Well, dang.
Melanie, however, put the kibosh on notions of further partying. Reminding Billy about obligations. Pulling him away from Creedence she said, firm: “We need to get ourselves home, now. We have ourselves a wedding to plan, don’t we?”
Wait—wedding? But hadn’t Melanie’s cadence gone UP at the end? Seeming to Chelsea like phony enthusiasm?
Outside on the sidewalk, Billy froze. Devin, down the block, paced in a circle and smoked. Her brother looked in the streetlamp glow as though talking to himself.
Billy announced that he needed to rap with his brotherman for a spell. “Why don’t y’all hang here and talk gal stuff for a bit?”
Melanie, harsh: “Just hurry up, now.”
Billy, thrusting his guitar case at her, said thanks.
The women watched them stroll away down the sidewalk. The cherry-eye glow of Devin’s cigarette faded in the darkness.
Melanie squinted at their retreating backs. She clutched Billy’s guitar against her body. “Well, that’s one thing I’m thankful for.”
Feeling old and ugly next to Melanie, she tried to stand with one leg bent inward and hands on hips, nonchalant but sexy. Chelsea asked about the one-thing.
“That Billy doesn’t smoke freaking cigarettes.”
“Be glad. Mama and Devin’s like living with two chimneys.”
Melanie turned imploring, a crumbling facade. “But he smokes so much marijuana.”
“He does?” Shocking. Drugs—that explained tonight.
“He always smoked, more than I liked? But I didn’t worry about it too much?”
“It ain’t so bad. So’s I’ve read.”
“They say pot isn’t as deleterious as alcohol, yes, and no one ever died from it. But, now he’s drinking hard liquor straight out of the bottle. Sometimes early in the day.”
“That’s not too good.”
Averting her dewy eyes, she said with disbelief: “He keeps blowing me off with the most ridiculous rationalization.”
Chelsea asked what.
“‘The people on TV all do it’. Can you believe that?”
This all seemed overwrought. A little high-strung, Miss Priss? It so happens I used to smoke weed with him back in the day, so ha-ha to you.
Knowing better than to make excuses for drinking too much, and yet: “He’s partying a little too hard. That’s all. You know men.”
Melanie grabbed Chelsea by the arm. “Creedence—you knew him a long time ago.”
“We hung out some. So to speak.”
At that Melanie narrowed her eyes. “What was he like in those days? Him and Ruck?”
Chelsea, picturing Billy sitting on the edge of the bed that awful night, pulling his T-shirt on over a strong, beautiful back. How she had put her hand there, from which he’d recoiled.
“I didn’t know him too good.” She gestured down the block. “The boys are the ones who were close.”
“I get that.”
“Billy was real strong for him. After what happened.”
“He says it was awful. A car accident, right?”
Chelsea held out her hands, a helpless gesture. “We got a lotta DUI in South Carolina. So sad.”
“Billy… he’s so different from all the other guys I’ve dated. So—what’s the word?”
“Well-spoken?”
“Erudite? Yes. Billy’s quite sophisticated. You should see his collection of art cinema. He went to present a major paper at a national conference only this spring.” She sighed. “I went to private school, UGA and now almost have a masters from Southeastern, mind you, and I haven’t even heard of half of the movies he likes.”
“Don’t surprise me none.” Imagining Billy’s fancy movies. Remembering Libby, and all her filmmaking dreams. “He’s a character, all right.”
“All of those Charleston boys back home, and the fraternity brothers here? Juvenile beyond measure. So weak and unmotivated. Did you know Billy has a producer in Hollywood interested in his screenplay?”
“Like—for a movie?”
“I’m certain his dreams are coming true. He’s not always patient, but—” Laughing and demure, covering her face. “Goodness, but we fit together well. Like he was made for me.” Now her tone turned chilly. “And me for him. If my meaning is clear. Little miss back-in-the-day.”
