The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  A handsome, light-skinned man of twenty rises and walks to the piano with the unself-conscious manner of a natural painter walking to a canvas.

  “James is the grandson of Swan Norris and Jimmy Revels, who was tragically lost to us in 1968.”

  This time the response is electric. A symphonic cascade of piano notes cuts through the awestruck buzz that follows, silencing all conversation. Gradually the notes diminish in volume until they settle into a slow, rhythmic undercurrent. Then, out onto that current, like a sleek canoe of rough-hewn timber, sails the voice of Swan Norris.

  I was born by the river, in a little tent . . .

  Oh, and just like the river I’ve been runnin’ ever since . . .

  Sam Cooke’s immortal anthem is one of those songs that few singers are really up to, but the restrained power of Swan’s voice brings chills to the back of my neck. One senses that, like a dammed river, it could break loose at any moment and wash away all before it. Swan doesn’t ruin the song with exhibitionist melismas, the way so many modern singers do, yet her sinuous phrasing easily matches Cooke’s original. When she pauses after the second verse, her grandson’s piano fills the space like an eddy of water. Then she goes on, catching the main current again.

  In the third verse her timbre changes, morphing into a more angelic tone, one reminiscent of a boys’ choir. Then I realize that Swan is no longer singing; she’s watching her grandson carry on what she started. As James Revels sings of being denied help from his brother, his voice seems to float above the crowd, into the high spaces of the church. But just as it seems in danger of drifting away, Swan’s rich, earthy alto fills the building from the floorboards to the apex of the ceiling.

  It’s been a long, a long time coming,

  But I know a change is gonna come.

  Oh, yes it will.

  When the last resonant echoes of the piano fade into silence, awe fills the church. For the natives of this area, a prodigal has returned—two, in this case—one a daughter, and the other the descendant of a man they believed martyred long ago, and without children. All I can think of is how profoundly moved Caitlin would have been to know that Jimmy Revels left a child in the world, and by Swan Norris. Then a piercing question comes to me: Did Henry ever know?

  As Swan returns to her seat, the elder Reverend Baldwin rises once more, presumably to dismiss the mourners. But when he reaches the podium, he looks out and says, “Brothers and sisters, our final guest today was asked to speak by Henry’s mother. Almost all of you know him, and I ask that you remain seated and give him the courtesy of silence.”

  In the front pew, John Kaiser gets to his feet. Several FBI agents do the same. When the door behind the altar opens, I half expect a black celebrity to walk to the podium, but to my surprise the man who appears is white—with white hair, a clean-shaven face, and piercing eyes.

  “My God,” whispers my mother, clutching my arm so hard it hurts.

  “Brothers and sisters,” says Reverend Baldwin, “Dr. Thomas Cage.”

  I start to get to my feet, but a strong pair of hands presses me back down. When I turn, I find Walt Garrity’s face only inches from my own, his eyes filled with empathy.

  “Just sit tight,” he says softly. “Hear him out. Then decide what you want to do.”

  CHAPTER 87

  AS MY FATHER walks to the lectern, obviously bent with pain, Walt keeps one hand on my shoulder. The whispers in the church rise like a wind before a storm, but Dad looks unfazed. My mother is blinking in openmouthed shock, but Annie is smiling broadly, Caitlin’s cell phone still held tight in her hand.

  “What the hell is he doing, Walt?” I whisper.

  “You’ll see. Just wait.”

  I quickly scan the pews behind me. “A hundred people are using their cell phones. Forrest Knox will have men here in ten minutes, and we’ll have a war on our hands.”

  “No, he won’t. Check your phone.”

  I slip my mobile from my inside coat pocket. The LCD reads NO SERVICE.

  “Jammed,” Walt says with satisfaction. “Courtesy of the FBI. Your father’s turning himself in, Penn. But he’s doing it in his own way.”

  “To who? Kaiser?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jesus. Does the FBI know you’re here?”

  “Officially? No. In reality, yes.”

