Scary Creek (28 page)

Mrs. Abacas smiled. “Oh, yes. Ryder ran against Gore
and then against Conley in 29. He couldn’t get his own party’s nomination. I
remember him. What is it you want to know?”

 “Was he an honest man?” I asked.

“Like all the rest of them that ‘had it’ and meant to ‘keep
it’,” she said. “He squeezed a nickel so tight you could hear the buffalo bawl.”

“Was he good to his family, his wife and daughter?”

“Killed his wife,” Clarence said. “They say she died
of loneliness and a broken heart, while he was traipsing around the world
looking for riches. He had strange notions about wealth and power. He believed
it came from a greedy god and if he turned against you, he took it all away.”

Not such an extraordinary belief, I thought, still
fashionable today among Republicans.

“Were you acquainted with his wife?” I asked.

“Whose wife?” Clarence asked.

“Mr. Ryder’s wife,” I said.

Clarence was silent, but his lips were moving.

“She was just a slip of a child! He should have been
ashamed of himself.”

Mrs. Abacas’ face radiated warmth and deep concern.
“You’re mistaken Clarence, that was his daughter. It’s hard to believe she was his
daughter,” she said, “but knowing her the way I did, it couldn’t be any other
way. She was a beautiful woman, but with weak eyes. I think the good Lord
intended it to be that way, to spare her from the outrageous sights a life with
Samuel Ryder was bound to include. She came to town often with her little
colored nanny.”

“I talked to Mrs. Taylor,” I said. “She’s bed-ridden now,
but still in good spirits.”

“That’s good. She is a good woman. She used to be a
Greene. Her father was Junior Johnson Greene, a local strong man. He used to
lift five or six men and women off the ground with his hair and spin them
around. I know; I was one of them!”

“Must have been a long time ago,” I said,
thoughtlessly.

“Sometimes it seems like yesterday,” she said, “but I
think it was in the mid 1900s. It was the same year Chub Decker bought an
Orient Buckboard and brought it into town to deliver ice cream. I remember the
first time I saw that thing chugging up Locust Street without a horse pulling
it. I thought I was losing my mind. We knew about automobiles, but none of us had
ever seen one in Vandalia at the time. His was the first. People followed him
around for weeks. They couldn’t get enough of that steam-powered vehicle. They
nearly overturned it in the street trying to get a ride.”

I tried to direct their reminiscences to more fruitful
events.

“Did Elinore ever marry?”

I could tell by the way Clarence’s eyes wandered and
blinked that this was a doubtful area as far as conjecture was concerned.

“Let me tell you what I know,” he continued. “She was
a beautiful girl, but her father kept her tethered like an animal and away from
everyone
, e
specially young bucks. He thought he was protecting her, or protecting
his wealth and position. There was plenty of talk especially after little Miss
Amy Taylor began to accompany her. She introduced her to many boyfriends. They used
to swarm around her like flies. Now mind, when I say boyfriends, I don’t mean what
they talk about nowadays. I mean boyfriends who, if they managed to steal a
little kiss, paid for it with the price of a slap in the face. I was younger
then Amy, but I knew most of the young men in town, the ones who liked and
wanted to spark her. I was one of ‘em, until I got married to Mame. Amy would
bring her into town, to the ‘opry’ house or dances, while her daddy was gone. She
would not object to a boy sitting next to her, talking to her or holding her
hand, but Amy would not let that girl out of sight for a second.

“There was another part of her life we knew nothing
about. It was the people in Elanville, the miners. They all worked for her
daddy. There might have been some contact, but it was not much. The Ryders
didn’t mix with off the boat immigrants who went to work in the mines. It just
wasn’t done.”

“Before we go to George’s room, let me ask one more
question,” I begged. “You know the wall that surrounds the Ryder house? I heard
an immigrant built it. Do you have any memories at all?”

His eyes narrowed and his thoughts began to sift
through the past. Then I saw a smile settle over his lips. He turned to Mame.

“It was in the 20s
,
d
o you remember, Mame? We were in this place
since 19
10-15. We;
bought the house from a dentist who wanted to move
back east. He said he wasn’t doing any good at all, and country people didn’t
care enough about their teeth for him to make a living. If you give me a few
minutes, I could name you every guest we had that year. We only had two rooms.
We didn’t build the new addition until ‘25’. Let’s see, where was I?”

“You were going to tell me about the man who built the
wall?”

“Oh, yes
,
August 1920 or 30. He was a gypsy. I could tell by the
color of his skin. It was light brown and he had a lot of black, curly hair. He
carried his tools in a big cloth bag and his clothes in a cardboard suitcase.
He was a clean little man, wanted fresh flowers put in his room daily, and he
paid in advance.”

“Gypsy? How do you know he was a gypsy?”

“We had a lot of them in those days; remember mother.”

Mrs. Abacas nodded. “They came in wagons and sold
copper goods, pots and pans, gold and silver necklaces. He always ran out to
greet them, as if he belonged to their clan. They talked in their language. I
think it was Russian or something close to it. I never understood a word. He
only stayed in the hotel for a week or two, and then he moved to Elanville to
work on that wall. I think he stayed with a widow woman and her daughter.”

“Those are the best damned walls in the county,”
Clarence chimed in.

Coming from him, I suspected it was high
praise.

“Ask anyone, they’ll tell you, the best damned walls
around. It would take a Sherman tank to knock ‘em down.”

“Do you remember his name?” I asked.

“What was his name?” he asked Mame. “Demetrios, Demos
… something like that. I can find out if you want. It will take a while, but we
have every registration card from the first day we started business, ain’t’
that right, mother, every card. They are all stacked away in boxes in the
basement. It might take a while, but we can do it, right mother, we can find
it.”

