South of Shiloh

by Chuck Logan

  Then Beeman put the Crown Vic in gear, turned around, went back up the drive, and left Rane alone.

  Rane got out of the Jeep and spotted another long sag of the yellow tape surrounding a pond in the back acres. White floaters caught the sun.

  He thought about it.

  Okay. What’s happening is he’s holding you close; behind his folksy shit, he’s checking you out. Not like the Tennessee cops, who routinely ran him in the computer to see if he had any outstanding warrants. Rane got the impression Beeman became a cop because he had to; the kind of guy called to make a difference in people’s lives. Paul’s kind of guy, who had to walk the walk in cadence with Tex Ritter’s mournful lyrics.

  Strap on the iron and do what a man’s gotta do…

  Corny.

  Except he steps in and catches you up as you’re about to spin out of control.

  I wasn’t out of control.

  Yes you were. They would’ve stomped you good in that bar if Beeman hadn’t been on the lookout.

  Rane picked up his travel bag, climbed the deck steps, and pulled open the sliding door. He paused on the threshold. Door’s always open. First-name hospitality. Trusts me in his house?

  He went in through the kitchen. The upstairs was conventional cozy. A clean, pressed county deputy’s uniform shirt hung on a hanger hooked to a chair. Magnets held a gallery of family pictures on the refrigerator door. Beeman’s wife was a wiry, dark-haired woman with large serious eyes and a smiling mouth. One of his sons looked to be seven or eight, shown hugging a black Lab. The other boy was older, perhaps twelve, with a stoic jock face to match his football jersey misshapen with shoulder pads. There was no sign of the Lab, so Beeman must have sent the dog away with his wife and kids. From the pictures on the walls it looked like he’d married early and stayed married.

  Rane spied a diamond ring lying in the middle of the kitchen table, on a flyer advertising a barbecue at a Baptist church. File that away.

  A panorama of Civil War paintings lined the walls of the living room and dining room; variations of Lee and Jackson on horseback. A large framed photograph showed a younger Beeman in a gray uniform, wearing full kit and shouldering a rifle, standing next to his wife, who wore a hoop skirt and bonnet and held an infant in her arms. A bivouac of white tents dotted the background. Finally, Rane’s eyes were drawn to the portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who peered from the wall over the desk in the living room with the iconic ferocity of a defiant Christ.

  He carried his bag downstairs and found the guest room. Most of the lower level was taken up by a den with walls papered in a solid collage of law enforcement pictures mixed in with badges and shoulder patches from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama sheriff departments. It had the look of Alary’s South. All he needed was a car door hanging from the ceiling. Antique guns, pistols, and swords filled a display rack.

  One corner was hemmed in by bookshelves full of crime fiction, which surrounded a comfortable easy chair and an ottoman. A lamp sat on a side table next to an ashtray and a corncob pipe. Something caught his eye on a shelf lined with nonfiction. Among the volumes of Civil War history, a single book stood upside down. Rane craned his neck and read the title: The Mind of the South by Wilbur J. Cash.

  Four generations of men stared from framed photos over the fireplace mantel. Rane presumed that a sturdy man in a police uniform, in the newest picture, was Beeman’s father. The formally posed, whiskered elder would be a grandfather. Finally, a yellowed, acid-splashed tintype under glass showed a wisp-bearded young man in a Confederate uniform. The Rebel ancestor held a revolver across his chest and his dark eyes were fixed on the camera with the intensity peculiar to the 1860s, which one does not see in the eyes of modern Americans—the one picture he had taken in his life.

  Another picture was familiar: Beeman in chocolate-chip camo and E-6 chevrons, standing with a black M2 rifle in one hand and plastic liter bottle of water in the other. The barren blend of sand and sky felt like Kuwait.

  Rane checked the bump on his forehead in the bathroom mirror. He didn’t replace the Band-Aid. A car came down the drive. As he pulled the faded army cap from his bag and slipped it on, Beeman walked down the stairs.

  “Let’s go,” he said, noticing but not reacting to the cap.

  “Where to?” Rane asked.

  “How about we try an’ figure out why Mitchell Lee Nickels went off his nut and wants to kill me,” Beeman said.

