God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, Amurder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (9780698170537)

by Safran, John

“I’ll put you in with three or four folks if that’s what you want,” says Tim.

  It breaks my heart that not being left on his own is the best plea bargain he can negotiate.

  “Listen, here, okay,” says Vincent. “Okay, I went to the house, you know what I’m sayin’, yesterday. Yesterday. I went to the house. And I was down and I asked him, you know what I’m sayin’, ’cause I’m on Facebook. I asked him about getting on Facebook. And he said yeah. All been approved. And he was like, ‘Vincent, come in here, in the kitchen.’ So I go in the kitchen, where he asked. And he was like, ‘Oh,’ he started talking weird. He started talking about all types of different kind of things. And I was like—because I ain’t feeling this, because you know what I’m sayin’, he had, like, some type of cord, I don’t know if it was an extension cord or something. He’s trying, he was trying, you know what I’m sayin’—”

  “Right,” says Trip.

  “He was trying to get me to do sexual favors for him. You know what I’m sayin’? And so I’m, like, I don’t get down like that. I’m like, you know what I’m sayin’, I snap. I ain’t gonna lie to you. I snap. I’m like, ‘You need to get out of my face, y’hear?’ Murble. And so he kind of forced himself upon me. He was taking his pants off. So, he took his clothes off, and he still had his underwear on. And I was like, you know what I’m sayin’, ‘Wha’ murble? Hey, man, get off murble.’ All I’m sayin’, you know what I’m sayin’, he tried, he reached out and grabbed me. He grabbed me and I murble the nearest weapon.”

  “What kind of weapon was it?” says Trip.

  “A knife.”

  “Where was the knife at?” says Trip.

  “It was in the kitchen.”

  “Where is it now?” says Trip.

  “Don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you did with it?” asks Trip.

  “Oh, it was so messed up in my mind. I don’t even remember, I was so scared, terrified.”

  “I’d be scared, too, man,” says Tim.

  “I been so terrified, I didn’t know how to control the situation. I want to go tell, you know what I’m sayin’, the police. I couldn’t, ’cause I know I’d been wrong. Even though in the circumstances I did it, I know I did wrong. I just couldn’t come out and call the police.”

  “How many times did you stab him with the knife? Do you remember?” says Trip.

  “I just blanked out, it could have been numerous times, could have been one, I don’t even know.”

  “Wha-wha-what happened after that?” says Trip.

  In a tangle of murbles, Vincent tells Tim and Trip that he didn’t want to get caught up in anything because he was just out of prison and he knew this would get him back in.

  “Why did you burn the house down?” says Trip.

  “Because I knew what I did was wrong. Even though I did . . . in my mind . . . in my mind I knew I was protecting myself, I knew I was doing wrong.”

  “Did this man ever try to do this before to you?” says Trip. “When you were a young boy, when you worked for him years ago when you were seventeen? Did he molest you then?”

  “He used to touch on me.”

  “He ever make you perform sex on him?” says Trip. “Said he was going to kill you? Hurt you? What’s the deal with that?”

  “You know what I’m sayin’, he used to tell me about some guy that died, he was the only black person he knew, he used to work for him, he used to help him out. And I used to think he was just talking about work. Until one day he just rubbed on my inner thigh, he tried to grab my manhood, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “When did he start doing this type of stuff to you?” says Trip. “How many years ago?”

  “I was young. I was, ah, about, ah, when it first happened about seventeen, eighteen.”

  “How much money would he give you when he’d try to touch you, so you wouldn’t go and tell folks? Did he ever pay you money to keep you quiet?”

  “One time he give me two, three hundred.”

  “Who’d do that type of stuff?” Tim says, disgusted at Richard.

  “He’d be asking me about neighbors and how they’d be acting,” Vincent says. “And I’d tell him they seemed like nice people, but not the kind of people I hang out with, and then I told him I’d been to the penitentiary. He started asking about ‘Is it rough in there?’ He was like, ‘Are there homosexuals?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he was like, ‘Where do they keep them there?’ And I was like, ‘You know, most of them murble discreet, people don’t like them in the population.’ I knew then that he was trying to make sexual advances again. You know what I’m sayin’, he used to always try to get me to do him.”

