Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  Tom thought about this for a while. Then he said, “No. Penn can’t know about this. First, he’s got to be able to deny all knowledge. Second . . . the people he’s talking to might sniff it on him.”

  Walt squinted at his old friend. “Are you sure that’s it? Or do you just not want to tell your son he’s playing bait?”

  Tom’s face hardened. “This is war. You know that.”

  Garrity held up his hands. “Let’s not plow the same field twice. I’m just making sure you face this straight-on.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Look, are you sure you haven’t noticed anything? Sensed anything?”

  “Not even a rustle in the tall grass.”

  “But you’re ready?”

  Walt didn’t bother to answer this.

  “You’re settled with it, I mean. In your soul?”

  Walt stretched his creaky frame, then looked back at the window in the door. “Believe it or not, I talked to Carmelita about it.”

  Tom blinked in disbelief.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Walt said. “She saw some rough stuff in Juarez before she moved up here.”

  “What did Carmelita say?”

  “She talked to her brother. He’s a priest down there still.”

  “Jesus, Walt—”

  “He’s a priest, goddamn it. He can’t say nothing. Anyway, Carmelita told him a bit about the Knox family history.”

  “And?”

  “He quoted some scripture, but I can’t remember the exact words. What it came down to was this: in a just war, certain things are permitted.”

  “Would he call this a just war, I wonder?”

  “Given the facts he knew, he did. He gave me his blessing.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it.” Tom rubbed his forehead, then said, “Damn, I’d give my left arm for a cigar.”

  Walt smiled. “Can’t help you there, bud. Got some chaw in the truck.”

  “God forbid.” Tom looked over at a cabinet mounted to the wall. “How about a game of gin?”

  Walt grinned. “Penny a point?”

  Chapter 12

  By the time our doorbell rings at 6:35 p.m., Annie and Mia have combed through everything available on the Internet about Serenity Butler, including a video of her acceptance speech for the National Book Award. They’re particularly excited that she spoke fondly of Mississippi rather than trashing it, which would have been easy for a black writer to do.

  When I answer the door, I find Tim Weathers standing beside one of those rare authors who looks like her jacket photo come to life. Serenity’s eyes hold a steady light, and her smile is quick and broad. She’s wearing jeans and a white tank top, and her hair is gathered in a low ponytail at the back of her neck. She might be a little thinner than in her photograph, but her arms are full and muscular.

  “You guys have some serious security here,” she observes, sticking out her hand. “Tee Butler.”

  I recognize the nickname from reading her memoir. Shaking her strong hand, I pull her into the house. Tim Weathers gives me a wink as I shut the door.

  “After what happened to Keisha,” I say, by way of explanation.

  “Oh, I get it. I wasn’t criticizing.”

  “My daughter and a friend are in the kitchen. They can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Great,” Serenity says, following me down the hall.

  I lead her into the kitchen, where Mia and Annie stand like the children in The Sound of Music waiting to be presented to the baroness.

  “Annie, Mia, this is Serenity Butler. Serenity—”

  “Hey, Annie,” Serenity says, stepping forward and giving my daughter a high five. The writer glances back at me. “I saw who was who by the timing of their smiles.” Serenity turns to Mia and points at the T-shirt she’s wearing. “UCA, huh? You a cheerleader?”

  “Used to be,” Mia says awkwardly.

  “Me, too. Waaay back. Hey, I know ‘Serenity’ is a mouthful, okay? My friends call me ‘Tee’ for short. Why don’t you guys call me that?”

  “Tee,” Annie says, testing the name. “That’s cool.”

  “In South Louisiana ‘Tee’ means ‘little,’” Mia says. “They use it instead of ‘Junior.’”

  “You mean like ‘Tee Neg’ or ‘Tee Jean’?” Serenity laughs. “You got people from South Louisiana?”

  Mia’s blushing now. “Some cousins.”

  “Me, too. But my ‘Tee’ is just a diminutive.”

