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

by Trey Holt

  “Why do you think it’ll work this time if it hadn’t before?”

  “It’s not like it hasn’t before. There were long periods a’time when it seemed like nothing bad was goin’on at all. Before that little girl next door, he was pretty much just doin’crazy things like that preachin’. And you know Ole Man Smithson sent her off. We ain’t got that to worry about now.”

  “That’s not how you looked at it then,”she said.“You used to say it was somethin’all the time. Don’t you remember that?”

  “All’s I know,”said Lucky,“is that I can’t just leave him there. It ain’t right. I been thinkin’a lot about this…and he should have the right to choose his course like all the rest of us. Even if it’s wrong, Mary. That’s what he should have.”

  Although I could not see the conversation between Lucky and my mother, I could imagine her seated in the chair at the end of their bed, where she had parked herself when he’d told her he’d brought Percy home, Lucky, standing by the door, so that he might escape his rage when it decided to come, which I was certain it would if the situation was discussed long enough. A conclusion to which my mother would come quickly, too, I imagined.

  “What do you want me to do?” Lucky half-huffed.

  “I’m not sure what can be done now,”she said.“Maybe he can go live with one of your sisters.”

  “They got enough with Mother and Daddy and their boys,”he told her. An edge had started to grow in his voice.“A-goddam-nough.”

  “I’m not sure what else you can do,”said my mother as she evidently conceded, or at least made a comment ambiguous enough that protest could be interpreted as concession.

  The princess passed through the hall and added her two cents worth, worth less than that.“I’m thinkin’it’d be okay with the Smithson girl gone now.”

  “‘The Smithson Girl,’”I mocked under my breath.“She had a goddam name. Christine.”

  Lucky came out of the bedroom and turned a sad, loathsome look my way, which I chose to believe he meant toward the princess but wouldn’t show her. Truth be known, I thought in that moment, Lucky was probably proud of me and ashamed of her, her dumbness, if that’s a word. She’d be lucky to graduate from Franklin High School and marry some bum. I was a star fucking football player. Nevertheless, I wasn’t able to think about myself this way very often. Most times, I was son of Lucky, corrupt“sheriff,”nephew of Crazy Percy, brother of the dumb, snobby princess. Son of Mary Hall, the one most of the town believed suffered in one or more ways at the hand of Dillard“Lucky”Hall behind closed doors.

  + + +

  “There gonna be fuckin’scouts at this game,”he’d told me, acting like nothing had happened. He’d been able to somehow forget, or at least transcend my busting him in the mouth, bloodying his nose on Main Street. What’s fair is fair, I guess, was the way he’d looked at it. I’d beat him at his own game. Stole the girl…that I guess he really didn’t want anymore. Taken her away when I delivered the news that her old man and her sister had gotten killed.

  I tried to act nonchalant, like it didn’t matter. I was glad he couldn’t see my insides shaking, my knees trembling under my pads.“You think so?” I choked out.

  “Fuckin’-A!” He slapped me on the back hard enough it made me jump, smacked my shoulder pads together so loud they almost sounded like a gunshot.

  “I doubt they’re comin’to see anybody in particular,”Collins said from across the locker room.

  “We know they’re not comin’to see your ass,”said Van.“That’s as plain as the ugly nose on your face.”

  “Lay off the nose, Manor,”said Raymond Collins. He’d caught grief about it as long as I could remember, probably since grammar school.

  “It’s hard to miss,”said Paul Chester, Jr..

  Collins gave him some unmistakable sign language from across the room, then turned and dropped his pants, his hairy ass shining for all to see.

  “I’d put that thing up if you’re not gonna use it,”said Coach Nedler as he stuck his head around the corner, shook it along with his hand at Collins’display.“That means now. My foot would just about fit right in there.”

