Natchez Burning (Penn Cage)
Page 90
He was alive.
CHAPTER 97
WITH CAITLIN’S HELP, I lay Sleepy Johnston down in the grass. Only now do I see the glitter of lights reflecting on water thirty yards away. That’s Lake Concordia, I think. This is Brody’s lake house.
“He’s alive,” Caitlin says. “We need a cell phone.”
“Don’t call no ambulance,” says Johnston. “We’re too far from the hospital. I ain’t gon’ make it. Just let me breathe this sweet air.”
Despite his request, Caitlin digs in the man’s pocket but finds only a walkie-talkie. She presses the transmission button and starts to speak, but I gently pull the radio from her hand. She stares at me with what seems like anger, but slowly her face softens into resignation. Below us, the ashy face and bloodshot eyes look up at the stars, seeing something I can’t begin to guess at.
“Don’t you want to live?” Caitlin whispers. “You can tell the world the truth about what happened all those years ago.”
Sleepy Johnston shakes his head. “That’s your job now. At least that old bastard’s gone. That’s enough for me.”
“You saved our lives, Mr. Johnston. You’re a hero.”
“No. I was Pooky’s friend . . . that’s all. Just one of Albert’s boys. That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Caitlin shakes her head, then wipes her eyes and begins to sob.
“Why did you call yourself Gates Brown?” I ask, leaning over him.
The gray mouth splits into a smile. “Gates was my man when I got to Detroit . . . that brother won the Series in sixty-eight. Tigers recruited him right out of reform school . . . helped him make good, just like Albert had done.” Two long, rasping breaths stop his speech. “You tell this story, miss,” he whispers, his eyes on Caitlin. “Just like Henry would have. Tell people what that Royal done . . . what people let him do.”
“I will,” she promises.
“He ain’t the last, you know.”
“We know,” I tell him. “Take it easy, man.”
“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “It took me so long . . . to find the guts to come back.”
He lifts his hand as though searching for a familiar grasp. Caitlin takes hold of it and presses the hand to her breast.
“Thank you for what you did. We’ll never forget you.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shakes her head helplessly.
Johnston, too, has closed his eyes. Caitlin leans over him, her ear against his mouth. I lay my hand on her back and rub softly.
When she rises, tears streak her face, and her mascara has bled into a bandit mask. “Jesus,” she says. “All of this out of some black kid liking a white girl?”
“That’s right. Just like Dad and Viola. We’re tribes, just like we were ten thousand years ago.”
She shakes her head as though to negate reality. “Nothing’s changed?”
“Sure it has. In the law. In people’s hearts? Maybe. In the blood . . . ? No.”
Caitlin gets to her feet and staggers away, obviously distraught.
I get up and follow. After leaving her in peace for a few yards, I come alongside her.
“Did you see Henry?” she asks, her voice slightly hysterical. “He was like a monk immolating himself in the street. He did that to save me.”
“He did. And to stop Brody. He did it for everyone he couldn’t save before tonight.”
She shakes her head with violent intensity. “I feel sick. I don’t know how to process that.”
“That’s who Henry was. He probably would have been useless in a combat platoon, until someone threw a hand grenade into a foxhole. Henry was the guy who’d jump on a grenade to save his buddies.”
Caitlin stops and turns back toward the lake house. Flames have reached the first floor, and smoke is gathering under the eaves. “What happened tonight? What am I supposed to write tomorrow? Everybody’s dead. I mean . . . what was the point?”
For a long moment I remain silent. “I don’t know, but I think maybe I finally understand why my father couldn’t tell me about the war.”
Caitlin gingerly touches the puckered burn on her face. “I wanted this story so bad. Now I’m in it. We are the story. And I have no idea what to say about it.”
“The things Brody and the Knoxes did . . . that pain echoes through a lot of years. Generations. That’s what kept Henry going, and what brought Sleepy Johnston back here. This is the end of Brody’s thread, that’s all. Albert’s and Pooky’s, too. It’s justice of a kind, I guess.”
“No one will understand this. I don’t, and I was here.”
“Because it’s not over. Forrest and the Double Eagles are still out there. And Henry’s work is truly yours now. Just write the story up to this point. That’s all you can do. The meaning comes later, if at all.”
The sound of sirens grows to a wail, and a convoy of spinning red lights comes flying up the lake road.
“How much do we tell?” she asks. “To the police, I mean.”
Brody Royal’s last accusation against my father echoes in my mind. “Is it worth lying at this point?”
She turns to me, her survivor’s will burning through the shock and exhaustion in her eyes. “I hate to say it, but we may have to. We’d better decide fast.”
Dreading contact with the larger world, we walk back to wait beside the body of Sleepy Johnston. A low thump makes the ground shudder, and then a tower of flame rises from the burning lake house.
“The flamethrower?” Caitlin asks.
“Probably.”
As the orange and blue geyser rises into the night sky, I realize I’m witnessing the cremation of a man who three days ago meant little more to me than a byline under a newspaper article. But without him, Caitlin and I would now be charred flesh and ligaments over scorched bone. In this moment, it comes to me that my father is somewhere out in this same darkness, lost in a maze of his own making. Yet he’s never seemed farther from me in my life. The question of who really killed Viola Turner seems like some mystery from another age, like the death of Amelia Earhart.
What happened tonight? Caitlin asked me.
For my part, only this: to save my father, I tried to make a deal with the devil, and I almost lost everything because of it. My father is going to have to save himself.
And the rest of it? What was the point? For most of his life, Henry Sexton fought to gain justice for nameless victims and for families who had no voice. Did he accomplish that? Will anyone care? I don’t know. But Henry did something that police detectives, FBI agents, and attorneys with a lot more training and resources than he possessed had failed to do for forty years.
