Ghost Years, page 11
“Yes,” said Francis. “Pity it didn’t make him a greater writer.”
Bring Me the Head of Mangas Coloradas
“What are you watching, Roy?”
“An old western movie, Shootout at Dead Indian.”
Roy’s grandfather sat down in a chair next to where Roy was sitting on the floor.
“What a terrible title,” he said.
“What’s so terrible about it, Pops?”
“The name of wherever that place is. The United States Army slaughtered the indigenous people on this continent for centuries to make way for emigrants from Europe. Christopher Columbus called them Indians because he thought he’d arrived in India. And later, archaeologists theorized that they originally came from Asia.”
“Did they?”
“At one time the North American and Asian continents were connected by a land bridge over the Bering Strait. The theory is that people from Asia, Mongolians, mostly, walked across to what is now named Alaska, then gradually moved south to where the weather was warmer, though some remained in the north. The ones who came to inhabit the southwest are called Anasazi in the Navajo language, which means Ancient Warriors. The Europeans came later and did their best to wipe them out. They still are.”
“You’re from Europe.”
“Yes, Roy. I was a boy when I came here, like you are now. I didn’t have a choice.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
“I read.”
“Is it true that white men took scalps like the Indians did?”
“Some did, as a kind of revenge, to show the Indians that they could be just as savage and disrespectful of their culture and religious beliefs. Not only did the whites take scalps, they also beheaded Indian leaders such as Osceola of the Seminoles and Mangas Coloradas of the Chiricahua Apaches, who was shot, scalped and decapitated. Supposedly his head was given to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., to be displayed, but it never was. The museum curators claimed it was lost, but most likely it was sold to a private collector. That happened in 1863, almost a hundred years ago.”
“In this movie one of the white men helps captured Indians get away before the killers can hang them for stealing horses that belonged to the Indians in the first place. Then he falls in love with an Indian woman and marries her.”
“Did they go to live somewhere else?”
“No. Her brother, who’s the leader of a renegade band, murders her for betraying their race.”
“There are bad people of all races, Roy, just as there are good ones. My advice is to deal with people as individuals, make up your own mind who’s worth your time.”
“What turns people bad, Pops?”
“Fear. They’re afraid and don’t even know it.”
“Good people get frightened, too.”
“That’s true, Roy, but some people can handle it better than others.”
“Can you handle it, Pops?”
“Not always. That’s what’s wrong with the world. Sometimes it’s difficult to do the right thing, or even to figure out what the right thing is.”
Roy turned off the television set.
“Don’t you want to see how the movie ends?”
“I think I know.”
Life Is Like This Sometimes
Roy rode the train from Oakland, California, to Ogden, Utah, where he arrived at Sunday midnight. From there he had to catch a bus to Logan, to meet a friend. The next one was not scheduled to depart until six a.m., so Roy had several hours to kill in Ogden, a town he did not know.
It was late November, very cold, snow and ice on the ground. Roy walked into a bar full of Indians. The name of the place was Dot’s Hot Spot. He took a stool and ordered a beer from the bartender, who resembled a retired Irish cop from Chicago Roy used to talk to at the racetrack named Eddie Dooley. Dooley had been forced to retire after the horse he’d been riding down State Street during a Saint Patrick’s Day parade had collapsed from a heart attack, fallen on Eddie, and crushed his right leg. One day at Sportsman’s he told Roy he was now “takin’ it out on the ponies.” The last Roy heard of Eddie he was repairing refrigerators.
Dot’s Hot Spot stayed open all night and was full of Indians who were either already drunk or about to be. During the course of the night several men slid off their stools and collapsed to the floor, where they remained undisturbed until they woke up and again took a place at the bar. The popular belief among white men was that Indians could not hold their liquor particularly well. From what Roy had observed by that time—he was twenty-one—neither could most white men.
Roy sipped his beer, listened to Charlie Rich and Freddie Fender on the Rock-Ola, and kept an eye out for trouble that might be headed his way. Roy didn’t want trouble, he just wanted to get to Logan. A white man with red hair cut short who looked to be about forty-five years old came in and sat down on the stool to Roy’s left. He ordered a shot of bar whiskey and a beer. He nodded at Roy.