  The conversation falters for a few seconds, and in that span I notice a keloid scar a little in front of Serenity’s left ear—a dark, U-shaped ridge at the hinge of her jawbone, about the size of a half-dollar. It’s not a bad one, but most women would try to minimize it with makeup. Yet Serenity leaves it exposed for the world to see. Since keloids are characteristic of African-Americans, perhaps she uses the scar as a badge to confirm her race beyond doubt? As I wonder about this, I realize I’m not the only one staring at our visitor’s face. Mia is gazing at Serenity as though confused by something.

  “Mia,” I say softly.

  Mia snaps out of her trance and blushes even deeper red.

  “It’s okay,” Serenity says. “When you title your book ‘The Paper Bag Test,’ once people find out what it means, they all stare.”

  “What’s the paper bag test?” Annie asks.

  Serenity smiles patiently. “In the black community, back in the day, people with lighter skin tones were looked at as higher on the social scale.”

  “By white people or black people?”

  “Both. But it was black people who created the test. It started down in New Orleans. If you were going to an exclusive party, or thinking about joining a sorority, say, they would hold up a paper bag by your face and check your skin shade. If you were lighter than the paper bag, you were considered suitable. If you were darker, you didn’t get in.”

  “Gyahh,” Annie says. “That sucks.”

  “You said it. And I’m exactly the color of the average bag. Which caused me no end of problems. When you live on a borderline, nothing’s ever easy. Sometimes I was in the cool group, sometimes I was untouchable. I got to know both sides.”

  “That’s kind of cool, actually,” Mia says. “For a writer, I mean.”

  “I guess,” Serenity concedes. “But for a young girl trying to find her way, it sucked.”

  Annie laughs, proud of having chosen the proper description of Serenity’s plight.

  To change the subject, I say, “So, you taught Keisha in college?”

  “As an undergrad. She had a lot of fire in her, even then.”

  “Keisha’s so awesome,” Annie says. “She isn’t afraid of anything.”

  Serenity smiles with her mouth closed, but I can read her response in her eyes. That’s probably not true anymore.

  “Okay, guys,” I say, clapping my hands to punctuate the end of this exchange, “Serenity and I are going down to my office. I’m going to give her some background on Natchez and the Double Eagles.”

  The disappointment in their faces contains more than a little resentment, but I’ll have to endure it. Annie’s not ready for the conversation Serenity and I are likely to have.

  My basement office suite is centered around a twenty-by-twenty room, with brick pillars replacing a load-bearing wall I removed during the remodel. Two doors lead off to rooms I use for storage, printers, and the like, but now those rooms have cots in them, for the security guys to catch naps when they need them.

  “Thanks for being so nice to Annie,” I say as Serenity walks to the bookshelves that line one wall and begins perusing spines.

  “I like her,” Serenity says. “She look like her mother?”

  “Spitting image,” I confirm, but I add nothing more on that subject. “I read your book last night.”

  “Yeah?” She looks back over her shoulder at me. “What’d you think?”

  “Honestly? I was stunned. I didn’t expect that kind of mastery in a first book.”

  Serenity moves sl
owly down the row of books, dragging a forefinger along the spines. “What was your favorite line?”

  Not many writers would ask this. Is she testing me? To see whether I really read her book?

  “There were lots of good lines. True insights. One of my favorites was something your uncle said. The one they called Catfish? About how being from Mississippi makes you different.”

  She smiles. “Mississippi blood. That part?”

  “That’s it.”

  A distant fondness comes into Serenity’s eyes, and she quotes her uncle word for word: “I been all over the South, man. Cutting pulpwood and playing the blues. Mississippi blood is different. It’s got some river in it. Delta soil, turpentine, asbestos, cotton poison. But there’s strength in it, too. Strength that’s been beat but not broke. That’s Mississippi blood.”

  “That says it, right there,” I tell her. “‘Beat but not broke.’”

  “It’s a lot more poetic than ‘Mississippi exceptionalism.’”

