Blood on the Leaves

by Jeff Stetson

  Actually, that fire hadn’t blazed for some time. It had gone out shortly after the Movement was extinguished—the same Movement that had been the driving force of his life, and that had almost cost him his life on more evenings than he could possibly remember. Once he’d believed that the struggle for civil rights represented a battle for the soul of humanity. He’d committed himself to the axiom that if strangers were treated with dignity, neighbors would have no reason to fear each other.

  But that platitude had shattered long ago. His neighbors had grown accustomed to living in fear, even though they owned twice as many guns as locks. And the Civil Rights Movement that had once moved a nation no longer moved him. Yet there still were moments when he saw nobility in his work. At such times his words rang with a majesty that inspired the blindfolded lady to balance the tears on her scales while clearing the lump in her throat.

  Perhaps that explained why Miller was in the courtroom today instead of a retirement home. Why he was in it yesterday and would be here tomorrow, returning every morning until he found one more case, one more cause, that would make Justice weep in hope of forgiveness and, ultimately, redemption.

  “Mr. Miller, do you wish to play the violin before sentencing?” asked Judge Louis “Fritz” Tanner. He gestured toward Miller’s client, Darnel Williams, who at nineteen appeared angrier than most black convicts twice his age.

  Miller lightly stroked the back of his head. He located his ponytail and glanced to the side, hoping to find inspiration. Instead, he discovered the smiling face of Deputy District Attorney James Reynolds.

  Reynolds had entered the practice of law sixteen years ago with aspirations of one day being appointed to the Supreme Court. Somewhere along the line he’d settled for becoming the highest-ranking black prosecutor in the district attorney’s office in a city that still flew the Confederate flag in its heart and would wave it proudly at the slightest provocation.

  Handsome in a way unlikely to turn heads, and charming without being charismatic, Reynolds dedicated himself to being prepared but never overrehearsed. Jurors didn’t always like him, although they implicitly trusted him, which contributed to his 95 percent conviction rate. The primary reason for his stellar record, however, was his natural abhorrence of losing on any level.

  Miller took a deep breath and looked respectfully at the judge. By the way Tanner rubbed against the bottom of his chair, Miller knew the judge’s hemorrhoids had flared up, a bad sign for any defense attorney.

  “Your Honor, while I have great fondness and admiration for you, I—”

  Tanner interrupted with a low groan and arched eyebrow. “No one can think more highly of me than myself, Mr. Miller, so if flattery’s your goal, it’s already been achieved if not surpassed.” The judge squirmed a moment, endeavoring to find a spot that promised no pain. “If you have similar views on behalf of your client, share them now or return your retainer.”

  “My client, Darrell Williams—”

  “Darnel, asshole.” Miller’s young client corrected the record and, at the same time, demonstrated his disgust for the proceedings.

  Miller beamed with affection and attempted an explanation with as much sincerity as he could fake. “I have a nephew named Darrell, and in his innocence he reminds me of—”

  The judge’s gavel struck once. “I’m a patient man, but it’s past lunchtime. I believe there’s a direct correlation between late lunches and long prison terms. Wanna test my theory?”

  Miller placed his hand on Darnel’s shoulder and paused for greater effect. “Your Honor, I believe my client can more eloquently address the court’s concerns.” He took a ceremonial step back and gave Darnel an encouraging nod. Reynolds leaned forward to ensure an unobstructed view.

  The judge folded his thick arms across his barrel chest and allowed the wide sleeves of his robe to rest gently on a stomach that benefited greatly from being covered. “Is there something you wish to state for the record before I impose sentencing?”

  Darnel glared at the judge the way a mugger stares at his intended victim. “Yeah . . . Fuck you.” Darnel reclaimed his seat with a renewed sense of power. Reynolds wiped at his mouth in an attempt to conceal a smile.

  Judge Tanner confronted a sheepish Miller. “Counselor, did your client seek your advice before addressing the court, or was his eloquence spontaneous?”

  “I understood him to say ‘Your Honor,’ Your Honor.”

  “I hope your legal acumen hasn’t diminished as quickly as your hearing.” Tanner lifted his gavel. “Three years for possession, six for distribution. Sentences to run concurrently.” The gavel came down hard. “Nice meeting you, Darrell.”

  “Darnel!” the defiant defendant responded in a last-ditch effort to showcase his manhood.

  “You’ll be a number by tonight.” Tanner rose as gracefully as his “condition” permitted, and was proceeding from the bench toward his chambers when he suddenly stopped. “Oh, Attorney Reynolds?”

  Reynolds deferentially came to attention, looking up from his paperwork.

  “I saw that smile. It’ll cost you fifty dollars. Next time I’m insulted, try to appear offended.” Tanner waddled away like a wounded duck, with no further effort to conceal the discomfort of his ailment.

  The deputies escorted Darnel past his emotionally devastated mother. Miller thought about turning away from the woman before she shared the one luxury he knew the poor would always be permitted to own: a steady flow of tears. Instead, he extended his hand and felt her trembling fingers.

  “There are several solid grounds for appeal.” He lied very easily when he genuinely liked someone.

