by Rod Davis
“Look, in a minute or two, someone will come up to the front door.” At my glance, she eased over to throw the dead bolt. “When he does, or if they both do, we go out the back. We can get in the car before they either get to us or back to the Suburban. They’ll have to decide which move to make. That’s our edge. We can make it while they hesitate.”
She moved next to me. It was ridiculous that I noticed the sensation of her breasts against my arm. “What if we don’t? What if one of them goes around back?”
“The way they just drove up like that, I doubt it. They don’t even know anyone is here. They’ve never seen my car or even know I exist. Another edge we’ve got on them.”
“I don’t know.”
I looked in her eyes. “Yeah. I don’t, either.”
I heard a door open on the SUV. I looked through the blind again. A white guy, medium build, dark black hair and a goatee, was coming out the driver’s side, saying something to whoever was inside. I waited until he started for the porch.
“Trey?”
She looked quickly. “No. Anyway he wouldn’t be with them.”
“Go now.”
In seconds, we were out the back door. As we ran through the grass toward the carport I could hear the front door being rattled.
We reached the Explorer just as I heard the crack of wood as the front door jamb splintered.
I cranked the engine, slammed it into reverse and peeled back. I was at the street by the time the dark-haired man had come through the house, rounded the yard, and reached the carport. I ground the gears and we lurched forward.
What I saw next, before flooring it, didn’t register. The guy from whom we were fleeing was just walking up the driveway, watching us. He didn’t even run to the Suburban. Whoever else was sitting inside the SUV never got out.
I sped down the block, still pretty empty since most people were at work, and turned several corners until I found a street that led back to Lamar, then turned right and just drove fast.
I went a half-mile or so before making a U-turn at a four-way. I took a loop road and then another turn that led into a residential area and a labyrinth of cottage-filled streets somewhere on the city’s northwest side.
“Turn there,” she said.
I went up a street named for Dr. King and then we were on another loop lined with HUD homes that had seen better days. I stopped in front of a brick house on a quiet stretch. Four black teenagers in baggy athletic gear and backwards hats walked by, giving us a look but judging us as little more than a curiosity.
It didn’t look like we had been followed. But it didn’t make me feel better that we had gotten away so easily.
“This is crazy,” I said, as much to myself as to her.
She watched the teenagers continue down the street.
“We need to get out of here, or call the police. Something.”
“Calling the police won’t do any good in this town,” she said. “And where can we go?”
“We can get out of Oxford.”
“I can’t, Jack. The service for Young Henry is tomorrow. And I can’t let my aunt come back to her house with those guys around.”
“If she’s coming back.”
“Don’t.”
“I mean, why would she? If she knows what’s going on.”
“Stop saying it that way.”
“I only meant—”
“She has to see her clients here. She has to come back. It’s her business. I have to get in touch with her. Somehow. She doesn’t have a cell. She doesn’t like them.”
“A friend you could call?”
“I don’t want to start just calling around blind.”
“Still—”
She exhaled heavily, slumping in the seat. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Elle, that was a pretty hard-looking guy. They knew where to come. That or they’d been watching it all along. Maybe they knew what to look for. We were lucky.”
“Trey knows my aunt wouldn’t keep anything valuable at her house if it was trouble.”
“Maybe. So why did they show up like that?”
She looked at me hard.
“They didn’t even bother to chase us. Doesn’t that strike you as unusual?”
Her nostrils flared.
Suddenly, I got it. “It is you they think knows where that painting is, isn’t it? Not your aunt.”
The hard face, harder.
“They’re just going to follow you until you take them to it. They have all the time in the world.”
She turned her face away. “No. Jesus Christ, Jack. I don’t know anything.”
“They think you do. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Maybe he wants both of us. Me and my aunt. You know?”
My stomach knotted so hard I thought I had been punched. Somewhere in there, she was either lying or afraid to face up to the truth. Either way it was bad.
She balled her hands together and pressed them against her mouth. She took a few breaths, shook her head. Then she tucked a leg up on the seat and turned to me.
“I have to get word to her somehow. I just need to think. I just need a minute to think.”
I put the Explorer in drive and started forward.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. I need to think, too.”
She looked at the street behind us. Nothing. I kept driving. We passed a neighborhood police station. One of those old fifties-era black and white cruisers, the kind associated with police beatings, was parked in front.
“You’re right. We do.”
I was reading street signs, maybe with a hint of exasperation. We were on a wide street that ran around the back side of Ole Miss.
“Cut up through the campus. Students coming and going, one more car wouldn’t get noticed.”
“They’re not following us.”
“Anyway.”
I braked down hard as a light changed. She jolted forward, almost hitting the dashboard.
“You don’t have to take it out on me.”
I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but kept it to myself. Finally we got a green. I peeled off, jolting her back again. I didn’t care.
