by Bob Bickford
“Stop right there! All of you!”
A middle-aged house monitor stood in her door, hair in curlers. The tone of command was impossible to ignore. The wild flight slowed and came to a stop. Tattered night dresses fell limp and came to rest against pale calves and ankles.
The matron’s body was thick and strong under her robe. She stepped into the hall and stood there, legs spread and fists on hips. She was used to girls and showed no mercy in her dealings with them. Some of the most recalcitrant had been broken and bent to her will in the privacy of her quarters.
“Stand where you are,” she commanded. “All of you. When I’ve identified each of you, you’ll go back to your beds and wait.”
The leaders were well up the hall. They turned and started back toward her. The lesser girls retreated a step as the two oldest and strongest approached. The one in front was a sixteen-year-old, her hair blown around her face like a mad corona. Her eyes rolled and snapped.
“What did you say, cunny?” she asked. She came up the hall a slow step at a time. “You’ll identify me, will you? Do y’not know me? Bring it here, you old bitch, and I’ll introduce myself. You don’t know us because to you we’re animals. We all look alike.”
There was nervous laughter. The matron stood her ground. She was unflinching and took a step forward. Her breathing deepened and her rage settled on the group like a damp blanket. A few of the girls looked suddenly uncertain, blinking in the dim light.
“How dare you, missy?” she choked. “How dare you defy me?”
The younger woman advanced on the older with her fists clenched. “And how dare you treat us worse than cows in a barn?”
The chief girl’s punch flew and connected with a wet smacking sound. The woman raised her hands to her bloody nose.
As soon as she bent, the girls were on her. She fell to the ground. Night dresses whirled and spun above her. She grunted loudly when the first bare feet stomped down.
Up the hall, a door opened and there was a shout. Another staff member was awake. Half the girls broke free and ran toward the voice. Before they had taken a dozen steps, the door slammed closed again and there was a loud clack as the lock was engaged. Bodies slammed, but the barrier held. They finally gave up and returned to the group.
The woman on the floor no longer moved. The blood that her bathrobe didn’t soak up began to spread on the linoleum floor.
Wanda stood and stared down at her, mesmerized.
Her reverie was broken by the sound of running feet. She looked up the hall at the departing girls. After one last look at the bleeding body at her feet, she ran after them.
Flying down the long, wide hallway, her heart grew dark and she was filled with black, blind joy. She jumped in the air as she ran, full of the hateful bliss of it. Ahead, she heard glass smash as the art room was breached. They poured inside, intent on the shelves that held tins of turpentine and flammable oils.
Within minutes, the first fires were lit, orange and yellow and blue flowers that blossomed and began to grow in the warm night.
***
Present Day:
We sat in Wanda Sutton’s living room. The air conditioner vibrated the window frame and blocked much of the light coming into the room. The space was reasonably tidy, but cramped. A huge flat screen television dominated the wall opposite the window. It was turned on with the sound muted--a make-believe judge silently admonished a defendant. The cabbage smell of old marijuana permeated the house.
Wanda pointed us toward a couch and then disappeared. When she came back, she had made up her face so heavily that I didn’t recognize her as the person who had answered the door. She wore a pink and white nylon shift and walked by us uncertainly on her heels. As she went toward the kitchen, I saw that she had removed the bandage from her ankle.
“I wasn’t ready for company,” she simpered, addressing only me. “I knew I’d see you, but maybe not so soon. I’m just about fixing to have a cold beer, if you want to have one with me.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “We just need to talk to you.”
She stared at me, and her face, reddening in patches, showed how haphazard her makeup was. “You look like your daddy,” she spat and turned away. “Suit yourself.”
When she came back into the room, she sat down heavily in an armchair across from us. She popped a can of Milwaukee’s Best, sucked off the foam, and sat it on the table next to her.
“So what do you want?” she asked. “You have about ten minutes until my son gets home. He don’t like people in the house.”
“You knew Mr. Sam Latta, obviously,” Sydney started.
“Why don’t we skip the shit?” She was looking at me. “You have something to ask me? Speak for yourself. Don’t hide behind your women.”
I wanted to know why my father had spoken to her at the end of his life. I wanted to know why he told me it had opened a Pandora’s Box, and what it was that she had blackmailed him with. I wanted to know why she had destroyed my dad.
I surprised myself with what I said. “I want to know about the kiss.”
“Why?” she asked.
She peered at me intently. She didn’t pretend ignorance, or ask me what kiss I was talking about.
“I want to understand. Maybe it’s time someone did. You’re the only one left alive who was there that day.” I looked down at my hands. “Maybe I want to know my father, a little bit.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Not all of it,” I said. “He never got the chance.”
She took a long pull of her beer and put it back down. She seemed to reconsider and picked it up for another drink. She gestured to the can. “You sure?”
I shook my head, and Molly spoke up beside me. “I’ll take one, thanks.”
Wanda hoisted herself up. Molly followed her out and turned in the door. “Glass of water for you, Mike?” she asked and nodded vigorously at me. Accept the hospitality.
