The Smokehouse

I always knew I was close to home when I saw the wig. Conspicuously hanging in the low branch of a tree, it was simultaneously a touchstone and a lingering question. How did it get there? Ripped from the head of a disguised bank robber running from the cops? Left there by a forlorn woman after her date didn’t show? I never knew. But tonight it was gone.

I was stumbling back from Frank’s Liquors, my usual brown paper bag clutched in my hand. An expectation of sweet relief to come when I poured the amber liquid into my jelly glass. In the dim light, I saw the naked tree branch and immediately scanned the ground to see if the wig had fallen. Then I looked up instinctively into the fading light of the sky to see if a crow had carried off the treasure as if it were a readymade nest. But I saw no sign of the wig. I approached the tall double doors of my apartment, pulling my key out of my coat pocket. I stopped, pushed the key into the lock, and felt the unmistakable tickle of a large hairy spider brushing the top of my hand. I pulled back abruptly. But there was no large spider. It was the wig, hanging from the last remaining nail I’d used at Christmas to string some lights before my daughter visited. I figured a drink would give me the ability to reason this out, so I went inside, pushing the door loosely closed. Makes no sense, I said to myself. But as I approached the kitchen, I heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, Phil.”

I stared straight ahead. “Scarlett?”

“Yes.”

“Good grief, I haven’t seen you since you moved out to Jack’s Creek. How are you doing? How’s your son Jimmy? You - did you put the wig on my door?”

“Yes. You used to always say you wanted to see me wearing it.

You never liked my short hair. But that nasty thing, probably birds were using it for a nest or whatever. You knew I’d never put it on, despite your fantasies. But I hung it there as a hint, to tell you that I was here.”

“I’m sorry, I should have caught on.”

“Jimmy woke up from that coma.”

“What? After the fight?”

“Yes. The doctors think he’ll be ok.”

“That’s incredible! I thought he was lost forever. I’m glad you got him into that home, but even the name was depressing - ‘The Home for the Incurables’. Did they cure him?”

“No. It was like a miracle. They called me one day and they said Jimmy was singing. Some Beatle song about Norway.”

“Norwegian Wood?”

“Yeah, that was it. I rushed over there, his eyes were open, he was singing. I just started to cry.”

“I’m sure you did. Thank God he’s ok.”

“Yes, he is. It’s just the other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

“I’d left a notebook by his bed. Like a diary. I was keeping it for him. I never lost hope that he’d wake up someday. I wrote everything in that little Moleskine book. Everything that went on while he was out of it. I bought it because it looked solid, sturdy, like it would last. I didn’t know how many years I’d be writing in it. But something made me turn to the very last page that day, and somebody had written some words on it – ‘Jack’s got the gold’. So I asked around, while everybody was smiling, caught up in the moment, just so happy he’d woken up, but this one little nursing assistant stood off by herself. She motioned to me. She asked me who Jack is.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“Well, first I asked her where she’d gotten that name from. And she said he mumbled it, over and over, mostly in the early evening when she was about to get off her shift and was checking on him one last time before she left. ‘Jack’s got the gold.’ She knew I’d been taking notes in that little book, and she thought it meant something. So she wrote it down. But I never saw it until now.”

“So what did you say?”

“I told her that’s where I lived. The old family home. The place my daddy left me, with the old house and the old scraggly farmland. Right along Jack’s Creek. But then I got to thinking. Where would there be any gold there? What disconnected memory lived in my son’s head that somehow broke free of that coma and came out of his mouth? When I went back home to get his room ready for him and to look up some at-home caregivers, I started walking the old farm. Looking around. Thinking. And I remembered my grandpa telling me to stay away from my uncle, my daddy’s no-good brother, that he was cooking up sour mash in the corn crib and that it was no good for anybody. Even at a young age, I knew about whiskey. They taught us that in the church. But I also saw my uncle tear off in the middle of the night in that old Model L Lincoln, and come home in the morning drunk and laughing, and staggering off to sleep in the smokehouse. I remember Jimmy as a little boy following him in there one morning and getting thrown out so hard he rolled down the hill. So I went poking around in there. And the whole time I was wishing you were there with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I can trust you. You and me, we had a thing, but we never talked about it. You saved me, I saved you. You were good to me.”

“You know how much you meant to me.”

“Yeah, we were good together. The way you told it, a lot better than that banker girl.”

“No question,” I laughed. “But what about the smokehouse?”

“I need to tell you something. I wanted to be sure we were still cool.”

“Did you find gold?”

“No, something better. The money my grandpa always said my uncle bragged about stashing when he was runnin’ moonshine. The feds came around after he died wrecking that Model L full of whiskey and tore up his old still and looked everywhere for what they called ‘the fruits of illegal enterprise’. They never found a thing. They were looking in the corn crib, but they never touched the place where he passed out when he’d come home drunk. The smokehouse. So I went out there. I climbed up in those old rafters. There was some Muriel Cigar boxes scattered around. Every one of them had money in it. Cash. Stacks of random bills. I counted it all. Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.” Her voice shook as she spoke.

“Wow! That is the best news I’ve ever heard. Next to Jimmy waking up, of course. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m taking you to a place you’ve always talked about. Paris. Where you’ve always wanted to go. I can pay you back for all the good things you’ve done for me. And maybe we can make a go of it this time, us together.”

Scarlett?”

“Yes?”

“I’m ready. And I’ll get you a new wig.”