Carolina Skeletons

by David Stout

  He partially drained the tub, then refilled it to the previous level with hot water.

  It would make no sense to try to see the old sheriff, Willop thought. Most likely, he wouldn’t be able to just walk in on him. And even if the old bastard agreed to talk, what would he ask him: Sheriff, did you frame this kid? Then there was the problem of the sheriff’s son. This is his territory, Willop thought. He scared Willop, more than a little.

  Should he try to talk to the sheriff’s son? Oh, sure. Let’s see, what to ask him … Captain Stoker, did you ever consider the possibility that your daddy, the sheriff, fucked up?

  Drowsy and discouraged, Willop wondered whether it would be smarter for him to fly home tomorrow and hire a private investigator. Oh, right, makes a lot of sense … How much can you afford to pay me, Mr. Willop? Well, I can’t pay you right now, because I don’t have a job, but my girlfriend … well, she can’t afford to pay you either. But it’s a hell of an interesting case.…

  He slid down into the water again, until the water was just under his lower lip. His face perspired freely. A purifying process, perhaps. Willop let his arms float and closed his eyes. His arms floating reminded him of the boats on Lake Marion. Floating. His whole body floating now. Willop felt drowsy, drunk and drowsy. He slipped off into slumber for a moment, but he woke himself with a snore. Water warm and good. The floating safe and good, in the arms of the water …

  The sound of the doorknob turning startled him. The knob was turning, slowly, slowly. The door was opening. Someone was there, in the dark. The someone could see him, naked in the tub.

  Get the gun, get the gun and fire into the dark! Willop couldn’t move. His arms were floating and he couldn’t move, couldn’t raise himself up from the tub enough to get the gun.

  His mother appeared, smiling, glad to see him. He tried to move his arms, to cover himself, but he couldn’t. His mother looked down at him, saw him, and the corners of her mouth turned upside-down, and her eyes rolled back, and she fell back into the darkness.

  Willop screamed, and the scream made him able to move again. He flung his upper body out of the tub, banging his ribs and sending the Scotch glass crashing. The water sloshed back and forth crazily, some splashing on the floor, rocking his body from one side of the tub to the other.

  The water was cold now. He waited for it to stop sloshing, then got out of the tub, stepping around the shards of glass. He took two bath towels, flicked on the room light just outside the door, and sat down on the bed. He dried himself quickly and turned the heat up.

  Moira. He would call Moira. No, too late. She might be sleeping, dreaming her own dreams.

  27

  The hardware store near the sawmill had displays of licorice, flashlight batteries, work gloves, and blue jeans up front. The area around the counter was the only part of the cavernous building that was well lighted, even in the middle of the afternoon.

  Willop looked at the floor, worn smooth long ago from the feet of the mill hands and their families. Where he was standing now his mother and his uncle had once stood; their feet had helped wear the floor smooth.

  “This used to be the company store, didn’t it?” Willop said to the young woman behind the counter. “I mean, going way back when?”

  “That’s what I understand,” she said, smiling. “I can’t remember that far back, though. Can’t come close. My daddy, he owns the store now.”

  “He here right now?”

  “Nope. In town. Won’t be back for a couple hours.”

  Though friendly, the young woman, who had sandy hair and wore a blue checkered blouse, was clearly bored.

  “I guess a Mr. Tyler used to run the mill. And the store.”

  “Yep. Lock, stock, and barrel. Sold out to the railroad a long time ago, though. Got old and tired, I guess. You gonna buy anything, sir?”

  “Sure. Give me a bag of those pecans. Small one will do. I hope you don’t mind me asking questions.”

  “No trouble at all, long as I don’t have anyone to wait on. You’re from up north, I guess.”

  “I thought you were the one with the accent.”

  She laughed. “You originally from around here?” she asked.

  “Uh, no. But I have some old connections, sort of.”

  The young woman let Willop’s vague answer go unchallenged. The truth was, he had stopped at the store because he just had to see it, not knowing when he’d be this way again.

