Dark of the Moon

by Parrish, PJ

  Louis estimated that Dodie was in his mid-forties, making him about twenty at the time of the murder, if Davis was right about the age of the bones. He stared hard at the sheriff. He couldn’t even begin to guess if Dodie was the kind of man who could take part in a linching, but the thought of it made the hair on his neck stand up.

  Ed Davis’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Sheriff, look at this. Somebody wrapped him up in something. Looks like canvas or tarp, what’s left of it. Probably a good thing, too. Doubt he’d be this together if he was just stuck in the dirt.”

  Dodie walked closer and squatted by the grave. “Critters didn’t get him?”

  “Won’t know how many bones we lost ‘til we piece him back together. Got a chain here, too,” Davis said. “Looks like an heirloom.”

  “Was it around his neck?” Louis asked, sliding between Junior and the sheriff and kneeling next do Davis.

  “Can’t tell, bones are kind of strewn about.”

  “May I see it?” Louis asked.

  Davis bagged the mud-caked medallion and handed it to Louis. It was about four inches in dianieter and heavy. The chain was intact. Louis ran the tips of his fingers over the raised seal on the front.

  “Got this, too.” Davis slipped a small tattered book into a plastic bag. The cover was black with mold and some of the pages disintegrated when Davis dropped it into the bag. “It was near the rib cage,” Davis said, holding the book out to Louis. “Buried with him, I’d guess, probably under his shirt or jacket.”

  Louis reached for the book, but Junior snagged it first. “This ain’t no damn good. Can’t read it,” Junior said.

  “Give it to me, and be careful.” Louis said, holding out his hand.

  Junior gave the bag to Louis. He studied the front, then gently opened the cover to reveal a patch of yellowed paper on the inside.

  “Hard to tell what he was wearing,” Davis went on, “but I can tell you what he wasn’t wearing.”

  “What?” Junior asked.

  “Shoes.”

  “How can you tell that?” Junior said, leaning forward.

  “Because there aren’t any, none in the grave, none nearby.”

  “Maybe some coon dragged ’em off,” Junior suggested.

  “Critters drag off bones, not leather,” Dodie said.

  “His hands were tied,” Davis said, handing Dodie a short, circular rope still knotted.

  Louis wet his lips and briefly closed his eyes, trying to imagine the horror of the man’s last moments. When he opened them, he saw the sheriff looking at him.

  “They were all tied,” Dodie said to no one in particular. “That’s the way it was done.”

  Louis rose stiffly. “Anything else?” he asked as Davis began bagging up the rest of the evidence.

  “Shreds of clothing. Denim, looks like. Lots of discoloration. Can’t tell if it’s mold or something else.” Davis continued to bag what things he could. “Louis, you move that rope there?”

  Louis nodded. “Yes, I did. It was under him.”

  “Figured as much. Got all of it?”

  “The end was cut. That’s all there is.”

  Dodie lit his cigar, the acrid smell drifting on the cold breeze. His eyes traveled in a circle around the scene and stopped on Junior. Junior was gazing into the shallow grave, hands stuffed in his pockets.

  “Junior, you gonna just stand there? Take some more pictures. Walk around and see what else you can kick up,” Dodie said.

  “Like what?”

  “Bones, you jackass, bones. Turn over some rocks and dirt.” Dodie looked back at Ed Davis. “Anything else, Ed?”

  “Nothing that I can see. The boys in Jackson can probably tell you more. This will take awhile, but I’ll see the remains get headed that way this afternoon.”

  Davis stood up, using the poplar tree for support. His small, gray eyes met Louis’s. “I’m right sorry about this, Louis.”

  Louis did not know what the coroner was apologizing for, but he nodded just the same. Louis gazed up at the thick limb over which the rope surely had been slung. It seemed odd that the rest of the rope was gone, but it probably wasn’t important. Someone had most likely cut it down, unaware that he stood atop a grave. The wind rustled through the tree’s bare branches, and Louis put out a hand, touching the trunk, as if it could tell him what happened. But the tree was as silent as the man beneath it.

  “Kincaid.”

  Dodie was calling, but Louis didn’t see him with Junior, who was heading back to the Blazer for a shovel. The sheriff called again and Louis followed the voice away from the grave, through some thick brush and trees. He spread some branches, stepping into the thin streaks of sunlight that cut through the threatening clouds. Dodie stood next to a white wooden fence, his body silhouetted against a rolling, yellow pasture spotted with copper-colored cows. Louis could see the smoke from his cigar drifting upward against the darkening sky.

  In the distance was a large white house, more of a mansion really, the kind of house seen in the history books on the Civil War. It was shaded by strategically placed pines, and surrounded by a white brick wall. It was at least a half mile away, at the bottom of the sloping meadow.

