South, America

by Rod Davis

  “Amen,” one of the teachers said.

  “Now, in our grief and sorrow, we struggle to find answers. I can only say that in time we might come to understand that which we cannot now. It is a small comfort if any at all, but I believe that just as the Lord is present in all that we do and experience, even in death so he is present as we struggle to find the light once again. And you know that we all have struggled to find that light so much here in this land of many sorrows and unexplained losses.”

  “Amen.”

  He paused. “At the request of the family, this service will be brief, but I call upon Terrell’s older sister, Elle, who has kept ties to our community even as she has gone on in the world to her own calling, to say anything she might feel for her brother. Sister, please join me here.”

  Elle stood and walked slowly to take a place next to the minister. She looked at the table.

  “Thank you all for being here,” she said to the teachers, “and for the flowers. I know Young Henry would have been so happy—is so happy—now, seeing this.” She touched the urn with her fingertips, then turned to the pews. “He was a fine, fine brother. He made us all proud. I am going to miss him terribly.”

  Just as it seemed she would begin sobbing, she straightened and glared at the men in the back.

  “I know my brother is finding a place with the Lord, and that’s good, Reverend . . .

  “Amen.”

  Her jaw muscles seemed ready to burst her face. “But I swear he will have justice in his name here on this earth, too.”

  She took a very deep breath, exhaled, and nodded to the minister, then returned to her seat.

  The organ began playing very softly, a hymn I didn’t recognize.

  “Let us pray,” the reverend said.

  We bowed our heads.

  “Dear Lord and King of Kings, God Almighty please accept this young boy, who did so much in our community and for our children, please accept this boy O Jesus into your bosom, please accept this fine young man O Host of Hosts and keep him for eternity. And, Lord, protect those of us here now from the despair that comes at such a moment and make our sorrows run into rivers of joy for the path to Heaven that comes to all mortal flesh, no matter how it is taken from us.

  “Bless especially the family and most of all the sister of our late brother, and guide her in the hard days ahead, and grant her spirit the power to prevail over the darkness. Now please protect and light the way for our lost brother, Terrell Henry Meridian, as he even now sits at your side. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in Jesus’s name we seek your mercy and glory everlasting, O Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen,” from everyone, including me. Not sure about the two in the back.

  The reverend motioned to Elle to come forward. She did. He embraced her for a long moment, then pulled back, looked at her directly, and took both her hands in his.

  “Go with God and the spirit of Jesus Christ Almighty.” He picked up the urn, placing a white lace coverlet over it, and offered it to her.

  She took it, looked at it, then at the minister, and turned down the aisle.

  I got up to escort her as we moved toward the foyer.

  When we walked past Trey and the other man, Elle looked directly ahead, saying nothing. I looked right at him. I didn’t have to put it into words.

  Outside, the sun hit us in the face hard.

  “We should go,” I said, still holding her elbow.

  “Yes. Go.”

  We went to the Explorer and put the urn behind the front seat so it wouldn’t fall over. Trey and his friend walked up.

  Trey held his right hand over his brow for shade. The other guy stayed back a couple of steps. Seemed to be watching me more than anything else.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Trey said. His voice was heavier than I had expected, and clearly of the bourgeois South. “We had some good times back in the day.”

  Elle turned to stand directly in front of him.

  “Go to hell.”

  I expected her to hit him and sure enough, she did. It was as if he expected it, too, and he didn’t even try to deflect it. Afterward, he touched the redness along his left cheek. “You’ve gotten stronger.”

  She hit him again, this time a sharp slap to the nose, and might have done more but I stepped up behind and held her arms. She didn’t struggle.

  “I guess that runs in the family.” He had that smirk again and I wanted to punch him, too, but we were pushing our luck. The dark-haired guy was hovering in a boxed-off stance as if waiting for a signal. I knew he was carrying.

  “Who’s your friend here?” Trey asked.

  “Nobody you’d want to know.”

  “You talk for yourself?” he said to me, looking over her shoulder. A trickle of blood came down from a nostril and he wiped it away.

  “Why don’t you just leave?”

  His brown eyes didn’t flinch, but if they were a window to his soul, it was not a happy place. His glance shifted back to his pal, then to me again. Then to her. “Where you going now, darling? I was thinking we could have a coffee or maybe a drink. You know, like a wake. Talk about back in the day. Talk about where the hell your brother stashed what he stole from me.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Then go there.”

  She moved a little in my arms. I released her.

  “Let’s go, Jack. Let’s get out of here.”

  She adjusted her shoulders and smoothed her dress, then walked to the open passenger door at the Explorer and waited. As though nothing had happened.

  I had to think how I would now get past Trey and friend. I wasn’t much of a brawler but knew how to handle myself from military days. If it came to that. Which I didn’t want. So I just walked away to my side of the car as if nothing had happened.

  Trey looked at me hard, then at his gunslinger, and shook his head slightly. He was giving me—or more accurately Elle—a pass. Except he wasn’t the type.

