American Ghost Read Online Free

found to be hilarious (and neither would Lena have if she had been Hendrix-born).
    Jolie bore her irritation with little grace, so visibly that Sam sobered up quickly and tried to make amends with a little small talk. “So are you a mere babe in high school, too?”
    He asked it as an obvious icebreaker, but Jolie was not so easily drawn out, offering nothing in answer but a slow shake of her head, so that Lena jumped in and answered aside, as if Jolie were a deaf-mute.
    â€œJolie graduated in May—she’s going to Chipola .”
    â€œNever heard of it,” he murmured, unwittingly putting himself back on thin ice, as Jolie’s form rejection from Savannah was still a sensitive subject.
    â€œIt’s the community college, in Marianna,” Lena raised her voice to explain, with a wary eye at Jolie. “It’s where everybody around here goes.”
    â€œEverybody poor, ” Jolie clarified, tired of Lena’s obsessive smoothing and wanting him to understand immediately, unequivocally, that she might be an eighteen-year-old hillbilly half-wit, but she knew who she was; she didn’t need some expert from the university to come in and tell her.
    The silence that followed wasn’t as insulted as it was thoughtful. Sam’s expression returned to one of benign scrutiny as he met Jolie’s eyes across the table, though Lena was plainly tired of Jolie’s childishness and mouthed in great exasperation, “Lighten up. ”
    Jolie’s guilt trigger was nearly as itchy as her defensiveness, and she immediately backed off, pink-cheeked and embarrassed, thinking she was getting as bad as Carl in the game of head-butting defiance. It was the Hoyt in her. It was genetic.
    The waitress returned with three heaping plates of fried shrimp before the silence could build. There were none of the usual sides—no salad or hush puppies or cheese grits, just a never-ending plate of golden shrimp and home fries and their own cocktail sauce that was spicier than store brands, infused with the heat of horseradish and red pepper.
    â€œI hope you aren’t allergic to shellfish,” Lena chirped merrily, trying to reclaim their earlier ease, though Sam Lense seemed to have realized he wasn’t in altogether congenial company and was, on his own side, notso easily drawn out. Lena was forced to carry the weight of conversation as best she could, till finally, in desperation, she called across the table, “Well, Jol—Sam’s here to study the Indians—couldn’t remember which kind,” she allowed with charming honesty, “but Jolie knows because the Hoyts—they’re Indian. Everybody says so. What kind?”
    Jolie’s father would just as soon have discussed birth control with her as his purported Indian blood, but in an effort to be agreeable she answered gamely, “Don’t know—maybe Cherokee, or Blackfeet,” she offered vaguely, as they were names she had heard bandied about by her cousins, who were a lot more into the ethnic variations than the old folk. She paused to let the Professional Indian Hunter jump in and instruct her, but he only plowed through his shrimp, raising an unconsciously doubting eyebrow at the mention of the mythic Cherokee, but keeping his own counsel.
    Lena refused to be drawn in, forcing Jolie to range further afield, offering with even less confidence, “Though Big Mama and Uncle Ott, and Daddy—they say the Hoyts, we aren’t Indian at all; we’re really from Alabama. That we’re—”
    Before she could get it out, Sam made a noise and lifted a hand in warning, as if unable to sit silent while she offered any more homespun theories of origin. “I bet you fifty bucks I can tell you what your Big Mama said you were. I’ll bet you a thousand. ”
    Jolie was taken aback by his outburst, equally sure he couldn’t, but forbidden to gamble by reasons of faith.
    â€œI