Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  “Did anybody find anything in the pockets or on the jacket anywhere?” I asked, not knowing what there might have been to find.

  “I didn’t hear if they did,” the older woman answered. “I just put it in there on the desk,” she said. She could tell I was still interested.

  “You can go look if you want,” she added, and pointed with her chin to the room next to the kitchen.

  I headed in the room and saw the soiled jacket placed upon the top of a desk. It had been ripped in places and was muddy. I searched in the two front pockets. I found nothing. Then I reached into the pocket on the inside of the garment and felt a hole.

  When I stuck my finger into the hole I was able to feel a narrow piece of material stuck inside the lining of the jacket. It was smooth and felt wound together. I pulled it out and immediately recognized it as red ribbon. It must have been the red item that Clara had mentioned seeing him put in his pocket.

  “Mrs. Franklin.” I walked back into the room where the older woman was standing by the sink. “Do you know what this is?” I asked.

  I placed the object in her hands. I watched as she slid it through her fingers from end to end, rolled it around on her palms. She shook her head.

  “Well, no. It feels like a ribbon of some kind,” she replied.

  “I think it is a ribbon,” I answered.

  “Is that right?” she asked. She handed it to me.

  “What color is it?” she asked.

  “Red,” I answered.

  And she nodded as if she knew exactly what it was. She turned back to the sink.

  “It’s marking ribbon,” she noted. “Lawrence and his father used red ribbon to mark the graves for the gravedigger.” She placed one of her hands on top of the other. “He probably just had it in his pocket from the last burial,” she added.

  I thought she was right. I knew I was forever finding things in my pockets that I had stuck in there while I was at the hospital. The ribbon had more than likely been in there for sometime and had nothing to do with his death.

  “I’ll just put it back,” I said. I could tell the finding had upset her.

  She just made a low humming noise, as if she was recalling an old song.

  I returned to the room and placed the ribbon back in the dead man’s jacket.

  When I made my way to the kitchen, Tom was walking into the room. Mrs. Franklin heard him come in and turned toward him and the young woman he had been assisting.

  “Now, Thomas, I want you and Rose to fix you a plate of food before you go,” she said as she placed the towel beside the sink, trying to sound upbeat.

  He moved near her and hugged her tightly. “I already told your neighbor that I will make sure we get something to eat,” he replied. Then he stepped away from her and stood beside me at the table.

  “We won’t go away hungry,” he added, standing close enough that his arm brushed against my shoulder.

  And we didn’t. We spent another hour at Mrs. Franklin’s house, eating plates of ham and biscuits and potato salad, speaking of easier subjects than death and sorrow. We had big pieces of chocolate cake for dessert, and once the bereaved woman heard the story of Jolie and Clara, and heard about Ms. Lou Ellen’s accident, she made Rusty wrap up some of the food on the counter to take down to the campground.

  “Rose Franklin,” the older woman said after Tom and I made several trips out of her kitchen and to her neighbor’s car. We had said our good-byes and were walking out the door for the final time. “You are welcome in this house anytime.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  “Thank you,” I said, and knew that I was.

  Tom and I followed Rusty to Shady Grove, and when she stopped at the office to drop off the food, we pulled in behind her. As I got off the bike I looked down at the river and saw the police car parked by my camper.

  We unloaded Rusty’s car, speaking only briefly to Mary, who hurried around trying to clear off a space for all the dishes. Tom mentioned that he needed to drive into town to the courthouse, that he had asked for some copies of something he was studying and that he would be gone only for a couple of hours and then would drive me back to the hospital.

  I told him that I would walk the rest of the way and I watched as he drove down the path toward his home.

  Once Rusty left, I headed to the river. I knew my chance to meet Sheriff Montgomery of West Memphis, Arkansas, had finally come. I walked down the gravel path and right to the steps of my camper. I was ready for our introduction.

  SIXTEEN

  He was not near his car, but rather had gone down to the riverbank. I watched him as he stood at the broken railings. He was with Deputy Fisk and they seemed to be studying the current or the flow of the Mississippi. They didn’t notice me as I walked up to my camper.

  I went over close to where they were standing and sat at the picnic table near my trailer and waited. It was the young deputy who finally saw that I was there. He touched the sheriff on the arm, they turned toward me, and then the two of them came over.

  As they walked in my direction, I immediately thought of my father, Captain Morris Burns, a thirty-year veteran with the Rocky Mount Police Department. I wondered how much the sheriff from West Memphis, Arkansas, was going to remind me of the man in whose house I grew up.

  “Are you Rose Franklin?” the lawman asked. He was dressed in uniform, but was not nearly as polished as his junior officer. He was short and square, red-faced, and he stood in front of me with his legs parted and his arms folded across his chest. He waited for my answer.

  “Yes,” I replied, thinking that both he and my father bore similarities. And I wondered if this man had lost himself, as my father had, to the endless days of governing the dark side of life.

  I was not old enough or wise enough to recognize how or when it started with Captain Burns; but I certainly grew to understand the consequences of a man losing his innocence, the way he begins to notice the bad in people before the good. The way the world suddenly turns into something he no longer trusts or approves.