  They eased out of the afternoon traffic coursing down Highway 72 and slowed in the left-turn lane. The light changed and Beeman turned south. “Tate Street, old Highway 45,” Beeman said, chewing on the stem of the unlit corncob pipe he had retrieved from his den. “We got two kinds of history, John: we have the Civil War for the tourists and we got the state-line mob days…” Beeman looked at Rane and smiled. “We don’t usually lay that on visitors too heavy up front; especially after we had to live down the Hollywood’s version of Buford Pusser.”

  As they cruised past a strip mall into more open country, Beeman said, “But there was a hell of a criminal operation here in the fifties and sixties. Started up when they closed the cathouses and casinos in Phenix City, Alabama, and run the assholes out. They settled on this road across the state line north of town and here, just past the city limits.” They drove by a pasture, some car body shops, and a machine shop, then pulled over to a deserted patch of cracked asphalt stitched with weeds.

  “They called this stretch Drewry Holler. Had your gin joints, hookers, gambling, and the El Ray Motel where Towhead White was killed. Not much left now.

  “Around midnight, August 10, 1972, Tommy Lee Nickels, Mitchell Lee’s pa, was shot DRT—dead right there—on that slab of blacktop. Shot four times in the chest with a .38. According to the legend that’s how all this started. Everyone says my dad did it. Story was he put Tommy Lee down like a mad dog.”

  “Did he?” Rane asked.

  “Don’t honestly know. Daddy never would talk about it; died letting everybody still wonder. But Daddy did favor a .38.”

  “He have a reason?” Rane asked.

  Beeman sucked the empty pipe. “Didn’t take much in those days. Look at somebody wrong’d get you killed along this strip. Let me put it like this—I live in a lot of house for a deputy’s salary. My daddy built that house and I suspect illegal moonshine had a hand in it. My momma never liked that house and when the old man died she moved home to Rankin County with her family.” Then he waited for traffic to clear, executed a U-turn, drove back to 72, turned west, and in a few moments they were on new 45 heading north toward Tennessee.

  “So there is bad blood between you and Mitchell Lee,” Rane said after a while.

  Beeman laughed soundlessly. “You could say that. But up till now all we ever had was a few fistfights in high school.”

  “What about the scene in the cemetery that time he shot at you?” Rane asked.

  “That was for show. Him and his scummy lawyer cooked up that deal so he went to alcohol treatment and got out of shipping to Iraq with the guard. That’s what I mean, see, he plans things, schemes. Everybody knew he was going to marry Miss Ellender Kirby far back as high school and it took him twelve years but damned if he didn’t.” Beeman shook his head. “So why’s he making his move now all of a sudden? And in such a dumb-ass way, sending text messages?”

  Beeman let the thought hang as he took a left turn, crossed the four-lane, and drove down a winding blacktop road with close-in foliage. Then he pulled to the shoulder, put the Crown Vic in park, got out, and popped the trunk lid. A moment later he returned with a Vietnam-era M16 rifle, the fully automatic military version with a forward assist on the side. He jammed a magazine into the rifle, pulled the operating rod to load a round, set the safety, and leaned the weapon in the front seat between them.

  “Don’t mean to get too dramatic, John, but we’re headed out to Guys and this is prime Leets territory.” Beeman looked around. “I’m outta my jurisdiction and I ain’t real popular hereabouts
. So keep them famous eyes of yours open.” He put the car in gear and drove slowly down the twisting road.

  “Where are we heading?” Rane asked.

  Beeman smiled. “Going to swing by Fiona Leets’s house, see if we can get a look at King Shit Dwayne himself. When he comes to visit he usually hangs out at his ma’s. He’s in from Memphis, has been all week.”

  “The drug kingpin who put a contract on you for shooting his brother?”

  “Word is.”

  Rane scanned the surrounding tree lines and brush. “Can this Dwayne make a contract stick?”

  “Oh yeah, big-time. He got rich selling drugs and now he’s invested it in pizza joints, dry cleaners, car lots. There’s a rumor he’s putting together a construction company. He’s got the connections to bring in a pro if he wanted.”

  “Okay, I give. So why ain’t you dead?”

  Beeman shrugged. “Almost was, last Saturday. In fact Dwayne was seen up by the Kirby house during the reenactment with a pair of binoculars, scanning the field.”