“Looks like we’re in the minority,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Roy. “I think most of these boys are drinking about the same as us.”
“You got a point, hotshot,” the man said.
They talked for a while. His name was Rigney. Roy never asked if it was his first, last, or only. He told Roy he had been up to Draper to visit his sister, who was doing a dime for armed robbery.
“She knocked down a couple or three laundromats, along with her boyfriend, Walter Topper. He put Rita up to it. Hotshot jumped bail, but he can’t stay disappeared forever. I’d hunt Walter Topper down and take him out of the count, Rita wanted me to.
“I’ve met a hundred men like Topper, maybe more. So will you, probably, before you’re through. Men with nothin’ inside. I’m one now, I suppose. Used to I did. Hard time’ll do that to anyone. Your old man ever put a pistol to your head and tell you if he pulled the trigger he’d be savin’ you from a lifetime of trouble? I was eight when mine done that. He weren’t wrong, just incapable of figurin’ out how to fit into this earthly paradise. Hanged himself in a clothes closet twenty years ago, nineteen fifty-two. How’s a boy to profit from that?”
They drank more. Rigney switched from whiskey to tequila somewhere along in there while Roy nursed a few beers. Roy wasn’t much of a drinker and he did not want to risk being kept from boarding the bus because he was drunk. Roy had promised to meet his friend in Logan by nine-thirty.
Rigney rolled up his shirtsleeves. Tattooed in large gothic letters on his left forearm was the name RUTH. A few Indians got into a tussle at the other end of the bar but it didn’t travel. To Roy’s relief, it was a pretty quiet night in Dot’s Hot Spot. Toward morning it occurred to him to ask Rigney who Ruth was.
“I don’t know anybody named Ruth,” he said.
They didn’t talk after that except to say goodbye and good luck. At five-thirty Roy left the bar and went to catch his bus. Two of the Indians who had been in Dot’s Hot Spot staggered into the Trailways station. The taller of the two wore a calico half-Stetson and a braid halfway down his back. He was one of the men who had been involved in the brief scuffle. A cop stopped them and ordered them to go outside and come back later when they were sober. The shorter Indian, who was hatless, passed out and slumped to the ground. His partner went out the door in a hurry. The cop picked up the Indian who had collapsed under his arms and dragged him outside.
From the window of the bus as it pulled out of Ogden Roy saw Rigney walking on the side of the road. It was snowing and he didn’t have a coat.
The Tiger
Ever since Roy could remember, a tiger often appeared in his dreams. He did not know why but later in life he learned that in some cultures, mostly in Asia and Eastern Europe, the tiger is a representation of an evil spirit, even an avenging figure, at the very least a portent of danger.
The night before his eighth birthday a tiger was following him through a forest. Roy wanted to run but he did not have command of his legs. He felt the tiger close behind him, though it did not make a sound. Suddenly, Roy turned around, expecting to be devoured. He and the tiger stared at each other, then Roy woke up. It was unusually cold for mid-October in Chicago, almost freezing. Roy looked out the window next to his bed at a pitchblack sky.
Roy had difficulty getting back to sleep but when he awoke it was the day after his birthday. His mother was sitting next to him on his bed.
“Sweetheart, I’ve been so worried about you. You developed a fever the night before last and slept for almost a day and a half. I telephoned the parents of the children you’d invited to the party and told them it was cancelled due to your illness, but don’t worry, we’ll set another date and celebrate your birthday a little later. I’m just glad you’re all right now. The doctor says he isn’t sure what caused this to happen.”
“I am,” said Roy.
