The Blues & Billie Armstrong 59
CHASING GHOSTS
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
I kissed Laurette lightly on the cheek and walked down the stairs. At the bottom I turned and looked back. “What was he like—Cole, I mean—did you know him?” She said, “No, I never met him. Pop and Molly did, I guess, but I never even saw a picture of the guy.”
At Main Street Liquors I bought a pint of Maker’s and set it in the passenger seat next to my mother’s old hatbox.
In my mind I saw myself by the burn barrel in the backyard all those years ago, holding up the blue flowered sundress by the hangar, checking the other pocket and finding the J.R. Cole obituary my mother had clipped out of the July 18, 1969 issue of the Lupoyoma Call & Record. I remembered reading that scrap of paper and thinking I had found the truth—when I had only found the mask of a trick, a crime against the truth.