Chelsea’s envy, sparking into full blue flame like a burner on Mama’s Jenn-Air range. “How wonderful for you both. And, I don’t have a clue what you’re suggesting.”
“You’re married, correct?”
“Yes,” unwilling to admit the failure to have a successful marriage. “I am.”
“Stick with hubby, Edgewater County. Understood?”
Chelsea Rucker Wallis, forcing a smile, hadn’t felt this aghast since she realized Dusty was literally belt-whipping her.
With hand-flapping nonchalance: “It’s wonderful when it’s so right. I’m so happy for you both.”
Shouting voices, in the distance; Melanie, frowning.
“Did you hear that?”
Chelsea got a cold-wash of anxiety in her gut. “It sounded like Billy and Devin.”
Sixty-Four
Billy
The two pals strolled around the corner from Lupo’s. They shuffled along in the direction of Roy Earl’s coffee beanery, which at this hour sat closed-up tight. Ruck, not only burdened with a cane but also pausing to cough and hack snort into the gutter, lagged behind Billy, with his big-legged strides.
He caught up. “I oughta chain-gang your ass.”
“When I saw you, I called an audible with that one.”
“Thanks.”
“Not my best decision.”
“What was that mess in there, dude?”
“It’s just a song, after all.”
“Much as songs mean to you, Bill?” Devin, low and rueful. “Hard for me to believe you on that one.”
Billy turned haughty. “I wouldn’t have done ‘Chain Gang,’ but it seemed like old times. But—I didn’t invite you. Did I?”
“You called to invite my sister. Is what it sounded like. Which is why I decided to come.”
Billy, short of breath, regarded his old pal with unmasked loathing. He worked his lips. Nothing came out but a liquor belch.
“Say what you gotta say, big man.”
Billy, no thoughts in his head other than movie lines, song lyrics, other people’s words. Thinking he might either vomit or cry; his lantern jaw working, soundless, until finding the right words, the right lyric.
“Maybe there isn’t a vein of stars calling out our name.”
“Do what, now?”
Collapsing against the wall of the neighborhood flower shop, Billy shuddered, wished for a drink.
“Bill—?”
“Cracks in the pavement,” he explained in an exhausted wheeze.
“What about ’em?”
“You have to watch your feet for them.”
A couple of sorority-girls passed by—passing as far away from the men as possible. They whispered and snickered at Billy leaning against the wall.
Examining his dirty Birkenstocks, big grimy toes sticking out, he cursed the young women and said to Ruck, “I’m not finding the right words.”
“What’s the issue?”
Billy’s answer? A gesture, expansive; sweeping his arm in a vast arc as if to say:
The street, the cars; the sky, the stars.
Devin, smoking and exhaling, watched as his brotherman, mumbling nonsense, hung his head and choked off a sob.
“You is drunk as a coot, boy.”
Billy raised his head. “Hypocrite.”
“Not I, said he.” Devin held out his hands—steady as rocks. “And for what it’s worth? I didn’t come back so you, or anybody, would swap out places with me and start drinking like there ain’t no tomorrow.”
“Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about your issues.”
“So what’s it about? Creedence?”
“Not so much.�
�
Devin smiled and shook his head, took a deep breath. “Before all that shit went down with us? I figured we could’ve been best friends, you and me.”
“You mean over what happened this spring?”
“No, dicknut. Before the Dead show.”
“Oh. Understood.”
Devin took a step toward Billy, who drew back against the wall of the flower shop with what appeared to be earthly terror.
“But, Bill—I wouldn’t mind another go around on the old friendship merry-go-round. If you’re game.”
“That’s so sweet of you,” cringing and biting the heel of his hand. “So generous.”
“But, dude.” Definitive. “I can’t hang watching you slurp booze and blow fumes in my face.”
“You shouldn’t, maybe.” Desperate. “But you could.”
“Not worth it,” without meeting Billy’s eyes. “I have—my sobriety to lose.”
Billy seemed gripped by a notion. “Ruck: a favor.”
“Anything besides doing a shot with you.”
