The Drifter's Wheel

by Phillip DePoy

  Neither of us felt comfortable sitting down before we were invited to. That parlor was the sort of room where one expected to see the heads of offending relatives mounted on the wall above the mantel—especially given the stern nature of Mrs. Jackson’s brand of religion. No one could hope to meet her standards. She had once told me that Jesus was all good and well for the lesser Christians, but too kindly and coddling for her tastes. She preferred, she said, the Christianity of the Old Testament. When I made the mistake of pointing out to her that Christ had not yet been born in the Old Testament and that the volume was primarily a Jewish historical and educational text, she chased me from her house with a poker from the ornate fireplace set. That had been nearly seven years before, and she clearly still held a grudge. I was a bit surprised that she’d let me in at all, considering her vehemence that day. “Sit down!”

  Andrews and I both jumped. Mrs. Jackson had slipped in behind us, silent and sour.

  “Your home is lovely as ever,” I began, looking around for the right spot to sit.

  “Introduce me to your companion,” she insisted impatiently.

  “Ah. Yes. This is Dr. Winton Andrews,” I said quickly.

  He held out his hand. She stared at it, then up at his face.

  “You’re a real doctor or one like him?” She twitched her head in my direction.

  “Um.” That was, apparently, all Andrews could think of to say. “There.” She pointed where he was to sit. He sat immediately.

  She stared at me. I stared back. That tableau could have lasted hours, but for the entrance of another Jackson. She was dressed in a floor-length Empire dress, her dyed red hair pulled back in a tight bun. I thought she was called Simple but I never knew if that was a name—a sort of Shaker homage—or a description. No one I knew had ever heard her speak, and she was easily in her sixties.

  Simple brought in a tray upon which was perched an ancient teapot and four exceedingly breakable cups.

  I chose the most masculine seat in the room, a leather wing chair that was certainly over a hundred years old. The leather was softer than a baby’s cheek.

  Mrs. Jackson glided to a Queen Anne love seat and settled herself in the exact middle of it—the way Polly Hutchinson Jackson had in her own home in Atlanta. I found that comparison heartbreaking, for some reason.

  The woman called Simple began to pour tea, and Mrs. Jackson coughed for a full minute. Andrews kept glancing my way, obviously nervous beyond the dictates of the situation, for some reason.

  “Truck Jackson,” Mrs. Jackson began abruptly, her voice startling even Simple, who nearly spilled her final cup of tea, “was a war hero. I believe I have a photograph of him in an album somewhere.”

  Simple began handing out teacups.

  “Truck Jackson visited me Monday night.” I accepted a cup from Simple. “Drank coffee in my kitchen.”

  Andrews was so surprised by my blunt approach that I thought his head might begin to spin around.

  “Not much,” Mrs. Jackson responded, almost allowing herself to smile. “He’s been dead for fifty years. Fifty years or more.”

  “Yes,” I said instantly, resting my teacup on my right knee, “that’s what I found so unusual about his visit.”

  Simple held a cup out in Mrs. Jackson’s direction, but she waved it away with a flick of her bony wrist.

  “Revenant,” Simple said, not to anyone in particular.

  “I agree.” I took a single sip of tea.

  “Not good. This time of year.” Simple appeared deep in thought.

  “He also paid his respects to Lucinda Foxe,” I said, staring into my cup, “and to Hovis Daniels before he came to my house.”

  “Hovis?” Mrs. Jackson sat up even straighter—a feat I would not have thought possible—and focused her eyes on mine.

  In the light of the parlor it was easier to see her eyes past her glasses. They were black coals where heat had once been—and could be again with the proper fuel, I thought.

  “The man told Hovis he was a World War II hero, told me he was a veteran of World War I, and insisted to Lucinda that he’d fought in the Civil War. But he also told her that his name was Jacob.”

  Simple stopped moving. Mrs. Jackson stopped breathing. Talking about ghosts as if they had actually visited me was not enough to slow down our conversation, but the mention of Jacob Jackson brought everything to a halt.

  “Simple, please sit down,” Mrs. Jackson commanded after a moment.

