “Right. I’m dry as Death Valley. No worries there.”

  “Thank goodness,” a rueful tone. “Keep it that way.”

  “We try our best to maintain over here at old Teetotaler Plantation.”

  “Ruck, there is
no try, there is only do; or do not.”

  “Okay, Mr. Miyagi.”

  “Yoda, bro. The fucking Jedi master. Keep it straight.”

  Devin, tiring. “So to what do we owe the extreme pleasure of this phone call, oh my brother?”

  Billy, hesitant. “Say—could I yak at Creedence? For a hot minute?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  Her face lit up at the mention of Billy’s name. She almost fell off the chair. Prancing with the phone up the stairs to take the call.

  Devin, of late peering into her crystal blue irises, thought for the first time since forever how those eyes looked so apart from anyone else’s in the family. The big joke always made, not knowing from where on earth little Creedence had come.

  The eyes.

  The red hair.

  The afternoon of his mother, and Uncle Hill.

  A shock of recognition struck Devin in the kidneys like the time he gotten mugged and beaten by a Vietnamese street gang outside a bar somewhere out west. The revelation left him weaker in the knees than he already was. Devin collapsed back onto his narrow childhood bed, the mattress worn and thin, springs squeaking. “Well I’ll be a son of a biscuit-eater.”

  Mama came into the room. “I didn’t really want to talk about none of that mess earlier, darling. Mama knows you’re not drinking anymore.”

  His words felt like objects in his mouth, like small spiders skittering off the tip of his tongue. His heart pounded. “What did you want to talk about?”

  Tearful. “A problem I have.”

  He couldn’t breathe. “Such as?”

  “A problem I might need your help with.”

  At last—her illness. What he could do for her. Deep down, this is what he knew had brought him home. He could sorta-kinda remember a phone call from Creedence that started this whole cycle of events.

  “What’s the trouble? I’m sure it ain’t nothing we can’t fix.”

  “Something I don’t want your sister to know,” she wailed, collapsing and telling him the truth. For the first time since she’d been sneaking away for treatments, she said, the tumor had grown. And how there was no more treatment.

  Not pretending anymore felt like a relief. But the news, and her grief, made Devin count drinks in his mind like an insomniac picturing sheep.

  Sure—he could stay sober and nurse his mother through her death. No problem.

  “We don’t got to tell little Creedence. It ain’t even nothing worth talking about—is it, Mama?”

  “No,” she said, smiling through her tears. “It certainly isn’t, my darling.”

  As such Devin hugged her, held his mother close; they both cried. Later, when they felt better, they went downstairs to fix dinner and smoke together.

  Sixty

  Billy

  About seven-eighths lit by the time his turn to perform at last came around, Billy had a hard time remembering which songs he had chosen. No punk, no jam-band Dead; instead, a populist pick-list of 90s radio hits he hoped would get the room on its feet.

  Otherwise, no longer nervous about warbling out his little cover songs; instead, he fretted whether Creedence would show. When he'd called to invite her, she sounded cautious but excited. Unlike her brother. When Ruck had answered, he sounded only cautious.

  Billy, fully primed and gargling another measure of Crown, no longer felt in need of the beer chaser. If only to find a convenient place to smoke a quick bowl, he’d be all set.

  Eh. The weed, making him all too present these days. Better to have a quick snort or six. Take the edge off that way.

  Wisdom, here. Ruck had just not known how to keep matters into perspective. Not getting too drunk was like screwing hard without having an accident. Billy, getting not-bad over the years at the latter. Working on the former.

  The club, filling up, mostly with musicians about to play to one another, but a few regulars and drinkers hanging around at the bar or at the tables arrayed in front of the small raised stage against the far wall, a Slim Lupo’s logo painted across the cinderblock wall, sound-baffling foam squares hanging down from the open rafters of the ceiling. The building was one of the oldest in the neighborhood, over a hundred years. They said in its original guise, it was used as a horse barn.

  Nicole Braden’s voice boomed over the PA. “Earth to Billy Steeple.”

  Paddy, waving a hand in front of a slack Steeple face. “Hey, ace.”

  “Howzat?”

  “It’s you.”

  “What is?”

  Nodding in the direction of the stage. “The whole of it all, my man.”

  Nicole, at the mic, glared over at Billy with busy eyebrows.

  “Oh,” he said. “Shit.”

  The previous act, a pair of aging hippie chicks with frizzy hair and thick bodies clutching acoustic guitars, the duo heavy on the harmonies and calling themselves Nancy and the Cartwrights, had all-but shuffled their gear offstage. Dead air approached.

