Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  In truth, both scenarios seemed unendurable. To lose Viola would be agony, yet to give up his family would mean betraying his deepest convictions. Then, like an unexpected blow, the full weight of the first possibility struck Tom: to see Viola in love with someone else … that might well shatter him. After this realization, every moment of that day became a struggle to maintain control of himself. He was trying to figure out some Solomonic solution when Dr. Lucas called him into his office and told him that Viola had asked to be assigned to Dr. Ross, a GP Lucas had hired two months earlier. Ross was only two years out of medical school, and Dr. Lucas told Tom that both Ross and the clinic would benefit from Viola’s experience. Tom sat in shock before his senior partner’s desk, unable to find credible words of protest.

  “It’s for the best,” Lucas said in a stern voice. “Viola’s close to a nervous breakdown. And you’re not thinking straight, Tom. If you were, you wouldn’t be putting your family at risk. The clinic, too, to be honest, with the way the goddamn Klan has been going at it these past couple of years.”

  “The Klan?” Tom said dully.

  “Let’s just leave it at that, all right? Viola will be working under Dr. Ross from now on. You’ll get Anna Mae.”

  Tom swallowed hard, trying to find his voice.

  “That’s all,” Dr. Lucas said. “Go home and see your kids. I saw Penn’s name in the newspaper yesterday, didn’t I?”

  “Penn?”

  “Your son, goddamn it! He hit a home run at Duncan Park. Go home!”

  Somehow Tom rose from the chair and found his way down the hall to his office. He buzzed the receptionist and asked to see Viola, but the receptionist told him all the nurses had gone for the day. He was certain he’d heard a note of triumph in the woman’s voice. He waited until everyone had left the clinic, then called Viola’s house. She didn’t answer.

  He found a stack of charts and began dictating, but between each record he dialed Viola’s house. She never answered. As the tension in him grew to an unbearable pitch, he swept the files onto the floor, then ran out to his car and drove to the colored side of town. Whenever he’d gone to Viola’s house before, he’d always been in her car, lying on the floor of her backseat. Now he drove right up to her frame house, his eyes scanning the carport, which was empty. He wanted to park out front and wait for her, but even unhinged as he was, he knew that would be crazy.

  That night he lay clenching and unclenching his sweaty fists beside his sleeping wife. In the hour before dawn, he felt closer to madness than he ever had in his life—even in Korea. The seed of that madness was the knowledge not only that he had to give up Viola, but that one day—perhaps not long from now—she would be lying in the arms of another man. Nothing could mitigate the horror of this prospect, or assuage the anger he felt—not even the thought of his wife and children, happy and carefree in a bountiful future. For the price of their happiness was Viola.

  But even if he were willing to pay that price, how could he work in proximity to a woman he loved but could no longer touch? How could he treat her as merely an employee? How could she ask that of him? And how could she endure it? Unless … no—she loved him still. Of that he was certain. Viola would keep her job because she needed it to eat. Any merciful separation would have to be provided by him. That meant finding a new clinic. Maybe starting his own practice …

  By the next morning, Tom had fallen into a state of near catatonia. He didn’t shower before driving to work, and he moved like an automaton when he got out of the car, not speaking to anyone he passed on the sidewalk. He knew no other way to face the lie he would now be living, one that slowly starved the soul rather than nourishing it, one that snuffed out hope rather than kindling it. What Tom did not know was that behind the door of the clinic that morning waited a future of blood and violence that would surpass even the war—

  “Dr. Cage?” called a panicked voice. “Dr. Cage, the door’s locked!”

  Tom heard a harsh rapping at his office door. How long had it been going on? “Just a damn minute,” he said under his breath. With a last look at the Polaroid of Viola, he slipped the photo back into The Killer Angels and reshelved the book.

  “Dr. Cage!” Melba cried, her voice insistent. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine! I’m coming!” He took a deep breath, then opened the door and stepped back so that Melba could enter. “I must have locked it by mistake.”