When they came back, I took a polite sniff of my tap water and set the glass on the coffee table. Wanda sat across from me again and engaged in her beer.
“The kiss?” I prompted. “What do you remember?”
“Oh, I remember everything,” she said. “Summer of ’46. We just moved here from Mobile. My daddy’s daddy had a half-brother, owned the store and was getting out of it--too old. He sold it to us. It was something for my daddy to do. He was just back from the war. He was in the Pacific. When he came back, I didn’t really remember him. My mama said it was on account of he came back so different.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“That summer? I was eleven. We was in back of the store, your daddy and I. He was sweet on me, if you must know. So we was sitting around, just talking about this and that, the way kids do. There was a little nigger, been hanging around all day, and he came up and kissed me. I have no doubt at all he had more than that in mind, neither. There was no one back there, and of course I screamed, scared to death. Your daddy just stood there staring, chicken-shit little bastard that he was.”
This was already different from the story that I had heard, but I kept quiet.
“Good thing my own daddy heard me scream,” she said, “and ran outside to chase him off.”
“He did more than chase him off, didn’t he?”
She looked at me slyly. Her drawl intensified, a parody of Southern sweetness. “Yes, and that’s a fact, isn’t it? That’s history, as they say. You don’t have to be clever to know about that.”
She was fat and old, but she had once been a little girl. I tried to summon some pity for her.
“That boy brought it on hisself,” she went on. “My daddy was just fixin’ to scare some sense into him, and that boy kept denying he was even there. My daddy needed him to see what he done was wrong and own up to it. The rougher it got, the more that little bastard kept denying it. Said he wasn’t going to own up to what he didn’t do. Said he was home the whole day, was never at the store. Little fucking liar. Even after he cou
ldn’t talk no more, he kept shaking his head no.”
I felt a mounting horror as I realized what she was telling us. Molly spoke for all of us. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You were there when your father killed him?”
Wanda took another swig, and smacked her lips. “Course, I was. How do you think my daddy identified him? All he saw behind the store was a little nigger running away. I went with them to pick him up.”
Them.
“Your uncle was there, too.” Sydney said. “He was your mother’s brother. Did he live in the same house with the rest of your family?”
“He did live with us. Came to help out with the store. Stands to reason he’d be there, don’t it? I was his sweet girl.” She smacked her lips at me again. “Anyway, the court said they didn’t do nothing wrong. There was a trial and they was free to go, weren’t they now? The judge and jury didn’t disagree with what my daddy and my uncle did, and they said so as official as you’d ever ask for.”
“I think the case was dismissed on a technicality,” Sydney said. “They couldn’t establish proof that the body belonged to Eli Tull.”
The detective had warned me against getting emotional, but it was her own face that was red.
“He was just a little boy,” Molly said. “A baby. How could they? How could they?” Her hand shook as she put the beer can on the table. She didn’t want Wanda’s hospitality any more. Her voice shook when she spoke. “The court certainly didn’t say that what they did was all right.”
“So you say, missy. So you say.”
I decided to interject. “Where does my father come into the story? He was there that day at the store, but was he your friend afterward? Did you talk to him about what happened?”
“I didn’t have any friends afterward, nor did my mama. We were the shit in this town, until finally she hung herself and I got sent away. All my people gone. As for your daddy, he came to me only a few months ago, didn’t he?”
At last. I had sensed as much. This is what we had come for.
“He sat right there, with his crocodile tears, and said he was sorry. Drunk old bastard. Asked me to forgive him for shooting my daddy and uncle like a couple of stray dogs, the nigger-loving son of a bitch.”
“Shooting your--” I felt shock run through my entire body. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Molly was staring at me, open-mouthed. The distress in her eyes mirrored mine.
Wanda Sutton slammed her beer can on the table and struggled to get up from her chair. Molly crossed to her and gently pushed her back, taking both of her hands in her own.
The old woman’s face was red, and her voice deepened and got rougher. I realized that she was crying.
“He came to confess, but I already knew! I knew what he did! I was on the porch of the store when he did it and saw through the window. He ran by me on his way out! I watched him shoot my daddy like a dog! Like a fucking dog! My mama hung herself, because of him! It was all because of him!” She had made it to her feet, struggled across the room, and slapped my water glass from the table. “Now get the hell out of my house you bastard, and remember that. I knew what he did. I knew it all along and never told a soul because I was gonna kill him myself. For sixty years, I waited for that day, and the nigger-loving bastard up and died on me before I could do it.”
She was screaming. Her cheeks were wet. We all stood up and backed away.
“What the hell?” I repeated, again and again, to myself.
“He killed my daddy! I hope he likes it in hell. Now get out! Get out of my house!”
We got out. A two-tone cream and copper station wagon pulled into the driveway and parked behind the motorcycle as we went down the walk. It was antique, from the ’50s or ’60s, and looked immaculate. I recognized Arthur Sutton from the funeral. He got out of the driver’s seat and glared at us over the roof. His hair was done in cornrows. I was startled at how oddly pale his eyes were. Another man was slumped in the passenger seat. He looked at us impassively through the open window, but did not get out.