“Gonna sound weird.”
Devin, like: try me, pal.
“Let me suck your cock.”
Devin, smoking and letting the offer settle. “Um—pardon?”
Billy, pulling his friend over to him. “Let me taste it.”
“Dude, get off me.” Ruck pushed away, stepped back. “Fuck off, bro.”
“I beg you. You don’t get it. I had this idea—I’ll be able to taste her.”
“You sick fuck.”
“Oh, god—please let me get close to her. To you both.”
“I’m-a whip your ass all over again.” The men grappled across the street from the last spot they’d fought outside Roy Earl’s. He tried clutching at Ruck, who swung with his cane, bonking Billy across the clavicle.
Hollering in pain, he let go.
“Now,” Ruck said. “Dude. Let’s get you some coffee.”
Billy shoved Devin against the wall. His cane clattered to the concrete.
“Now let me fucking suck your motherfucking cock, you dumb redneck.” He roared with insistence. “I’m not asking.”
The echo slapped back from the opposite row of businesses.
A stare-off. Both needed to catch their breath.
At last. “Bill? Love ya, but I decline this privilege.”
Billy released Ruck. With an air of supercilious scorn: “Suit yourself. The point anyway is to forget the past. Forget our troubles, not wallow in them. Now let’s go get a drink,” he shrieked.
Ruck, unperturbed by his friend’s outburst, picked up his cane and fumbled in his pocket for a smoke. “Dang, beau—I’da thunk you’d be a little more considerate of my condition. But yeah, I’d need a bracer to get my joint worked on by you. You crazy fucker.”
Billy, a flash of lucidity and self-consciousness. “Of course you’re right, Ruck—right as rain. Right as any of us.”
“Wouldn’t go that far.”
“Listen to me, with all my drunken talk of dick-sucking.” He tsk-tsked. “It’s all an act. My little Andy Kaufman routine.”
“I sure hope so.”
“Let’s go and collect these girls. I’ve been a sodden idiot tonight, and I apologize. Perhaps I’m going through a midlife crisis a little early.” The two headed back around the corner.
“Everybody’s been put through the ringer. Creed’s divorce, all my bullshit. It don’t never seem to end.”
“I must say, that sister of yours?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s a fine lady.”
“I ain’t been too good a brother to her. That much I know.” Pausing. “Maybe I got a chance to make it up, now.”
“Sounds like a beautiful thing.”
“Man—you okay?”
“I was nervous about singing. Too much too fast.”
“Been there; done that.”
“Hey—forget all that talk back there.”
“Already have. Booze fucks with your head, heart and soul, brother. You ain’t got to apologize for nothing. Not anymore.”
Billy and Melanie together on the sidewalk; he tried to put a good face on the fact that he yearned for Creedence, still. His throat closed in grief as they watched the siblings jaywalk over to the parking lot.
Ruck turned back and caught Billy’s eye; the men, sharing a moment. The look they shared, portentous, like in a movie where the actor’s faces represent emotions no amount of hoary scriptwriter dialogue could adequately convey.
Sixty-Five
Devin
He finally went to see the other passenger.
Dobbs and Libby Vandegrift, the happy couple, received Devin sitting on the floral-print couch in their tasteful, formal living room, a traditional family home: this corner-lot anchor situated on a quiet street in a subdivision not far from the new Tillman Falls interstate exit, why, it represented the American dream. Felt comforting in every way.
The couple had been married for fifteen years. Established, as folks say.
The cries of children at play, from another part of the house.
Devin, confused and nervous; told, beforehand, smoking not permitted.
Dobbs, no wheelchair.
Rising, effortless, to a standing position.
Presenting himself, a Christlike figure in pressed gray slacks, a sky-blue oxford stretched taut across a Southern man’s belly. The famous curly hairline now in recession, feet shod with worn topsiders, a middle-aged gent who’d feel well at home anywhere in a place like Edgewater County.
Dobbs, whom they said would never walk again.
Dobbs.
