Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  Devin looked into the life of the asshole driving the truck that fateful day. Or intended to, but stopped by the idea that knowing more about a soul troubled enough to drink so much and drive was to wallow in familiar failings.

  No answers there. He already had the answer.

  Dude was drunk.

  Dude was driving.

  Devin, doing the same a million times. Before the accident. Since. What more did one need to understand?

  And so another notion, different research, and yet not:

  A man in a pool.

  Asking Uncle Hill about that country club incident in the summer of Devin’s fourteenth year. What he remembered—who the man had been.

  “That must have scared the mess out of you, finding a dead retarded boy first thing in the morning.”

  “’Twas an eye-opener.”

  “In any case, that fella was Roosevelt Nixon’s cousin, or nephew—the preacher on the radio. Built himself one of them mega-churches over yonder across the bridge.”

  Devin’s skin, stippled with horripilation: The Reverend Nixon. Savior to Prudy. The man of God who’d said grace over the steaming bleeding wreck of the car. This, the reason for at first believing the Reverend to be the Floating Man, come that day of the accident to collect the mortal rent. Their eyes, the same.

  Coming back to him, now.

  All of it.

  He pushed it away.

  Most of it.

  Driving east until getting to the highway of Libby’s death, now expanded to four lanes running from the interstate into Tillman Falls, he smoked and felt at ease. He crossed the long bridge over the coffee-colored Sugeree River and passed into the poor part of town, where the black folks were now being pushed out by mobile homes filled with Latino day laborers, families full of stair-step children and mothers-in-law; they called it Little Mexico across the bridge, now.

  The Calvary Full Gospel Church of the Holy Redeemer remained in full flourish over in Easton township, the unincorporated area over the river. An old clapboard sanctuary sat next to a glimmering, modern glass and brick edifice reaching toward the sky; it reminded Devin of the county administration building downtown that had been constructed during his long absence. Here the work was so recent there remained a fenced-off quadrant of the parking lot with what construction equipment and supplies remained from the build. From the size of his congregation, the Reverend Nixon, a radio preacher, was doing all right, it seemed.

  Devin, rolling onto fresh asphalt dark and smooth, the lines of the spaces crisp and defined, finished his butt and chewed some gum. Being a Friday, only a couple of cars sat parked outside. Devin, hoping a church secretary inside able to direct him to the Reverend.

  Slicking his hair back and brushing off his jacket and pants, he thought: No way is he going to remember me.

  “No way,” Devin said to the empty parking spaces, loping to the sanctuary in his shuffling, post-fall gait. “Dime to a dollar says he won’t.”

  A teenage boy appeared out of the double doors of the whitewashed, weathered older building. Startled by Devin’s presence in the churchyard, he called out.

  Raising a friendly claw, Devin hollered, “Y’all got a Reverend Nixon around here, pardner?”

  A slight hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Wondered if I might have a word with him.”

  “May I ask what this is regarding?”

  Devin, explaining best he could. “It’s about a cat. And his cousin.”

  The boy took it in stride. “Parishioners—they come to my father with all manner of problems.”

  “Reckon it comes with the territory. But, this ain’t no problem. I just need to thank him for something.”

  Tall, rangy and stoic, the teen, in workout sweats, gestured, poised and graceful, for Devin to follow him around the building. “He’s around back.”

  Nixon, in shirtsleeves, wrestled a carton of what appeared to be holiday decorations out of a storage shed while two other, younger boys passed him smaller boxes from within, assembly-line method. He didn’t hear them approaching at first.

  Devin, shuddering at the sight of the strong, wide shoulders of the man, the rolls of flesh at the back of his neck, the dark skin and cropped dusting of now-graying hair, the sweat stains on his shirt; all familiar. More of him now to be sure, but without a doubt, this, the savior from the side of the road who’d taken Prudy. How Devin remembered Nixon best: while lying in the blazing sun, the shattered vehicle, the ticking hissing engine block, as the Reverend prayed over Libby and the other victims, voice quavering: Bless and keep these children of God; mitigate their suffering to come.