  Mr. Nedler wasn’t afraid to use his foot, that way especially. He’d let it go on several people that I’d seen. Van, Chester, Collins, they’d all gotten his wrath at one time or another. A foot in the ass, an open hand to the back of the head. He’d especially always had it in for Van, who, rumor had it, had paid a few clandestine visits to his wife. As for me, I’d always suspected I’d been able to avoid his wrath because I was good at sensing when to avoid him, when to say the right things, as I had learned from my life with Lucky. I was also his boy, I knew that, too. His only chance to win a state championship that year, an award that had eluded him for the half-dozen years he’d been the coach.

  We’d been getting ready to play Columbia that night, a town twenty miles to Franklin’s south. I had heard that there were college scouts there, unidentified in the stands, right along with Lucky, who I knew was in the stands thirty minutes before the game started. It was hard for me to imagine anybody was there to see me.

  “There here to see you, buddy,”Van said, slapping me on the back again, taking the image of Lucky and the imaginary scouts out of my mind, especially the one wearing University of Tennessee orange like the ones who came to see Ronnie Langford.“You…you…you!”

  I tried to laugh it off.

  “They’re hear to see you!” he said, checking the door as Nedler stood still as the statue.

  ‘I’m not sure who the hell’s doin’what,”said Coach Nedler,“but, Manor, I’m sure if it’s bad you got somethin’to do with it.”

  Van just smiled at him in knowing way, waved at him before he cast his eyes to the floor. He took me by the shoulder pads and stared into my eyes.“You got a chance here, buddy. A big chance. You go tonight, they’ll be back to look at you again. You’re the first one since Ronnie Langford. You know that, don’t ya?”

  I have to say that Van seemed on my side that night, throwing a block every chance he could, especially a couple that freed me to score on a long drive right before halftime, the third touchdown of the half, two of them mine. He’d gotten up and come to the end zone as I tossed the referee the ball and asked me,“Who’s takin’care of you? Huh? Who’s lookin’out for your ass?” I’d score once more in the second half on our way to a 28-14 win over the Columbia Mules, so named for the animal their county was famous for. I don’t believe I ever saw Lucky as proud as he was after the game, then when the next issue of the Tennessean came out.

  “‘Hall may be the best since Ronnie Langford,’”he read while we were sitting at the kitchen table. The princess sat there, trapped in the middle of chewing her eggs, unable to escape Lucky’s reading.“‘It’s taken eight long years, perhaps, for the town to heal from the loss of its golden son, at least as far as football is concerned. But the spotlight seems to have re-emerged. His name is Henry Hall, son of our own“Lucky”Dillard Hall, former Assistant Police Chief, now Police Chief.’They could have left part of that out,”he interrupted himself reading.“‘In the opening game of the season last Friday night, he rushed for a hundred and forty-two yards for the Battle Ground Academy Wildcats and single-handedly outscored the Columbia Mules. He had a strong season last year, but 1953 seems to promise even more. Next week, we’ll see how he fares against the Spring Hill Cougars, who posted a 7-3 record last year and made a trip to the annual Butter Bowl. It promises to be an interesting season as scouts descend upon Franklin from across the state to observe Hall, assess his playing and gather the information that will determine whether or not he’s offered a scholarship. We can only be glad that the conflict in Korea is over, so that Hall might be able to go the way of football and not the way of war.”

  The next week would bring the Spring Hill Cougars to the Academy and even a better week for me, except for the fact that I felt distracted most of the time. One moment I’d be in the game, carrying the ball or fielding an
d returning a kickoff, and the next I’d be in the car with Sharon or at the hospital with Percy. Halftime brought Nedler giving us a speech in the locker room. His blues eyes flashed and popped as he spat his words.“You’re playin’like a’bunch a’sissy girls. A bunch of g—f—d—” He couldn’t decide on his expletive, so he didn’t use one, the moment passed.“My wife could outplay you.” Spit formed on his lower lip as his emotions hovered at the edge of his control. He took his fist and shook it at the heavens…at the locker room ceiling…at something. He slapped the closest locker behind him with the flat of his hand.

  Van elbowed me, which drew a look from Nedler.”His wife can do a lot things.”

  “What’d you say, Manor?”

  “I said that I was sure we’d play better in the second half…because we’ll change a lot of things…like you said,”he said, smiling that smile of his.“I think we need to tighten up the line, protect our boy here.”