She nodded and glanced at the big clock over the desk,
another piece of lobby furniture that was a genuine antique. A pretty 1940s female
with a blond marcelled hair-do informed everyone who entered that it was time
for a Coke.

“Mr. Thacker is going to be disappointed if we don’t
show up on time,” she said. “He’s been trying so hard to get a good crowd.
Hardly anyone came last night, only me and Clarence, and Janie the waitress
from the Old Town Tavern, and Eulah and her boyfriend, Bob, the dog.”

I wanted to ask about Bob, the dog, but knew it would
lead far astray of the point.

“By all means, let’s go see George.”

There was a tiny elevator in the hotel built to
accommodate about two persons uncomfortably. We squeezed in. Mrs. Abacas pushed
the button and the lift rumbled and groaned to life. It slowly ascended to the
second and only other floor, resurrecting as if from some subterranean depths.

“It goes very slow,” she said, “and it takes a lot
longer than walking, but if we tried to walk, we might not make it.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

  The door opened slowly, changed direction and
started to close again. Clarence jammed his cane into the opening and the door stopped.
I pried my way through the narrow opening and helped the Abacases out. George’s
room was across the hall from the elevator and his door was wide open.

Eulah, Bob and Janie had already arrived. They were a
frightfully pathetic lot. Bob, the dog, was a lifetime loser. He was about to
be kayoed in a deadly bout with alcohol. His mind had departed a long time ago
for parts unknown and would never be able to find its way back.

Janie was his female counterpart. She chain-smoked and
drank spiked kool-aid without stopping. I suspected she was spiking it with
something other than alcohol, such as embalming fluid. Eulah, Bob’s girlfriend,
was thin, bland and going bald. She was the adhesive that kept him from
immediately disintegrating. She wiped his hands and mouth, smoothed his hair and
pushed food down his throat. It was a pathetic and doomed group.

George Thacker sprang out of his chair to greet me.
There was a remorseless piety in his eyes and a powerful reassurance in the
grip of his hands. He was out to save these people and in doing so, save
himself. He led me around the small room introducing me to his congregation.

“Bob, I want you to meet a man in whom the lord has
taken a special interest, Charles Case.”

Could he have meant me? Yes, he did. I smiled and took
Bob’s hand in my own. It was cold and felt more like a clammy fish than flesh.

“Janie, say hello to Mr. Case.”

She was shaking like a leaf in an updraft.

“And this is Eulah, Charles; she’s Bob’s special
lady.”

She was as thin as a rail and the first two fingers of
her right hand were discolored brown and yellow from nicotine and cigarette
burns. She was blind in one eye and as clichés go, could not see out the other.
Her glasses were so thick they completely distorted any possibility of looking
into her eyes -- eyes that looked like two alien species swimming around in
miniature fish bowls. Her thin hand felt like a broken branch. I thanked God
for my mental health no matter how questionable it was.

I was glad when George finally directed me to the tiny
card table in the center of his room. Red Christmas wrapping paper was serving
as a tablecloth, and pictures of Frosty the snowman and red-nosed Rudolph where
everywhere. There were also cookies on cardboard plates and paper cups
containing a few swallows of grape kool-aid.

“I’m glad you came,” George said. “I wanted to invite
you, but I didn’t think you really wanted to hear about this.”

I nodded. “I don’t, George. I know all I need to know
about salvation; I once attended a church bazaar. I just came by to talk to
you.”

“About what?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure if this was the right time to talk about
a séance. After all, he might consider it pagan, holistic or New Age.

“It’s about something that will help me into my house;
something that may require our presence at the Ryder house.”

“Jesus, don’t tell me you want to open another grave!”
he screeched.

“No, George, something more important. I want you to
help me communicate with Elinore.”

“Communicate?” his eyes bulged.

“A séance,” I said. I had forgotten that George was a
lawyer. He probably knew as much if not more about these things than I did.

He rubbed the gray stubble that was growing on his
cheek and chin. “It would be a challenge, wouldn’t it? I never felt so close to
Him before. It’s almost as if all this were predestined.”

I nodded casually. “You could say that.” If someone
told me a month ago that I would be running around in a rural West Virginia
county trying to communicate with the spirit of a woman who died
in the 1970s …
I
paused. What made me so sure it was in the 70s? I had to review my mental records.
My imagination was out-flanking me.

My foster mother had reportedly died in the 70s, but
she had nothing in common with Elinore Ryder except ... age. Her eyes were
, if not perfect, unique.
She
had eyes in
the back of her head, so to speak. She
could
even see through walls
into other rooms, sort
of.
She knew what was coming days in
advance, and she used to wake me up in the middle of the night screaming; I
shuddered.

What else did my mother have in common with Elinore?
The only daughter of a domineering and absentee father, married to a lifetime
bureaucrat who was a closet alcoholic, a woman who never knew her child and
sickened herself to bed after she gave birth, but that’s where the similarity
ended; thank God.

 My father also believed that supernatural power and
wealth went hand-in-hand. He believed in his divine right to possess more wealth
than others did. I could not believe in such nonsense. I was and still am a
person who considers belief in a supreme being a form of treason to the human
race.

No, Elinore’s death and my mother’s death occurring in
the same decade could be nothing but chance and circumstance. I am here because
a strain of avarice I inherited from ancestors dictates that I try to profit
from a piece of real estate. At least, that is what I desperately want to
believe.

“When do you want to hold this…séance?”

“Tonight,” I blurted.