  “Don’t do that!” said the nurse. “I didn’t know what might have happened in here.”

  “Melba …” He shook his head and opened his palms. “I’m not going to kill myself or anything.”

  “Of course not. I just … your heart. Anything could happen, and at any time. That’s what your cardiologist said.”

  “I locked it by mistake,” Tom said gently. “But listen … if it’s my time, there’s not much we can do.”

  Melba gave him a sisterly glare. “Don’t you say that. Don’t talk like that.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, then. The reason I needed to talk to you is that someone’s been calling on the phone for you. He’s waiting on the line now.”

  Tom looked at the phone on his desk. “I didn’t hear it ring.”

  Melba squinted in puzzlement. “You didn’t?”

  Over the years, so many thousands of patients had called Tom that he’d developed the ability to tune out the telephone altogether. “Lost in thought, I guess. Who is it?”

  “He wouldn’t say. The caller ID said ‘pay phone,’ but all the man will say is that he served in Korea with you.”

  Tom felt his heartbeat quicken.

  “Thanks, Mel. I’ll take it.”

  She hesitated, then went out. As soon as the door closed, he picked up the phone. “Walt?”

  “You bet,” said a Texas drawl.

  “Don’t say anything until my nurse hangs up.”

  They waited for the click of the receiver. Tom had e-mailed Walt Garrity a few hours earlier, instructing the old Texas Ranger to call him at home using a pay phone.

  There was a clatter in Tom’s left ear, then Melba said, “Dr. Cage? Have you got it?”

  “I’ve got it,” he said, waiting for the click.

  It was slow in coming, but at last it did. “Okay, Walt.”

  “Jeez, pardner. Could you make it any harder on a fella?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just about can’t find a pay phone these days.”

  “Sorry.”

  The old Ranger chuckled. “I finally found one in the lobby of a hotel. I think mostly hookers and drug dealers use it. Anyway, what’s going on? Not your ticker again, is it?”

  “No. This is worse.”

  “Shit. Fire away.”

  “I’m in trouble, buddy. I need help.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The law.”

  Garrity took a moment to process this. “That sounds like your son’s line of country.”

  “Normally, it would be. But I have to keep Penn out of this. This is … different.”

  “Different how?”

  “This is like Korea.”

  “Which part?”

  Tom hesitated, wishing he didn’t have to raise any ghosts for Garrity. “Like the ambulance.”

  “Oh, God. How do you mean?”

  “Similar situation.”

  This time the silence dragged for a long time. “I think I’ve got you. Tell me what you need.”

  “I hate to ask this, Walt. I hate to ask you to leave Carmelita.” Garrity had found his true love late in life, a Mexican woman who put up with nothing but took wonderful care of him. “But I need you to come to Natchez.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I may be in custody soon. Probably not tonight, but possibly as early as tomorrow. If that happens, I’m going to need you on the outside, doing what I can’t from jail.”

  “I hear you.”

  “This could be dangerous. I won’t lie to you.”
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  “Imagine that,” said the Ranger.

  “Before you say yes, I want you to know—”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, Corpsman Cage. Medics stick together. Right? Whatever you need, you’ve got it. You know that.”

  Tom felt an unexpected rush of emotion. “Thanks, buddy.”

  “Can you be more specific about your situation?”

  “Not on the phone. Let’s just say I’ve got a target painted on my back.”

  “Just like that ol’ red cross in the snow, huh?”

  “Yep. A lot like that.”

  “What goes around comes around, I reckon.”

  “Walt—”

  “Put a sock in it, Corpsman. Remember what we told the wounded. ‘Lie still. Play dead. Help’s a-comin’.’ I’ll be there tomorrow, if not sooner.”

  The connection went dead.

  Tom raised his arm and wiped tears from his eyes for the second time that day.

