Ginny Gall by Smith Charlie

Author:Smith, Charlie [Smith, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-26T23:00:00+00:00

5

Spring had flared out, burned brightly and was smothered by summer, its heroic proposals soon cornered and worn down into soft mountain evenings and hot days nobody wanted to be outside in. Soon fall would be cranking up. Already the tulip poplars and the sycamores showing black-speckled leaves, and the tall sumac reddening in the road ditches. He had returned to the Home, but there was another boy in his old place now, living with Mr. Oliver inside the house; Delvin had to take a berth out in the barn. The Ghost was the regular driver now, captain of the big new Cadillac hearse and even the black-paned ambulance they used to pick up the bodies. They had a contract locally to pick up africano corpses at the city morgue and local hospitals. Mr. Oliver spent much of his time lying on a velvet couch out on the newly glassed-in side porch. You could raise the cloudy louvers and let in breeze and on cool days Delvin would find him out there listening to his new prodigy read to him from the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The boy was only ten, but he was smart as a whip and to Delvin’s eyes a hustling little conniver.

Not that Delvin mentioned any of this. The Ghost, who had told him, laughed about it, but he was on Delvin’s side in the matter, if there was a side, as long as Delvin didn’t try to push in on the driving. Conspiring young ’uns wasn’t much to get charged up about. Not compared to what he found out about what had haunted him the last four years. The old trouble—the shooting, the flight, the law—so the Ghost confirmed, had all been a figment on top of a figment. For a while that busted him up good. As he stood out in the street before the Home on his first day back, still dusty from the rails, the Ghost had come up behind him and cried Boo! Delvin had jumped like a poked dog. The Ghost gave him a big fool’s grin. He’d grown tall, skinny, and had an orange fuzz settled on his face.

“Expected you back sooner’n now,” he said.

“How’s that?” Delvin said.

“That old business.”

“What so?”

“The one bout shooting that white boy?”

“You heard anything?”

“Nothing ’cept there wadn’t no white boy shot.”

Delvin re-experienced a clutching sickness in his gut. “You sure about that?”

“Wadn’t nothing but a wisp.”

“I don’t believe you.”

And he didn’t, wouldn’t, until the Ghost walked him aside, led him into the shade of a a big half-peeled sycamore and there told him what was so: there’d been no trouble anybody’d been looking for him about. No Chattanooga white folks had even mentioned negroes shooting. “They’s probably too ashamed to,” the Ghost said.

Delvin had stretched both hands out and eased himself close against the tree. The bark smelled of tree life. He pressed his face against the smooth skin. The Ghost took a step closer but he didn’t touch him.

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