Bottomland: Based on the Murder of Rosa Mary Dean in Franklin, Tennessee

by Trey Holt

  “I’ll give you all hundred and thirty fuckin’pounds of me!” I hollered. Still trying to get loose of Jack Charles’grasp.

  “Fuck you!” Collins said.“Mr. Charles, let him go.”

  But he didn’t have the look in his eye that said he meant it. On this day, he didn’t want to whip my ass. Didn’t have the heart for it.

  Mr. Charles still had my feet off the floor.“Goddamit, Henry, stop kickin’. You’ve bruised my shin in two or three places.”

  I struggled harder to get free. Mr. Charles locked down harder.“Mott,”he yelled to Chester, who, that I’d seen, hadn’t moved,“get over there to the phone and call Lucky Hall and tell him to get his ass down here. Tell him his boy and another Academy boy are about to have at it…already drawn blood from each other.”

  Chester Mott moved from the corner where he’d been, toward Mr. Charles’office.

  “You gonna fight anymore?” Mr. Charles asked me.

  “If he wants to,”I said.

  Like this thing I didn’t understand had overtaken me, I felt myself pulling against Mr. Charles’grasp almost against my own will.

  “Mott, get that phone and start dialin’,”he yelled to Chester. Chester, who seemed to deem most all contact with other human beings bothersome or maybe even hurtful, sheepishly stepped into Mr. Charles’office and picked up the phone.

  “Dial!” yelled Jack Charles. And I could feel my own body melting beneath his grasp. Softer...softer...softer.

  Chester stuck his head out of the office.“I don’t know the number,”he said.

  + + +

  As most things seem to be, throwing these papers had been the damnation and salvation of my shoulder. They were probably what wore it out in the first place, and probably what caused me to push through the pain to make it functional again. As well, they had been the thing that got me out of the house every morning, brought me two hours by myself no matter what. The thing I had to get up and do no matter what. The thing, also, that made my days twelve, thirteen hours long every day, as long as I could remember. On this day, though, the adrenaline pushed through me so hard that I couldn’t feel a thing. Well, besides the grasp I had on the paper, tightening as I drew my arm back and cocked my hand over my shoulder, then beginning to loosen as my arm moved forward and then the final twist of my hand as my arm came to the place where my thumb and first two fingers released and the son of a bitch went flying. Right in front of me, taking every paper in the chest was Raymond Collins.

  I had gotten used to riding the Indian with one arm. The only trick was that I had to stay in the same gear, and being right-handed, steer with my left hand—where the clutch is—while I let off the gas and fired each paper. Speed up, hand off the throttle, throw a paper, do the same again. Over and over and over. Down Lewisburg Pike and Adams Street after I left the paper office, then to the sporadic housing on the southside of town, then back down Main Street (or Columbia Avenue it was called there) through the“mixed”section of town, then to the west side of town, and then north. By the jail. Or at least two blocks from it.

  + + +

  I threw the Indian in low gear and coasted, then I let completely off the throttle so there wouldn’t be a sound that would give me away. Still pretty much pitch dark at 5 o’clock in the morning, the street, the town for the moment, had a quietness that almost anything would shatter like a rock through a storefront window. The jail backed up against the river just after it crossed what people outside of Franklin called Franklin Road, what we in Franklin called Nashville Pike. On the west side of the jail was the auction barn Sammy Samuels ran, Lucky’s crap shooting buddy. The filling station where they shot craps was just up First Avenue, where it met Nashville Pike. Samuels’Auction Barn made a business of making money on dead people’s things. Estate Sales, that kind of thing. A lot of times, I suspected that’s why Lucky went to work so early, to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee with Sammy Samuels. But there hadn’t been any smoking and drinking coffee on this morning, even any pouring a little whiskey in the coffee, which they might have needed today and which I had often seen them do. At least not for Lucky.

  Sammy Samuels stood at the bottom of the four steps that led from the gravel parking lot to the front door of the jail. Behind him were several men, some of whom I recognized, some of whom I didn’t. Paul Chester Sr., John Harvey, a foreman down at the stove pipe factory just out of town. The other five or six were further behind them, away from the light that illuminated the parking lot. From them stepped James Langford, Ronnie Langford’s father. He was a large man, like Ronnie had been. Blocky more than tall. Big, barrel-chest, skinny hips compared to the rest of him. I bet I hadn’t seen him a handful of times since Ronnie had left. Rather than eight years, he looked like he might have aged going on twenty. In the moment I saw him step out of the darkness and toward the yellow light hung on the side of the jail building, I remembered that Lucky had told me several times that he had been to his house to break up quarrels between his wife and him.

