The Cutting Season

by Attica Locke

  “No, honey.”

  On the highway, a pickup truck chugged past, close enough that Caren could smell its exhaust. Behind them, plumes of steam rose off the fat, black kettles of boiling crawfish. “You’ll be with your dad for a few weeks, maybe until December. You guys can get a tree and decorate it,” she said, trying to sell it to Morgan, but also to herself. “The thing is, I have some decisions to make about where we’re going next, what happens for all of us. ’Cause right now it looks like I’m going to be out of a job.”

  Morgan stared at her for a moment, maybe not buying any of this.

  She and her mother had never, for more than a day, been apart.

  “But you love Christmas,” she said, sniffling.

  Caren smiled and kissed her forehead.

  “What about school?” Morgan said.

  Eric started to answer this one.

  Caren gave him a look, shaking her head slightly. Not now.

  “We’ll talk about it,” she told Morgan, patting the hair at the nape of her neck.

  Eric told Morgan that Lela was excited to see her again.

  Morgan shrugged, looking down at her plate, picking at a few stray kernels of corn. “I guess if it’s just for a little while,” she said.

  Caren paid for their meal in cash.

  On the ride back, heading south toward Belle Vie, she asked them both to make one last stop with her, directing Eric to the highway exit that led to Donaldsonville, to the tiny church on Lessard Street.

  PART III

  Final Tours

  26

  The casket was closed for the service. Morgan, who had never been to a funeral or a wake or memorial service of any kind—had never even known a person who had died—was plainly fascinated by the spectacle of the thing. The prayer candles and the spray of gladiolus and white carnations, and the short, black priest in his dress robe, a formal stole of red and gold draped about his shoulders and hanging near to his ankles. She sat on the edge of the pew, leaning forward, her elbows propped on the back of the bench in front of them, as if they were at a ball game or the theater, and twice Caren had to ask her to please sit up, to show Inés that least little bit of respect. Eric was appropriately solemn, but distant. He didn’t know the woman, of course; he was sitting in this tiny, dimly lit church for Caren. From Father Akerele’s opening prayer to his reading from the Book of Wisdom—the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them—to the congregation’s whispered Amen, Caren was on the verge of tears.

  Everyone was invited to speak.

  Friends and loved ones.

  The first to the lectern was Ginny, the church secretary, with her ruby-red curls and her graceful pear shape poured into a black pantsuit, a small pink flower in the lapel. She was holding a tiny, square piece of paper, her hands shaking slightly. The church was not full. But a good number of people had gathered to honor Inés, more than Caren would have expected for a woman born and raised over a thousand miles away. There were the church ladies, of course, and also the Groveland workers, and a few field hands from other farms. One man was biting at his nails. Another, nearly as dark as Caren, had his head down in prayer. She remembered him from the candlelight vigil, when he’d leaned against the white fence in the fields, hardly able to tear himself away from the site, the shallow grave, the space that could not be filled. It was Inés’s love, Gustavo.

  There were others, too.

  Lorraine had come to honor a woman she didn’t even know, simply because she had walked among them, no matter how invisible. Dell and Pearl and Ennis Mabry had also come. ’Cause that’s just what black folks do. Southerners, too. These were cultural artifacts that, God willing, would go untouched by time. Raymond Clancy was here. Caren had seem him in a back pew on her way in, seated next to, of all people, his brother, Bobby, who looked distinctly uncomfortable in a suit. Whether by coercion or his own free will, he had come to play his part: son of Leland James Clancy, a man beloved in this parish, who would have demanded his sons put aside their petty disagreements and show respect for the fallen, an innocent woman who’d been killed on the very land the Clancys had lived on and loved for nearly two hundred years. Caren caught Bobby’s eye. He nodded at her, then turned his attention to the altar.

  “Inés was warm and quick to smile,” Ginny said.

  At the pulpit, Father Akerele listened with his eyes closed, nodding.

  “And she believed deeply in God.”

  Amen, someone called.