  “Good advice, Manor,”he said.“But maybe you ought to let me be the coach, huh?”

  Coach Langley, or Fester out of his presence, walked up behind him and exhibited the fact he liked to repeat what Nedler said.“Yeah, maybe you ought to let him be the coach, huh?”

  “Just trying to be a blessing,”said Van.

  “Yeah, you always are,”said Nedler.

  “He’s been talkin’to his wife,”Van whispered to me.

  As for me, I was trying to imagine what the scouts had thought about the dismal first half I’d had. I’d run for only twenty-seven yards, if I’d kept up with it right in my head, which I’d never done before this year and all this talk had started. I thought about the punt I’d dropped after calling for a fair catch. I thought about the two kickoff returns I’d had that had been under twenty yards. Pretty much, a botched attempt at any real effort is what it had been, which had landed us down 14-3 to a team we should have already put away.

  “We gotta block better,”said Nedler.“We gotta execute, all fire off the line at the same time. Some of you d—darn guys look like you’ve been glued down in your stances. If we can get off to 2-0, we can start on a march toward the goldang state championship.”

  ”I bet these boys don’t wanna win a state championship,”said Fester, the veins bulging in his head and neck as they did.

  “Yessir, we do!” shouted Raymond Collins.

  “Well, you boys sure ain’t playin’like it! Are they?” Nedler directed toward Fester.

  He shook his head. Breathed heavy enough I could hear it all the way across the locker room.

  “You boys get off your asses and play like you know you can play,”Nedler finally let go.“And I mean in this second half, not next goddam week!”

  “Yessir,”most everybody shouted.

  What Nedler described to us, we were able to execute in the second half. The line tightened and began to open holes, at first just big enough to get through for four and five yards, then for ten, then finally large enough to drive Sharon’s car through. Van pulled us ahead halfway through the third quarter when he caught a twenty-seven yard pass from Johnny Nance. From there, we looked only forward as we scored once more in the third quarter, then again to begin the fourth. As the tide turned, I was able to push the images of Percy and Sharon out of my head and focus on the ten-foot wide holes the line was opening. At the end of the game, even Raymond Collins and I were friendly toward each other, patting each other on the back for a job well done. Van laughed at the sight, and told everybody who would listen,“See, I should be the coach. Nedler’s wife told me I was better than him anyway.”

  “You’re crazy as hell,”Tully told him, after he’d made his way into our locker room after the game.“I thought you boys were gonna get your asses whipped after the first half. I was kind’a thinkin’that I ought to have gone to the Franklin game.”

  “Any asshole can go to the Franklin game,”Van told him.“You’re lucky you’ve got friends at the Academy, so you have somebody else to come watch.”

  “I hear you talkin’, Manor,”said Tully.“I sat up there by Lucky Hall. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a man holler or cough so much. He was lookin’all around him every play, tryin’to figure out who might have been the scouts.”

  “I thought y’all quit talkin’about that shit last week. There probably wasn’t one scout in those stands,”I said, hoping I was wrong.

  “You’re probably right,”said Raymond Collins as he finished putting his things in his bag and slung it over his shoulder and let the locker room door swing shut behind him.

  “He’s just jealous,”said Van.“You see that don’t ya? Come on, let’s go down to Willow Plunge. Tully, you got some beer, right? And some good shine.”

  “The best,”Tully told him, drawing on a cigarette, daring our coaches to tell him to put it out.“Right out’a Little Texas. Straight from the Bennings.”

  “I think I’ll pass on Willow Plunge,”I told them, throwing my own bag over my shoulder.“I got other things to do.”

  “Yeah, we know what you got to do,”said Tully.“I didn’t see her in the stands tonight. Where was she?”

  “She had to work,”I answered, as the door shut behind me and the cold night air touched my face.“See y’all.”

