Ghosting (25 page)

She wanted nothing more to do with it and made a point of not thinking about it for several days. She tried to put the event behind her and stayed away from the routine for a while. Yet, after a time, once the immediacy of the terror had softened somewhat, and after she had not seen or spoken to Cole in weeks, the strangest thing began to occur—it was almost like she
wanted
to experience that night again. Like she longed to feel it again. To be tempted toward that darkness again. As a way of understanding; perhaps to hear the warning more clearly.

So she’s been returning to the entire procedure with the greatest precision she can manage. She tries to set it up exactly as it had gone down that night: hung her necklace on the antenna, smoked off a bowl, endured Letterman and his buddy Paul trade jibes, turned off the TV before the musical guest appeared. But she sleeps through the night undisturbed. She has now repeated the process more times than she cares to count, trying to recapture the greatest terror she has ever experienced, practically making a ritual out of the steps she can remember,
practically inviting
that bad, evil, negative element to return to her room so that she might find what it meant, what it wanted from her and what she might find in it to bring to Cole. Yet these nights at home disappear in the peaceful sleep of the oblivious.

Paradoxically, that she doesn’t seem able to make the event reoccur has led her to believe more fervently in the reality of that night, that it was not simply the strength of Greuel’s homebatch weed working on her subconscious, but that Evil is real, an element as real as positive energy, at least, and it is capable of engaging a person body and soul. And it’s like you can just bump into it, accidentally. Lately she discovers herself doing the most menial thing, driving alone or checking in at the new job or standing in line at the kwik-stop, and in her mind she is picturing this entire other galaxy, an entirely separate dimension encompassing this world like a vision out of some medieval fantasy, where there is a perpetual war going on, or at least a yin and yang push-pull conflagration, of Good vs. Evil, absolute energies the human mind can only conceive of as demons and warrior angels going at it in this spinning tornadic vortex for the, what?, the souls of each of us?

Admitting this makes her feel kind of ignorant, and superstitious, and plain silly, which is not how she likes to think of herself. But if she looks at it from a certain angle she can frame it as a kind of gift, too: for whatever reason she has been presented with a brief glimpse into what is
actually going on out there
, just out of sight. If she’s interpreting it correctly. An acknowledgment she finds even more disconcerting and so she tries to avoid that one, too. What if the warning was for her? How would she know to heed it?

Intuitively she feels this is not the case. If it’s a warning it is not for her, it’s for others. The prophets in the Bible underwent such experiences that were meant only for them to share with the others who could not see what they knew. But again Shady thinks the entire notion is silly; she doesn’t live in the world of the Bible. That world ended a long, long time ago, didn’t it.

Cole finds himself frustrated, brought to stasis, treading water furiously and getting nowhere he wants to go, like he’s caught on the far edge of a rapid current whose violence he feels only as a tug near his body, he can’t tell if the pull is irrevocable or if he can still swim to safety. The sense of adventure and the kick of high-risk remains at each run but he’s no longer petrified by the sight of a state trooper and he wonders if this means he is becoming careless. He’s busier than he would choose to be and yet he has little cash in pocket. Half the state’s on one drug or another and it’s like the responsibility has fallen to Cole to insure everyone receives their allotted share.

Spunk tells Cole he’s already the luckiest of couriers. The others never saw Arley Noe or Greuel himself. The other guys in the trade (Spunk says) think Arley and Greuel are voices on a phone. I’m honored, Cole says, but it’s not helping him get any closer to where he needs to be.

“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

“You know what I’m after. This is your world, man. I’m a stranger here for my mother.”

“If that’s what you want to believe. You shouldn’t blame your decisions on your momma, James Cole. I mean look at her. You’re here because it’s your life, man, this kind of thing is just what you were destined to do. That other stuff”—he flips one hand in the air between them—“that’s all just high-talkin’.”

