American Ghost by Janis Owens Page B

themselves till then.
    Sam also came to his feet and assured him they would, and since it was still barely midday, he and Jolie went out to the campground on some pretense, to be alone. They didn’t head straight to the camper as they usually did, but just sat on the pier in the slant of the noonday sun, which wasn’t as brutal as it’d been in August, having grown mellow and golden with the closing of the year. They were both a little overcome with the enormity of what they were doing and sat without speaking till Jolie finally commented in a mild voice, “I almost fainted when he askedus what was the rush . If you’d have said that idiot thing about your penis, I would have dropped dead.”
    Sam stared at the black water. “If I had said the word penis in front of your father, our troubles would be over. Because mine would have fallen off.”
    Jolie smiled, then laughed aloud, as his old Sam-humor was a great joy to her.
    â€œWell, I do love you,” she told him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. “When are you gonna tell your parents?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” he sighed, his eyes still on the water. “I was thinking next week, but hate to spoil Hanukkah.”
    â€œWhat’s Hanukkah?” she asked, with such innocence that Sam expelled another long sigh.
    â€œAh. Nothing. Little winter festival my mother is fond of.”
    â€œAnd telling her will ruin it?” she asked, so lightly that Sam blinked back to the present.
    â€œNot ruin,” he assured her. “Complicate.”
    He insisted on calling them immediately, to demonstrate his goodwill, though he did ask that Jolie not mention she was from Hendrix.
    â€œWhy not?”
    Sam sighed. “Let’s save something for New Year’s.”
    All in all, the call went well, all polite absorption at this point (“Oh? Really? So soon ? A pastor’s daughter? How nice ”), which Sam figured was the emotional equivalent of clinical shock, the hammer blow to the thumb that doesn’t hurt for about three seconds, then, oh, yes. It hurt a lot. It howled .
    But he was the baby of the family, the nonconformist who’d spent twenty-four years outflanking them. He rubbed his neck when he hung up, told Jolie with a wan smile, “See? I told you they’d be fine.”
    Once the hurdle of informing their parents had been cleared, they went about tying up the loose ends of the fall semester so they could marry as soon as the maid of honor (Lena) and groomsman (one of hisbrothers, though Sam was less picky) could be depended on to show up at either El Bethel or the courthouse in Cleary after Jolie’s last exam in mid-December. Sam would be gone by then, or soon after; Jolie would transfer to UF for the summer semester, or maybe in January, if the right strings could be pulled. That was the plan—to be gone by January in a quick and simple flight, one complicated by the holidays, which were rigorously celebrated in Hendrix, hamstrung by all manner of tradition and family gathering.
    Both Carl and Lena were coming home for the annual Thanksgiving feast Raymond traditionally hosted at the parsonage, which filled the little house to the rafters with cousins, in-laws, exes, and more than a few hunting dogs. The menfolk did the outside cooking—the turkey-smoking and the pig roast—while the women did the inside cooking and arranging and stepping and fetching. All of it came at a most inconvenient time, the week before finals, keeping Jolie in a stew of irritation and sleeplessness that made her snappy with everyone, including Sam.
    He picked her up from school as usual the day before Thanksgiving, on a sterling-clear afternoon, as muggy as July, though a front was due by morning, and the first frost of the season had been forecast. Jolie was nearly done with the labyrinthine preparations of a Hoyt family feast—mountains of red