  Simple sat almost immediately, on an embroidered footstool, and leaned forward like a child. It couldn’t have been a comfortable posture.

  “We don’t mention that name in this house, Dr. Devilin,” Mrs. Jackson sniffed. “I expect you know that.”

  “I know that someone visited me and Lucinda Foxe on the same night, claiming to be a Jackson. He had a gun, and I believe he killed the man who was found behind your house Tuesday morning. The sheriff, for reasons of his own, has arrested Hovis Daniels for the murder. The strangest verifiable fact in this matter is that the dead man and our visitor look enough alike to be brothers. And since the one who’s still alive claims to be at least two or three of your relatives, the sheriff wanted you to have a look at the dead body to see if you recognized him. Since you won’t do that, I have questions of my own.” I took a breath. “That, in a nutshell, is the situation.”

  “Ordinarily I’d ask you to leave after a bag of wind like that,” Mrs. Jackson said, sitting back. “But I understand that you’re a troubled boy, and I must have patience with the damaged souls of this earth. I suppose anyone raised by those trashy parents of yours would grow up bent and broken. So I forgive you, because it is my Christian duty. But keep your tongue civil. My patience is not boundless. Ask anyone.”

  She glanced, only for an instant, at Simple, and the woman on the footstool shivered, closing her eyes. I tried very hard not to think too much about that.

  Mrs. Jackson had used a ploy that had certainly worked on most people around her, a combination of sanctimonious religiosity and stiletto attacks on the psyche. It hadn’t worked on me because no one on earth could think or say worse things about my parents than I had, and I found her hypocrisy laughable.

  So I smiled. It seemed to do the trick: She cocked her head at me like a spaniel trying to figure out what had happened.

  “My theory,” I announced, glancing at Andrews so that he might know it was time for him to join the conversation, “is that my visitor was one of two things. The first thing he could have been is, as you have suggested, a revenant, a wandering shadow—”

  “A traveling creature,” Simple piped up.

  I was startled by the sound of her voice. It was melodic and very rich.

  “‘Today I am a warning,’” I quoted, “‘to woman and to man.’”

  “Simple is a great one to sing in our church,” Mrs. Jackson said, without even a hint of pride—or approval.

  “In Mrs. Jackson’s church,” I explained to Andrews, mostly to irritate Mrs. Jackson, “they do not believe in musical instruments, which they believe are primary tools of Satan. They do sing. I’ve told you many times about Sacred Harp music.”

  “Oh, right!” He sat up. “Those weird harmonies.”

  “Simple and I were sharing a moment of one song called ‘I Am a Traveling Creature,’ and it’s a fairly frightening example of the genre. I believe in one verse a dying woman prays for some hope of relief, but the spirit of God says, ‘Too late.’”

  “That’s enough!” Mrs. Jackson exploded.

  “Mrs. Jackson believes in that sort of divinity,” I went on, “one that has more punishment than forgiveness in its arsenal.”

  “I can see that,” Andrews nodded, enjoying the fact that the old woman was getting more and more upset, though he could not have said why it was happening.

  “The second explanation for my company on Monday night,” I pressed, “is that he was a relative of yours, someone who knows the family history and is taking advantage of it for
some reason or another, trying to scare up information, perhaps, about family money. I’m trying to understand it, but I keep coming back to the fact that the man himself seemed so confused. And why would he tell me that he was Truck and tell Lucinda that he was Jacob?”

  “Brothers.” Simple was rocking and not looking at anyone.

  “What?” Andrews asked her.

  But she would not even look up.

  “Oh.” I snapped a few of the pieces together. “Polly told me that Truck Jackson came up here to find out about his inheritance, and he was shot by his brother. And Jacob Jackson left his family and fought against his brother. And the dead man and the killer are probably brothers. Nice work, Simple.”

  She smiled but did not look my way.