  We share a laugh, and somehow this mutual appreciation of our common history banishes the awkwardness of being alone without really knowing each other.

  “You remind me of another writer,” I tell her. “He’s not from the South, but he had a black father and a white mother.”

  “James McBride?”

  “How did you know?”

  She clucks her tongue once. “A lot of people say that. If McBride wasn’t so damned good, I’d be offended.”

  “Because my first point of comparison is a mixed-race writer, and not just Carson McCullers or Eudora Welty?”

  “Of course. But I get it. I’m not naïve.”

  “It was McBride’s prose I was thinking of. The gift for detail.”

  “You don’t have to dig yourself out of a hole.”

  “I wasn’t . . . shit, okay.”

  Serenity stops her slow progress along the shelf and takes out a volume by Shelby Foote. She looks at the title page, then slides it back in.

  “So how does it feel to win the National Book Award?” I ask.

  “Pretty damn good, I won’t lie. How does it feel to sell millions of books?”

  “Not bad.” We share another laugh. “Maybe we all want what we don’t have,” I suggest.

  “Touché.”

  At last she turns away from the bookshelf and sits down in the Eames chair where I read her galley last night. After testing the cushion, she lifts her shapely legs onto the ottoman and crosses them.

  “I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here, right? Natchez, I mean.”

  “Well . . . you’re friends with Keisha.”

  “I am. But that’s not all of it. Maybe not even most of it. I want to get justice for Keisha, yes. But I’m really here because of the larger story.”

  “Which story, exactly?”

  Her dark eyes focus on mine to the exclusion of all else. “Your story. Or your family’s. Your father and Viola. Does that surprise you?”

  “Ah . . . yes. A little.”

  “Keisha’s been sending me her stuff all along. Since before your fiancée was murdered. And I see a lot of parallels with my mother’s story in the relationship between Viola Turner and your father. And I see myself in Lincoln Turner, of course.”

  “I can see that, at least in the abstract. But in your book, you made it sound like you’d put your quest for identity behind you. ‘Not every mystery has a solution,’ you said.”

  Serenity’s gaze moves off of me. “Right. Well, on that point . . . there’s been a development.”

  “What kind of development?”

  “A candidate has come forward. For my paternity.”

  This is the last thing I expected to hear. “Who is he?”

  “A retired art professor in Philadelphia. He’s sixty-nine years old. He’s already offered to take a DNA test. I’m pretty sure he’s the guy.”

  She’s speaking with cool detachment, but I don’t buy it. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m not sure. He just contacted me last week. You read my book. I spent a lot of time up in Philadelphia, trying to trace who my father was. And I actually talked to this guy. He wasn’t one of my main candidates, but I did interview him. He denied even remembering my mother. I knew she’d been in one of his classes, I had the records. But he claimed he’d taught too many students to remember individuals.”

  Having seen a photo of Charity Butler inside Serenity’s book, I doubted this. “Even those as striking as your mother? Doesn’t sound like any professor I ever had.”

  Serenity clucks her tongue again, this time making it sound like a guilty sentence from a judge. “Exactly.”

  “So why the change of heart after all this time?”

  “Two reasons. First, his wife died.”

  “Ahh. And the second?”

  “Come on. I just won the National Book Award. I’m famous.”

  “And he’s an academic.” I shake my head in disgust. “He wants the world to know that half your genes came from him.”

  “You got it, Mayor. No heart involved. It’s all ego.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?”

  “Haven’t made up my mind. I don’t really like the guy. But I suppose I want to see whether I can recognize what my mother saw in him. I didn’t the first time.”

  “What about your own connection to him? Your future?”

  Serenity’s mouth twists with deep displeasure. “That man’s not my father. My grandparents raised me. My aunts. Uncle Catfish. I don’t plan to get warm and fuzzy with my sperm donor.”

  Sensing deeper anger in her voice, I decide to change the subject.