Mary Ann Wilson
When Kitty Colby attended boarding school at Our Lady of Everlasting Obedience in Blissful Plains, Illinois, in the late 1930s and early ’40s, the only other student she felt was her real friend was Mary Ann Wilson. Kitty was from Chicago and Mary Ann was from Mississippi Falls, a small town near the Kentucky border. Kitty was extremely shy and intimidated by the strict discipline enforced by the nuns, whereas Mary Ann appeared unbothered by their harshness and occasional brutality. Both girls were the same age, tall and pretty; Kitty a brunette with dark brown eyes and Mary Ann a blonde with blue eyes.
The girls did not like being separated during the summers. They sent postcards to each other weekly and spoke on the telephone as often as possible. Kitty felt safe when Mary Ann was with her at school, protected from what she perceived as dismissive and rude behavior directed at her by other boarders. Mary Ann ignored this exclusionary attitude, floating above what she described to Kitty as “dumb girl stuff.”
“We’re prettier and smarter than any of them and that makes them unhappy,” she told Kitty. “They’re jealous, is all.”
When Mary Ann got sick and had to be sent home to Mississippi Falls, she was thirteen years old. She and Kitty had been friends for five years and Kitty felt lost without her. She prayed every day for Mary Ann’s recovery and begged the nuns for information as to her friend’s condition. All they told her was that Mary Ann was in God’s hands, whatever happened to her was up to Him.
At Kitty’s request, after almost a month without news, her mother called Mary Ann’s parents and learned that she had pneumonia. Two weeks later the students were informed by their Mother Superior that Mary Ann had died.
Following her best friend’s death, life for Kitty at Our Lady of Everlasting Obedience became unbearable; she suffered from depression and was eventually withdrawn by her mother from school for the remainder of the spring semester. Kitty returned to boarding school in the fall, surviving only by imagining that she was protected by Mary Ann’s spirit.
Throughout the rest of her life Kitty remained convinced that Mary Ann was always nearby looking after her. When her son, Roy, was born, she believed that Mary Ann was holding her hand during labor, and years later told Roy that they both had a guardian angel named Mary Ann Wilson who would protect them from harm.
One night not long after Kitty had her second stroke, Mary Ann appeared in Kitty’s bedroom. Her hair was on fire. Tentacles of orange, red and yellow flames wriggled from her head.
“Mary Ann,” Kitty whispered, “do you know that your hair is on fire?”
“It happens sometimes,” said Mary Ann. “At first my mother was frightened but I wasn’t. I knew the flames would not spread to others.”
“But why does it happen? Isn’t your scalp burning?”
“I don’t feel the heat. The flames are God’s fingers caressing me.”
When Kitty was ninety-one years old, on her deathbed in a hospital, a nurse attending her told Roy that his mother believed a woman named Mary Ann was coming to take her away to a place where she would never again feel pain or be alone.
“I asked your mother if Mary Ann was very old and she said, ‘Yes, she’s thirteen, she’ll be fourteen in June.’ ”
The Promise
The worst marriage Kitty made was her last. Her son, Roy, was gone by this time—“Out in the world somewhere” Kitty told people who asked her what he was doing. The most recent news she had from him was that he was working as a merchant seaman on freighters carrying cargo between Europe and South America. Her daughter, Sally, was nine years old, so she had no choice but to go along with Kitty’s decisions regardless of how ill-conceived and self-destructive they might prove to be.
Kitty’s fifth husband was Reno Mott. His first name was really Melvin but very early in their relationship Kitty could not remember it at a dinner party when she attempted to introduce him to friends of hers, so she said it was Reno, because that was where he was from. She thought it was funny and he did not seem to mind; thereafter, she called him Reno, as did Sally. He owned a box manufacturing company in Reno, Illinois, where he lived with his teenaged daughter from a previous marriage, to which town Kitty and Sally moved from Chicago. Kitty did not tell Roy about her latest marriage. She wrote to him irregularly in care of a friend of his in London, England, where Roy stayed when he was not at sea, and informed him only that she and his sister had moved to Reno, Illinois, ninety miles northwest of Chicago.