  I opened my door. Elle and I looked at each other across the roof.

  “You go do your crying now,” Trey called out. “Let it all out, big sister. We’ll get together later on. Maybe visit Lenora.”

  “Forget him,” I said across the roof, loudly enough. Too loud, considering they were letting us walk away and a wiseass retort could be a serious mood-breaker.

  She got my point.

  Trey dabbed at a corner of his mouth and in the same motion put on some expensive-looking sunglasses. “The guy they’ll be forgetting about is you, what is it, Jack? Hack? Kack?”

  I let it go.

  “I’ll look you up in the book. We’ll get a beer next time I’m in town,” he said as I opened my door.

  “Bastard motherfucker,” Elle said as she got in, looking out at him. First time I’d heard her curse like that. She slammed her door shut and turned to me. “Now do you believe me?”

  I cranked the engine and backed up, not really looking to see if anyone was standing behind me.

  “One hundred percent.”

  I put it in drive and we left the church parking lot just as the double door opened and the school folks came out, talking to Reverend Thompson. He looked in our direction, and then at Trey.

  We went down the hill to the potholed street that led back to the highway. I turned west, as if headed to Oxford again, but then after two exits got off and went east again. Maybe they knew we were headed back to Birmingham but maybe not.

  The Volvo had followed us west a little, then turned off. As he had back in the parking lot, Trey might have been giving Elle a pass. But it was just more rope.

  8

  I thought it was best to take a roundabout route to Birmingham, where we vaguely thought to get Elle’s car, and then—we didn’t have that much of a plan yet. Maybe back to New Orl
eans. Maybe together. Maybe not. Past Pontotoc, I turned down a moderately busy two-lane state highway that runs through farm-laden hills and the strange phenomenon of rural sprawl alongside the Tombigbee National Forest west of the Natchez Parkway.

  I was actually thinking about lunch. All I’d had was toast and coffee at Colletta’s. Elle said she couldn’t eat, but passed me a water bottle. I drank it all. Outside, the sunny weather was disappearing fast as a thick gray cloud line closed in from the west. I hadn’t really been following the news, much less the weather, but we were in for something.

  The encounter at the church had left me with a feeling other than the expected emotion, fear. It was like the rush I got back in TV land when I was about to find the clue needed to make a story fit together. Less pleasant to admit was that it was also like the adrenalin spike I’d felt when my team had reeled in some North Korean agents slipping into the Incheon harbor. Or that time in Costa Rica. I pushed away the memories. It wasn’t like that. And I wasn’t the one doing the hunting this time, either.

  In contrast, Elle seemed almost deflated. She slumped against the side window, saying little. She found the NPR station again but it was news instead of music. She tried tuning something else and then gave up.

  I thought she was going to sleep again, but then I heard fitful breathing. “Oh, Jack, oh, Jack, oh, Jack . . .”

  It came on fast. She burst into convulsive sobs—primal cries of pain, long, aching vowels with no kinds of words around them, just straight out of her gut and soul. She kicked at the dash, then pounded it with her fists, shaking her head violently.

  I slowed down and looked for a place to pull over but after each hill there was always another prefab house or mini-mart or church or retail strip or video store. New South, indeed.

  I reached over to comfort her but she swatted my hand away. Her face was drenched with tears and her mouth and nose were shiny with saliva and mucus. She collapsed forward in the seat, almost motionless, crying in a way that broke my heart.

  Torturous miles went by. Finally I saw a red-dirt turnout to the left past a clump of trees leading up a small hill. I braked down hard and pulled across the highway, bouncing in over a broken-up asphalt apron, spewing gravel and dust. The lane curved up into the trees right away but then widened, almost enough for two pickups to pass each other. Then it curved a couple more times until we came to a broad turning area. A sign said, “Green Valley Covenant’s Promise, 1/2 mile.” An arrow pointed up a small rise.

  I eased past the sign, then turned on the wide arc of the curve so the Explorer would face out toward the highway. I pulled to the far right, almost into the thick brush, then turned off the engine and got out. I hoped it was a time of day when nobody would be seeking the Lord’s advice.

  I went around to Elle’s door and opened it. She looked at me like I was a stranger, like she didn’t even know where she was.

  I reached across to undo her seat belt. She didn’t move.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her face turned to me but I don’t know what she saw.

  “Let’s rest here. It’s quiet. It would be better out of the car for you.”

  Gradually her reddened eyes seemed to come into focus. She nodded a little, smoothed at her dress. She eased out of her seat, holding the door for support as she got out. We took a few steps. Her knees buckled but then she stayed up.

  I helped her over to a little ridge of earth under the trees where a patch of weeds had been beaten down, maybe by utility crews who used the place for lunch, working on the power lines down the road. She sat down, drawing up her legs and resting her head against her knees in an upright fetal position.

  I got some water for her but she didn’t want any.

  “He was my brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was my baby brother.”

  “He was.”

  “They killed him like that.”

  “They did.”

  “Young Henry.”

  I reached for her arm but she shook it off.