  A flood of confused emotions is surging through me. Dad stands silently at the lectern, a gray pinstripe suit with high, wide lapels hanging off his frame. He looks as though he barely has the strength to hold himself upright.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Penn—”

  “What the hell is he wearing?”

  “A suit that belonged to Pithy Nolan’s husband,” Walt hisses. “It was made in 1940.”

  Pithy Nolan, I think, stunned by my stupidity. Of course! Where else would they be hiding?

  “He’s lost his mind, Walt. This is insane.”

  “Just listen, for God’s sake.”

  Dad looks down at the lectern, but he has no notes. He seems to be considering what he wants to say. When at last he begins speaking, his usually strong voice sounds weak, but his words are clearly audible.

  “I know some of you are surprised to see me here,” he says. “I haven’t come to disturb this service. I’ve come to pay my respects to Henry, and to the cause for which he worked so hard.”

  Dad looks out over the crowd, and recognition is the dominant expression on his face. His eyes pause as they take in Annie and my mother, but they slip right over me and move on. He can’t bear to look at me, I realize. When he speaks again, his voice seems to have gained strength.

  “This morning, I told Henry’s mother that he had given the last full measure of devotion to his cause, which was justice. I was quoting Abraham Lincoln describing the fallen at Gettysburg. But Henry’s bravery wasn’t the kind I saw demonstrated by my fellow soldiers in Korea, charging into bullets and dying in a foreign land. Henry proved his courage alone, in the face of apathy, resentment, and open hostility. Having experienced battle myself, I wonder whether Henry’s bravery isn’t a higher form of courage. There’s nothing harder than fighting alone, with no one to keep you company in your foxhole. There ought to be a special medal for that. But like most soldiers I knew during my service, Henry wasn’t looking for medals.”

  “Amen,” says a soft voice behind me.

  In the pew reserved for family, I see an old woman who must be Henry’s mother nod and wipe her eyes.

  “It says in the Good Book,” Dad goes on, “‘No greater love hath any man than he who lays down his life for his friends.’”

  “That’s right,” says a bass voice from the rear of the church.

  Dad bows his head as though paying homage to this principle. “Henry laid down his life to save my future daughter-in-law, Caitlin Masters, who I’ve thought of as a daughter for years now. As Reverend Baldwin told you, Caitlin was murdered yesterday, despite Henry’s sacrifice. She died following a trail that Henry blazed, and her greatest hope was to complete his work. If she hadn’t managed to discover that Bone Tree, I wouldn’t be standing before you now, but lying on a cold slab somewhere. Instead, that brave young girl is the one awaiting burial.”

  Dad pauses to catch his breath, and I can tell this speech is costing him dearly in physical terms. Then I see his chin quivering with emotion, and a knife of pain goes through me.

  “To paraphrase what President Lincoln said in 1863: We here cannot consecrate or hallow the ground in which those honored dead will lie, for their actions stand far above our power to add or detract. The world will not remember what we say here today. But it will remember the battles that Henry and Caitlin fought. What remains for us is to rededicate ourselves to the task for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. We must resolve that they shall not have died in vain.”

  All the whispered conversations have ended. Everyone in the church sits with rapt attention. Something is coming, and the congregat
ion senses it like a flood swelling one bend up the river.

  Dad looks around the church, taking in each face in its turn. “How can we do that, you ask?”

  “Tell us, Doc.”

  My father raises his right hand, his finger pointed skyward, and the spirit of the crowd rises with it. As angry as I am at him, he somehow radiates the conviction of a prophet when he continues.

  “Hear me now,” he rumbles. “For the hour of justice has come.”

  Excitement sweeps through the church like a strong wind.

  “That I, a white man, stand here and speak to you, the descendants of slaves, about justice is almost absurd. Yet speak I will. Because someone must. The wound that slavery dealt this country has never healed. Speaking as a physician, the efforts to heal it have been pathetic. Four months ago, a hurricane swept through New Orleans and revealed just how broken this country is, how deep the divide between black and white. The scenes we saw play out after that storm would not—could not—have happened in a white city in the North.”