It was not long after their arrival in Reno before Kitty began to realize that the marriage had not been a good idea, especially for Sally. Reno Mott’s daughter, Rowena, terrorized the younger girl. She resented Sally’s presence and her mother’s intrusion into Reno’s and her life. Rowena did everything she could to make Sally’s existence there intolerable. No matter how Kitty attempted to ameliorate the situation, Rowena’s cruelty toward her stepsister did not abate. In addition, her rudeness to and contempt for Kitty knew no limits. After six months Kitty told Mott that she and Sally were going back to Chicago. Reno Mott had made no attempt to mitigate his daughter’s hostility. Whenever Kitty brought the matter up to him, he just shrugged and suggested that she ignore Rowena’s nastiness, insisting that the girls would get along after they got to know each other better. This did not happen, so Rowena gladly agreed to leave and go to live with her mother, who also had remarried, in Akron, Ohio.
Rowena’s departure improved daily life for Sally, but Kitty was disappointed by her husband’s indifference to her complaints concerning financial matters—his box business was failing—and his refusal to properly include her in his social life, preferring to have Kitty stay at home with Sally while he went out with unidentified friends. This behavior did not sit well with Kitty. When she had met Mott in Chicago at a restaurant and agreed to have a date with him, he behaved graciously and was congenial to her friends. He told her then that he had a thriving business in Reno and that he was well-fixed for the future. “I’m a good catch for any woman,” he said.
Kitty stuck it out for a year and was again on the verge of leaving Mott when he came home one day and declared that they were going to move to Phoenix, Arizona, where he had agreed to take a job as manager of a Ford dealership. The house in Reno was being foreclosed upon and the box business was bankrupt. They had no choice but to go.
Kitty told him that she had no intention of moving to Arizona, where she didn’t know anybody, at which point Reno Mott became furious and left the house. That night, after getting drunk with a former girlfriend, Mott drove off a railroad bridge into a canal. The woman with him was pronounced dead at the scene from a broken neck, and Reno suffered two broken legs as well as a serious head injury that would most likely render him permanently incapable of caring for himself. Kitty wanted nothing more to do with Reno Mott. She took Sally to Chicago, where she rented an apartment, got a job as a receptionist in a private hospital, and filed for a divorce.
When Roy arrived in Chicago, his mother told him what had happened. He asked her where Reno Mott was now.
“He’s in a nursing home for disabled veterans in Reno,” she said. “He was in the air force during the war. He’s trying to get a government loan so he can afford to sue me for support. I’ll never get married again, Roy, I promise.”
Roy borrowed a friend’s car and drove to Reno, Illinois, where he confronted Mott in the nursing home.
“If you don’t leave my mother alone,” Roy told him, “I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”
Kitty asked Roy if Reno Mott had said anything to him.
“Yes, he said he understood me and that I shouldn’t worry because he had a job waiting for him in Phoenix and that as soon as he could walk again he was going there to sell cars.”
The Recital
The piano teacher, Bill, was a tall, slender man in his mid-thirties. He had wispy, thinning brown hair, and his concave posture gave those in his presence the unsettling feeling that his body could at any moment crumple into thirds. He wore wire-rim glasses and always spoke gently and encouragingly to Roy’s daughter, Daisy, then eight years old, who was his student. Roy liked Bill. He told Roy that Daisy had some musical talent and it seemed to Roy that they genuinely enjoyed one another’s company.
Bill did mention to Roy, however, that Daisy could be obstinate on occasion; that if she had a problem getting something right, even though he told her to let it go for the moment, that they could come back to it later, Daisy would often insist on working on the passage until she was at least satisfied with her progress. This kind of perseverance, Bill said, impressed him. He had seldom encountered a student so young who exhibited this degree of tenacity.
Daisy practiced less than she should have, Roy thought, but she said she liked taking piano lessons, so he did not mind paying for them even though it was an expense Roy barely could afford.
When it came time for her first recital, Daisy practiced the piece Bill had chosen for her to perform more diligently than usual. Roy noticed how her technique improved over the two or three weeks she rehearsed it. Bill mentioned to him how pleased he was by Daisy’s dedication and on a Thursday after practice, two days prior to the recital, happily pronounced her performance-ready.