Cole lifts his shoulders, drops them. They are standing in what Spunk calls his new
base of operations
: a self-storage garage rented as a retreat of his own, a hundred-fifty windowless square feet with a rollup for a front door and a screened ventilator fan in the back. The bunker reeks of bong water and feet despite the ventilator fan. Spunk has outfitted the unit with rugs and an old leather battlement of a couch, one that used to reside in Greuel’s basement before Spunk moved his bed down there, the leather peeling and burred in spots, stretched enormous across the wall like some prehistoric rhinoceros that once lay down against the concrete blocks and died. Opposite this sits a Zenith on a rolling stand with an eighties-era VCR—key tabs instead of buttons; atop that is a hi-watt boom box of the latest quality, with a five-disc CD changer and onboard mixer. The VCR no longer works; he uses the TV as a monitor for his Colecovision and Atari games.

A gray pit bull curls into one arm of the couch, a female Spunk rescued from the pack left behind at the seminary. The only one he could get his hands on, he says, and since she has become his property Cole can see Spunk has made up his mind she’s the best of the lot, a pure breed of stellar demeanor, intimidating if he needs her to be, and though Spunk has had her for weeks he has yet to name her. He calls her “my bitch.”

“Check it, I’ve already taught her how to shake. C’mere, bitch!” Cole watches as the dog, which seems either tired or bored, regards Spunk as he tries to get her to raise one paw on command. Her eyes keep flicking away from him, to Cole, back to her master and then to Cole again standing near two potted plants.

“She doesn’t want to play ’cause she’s looking out for me. People think I’m stupid but I can do this business myself. Why I got this place. I don’t know what Arley’s going to do once Daddy’s gone but I got to look after my own self-interests, right?”

A fine haze sifts the ceiling, adding to the ghostly hue cast by a single metal halide grow-light hanging over two small skunk seedlings stuck into gallon buckets. The plants are not thriving. Spunk admits he’s not sure he did right in transplanting them. “I maybe jayed the roots or something,” he says. “My first shot at it. Maybe they’re still shocked from the move.”

“Could be. They look hopeful still. You sure these are females?”

Spunk shoves him sportingly.

“Check’em out. Step up close, don’t be shy.” Cole does as asked, bending closer to study the jagged leaves but they’re too young to make out any resin shining there. As he nears, the pit begins a low growl deep in her throat. “Reach for one,” Spunk says, grinning. Cole barely moves a hand forward when the pit is off the couch and at him, snarling until he’s back into the corner. Spunk’s laughing goofy hard as he grabs the dog’s collar and reins her in. “See how great she is? Don’t worry, she aint gonna hurt you with me here, she’s all show aren’t you, girl? Aren’t you a mean little show?”

At the touch of Spunk’s hand the dog does undergo a remarkable transformation. The violence disappears from her like a wave that has crested and crashed and now recedes from the sand. She trots back to the couch and, regaining her place, stretches on her back so that her master can rub her belly, her long tongue lolling to one side, saliva drawing to the floor.

“Look at that belly,” Cole points out, “is she pregnant?”

“Hell, I don’t know, I just got her a couple weeks ago. No telling what those dogs’ve been doing in that shithole. Grab a seedling there and see if she cares if she’s pregnant or not.”

Cole asks where Spunk got the plants—his father won’t allow growing on their property—but his pal shrugs off the question. He backpedals to the ragged couch and collapses beside the dog. “Need to get my own thing going,” he says, preparing another bowl in a funk-water bong. “You can’t rely on anybody these days to come through for you, not even your own daddy.” His voice turns almost mournful.

Cole studies the wallowing seedlings again. They don’t look good but they might live, he can’t tell. It is a hardy weed after all. Spunk’s attention span scattered in every direction on awakening, but he could concentrate long enough to meet his own needs as well as anyone else.

“Doubt old Blue Note would be thrilled that you’re trying to grow here, either.” The water gurgles as Cole sucks in the smoke, picturing Arley Noe. Something about the man reminded him of soot—the ashy powder of it like bits of cloud discarded behind him anywhere he moved, scouring the air for long moments before it dissipated.