  “Man,” says Tim. “Well, tried to make him do you from behind? That kind of crap?”

  “I ain’t like that, though,” Vincent says, not really answering the question.

  “I—I know, I’m with you,” says Tim. “Something wrong with that man, I’m with you, brother. That man, doing those type of things, that ain’t right. I want you to know, that that wasn’t right, what that man was doing to you, what that man was trying to do to you, was wrong.”

  “I know I did wrong. I know, I know I did wrong, but I was trying to protect myself. He was trying to—I don’t know how far he would have went. He grabbed me around my neck. I got scratches, he scratched me, he tried to force me, you know what I’m sayin’, do sexual favors with him. I was provoked—I’m not a bad person, I was provoked. Minding my business, I got on Facebook. I’d shown him some of my pictures. He wanted to see my pictures on Facebook. And if you look on there, I got a lot of pictures with my shirt off. And I’m like, he was looking at my pictures and stuff, and I don’t know if they could have turned him on or whatever, know what I’m sayin’? That’s when he called me up to the kitchen. And he wanted to know . . . murble.”

  “That’s messed up,” says Trip.

  “Sure is,” says Tim. “Let’s have a cigarette, let’s smoke.”

  The tape cuts to four days later.

  A shaky camera follows Tim, Trip, and shackled Vincent, stamping across Richard Barrett’s lawn. There’s something there that had been removed by the time I snooped months later. Thick Greek columns frame the front door and the back door. More of these columns are placed around the house to give the impression they are holding up the roof. Richard’s apparent attempt to turn his crummy little house into a Southern mansion. They arrive at the back door.

  “Did you knock on the door, Vincent?” asks Tim. “Or did . . . How did you get in? I mean, did you know or was it unlocked?”

  “He let me in. Yeah.”

  “He know you were comin’ or didya knock?”

  “He knew I was comin’.”

  I’m inside the house for the first time. Sunlight cuts through the window shades, but it’s dark overall. A flashlight beam rolls onto Vincent. He stands in a tiny kitchen area.

  “This is where we got, right here, that’s where I had . . .”

  “Is this where you were sitting on top of his back?” Trip asks.

  The camera pans down to a red blotch on the floor the size of a Richard Barrett.

  “Murble,” Vincent says. “Remember he had a knife,” he adds, “he was tryin’ to use a knife on me.”

  “Where’d he get his knife from?” Trip says.

  “I guess it been here.” He motions. “I think it was over on the counter at first. When he had the knife, I grab his arm and bend his arm, and the knife drop. And then, you know what I’m sayin’, I tried to restrain him.”

  Vincent pokes his tongue when he says that.

  “So I grabbed his belt. And he was on the ground, his pants were already off when he was on the ground. I grabbed his belt and I tried to tie his arm up. And know what I’m sayin’, he kept struggling. All he kept sayin’ was, ‘Let me get to the room.’ And I’m th
inking, If he gets to the room he gonna shoot me or kill me or somethin’. Well, that’s when, know what I’m sayin’, I blanked out. Just started usin’ the knife I had.”

  “Now, you brought a knife down here with you?”

  “Yo.” Vincent tries to pull the “yo” back into his mouth. “No. It was already there.”

  Trip turns and grins to the camera.

  The three shuffle down the kitchen area, a corridor more than a kitchen. The flashlight rolls over this, then that, then that. Clay pot on top of the fridge. Cane stool on its side. Metal bin tipped over.

  Vincent guides us through the dark to Richard Barrett’s master bedroom. Vincent lifts his cuffed hands and flicks on the light. A four-poster bed appears. It’s gorgeous and looks antique. The cloth canopy over it is frilled around the edges, with a golden tassel hanging at each corner. It doesn’t belong in such a small room.