  “Come on, old buddy,” Nicole said into the mic. “I don’t vamp.”

  Panicking, he downed a last-gasp of the good stuff and grabbed his guitar case, in the process almost falling over.

  “And now, here’s an old friend from down here in the Market. If you’re as old as I am, you might remember him from hardcore acts like Choking Hazard and Meat Mallet. Billy Steeple.”

  On the depressed trudge up to the stage with his guitar—no one cared, no recognition, no cheers or hoots at the mention of his old bands—his frown next turned upside down. As he hit the riser, he saw, smiling and waving, Creedence! Making her way to a table in the middle. Creedence, appearing hotter than any redheaded Southern belle had the right.

  Yes!

  SPROING.

  Billy, adjusting the mic stand to suit his impressive height, winked at her, broad and comic so she’d notice.

  Creedence Rucker fairly glowed, her eyes like two diamond chips floating in the dim light beyond the stage.

  “Hi everyone,” Billy boomed, plangent and present in the vocal monitor at his feet. “A special shout-out goes to the lovely little redhead over ‘yonder’.”

  Creedence, blushing, self-conscious, hid her face. “Hi.”

  “Hi, angel.”

  He got out his Alvarez acoustic guitar, strumming. Tweaking the tuning. Satisfied, clearing his throat.

  But before beginning his first tune, Billy, shitting a golden brick—none other than Ruck St. Ruck himself came cruising in through the door, relaxed and insouciant like he’d been rolling down Bourbon Street.

  Followed, to Billy’s revulsion and shock, by a sneaky and thrilled Melanie.

  Damn her. Not doing what told. Again.

  Consequences.

  Melanie squeezed her eyes and shrugged at him like a naughty little girl.

  The two of them piling in on top of Creedence at the last available table on the packed floor caused a ridiculous bustle right as Billy about to serenade his way into that other woman’s trousers.

  You selfish assholes. Way to ruin everything.

  Sixty-One

  Devin

  Devin, scrunched in the passenger seat of Chelsea’s green Ford Focus, heading to Columbia.

  To see Billy play at a fucking songwriter night.

  Inside a bar.

  Yeah.

  But it sounded like Billy needed him there.

  Fine.

  His sister, skittish and spastic, motored south down the busy freeway toward Columbia like a scene out of a Mad Max hyper-reality, road warriors on a last chance power drive of un-signaled lane switching, bird-dogging, wild speeding, and generalized near-mayhem. Since coming home from the hospital, Devin, much as he could, avoided cars.

  A Suburban roared by followed by a convoy of big rigs four trucks strong, shaking the Focus frame, blowing their doors off.

  “These people’s nothing but maniacs.”

  “You the one going too slow, GF. At this rate, them wooly-boogers’s liable to run us over.”

  “It sure is
gonna be a pain.”

  “What?”

  “Running back and forth to deal with Mama. After I move over here.”

  “You ain’t gonna have to worry about it.”

  “But—I figured you wouldn’t stay. That you and her—?”

  “You know she’s sicker than a dog, don’t you?”

  Creedence, gripping the wheel. “It ain’t that bad. Look at how busy she stays.”

  “Horse-pucky.” Devin, dying for a smoke. “Sicker than shit’s what she is.”

  “Then it won’t matter either way, eventually. Will it.”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.

  The closest they’d come to discussing her mother’s cancer had been after Chelsea found a pill bottle her mother had stashed away in the trash, had looked it up online and confronted Devin. It was for some kind of renal cancer. Mama’s kidneys had gone bad.

  Well, knock me over, he had thought. I would have figured the lungs, as he anticipated from his own predilections enjoying a bout of future liver cancer. He’d have to get he filter changed, if he wasn’t careful. Hardy-har.

  Devin, stealing glances at his sister. In profile she looked determined, almost defiant. She wasn’t gonna let Mama’s mess bring her down. Her eyes, sparkling with anticipation for the night out in the city. She was fine pretending for a while longer.

  Since his earlier epiphany, he’d been unable to stop regarding her features, the small details, the color of her skin. Turning the apparent facts over in his mind. But not wanting to. Feeling nutted anew over the deception regarding his father’s dignity and bloodline.

  But hey—at least this fresh drama better than thinking of drunk driving accidents and dead girlfriends.

  Creedence, the little mind reader: “Why do you keep cutting your eyes at me?”

  “I was looking at a Ferrari going by on the other side.”

  “You were eyeing me back home, too.”

  Shrugging. “Thinking about shit. The past. That’s all.”

  “You worried about drinking tonight?”

  “Nah.”

  “Should you be doing this?”