South, America

by Rod Davis

  Elle shifted a little.

  “I’m just saying that people bonded together in unusual ways, especially out in the country, and Oxford was definitely country in those days.” She paused. “And so it wasn’t unheard of for a white man and black woman—sometimes the other way but that was very dangerous—to find something together. It wasn’t anything anyone admitted and it happened all the time. I guess it’s been that way in the South all along.”

  I looked up at Elle, my hand resting on her leg as she sat on the armrest of the La-Z-Boy. It started coming to me where this was going. I was glad the Vicodin was giving it a soft focus glow, some grainy documentary.

  “Elle’s mother, Pearl, and Junior Barnett, they were around each other a lot and both were most handsome and beautiful people, especially Pearl. It wasn’t some kind of sleazy thing. That man loved Elle’s mama. And he loved Pearl’s daughter, too.”

  Elle held up her hand for Lenora to stop. She wanted to be the one to say it. She looked down directly at me.

  “Trey is my half-brother.”

  As my bloodshot eyes met hers, I tried to convey, wordlessly, the only sentiment that came up: compassion, for lack of a better word. What could I say, that I was sorry? For that matter, what could she say? She took my hand again, pressed it against her leg.

  “No one ever knew,” Lenora continued. “It was right after they moved to Oxford and Abe Henry and Pearl weren’t getting along so well. Pearl felt like she’d been dragged out into the sticks and, well, she was a real beauty and one of the things about them moving was that she would help with some office work for Junior. So they got to be friends, in that way it happens down here. And then they had what you’d call an affair. It didn’t last long. I think Junior thought it was going to ruin Pearl’s marriage and he couldn’t marry her. Like that.”

  Lenora paused, her hands working together like she was washing them. Elle let go of mine, stood, walked around to the other side of the coffee table, then sat on the couch, alone.

  Lenora noted the distance, then continued. “But then . . . Pearl was pregnant. It worked out that the timing was that it could have been Abe’s child. But Pearl knew it wasn’t. We were very close. She was the sister I never had. We shared everything. I swore never to tell, because what good would it do anyone? Abe Henry was a fine man, my brother was, and a father sent by the Lord to this child. It never would’ve mattered.”

  I looked across at Elle, who was looking right back. I turned to Lenora. “So how did Trey find out?”

  “That’s where the fight started. You know, that boy always owes lots of money. But sometimes people owe him.”

  Artula came back into the room and sat near Lenora. I could tell she knew all this, too. It was like being in a house with someone with a cold. Everyone gets it.

  “There was a lawyer, I think from Tupelo, not a very good lawyer, got into Trey for some coke or gambling money and couldn’t pay. His name was Fredericks. Trey was going to have him killed or hurt pretty bad. But Fredericks, I think they called him Chick, turned a deal. Told Trey he had something that could pay off his debts. Anyway, that’s what Terrell told me happened.”

  “That’s how we know all this,” Elle said.

  “That’s how. And his spirit spoke to me last night.”

  “It did,” Elle said.

  “Praise the spirits,” Artula added.

  “Amen.”

  “So the lawyer told him he had seen a special will, made out by Junior.”

  “About Elle.”

  “About Elle. A lot about Elle. It said Junior was her father and that on Elle’s thirty-fifth birthday she gets half the Barnett inheritance, which is in trust. With Junior and his wife both dying young, there was a big nasty fight about the will. Trey wanted it all, of course, both halves, and right away. But he couldn’t because the estate was tied up. Junior had put in a provision preventing anyone from saying why. It’s all kept by lawyers in Jackson. Basically, Trey gets his half when he turns forty. By then, of course, Elle would be way past thirty-five, since she’s two years older than Trey. So the best he’d be able to get would be his half.”

  “When is your birthday?”

  “November eleventh. Veterans Day. How about that?”