  The young woman put the bag of pecans on the counter and took a dollar bill from him.

  “I’m just here part-time,” she said. “Helping out my dad. I go to the University of South Carolina. I’m just home on break.”

  “Ah. You coming back here to live after you get out of school?”

  She laughed again. “Nooo, not me. Too small, too quiet, too boring. I mean, I’ve been to Charleston and Atlanta, even up to Yankeeland a couple times. Too slow for me here.”

  “Hey, how you gonna keep ’em down in Alcolu once they’ve seen Columbia?” Willop said.

  A bell jingled and the door swung open. An old black man, bent and shuffling, but clearly once powerful, entered.

  “Afternoon,” the old man said.

  “Hey, good to see you,” the woman said.

  “Got any licorice there?” he said.

  “Saved the best for you.” She took a few coins from the man and gave him several red strands. “And here’s an extra for being one of our regulars.”

  “Obliged,” the old man said, turning and shuffling out.

  “Nice old man,” the young woman said. “You seem awfully interested in local history.”

  “You get that way, living around the New York area. Everything’s so crowded, you kind of like to find little, out-of-the-way places.”

  “Well, I guess,” the young woman said. “Can’t get much more out of the way than here, I suppose.”

  “Right,” Willop said. Then, on an inspiration, he added, “I’m interested in regional dialects and accents, too. I do some writing, and I’m interested in how the various accents vary.”

  Terrific, Willop thought. Various accents vary; every time I try to get clever …

  “Oh, I agree,” she said. “People around here talk different from the ones in Charleston, at least if you know what to listen for.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m quite interested in linguistics, actually. Have you read much in that area?”

  “Not recently,” Willop said.

  “Well, anyhow …”

  “Thanks for the pecans. I’m going to depart before I bore you completely.”

  “Happy to talk. Not that busy in the afternoon.”

  On the wall behind the counter hung an old ax and sickle, an ancient chewing-tobacco poster, and, framed in wood and covered with dusty glass, a World War II poster showing a Flying Tiger fighter shooting down a Japanese Zero.

  “I guess you wouldn’t remember any of the shacks they used to have around here. For the mill workers.”

  “Not directly. The little community—it was all black—that’s been gone for a long time. ’Course, a couple of the shacks are still standing. Mostly abandoned, though.”

  “Mostly?”

  “I know at least one of them is still lived in. Right across the way. That old fella who was just in here. Used to work at the mill, in fact. Tyrone.”

  When Willop reached the old man’s shack, he found him leisurely tending a small rubbish fire in his bramble-strewn yard. His cabin—light gray, one room, door half open to reveal a cluttered, dark interior—was barely thirty feet away.

  “Hi,” Willop said, louder than normal. He didn’t know if the old black was hard of hearing.

  “Afternoon.” The old man paused for a moment.

  “Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

  “Time I got plenty of.” The old black chuckled, but Willop sensed a suspicion that might be impenetrable.

  “I understand you used to work over at the mill. Lived around here a
long time.”

  “True enough.”

  “Can I offer you some pecans?”

  “Teeth have enough trouble with licorice.”

  The old man was having none of Willop’s smooth talk. He resumed his task of poking twigs and branches into the fire.

  “I was hoping you could help me with something that happened around here a long time ago. Your name is Tyrone, right? My name is Willop.” Willop would have offered the old man his hand, but it was no use. The man kept poking in the fire, scarcely looking up.

  “What you want?” Tyrone said finally, more a demand than a question.

  What the hell, Willop thought. Nothing to lose by getting it out. “I’m interested in a murder that happened here a long time ago. Down past the mill there. Two little girls.”

  “I ain’t know nothin’ about that thing,” Tyrone said. But, unmistakably, his once-powerful shoulders shook for a moment.

  “Well, maybe you know more than you think.…”

  “Don’t know nothin’. Told you that.” Tyrone poked at the fire harder.