  I shut the Indian down and rolled to a stop fifty or so feet away from the gathering. As far as I could tell Lucky was nowhere to be seen. It looked and sounded like the men were talking among themselves.

  “How come he didn’t come over and drink coffee with us this mornin’?” Paul Chester Sr. asked. He was red and ruddy like his son, the boy who got us the beer at the fucking Academy. The boy whose education was paid by the fact kids came from two and three counties away to buy beer underage. The boy of the father whose ass was kept safe by my father. It was one of Lucky’s best, most endearing features.

  “I don’t know,”Sammy said.“I’d thought he would’a. Who can remember the last time that Lucky hadn’t been over to the barn to have a cup‘a coffee with us?”

  “Yeah,”said John Harvey. I guess John Harvey stopped by in the morning on his way to the stove pipe factory, which held at least half of Franklin’s manual laborers.

  James Langford had about made his way up the side of the small crowd now. He would normally not have been among the frontrunners of these men; he was just an electrician who worked for McFadden’s Electric on the west edge of town. He normally wasn’t a part of this good ole boy club. Perhaps, though, his son and what had happened to him, along with the fact that he had“lost his mind”since, had elevated his status.

  “They still sayin’it was that woman that lived over in the Burgess house?” asked Sammy Samuels, smoke leaving his mouth and rising with the rhythm of his words.

  “Yeah, that Mary Ivy woman,”said James Langford as he finally made his way to the front of the men. He’d been fiddling with his britches, working his khaki pants out of his boot tops and down over the sides.“She was a little touched in the fuckin’head if you asked me,”he said, straightening the hat on his head, tilted to one side from the work he had done on his boots.

  Paul Chester Sr. and John Harvey laughed like people do when they realize something’s funny and somebody else doesn’t. Strong, hardy laughter trailing into shame when you figure out the butt of the laughter is laughing too.

  By now, Sammy Samuels had made his way up the steps and was peering in the one window on the side door to the jailhouse.“I don’t see his fat ass in there anywhere. He’s probably back there talkin’to him. You know, he’s always been kind’a soft on coons. That’s the reason that I always thought Mr. Garrett should’a backed somebody else when it come to them appointin’somebody Police Chief.”

  I was sure that Lucky knew Sammy Samuels thought all of this—and I was equally as sure that Sammy would never say any of it to Lucky himself. Affection between these men was a lot like hospitality in Franklin, I suspected, just deep enough that you couldn’t see what was underneath it. Never spoken.

  Lucky opened the door just as Sammy Samuels had his face pressed against the small piece of glass at its center.

  “Goddam, Lucky, you hit me right in the head with the damn door,”he protested, rubbing his nose, his jaw, where the contact had been.

>   “What’re you doin’lookin’in the door anyway?” asked Lucky.

  “Lookin’for your ass,”spoke Sammy.“You didn’t come over and drink coffee with us this mornin’.”

  “I kind’a had things to do,”said Lucky. As with anytime he felt anxiety, or anything else for that matter, he lit a Lucky.

  “You found that other nigger yet?” asked Sammy, who now lit a cigarette himself. A Chesterfield. He cupped his hand around his mouth and stuck the match to the cigarette, then fanned the match out like I’d seen him do a thousand times, it seemed.

  “Nope, not yet,”Lucky laughed.“I’m on the case though.”

  “You goin’to get him in a little while?” Sammy asked.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna go out and check on several leads in a little while,”Lucky said. He crimped his cigarette between his middle and forefingers like I know I had seen him do a thousand times.Blew out a grey cloud that dissipated from around his face as he began to speak.

  “Who ya got with ya down there?”

  Sammy turned and glared down at them, squinting like he couldn’t tell…didn’t know.

  “Hey, Paul. Hey, John. Hey, James.”

  The other men were still standing far enough back and it was still dark enough that I assume they were unidentifiable from where he stood. That or he didn’t want to know.