  “And you’ll be—”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know why Junior set it up that way,” Lenora said, “but the point was that Trey got the farm and some of the physical stuff when Junior passed, but not the bank accounts, which was the main part. At first it pissed him off, but what he told Terrell was that it was just something his dad had done so he wouldn’t blow through the money when he was young.”

  “Which he would.”

  “Of course. All this time, he’s been living on the idea he’d have about $30 million in trust instead of just fifteen. So he figured he could handle any debts, eventually.”

  “If the mob gives that kind of credit.”

  “Which they don’t.”

  “Let me see if I get this,” I said, as much to myself as anyone. “Trey gets into a lot of debt, and then, trying to raise money from a crooked lawyer, finds out about a secret will. And his newly discovered half-sister. So he freaks.”

  “He freaks,” said Elle.

  “He freaks and he goes to Terrell,” Lenora added. “Confronts him about it all. He tells him he has to get Elle’s original birth certificate—the one Junior and Pearl hid away. He thought without that, the will couldn’t be enforced for Elle. Maybe the lawyer told him that.”

  “No will, no money for Elle.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Young Henry went crazy on him,” Elle said.

  Lenora nodded. “Terrell said they got into the biggest fight they ever had, yelling and even punching each other. Terrell called me about it. I never told him I knew all along about Elle, but I had no idea about the will. No one did but Junior, I guess, and that lawyer. Maybe the firm in Jackson.”

  She looked at Elle. “So then Terrell realized Trey would never let it rest. That’s when he went to Birmingham and took the painting. It was some kind of black market deal Trey had gotten for drugs and he was going to send it to an underground auction in Houston or Mexico and use the money to pay off the mob. So Terrell took it.”

  Even with the pain pill, I could feel the dimensions widening, deepening.

  “It was after that he called me to tell me what he’d done and ask me if I knew about the birth certificate. Who might have it. I just said I didn’t know.” Lenora’s brow furrowed in deep thought and she seemed to be weighing something. “Then I didn’t hear from Terrell for a while. One day he called to say he was going to New Orleans to meet Trey and sort it all out.”

  “And that’s where I came in.”

  “That’s when you found him.”

  Junior ran in and jumped up into his mother’s arms. “I’m going to give them a bath,” she said, holding him up in the air until he giggled. “Vanessa’s probably about to pitch a fit to get out of her playpen, too.”

  Artula tucked the boy under an arm and headed for the hall, pausing once to look back over her shoulder.

  I touched my nose so the pain would keep me in focus. “So, one more time—Terrell telling you all this, he never let on where he was keeping the painting? Or that birth certificate? They were connected? We’re running out of time.”

  Lenora looked away toward the back yard. It had been hard on her, having to admit she had been covering up a family scandal, even if it was obvious it had been done only to protect Elle and also Pearl’s reputation all these years.

  “All I know is Terrell said it was somewhere safe in the city. But where . . .” she looked at me, then Elle, and shook her head . . . “I truly wish I knew. I truly do.”

  I shifted in my chair. I wasn’t sure if we now knew more than we did, or less. And it took a beating just to get
this latest tidbit.

  Lenora slumped forward, unguarded, a woman undone by remorse. But then her head came up and there was a kind of light in her eyes, like bottled fireflies. She looked at Elle. “I do know this. Terrell Henry died trying to help you. Now he’s a trapped spirit”—she turned briefly to me—“what we call ‘bound up.’ He was taken before his work on this earth was done. But he wants to help more. I know that.” She paused, smoothed her slacks along her thighs, willing herself back to business. “I have to do some more work tonight to see if I can get to him.” She looked at me dead-on.

  It was impressive, but I probably didn’t respond with the right measure of enthusiasm. Seventy-two hours to put together a lot of loose ends and we were going to have a séance.

  Meanwhile something was going on with Elle. She stood up suddenly, as if energized by whatever had passed through her aunt.

  “I understand how you feel, Jack. Imagine how I do.”

  “I’m sorry it came out like this.” My neck muscles felt on fire.