  I don’t think I was around early enough to pay attention to the details to my father’s descent into low opinions and cruel cynicism, but I always somehow suspected that it was intricately connected to his job. I knew that his work was bigger than who he was, more powerful than his personality or his own levelheadedness.

  I watched as the sheriff stood sizing me up and wondered if he had become his job or whether his job had become him. I had seen my father and the other men on the force and the way they narrowed their glances in my direction. The immediate judgment of good or evil, mostly evil, the intensity of the eyes, the rigid holding of the jaw, the ability to stand so perfectly still, just like the man was standing in front of me, readying himself for trouble.

  The deputy stopped behind him near the tree.

  “Are you sure you’re Rose Franklin?” the sheriff asked with a smirk.

  “Yes,” I answered again, deciding to stick to my story and to my new name. “I’m sure.”

  “Isn’t there more to your name than that?” He cleared his throat.

  “Rose Franklin Burns Griffith,” I replied, feeling my pulse quicken and wondering where he had checked out my identification. “I’m taking my mother’s name,” I reported.

  “Well, you might need to get that legal. Because for now, you’re known as Rose Griffith.”

  He stared at me. His sunglasses hung out of his front pocket. His eyes were dark brown.

  “Okay,” I answered. “And are you going to tell me who you are?” I asked.

  “I’m Sheriff Leon Montgomery,” he said, spitting the words out like he was sure I already knew.

  The deputy turned in my direction and smiled sympathetically. He shook his head, seeming as if he was sorry for what was happening to me. It reminded me of so many looks just like it I had received during my lifetime.

  Growing up in my father’s house, I grew accustomed to those glances of sympathy from others, my own feelings of shame. I
grew accustomed to wearing the veil of disappointment when it came to my father’s parenting skills. And with so many years of embarrassment because of his absences at those events where I wanted him present—events such as recitals, birthday parties, graduation—and even more years feeling the humiliation of his presence during times when I wished him dead—date nights, slumber party nights, after he had been drinking—I finally began spending less and less time at home and more and more time trying to be anywhere that I thought he wouldn’t be.

  It never seemed to matter, though, because he always knew where to find me, always knew which house, which party, which friend. And there he would show up, yelling and intimidating anybody and everybody around, pulling me out to the car and throwing me in it like some criminal he was picking up.

  Trying to get away from my father was the main reason I left home to live with my grandmother every summer from the time I was thirteen, the summer after my mother died. It was the main reason I went to school five hours away instead of studying nursing at the community college close by, and the main reason I married Rip before I turned twenty.

  The hold that Captain Morris Burns had over me was broad and heavy. I’m not sure I ever learned how to slide out from under it. Even after he had his first stroke, drooling like a child, falling down, paralyzed, even then he yelled at me for not being respectful, raised his good hand at me as if he intended to strike me because I answered him without saying, “sir.” Even then he made me think he was bigger than God.

  Even after I was married, grown, and living in my own house, even when I told him I was through with him, never wanted to see him, even then he would call me and as soon as I recognized that it was him on the phone, my hands would start to shake and my voice would change, seem small and faraway.

  Even the last day I saw him, that afternoon I visited him in the nursing home, before leaving Rocky Mount, even then he was more than me, took up the whole room, even then I stood beside his bed and felt like a child.

  I stared at Sheriff Montgomery and knew that my father, Captain Morris Burns, was not just a man, not just a policeman. He was the whole force wrapped up in himself. And as I steadied myself to have a conversation with this lawman, I knew that for me he was more than just an officer asking me questions. He represented a lifetime of pain and heartache.

  “Is there some trouble because of what I’m calling myself, Sheriff Montgomery?” I asked, trying to let go of some of my anger. He was, after all, I told myself, not my father.

  “Well.” He sucked his teeth. “I wouldn’t say trouble.”

  He walked closer to the table. “I’d just say maybe interest,” he said, as he put one leg on the bench where I was sitting. “I’d say there’s interest because of what you’re calling yourself.”

  “Uh-huh,” I replied. “And who would be interested in that?” I asked.

  “Me,” he answered. “Maybe your husband in Rocky Mount.” He rested his elbow on his knee and dropped his chin in his hand.

  “Ex-husband,” I said. “He’s an ex-husband, and I don’t really think he cares what I’m calling myself.”

  “Well, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Seems as if he does care.” The sheriff had a line of sweat across his brow.

  “He says that he’s paying the credit bill for a Visa for a Rose Griffith.”

  He slid his fingers down his chin. “He doesn’t know anybody named Rose Franklin. And he doesn’t intend paying the bill for somebody other than his wife.”

  He dropped his leg and stood up next to me. “Excuse me, ex-wife.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t see how this is a problem for the West Memphis Sheriff’s office,” I said, and I clasped my hands in front of me on the table.

  “But I tell you what, I will call my ex-husband this afternoon and straighten this all up.”

  I smiled at him. “Is there something else that you need to ask me about?” I knew if he was anything like my father, he wasn’t through with me yet.