  “Father?”

  “Yes, my son?”

  “A visitor.” A manner Devin noted as code between father and son. “Right here.”

  Nixon, peering down his nose at the visitor, gave the skinny white man in the battered jean jacket and aviators the once-over. He handed off the cardboard box to one of his younger sons. Caution informed his deliberate movements.

  He pursed his lips and tilted back his head. “Afternoon. You looking for work?”

  Extending his hand and saying in a loud, nervous tone, Devin laughed, self-effacing. “Nah. Look here—a while back, you done me a solid. I came today to thank you for it.”

  “A favor?”

  “It’s long overdue. Name’s Devin Rucker.”

  Nixon barked a short, mirthless laugh. “Devin Rucker. Now that’s a name I haven’t heard for a long, long time.”

  “Tell truth: You remember me?”

  An enormous hand laid upon a bony shoulder. “I’m afraid so, son. Indeed I do.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  Nixon, a mountainous human being, seemed disturbed by Devin’s skeletal frame. “Heavens, have you lost weight? You must let us feed you.”

  Nixon’s son, at the adolescent stage when parental uttering often caused mortification, castigated his clueless father: “You make it sound as though he’s a stray dog.”

  The Reverend, unmoved by his son’s concern, motioned for the boys to totes boxes inside the new sanctuary. Unhesitant to abide his father’s direction, he did so only with the pursed lips of teenage dissatisfaction.

  “Had me a heckuva spread at lunch. But I appreciate the thought. I’ll take a cuppa joe, if you got one.”

  “That much we can do.” Nixon, looking upon the slender man with concern. “But, have you come here for help?”

  The man knew a drunk or druggie when he saw one. “Like I told the young master there, reckon I’m getting around to saying thanks to a few folks. Or else, sorry for whatever I pulled on them.”

  “You’re in recovery?”

  Devin smiled. “You know the drill—people I come across who helped me out along the way. Or else who I might owe a kind word or two.”

  “Understood. We have meetings here three times a week. A bustling endeavor these days, I’m afraid.”

  “I been all over. Trust me—it’s going around.”

  Roosevelt Nixon closed his eyes, nodded. “Yes.”

  “So—you remember the cat?”

  “Of course.” Putting his arm around Devin, he cautioned, “But your marker, if you had one, is more than clear with me. I begin each morning with a single request of this world, and it is for an opportunity to serve. But in any case, somewhere in my files I still have the lovely card your mother wrote thanking me.”

  Devin, fighting back a roll-tide of emotion. An enormous, sucking breath. “She sent you a card—good. More’n I ever did.”

  “Are you well, my son? Is your life a happy one?”

  He shrugged. “Better than it was.”

  “Life is but our testing ground for how we’ll be received for all eternity.”

  “Sometimes it does feel that long. Don’t it?”

  “Here’s a lesson, a way to approach each new day: The past is complete, and the future is not ours to see, but right now? Right now is a gift, Devin. That’s why they call it the present.”r />
  Devin grunted at what he considered a creaky cliché. “You ain’t the first person to try to explain that to me.”

  Now for the other aspect of Devin’s visit—to tell the Reverend of the day in the pool. Of finding the body, the floating man.

  “Albert? Dear Albert? Another day I remember well. And, that was you?”

  “Kinda blew my mind, finding him. But nothing like what was to come.”

  Shaking his head. “Another tragedy. He never got the chance to deal with his alcohol addiction. It cost him his life.”

  “It’d been so hot that day before—the hottest day of the year, or at least that’s the way I remember it. I knew in my heart that, all that fella had wanted was to cool off. And he had to die for it? Don’t nobody deserve to go over something so basic. Something so innocent. Do they?”

  “Certainly not Albert. Despite his ‘issues,’ as afternoon TV talk show hosts would put it, he was a good soul, with a kind and innocent heart. Alcoholic, though.”

  “Another stupid accident. Him in the pool.”

  “It’s fair to say so, yes.”