  “Ouch,” Rane said.

  “He wasn’t exactly out of place, ’cause he bought two of them cannons for the artillery boys. But when you think of it, him on one side, Darl on the other and Mitchell Lee maybe somewhere in the middle with a rifle?” Beeman raised his eyebrows.

  “So bring Dwayne in?”

  “No probable cause. They decided to carry Paul’s death as an accident. Woulda been me, they mighta ruled that an accident too.”

  “Cleaner than a hit,” Rane said.

  “Yep. Except it bounced funny.”

  “Beeman,” Rane said, “we been driving around for a while and,” he pointed to the radio handset clipped to the dash, “that radio’s been awful quiet.”

  “You noticed that,” Beeman said. “Well, it’s like this. Paul’s death is officially closed to keep ’em happy at city and county. But the sheriff knows something’s going on, especially with Mitchell Lee missing and me getting weird threats, so he’s taken me off everything else and’s letting me poke around on my own.” He grinned. “That way, the shit hits the fan he don’t get hit with too much splatter. Like I said, folks on the west side of Alcorn tend to favor the Leetses in this alleged feud. And they vote, even the ones who can’t read.”

  Beeman slowed and pulled to the side of the road in front of a broad, well-tended lawn with a large bronze water sculpture set in front of a newer, sprawling ranch-type house.

  “Fiona Leets’s place. Dwayne built it for her. Now look in back of the main house, see that one-room hillbilly shack with the sagging gray plank siding?”

  “Yeah,” Rane said, scanning the house, the lawn, the surrounding tree line for a glint of sunlight on metal. Like a rifle barrel.

  “Well, Fiona’s got this brand-new house with all the latest gadgets. I heard there a plasma TV in there the size of my garage door. But she likes to stay out in that one-room cabin with nothing but an old bed, a rocking chair, and a wood cook stove. She’s probably in there now, rocking, maybe with a pinch of snuff she keeps in this old silver Rooster Snuff tin. Then she’ll take a twig from a black gum tree, gnaw it down to fiber and make her an old-time toothbrush to tidy up her remaining teeth.”

  Beeman sighed and leaned back. “Don’t see Dwayne’s Caddy. Guess he ain’t around.” Then he pointed to the lawn. “That’s what I really brought you out to see.”

  “A fountain,” Rane said.

  “Take a closer look and tell me what you make of that?” Beeman asked.

  Rane scrutinized the stylized bronze tiers of tanks and tubes. Sunlight hitting the falling veils of water cast a trembling rainbow. “Some kind of metal sculpture?”

  “Dwayne brought in the artist special from Nashville. Got heating elements built in so it never freezes and runs all year.”

  “Yeah?”

  Beeman leaned forward. “John, man, you are a city boy,” he said patiently, “that’s a sculpture of a fuckin’ moonshine still.”

  40

  AS THEY APPROACHED THE MAIN HIGHWAY, Beeman stopped, unloaded the rifle, and secured it back in his trunk. Then they drove back to Corinth and entered the residential streets north of city hall. Beeman pulled to the curb in front of a white frame house with one of the GENERAL SLEPT HERE signs in front.

  “The Kirby Cottage,” Beeman said. “This is where Mitchell Lee lives with Ellender Kirby; a whole world away from Drewry Holler and Guys.”

  “So?” Rane asked.

  “So he had a way of getting noticed and Hiram Kirby picked him up when he was sixteen and sponsored him and he meets the banker’s daughter, huh? Mitch figured out a good thing when he saw it and kept a discreet distance from his outlaw cousins. After school let out, instead of playing sports or raising hell, he’d worked as a janitor, sweeping up in the bank. When he graduated he started as a teller, driving to business classes at Northeast Mississippi Community College. He finished up over at the University of North Alabama in Florence.

  “Miss Kirby went to Ole Miss, split town after college, spent some time as a flight attendant with Delta to look over the pilots, then tried advertising up in Nashville. When her mother became ill with cancer she came back to help her father and brother get through it.

  “After her mother’s funeral she rediscovered Mitch, who had worked his way up to loan officer. They sent the gossip mill into orbit when they ran off and got married.”