  He twisted around and looked at the river and then turned back in my direction. I could tell that he tried carrying himself bigger than how he was, but in truth, he wasn’t much taller than I am.

  “As a matter of fact,” he replied. “I do have a few more questions for you.”

  I waited.

  “I’m very interested in why you seem to be showing up asking everybody about my investigation,” he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “You got some special reason as to why you’re so curious about a drowning in a place you claim only to be passing through? Some reason as to why you picked Shady Grove Campground?”

  I studied him. He was a spitting image of Captain Burns when he was interrogating someone. He was cocky and bullish and intimidating, but I wasn’t thrown by his tactics.

  “Maybe you know something the rest of us don’t know,” he continued. “Maybe you’d like to let us in on what you’re doing here, how it happens that you show up the day we find a missing body, why it is you’ve decided all of a sudden to take the deceased’s last name, how it is you’re so familiar with the likes of Lucas and Rhonda Boyd, folks with a known criminal history.”

  I glanced over to the young deputy. He seemed to grow more and more uncomfortable with the manner in which his boss was talking to me. He shifted in his stance and then squatted on the ground and began pulling at the blades of grass.

  “I don’t really see why it’s any business of yours why I’m staying at this particular campground and why I’m asking questions about a mysterious death. And I don’t really think I have to explain to you why I’m calling myself anything. Last time I checked there wasn’t any law about the names we choose for ourselves.”

  He snorted. “Oh, we got some laws all right. Comes under the heading of misrepresentation. Maybe you’ve heard it called fraud.”

  He ran his fingers across his salt-and-pepper hair that he had slicked down on the side of his head.

  “But let me just move on.” He threw his leg back on the seat again and leaned into it.

  “You see, it appears suspicious to me that on the day we find a dead man, a dead man without an immediate family except an aged blind mother, a dead man who owns quite a bit of property and a lucrative business, that a woman from North Carolina suddenly shows up out of nowhere and starts asking a lot of questions and then just up and decides to change her name, implying that she’s somehow related to the deceased.”

  Suddenly, his line of thinking was making complete sense.

  “You think I’m trying to benefit from Mr. Franklin’s death?” I asked, finally understanding what the sheriff was getting at.

  “I don’t know. You tell me,” he answered. Then he angled himself so that he was right beside me, looking over me.

  “Why did you go to the coroner’s office this morning wanting to know if the cause of death was really suicide? Why are you so suddenly intimate with the Boyds, with Mr. Sawyer? Why did you go to the dead man’s house? Ms. Eulene didn’t know of any Rose Franklin who was related to the family.”

  The irony of the situation made me smile. While I was investigating him, he was trying to find out about me.

  He assumed I had come into town to lay claim to some of the dead man’s property. He thought that I was trying to find out if the death could be listed as something other than suicide so that I could name myself as family and might be entitled to some insurance money.

  “Look,” I said, using an easier tone for I realized that my arrival in West Memphis and my interest in Lawrence’s death could raise a few eyebrows.

  “I’m not interested in the Franklin money or any settlement.” I relaxed. “I just met Lucas and Rhonda Boyd and Tom Sawyer,” I added, though I did not think it was any of his business to ask me about those relationships.

  “I just want to know what happened to the man. I just want to make sure he’s not written off as some suicide without the case being clearly investigated.”

  The sheriff e
yed me suspiciously. I could tell he didn’t believe me. I waited before he responded.

  “Well, you don’t need to worry your pretty head about this investigation. I’m handling it personally. Mr. Franklin and I had a lot in common and I want to make sure I understand what happened to him, too.”

  His patronizing words stung. I fought back.

  “Like the land here on the river?” I asked.

  He dropped his leg and stood very near.

  “What?” he asked. I could see how seriously he had taken my question.

  “Like the land here on the river,” I repeated.

  “Didn’t you and your brother try to buy this land from Lucas and he wouldn’t sell? And didn’t Lawrence uncover something of interest somewhere close by? Is that what you meant by having things in common with Mr. Franklin?”

  The sheriff pulled in his upper lip, dragging it slowly under his teeth. He took in a deep breath and stood up straight. A voice on the radio suddenly came on calling the sheriff’s name.

  He turned toward his deputy and pointed with his chin to the car. Deputy Fisk walked by me. We both watched him as he opened the door and sat down on the front seat and answered the call. I turned back to face the sheriff.

  “I don’t know what it is that you think you know, Miss Franklin,” he said, accenting the words Miss and Franklin. “But my real-estate interests have nothing to do with this man’s death and I’m offended at your implication.” He put both hands on the table, leaning right beside my face.

  “Now I understand from Jimmy Novack that your car will be ready in the morning. Since it seems that you have no further business in West Memphis, then I presume you’ll be going on with your trip out west.”

  I pulled away from him.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Shady Grove does have some lovely people here and I may just stay a few more days.

  “There’s no reason why I can’t, is there?” I asked.

  He dropped away from me and then stood up. He glanced over to his deputy, who was looking at us. Fisk raised his chin and starting walking over. The sheriff seemed to take it as a sign.