Ghosts

The old black Cadillac disappeared in an impressive cloud of dust and invective as it roared up the Ranch’s entry road towards the highway in the distance. You had to hand it to the fifth Mrs. Johnston, the woman really knew how to make an exit.

I watched her go from the far end of the sturdy porch that wound around the entirety of the house. Her departure was a matter of neither surprise nor sadness to me. I wiped my hands with the towel slung over my shoulder as the dust cloud churned towards the wooden gate with the faded sign (“Johnston Ranch”) that mocked the remnants of a once-thriving enterprise.

Abraham Johnston, his broad leathery hands clutching the railing with undirected fury, stood on the porch in his beloved, bedraggled robe watching his wife take her final leave of him.

We’d both played this scene before.

The Cadillac swerved on the highway with an angry squeal and charged off towards town. The morning silence reasserted itself as the mustard cloud of dust settled down to the parched earth and the growl of the Cadillac engine faded into the distance.

Abe Johnston, still holding onto the railing for dear life, glanced at me those hard gray eyes of his filled with something liquid, something hot and remorseful. “What’re you lookin’ at, boy?” the old bear growled feebly. “Ain’t you got no work t’do?”

I shrugged and scratched at my always-unruly beard. “You ain’t mad at me, Abraham,” I said evenly. I nodded at him with defiance, understanding, deference, and a modicum of pity. His resolve deflated, he frowned ruefully and nodded back just so.

I turned to walk back down the porch to the kitchen door. “You ain’t mad at her either,” I called back.

In my 20 years at the ranch I’d seen any number of women come into the house on the arm of its inebriated master. They were all distressingly alike: desperate party “girls” who used too much makeup, drank too much cheap liquor, and who deluded themselves into thinking that no one could tell, with but the briefest of glances, that platinum blonde (or bright red or jet black) wasn’t their natural hair color.

Abe Johnston was a powerful figure of a man even with 67 long, hard years under his belt. When I first met him he had a casual swagger that was undeniable and compelling.

Back then, at 18, fresh from the city and longing to find someplace to belong, the imposing cowboy had seemed something of a godsend. Now the solid, muscled body the photos from his youth celebrated had given way to a leathery, tanned beefiness that he carried with weary but undeniable grace when he was sober (and still well enough even when he was drunk.)

The women he met in the forlorn bars in town liked him. Most of them were from nearby towns…or even from the city…and they were drawn to what they saw in him. He’d buy the women drinks and charm with robust tales of his father and his grandfather; tales of carving a vast, thriving ranch out of arid nothingness. Tales of real men accomplishing the bold deeds that made up the tapestries of their lives.

These women were, as a matter of course, far too self-absorbed to recognize the crushing sadness that came into Abe Johnston’s eyes whenever his storytelling drifted too near to the present. They would just run their fingers through the woolen bristle of his gray beard or put his cavernous Stetson on top of their brilliant hairdos and eagerly agree to go with him when he would invite them back to the ranch for a “nightcap”.

In the still hours of the night Johnston Ranch was still a relatively impressive sight, something to perk up the imaginations of the women looking for one last refuge with a man who will take care of them. On those nights when Abe would invite one of the women home I would hear them stumble in together, laughing and whispering, as they took the stairs onto the grand porch and clambered into the house. Listening from my room, which was right next to Abe’s bedroom, the ritual quality of the process never failed to amaze and bemuse me. Abe Johnston’s boots would clump loud on the hardwood floors, the masculine thumping masking the more dainty tapping of bright (most often red) high heeled pumps. The rest of the ritual was invariably the same: boots thumping to the floor followed, in short order, by giggling, moaning, the rhythmic squeaking of worn bedsprings; and then grunting, an occasional feminine yelp, and, eventually, humid silence followed by satiated stereo snoring.

If I was still awake after all that, and most often I was, I would sigh deeply and wonder yet again why I had stayed at the ranch for so long. I would wonder, yet again, what I was looking for…or what I had found. Then I would laugh, briefly and ruefully, at both Abe Johnston and at myself, and then roll over and go to sleep.

In the morning the lovers would follow the smells of coffee and biscuits to my kitchen. Abe Johnston would always be wearing the robe his first wife had made for him, even though it barely fit across his solid girth, and nothing else. His companion would be squeezed back into her rumpled party dress which was, almost needless to say, much too loud for morning. Abe would acknowledge me with a grunt and a weary shrug as I filled his old mug with coffee; his companion would usually only acknowledge me only with apprehension and some measure of embarrassment.

“That nigger work for you?” was inevitably the question overheard as I left the kitchen to tend to the horses.

“Yep,” Abe Johnston would reply softly. “He been with me a while.”