  Rane thought he detected a hint of envy creeping into Beeman’s tone and filed it away with the lonely wedding ring on his kitchen table. “What’s she like, the wife?”

  “Well, she runs all the local charity efforts. Since her brother died in Iraq, the word is, she’s getting interested in doing something with wounded vets.”

  “Where this headed?” Rane asked.

  “C’mon, John,” Beeman said, “you were a cop for a while…”

  Rane guffawed. “Two years after the academy.”

  “That’s long enough to grasp Street Sociology 101. Most people who go bad have poor impulse control. After a few drinks on Saturday night they start wearing the shitty cards life dealt them on their sleeve. One of the things I remember about Mitchell Lee in high school—besides fighting with him in the parking lot—is he was in the chess club. That boy always plans two moves in advance. Anything he does is for a reason.”

  “So he was wrapped too tight and flipped out?” Rane speculated.

  “Yeah, right. People say he’s been fighting this outlaw gene all his life. But I don’t buy it. This is a guy so smooth he could hustle Bill Clinton out of his last dick rubber. That stunt at the cemetery was family politics. See, his brother-in-law, Robert, ran the bank after the old man retired and stuck it to him every chance he got. Mitchell Lee worked it so he stayed back when Robert deployed with the guard. Once Robert was out of the way, he resigned from the bank, started this radio talk show, and set up a battlefield preservation charity. And Old Man Kirby really liked that idea. You remember the statue out at the Kirby estate?”

  Rane nodded.

  “Mitch had that built; he raised all the money on his radio show. I didn’t help any,” Beeman sighed. “I figured he was up to something so I got an admin subpoena and went through the charity bank records. All that did was make me look bad and him look better.”

  “So the feud goes both ways,” Rane said.

  Beeman scratched his cheek and admitted: “Yeah, I guess it does get a little tense when we get in the same room.”

  “So if he didn’t flip out, how’s he go from building statues to shooting at you at Kirby Creek?” Rane asked.

  “Paul Edin,” Beeman said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, why are you having this conversation with a cop sitting in a car in Corinth, Mississippi?”

  Rane stared back. Beeman’s quiet brown eyes were doing his slow, tricky roping routine. “It’s a story…”

  “That’s right, John. About Paul,” Beeman said. “What if Paul wouldn’ta stepped out and caught that bullet
? What if it had killed me deader’n shit, huh? What would have been the next step? Just me ain’t worth Mitchell Lee going off the deep end. Once I’m dead, then what? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Not sure I…” Rane said.

  “Think, man—Paul changed things,” Beeman said, slowly scanning Rane’s face. “Maybe his dying had a way of changing people’s plans, and their lives…”

  Rane shrugged, said nothing, and broke eye contact. The moment passed.

  “Anyrate,” Beeman said briskly. “Mitchell Lee has this one reliable flaw and that’s our next stop.”

  “Drinking,” Rane said. “The scene in the cemetery shooting at your car.”

  “Other women. He always catted around. You see, the night before he started shooting at Yankee grave ornaments he roughed up his girlfriend. T’ween you and me, I think that was part of the scenario. When she showed up at Emergency—that’s what got us out looking for him.”

  Beeman turned the car around, drove into the business district, and parked down Fillmore from the coffee shop. They got out, ambled along the storefronts, and stopped in front of a plate-glass window full of ferns. An arch of delicate cursive script over the door spelled out MARCY’S SHOP.

  “You met Darl Leets this morning, right?” Beeman asked.

  Rane nodded. “And, you know, I got the impression he’s a reluctant sort of bad guy.”

  “Well, his wife did haul him out of the Memphis drug scene and away from Dwayne. Got him so he spends more time coaching Little League than he does in that beer joint. Darl was a bad boy once but now he’s what you call a house husband. When you get a look at his wife you’ll see why,” Beeman said as he leaned to the window and peered inside. “Yep, Marcy is in the building.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rane said. “The girlfriend?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Mitch and Darl are cousins? And…” Rane pointed at the salon.

  Beeman said, “Yep. Her and Mitch been having a side thing going for a year at least. It’s a mystery why she stays with Darl. I asked her straight out once.” Beeman grinned. “And Marcy says, ‘Darl’s a married man. He comes home at night.’”