Carolina Skeletons

by David Stout

  He had gone less than a quarter-mile from the store when he saw it: a little white house by the side of the road with a sign out in front. Room for rent. Vacancy.

  He braked hard, had to back up a few yards, turned into the driveway, shut off the engine and the lights. Dark, quiet, only the trees.

  Willop felt naked under the porch light as he pressed the bell. He rang it again, again, again. Please … The door swung open. An old black woman, must be over seventy.

  Willop was glad she was black, glad that she seemed to be able to tell he was black. Willop smiled, and meant it, he was so relieved.

  Just need a room for tonight, Willop told her. “I found myself kind of stranded,” he said, an explanation that explained nothing, yet with his smile might explain anything: kicked out by his wife, can’t afford a motel, hiding from his girlfriend’s brother …

  The old woman didn’t care. Pay in advance, she said. Pull your car around back. He parked the car so it couldn’t be seen from the road, got out his suitcases, followed the woman upstairs, nodded as she pointed out the bathroom, told the woman that, no, he didn’t smoke.

  The room was just big enough for the bed, a dresser, a chair, and a small closet. It looked clean and smelled of furniture polish, though that didn’t quite mask the smells of people grown old with the house.

  Willop locked the door; took out the bottle of Scotch; took out the gun, loaded it, put in on the chair next to the bed; stood his suitcase in front of the door; slid the dresser over (quietly, so she couldn’t hear) so that part of the dresser was in front of the door. He took off his shoes, turned off the light, lay down on the bed, his head propped up on the pillow. He felt for the gun, felt secure that it was right there.

  Willop realized then that he had left the coffee in the car. He would not go back for it. He would need the Scotch tonight, even after the martinis at dinner (so long ago!), to sleep, to sleep.

  He slept on his back, which he almost never did, awaking every so often with a start, holding his breath, listening for sounds in the dark. There were none. Back to sleep …

  Finally, with one of the wake-ups, he sensed that the room was no longer ink-black, the night outside the single window had merged with the first hint of dawn. Back to sleep …

  Another wake-up, the room gray with early morning now, and sounds from below in the house. Just the old woman. Back to sleep …

  But only for a little while. The next time Willop opened his eyes, it was still gray in the room, though a lighter gray, but he knew he was done sleeping, even though he did not feel rested. He got out of bed (the room was chilly), hurriedly put on the same clothes he had worn to dinner (so long ago, last night), and went to the bathroom. The woman had left a clean towel and washcloth on the edge of the tub. Willop washed his face, rinsing again and again with the warm water, ran his fingers through his hair, dried himself. God, he felt like hell.

  He closed his suitcase, put on his jacket, stuck the gun in the pocket, went downstairs. A clock ticked in the old-smelling house.

  “Morning,” he said to the woman, who was standing in the kitchen.

  “Coffee’s free,” she said, more loudly than necessary. “Give you a full breakfast for three dollars. Bacon, toast, juice, and grits. Ain’t very busy …”

  “Maybe some toast,” he said.

  Willop saw that she wore a hearing aid and thick glasses. Good …

  The old woman moved her head and shoulder to tell him he could sit at the kitchen table. She put a big mug of coffee and a plate of toast she’d already made in front of him. The coffee was strong.

  “You here alone?” he asked.

  “Just me,” she shouted.

  Good, Willop thought. He took out his wallet. “Here’s five bucks. Three for the breakfast and two if I can use your phone to make a couple of calls.”

  “No long distance?”

  “Collect only.”

  “Phone’s in there.”

  Willop ate a couple of bites of toast and, without asking permission, took his coffee into the living room. The phone was on a stand near a window that looked out on the road. He sat down and dialed.

  “Collect from James,” he said when the operator cut in.

  One ring, two, three, four … she couldn’t have left for work yet.…

  “Nobody’s answering, sir.”

  “Keep ringing.”

  Another ring, another, another. Maybe …

  “Hello?” Moira sounded harried.

