by Trey Holt
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Each time I got anywhere near the place, I could remember it as clearly as if I’d been there that day. Could smell it. The piss and the shit and the vomit, the men who hadn’t had a bath ina few days.“They’ve just give up,”Lucky would describe them as they lay in the hall or sat together quietly in the meeting room, playing cards.
Before there were interstates that would carry you around it, there was really only one way through Nashville. Right through its heart and then out its other side, Central State loomed like a grotesque monument of what was done with people like Percy on a hill on its southside.
I tried to imagine if Lucky thought things like I did. Still heard his words; still remembered the two stints he had spent there. Remembered the second set of days he had been there, the ones in which he had spoken the words that had been flooding their way through my memory. Another deal cut, by the Police Chief this time, Lucky Dillard Hall himself. I wondered if he was as numb to it as he seemed, or if this was just his way of retreating from Franklin, getting the hell out of there after the spectacle he had displayed earlier in the day.
“Them goddam people are all alike,”Lucky had proclaimed to me.“They’re just out to prove everybody’s stupid but them. I told the bastards that I was workin’on it. It ain’t like we haven’t had other things to do. That was the worst decision I ever made, puttin’that body out. Smartass son of a bitch.”
By the time Ike Beatty had called Miss Helen and she had located Lucky, the front screen of the television was gone. Shattered into a hundred pieces, Lucky claimed, by his hand coming down on the top of it. Shattered into a thousand pieces, I theorized, by his boot after he read the Banner, which I never saw and didn’t want to see. The Banner had made its way into the driveway, courtesy of Chester Mott, at around 4 o’clock, and Beatty had called at around 4:30, after a conversation he’d had with Larry Beaman.
“You ever been to Portland?” he asked me.
I shook my head, still half-scared of him. His rages had rarely ever ended with just an object. Sure, there had been plenty: a couple of doors, a few windows, a chair that had somehow made its way into twenty pieces in the backyard. There had even been a dent in the door of his previous car that had miraculously appeared after he and my mother had been somewhere one night.
“Some son of a bitch must have backed into it when they was leavin’one of the bars downtown!” he had said when I asked him about it. It was coincidental, I guess, that my mother also came home with an injured arm. I, though, hadn’t taken a picture of her to preserve the way she looked for the sake of posterity.
It was the reason he had been hired as a policeman to begin with. Somebody rough as a corn cob to protect the good people of Franklin. Somebody who lacked enough class and civility to keep himself from getting mad and beating or jerking the shit out of you.
I wanted to ask him what the Banner had said, but it was simply not the way we operated. As I laid under the carport, changing the oil on the Indian, he had pulled in, made his statement about the day and its results, then disappeared into the house to find my mother and Jean gone to the store. They accepted his explanation about what happened to the television like it was the gospel when they returned. My mother even took the broom and the dustpan out of his hand and tried to help him finish cleaning it.
“It ain’t that much farther,”he said, seeming to accept the fact I didn’t know where we were going. Neither did I know why I was going, excepting my idea he didn’t want to go alone.
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Ike Beatty was an average-sized man with little hair and a large gap between his front teeth. His wife flitted to and from the room where Lucky, he and I sat, bringing tea and coffee as fast as she anticipated a need. She appeared nervous, the initiation of sounds bringing jumps from her like coins in a ride outside a grocery store. Her hair was pinned on top of her head; her dress a little too small. Mr. Beatty and Lucky sat across a small, well-scarred coffee table from each other, silence proving to make everyone a little uncomfortable. Lucky held out a cigarette to Mr. Beatty, whose own pack remained hidden in his shirt pocket. He nodded silently, took it and waited for Lucky to offer a light, which he did.
The Beatty’s had appeared nervous from the moment they invited us into their two-bedroom house to the northwest of Nashville.“I do believe I know her,”Ike had told Lucky on the phone, when he had described her.
After Ms. Beatty had gotten everyone’s tea and coffee fixed, she perched herself on the corner of the couch where Ike sat. She studied the badge on Lucky’s shirt glimmering in the sixty watt light.