  In the center pew, Caren felt a sudden motion on her left side. She turned to see Lee Owens sliding into the open spot next to her. “Guess who’s here?” he whispered, leaning in so closely that she could smell his aftershave, a musky scent, like the dried leaves of bay laurel. He nodded over her shoulder, and when she turned she was surprised to see yet another familiar face in the back of the church. In the very back row, on the far-right-hand side, Hunt Abrams was sitting alone, arms folded across his wide chest. He was wearing the same black Groveland windbreaker, hadn’t even bothered to change out of his jeans. “Paying his respects, I see,” Owens said. He raised an eyebrow at the audacity of it, the sick act of a killer showing up at his victim’s funeral. Caren felt Eric watching her, taking note of this whispered exchange between her and the reporter. But when she glanced over to meet his eye, he had already turned and was now staring straight ahead. He was holding their daughter’s hand.

  At the lectern, Ginny made the sign of the cross.

  Then, in halting, high school Spanish, she said, “Descanse en paz.”

  Rest in peace, Inés.

  As Ginny started down the short flight of steps at the edge of the altar, Akerele held out a hand to escort her. Caren glanced again over her shoulder. Hunt Abrams was looking right at them, at Caren and Eric and Morgan—at her nine-year-old daughter, the girl who had first stumbled upon the bloody knife. We should go, she thought. We should get her out of here right now. Only she couldn’t think of an easy exit out of the small church that wouldn’t take her daughter within inches of Abrams’s grasp.

  There was a sudden rustling, a sober murmur in the crowd.

  One man was walking to the lectern alone.

  It was Gustavo, wearing a pressed shirt, black and red, his nerves plainly showing. Even from a distance, Caren could see his lips quivering, and there were dots of sweat across the leathered skin of his forehead. “Lo siento,” he said, trying to gather himself. He kept looking in the direction of the back of the room, where Abrams was sitting. Then he crossed himself and began again. He didn’t cry, and he didn’t say his name. There was just this, this one declaration, a mere whisper into the microphone.

  “Yo la amaba.”

  I loved her, he said.

  He knew he shouldn’t say that, not here.

  He knew they weren’t married.

  And long ago they had made a pact not to speak of their families, the ones back home. “De este lado,” he said. “Fuimos solo nosotros. Y era amor.” On this side, he said, it was only us, and it was love. He knew there was a husband. There were kids. And he could speak to her love for her children, whom she hadn’t seen in almost three years.

  She sent money home each month, and she prayed.

  She prayed for those kids.

  She worked every day for them, even looking for day work when the rain pushed them out of the fields—cleaning houses or washing dishes at the VA center in Darrow or doing cleanup at construction sites, hauling trash, some of which she would lug home, to a small camper they shared. Books or used clothes or the base of a porcelain lamp or a piece of an old bed frame. She found a use for everything.

  Here Gustavo smiled.

  Inés was headstrong, he said, and sometimes stubborn. At this, one of the other field-workers smiled in kind. Sí, he called out, sharing this particular memory.

  Gustavo glanced dow
n at the casket, covered in flowers.

  She didn’t like it here, he said. She was trying to get enough money to leave, to go back home, or at least get as far as Texas. She thought, if nothing else, she could make more money picking grapefruit along the Valley. Gustavo lowered his head.

  I wish she had gone, he said.

  She should have gone home.

  Por eso cantamos para Inés, he said.

  So we sing for Inés.

  We sing her soul home.

  By now Caren was crying openly. Through the sting of her tears, she watched as Gustavo walked back to his seat, while some of the churchwomen stood to face the congregation, positioning themselves below the altar. Ginny was standing in front. In chorus, they began a hymn: “What Wondrous Love Is This.” Owens, sitting next to Caren, mumbled the words in a soft tenor, speaking more than singing, and she was surprised that he knew each verse by heart. This close up, she could see his hair had been slicked back and combed. Out of his usual khakis and ball cap and into slim black pants, he’d clearly gotten dressed up for this, for Inés. And when Father Akerele asked the congregants to please join hands, it felt oddly comforting to hold his, Eric on one side and Lee Owens on the other.