  “Collect call from James. Will you pay?”

  “Yes. James?”

  “Hi.”

  “I was in the shower. Where are you?”

  “Still you know where.”

  “Are you in trouble?” There was something wrong in her voice.… Couldn’t be explained just by her having to step out of the shower …

  “I might be. That’s one reason I called, so in case I get arrested or … anything … you can tell someone—”

  “James, I don’t think we should talk very long.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Delmar Springs called last night. To tell me that the police got a request from someone in South Carolina to run a computer check on you.”

  “Great.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Couple people turned up dead around here.”

  “Oh, James …” She was crying.

  “I haven’t wasted anybody.”

  “Oh, James. Be careful.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  “Someone may be setting you up.”

  “What an understatement …”

  “Just come home. Please.”

  “You know, my mother was right. It’s still South Carolina, and I’m still—”

  “Can you come home?” She was still crying.

  “How? No way I can get on a plane. They’ll be looking for me. Can’t drive the car I rented …”

  “Then just give up. Call the police, or the sheriff, or whatever. Tell them where you are and let them come and get you.”

  “You know, that probably would be the most sensible thing.”

  “Please …”

  Because he couldn’t bear to hear her cry, and because he was afraid someone might be trying to run a trace on the call, he told her in one breath not to worry, that he loved her and good-bye, and hung up.

  He finished his coffee, looked out the window at the road, and picked up the phone again.

  The sensible thing to do—the only sensible thing—would be to call the sheriff’s office and tell them where he was. Hey, he could tell her to tell them he was waiting, that he wouldn’t resist.…

  “Clarendon County sheriff.” A woman, but not Bestwick.

  “Bestwick in today?” Willop mumbled.

  “Not till three o’clock.”

  “Thanks.” Willop hung up. Should have just said who I was and where I was, he thought.…

  It was stupid—no, goddamn reckless—to even think of calling Bestwick.

  The information operator said there was only one Bestwick in the Manning area.

  Willop dialed.

  “Hello.” Her.

  “Can we talk?”

  “You …”

  “Please. Just for a minute.”

  “I shouldn’t. I never should have …”

  “Please. Please.”

  “They’re looking for you.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. I never would.”

  “They think you might have.”

  “Supposed to look that way. Don’t you see that?”

  Silence.

  “Don’t you see?”

  “You should come in.”

  “Hey, I’m the stranger around here. They’re looking to blame someone. I’m the right guy. That’s how cops are. Cops any place …”

  “You should just come in. That way, they can’t hurt you. But you wouldn’t tell them I showed you— Oh, dear Jesus …”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Jesus …”
Now she seemed close to crying. No, she was tougher than that.

  “I promise I won’t tell,” Willop said. “All I want is to talk to you for a minute, and for you not to tell.”

  “Dear Jesus …”

  “Right. Dear Jesus. Listen, I talked to that Cody guy once, just once, and he’s dead. Same thing with that poor old Tyrone in the shack. Somebody killed them, right? No accidents.”

  “They think maybe you did.”

  “No. I told you. Listen, I keep hearing about this T. J. Campbell guy in every other conversation I have around here. What’s with him and Cody and Tyrone?”

  “Deputy Cody, he never have any truck with T.J. that I know of.…”

  “How about Tyrone?”

  “Tyrone, he just live over there in the shack. Not want nothing else that I know of …”

  “Figures. Listen, did anybody ever think T.J. might have, you know, had something to do with that thing that happened a way long time ago around here?”

  Long pause. “You mean that thing I showed you in the files?”

  “Yeah. That thing.”

  “Not that I know of.” But there was something in Bestwick’s voice.

  “You’re trying to say something else,” Willop said.

  “My mama, she a young girl in the shacks way back then, and her mama tell her she have to watch out for the white foremen. Especially Mr. T.J., because he the one who most like to … you know.…”

  “Yeah, I know. Well, how come nobody ever asked the people in the shacks about him?”