We entered a street full of sorority houses and then on into the main part of the university. Thick trees draped in Spanish moss shaded the streets. Near the student union I turned left and passed alongside a big open park area, what they called the Grove, where three red-and white-striped pavilion party tents had been erected. I pulled the Explorer over at a row of parking spaces in front of the college’s old observatory and backed in. In case we needed to leave fast.
I turned off the engine and looked across at Elle. “So?”
“I don’t know.”
We looked out at black workers carrying piles of metal folding chairs toward the tents. A group of coeds in shorts passed in front of us, talking loudly and carrying big plastic drink cups. It got pretty quiet. I finally spoke.
“Nothing is ever going to be the same for you now. You get that, don’t you? I don’t know what these guys want, but I do know that they aren’t going to let you alone.”
“I didn’t want to get you into all this, Jack. Really.”
“Really? I’d say just about the opposite.”
The slap came so fast I took it full on. But I grabbed her wrist when she tried it again. Also her other wrist when she tried with that hand. Her eyes were hot and maybe mine were, too.
We held the position like we’d been sculpted in it, and I let go of her wrists. She slumped back in her seat. I did, too. We stared out the windshield at the ebb and flow of the campus grounds. Some kids walked by, looking in at us as though we were an exhibit.
“We can play them as much as they play us,” I said.
“Yeah? Who are we playing?”
“We’re not playing anymore.”
Taylor Grocery is a down-home café in a rundown wooden tin-roofed building a short drive south of Oxford. It’s a local favorite. I parked in the dirt lot in front, as it was a little early for the college kids except the early partiers who were already lolling about on the front porch. Elle had said it was a place in which Trey “wouldn’t be caught dead.” Not least, she said, because of a bad drunken scene he’d once caused, making him as persona non grata as a local rich boy can be.
Inside, we got a table almost right away, next to a wall covered with photos and grafitti from guests over the years. We both ordered the catfish. There wasn’t even a smirk at an interracial couple. Mississippi had a past, but it had places like this, too.
A guitar, fiddle, and bass trio ambled onto the stage at a corner of the café and began picking out some easy Western swing. Outside, dusk was settling in and by the time we were finished, it had gone dark. I’m not sure if that made me feel safer, but I was with my girl. My girl whose brother was dead and whose childhood friend apparently was trying to kill her, too. My girl who had secrets. Some, I realized, from herself.
Over dinner, we discussed her friend, Colletta, who owned a small house a few miles down the road, the main reason we had come to Taylor. Elle stayed with Colletta from time to time on visits from Tuscaloosa and thought it would be safe. She didn’t think Trey would know about it.
Elle said Colletta sold beauty products and was constantly on the road. She didn’t answer her phone, but Elle said we could stay there anyway. I said it reminded me of dropping in at Aunt Lenora’s. Elle said this would be different.
The light green, shingle and wooden frame cottage was a mile or two farther south, past a couple of turns I probably could never find again, tucked against the edge of a forest line down a dirt lane. Exactly the kind of place you’d want to go if you wanted someone to come and kill you in the cover of night. But it was all we had.
I pulled up to one side, leaving the headlights on so Elle could see as she walked across scraggly country lawn to a small decorative rock display around a concrete bird bath. She bent down to turn over a large oval rock, looked back as though to say I told you so, and picked up the key. I cut off the lights.
We carried a couple of bags and my shotgun into the house. It was warm and stuffy until we turned on the air conditioner. The furnishings reminded me of Elle’s place in New Orleans, although a little more rounded out. There were some big watercolors on the walls, mostly photorealism-style portraits of children and old people. Elle said Colletta wanted to be a painter.
I went back out to move the Explorer next to a tool shed at the rear of the house. I paused to admire a medium-sized vegetable garden full of tomatoes, squash, and green beans, but froze when I heard rustling in the tall grass beyond. A few seconds later, rabbits jumped out.
I wish I could say that we spent the rest of the evening in passionate lovemaking but in fact we found a few welcome beers in Colletta’s fridge and drank them, sitting outside on her screen porch in the breeze while the inside of the house cooled down. Fatigue set in on top of the anxiety.
About ten, we decided on the plan for the night. We would sleep in four-hour shifts. She volunteered for the first watch and I let her. I pulled the Remington from the case, and loaded the magazine. Having grown up in the country, she knew about shooting. She settled on the porch to watch the approach and I stretched out in the front room on the sofa. To my surprise I drifted away.
It was just after two a.m. when I felt her rubbing my shoulder.
“The shotgun’s on the porch. I didn’t see anything.” She stretched onto the couch where I’d been and her eyes were closed almost at once.
I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. The night air was chillier than I had expected and there was a light fog, but I could see well enough and I could hear anything coming for miles. I went to the porch, pretended to shoot a fast-turning dove, but then just sat with the shotgun across my lap.
I was surprised how wide awake I had become. I’d pulled all-night duty more than once and it was like that. I thought back to those days. At least this time I was guarding something I could understand a little better. On the other hand, in the streets of Seoul and Incheon I’d known pretty much what to expect in the way of an enemy.