  “I see this didn’t burn so good,” Vincent says.

  “No, it didn’t, did it?” Trip says. “What did you use, a lighter?”

  “Mm-hmm. Pour the gas, run it out, light it up, whoosh.”

  Trip looks around at the chest of drawers and closet, a beautiful match to the bed.

  “What was the reason for doing it in the bedroom? Any reason in particular?”

  “Nah, I thought the whole house would burn. Burn the whole house down.”

  Vincent takes us to the other end of the house, the flashlight rolling over candelabras and antique table lamps on the way. The fire worked in the guest bedroom. The walls and floors are silver and black with ash.

  The three men end up in what I’m guessing is the front room.

  “Let’s get out of here,” says a voice in the dark. It’s Tim Lawless.

  “You scared?” says Vincent.

  “No, it stinks,” says Trip. “We just don’t like the way it smells in here.”

  There’s a rustle and a click click click.

  “Put the light on us,” says Trip to whoever is holding the flashlight.

  The light rolls on. Trip is lighting a cigarette dangling from Vincent’s lips. Behind them is a baby grand piano.

  • • •

  Later, the investigators and Vincent are striding up the road.

  “Get me Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton. Need those guys!” says Vincent with a half laugh.

  “This is gonna be, like, kinda the Jena Six, hey?” says Tim. Five years ago, blacks united across America to protest the jailing of six black students in Jena, Louisiana.

  “The Jena Six, y’hear!” shouts Vincent.

  “They’re gonna call you the Rankin One,” says Tim.

  Vincent laughs.

  “And they gonna come down from everywhere,” says Tim.

  “Yeah. The white supreme-ist hollerin’, ‘Hear! Hear! Hear!’” says Vincent, imagining the white supremacist crowds furious he’s killed Richard Barrett.

  “You think about the name of your book?” says Tim.

  “Yeah,” Vincent says. “I think it gonna be Consequence.”

  “Consequence!” Tim and Trip laugh.

  “It’s a good title,” Tim says. “I like that. You do me a favor? You write that book now, I’m gonna give you one of my cards, you make sure you spell my name right in your book. I want credit, too, now. I give you a card. Tim. They call me Tiny Tim.”

  Sherrie

  Vincent’s sister Sherrie has phoned me and I don’t know why. The clock radio is glowing 10:07 p.m. Tiny moths block the glow from the lightbulb above my bed.

  “You’re leaving tomorrow, my momma said. I’m sitting here watching TV,” Sherrie tells me. “I’m not doing anything. Do you have your stuff packed?”

  “No, not yet,” I say.

  I’m trying to figure what to ask her on my last night in Mississippi.

  “My momma and her boyfriend are not here,” Sherrie says. “And I’m in her room. My uncle’s asleep or he’s drunk and, you know, he has a brother here. He’s handicapped and he keeps calling my name. He’s getting on my nerves. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a headache. I don’t feel well. I’m just stressed out.”

  “What are you stressed about?” I ask.

  “Everything,” she says. “Do you believe that the world is coming to an end?”

  “Tonight? I don’t think it’s going to come to an end.”

  “This year?”

  “No, I think it should be okay.”

  “Sherrie!” cries the tangled tongue of a man.

  “That’s my uncle’s brother with the handicap,” Sherrie says. “Have you read the Book of Revelations?”

  My mind winds back. I remember when I first dropped by the McGees’, Sherrie was shambling in the dark with her fat, floppy Bible.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ve read the Book of Revelations.”

  “Did you read about the moon turning red?”

  “I can’t remember everything. I read it a few years ago.”

  “Did you see the moon turning red?”

  “What, in real life? Like, up in the sky?”

  “Yeah. Last week. It was red. It was so red. It was scary, but I was not scared because I knew that it was going to happen and I’ve been good forever.”

  I drift over to my window and poke my head out, but I can’t find the moon.

  “I’m concerned with this,” Sherrie says, “because I know this girl named Crystal and I hear things and I think that she is the devil, and every time I talk, she talks.”