  “And as you say, he was a good man. Wasn’t he?”

  “Albert was relatively innocent of baser instincts.”

  “I tried to help him. That’s why I jumped in. To save him, if I could. But too late.”

  “You shouldn’t suffer guilt. His fate was sealed the moment he took a drink of that poison. The liquor, not the water in the pool, was his undoing. Something you know all about, don’t you?”

  He slapped his hands together. Ready, now, to skedaddle. “My Mama’s waiting on me up the road a piece. Thank you again for helping me, and my cat. That’s all I needed to say. That, and sorry it took me so long to say it.”

  “It was the least I could do.”

  “And yet not.”

  “You should know you’re welcome anytime in our sanctuary here.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Glancing over his shoulder at his new church, gleaming in the golden afternoon Carolina sun, he said, “There’s someone inside you may wish to meet. If you have a moment.”

  Devin, perplexed. “Who?”

  “Albert’s mother.”

  “His mother?”

  Nixon, a hand on the sleeve of Devin’s jacket. “I don’t think that she needs to know who you are, not in relation to her son and his death. It devastated her—his older brother had already passed away as well, as a serviceman overseas. But if it would help you to meet her, to say hello? This hour is the time.”

  “Can’t think of a reason not to say ‘howdy’.”

  The men ambled through a set of double doors at the rear of the sanctuary leading into the fellowship hall, with its folding chairs and tables and a small kitchen from which to prepare the bread of life broken amongst brothers and sisters there in the direct sight of God, a deity to whom the faithful were penitent, duly indebted, and, as Devin suspected, likely happy and satisfied at being in such condition.

  A woman, stooped and elderly, nonetheless pulled an oversized tray of steaming blueberry muffins out of the oven as though it were no trouble. The whole joint smelled like a bakery. Devin had lied about lunch—his stomach lying empty grumbled at the heavenly scent.

  Nixon called from the door. “Aunt Lechelle?”

  Lechelle Nixon put her muffins down on the cooling rack. She regarded the hard-eyed white man standing next to her nephew. She took off her oven mitts and came over, a slow shuffle.

  “Y’all like to made me come out of my skin.”

  “Come say hello to someone.”

  “Who this?”

  “A friend of mine,” Nixon said, smiling and beatific. “A dear, old friend.”

  Looking the visitor up and down, she wiped a hand on apron and held it out. “And how are you on this fine afternoon, young man?”

  Devin, seeing her son’s eyes in hers as well as the Reverend’s, but not bulging and feral in horrific acknowledgment of death, instead twinkling with knowledge—with life—behind wire-rimmed glasses. Devin, guessing more than a few of the deep creases in her face attributable to the loss of her sons. “Right as rain, my dear.”

  Lechelle, folding her arms, inquisitive, acted like one of those intuitive types. “You got something to say, Mr. Man—don’t you?”

  “I do, ma’am.”

  “So I reckon you best be out with it.”

  Aching, empathetic, trying to find the words; Devin, holding out hands steady as rocks. “I’m not sure how to put it.” At last he explained: “I knew your son.”

  Her face lit up. “You knew Albert? Or Dewayne?”

  “Albert. He was a good fella.”

  They chatted for a moment; he didn’t make up any lies. Only that he remembered him from them both working at the country club. Her love-light shined at getting to talk about the son she’d been missing for many years. Devin left wondering for whom, truly, this trip to the church today had been taken.

  Seventy-Seven

  Creedence

  Chelsea, grateful to pick up Devin’s other Christmas gift, the one she couldn’t make herself:

  The small cube of a monument from the place over in Tillman Falls where Eileen ordered all the others for her beloved pets. Heavy for such a small stone, the engraving looked simple, perfect. Pleased, though not knowing what Devin might think about her gift. With any luck, a gesture to help him honor the life of his sweet kitty.

  Chelsea, never again hearing back from Billy. That’d changed everything—he didn’t love her. He had only wanted to fuck her, she felt. Typical man.

  Or maybe he was playing hard to get.