About six, I could hear the sounds from the houses up the road coming to life for the new day. I went inside and, seeing Elle still asleep, figured I’d sit in the lounger over by the dining room and give her another half hour.
Two hours later I woke with a start, then got her up, too. The service for Terrell was at eleven. We needed to be on time.
7
The Merciful Witness Church was perched on the side of a thickly treed hill on a highway at the eastern edge of the city, encroached by gas stations, convenience stores, retail strips. It would suffer, at least scenically, in the coming years, but for now it was everything you could expect from a moderately prosperous suburban house of worship that didn’t belong to white Mississippi. Red brick with green trim, it almost looked like a small, private Christian school. I guess it was.
We pulled into the asphalt parking lot in front just before eleven. Elle had asked Reverend Thompson to change plans and make it a private ceremony, although she didn’t tell him why. It wasn’t the church Elle had grown up in—she was a lapsed Catholic—but Terrell had gone there in recent years. He liked Reverend Thompson, who happened to be a second cousin of Mr. Orman at the funeral home in New Orleans. The two had expedited everything for Elle. I don’t know the cost; she said she thought it was fair, considering.
A half-dozen vehicles in the lot, all Detroit sedans or pickups, indicated maybe a few teachers had come anyway, once they heard the news. Oxford might have gotten trendy, but it was still a small town that way. I gathered Terrell had been a popular teacher, although he’d been on a leave of absence for the current semester. Elle said he had been thinking of moving to Jackson, like his aunt. If Elle was correct, whatever he’d been doing in the meanwhile had gotten him killed.
“I should have invited everyone. Let it be a real service,” Elle said as we sat for a moment in the Explorer.
“You did the right thing.”
She shrugged and opened her door. She had changed into a black dress and black pumps at Colletta’s. I hadn’t thought to bring anything appropriate but had a dark blue camp shirt and black jeans. I hoped no one would look at my deck shoes.
I had barely locked the doors when I heard another vehicle pull up. Elle and I saw the sport model black Volvo at the same time.
“Go inside,” she said.
“Not without you.”
A strange look came over her face. Not mournful. She seemed to be deciding which direction to walk, but took a breath and we made our way up the sidewalk to the front door of the church.
No one got out of the Volvo.
Inside, the rush of cool air felt good. A dozen rows of pews lined each side of the modest sanctuary. A choir pit and organ were at the front near the pulpit on a small dais. A gilt-framed portrait of Jesus, classic pose, hung on a back wall with one of the black Virgin. Multicolored sun filters hung from the side windows. Next to the pulpit, vases of flowers covered a wooden table. Also a ceramic, bronze-colored urn with two horizontal black stripes. Elle saw it at once.
We walked up the aisle. Three women and a man, all black, sat near the front and turned to look at us. They nodded to Elle, who paused to shake their hands. She introduced me as her friend from New Orleans who had helped with arrangements. I didn’t catch all the names but two were teachers, one was a parent, and the other a principal. The principal said they were all very sorry at the school and knew the ceremony was private but felt they should send just a small delegation. Elle thanked them and hugged each one.
We took a place in the left front pew. We were still a little early and t
he minister hadn’t emerged. Elle kept looking at the urn.
I wondered if the two men in the Volvo would come in. I got my answer when the church door opened and light spilled inside. I turned but Elle didn’t. One of the silhouetted figures was the goateed, dark-haired thug I had seen back at Lenora’s. The other was Trey Barnett. Elle didn’t need to tell me.
They took seats in the back right pew. A beat later, Elle stood, turned, and fixed them with a glare of cold hatred.
Trey nodded indifferently. He wore a black, double-breasted suit, maybe British-tailored. He was a good-looking man, medium-frame, light brown hair fairly short, a solid, rectangular face. His thin lips bore the trace of a smile. The thug was in a standard corporate business suit, dark blue, but betrayed by a black shirt and black tie. He looked like wiseguys I had seen in Dallas.
Elle sat back down. I took her hand. She pulled it away.
I didn’t know what to say and was relieved to see the Reverend Thompson come in from a door near the choir pit. He was gray at the temples and wore heavy-framed, dark glasses. His robe was deep purple and he carried a Bible.
He came up to Elle right away and opened his arms. She stood and allowed him to embrace her.
“I am so sorry.” His voice was deep, classic Southern preacher.
“Oh, Reverend.”
He held her a moment longer. As they stood together, a woman in a green robe came in from the back and sat at the organ. She began playing a quiet hymn and the church was filled with music. It made it seem better.
Elle introduced me to the preacher and he told us what he would do. The service would be simple and she could say a few words if she wished.
We sat down. The reverend went to his pulpit, then seemed to change his mind and moved next to the table with the flowers and urn.
The music softened and stopped.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, barely glancing at the two figures at the back. “This is an unhappy time, and yet one in which we are called to remember the ways of the Lord and how little we can understand them. No one could say that the loss of Brother Terrell Meridian in such a manner could be God’s will, as you might say, but neither can we say that even in his passing was God’s presence missing.”