In the regular course of things Andy Taylor’s taxicab would come rumbling up the entry road and honk. From the barn or the corral I would watch as the woman gave Abe Johnston a wet, hopeful kiss just before he closed the door of the cab behind her. (One of the more brazen of his companions reached into his robe and gave his penis an affectionate pat. Abe Johnston didn’t react one way or the other.) Abe would be back up the stairs and into the house before Andy’s cab was halfway up the entry road.

The women rarely made return visits.

On some nights there would be but a single set of footfalls…a drunkard’s precarious ballet in the enveloping darkness…and I would know that no one had come home of Abe Johnston. On such nights he substituted even more whiskey for a woman’s company and he would be barely vertical. I always wondered which angels were charged with getting the old man home on such nights. I would get up from my bed and go help him to his bed. He’d relax heavily against me as I guided him into his room.

“…you’re my only frien’…” he would slur affectionately. “…you’re a good boy…”

“Ain’t been a boy in a while, Abraham,” I always replied without rancor, “but I am probably your only friend…”

Letting him rest down on the bed, I’d pull off his boots and help him undress.

“…why…why d’ya stay wit’ me…?” he would often ask forlornly. “Ain’t no damn good t’nobody…ev’rybody else lef’ me…”

I would gently push him down to the bed and cover him up. Often I would have to resist the urge to kiss his cheek. “Go to sleep, old man,” I would say firmly. I’d shut off the light and, as I made my way back to my room, I would find myself wondering about his question. Why was I staying on a dead ranch with its sad ghost of an owner? But the question was fleeting and the answer was all too apparent. I would know that I was exactly where I was needed to be. I would know, for better or for worse, that I was exactly where I was needed. I would think about my father…the father I never knew…and wonder if he was anything like Abe Johnston. Then I’d curse myself for a sentimental fool and take myself back to bed.

The fifth Mrs. Johnston first came to the ranch one hot yellow day in her ragtop Cadillac. She was looking for directions to the majesty of the West she had been dreaming about for years…the same majesty I had come looking for some 20 years earlier. Abe Johnston had been sober for a while then…having gone on the wagon after a particularly nasty fall…and he made for an impressive sight as he rode up on the calico stallion. They talked for hours and, even though he was more than 30 years her senior (the fifth Mrs. Johnston being two years younger than me), she found herself utterly charmed by rugged old Abe Johnston.

After she’d left that evening, Abe proclaimed that she was going to be his salvation. I reminded Abe that he had been down that road twice before in just the time that I had been employed by him but he chose to pointedly ignore me.

Two weeks later they were married in the courthouse in town. I was the best man. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston went to New Orleans for their honeymoon.

Not long after their return, the fifth Mrs. Johnston came to me after breakfast and announced that there were going to be changes now that she was the woman of the house. “I want you to move your stuff into that bunkhouse in the back,” she said, her arms crossed defiantly across her chest.

“Nobody’s lived in that place for years,” I responded patiently as I continued to wash the dishes. “We ain’t had a crew here since we sold the herd off for back taxes so we’ve had no reason to keep the bunkhouse up. I go in there to write sometimes but I have no intention of living there.”

“Well, you’re hired help and I don’t want you in my house,” she said crisply, “so you’ll be living out there from now on.”

I chuckled derisively and shook my head. “Don’t think so.” The fifth Mrs. Johnston’s eyes narrowed murderously.

“I can’t abide no uppity niggers,” she spat, her face growing flush. “I moved outta the city to get away from your kind.”

“And I can’t abide no uppity redneck bitches,” I shot back. “I ain’t going nowhere. This is my home and that’s the end of the story.”

Her eyes flashed fire. “You think Abe won’t bounce your black ass outta here if I ask him to?” she hissed.

I shrugged and went back to putting the dishes away. “Why don’t you ask him and find out.” She started to say something but thought better of it. She sighed angrily and stormed out of the kitchen to find Abe.

Abe and the fifth Mrs. Johnston had a heated argument. After it was over the fifth Mrs. Johnston never said another cross word to me during the rest of her 11-month stay at the ranch. She rarely said anything to me at all in fact and that suited me just fine.

The fifth Mrs. Johnston quickly came to realize that Abe Johnston was less a dashing, romantic figure from a time gone by than he was a tired old man who had all but given up on life. She wanted his mythology; he wanted her youth and vigor and passionate devotion. Neither of them got what they wanted.

The two of them embraced their disillusionment in different ways: he started drinking again and she started disappearing into town for hours at a time.

Every other week or so I would take the truck and go into town myself. I’d drink beer in the cantina at the far end of town with Rosa, the wide-hipped Mexican woman who owned it. We’d sit in the booth by the window and talk about dreams we would never make true and all the places that we would never make time to visit. Rosa would work the room every now and again…flirting with and badgering the regulars…and then she would come back to the table and shoot the bullshit with me until the evening slipped slowly away. I would always take special note of the interstate bus that stopped up the way from the cantina three times a week. It was the same bus that I had taken from the city so many years earlier.