  Outside, she asked him to wait for her.

  But somehow as they filed out of St. Joseph’s with the rest of the congregation, Owens got ahead of them. Eric was close by Caren’s side, ushering her along, but also keeping her and Morgan well within his sights. She could feel his presence behind her as they made it down the church steps. “Let’s go,” he said, holding tightly to Morgan’s hand. She was still in her school uniform, her bare legs open to the night air.

  Abrams was long gone, his black truck nowhere in sight.

  Lorraine and Pearl, Ennis and Dell had already left in Lorraine’s Pontiac.

  Bobby Clancy was still lingering on the dewy lawn, beneath the low branches of the black pecan tree. He smiled when he saw Caren. He ambled over, both hands balled inside his pants pockets. Beneath his dark suit, Caren noticed a pair of camel-colored boots. “Hey,” he said. And Caren said, “Hey,” back, introducing him to Eric and her daughter, Morgan. He nodded warmly at the girl, folding his tall height in half by bending at the waist, so he could shake her hand like a gentleman. “Lord, if she don’t favor Helen,” he said, glancing back at Caren. “And as pretty as her mama, too.”

  Caren caught the faintest smile on her daughter’s lips.

  “You don’t remember me, huh?” he said to Morgan.

  Caren thought he was drunk, or at least halfway there. Bobby had never actually met her daughter, not even as a baby. “Bobby and I grew up together,” she told Eric.

  Bobby smiled sloppily, swaying a little on the heels of his boots, and again Caren wondered how much he’d been drinking. “Wouldn’t know it now, but we was real close,” he said. “And I was way too shy to tell her I had something of a boyhood crush on her.”

  Eric looked from Bobby to Caren, who felt her cheeks flush.

  She felt embarrassed, but also slightly angry with Bobby for finally saying it out loud, and here of all places. She felt she would have rather gone the rest of her life pretending not to know what she always had, that Bobby liked her and that he felt hemmed in by the proscriptions of his birth and name, the rules that he imagined kept them apart. Bobby basically said as much now, adding, “Yeah, well, times were different back then,” while fiddling with something in his pants pocket. Through the fabric, Caren thought she spotted the outline of a flask. She wanted to change the subject.

  “So I guess you know about the sale, then?”

  Bobby looked back toward Lessard Street, where Raymond was sitting in the driver’s seat of a late-model Cadillac, watching this little reunion between his kid brother and Caren. He tapped on the horn, letting Bobby know his ride was leaving.

  Bobby turned back to Caren. “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

  Then, he pulled out a silver flask and took an open swig in front of everyone, before tramping across the grass toward the passenger seat of his brother’s Cadillac.

  By now the crowd outside St. Joseph’s had thinned. There were still a few lights on inside the church, but Ginny had already pulled closed the gate to the church’s parking lot, which was now vacant. There was a rustle of tree branches overhead and a cool wind swaying the leaves. It was cold out here, and getting colder. The field-workers, everybody, was gone . . . except Lee Owens, who was waiting for her.

  “I hear they charged the Isaacs kid,” he said.

  “Caren,” Eric said, putting a hand on her elbow.

  He was through with it, she knew, all of it. The plantation and the cane fields and the sloppy murder investigation. The rain and the muggy mess of Louisiana.

  “Can you give me a minute?”

  Eric looked at her, then at Owens. “We’ll wait by the car,” he said, tugging at Morgan’s hand. Caren watched as he led her toward the rental car across the street.

  “I have something,” she said, turning to Owens. She still had the DVDs in her pocket—the headlights caught on tape. She pulled out the plastic case, the clear cover catching the light of the street lamp. The whole effect threw a yellow glow over the bottom half of Owens’s face. Who knew what could happen, Caren thought, if a newspaper took seriously what the cops wouldn’t?

  Screw Lang, she thought.