  “Oh, Jack.” She began weeping again, not hard, like before, but in steady sobs. She rocked to and fro.

  I touched her shoulder and she didn’t flinch so I sat next to her. I reached around to lightly massage her neck. A breeze whirred through the trees. It had been quiet when we stopped—but now a chorus of birds erupted. I heard a rustle in the underbrush and the birds flapped away. Flopping and flailing noises followed. A huge gray cat moved off past a cluster of leaves.

  Then came another kind of sound. Faint, then easy to recognize: tires crunching on gravel. The laboring of a big engine coming up a hill. Then it was in view, and although it was impossible, there it was. The dark blue Suburban pulled to a stop at the curve just down from this one, maybe fifty yards away.

  No way I had seen them following. But I had been looking for the black Volvo. They were good. I could hear the SUV shift into park, the engine idling high, as if the air conditioner had kicked in.

  “We need to leave.” I pressed my fingers hard into Elle’s forearm.

  She looked up at me, and then, following my gaze, at the latest intruder.

  Her throat was raw from the sobbing and it was hard for her to talk.

  “Just get in the car. Don’t look at them.”

  I started the engine and waited to figure the next move. I couldn’t get around the SUV, and if I backed up, where would that lead?

  The Suburban flashed its lights, twice, and eased up towards us. Elle and I exchanged quick looks.

  But the big SUV just rolled up the trail slowly, stopping directly in front, blocking the lane. I realized they were toying with us again.

  After a few moments, the driver lowered his window and waved his arm outside, making a peace sign with his fingers. The Suburban moved forward again. I waited for the moment I could gun it and get around, but the SUV glided on, at a crawl. The arm and peace sign from the open window belonged to a black man, forty-ish, with the fashionable narrow trace of a beard along his jaw line. Close-cropped hair. One of those faces clean like a scaled fish. I could barely make out the passenger, but it looked a lot like the goateed guy who had been with Trey.

  As he passed, scaled fish puckered up as though blowing a kiss. Then he laughed, turned to the passenger, and the tinted window slid up with a smooth electric movement. They peeled away, spewing gravel, up around the curve that led on to the country church.

  I hit the accelerator. At the bottom we jolted onto the highway so hard we banged our heads on the roof. A welder’s truck veered around us doing at least ninety, laying on the horn. We headed south.

  “It was him, from the church, wasn’t it?”

  “And somebody new.”

  “Why—?”

  “Who the fuck knows. More of that crap Trey was pulling.”

  “Whatever he wants, he isn’t getting it.”

  “He wants you.”

  “So?”

  I pushed it up past seventy, always watching the rearview. Elle turned frequently to give the road behind us a good scan. We never saw anything. But we felt it, like the storm-scented air.

  I knew I had to keep changing our route. I dropped off the highway when I spotted an exit for a road connecting to the Natchez Trace Parkway. It led all the way down to Jackson, but hardly a main thoroughfare thanks to its fifty mph speed limit.

  We crossed an earthen dam at a small reservoir and instead of getting onto the Parkway directly, I picked up a county road, then doubled back north, instead of south. In a few miles we were back on the state road and after that found an exit onto the Parkway. It was confusing and I meant it to be.

  The Parkway followed an old Indian trail, slicing through thickets of moss-covered trees, hillsides buried in kudzu, sporadic farmland. I liked it because it had only a few entry and exit points. Anyone still
following would be easy to spot.

  I kept heading south. We passed no cars and met only two or three heading north. Maybe a Saturday afternoon was just slow in general. Add to that the weather, which seemed to get worse by the minute, winds bowing the treetops and scattering brush.

  The Trace, already primordial green-black, turned even darker.

  “We could go to Rosedale,” she said, looking out her window. “We could get off this road and go there, instead of Jackson or Birmingham or Tuscaloosa.”

  “Rosedale?”

  “I know people. They’ll take care of us. Trey can’t get to us there. We can figure out what to do. You know?”

  “Rosedale.”

  “I don’t want to go to Jackson now.”

  “What about Lenora?”

  “Someone in Rosedale can help me find her.”

  “We don’t have to go anywhere. I mean, we can go anywhere.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  Calculations raced through my brain. “It’s okay. Rosedale will be good.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  I watched for an exit back to the state highway we’d have to take to get to the Delta, but the first thing we spotted was a marker for restrooms at the Witch Dance trailhead. We both needed a pit stop.

  I pulled off at the roadside easement and stopped next to litter barrels above a small stone path leading down to the public facilities. An RV with Oregon plates was parked just in front of us. I was trying to look inside it through the back window when an elderly man and woman came up the path. They waved at us, half-smiled, got back in their vehicle and drove off.

  We were alone. A larger, secluded parking area was down the hill below the johns. I drove down and we got out. A wooden park information sign at the edge of the parking area depicted a map of the area and trails and explained that this was where witches and spirits allegedly danced. It said that on the spots where they danced, no vegetation grew even today. Visitors were invited to look around for barren patches.