  “Hey, Lucky,”said Paul. John Harvey echoed him.

  “How are things down at the plant?” Lucky asked John Harvey.

  “Fine…fine,”said John Harvey.“Can’t complain a lick. Wouldn’t do any good if I did.”

  “Everybody get home all right yesterd’y evenin’?” Lucky asked.

  “Far as I know,”said John.

  “How‘bout with you, Paul?” Lucky said.“Everything all right down at the store?”

  “Believe so,”he said.“Didn’t have any problems yesterd’y.”

  Yeah, I thought, I’m sure he didn’t. His damn sales had probably been quadrupled because Franklin High School and the Academy had both been out. The kids had probably poured through there like water.

  “Hell,”said Lucky,“y’all must be the exception then. I think most’a the town rolled up the sidewalks long about two o’clock yesterd’y afternoon. You’d’a thought it was Wednesday.”

  Even though the mood was tense as hell, everybody there laughed. It was true, Franklin shut down as tight as a jug on Wednesday afternoon. The only things that stayed open were the groceries.

  “Did you ever find out who she is?” Sammy asked.

  “Ain’t yet,”said Lucky.“I’m plannin’on goin’over there this mornin’.”

  “Damn, Lucky! What you been doin’!?” exclaimed Sammy.

  “I been workin’in there,”said my father.“Makin’plans for the day. Since when did you become the fuckin’mayor? Ain’t there nobody else dead in Franklin for you to worry about? Can’t you go talk some old widow woman out’a her things while she’s still alive? You’ve done that pretty well more than a few times.”

  “You tell me where they are and I’ll go talk to‘em,”said Sammy. He threw his Chesterfieldto the ground and stomped it with his boot.

  “I’ll be on the lookout,”said Lucky.“Hell, I’ll do that in my spare time…when I ain’t workin’on who slit that woman’s throat yesterd’y.

  A little laughter rumbled from the other men then they fell silent. In the moments of emptiness of sound—no cars passing, the dark still trying desperately to hold away the light—was the sound of the river. And with it, every time I heard it, was always the sound of my uncle’s voice. His words were never clear, never orderly enough to be made into a coherent sentence; but the sound of his voice was there just the same. I could hear it as clear as I could hear the water passing invisibly between the banks in that cut of earth behind the jail.

  “Go in there and get that nigger, Hall,”said James Langford.

  Sammy turned to look at Mr. Langford. Flinched a little when he saw him. Eyes grew big as his mouth.

  “Now wait just a goddam minute, Langford,”said Sammy,“this ain’t what we talked about. We was just gonna talk to Lucky, see if he’d let us speak to Mosby in person, see if we could get it out of him who helped him. Hell, I hadn’t even had a chance to ask him yet. It ain’t no need to act all crazy.”

  “Move out’a the way,”said James Langford. Much like I could hear my Uncle Percy’s voice in the passing of the river water, I could hear Ronnie Langford’s voice—telling me about his“girl,”about how to throw papers, about football, about all the things that happened the last time I saw him—in his father’s voice.

  “Ain’t no need to act all crazy, hell!” James said.“There was a dead white woman fount behind Franklin High School yesterd’y mornin’and a nigger they put in jail just a little while thereafter because fuckin’Lucky here had a pretty good idea who done it. It’s been said that two niggers was followin’that woman the night before. What else ya need to act crazy?”

  It was when James Langford reached the second step that I noticed one of his hands was positioned strangely, like it held something. Sammy Samuels moved aside, so that Lucky was directly in Mr. Langford’s line of progression.

  “What you gonna do about this shit, Lucky?” he asked.

  Lucky, as always, at least with people outside his own family, grew calmer as things grew more tense. His right hand now rested at his side while he propped the door open with his hip. His left hand had moved to Sammy Samuels, in a strange way, either protecting him or moving him out of the way.

  “I’s just tellin’Sammy here,”said Lucky,“that the first thing I’m gonna do is go over to the Burgess house and see about that Ivy woman.”

  “Whether it was the Ivy woman or not,”argued Mr. Langford,“there’s still a fuckin’dead woman that they’re gettin’ready to put on display like some kind’a prime kill from a hunt and there was two niggers that followed her that night. And as far as I know only one a’them boys is in the jailhouse.”