  CHAPTER 17

  MY KNOWLEDGE OF FERRIDAY, Louisiana, is so limited that I only recently realized that the town lies within Concordia Parish. I always thought the Concordia Beacon was printed in Vidalia, the little town just across the river from Natchez. I’d never confess this to Henry Sexton, of course. The man has done some amazing journalism from this farming village. I won’t be surprised if Henry brings a Pulitzer back to Ferriday someday, if only he lives long enough to accept it.

  Dusk is falling as I roll into the town proper, its main drag a hodgepodge of gas stations, convenience stores, and small repair shops. The newest-looking building in sight is a Kentucky Fried Chicken. For most of my life, I thought of Ferriday only as a town I had to pass through to get to Lake St. John. During the Urban Cowboy craze, I’d hear it mentioned as the birthplace of Mickey Gilley, and later as that of Jimmy Swaggart. Both men are cultural footnotes now, and favorite son General Claire Chennault is as unfamiliar to anyone under fifty as the crank telephone. It’s local boy Jerry Lee Lewis—the Killer, by his own proclamation—who wrote his name in the brightest lights on the world’s stage. Jerry Lee may have tarnished his legacy by marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin (something that wouldn’t have shocked the homefolks nearly so much as it did the London reporters who first broke the story), but John Lennon kissed his feet twenty years later, and the Killer is still going strong. My clearest memory of Ferriday is driving over to sit in the decaying old Arcade theater in 1978, because unlike Natchez’s conservative theaters, the Arcade was showing Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. To this day, I believe the Arcade owners booked the film because they thought it was a movie about deer hunting, not Vietnam.

  The Concordia Beacon is housed in a shockingly small building on the north edge of town. No bigger than a successful dentist’s office, it stands at the border of an empty cotton field that stretches off toward a distant tree line. The sickly sweet smell of some chemical poison rides the chilly breeze as I get out and walk to the glass front door.

  I hold my breath until I get inside.

  A woman of sixty-five stands behind a high receptionist’s desk, her hair done in a style that would have looked fashionable in the late 1950s. She looks as though she’s gathering up her things to leave. I hear a radio playing in the back, but when the woman calls “Henry?” over her shoulder, the music stops.

  “Send him on back!” comes the reply. Then the music starts up again.

  The woman laughs and shakes her head. “Same old Henry. I worry about that boy.”

  She comes around the desk carrying a big purse and a cake box. “I sure like your books, Mayor Cage. My husband does too. And he don’t hardly read nothing anymore, so that’s saying something.”

  “I appreciate it, Mrs …?”

  “Whittington,” she says. “I used to be a Smithdale, ages ago. I only say that ’cause Dr. Cage treated me when I was a teenager. They don’t make ’em like Dr. Cage anymore.”

  I give the obligatory smile I always do in these situations.

  As Mrs. Whittington passes me, I feel her hand close on my wrist, and she looks into my eyes with the disarming sincerity of country people. “I mean it,” she says earnestly. “You take care of your daddy.”

  I promise that I will, realizing as I do that the rumors must already be spreading outward through landlines and the cellular airwaves like vibrations through a spiderweb.

  “We’ll be praying for you,” Mrs. Whittington says, and then she’s gone.

  I hear the glass door being locked as I pass through the doorway into a larger room containing several small desks, a photocopier, and tall shelves holding big bound volumes filled with back issues of the Beacon. Seated behind one of the desks, playing an old National guitar with a shining silver resonator, is Henry Sexton, the lanky, unassuming baby boomer who has stirred up more trouble for ex-Klansmen than almost any reporter in the South. Henry nods when he sees me, but he keeps on playing, using a gold cigarette lighter as a slide, filling the room with crystalline wails that soar over droning low notes that ebb and flow like the moaning of a grieving man. With his graying mustache and goatee, he looks more like an old musician than a journalist.

  “Come on in and sit down,” he says, scrunching up his mouth as he plays a particularly difficult passage; then he tosses out a flurry of blue notes that vanish into a shimmering harmonic at the twelfth fret.