  She thanked him, then, overcome with grief, buried her face in her hands. He guided her head to his left shoulder, and she sobbed when he held her. In that intimate exchange he tried to remember what it had felt like back when he truly shared the agony and humiliation of the people who’d mortgaged their homes to invest their future in him. He touched the dampened spot over his heart and then said good-bye to the woman whose tears he now carried.

  By the time his jacket dried, he’d already maneuvered his way through the most crowded sections of the parking lot and was intercepted by Reynolds.

  “Don’t you have any white clients?” Reynolds teased.

  “I prefer representing the oppressed. It provides me with unlimited business.”

  The two men crossed the lot together, heading toward Miller’s car. “Twenty-five years ago, I represented Darnel’s father,” Miller confided. “He wanted a career in law enforcement, but as we know, the sheriff’s office didn’t hire blacks back then. It only arrested them.”

  “Did you win the lawsuit?”

  Miller nodded yes, with no sense of satisfaction. “A week after the verdict they planted drugs in his patrol car, then fired him.”

  “You’re the one who keeps reminding me that justice is blind.”

  “Did I remember to add deaf and dumb?” Miller reached his vehicle, an ancient British Triumph sports car with a badly torn convertible top. He pried open the driver’s door and crawled through the small rectangular crevice, narrowly missing scraping his forehead on a jagged piece of vent window. Noting a patch of ripped leather that hung loosely from the side of his bucket seat, he reattached it with transparent tape. He reached for the stubborn door and tried unsuccessfully to close it. Undaunted, he raised his head toward the sun and proclaimed, “Three more payments and it’s all mine.”

  Reynolds applied maximum force against the dented metal frame. “Then you can get a new one.” In exasperation he slammed it shut.

  Miller cranked down his window as far as it would go, an inch or two more than halfway. He used the partial opening to wax philosophical. “New isn’t always desirable. Take our great city, for example.” He vigorously pumped the gas pedal several times. “We spend a fortune on ballet just to be seen as international.” He tested the ignition. “Yet somewhere in Europe they’re lusting for our Delta blues.” The engine sputtered but
clung to life.

  “Tradition’s a glorious thing,” mused Reynolds.

  “Only if you claim it as your own.” The car backfired before finally kicking into full power. Miller’s eyes gleamed with delight. He signaled thumbs-up and raced his sports car through a parking lot full of police heading for traffic court.

  Reynolds hadn’t yet taken a step when, in the distance, he heard his name called by a voice so unmistakable, his initial impulse was to reach for his wallet and wait for the collection plate to arrive. Legend had it the Reverend Samuel Matheson’s whisper could calm children while frightening the wicked. But the Reverend Matheson wasn’t whispering today; he was at full throttle. He made it easy to understand why God chose the human voice as His favorite instrument.

  Reynolds turned to greet his pastor.

  “James . . .” The preacher’s voice remained unshakable. “I need you to render a great service.”

  Reynolds felt his heart race and tried to conceal his alarm. The Reverend Samuel Matheson had become a southern institution. Every civil rights and community leader in the surrounding five states had at one time or another sought his advice or guidance. Reynolds couldn’t believe the man who had ordered Martin Luther King Jr. to “keep walking forward and don’t show any trace of fear” might actually require a mere mortal’s help.

  “Of course, Reverend, anything I can do.”

  Pastor Matheson closed his eyes and then, with the hand that had grown accustomed to carrying the full weight of the Scriptures, touched Reynolds on the shoulder. In a tone barely audible he asked, “Would you please find out what they’ve done to my son?”

  CHAPTER 3

  REYNOLDS ABRUPTLY ENTERED Melvin Vanzant’s office and discovered a meeting in progress that should have included him. “Why didn’t you tell me about Matheson?” he blurted out angrily.

  Vanzant received a sympathetic sigh from his chief assistant, Woody Winslow, a lifelong bureaucrat who was eminently capable in matters of the law but perpetually handicapped by a limited vocabulary. Reynolds believed there existed no greater curse than having so many ideas and so few ways to express them; it rendered a man incomprehensible to all but himself.

  “I was under the impression you worked for me, not the other way around,” said Vanzant without bothering to look at Reynolds.

  “What’s he charged with?” Reynolds asked.

  “Your information’s as bad as your attitude. I extended an invitation for a friendly visit, and he graciously accepted.”

  “That’s not what his father said.”

  “The reverend may represent God, but neither speak for my office.” Vanzant passed a file to Lauren Sinclair, who, when she wasn’t prosecuting a case and causing hardened felons to tremble, appeared as mild as an elementary school teacher. If there’d been any justice in government, her thirty years of dedicated service would have made her Vanzant’s boss just long enough to fire him.

  “Is he being charged with anything?” Reynolds looked at Sinclair for a clue.

  “If arrogance was a crime he’d be facing twenty-five to life,” said Vanzant. He leaned back in his chair and looked accusingly at Reynolds. “But then, he’d have a lot of company in his cell, wouldn’t he?”

  Reynolds took a breath and silently counted to five. “Why was he taken away in cuffs?”