  Before I got to the spot where I was going to meet Sharon at the river, I pulled over myself and let the silence of the night take me into its own arms. Just starting to become sore from the hits I’d taken during the game, I thought about how such punishment was a relative small price to pay to have a chance like I did, how I might have a ticket that few others had been lucky or fortunate enough to receive. How, like most things, I’d never asked for it, but it had just been given me, mine to do with what I would, after I had started playing football and baseball in the eighth grade. How I’d been given the speed to outrun people and the eyes to see where the next step should go. Up the hill half a mile or so, I could hear what I thought were probably the initial hoops and hollers of Van and Tully and whoever had joined them at Willow Plunge, then they, too, became quiet. In the silence, I sat and listened to the almost silent voice of the river and the soft language it spoke under the distant, star-scattered sky.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It took Lucky a long time to finish his conversation with my usually pliable mother, Mary. Out the same window in which I would watch Lucky that December morning, I had looked out on Percy in mid-September, clutching to his chest the bag I had packed for him, at Lucky’s request the first time I had visited him. In the fading light, he appeared thinner than when he had left, even thinner than the last time I’d seen him, perhaps a week before. In Lucky’s absence, Percy appeared to be watching something on the floorboard in the mostly darkened car. Every so often, he’d shake himself, look into the mirror and speak as if he were talking to someone else in the car with him. He scoured his face several times with his hands and pushed his hair out of his eyes and off his forehead for it only to fall once more.

  Finally, after his conversation with my mother, Lucky had made his way back through the kitchen and out into the evening that had grown completely darkened except for the yellowish glow of the light on the driveway-side of the house. He made his way to the car and opened the door, sitting in the driver’s seat beside his brother. After several moments of what appeared to be silence, they began to talk, I figured, about what happened from here.

  Just before I climbed the stairs with a cold glass of milk, I had seen them exit their respective sides of the car. In the half-light of the driveway, Percy stood still, his bag clutched to his chest, waiting for Lucky to lead him inside. In a few moments, he would make his way in the back door, across the porch and ascend the steps like he was home, which, in fact, I guess he was.

  + + +

  When Lucky emerged from the back, he stared at then fiddled with some notes and papers on his desk, arranging them one way then another. In his absence I had heard Miss Helen make her way in the door and then seen her briefly as she passed his office and took a seat at her desk n
ear the front of the station. Just after she had gotten settled, Johnny Forrest had come from the back, mumbling something to himself about Lucas Reasonover. Never seeming to notice me, he had then disappeared into the room in which I assumed he had been staying these last four days. I wondered if perhaps Lucky had put Percy in that room and not in a cell at all. But then I figured what had probably happened couldn’t have if Percy had not been locked down somewhere. Or perhaps they had been in that room and he found what was taking place so unbelievable that he could not bring himself to flee. Or perhaps, he thought he deserved it. Dr. Guppy had told us when we went for the formalities that Monday afternoon, that he believed the bruises and lacerations on his face, hands and neck were very unlikely to have been from the same cause as his death. That was all that was said. He suggested that there be no autopsy unless we, the family, had questions that were unanswered. Otherwise, he would identify the cause of death as that which was obvious.

  When Lucky finished sorting through his papers and put an armful in a briefcase he carried only when he had to, he motioned me to come behind him. We made our way to the police car in silence, only broken by the sounds of the doors opening and closing and their echo off the back of the police station.

  The Burgess house was on a short, thin street named Evans Alley, just off Strahl Street, which ran parallel with Columbia Pike, and was probably a half mile from where we lived. It had been there as long as I could remember and had been home to many different people over the years, and was, in general, viewed as a place of all kinds of debauchery. It was the kind of place Lucky normally stayed well clear of, except, I assume, on this day and perhaps on Tuesday, when he had visited the boarding household and talked to its inhabitants to make sure that one of them, Miss Mary Ivey, imaginary horse rider and purported prostitute, was still alive. As Franklin had settled into the fact that it had a body and possibly its blood on its hands, there had been, there had, according to Lucky, been several reports of Miss Ivey, having been seen walking down the road the night before, so identified by her riding britches. The two black men seen following her, had supposedly been the reason the Mosby’s were still in Lucky’s jail.