Henry got his man.
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AFTERWORD
WHILE THIS NOVEL is entirely fictional, many of the background cases were inspired by unsolved race murders that occurred in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, and southwest Mississippi during the 1960s. To date, only one conviction has resulted from these horrific crimes. Stanley Nelson of the Concordia Sentinel has been working to solve those cases for many years, and he’s made remarkable progress. This is an often thankless job that angers many, but with limited resources Stanley has persisted in the face of both apathy and obstruction. In some cases he has solved murders, but the killers were already dead. In others, the outcome has yet to be decided.
Despite the FBI’s cold cases initiative, which began in 2007, the behavior of the FBI and the Justice Department regarding these cases is puzzling and sometimes inexp
licable. Where official progress has been made, it has been due to the commitment of dedicated family members, reporters, and individual prosecutors or U.S. attorneys, rather than the sustained efforts of the FBI and the Justice Department. Today’s FBI agents are as dedicated as those of the 1960s, but they have been given neither the time nor the resources required to mount an effort comparable to that of their fellow agents from the earlier era.
The solutions to my fictional cases are different from what I believe happened in the actual cases that inspired them, but the emotional realities are true. In creating the characters of some of my fictional victims, I used theories and rumors that circulated during the early phases of the investigations. Many of those I no longer believe to be founded in reality. The primary example is Frank Morris, the shoe repairman, who I believe was guilty of nothing more than serving both white and black patrons and refusing to mend a corrupt white deputy’s boots for free. Morris was a fine man, and not involved in bootlegging or prostitution, as was suggested by rumor and by evidence likely planted at the site of his burned-out shop. The same holds true for the terrible plane crash at Concordia Airport in 1970. That was almost surely an accident, though had justice been done in an earlier murder case, one pilot would have been incarcerated, and the subsequent collision could not have happened. Life is often more prosaic (and tragic) than the stuff of good fiction.
If you would like to learn more about the actual crimes that form the backdrop of Natchez Burning, please visit the Web page of the Concordia Sentinel and read Stanley Nelson’s articles. You will also find a link on my website. Stanley expects to have his own book published soon, so watch for that as well.
I cannot possibly thank everyone who assisted me with this novel. However, I must include the following:
Dr. Jerry Iles, gone but never forgotten.
Betty Iles, for everything.
Uncle Joe Iles, for standing in for his big brother when it mattered most.
Madeline Iles, Mark Iles, Geoff Iles, and Colin Kemp.
Caroline Hungerford, for too many reasons to count.
Dan Conaway and Simon Lipskar, for vision.
David Highfill, Liate Stehlik, and the whole team at William Morrow/HarperCollins, for putting their full faith into this epic endeavor.
Courtney Aldridge and Rod Givens, M.D.: wise friends; Jim Easterling and James Schuchs, southern philosophers; Billy Ray Farmer, who’s got the instincts.
Stanley Nelson, the journalist/detective; Rusty Fortenberry, for great stories about law in Mississippi; Mimi Miller, the memory of Natchez (and still young!).
Ed Stackler, for riding shotgun ever since I put Rudolf Hess back into the cockpit of his Messerschmitt.
Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger; John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide; Kevin Cooper and Ben Hillyer of the Natchez Democrat.
Tony Byrne; Charles Evers; Sheriff Chuck Mayfield; Darryl Grennell; D. P. Lyle, M.D.; Nancy Hungerford; Kevin Colbert; Keith Benoist; John White, M.D.; Brent Bourland; Mark Brockway; Mark Coffey; Grayson Lewis; and Brooke Moore.
Judge George Ward (John, Win, Stan, and Ann, too!).
Jane Hargrove, who worked faithfully beside me through many novels.
Bruce Kuehnle and Alan J. Kaufman, lawyers who helped when it counted.
My deepest thanks to all the doctors, nurses, and paramedics (and chopper crew) who helped to save my life: those at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Natchez Regional Medical Center, Methodist Rehab, and Prime Care Nursing. I particularly want to thank: Dr. Matt Graves (ortho trauma guru); Dr. Peter Arnold (plastic surgeon/fighter pilot); Dr. Fred Rushton (thanks for patching my aorta, yo!); Dr. Gregory Timberlake and Dr. Wesley Vanderlan (critical care); Dr. Joe Files; and Kim Hoover, dean of nursing, UMMC. I also want to thank Richard Boleware, Rick Psonak, and Blake Carr at UMMC Orthotics and Prosthetics. Special thanks to Claudia, Felecia, and Renee, my supernurses. Thanks also to Karl Edwards of Natchez, for many great conversations during rehab.
Finally, thanks to the Rock Bottom Remainders, for forcing me to have fun regardless of what life throws at us.
As usual, all mistakes are mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GREG ILES spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and studied the American novel under acclaimed southern writer Willie Morris at the University of Mississippi. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was the first of thirteen New York Times bestsellers, and his new trilogy continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and #1 New York Times bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl. Iles’s novels have been made into films and published in more than thirty-five countries. He is a member of the lit-rock group the Rock Bottom Remainders and lives in Natchez with his two teenage children.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
ALSO BY GREG ILES
The Devil’s Punchbowl
Third Degree
True Evil
Turning Angel
Blood Memory
The Footprints of God
Sleep No More
Dead Sleep
24 Hours
The Quiet Game
Mortal Fear
Black Cross
Spandau Phoenix
Death Factory
BACK ADS
CREDITS
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photograph © by Mike Hollingshead
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
NATCHEZ BURNING. Copyright © 2014 by Greg Iles. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-231107-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-233586-9 (international edition)
EPub Edition APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062311108
Version 03212014
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