  “Sounds good,” I say, as he lays the National flat in his lap.

  “I try to keep my hand in. Calms me down when I’m stressed out. Playing this guitar always makes me think of Albert Norris.”

  As Henry takes his hands from the strings, I notice his hands are shaking. “Did you know him personally?” I ask, quickly looking up at his eyes.

  A deeper sadness comes into Henry’s perpetually sad eyes. “I knew him well. As a boy, of course.” His face brightens a little. “As a matter of fact, I bought that guitar off a man Albert sold it to back in the fifties. Albert was a pianist by training, but he could play a mean guitar when he wanted to. But it was Jimmy Revels who taught me to play the slide like that—with a cigarette lighter instead of a bottleneck. Steve Cropper did the same thing on some big records. But you didn’t come here to learn about the blues.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew Jimmy Revels, either. You’ve never mentioned that in your articles, have you?”

  “No. I try to keep my writing as objective as possible. But I knew Jimmy pretty well. Luther Davis, too. I was close to Albert’s whole family, and most everybody who hung out in the store. That’s one reason I’ve never let those cases rest. Maybe the main reason.”

  “Well, I admire you for it.”

  Henry shakes his head. “I respect you more for taking on the Del Payton case. It’s easy to work hard at something when you have a personal stake in it.”

  I don’t want Henry thinking I’m a better man than I am. “Honestly, when Payton’s family first came to me, I turned them down. They sort of embarrassed me into taking the case. You could say I took it out of white guilt.”

  Henry goes still, his eyes smoldering in his mild face. “Don’t knock white guilt. Let me tell you something. There’s a PBS crew filming a documentary about my work. They’re covering a few other investigative journalists, too. And the question people always ask when the director shows them footage is ‘Where are the black reporters in this story? All you’re showing us is white men trying to solve these civil rights murders.’”

  “How do you answer them?”

  “With the same question. Where are the black reporters? I need all the help I can get. But it’s white men working these cases, almost exclusively. And I’m not sure why. Is it guilt, like you said? I’ll tell you this: when I read my list of black murder victims from the sixties, hardly a black person in America recognizes a name. There’s something wrong with that, brother.”

  Henry leans back and flicks his fingernails across the open-tuned strings on the National. “Albert Norris was like a father to me, Penn. But Jimmy Revels broke my heart. And he never eve
n knew it. Ain’t that something?”

  Jimmy Revels broke my heart? This strange lament stops me cold. For a moment I wonder if Henry is telling me he’s gay, but he reads my mind and snaps this delusion with a laugh. “No, not like that. But we don’t have time to go into that story. Did you tell Shad Johnson I made a copy of what was on that hard drive?”

  “No. I promised you I wouldn’t, and I keep my promises.”

  “Thank you. I need favors from Shad from time to time.”

  “Has he helped you in the past?”

  “No. But he’s all I’ve got to work with over there right now.”

  “My fiancée would tell you you’ve got nothing, then.”

  Henry looks strangely uncomfortable.

  “Do you know Caitlin?”

  “I’ve met her a couple of times,” he says quietly.

  His tone doesn’t sound favorable. “But?”

  “Well …” He looks at the floor between us. “She’s big-time, you know? Pulitzer Prize and everything. I just work for a little weekly paper.”

  “Don’t underestimate what you’re doing, Henry. I’ve heard Caitlin compliment your stories many times. She has tremendous respect for you.”

  He actually blushes at this. “I appreciate that.”

  Henry probably thinks I’m just being polite, but the truth is, Caitlin has sounded almost jealous when she’s mentioned Henry’s work. I’ve occasionally wondered whether she’s followed up some of the leads he’s unearthed, without telling me about it. Maybe that’s what Henry’s worried about. He doesn’t want to reveal hard-won information to me, when it might wind up in Caitlin’s hands an hour later.