  “That man in the jailhouse ain’t guilty until he’s proved that way,”said Lucky.“And the only reason that we talked about puttin’out the body is because we need to know who the woman is if it ain’t Miss Ivy.”

  I hadn’t heard yet of any“body”being out, but if it was out, I knew it would be at the same damn place they put Ronnie out when he came home, where Mr. Langford had insisted they put him at Franklin Memorial Chapel. His boy was a hero, he claimed, and he would be treated like one. Even George Preston, the only and therefore best undertaker around, couldn’t make him look presentable. Yet Mr. Langford insisted anyway.

  By this time, John Harvey had approached Mr. Langford from behind and begun to try to talk to him.“James,”he said,“you know that Lucky here will do the job he’s s’posed to do. You know we all want to know what the hell’s goin’on.”

  For the first time I saw the gun clearly enough to know that’s in fact what it was. As he waved what looked like a thirty-two caliber pistol over the men below, they flinched each time it passed back and forth. Mr. Langford took another step toward Lucky and Sammy Samuels, brandishing the pistol a little more plainly.

  “This is still America, ain’t it?” he said.“Where the guilty get what’s comin’to‘em and the innocent are protected. That’s still where we live, ain’t it?”

  “Far as I know,”said Lucky.

  “This is between you and Lucky,”said Sammy. He slipped by down the stairs and didn’t stop until he made his way to the base of the steps and the other men.

  “What I want to know,”said James Langford,“is how the hell they’re gonna put enough makeup on that woman to cover the gash in her throat? Can you tell me that Lucky Dillard? Huh?”

  Lucky acted as if Mr. Langford didn’t have the small handgun he held in his right hand now, waving as he talked. His eyes were on Mr. Langford’s eyes, his sorrow. And, I suspected, his own.

  “First of all, Jimmy, I ain’t decided that we’re gonna put the body out… ‘cause I’m not even sure if w
e need to. I need to figure out if it’s that other woman first, and then–”

  “Why ain’t you already done that, Hall?” he asked. Like he might have just remembered that Dillard wasn’t my father’s last name.

  “‘Cause I had all I could do yesterday dealin’with people like you,”he said.

  I could tell in the growing daylight that Lucky’s patience was starting to grow as thin as the onion paper pages of my mother’s Bible. His anger, although it was likely to come slower with the general public, was still as unpredictable as springtime storms. When things seemed their worst, his eyes would brighten and the cloud would often pass. When it all appeared clear, sometimes the thundering anger would come, rush in like pounding rain and hail, gale-force winds..

  “Godammit, Jimmy,”he said,“you been standin’on the side porch a’the jailhouse for goin’on five.. ten minutes, waving a gun around as you spoke. Now, what I suggest is that you put that gun back in your pocket and go back down the steps.‘Cause if you don’t, then I’m gonna have to take out my damn gun and—“

  “What the hell you gonna do with it?” Jimmy Langford now asked.“You gonna whip me with the butt of it like you did your brother? You gonna take me in the jailhouse and do it so’s won’t nobody see?”

  Mr. Langford took a step back like he was surveying the situation, thinking about Lucky’s words. Then he laid the gun on the railing, resting his hand on top of it. His voice began to break as he spoke.“Why don’t you do that, Hall, Lucky Dillard…whatever the hell your name is?‘Cause you know the truth, I ain’t worth beatin’no more. The last coupl’a times that Ronnie whipped my ass before he left was the last good ass-whuppin’s I got. Why don’t you do that for me? Do that for me…do it for him. Do it for his Mama. Do it for your brother. Do it for somebody.”

  James Langford then took three short, quick steps and was on top of Lucky at the railing. I heard the old wood rail whine as both men’s weight rested against it. Crack but not fall as Mr. Langford grabbed somewhere in the vicinity of Lucky’s collar with one hand and raised the gun high above his head with the other. Lucky simply tried to protect himself, but didn’t reach for his own weapon as Mr. Langford lowered the pistol once, then twice, then a third time on his head and shoulders. Perhaps he would have allowed Jimmy Langford to fire a bullet into him if he had so chosen. Only when John Harvey and Paul Chester Sr. grabbed him did Lucky take the gun out of his hand.