“What the fuck?” Arthur asked.
I didn’t answer.
“No, thanks,” Sydney answered.
In the van, she fumbled her keys out and into the ignition. I saw that her hand was shaking. Molly sat beside her, in tears. I was stunned. My ten-year old father had shot two men to death, and I simply wasn’t able to process what was going on around me anymore.
“Well, at least,” Sydney said, “we came to the right place.”
CHAPTER 20
Sam Latta
Marietta, Georgia, Sunday, August 4, 1946
The boy carried his guilt like a knapsack. He had refused the kiss and the other boy had been forced to take his place. He knew that the girl’s father was a murderer. He knew that he himself was partly to blame for the little boy’s death.
His own parents were inaccessible. He had been gently shushed and told that the matter was not his concern, nor was it the concern of any folks like them. The black child’s murder had taken place across a great divide, in a place he should never go. That grown people had caused the death of a child destroyed something fundamentally childlike inside of him, and his waking world took on the strange and heavy cast of a nightmare.
He took his burden back to the general store, because he had nowhere else to take it.
“Well, well, well,” the uncle said. He looked down from atop a shaky wooden ladder that leaned against a rafter, a dead light bulb in his hand. The girl’s father stood at the bottom, holding it steady. He stared at the boy with no expression.
“I thought we told you to stay out of here, boy. You don’t listen too good, do you?”
“I know what you did,” the boy said. “I’m going to tell the police.”
The father spoke up. “You’re a regular goddamned broken record, aren’t you?”
He looked up at the man on the ladder, and the two of them laughed.
“You ever hear about double jeopardy?” the uncle asked. “Double jeopardy. The law says we didn’t do nothing at all, and that’s true forever even if we say different.”
“I’m going to make you tell what you did,” the boy said.
“Oh, we’ll tell everyone, don’t you worry. There’s Look Magazine people going to pay us to tell the world. We’re going to be rich and famous from this deal, so get on out of here before I lose my patience with you.”
The boy reached into the pocket of his corduroy pants and pulled out the pistol that had been resting heavily against his leg. He had removed it from his father’s desk drawer. It was a revolver, smaller than the Colt the men had used on Eli. The uncle whistled, long and low.
“Lookee here, Floyd,” he said. “Look what this boy brung us. What you gonna do with that, son? Shoot us?”
“I’m going to make you tell the sheriff what you did,” the boy said.
Now that the gun was out, it felt heavy and useless. The men were unimpressed. This was not what he had imagined, and he felt the tears start.
“You don’t listen, do you?” the uncle taunted. “We can tell anyone we like. The sheriff won’t do nothing. Now if you don’t want to end up like that little nigger, you turn around and get your ass out of here.”
“Give me that,” the girl’s father said.
He let go of the ladder he had been holding and took a step toward the boy, who was badly startled and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked and hurt his thumb. The sound and smell made him think of red paper rolls of caps.
The father was sitting on the floor, looking at him stupidly.
“You son of a bitch!” the uncle screamed and started down the ladder, which swayed dangerously.
Terrified, the boy swung the gun toward him and fired twice. The first shot went wild, into the roof of the store. The second caught the uncle in the crown of his head, and he fell backward off the ladder, knocking cans off a shelf as he came down. He hit the floor hard and bounced once on the wooden boards. He lay on his back and kicked his feet.
The boy was reminded of a dog that dreams about running. There was an overpowering smell of shit, and then he was still.
The father had fallen back on one elbow, and he looked up at the boy, his eyes wild with fear. He clutched at his chest. “Help me.”
His voice gargled horribly. It sounded like a monster. Terrified, the boy turned and rushed out. His feet thumped across the porch boards, and then flew over the packed clay in front of the store. He ran for his life. The blonde girl came around the corner and stood on the veranda, watching him get smaller and smaller on the dirt road until he was gone.
***
Present Day:
“It’s nice being here, where it’s warm all the time, but I guess I belong up north,” Molly said. “I’m ready to go home.”
A warm Southern twilight was coming down, covering us like a lavender blanket. We walked along quietly for a little while, past the old homes and churches. An occasional person nodded at us while strolling the other way, or waved from a front porch.
“Do you miss your dad?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I’m starting to. The more I find out, the more I wish I had known him better. I never had a clue.”
She held my hand while we walked. The air was soft and sweet. “Maybe he was scared of you, Mike.”
I looked over at her, surprised. “Scared of me? Why would he be scared of me?”
“Scared that something terrible might happen to you, and he wouldn’t be able to stop it. Scared that he’d fail you, the way he’d been failed.”
Lights were coming on in the houses we passed. We were wandering the streets and roads of Marietta, and I had only a general sense of where we were. We matched steps. Molly was wearing bright aqua running shoes that made me smile.
“Maybe,” she went on, “all the times you thought he didn’t care, he was watching you. Watching from a safe distance. It was the only way he knew how to be.”