“You think we’re gonna get this bad weather they’re talkin’about?” Ms. Beatty offered. Sipped her coffee, diverted her eyes from Lucky’s badge to his for a moment.
“I don’t know,”said Lucky.“Me and the boy were listenin’to the radio on the way down here. They said there wasn’t no way we were gonna avoid it. But you know how that is.”
“Yeah, it’s like that blizzard we had in‘45. You remember that one?”
“I do,”said Lucky.“Recall it like it was yesterday.”
Never forget it, I thought, but didn’t speak. I hadn’t spoken yet, except to nod my head, mumble my name and tell Mrs. Beatty what I wanted to drink when she asked.
“You remember, they didn’t have one idea under heaven or hell that the thing was comin’, and then it just hit us and covered us up.”
“I do,”said Lucky, inhaling the fumes from his Lucky. He let them rest a few seconds then hacked them out. He offered me a cigarette and a light. I took both.“It took us a week to dig out from under it. That’s the thing about his part a’the country. We don’t get much weather like that…but when we do, we don’t have what it takes to get ourselves out from under it.”
“I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that didn’t nobody know it was comin’,”said Ike, rubbing his fuzzy head, a few stray hairs standing up straight from the static created.“They didn’t know nothin’about the weather back then. Didn’t know nothin’about the weather and didn’t have much of a way to let people know what they did know. We just got us a television,”he said, pointing to the cabinet sitting in the corner.“Hadn’t even quite figured out how to work it yet.”
“They’re nice,”said Lucky.“We’ve had us one for awhile. Ours just went on the blink today.”
Mr. Beatty nodded his head like he could both understand and not imagine. He deposited a long growth of ashes into the tray on the coffee table., which Mrs. Beatty immediately collected. She set one new ashtray in front of Ike, one in front of Lucky.
Lucky felt his pants pocket to see if the two or three Polaroid pictures were still there.
“How long y’all lived in Portland?” Lucky asked.
“Pretty much all our life,”said Ms. Beatty, a strange, slow smile coming to her face as the words exited her thin lips.“We lived in Watertown for a few months years ago…in Mt. Juliet another time. But we been here for a long time.”
Mr. Beatty nodded and knocked the end off his cigarette again. Snuffed it out.
I watched the smoke rise aimlessly toward the ceiling. Lucky bobbed his head up and down.
“Used to come up here to go to Lebanon sometime myself,”said Lucky.“Used to have a friend who came.”
Mr. Oscar Garret, I thought. To play poker and shoot craps, is what Percy had told me.
“You said the name right,”said Mr. Beatty as he searched for another cigarette, then seemed to remember Lucky had given him one. He waited for Lucky to offer, which he did.“Most people don’t say it right. They say it like the name a’that country overseas. You said it good, though.”
“Thank ya,”said Lucky. He leaned and lit Ike’s cigarette.
“Our daughter ought to be home in a little bit,”he said.“What time is it?” he asked his wife.
She spun and stretched to see a clock on the kitchen wall.“Almost five,”she said.
Ike nodded and turned his gaze back in Lucky’s general directio
n.“It’s gettin’pretty close to bein’the shortest day of the year. It’s hard to believe it’s almost dark already.”
“Yeah,”said Lucky.“It always fools me when it’s like this. Seems like the whole day’s gone.”
“You gonna want us to come tonight, ain’t ya?” said Ike, whose real name was Isaac, Lucky had informed me.
“Probably so,”said Lucky.“If the pictures look familiar. You’re gonna have to come see her.” He picked up his tea, shook the ice cubes loose from the bottom of the glass, sipped it.
“I don’t want Eugene to see them pictures,”said Mrs. Beatty.
“I know what ya mean,”he said.“Got a daughter a’my own, about his age. Wouldn’t want her to see them either.”
Goddam Princess. Let Henry sit with the body for hours. Run all over the world with you. But Eugene, some boy you don’t even know…you protect.
“But,”said Lucky,“it’d be good if he’d look at one. How’d you say he knew her?”
Mr. Beatty started to speak, but Mrs. Beatty cut him off.“Eugene’s my sister’s boy. He come to live with us a few years ago…how long ago, Ike?”