  “Right.” Andrews joined in, attempting to needle the old woman. “Civil War. Brother against brother. You people in this part of America are still on about that, I’m told.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Mrs. Jackson snarled. “Let me set you straight. Robert E. Lee was Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union army. Did you know that? Lincoln only chose Grant after Lee turned him down! Did you know that Lee cried like a child when he made the decision to lead the Confederate army instead? Before the war, Lee was the Democratic Party’s leading contender to run against Lincoln in the next election.”

  “Look, no argument you could ever make would convince me that slavery—” Andrews sneered.

  “The war was not about slavery!” Mrs. Jackson’s voice was nearly at the edge of the range of human audibility. “It was about economics. It was about what sort of country we were going to have. It was a war between agrarian ways, which are God’s ways—living off the land God gave us—and industrial ways, which are Satan’s ways—living off the stinking inventions of little men. Jacksons never had slaves—not since we came here in 1692. Never would. We do our own work, and we glory in the work. Why would we turn that glory over to someone else?”

  “Dr. Andrews doesn’t really need a lesson about—” I interrupted.

  “And as for Jacob Jackson,” she continued, turning her venom my way, “he was a traitor to the family. He suffered in his last hours—he lived in Chicago, a town of stinking industry. In a tiny rooming house in Chicago, he became obsessed by the notion of reuniting with his family in Georgia. He felt he must repair a rift before he died—a rent in the fabric of his family that he must mend. This consummation was all but extinguished, however, when every letter he wrote to us was returned unopened. He discovered that he was dead to his family in Georgia. So they would be dead to him, too. He forgot about us—and about almost everything else—by means of a carefully planned program of spending all his money on prostitutes and liquor.”

  “The man in my kitchen told me he was Truck Jackson, married to Polly Hutchinson.” I stared back at Mrs. Jackson, hoping she would understand that I was interested in the present more than the past—admittedly an unusual circumstance for me. “If I could just—”

  “That was Jacob!” she objected. “You’ve got it all confused. Jacob met that singing Hutchinson girl when he was up at Gettysburg; they married in Illinois.”

  Without warning, Simple jumped up and left the room.

  Mrs. Jackson shook her head, as if shouldering a burden that would be too great for a lesser mortal. “That girl. Excuse her, if you can.”

  “I’m a bit confused myself,” Andrews piped up. “I’m an outsider. I don’t quite understand this business of Truck Jackson—the real one, back in the fifties, and some inheritance that ended up provoking his demise.”

  “Truck Jackson was a war hero!” Mrs. Jackson rasped. “War hero. I believe I have a photograph of him in an album somewhere.”

  “You said that,” Andrews told her slowly.

  “I did?” A momentary chink in her armor appeared; she shifted in her seat, and it was gone. “He and his brother, James, got into an argument about dividing up this property. I would not stand for it. I will keep this property intact! It must remain as it is.”

  “What did Truck want?”

  “No.” She waved her hand at me as if she were casting a spell. “James wanted to divide it. Truck didn’t care. He sided with me. They argued—”

  “Did this James person have any specific division of the property in mind?” Andrews asked.

  “What?” She had to take a moment to think. “He … I believe he wanted the bottom twenty acres for himself.”

  I turned to Andrews. “Where Hovis Daniels’s shack is located?”

  “Hovis.” Mrs. Jackson said the name the way most people cursed. “Hovis killed little Barbrie. She was my great-niece once removed, and the sweetest flower of these hills.”

  Before I could pursue that line of thinking, Simple bounded back into the room with a piece of yellowed paper in her hand.

  “Not all were sent back.” She sat on her stool, flushed.

  “What have you got there?” Mrs. Jackson nearly rose to a standing position.

  “Some of the letters from Jacob were kept. Someone in this house, not Edna, has some. I found them. Here’s one.”

  She held it out, a wildflower found in a darker part of the forest, to everyone’s surprise.

  “Give me that!” Mrs. Jackson demanded.

  “Listen,” Simple said to me, drawing the letter backward to her face. “‘I told her I had not injured my leg in the battle at Gettysburg. I told her I had injured it wrestling with an angel. That’s what made Miss Hutchinson fall for me.’”

  “Simple,” Mrs. Jackson growled. “Where did you get this nonsense?”