  “You know. Back then, they think that just nigger talk. Anyhow, nobody ever asked, I know of. You better come in. I can’t talk to you no more.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Promise you won’t tell.…”

  Willop knew he should leave her dangling, leave her afraid. That way, she would be less likely to tell the sheriff and Stoker he had called.…

  “I promise,” he said. “I promise.”

  So what now? Willop thought. What he should do, what Moira wanted him to do, was call the sheriff’s office and have them come and get him. Sure. It could all be straightened out, couldn’t it? No way he’d be convicted, if they would only listen … He could explain the visits to Cody and Tyrone and Brickstone and looking at Tyler’s will.…

  Maybe he could even persuade Stoker and the sheriff to do a good investigation of T. J. Campbell. Sure, after more than forty years …

  Isn’t this the craziest damn thing, Willop thought, because just then he remembered a golf tournament he had seen on television years before. Young, strong golfer, never a winner before, has his biggest decision on a par 5: whether to lay up short of a wide creek to set up an easy wedge to the green, or to take his biggest fairway-wood shot and try to go over the creek and reach the green in two. The golfer had disdained the easy shot, had gone for the green, reached it in two shots, got an eagle that won the tournament.

  Ah, but he had won as soon as he chose to go for it, Willop thought. That was what had made him a winner.…

  Willop picked up the phone. He would call the sheriff’s department—but not to turn himself in.

  “Clarendon County sheriff.” Same voice as before.

  “Hi. I’m an old friend of Dexter Cody. Are there any calling hours at the funeral home?”

  “Yes, sir. Going on right now, in fact.”

  “Good,” Willop said.

  Maybe the old woman had believed him and maybe she hadn’t when he told her he couldn’t start his car. Whatever. She had been happy enough to take the twenty dollars Willop offered if he could use her car for a little while. He had even promised to fill up the gas tank; well, maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t. Her car didn’t run that great, and it had been a long time since he had handled a stick shift.

  He only hoped the car would last until he got to Cody’s house.

  Willop parked behind several other cars by the side of the road. If he had guessed right, Cody’s widow and whatever other relatives he had would all be at the funeral home. Probably somebody minding the house, maybe a neighbor …

  Good, Willop thought as the door swung open. The person opening it was a small woman in late middle age. Black.

  “Hello, I’m sorry to bother you at such a time,” Willop said as unctuously as he could. Then, showing his credentials, he went on: “The sheriff sent me over just to pick up some papers that belonged to Deputy Cody. Won’t take but a few minutes …”

  “They’s all at the funeral home,” the woman said uncertainly. “I’m just a neighbor.”

  “Yes. I see. Well, you’re welcome to review my credentials,” Willop said, holding his thumb over part of the credentials so she couldn’t study them too closely. “Or you can check with the sheriff’s office.…” The last was a pure, all-or-nothing gamble, but Willop had no choice.

  “Guess it’s all right. Folks’ll be back in a half hour or so.” She held the door open for him.

  “Thank you again ever so much,” he said. “Sheriff Fischer and Captain Stoker asked me to come by.”

  “His desk is in there.” She pointed to a small room just off the kitchen.

  Willop wandered over to the room she’d pointed out. At the desk, he stooped over, pulled open the drawers, fingered through sheafs of letters and utility bills and unused envelopes and long-ago snapshots and addresses.…

  Crazy, Willop thought. Crazy to come here, crazy to think I could find anything. He felt sweat on his back.

  “Find what you need?”

  The woman was by the door, not ready to challenge, no longer convinced.

  “Think I need to look in his room,” he said. “Upstairs?”

  “Well, I don’t know.…”

  “Told you, the sheriff asked me to come.”

  Then Willop was by her, going through the kitchen, past condolence pies and cakes and casseroles stacked on the table and window ledge and on top of the refrigerator, bounding up the stairs, two at a time.