  “You’re damn right,” murmurs a voice from the crowd, and Reverend Baldwin glares at his congregation.

  “Some people argue that your community is destroying itself,” Dad goes on. “Your children are killing each other, accomplishing a genocide that the Ku Klux Klan never could. The terrible truth is, all that death is a legacy of the great crime that came before, that shattered families and stained these rich fields red for generations. But nothing is simple. I wish I could tell you that the enemy is all of one tribe, but I’d be a liar if I did. It seems that the young man who killed my daughter was black, a drug user manipulated by white men to do their dirty work for them.”

  A few sharp inhalations cause me to start.

  “We in the South know just how complex and porous the boundary between black and white truly is. Our communities touch each other in a thousand ways, but not always in the light. We try to bridge the great gulf between us at our peril. In my life, I came to know and love people on your side, but I don’t know whether I helped or hurt them.”

  Dad pauses to wipe sweat from his brow. I suppose this is as far as he will go toward acknowledging his relationship with Viola. After gathering himself again, he continues, speaking as intimately as he would to his own family.

  “Some of you here today, I delivered into the world. Others watched me hold the hands of your parents or brothers or sisters, or even your children, as they passed out of it. I relieved pain where I could. But in the last analysis, I’ve been nothing but a conductor on the train of life. I took people’s tickets as they boarded, attended to a few needs while they rode, then punched their tickets as they got off. In my own life, I did things I should not have done, and I left undone things that will haunt me to my grave. For the most part, other people paid the price for my sins. Henry Sexton was one of them, and I can’t change that.

  “But the lesson of Henry’s life is that you don’t cure the great ills of the world by grand gestures. You start small. Like all great men, Henry began in his own backyard. He saw injustice and tried to remedy it. He knew that murder—especially the murder of those who had no voice, no champion—could not be allowed to stand. So he took up the work that his government had failed to do. He lit the lamp for the rest of us. Henry pointed the way.”

  “Amen,” says Reverend Baldwin.

  “If we’re to follow Henry’s path, then we must be as brave as he was. We must risk his fate, and Caitlin’s, too. There are always a thousand reasons to do nothing. We tell ourselves the past is better left undisturbed, that stirring up old trouble will hurt everybody, white and black. That only when the oldest among us have died will change be possible. Even the Bible warns of the terrible price of looking behind us. ‘Don’t look back,’ said the angel to Lot’s family, ‘lest you be swept away.’ But Lot’s wife did, and she became a pillar of salt.”

  “Sho’ did,” says a woman’s voice.

  “Unlike Lot’s family, we live in the modern world. And in this world there is only one path to healing. As a physician, I learned long ago that denial, no matter how fervent, will not cure the afflicted. Nor will prayer, I’m sad to say. If prayer could cure cancer, that scourge would long ago have been wiped from the earth. No . . . if we hope to leave a better world for our children, we must cut deep into living flesh and rip out the tumors we’ve left alone too long.

  “That’s hard and bloody work. Practicing medicine over the years, I came to know secrets that might have altered the future of our little postage stamp of America. But I feared what might happen to my family if I exposed the terrible deeds of which I had knowledge. I did small things to ease my conscience along the way. I even wrote to Henry—anonymously—and tried to point him in the right direction on some cases, but that was far too little. Henry lying dead in that casket is the proof, and also my reprimand. Today I am shamed by his example.”

  This time no one calls out in support or affirmation.

  “But I will be ashamed no longer,” Dad says with an edge of anger in his voice. “I will live in fear no longer. They’ve shot me once already, and if necessary they can shoot me again, because I’ve already lost a daughter. But no matter what they do, the crimes of the men who killed Henry and Caitlin will not stand.”

  “Praise Jesus!” calls an older woman.

  “Two nights ago I was kidnapped by Colonel Forrest Knox of the state police—not legally arrested, but kidnapped and taken to a secret place to be held hostage. A few hours later, I was kidnapped from Forrest by his uncle, Snake Knox, who meant to murder me.”