  Open up to him, Willop thought. “Look, I’m trying to settle an old personal debt by asking some questions about the case. To see—”

  “Man, I ain’t got no reason to give a shit ’bout your debt. Anyone else’s either.”

  Tough nut, Willop thought. Back off a little.

  “You live here alone?”

  “Look that way, don’t it?”

  “I mean, I thought maybe your wife—”

  “Ain’t never had no wife. Never had time.”

  “The mill took a lot of energy, I bet.”

  “Work hard, you get tired. Ain’t a mystery ’bout that, no matter what they say.”

  Some smoke from the fire blew in Willop’s face as the breeze shifted. He moved closer to the old man.

  “You must be one of the last of the men who worked in the mill way back then. Any reason you never moved away?”

  “Man live where he want to. Ain’t never lived anywhere else. Ain’t never seen a reason to. Hurt my back in the mill, long time ago, movin’ a log, but Mr. Tyler, he let me stay on here.”

  “Nice of him. He’s been dead a long time, I guess.”

  “Long time. But he let me stay. He tell the railroad, when they buy the mill, you leave that place alone over there, that little place where Tyrone is.”

  “So that’s why you’re here.”

  “Reason good enough …”

  Willop backed off, from the fire and the questioning. He chewed a few pecans, playing for time, thinking. He held out the bag to the old man again, but the offer was ignored. Screw it, Willop thought.

  “You remember when those two girls were killed, Tyrone?”

  “Everybody do. Everybody who was around here. Not many left anymore …”

  “What kind of day was it? You remember? Nice day? Chilly? It was March, I think.”

  “Beautiful day. Beautiful day. Pretty spring day.”

  “I can see you have a pretty fine memory. You have a window then, in the mill? A window you could look out and see the beautiful spring day?”

  “Shit. Ain’t no windows. ’Sides, I used to be mostly outside. By the pond, with the horses …”

  “I’ll be damned. So you must have been outside that very day. Especially if you usually worked down at the pond and if you remember how pretty a day it was.”

  “’Course I be outside.”

  “Right around the time those poor girls were killed …”

  “I ain’t the only one. Whole gang of us. Rudy and Lem …”

  The old man’s voice had risen in pitch and volume. Afraid, Willop thought.

  “But none of you heard anything.”

  “Ain’t none of us heard a thing. Sheriff, he asked us. Happened down the way a bit, off the tracks. We didn’t hear nothin’.”

  “You remember talking to the sheriff, then?”

  “’Course I remember. Helped him get his car out of the mud, in fact.”

  The old man turned his back, walked a few feet away, and swept up another armful of branches and twigs. He began feeding them into the fire, not looking up at Willop.

  “You know that boy? The one they say did it?”

  “Probably seen him around. Can’t say I knew him …”

  “You must have known him a little bit, seeing he lived in the shacktown. Must have been a mean little bastard, to do a thing like that.”

  Silence, save for the low hissing of the orange fire as it fed on the twigs.

  “The sheriff ever look for anyone else?” Willop asked.

  “I never ask the sheriff his business. A good man, the sheriff. Ain’t for me to ask him his business. Ain’t for me …”

  “He must have been glad you helped him out of the mud.”

  “Anybody be glad to get out of the mud. Any sane man …”

  “That time when you helped him out of the mud. He ask you where you’d been, you or anybody else who worked on the pond? To see if you had an alibi?”

  “Never ask me where I been! Never did! He knew I done nothin’ like that!”

  Sad, Willop thought. Old black man from the Carolina nowhere, thinks he has to defend himself after forty-plus years against something nobody ever said he did. Talk about broken spirits.…

  “You all must have been pretty broken up, a horrible thing like that. Being acquainted with the fathers of the girls and all …”

  “Any sane man be broken up. Any sane man.”

  “Mr. Tyler, he must have been sad.”

  “Any sane man …” Tyrone poked harder at the fire, the embers flying several feet. “Mister, maybe you got all day to talk crazy, but I ain’t.”