  “I’d like to hear it,” Andrews said in a very jolly fashion.

  A brief war played itself out across the face of Edna Jackson—it was a war between good manners and personal anger. Manners, for the moment, won out.

  “Very well,” Mrs. Jackson grumbled.

  Simple smiled, and continued reading. “’She thought I was speaking metaphorically about the struggle of humankind. She looked into the well of my eyes, down to the bottom. There she saw a perfect reflection of her face, because that was all I could think about. We were mad for each other. Before the older women at her church could stop it, fire had seized us both.’”

  Simple stopped reading for a moment and looked up at me with a face generally reserved for medieval portrayals of the Annunciation, and then she turned again to her letter.

  “‘Married, our passion exploded. I often ran from the field in the middle of the morning to be with Polly. I ran. Six years and four children later, I still can’t go more than a few hours without wanting her close to me. She feels the same way. Our desire is not shamed by public opinion. We hold hands—no, we clutch hands—in church. We kiss on the street. We never let more than three sentences pass without a sweet name falling from our lips. And when I look at my babies I am often unable to make words properly. I think they are starlight. I think they are diamonds. When I pitch hay, I toss every other forkful onto them. It makes them shriek with laughter. Delight in the golden rain. You can always see us, the whole family, planting roses, painting the farmhouse, singing in the kitchen while we make dinner. There isn’t a man in the world who loves his own family more.’”

  I was wondering why some of the letter sounded vaguely familiar to me when Mrs. Jackson wrecked the gentler air in the room.

  “That’s why it must have been such a shock to everyone,” Mrs. Jackson interrupted, her voice like an ungreased mill wheel, “when he ran off one day and never came back.”

  “The rain just wouldn’t stop,” Simple explained. “It says so in another letter. It started in March. By the last week of May there were two clear days in a row—but they were too late. The corn was ruined, along with the Jacob Jackson family. A great deal of Indiana was flooded. The governor declared a state of emergency. Jacob was inconsolable. His heart was broken by the ruin of his fortunes, and it set fire to his mind. Something is lost in that kind of a fire—a compass or a gyre—whatever it is that keeps a man li
ke that on track. I believe his mind capsized.”

  “He was looking for some reason why his life had been heaped with travail and tribulation,” Mrs. Jackson sighed with a kind of self-satisfied resignation. “He thought he was Job.”

  “He wasn’t,” Simple objected. “He was Jacob—but he didn’t know what that meant. Anyway, it’s easy to see how a confusion like that might have happened. All that stands between Jacob and Job are the little letters a and c—and those letters stand for ‘alternating current,’ as a child learns in school. Only this was the alternating current of the Universe, the electricity of the spheres.”

  Andrews stared at Simple, his mouth actually wide open.

  “Jacob wrestled with an angel,” I began, partly to explain Simple’s line of thinking to Andrews, partly to support it.

  “I know,” Andrews said softly, “but the electricity of the spheres—”

  “What I’m wondering,” I said to Mrs. Jackson, “I mean, the question I have turning in my mind, is this: What did Jacob do about his economic travail?”

  “He thought he could come home,” Mrs. Jackson crackled. “He was desperate enough to think he could muster sympathy in the bosom of his family.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” I nodded. “He came here.”

  “Came back for money,” Mrs. Jackson coughed. “They chased him off the property with dogs. He never came back. He went to Chicago.”

  “He lived in a rooming house,” I said, not certain why I was saying it—or to whom, “owned by someone named Madam Briscoe. There he met a woman, a prostitute, called La Gauchina and had a son with her—named Truck.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that!” Mrs. Jackson exploded.

  “But Jacob Jackson would never see Truck,” I continued, “because one of his relatives from Blue Mountain chased him down all the way to Chicago and shot him at Mrs. Briscoe’s to keep him from ever coming home to this house—”

  Mrs. Jackson’s face was a stern warning. “Dr. Devilin, I must ask you to stop this line of—” Mrs. Jackson warned.

  “—to keep him from ever inheriting any of this land. He was murdered by his brother, just like Truck was murdered—over some alleged inheritance.”