  The name Knox has silenced the church. Not one breath do I hear, and to the side of the altar, John Kaiser’s face has gone white. But Dad has no intention of stopping. He was always a commanding speaker, but now, despite his obvious physical frailty, his voice is gaining power like a heavy rocket leaving the gravitational pull of the Earth.

  “You all know these men. You know their history, and that of their family and fellow travelers. None of that’s a secret anymore—if it ever was—thanks to Henry Sexton and his newspaper. Like Brody Royal, these men not only mock the law, but wear its mantle and twist it to their own selfish purposes. You in those pews know more about that kind of injustice than I ever will.”

  I hear bodies shifting, angry whispers, and murmurs of resentment, but Dad pushes on with irresistible force.

  “Today, in the shadow of Henry’s coffin, I call you all—not to arms, for this is a house of worship—but to witness, to speak the truths you know, and to demand the justice for which Henry gave his life. Set aside your fear. Refuse to be silent one minute longer. For justice delayed is justice denied. Force those who come in the night to terrorize and kill to flee in terror themselves. Deny them the sanctuary of silence. Deny them all refuge but the bars of a prison cell. Deny them all rest but the grave. And by so doing, let Henry, and all the grieving families for whom he sought justice, rest in peace at last.”

  Dad sags forward on the lectern, and half the people in the church lurch forward as though to prop him up. But after a moment, he pushes himself erect again and gazes out over the congregation with empathy and sadness.

  “Thank you for hearing me out. And now . . . I go to answer for those things I’ve done and left undone. I go to speak the truth as I know it, and pray there’s still time for redemption. But please . . . remember my charge to you: do not let them die in vain. God bless you all.”

  With that, my father turns and shuffles to Henry’s coffin, then lays his hand on it, head bowed.

  My mother sobs once beside me, overcome with emotion, and then her quivering hand closes around mine. “That’s your father,” she says, her voice filled with vindication.

  “I know that,” I mutter, more confused than I’ve ever been in my life.

  After his silent communion with Henry, Dad straightens up and walks back through the door whence he came, this time escorted by two FBI agents.

  The buzz of voices that rises in his wake sets the wa
lls of the church to vibrating. The energy in this building is palpable, electric, a living force that craves a balancing of the scales. If the surviving members of the Double Eagle group were brought through the doors behind me now, I doubt they would escape this crowd alive.

  “Does Kaiser have men out back?” I ask Walt as the pallbearers slowly walk to the bier.

  “He’s got everything covered.”

  “Are they taking Dad into custody now?”

  “Probably. Quentin Avery’s back there, too. Kaiser’s coordinating this with Colonel Mackiever, the Concordia Parish DA, and the big boys in Washington. It’s going to run like clockwork.”

  “You’re forgetting the Knoxes, aren’t you?”

  Walt squeezes my shoulder again. “I’ll talk to you outside, Penn.”

  He starts to rise, but I turn and grab his arm. “What did Dad trade for this, Walt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The JFK stuff?” I whisper. “Or is he going to come clean about Viola?”

  “I don’t know, man. And I don’t care. This was the only way to end this nightmare with him alive.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be okay. He’s seen to that.”

  I shake my head, then release Walt’s arm.

  As the old Ranger hurries through the back door, Mom clenches my knee. “Penn, what’s happening? Did Walt say Tom is turning himself in?”

  “Yes.”

  She nods and shudders with conflicted relief. “Do you think the FBI would let me see him? Just for a minute?”

  I can hardly answer, so profoundly shaken has this turn of events left me.

  “Penn?” Mom says again.

  Henry’s funeral is over. The coffin has departed, Reverend Baldwin has released the crowd with a barely audible prayer, and the doors at the back of the church have been thrown open, letting in a broad shaft of gray-white light.

  “Walt said Quentin’s out back,” I tell her. “Go through the door behind the lectern and find him. He’ll help you.”

  Mom grabs my hand and places it over Annie’s, then rushes through the door beside the altar.