  “That thing your uncle used to say about Mississippi blood. The strength in it. ‘Beat but not broke.’ Do you think he was only talking about black people?”

  My question proves sufficient to distract her. “I asked him that once,” she says. “Catfish actually liked white folks, especially the working people. He thought they’d been manipulated by the moneyed class to resent blacks, but he respected their honesty. Said he always knew where he stood with white southerners, that they always lived up to their word. Uncle Catfish never trusted Yankees. He was like Charles Evers that way.”

  “And James Brown.”

  “There you go. Now, Catfish did say that Mississippi had always bred a special strain of asshole. The Ross Barnett types. We’ve still got a few of those around, I think.”

  “Especially up at the state capitol. Hypocrisy is their wardrobe of choice.”

  “Lawdy, lawd,” Serenity says in a Butterfly McQueen voice. “Looks like I’ve found me a bona fide progressive household. Yes, suh, Mr. Rhett.”

  “Guilty as charged.” As I watch her watch me with what I know is a ruthlessly unsentimental eye, I say, “Where are you planning on staying while you’re in town?”

  “I booked a room at the Eola Hotel.”

  “Have you checked in yet?”

  “No. I came straight here.”

  I take a quick mental inventory of the house. “Look, I want to make you an offer.”

  Her eyes twinkle. “I’m all ears.”

  “If my instinct about you is correct, you’re going to lose no time making yourself a target of the same bastards who attacked Keisha there. In fact, by coming to this house you might already have done that. So I think you ought to stay here with us. At least for your first couple of days.”

  “Seriously? In this house?”

  “Well, Caitlin’s house is right across the street, but you know what happened to Keisha there. We’ve got enough room, plus a truly badass security team. You won’t find that at the Eola.”

  After a few seconds of reflection, Serenity takes a deep breath, purses her lips, and sighs. “Mr. Mayor, I accept your offer. I don’t fancy getting acid thrown in my face. Or worse.”

  “Good.” Her answer gives me a deep sense of relief. “Why don’t you get your stuff from your car, and Mia and Annie will help you settle in.”

  Serenity til
ts her head as though pondering something. “Hey . . . I don’t want to pry, but what exactly is the status with you and the cheerleader in there?”

  “Cheerleader?”

  “The girl with the UCA T-shirt.”

  “Oh. Mia takes care of Annie.”

  “She looked a little old for that.”

  “She’s only a sophomore in college.”

  A faint smile touches Serenity’s lips. “My mother was a sophomore when she got pregnant with me.”

  Hot blood rushes to my cheeks. “Good Lord . . . no. It’s nothing like that. Mia was Annie’s babysitter a couple of years ago. After Caitlin was murdered, Annie kind of lost it. My mother’s living near the prison where my father’s being held right now, so Mia offered to help.”

  “I see.” But Serenity’s eyes say the opposite.

  “Do you?”

  She pooches out her lower lip. “Aren’t we in the middle of a semester? There isn’t a college in Natchez, is there?”

  “Mia goes to Harvard. Everything blew up during her Christmas break. She took off a semester to help.”

  This time Serenity’s nod is slower but more definite. “Now I see. Well. Did I just ruin my invitation?”

  “No, no, it’s fine. You’re just wrong about Mia. You’ll see after you’ve been here awhile.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  She gets up lightly and heads for the stairs. “I’ll just grab my bag.”

  “You need any help?”

  “Nope. I travel light.”

  While Serenity retrieves her bag, I run upstairs to the kitchen to work out her sleeping arrangements with Annie and Mia. Annie is overjoyed to hear that she’ll be staying with us—Mia, less so.

  “With Mom coming in Sunday night, you guys will have to double up, and the biggest room is the old master bedroom on this floor. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yeah!” Annie says, not even looking at Mia, whose mouth has tightened. “Tee’s probably going to need the bodyguards. Especially if she picks up where Keisha left off.”

  “Mia?” I ask. “I know that’s asking a lot, you giving up your privacy. You could use the sofa bed in my office in the basement.”