Ike took a break from his cigarette, from some concoction I assumed was stronger than tea.“‘Bout three years ago, maybe four. Naw, I think it was really closer to three.”
“Anyway,”said Mrs. Beatty,“he’s my sister’s boy and she couldn’t do nothin’with him. She said he was just like his daddy, who was already in the penitentiary and that if she kept on raisin’him, that’s where he was gonna end up.” She checked everybody’s glass, must have concluded they were fine.“The last time he got in trouble in Illinois…somewhere close to Chicago, that’s where she lives…the judge told her if he got in trouble one more time he was goin’to the reformatory.” She held out her hand for Ike to pass her a cigarette, which he did out of his own pack this time. She clicked his lighter, shot a flame before she kept on.“I guess they’re more easy up there. In towns around here, they go to the reformatory for almost anything.”
“Yeah,”Lucky nodded. His eyes moved around the room then back to her face. I could hear his breath going and coming from his chest. He produced a pad and pencil.“How’d you say he met her? What’d you say her name was on the phone?”
“What did Eugene tell us her name was, Ike?” asked Mrs. Beatty.
“Rose Mary,”he said.“Rose Mary…Dean, I think.” He shook his glass, rattled his ice cubes.
“She come with Eugene, but I think he’s better now, don’t you, Ike?”
“Why’d he bring her here?” Lucky asked, before Ike could answer Mrs. Beatty.
Ike snuffed the mostly smoked cigarette out and pushed back the tuft of hair on his forehead.“If I‘member right, she said she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“She wasn’t no big woman,”said Mrs. Beatty.“Maybe a little shorter than normal. We felt sorry for her…let her stay here. How long would you say? Maybe a week or two back then?”
“How long was‘back then?’”said Lucky.“Can you give me a year?”
Ike and Mrs. Beatty looked at each other, seemed to be counting back the years. Ike produced a hand, wandered through a few fingers.“Three…four years,”I believe. When was it, hon?”
Hon answered,“I believe it was more like four. Around 1949. I guess I could call Helen and see. I ain’t talked to her in a few months, though. Might have hard time tracking her down.”
“Yeah, that’s prob’ly somethin’I need you to do if you can.”
“Are we gon’have to come to the police station?” Mrs. Beatty asked.
“Yes ma’am, most likely,”said Lucky.“I think we can have Eugene—that’s what you said his name was, right?—identify her from her picture. But I gotta have somebody come there and see her. Lucky we found you today. We’re gonna have to bury her tomorra’.”
“Well, let’s us have a look at them pictures now,”said Mrs. Beatty.“I hate puttin’off things and dreadin‘em. I’d rather just go ahead and do‘em right now and get‘em over with.“Specially before the kids come home.”
“Yes ma’am,”I understand,”said Lucky. He felt for the pictures in his pocket once more. Produced them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My exposure to Dr. Johnny Guppy had been fairly few and far between. As other things that would come to pass from our existence, he still did house calls in 1953. Doubling as the town doctor and the town’s coroner, I am certain he was often at the same place with George Preston; yet I recall that only with Percy and during the last night of the Blizzard of’45, if Tennessee can in fact have blizzards. The ice sealed the snow beneath itself until both melted after five days. On this evening, though, George Preston and Dr. Johnny Guppy were sitting, waiting on the arrival of the people who would identify Rosa Mary Dean.
I could not recall being inside the police station more than a handful of times. Now, after all these years I was aware of how the place had taken on Lucky’s aura. Smelled like him: a little whiskey, the stale smell of smoked cigarettes, some cologne that my mother gave him every Christmas.
Dr. Johnny Guppy seemed as though he was a perpetually peaceful man, one of the Franklin citizens in the social class that families like ours could never transcend into. And he was comfortable being so. His stature was grand as he sat in Lucky’s office, waiting, as we all did for Ike and Carolyn Beatty to arrive to identify the real woman they’d seen in pictures.
“It’s her,”Eugene had said, turning shimmering blue eyes away from the picture Lucky protruded across the coffee table.