Walking.
His face is so young. Like ain't no time passed at all.
Devin said this aloud, the words feeling glued onto a thickened tongue.
A shift in the refraction of brilliant light from an unknown source; Libby, her young self again, too, rose and greeted him.
Back to Dobbs, now become the man in the pool.
Hanging upside down in the corner.
Drifting, languid; his wheelchair sitting under him, empty.
Libby, glancing over to the apparition and smiling. Winking at Devin, a big thumb’s up. Silent, her words nonetheless came to him:
Life is just a bag of tricks!
Waking up. Five in the aye-yeem. Cursing this latest shitty dream.
A thought, creeping in on cat’s feet: the notion of a palliative to these terrible awakenings.
A shot.
A bracer.
An eye-opener.
Before going to see Dobbs.
Jamming his hands, freezing, under his armpits like in the days of the oldschool tremors, he shuffled to the bathroom he’d gone back to sharing with his sister. He took his toilet while singing:
How dry I am, how wet I’ll be.
Back in bed, Devin switched on the light and read until the sun came up. He’d been going through old books from the bookshelf his mother kept as he’d left it—as she had every other part of his room. Like when he and Dobbs had hung out as teenagers, getting high and listening to records and playing Atari.
A museum exhibit.
A snake eating its tail.
Like ain’t no time passed at all.
Yeah—it all fucked with him. Only day-by-day kept him going; kept him determined.
Seeing Steeple in such sad shape last week hadn’t hurt. If that wasn’t an advertisement for staying straight, nothing would be.
Only one niggling detail—Creedence told him how Melanie had all but blamed Devin’s return on Billy’s current status. Only his reading on recovery and its ideas about guilt being unproductive kept him from getting snippy over it. He had not asked anyone to come get him in Texas. He hadn’t even been going to Texas before Billy called. Who was making whose reality, here?
Such a notion chapped his ass. Also made him want to drink it all away. But, what didn’t?
Day. By. Day.
After dawn he dragged his ass out of bed, made breakfast for
the house, and made sure his mother’s pill-minder was stocked with her pain meds and other prescriptions.
And hoping she had a good day ahead. Mama had begun having more bad ones than good ones. It never rained but poured.
Sixty-Six
Creedence
The phone number, long distance, unfamiliar. At first Chelsea thought the woman calling for Devin was a telemarketer.
Balancing the cordless on her shoulder, she stood chopping carrots; a salad underway. Healthy, her own food, that which was good for her, neither her ex-husband’s diet nor her mother’s rich indulgent cuisine, everything creamy and buttery and fatty to the point that half the time she awakened in the night with the shits. “You’re who, now?”
“Millie. A friend of Ruck’s. Millicent Haversford.”
“You mean ‘Devin’?’
She said she did.
“I’m his sister.”
Silence, a low hum on the line.
“Hello?”
A voice halting, hesitant. “He—Ruck never mentioned you.”
“And who may I say is calling, again? Millie, you say?”
“Yes.”
Creedence, holding out the phone to Devin, standing with stiff body language in the living room.
Frantic, he waved her off as though directing an errant jetliner on the tarmac at Columbia Metro. Forget it, he mouthed. “Not ready.”
“I’m sorry,” hating to lie. “But he’s not here.”
Millie, all tumbling out in a rush. “He’s not there. But, he’s there—right?”
Chelsea, saying if she meant, did he live there? “Yeah. He’s out buying groceries with Mama.”
“I tried his mobile.”
“I think he turned off his service. After he got out of the hospital—you don’t know about that, do you?”
Millie, expressing shock and dismay.
“He fell down some stairs. They didn’t know if he was going to wake up, but, then he did.” Locking eyes with him across the room. “He woke up from a fifteen-year bender and a tumble down a flight of concrete steps onto his pointed little head like it wasn’t nothing. Started smoking and cussing again without missing a note. It beats all anybody’s ever seen,” laughing despite the hot tears running down her face.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 43