  “Nothing for you to be sorry about.” She turned to Lenora. “What you said, him dying trying to help. It just came to me.”

  Lenora smiled.

  Elle was around the coffee table in three strides. She knelt down in front of me, her body liquid gold against my legs, so that her eyes could be level with mine. She was stone beautiful and utterly unnerving.

  “The silver neck chain with the little square locket. The one I couldn’t find that day you showed me where his body had been. I thought you took it.” She shook her head, smiling like some mad inventor. “It wasn’t you. Young Henry gave it to someone else. To do something for him. To—”

  “Elfego.”

  “Elfego.”

  We were going back to the Rio Blanche.

  16

  But not just then. I got up to go to the bathroom and a sharp pain stopped me after about three steps. I waited for it to go away and then proceeded, much more slowly. By the time I was able to urinate, and happy to see only a little blood, I knew I was in no condition to drive, or probably even to sit in a car for hours.

  I washed my hands and looked into the mirror—there was a little frog sticker on the lower right corner. The break in my nose was barely noticeable, beyond the swelling. Like my ribs, just a lot of temporary pain. As for the rest of my countenance, it was woeful enough to ride with Sancho Panza. Bruises on both cheeks and darkening under both eyes. I looked like a cheap club palooka.

  I had to keep my mind on the temporary misery of my body—what did the Buddhists say, that all suffering can be overcome? I would have to work on that. I would have to work on a lot of things, and most likely I’d still come back as a mosquito.

  Ideally, I could lay up for a week and nurse my wounds and let Elle minister to me and make me feel like an injured war hero. But we were pretty far from the ideal. And we were pretty far from New Orleans, where we had to be, somehow, before Trey put together the same part of the puzzle we had. If he got the painting before we did, no telling what Big Red would do. I was not inclined to rely on his compassionate nature or tolerance of excuses.

  Then my knees crumbled a little, and I was slumped on the bathroom floor, light-headed and half-sick at the same time.

  I sat there a few minutes. Elle peeped in, then pushed the door all the way. “Tula, can somebody come help?”

  This by way of saying that’s how we spent another night in Rosedale. I awoke at dawn, from the light and from the noise of some kind of tractor or big machine in the nearby fields. I was in my shorts again, but this time my head was clearer. I still felt the pain but not the overwhelming nausea. The other twin bed was rumpled and I think Elle had been there for part of the time I was zonked.

  I got up, dressed myself slowly. Artula had made coffee, as usual. I poured a mug and walked into the back yard. Feathers had blown around the spot where Lenora had been the previous night, beseeching her African gods. On a large serving tray completely incongruous in the morning sun were some bowls of something—water, maybe, or blood.

  I went back inside just as Elle and Lenora came in from the front door. I realized they had been up for a while, packing.

  “How are you feeling today, honey?” As always, Lenora was impeccably outfitted, this time in dark green pants suit and form-fitting tan blouse.

  Elle kissed me, gently. “You look better. You tossed and turned last night for a while but then you settled down.”

  “I feel better.”

  She tried a playful cuff on my chin but I had to wince.

  She nibbled at a cinnamon roll Artula had baked. “Feel like traveling?”

  “I know. We should have left yesterday.”

  She touched my cheek softly, “No, no, that’s not what I mean. It was better that you slept. But we have to get out of the house.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  “I can drive.” I tried to stand up straighter. “Maybe at first.”

  “You’re not driving at all,” Lenora said, laughing. “You could barely sit behind the wheel, and if you could you’d fall asleep with all those pills inside you.”

  She and Elle shared an eye-rolling at my expense.

  I grabbed the rest of the cinnamon roll and went back to the bedroom. Elle had packed my duffel bag, the Glock right on top. I took a Vicodin from my pill bottle, partly for the immediate pain and partly because I knew how the road would be.

  Elle came in. “Lenora’s going to stay with Tula tonight. You know, we have our troubles, but that girl has the kind that aren’t going away.”