  Eric called out her name again. “It’s late,” he said.

  “I could drive you later,” Owens said. “I mean, if he needs to get her home.”

  When Caren presented this idea a few moments later, and out of Owens’s earshot, Eric lost the last of his patience. “What are you doing, Caren, you don’t even know this guy.” He had his fingers dug into Morgan’s shoulders, keeping her close. Morgan was leaning her head against her father’s torso. She was shivering.

  “Take her home, Eric. I’ll be fine.”

  He looked from her to Owens, then back to her again, rolling his eyes. “Caren and her many suitors,” he muttered.

  Now she thought he was just being mean.

  “It’s not a date, Eric,” she said. “He’s a reporter.”

  Eric let out a wearied sigh.

  He stared at her for a long time, the amber street light softening his features. He was worried about her, that’s all. “Just be careful, Caren.”

  Morgan was still standing between them, unsure in which direction she was meant to go, if she should stay with her mother or go with Eric. “Go with your dad,” Caren insisted. “I’ll be fine, ’Cakes.” Morgan’s eyes narrowed to slits. She looked past her mother, sneaking a peek at Owens. “Is Donovan going to be okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, ’Cakes.”

  Morgan nodded sagely, a kid getting an early, unwelcome lesson in the breadth of life’s vast unfairness. She took a sideways glance, a second look at Owens. “Don’t keep her too late,” she called to him, before skipping off to catch up to her dad. Owens was highly amused. “What a great kid,” he said, as Caren stood there, watching her go.

  They sat in his car, in the dark, only the blue light of his laptop computer between them. Owens hit rewind and they watched it again, the last scene on the second disc. Caren could smell the soapy pomade in his hair, the hint of mint on his breath. He was chewing his fingernails, utterly perplexed. “I don’t understand,” he said, staring at the headlights on the screen. “Why would he take a deal?”

  “The whole thing started as a misunderstanding,” she explained. Outside, the rain was misting, swirling about, like tiny seeds in the wind. “Donovan, the kid with a criminal record, admits to being at the scene of the crime the night she was killed, not knowing what he was getting himself into, and then the cops just kind of zeroed in on him and never looked back. And now they’re saying they have the murder weapon.”

  “The knife?”

  Caren nodded. “
But his car sat in our parking lot for at least a day. It sat out there completely unsupervised for a whole night. Anyone could have put it there.”

  Owens was still staring at the computer screen, at the shot of the truck’s white headlights, the visual fact of someone parked just over the fence in the cane fields.

  “Abrams sleeps in his trailer, by the way, so he can be first in the fields at sunrise,” he said. “That’s not even five hundred yards from the grave site.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. The nails were bitten to the quick, gnawed and pink. Caren noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “There’s almost no excuse for him not being a person of interest in this, especially in light of his past behavior,” he said. “I tried to offer an affidavit, to tell Lang what I know, the research the paper has on file for the man right now, but they don’t want to hear it. For them, this whole thing is solved.”

  She caught a note of something between heartache and rage behind his pale green eyes. She wondered what all this meant for him, why, beyond his job, his reporter’s eye for a lie, he was so beset by this particular story, why he cared so much.

  “Clancy got Donovan a lawyer,” she told him.

  “Raymond Clancy?”

  She nodded, adding this to the growing list of his shady behavior of late. He wanted this deal with Groveland to go through, and Abrams getting arrested for murder, or even being under suspicion, would surely pour cold water on the plantation’s sale, as well as the launch of Clancy’s political career. Getting Donovan a lawyer was a sleight of hand, a trick, a cover . . . but for what exactly, she wondered.

  Once more, she tried to walk through Owens’s take on the case. “So Inés finds a bone out in the fields, a body part buried in the Groveland farm, and less than a week later she’s dead,” she said.

  “Very rarely does one come across an honest-to-God coincidence in my line of work,” he said. “If it smells rotten, it’s usually ’cause it is.”

  “You think Abrams told Clancy what was buried out in those fields?”