“I’ll make my move after a while, nothing fancy. Daddy won’t be around forever but I aint ever going to cross him, neither. He knows that.” Saying this, Spunk’s eyes clarify and focus briefly, sadly and with deep sentiment, and with also a kind of despairing lonesomeness usually experienced late at night when you had no girl and the bottle of whisky is empty and the music on the stereo hammers at everything you had that once made you joyous, though you might not have realized it at the time, and which now seems gone forever.

“He’s pretty sick, isn’t he.”

Spunk shakes his head slow and silent in angry disbelief. “I tell you, man . . . I know nobody could ever mistake the old man for a saint, but he deserves better than this.”

“He’s only mean because he has to be.”

“That’s it, Cole! You have to be a motherfucker in our business or else you’re gone forever. You’ll see. You still got to learn that yourself, you’re too nice, too considerate.”

“Was that Fleece’s problem? He was too nice?”

“Fuck you, Cole. Fuck you for even thinking I’m talking about that. I don’t know where your brother is and I’d freakin’ take you to his right hand and leave you there if I did. God
damn
. Shut
up
.”

Spunk’s transparency is one of the reasons Cole still loves him: if Spunk knew something Cole would know, too, because the secret would come out soon enough. The only other possibility is that Spunk holds lowdown facts that his brain hasn’t connected to Fleece or to his father—and that’s the kind of information Cole can only wait and listen for it to slip out. He’s not very good at this.

“I figure he’s alive at least,” Spunk squeaking a straw back and forth in the Big Gulp in his lap. “If you think about it, he has to be.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look at the economics of the situation. We were dry three months after Fleece took off. Stretched what we could get our hands on but that wasn’t near enough for the Greuel and Arley show. Even I was smoking mostly shake myself. Daddy won’t buy from those Mexicans, neither. He says you let in those fuckers just once, they never go away.”

Cole takes this information in his mind as though weighing it in his hand. He wishes for paper and pencil on which to write out a
timeline, but there isn’t any in the garage. So he thinks: If Fleece stole the harvest at the end of October, then Spunk is saying they were dry through January. Cole’s been running since February and here it is ten days before April. When did he buy the two quarters with Shady? The weekend after Thanksgiving; Sheldon’s fraternity was celebrating the weekend after Thanksgiving.

“Why three months? When did you pick up again?” Cole is trying to count back on his fingers without making it apparent.

“Last week of January. I rode to Harlan with Creed myself. It took a while to get set up but you should see what they got underground down there—”

“That’s your mom’s brother, right?”

More squeaking from the straw as Spunk nods, sucking out the last of his soda. “That’s the man. You’ll get to meet him someday. One cool mofo, my uncle Crutch. A weirdo, too. In a all-right way.”

Cole would like that and he admits as much. For a time he had loved Clara, Spunk’s mother, as if she were his own. While Lyda cleaned houses after her fall at the clinic, waiting for the disability application to go through, Cole spent after-school hours at their farm under Clara’s eye. He has a vivid memory of her from when he ruined his leg. She had a piebald horse named Sadie Dame that had kicked him, shattering the patella and tearing the ligaments, and it was Clara who drove him to the hospital. He remembers her as gentle and beautiful and kind, with straight ash-blonde hair down to her waist that she often wore in a single braid, and calm mudflat-brown eyes, and even-toned skin save for the roseate butterfly pattern across her nose and cheeks—a sign of the lupus that eventually took her before he and Spunk were ten. She was a lover of the earth and held a hippie’s sentimental, communal idea for the land of Kentucky; marijuana was a plant she
believed
in, part of earth’s bounty. He remembers watching her roll up and smoke while she watched the boys run after her horses. Back then Spunk called the jays and pipes her medicine, a child repeating what his mother had told him.

His friend nods and his eyes appear to lose all feeling; his hands fall to a rest with the big cup in his lap. “Wonder what she’d think to see us now?”