It had grunted gamely, roaring off belching oily black smoke in its wake. I had glanced at the dingy little town…everything was shaded of washed out brown and gray and blue…and I wondered why no one had told the people wandering languidly in the merciless midday heat that they were shades in a ghost town that didn’t know it was dead. I had taken my father’s suitcase…the only thing the bastard had given me in all my 18 years on Earth…and wandered away to find someplace to belong. Wandered away to find someplace where somebody needed me. But now telling the woman at the bus station back in the city to give a ticket that would take me as far West as my cash would allow didn’t seem like such a bright idea.

I quickly became aware of the fact that I was the only black person anywhere in sight. I’d never in my life been anywhere where I was the only black person and the realization filled me with more than a little apprehension. But the people on the street….most of them in cowboy hats like they were living in some goddamn John Wayne movie…regarded me with only passing interest. I was more of a curiosity than a threat and they went about their business without giving me a lot of thought.

I wandered about for a while until I met Abe Johnston. He was hefting a bale of hay into the bed of his pickup when he looked up and met my eyes. He said that I had the look of a man who needed a job. I warily said that he was right. He asked me if I could cook and I said that I could (my Mama had taught me to cook early on…”you won’t have no reason to be lying to some woman just so’s you can eat regular,” she used to say.) It seems his cook (“a Mexican boy name’a Pedro”) had just quit and needed another one for him and his hands. And just like that I took up residence on the ranch.

And eventually I’d been around so long that nobody in town was even cursorily apprehensive anymore (I was one of “theirs” so I was okay. That attitude probably should have bothered me more than it did.)

Some times on my nights out I’d see the fifth Mrs. Johnston clinging to some lanky, besotted cowboy as the two of them went up the stairs to where Rosa had rooms that rented by the hour. The fifth Mrs. Johnston often came to the cantina even though…or perhaps because…she knew that it was where I hung out when I was in town. I never acknowledged her presence there. And I never told Abe about her trysts (though, knowing the old man, there was nothing he really needed to be told about her activities. Nothing he didn’t already know all too well.)

After she’d closed the place for the night, Rosa would take me up to her room and I would lay with her, laughing and bullshitting and finding comfort and release in the tangy humidity of her plump, pleasing body, until the moon turned cold.

There were a few times when I came down to the street in the still hours before dawn when I’d find the fifth Mrs. Johnston sitting in her Cadillac…too drunk to drive with her clothes rumpled and, sometimes, torn…crying bitter tears. I’d always sigh and shake my head with both contempt and pity. And then I’d walk down the street and leave a note in the door of Andy Taylor’s storefront office asking him to come pick me up at the ranch in the morning. I’d trudge back down the street and drive the fifth Mrs. Johnston home in her Cadillac. We never spoke during these rides. She would pretend to doze off in the passenger seat while I listened to the radio…most often the plaintive songs of George Jones or Patsy Cline played by a local graveyard shift DJ who apparently stopped listening to new records sometime in the early 70’s…on the short ride back to the ranch.

Once we were home, she would slip out of the car and stumble into the house. I’d park her car and go up to my own room so that I could get a few hours sleep before daybreak. In the morning, Andy Taylor would pick me up and take me back into town to get the truck. This series of events happened at least a half dozen times during the fifth Mrs. Johnston’s stay at the ranch. If he noticed…and, of course, he had to notice…Abe Johnston never bothered to ask either of us about it.

After 11 months, the fifth Mrs. Johnston decided that she’d had as much as she could take of the faded ranch and the faded old man and she left cursing and furiously downshifting. I took a plate from the table and put it back in the cupboard. It would not take long to erase the physical traces of the fifth Mrs. Johnston, she had stopped trying to put her imprint on the house quite early on (neither Abe Johnston nor myself allowed much change to come into the house.) I poured two cups of coffee and sat down at the table.

Before too long, Abe Johnston trudged in and slumped into his chair. He took a long sip of coffee and looked up. His lips parted as if to speak but then he sighed and took another sip. I waited patiently. He looked up again and, in a small wounded voice, he said, “She said I was an old man…no good to nobody…”

I nodded and sipped at my own coffee. “You are an old man, Abraham,” I replied. “Everybody gets old…it’s part of the deal…”

He winced and frowned and then shook his head sadly. “…yeah…suppose so…” He picked up his cup and stood. “Guess I’ll get dressed,” he said soberly. “After breakfast we can take the rest of her stuff into town and then pick up the horse feed.”

“Okay.”

Abe Johnston walked over to the door. He paused and looked back. For an instant he looked scared and lost. “You ain’t gonna leave me, are you?” he asked earnestly in a small voice.

I looked over at him. “No, Abraham,” I replied without hesitation, “I’m not.”

His body gave a slight, involuntary shiver of relief. He winked and turned through the door. “Good…you’re a good boy…”

I shook my head and chuckled patiently. “I love you too, old man,” I said to the now empty doorway. “I love you too.”