  “The Bible devil?” I squeak.

  “Yes,” she says. “The other night, I was lying in bed. I was on the floor, actually, I don’t have a bed. So I was there on the floor wrapped up in the blanket and I started hearing her. She put her soul into a dog and she told me to ‘Come out here. Come out here.’ You know, trying to scare me to death.”

  “She put her soul in a dog? And it was a dog that was outside your house?”

  “Please don’t think I’m stupid.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid. I’m just trying to follow the story.”

  I now know what I’m going to ask her on my last night.

  “Do you reckon Vincent has got the devil in him?”

  “I think he has,” says Sherrie. “Well, I know he’s there now because he killed a man. You know, murder, that sends you straight to hell. So he’s probably one of his people. One of the devil’s people.”

  “Do you reckon the devil made him kill Richard?”

  “I think so. Probably. I have no idea. I don’t know. He was just a violent person and it led him to death and now he’s marked with sixes.”

  I think of the devil’s beard that sprouted from Vincent in the courtroom, and the last three digits of his social security number—666.

  “Sherrie!” cries the tangled tongue.

  “Vincent told me when he was really young one of his relatives made him round up dogs to hit,” I say. “And that’s why he thinks he might have started to get violent.”

  “That’s possible. You know, you hang with the guys in the streets, these kind of guys are rough and like fighting dogs. When we moved to Jackson in ’95, ’96, he met a lot of guys. They were doing things, hopping in cars, hopping over car fences, stealing cars, doing different things. People he hung out with got him into things. Those were the people that accepted him, and he stayed in there with them, you know? And he’s always seen violent things. So when he grew up and thought he was a man, he thought, Okay, I’ve seen men hit their women.”

  “Did you know China, his old girlfriend? I heard he beat her up.”

  “He did. They just used to fight all the time. She was Korean and black. She was a very pretty girl. I believe the first woman he ever hit was China.”

  Vincent, Sherrie says, wasn’t like this when he was small.

  “I th
ink he mostly got violent when he was in prison,” she says. “Because he had been stabbed and, you know, you can die in the prison. In prison the guards are never always there. And the prisoners all clique up into cliques. Being in there for so long and having to see what was going on, he knew either he was going to fight or die, so he had to defend himself. And, you know, when he got out of prison, his mind was still in there. Once you’ve been somewhere and once you’ve been used to something, your mind is set on that. When you’re sixteen, seventeen, in and out of a detention center, from detention center to prison, back and forth, every three or four years, not being used to the world because you’re always in jail, you feel more comfortable in jail than you do home. And it’s just a lifestyle. It becomes your life, because when you get out here in the world, you’re lost because you’re used to having a schedule: You wake up, you shower, you clean, you go out, you get back to your room, you eat, and you do those things.”

  Vincent, Sherrie says, didn’t handle Richard like a free man would have.

  “He’s been in jail and has almost faced death because four or five guys jumped on him, and he knew either he was going to fight or die. And so, you know what I’m sayin’? So he comes out and he did what he did when he was in jail.”

  “I wanted to know, when Vincent was in court, how come none of the family came?”

  “Nobody was keeping in touch with me, telling me too much of anything. And I wanted to be there for him and help him out, but no one told me. So that’s the only reason I wasn’t there. Every time I see him on TV and the papers, I want to cry, because I know he’s going through so much and to have no family there for him, it hurts bad, man. I was locked up in a detention center. Nobody ever came to see me, you know? And I wonder, everybody else locked up had a visitation every other week. My momma never came and when she did come, it was on the wrong day.”

  “Sherrie!” cries the tangled tongue.

  “I don’t know if he’s better out or in,” Sherrie says. “Nobody likes to be locked up against their will, but, see, he’s so used to it. It’s really just his life. He’s never had a chance to get out here and work, get a decent job, have a decent home, a decent family. He’s never experienced that. And I know how he feels, but I just handle my things differently from him. So I understand what he went through, but I know that wasn’t the best alternative.”