  “I’ve already asked the chief to write up a letter of reprimand to cover everyone’s ass. Last thing we need is a public relations problem with either the college or the community.” Vanzant scratched the inside of his left thigh. “If you’re so anxious to find out what’s going on, just sit down and listen. I realize it’ll be a new experience, but who knows? You may learn enough to challenge me for real one day.” Vanzant had never forgiven Reynolds for running against him in the last election. That experience intensified his paranoia about losing his job and caused him to deny career advancement opportunities to his most talented staff members.

  Reynolds sat at the small round conference table and poured himself a glass of water. He’d barely tasted it when Sinclair began her report.

  “Two bodies were discovered in Greenville last night. Coroner identified them this morning as Robert Taylor, tied to a tree trunk and set on fire, and Reginald Hopkins, lynched just a few feet away. Both white, late fifties, give or take.”

  Reynolds surveyed the room. Its large L shape looked impressive but utilized space inefficiently and impeded communication, making it as dysfunctional as the man who occupied it. The arrangement of the windows provided minimal ventilation and admitted very little light from the outside—an apt metaphor for what was often lacking at work sessions conducted by Vanzant.

  “What else do we know about them?” Reynolds asked, wondering how the answer might implicate Matheson.

  Sinclair reviewed the file. “Arrested thirty years ago for allegedly burning to death a black soldier while they were lynching the man’s brother. Jury found them not guilty, despite the defendants’ bragging about the murders to a barroom full of patrons.”

  “There is a God. He’s Negro and He’s definitely pissed,” said Winslow.

  Reynolds decided to filter his response through a veil of sarcasm that Winslow probably would have difficulty penetrating. “Haven’t you heard the news, Woody? We don’t use the term ‘Negro’ anymore.”

  Winslow removed a carrot stick from a plastic sandwich bag and took a bite. He ran eight miles each day and snacked on raw carrots, celery sticks, apples—anything loud. Reynolds theorized that Winslow’s eating habits had less to do with health and more to do with a desire to be noticed.

  Sinclair handed Reynolds some paperwork from the folder, along with two photos of the victims. He’d just started reviewing the material when Vanzant reasserted control of the meeting.

  “The professor’s compiled an extensive set of biographies of unpunished civil rights ‘war criminals.’ That’s his term, not mine.” Vanzant placed an unlit pipe in his mouth. Cigars were actually his oral stimulant of choice. The stench from his habit permeated every piece of furniture and contaminated the floor-to-ceiling drapes. Vanzant lit the pipe, took a long puff, and turned on a tiny fan, which tried mightily to circulate the foul air more evenly.

  “Each week he selects two new names from the list and shares them with his students along with their photos, home addresses, places of employment, phone and license plate numbers, church and civic memberships, favorite restaurants, and preferred method of committing murder. The reverend’s son is very thorough. He supplies everything except the actual weapons he wants used.”

  Vanzant took a break from his pipe to spray decongestant up his right nostril. “By the time the deputies interrupted his schedule, he’d already taught several classes. Needless to say, we’ve got a couple of bodies in the morgue that were alive and well until they became the subject of one of his more popular and, undoubtedly, provocative lectures.”

  The information stunned Reynolds, but he didn’t show it. “The fact that he teaches a controversial class doesn’t mean he knows anything about the two murders.” Reynolds’s tautologically correct statement did little to ease his growing discomfort.

  Vanzant inhaled deeply and tested his nasal passage. He pulled a second file from the pile on the table and shoved it in front of Reynolds. “If he can’t help us with the deceased, perhaps he can shed some light on the whereabouts of the living.”

  Reynolds opened the new file and pulled out photos of two more white men. He laid the pictures side by side, then turned them so they faced Sinclair. “I’m afraid to ask this, but were these two gentlemen assigned as homework?”

  “Required reading on the first day of class,” she answered, then pointed to the photo on her left. “That one’s Theo Crockett, accused in nineteen sixty-two of shooting Joseph Dean, a voter registration volunteer and single father of three, then dumping the body in the bayou. The bald, short guy with the pleasant smile and protruding midriff is former Deputy Sheriff Travis Mitchell, suspected of beating to death
a fifteen-year-old, hacking the corpse to pieces, and concealing the remains in the marsh. They were both acquitted of all charges.”

  Reynolds studied the pictures without exhibiting a visible expression, a skill that had served him well throughout his career.

  Winslow filled in the relevant information. “Mitchell’s wife says he’s been missing for two weeks, which coincides with the beginning of Matheson’s course. The police haven’t been able to locate Crockett’s family.” He took another bite of his carrot.

  Reynolds stared at the wall behind Vanzant. Suddenly, the room felt claustrophobic. “Was Matheson cooperative?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Vanzant. “He’s been a marvelous help, just like the good church boy he is.”

  Something about the way Vanzant said “boy” pierced Reynolds and forced his eyelids to shut ever so briefly. Sinclair offered an apologetic glance, which he appreciated, but the damage was done.

  It no longer mattered to Reynolds how the word “boy” was delivered—it always had the same debilitating effect. It could be disguised as a smile, a look, a pat on the back, a demand, or it could be cloaked inside a phrase that sounded like homage. Whatever its permutations, it forced Reynolds to restrain himself from reacting in a way detrimental to his continued employment.