  “I’m sorry, but this is really important to me.”

  “Well, it ain’t to me. What’s important is getting my place clean and proper-like.…”

  Willop felt a deep sorrow for the old man. What he had, the cabin and the yard, were so little. There, Willop thought. That’s how to get to him.

  “Mr. Tyler leave you money, or did he just give some directly to the railroad? So you could stay here.”

  “Ain’t your business.”

  “How about T. J. Campbell? You get along all right with him?”

  The old man stood up, slowly, and pulled a glowing stick from the fire. He held it between himself and Willop as a threat, but it was no good. The face showed terror; old Tyrone was not used to thinking he had any rights, let alone asserting them.

  “I’m sorry,” Willop said. He meant it, but he was not through. “Guess I should go find T.J. himself …”

  “I ain’t never said a thing to you ’bout him. Or that thing back then …”

  “Anybody ever ask you if you knew where T.J. was then? I mean, right about the time of the killing.”

  The stick had cooled, and the old man put it down. “Sheriff, he asked me. Told him T.J. was right close by. The truth.”

  “You saw him?”

  “He told me. Told me he was right close. Right close. On his horse. Remember it plain, ’cause T.J. say he have trouble with a horse.”

  “He told you where he’d been, but—”

  “Leave me be, mister.”

  “The truth is, he told you what to say.”

  “Leave me be, I said.”

  “Tyrone, would you be willing to sign a statement to all this? I mean, what you remember about that day? If it ever came to that?”

  Triumph lit Tyrone’s face. He smiled at last. “Told you to leave me be,” he said. “Ain’t gonna sign no statement, ain’t gonna sign nothing. Not till Judgment. Never did learn how to read and write …”

  Willop nodded, sadly. Then he handed the bag of pecans to Tyrone and walked away.

  28

  Though he was a quintessentially sociable man, Judah Brickstone loved that moment when the door closed as his secretary went to lunch. It meant he was alone.

  Time to put the brown bag on the desk, peel the hard-boiled egg and dust it with salt, arrang
e the carrot sticks on the waxed paper and salt them, too. Brew some tea. Save the apple for last.

  Alone, until his secretary returned. Except that today the interlude would be interrupted by this strange Allison, who just had to see him on his lunch hour. All right, he would not fret. No sense spoiling the time. Time was meant to be savored.

  He had been to Columbia, many times; been to Charleston, been to Atlanta. Indeed, the walls of his office were full of reminders of those visits. Pictures and plaques, charters and certificates, ribbons and citations. There, with Sam Ervin, just after Watergate. Over there with Strom Thurmond. Next to that with George Wallace (God, how they both looked younger! Especially the Governor, before the shooting …)

  Judah Brickstone had learned very early on that few things were as important as learning how to get along with all kinds of people, people as diverse as the ones in the pictures. And not just politicians and powerful folks. You had to be kind to the everyday folks, too.

  He smiled at his own surfeit of feeling. His wife, Lou, poked fun at him for that, as did his son and daughter, as did his grandchildren, whose pictures had the most honored spots of all: on top of his desk.

  The clock near the door ticked its perfect course toward twelve-thirty. Not long now before the stranger would arrive. Well, the stranger could just watch him eat his lunch; Judah would not hurry to be done before he arrived.

  He had a hunch the visitor might be colored. Judah had not been sure, on the phone, but there was something in the voice.

  Actually, Judah had the best possible reason to chew his modest lunch at his usual, relaxed pace. More than most folks, he had to watch what he ate, and how fast, and when. He had survived a heart attack and, a few years later, cancer.

  Talk about getting things in perspective. Couple kicks like that were enough to make a man realize that how he spent his time was the most important thing in the world.

  The heart attack had been the easy part, once he had survived it. Exercise just a bit more, relax more, lose weight. Ration the intake of bacon and eggs and ribs and yams and pecan pie—all that good stuff! Look thin for the doctor.

  Which Judah had done. Which had only made the cancer that much harder a kick in the old behind.