Read Online American Ghost by Janis Owens - Free Book Online Page A

Old Man seemed not the least bit intimidated by this bald challenge; he just pointed a crooked finger across the table at Jolie and answered with calm assurance, “Thet girl right thar. Thet’s one.”
    Sam had burst out laughing, as he’d grown fond of the Old Man, who was a strange old bird by any reckoning, connected to the modern world by the thinnest thread, and in danger of exiting it prematurely thanks to a runaway case of diabetes and a bad heart. He was a gold mine of minutiae about Old Hendrix, and from their drives on the debit Sam gathered what meager information he could of his great-grandfather, and the exact location of Camp Six, where Brother Hoyt had, along with most in Hendrix, worked on and off as a young man, when all other paychecks had failed. “Nasty, hard day it made,” he said, “and I was always glad to be done.”
    Sam was careful to keep his cards close to his chest and went about his questioning with objective nonchalance, a full month into it before he got around to asking the Old Man about Sam’s own slender stake in local lore.
    â€œSo Camp Six was basically a company town?” he asked as they threaded their way over the long bridge that spanned the river and floodplain outside town. “You bought your groceries on chits, at the store?”
    â€œIf you had the credit. They could be particular.”
    â€œWho’s they ? Who owned it?”
    â€œLumber company,” the Old Man answered, “same as cut the swamp. Had mills here, ’n Louisiana, and Texas. Some of the folk was local. Same folk what owned the bank.”
    â€œDid they own the store? Was there local resentment? That people had to shop there?”
    It was a sweltering afternoon, the windows of the Old Man’s ancient, little Ford Falcon down, his elbow to the wind as he answered, of turpentine camps in general, and Camp Six in particular, “Naw—you didn’t have to buy thar. It was just convenient. Used to be, the riverboatsbrought thangs up to the landing. But the boats quit running, so they opened the sto, same as most camps.”
    â€œWhen did it close?” Sam asked, feeling for his notebook and jotting notes as always, his face to the open window.
    â€œOh—’37, or ’8. Place got robbed, then was burnt. Old boy who worked there got shot in the face, in front of his wife and childrun.”
    Sam kept a carefully neutral face. “Who shot him?”
    The Old Man cast an inquisitive eye at him, as if surprised he hadn’t heard this locally famous story, though the Old Man made little of it and explained with the same drawled candor he went at everything, “Colard feller—name of Kite. Over a pack of cigarettes, they say. Just come upon him and pow . Down he went.”
    Hearing the details of the family secret so casually recounted by a near first-source witness was affecting enough that Sam had to keep his face averted to maintain any semblance of distance, his voice dry and detached. “So, did you know him? Were you there ?”
    â€œ Naw . I wouldn’t have lived in camp if you’d a paid me. Usually stayed with kinfolk, working for ’em. And he wasn’t from around here—German feller.”
    â€œSo what happened to him, after he was shot?” Sam pressed, meaning what had become of his body, though Brother Hoyt misunderstood.
    â€œHe was graveyard dead. Dead before he hit the flo’.”
    â€œI mean, where they buried him.”
    â€œThe German feller?” At Sam’s nod, he shook his head. “Couldn’t say. He wasn’t from around here,” he repeated in casual dismissal, then concluded with no trace of malice, “But old Kite swung for it. Buried him in Cleary. What was left of him.”
    He said it with a face of faint distaste that caught Sam’s attention, enough that he paused in his scribbling to ask, “Were you there? Did you see it?”
    The