  But three weeks? Thanksgiving had come and gone.

  Screw you, Billy. Enough of games. Her dignity and self-confidence, impugned. How could he not call to respond to the message she left? Her apology?

  “I sure am sorry, Miss Rucker.” The old woman working the counter at the monument company tsk-tsk’d as Chelsea scratched out a pink check with cartoon kitty-cat faces, number 103 on her new account. “I know how y’all Ruckers love your little ones so much. Your Mama and them ELMS has damn near paid for that whole new animal shelter they got set up over yonder.”

  “But this one, it’s for somebody who’s been gone for a while already. It’s not so painful.”

  “Still, though. We grieve anew daily for our lost loves—don’t we?”

  “That’s right. You don’t ever stop missing the ones you lose.”

  Seventy-Eight

  Devin

  The holiday season in the Rucker household, lurching from the highest highs to the lowest of lows.

  The biggest ugliness occurred due to Eileen causing a stink on Christmas Eve, the traditional night upon which all the cousins and aunts and other scattered relatives gathered to feast and celebrate the birth of the Savior.

  This year, like most others, finding the house overflowing with a rucksack of Ruckers and a bevy of Eileen-side Bevinses, all of whom were told Eileen had a thyroid issue resulting in her weight loss, general pallor and fatigue.

  Devin, away for so long, had dreaded the holiday experience like few others. As did Creedence, both peppered with a thousand questions about what in God’s name they were thinking by going to live in Columbia, as though the minuscule metropolis a Sodom teeming with sin, or else what Devin had been doing with himself for the last decade and a half.

  Both siblings, for the most part, remained at their most diplomatic, working the room of aging folks who were taken with wonder at Devin’s appearance back home. Thankful for sobriety, as he said again and again; a hand held in front of his mouth to shield his expulsions of coffee- and cig-breath.

  But Eileen, bless her heart; she had to go and set one or more of her children off, and this despite a suspicious, prescient Devin having warned that, however much unbridled all-consuming emotion about family and the past and keeping everybody together might drive her every thought and movement, and despite her illness closing in from all sides—the
latest scans, no bueno, heavy metastasization underway, darn it—if she pulled this one particular stunt? A no-brainer of a family crisis, if not outright old-school Devin-style trouble, likely to occur.

  Picture this:

  A Southern family, multigenerational, gathered around the long formal dining room table. A dozen grownups in total, a few youngsters to the side at a card table but not many, not since Devin and Creedence had failed to reproduce; as-yet, as Mama kept clarifying in a loud, quavering voice. Everyone laughing, talking, eating, most of them county natives, their speech with a musicality and a simplicity to the nature of their conversations: the condition of vehicles; children’s and grandchildren’s activities; the TV programs, daytime as well as primetime; how they understand neither computers nor the state of modern country music; NASCAR; their church pastor and his dramas; how the world was changing so fast; how the world was wicked; how the Lord had a plan.

  Dobbs and his mother, also attending. Dobbs and Devin, together almost every day, now, hanging out if only to sit reading together like an old retired couple. Devin could now drive them, Dobbs and his mother, on outings; to movies, to the library, on errands. Good times.

  Dobbs and Devin, reminiscing with cheer about Eileen cooking them breakfast before school, the scrambled eggs, how Dobbs liked ketchup on his; the albums they had played and cassette tapes too, riding around in Roy Earl’s grandfather’s pickup, listening to Blue Öyster Cult or The Who or any number of other classic rock bands.

  Devin, weary and nostalgic, an uncommon condition—it must have meant Gen X was aging. “As wholesome and marvelous a childhood as anyone who’d ever lived. What we had.”

  Dobbs, a sad smile speaking poignant volumes. “It was a time of innocence and grace.”

  “I sure didn’t know it then. But then, all that gets wrung out of you by life.”

  “Don’t it?” Creedence, chiming in. “Don’t it, though?”

  An opportune moment for Eileen’s guest of honor to appear out of the shadows of the foyer like a golem.