“Look at it good,”Lucky had told him, the Lucky Strike bobbing on his lip as he spoke.“Since you knew her better than your moth—better than Mr. and Mrs. Beatty, I gotta know that you think this is her. She’s gonna be buried tomorra’. Once that happens, it’s hard to take back an identity.”
Tears coming to his eyes, Eugene took the picture in his soiled hand and stared at it. He ran his hand over his hair, wiped his face with his palm. Ike rattled his glass as Mrs. Beatty checked everybody’s again.
“Boy was in trouble,”Lucky would boast to me on the way back to Franklin, beginning to sip at his bottle.“That’s the reason that woman didn’t want him to come to the police station. Some people think about such places like a deep, dark hole. Fall in…never come out.”
His bottle was bringing the levity that it did the first half-hour or so, relieving him of the weight pressed perpetually on his shoulders.“I didn’t give a shit if he came or not. I just wanted an i.d. on the picture.”
Central State loomed on a nearby hill, like a shadowy beacon barely showing its face through the night, reminding of how fragile, how short things are…can be. Lucky didn’t look at it.
“I just wish we hadn’t had to wait so long on him. I know George Preston and Guppy are already there. Waitin’.”
“Eugene,”Lucky had said to him after we waited what seemed like five minutes,“I ain’t tryin’to push ya, but you’re gonna have to tell me if this is a woman you think you know…and what you know about her.”
Eugene stared stone-faced at the other pictures Lucky produced from his pocket and laid out on the coffee table. The Beatty’s let their eyes float back and forth between the pictures, the lacerations barely visible but death very apparent.
“She come here from somewhere up north.” His voice was higher, almost choked down in his chest. His hand shook as he drew the cigarette Lucky had given him.“Rose Mary,”he said.“Or Rosa Mary Dean. She come down here from somewhere up in Indiana. She got on the train I was on when Mama shipped me off down here. Sat down right by me. There wasn’t no other seat available.” He glanced at the Beatty’s.“Nothin’against y’all. You know how much I’ve‘preciated livin’here.”
“It’s kep’you out’a all kinds a’trouble,”Mrs. Beatty reminded him.
“I know,”said Eugene.
“And when was that? When did you come down here from Chicago?”
“It was 1949,”he said.“When I was thirteen
years ole. Wadn’t that when it was?”
“Your aunt and I was just discussin’that while ago,”said Ike.
“‘49 sounds right,”Carolyn Beatty said.
“Did she come to this house?” Lucky asked.“I’m assumin’you were livin’here then.”
“We was,”said Mr. Beatty. He stood and took the couple of steps to join his wife, who had moved to Eugene’s side.
Lucky’s pencil was poised above the small pad in his hand, smoke rising from the cigarette two fingers away.
“She come here‘cause I reckon she didn’t have anywhere else to go,”said Eugene.“Don’t you think that’s why she come here the first time, Mama?”
His aunt nodded her head.
“Did she stay here with y’all?” Lucky inquired. Drew from his cigarette, coughed a little in rebellion as I had grown accustom to his doing.
“Yep, she did,”Eugene answered.
“Yessir,”Carolyn reminded him.
“Yessir,”he echoed.
“How long?” said Lucky.
“How long ago was it?” asked Ike.
“Umh-umh,”said Lucky.“How long did she stay?”
“I reckon she probably stayed goin’on a week,”said Mrs. Beatty.“We let her stay here‘cause she said she didn’t have nowhere else to go. After she got off the train, she just took a seat over at the far place in the station. We was waitin’on Eugene to come out of the restroom and she jus’went over to the otherside and sat down by herself. I remember sayin’to Ike at the time how sad it was that somebody didn’t have nobody there waitin’on them. When Eugene come out of the restroom he told us that he’d been talkin’to her since she got on at Indianapolis. I jus’couldn’t stand to see no child with no place to go....”
“She really wadn’t no child,”Ike interrupted.
“She wadn’t full-growed neither.”
“Awright, awright, that’s true,”Ike said.
“I’d say she was in her late teens…maybe twenty,”Eugene stated.“The fact was, though, that she was gonna sleep right there in the bus station.”