  There, his bedroom. A smell of an old man: his work clothes, his field clothes, hunting clothes, all of it too-seldom washed, or maybe just worn too many years. Those smells blended, Willop gradually realized, with the smells coming from downstairs—the mountains of food and, from somewhere, flowers. Together, the smells almost made him vomit. Willop felt like a ghoul.

  This drawer for underwear, this for socks, this for flannels, the bottom drawer for a box of old coins, woolen longjohns … He had no right.…

  The closet. Smells of old boots and slippers and shoes. There, an old steamer trunk. God, don’t let it be locked.

  The trunk was secured only by the clasps. Willop dragged it out into the room so he could explore better. He could smell his own sweat now, over the other smells.…

  Willop flung open the trunk; the top banged against the closet door. The woman downstairs might be calling the sheriff now.…

  Top shelf of the trunk filled with letters, paper, old photographs in browns and grays. There, a much younger Dexter Cody, thin and bony and awkward in an ill-fitting suit, standing next to a young woman, plainly dressed, holding flowers, trying to smile. Oh, his wife, their wedding day, long ago. He had no right.…

  Willop lifted the shelf out of the trunk and flung it to the side. It clattered on the floor. People might be back from the funeral home any minute.…

  The bottom part of the trunk was stuffed with envelopes, mostly old and smudged with fingerprints, and shoeboxes. One shoebox filled with small, long-ago gray and brown photographs of picnics and people standing on porches and with one foot on a running board and waving and at a county fair or something.…

  Willop could smell his own sweat. He had no right.…

  A big envelope full of letters; woman’s handwriting, addressed to Cody’s wife.

  A sheaf of letters, held together by a rubber band, more women’s handwriting.

  Never mind being delicate … Scoop up an armful of stuff and toss it on the floor to see what else is in there.…

  More e
nvelopes on the bottom—manila, thick, and business-size—like from an office … Where had he seen that kind of envelope before?

  The sheriff’s office! Same kind of envelope he had seen with the case file …

  Willop’s fingers trembled. He was running out of time, he almost cut a thumb on the metal clasp of the envelope, he could smell his own sweat.…

  Pictures. Terrible pictures, and not small like the others. Pictures of a black woman, head almost cut off, lying in her own blood. Axed to death.

  Lots of cops kept their own private scrapbooks, Willop thought.

  Picture of a farm accident, mangled body lying next to a conveyor belt and some machinery …

  Pictures, pictures. Pictures of two little girls lying dead next to a ditch. Jesus, the same pictures he had seen in the sheriff’s office. Same pictures. Was that how Cody got his kicks?

  Another big envelope. Not pictures, just a bunch of papers, all sizes, some with clumsy typing, some with handwriting.

  The long-ago handwriting of Sheriff Hiram Stoker.

  Willop had seen the papers before, in the file of the Ellerby-Clark homicide. Cody had copied the file.

  And here was a piece of paper Willop hadn’t seen before. A piece of yellow lined tablet paper. In the sheriff’s handwriting.

  Shld be kept confid. Inter. of one Tyrone (col’d.), a millwrker, seems to acct. for whereabouts of other col’d. wrkers at time of killings, as well as other possibles. Tyrone also accts. for presence of T. J. Campbell. Tyrone recalls T.J.C. being near pond, says he is sure because he can recall T.J.C. having to hit horse …

  Willop’s heart pounded in his ears. He had not seen this piece of paper before. He was sure, sure, sure …

  The sheriff had at least thought it might be somebody else, thought it could be.…

  What had Tyrone said that had gotten him killed? What had he told Willop?

  Jesus.

  Enough. He had no more time. Willop left the trunk contents strewn on the floor, ran down the stairs, through the kitchen filled with pies and casseroles.

  The woman was holding the phone. Was she starting to call, or already done? Should he stop her? No.

  “Thank you,” Willop said. Then out the door, into the fresh air, still no one else in sight, start the car, the clutch bucking and the car lurching, but taking him away.