  “Ours are?”

  “They might. But they don’t live inside our bodies, ready to kill us.”

  “No.” Actually I wasn’t so sure what was living inside my body.

  She picked up the duffel and carried it to the front door. I wolfed down the roll but didn’t want to trouble Artula for anything else. At the slightest hint she’d be frying bacon and scrambling eggs. I liked that woman. A lot.

  It was like Elle said. We had troubles. Some we had made for ourselves and some we were willingly taking on. But Artula’s burden was heavier and beyond reason. It was the kind of thing that gave me problems with karma, same as it would have about God’s will had I still been a Methodist. Artula was a good woman; braver than any of us. I was in no position to know all the answers, or all the vectors of fate in this life or any previous. Ignorance didn’t make me feel better.

  I took my duffel to the truck, and Elle came along with her own bag. I arranged things in the back of the Explorer to be sure I could get to the sundry weapons I had accumulated if need arose. It seemed sort of nuts to be thinking about another firefight, but that’s where it was for us now. Still, I hoped that Big Red’s intervention meant Trey was taking a back seat now as far as following us, and leaving it to the mob boys. Or more likely that’s what they had told him to do.

  But it was a no-brainer that Trey would be on us sooner or later. Either Elle would inherit a fortune very soon, or she wouldn’t make it to her next birthday.

  They all came outside to see us off. Hugs and kisses all around. Several times. Everyone seemed ready to cry.

  “We’ll stay in touch from now on, Tula. Always.”

  “I miss you already. It was so good to see you again.”

  We got into the Explorer, me in the passenger seat. Elle cranked the ignition, pulled around the little circle of the drive. They all waved and went back into the house.

  We took the lane back to the Great River Road, then south, to whatever awaited.

  The highway was uncomfortable but not gruesome. The Vicodin helped. What a great drug. Put Valium to shame, really. I made a mental note to go buy a lot of it. You weren’t supposed to use it with alcohol but I figured what the hell, it would go great with a no-bullshit Cabernet. I was very glad not to be driving.

  Elle tuned in a blue
s station out of Greenville or maybe Cleveland. The highway was deserted, cutting down toward Vicksburg through the Delta’s contradictions of lush, rich bottomland and world-class poverty and racism.

  We pulled into a one-room fried chicken and tamale joint in the hamlet of Benoit, where I got an egg and bacon soft taco and a half-dozen hot tamales, of which I ate three. Elle had an egg and potato taco. We carried out to-go cups of coffee. With the food and caffeine, I started to get slightly more lucid, but still registered somewhere between woozy and ditz. From now on, unless the pain was severe a half-tab of Vicodin would have to do.

  It didn’t look as though anyone was tailing us. Nor did they need to. For the next 72 hours, we were as safe as gold in a Swiss bank. All our pursuers were united in one objective: pressuring us to come up with the goods. We were their hounds, hunting down the quarry. But we wouldn’t get pats on the head when we delivered. I guess that made us more in the nature of pawns. Either way, we were the only ones who really understood how problematic the quest would be.

  The big river was on our right, to the west; the Great State of Mississippi extended to the east. When the River Road ran out, we’d have to decide which route to take to New Orleans and for that matter where we would stay if we didn’t go to my place. For all I knew, Trey by now knew where I lived.

  She was quiet, the way she had been after we first met. I didn’t know what to say yet about her and Trey and I guessed she was a long way from bringing it up herself. She was related to a man I might have to kill to stay alive.

  I might have been wrong about the medication easing up. A rolling wave of both nausea and serenity passed through me. I drifted in and out of a reverie of sitting in an SUV driving through the Delta, to floating around through the entire universe. I started to daydream, if that’s the right term; I would say meditate but you can’t really do that on drugs, New Age versions of enlightenment notwithstanding. But this daydream was okay, and it took me back to a place I needed to find. Because the place I was in now was off the charts.