  Louis wandered to the fence and stood next to Dodie. “Who lives there?” he asked, his mind already framing questions to ask the owners.

  “That’s Max Lillihouse’s place. His wife Grace’s grandparents built it. Beautiful, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Do they own this land here?” Louis asked.

  “Yeah.” For a second, they were quiet. Suddenly Dodie turned to face Louis. “Now, don’t you go bothering them folks, Kincaid. That family has nothing to offer on this, and Miz Grace is the nicest lady I know. Trust me. You stay away from them.”

  Louis did not reply. He had no intention of staying away from anyone. He was debating whether to share this thought with Dodie when the sheriff spoke again.

  “Stupid animals, cows.”

  Louis directed his gaze back to the slow-moving animals. “No dumber than some people I know,” he replied.

  Dodie took the cigar from his mouth and looked at Louis as if about to say something profound. “You seem to have forgotten a lot about these people here, Kincaid.”

  Louis smiled faintly. “White people or Southerners?”

  Dodie shrugged. “Both, I reckon. Mostly Southern folk. I need to tell you, I’m concerned about you, Kincaid—you and this case. I don’t want to see you going off half-cocked on this thing, if you get my meaning.”

  “If you mean I should just ignore this. Sheriff, then no, I can’t say I do get your meaning.”

  Dodie relit the stubborn cigar. “Look, I know you probably harbor some bad feelings, and I don’t blame you. But you gotta look at it from a different point of view, a policeman’s point of view,”

  “That’s what I am doing, sir.”

  Dodie sighed. “Now, Kincaid, it’s not like the folks in this town would consider this a real crime. It’s just—well, things like this are part of their past, part of something terrible they’d rather forget.”

  “What about his family?” Louis said. “Do you think they forgot?”

  Dodie let out a tired breath. “Kincaid, I ain’t talking to hear myself talk.”

  “Sheriff,” Louis said slowly. “We need to find out who killed him. We will find out who killed him.”

  Dodie jerked the cigar from his mouth with one hand and the cap off his head with the other. “The Klan killed him, for chrissakes! Ain’t that good enough for you?”

  “No, it’s not,” Louis said, his teeth clenched. “And I don’t think it should be good enough for you.”

  Dodie’s face reddened and Louis could see his neck muscles tighten, as if he was choking down an outburst. Instead, Dodie pointed his cigar at Louis.

  “You’ve no right to talk to me like that, Kincaid. I don’t need some lecture from you on police ethics. You don’t know me, and you don’t know nothing about nobody here.”
<
br />   Louis stared at Dodie’s gray eyes then looked back at the cows. He could smell the manure in the air. It seemed appropriate.

  Dodie put his cap back on and stuck the cigar back in his mouth. “For chrissakes, let’s find out who the poor bastard was and just give him a decent burial,” he said.

  “There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” Louis said softly, without looking at the sheriff.

  “I know that, Kincaid,” Dodie said. “But if you think these folks, white or black, are going to talk to you about something that happened twenty or thirty years ago, you’re dumber than those damn cows.” Dodie paused to take a deep breath. “Look, Kincaid, I don’t know if we still have Klan here or not, but I reckon we did back then, and a good number of those people are still here. They’re retired, they’re old, they don’t want to remember. I’m tellin’ you, it was just the way things were.”

  Louis turned to face Dodie. “This is a murder, sir, whether it happened thirty years ago or thirty minutes ago. We’re police officers. We are obligated to investigate this.”

  Dodie stared at him, his eyes hard as granite. Louis knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing he had thought about all day, that an investigation would tear the town apart.

  Dodie looked away and out at the pasture. The lines around his mouth grew tight, and his eyes flickered just a little as he spoke. “You want revenge because you figure he was black.”

  “I want justice because he was a man,” Louis said.

  Dodie did not look at him, but turned toward the Blazer. The cows were moving slowly down the hill. Thunder rattled overhead.

  “There is no justice, Kincaid,” he said, “not for me, not for you. And not for him.”

  Chapter 3

  Louis dipped the knife into the jar, scooped out a glob of peanut butter and spread it across the bread. Before replacing the lid, he ate two or three clumps off the knife, then folded the bread in half, picked up a Dr. Pepper and padded to the sofa. The sound of gunshots from the TV filled the room, followed by a ferocious roll of thunder from outside.

  Tugging at the belt of his terry-cloth robe, Louis dropped into the sofa and pulled an afghan over his legs. He swallowed the sandwich in two bites, then climbed off the sofa to turn up the television. Magnum, P.I. was on, and Louis settled back to watch as Tom Selleck chased a bad guy down the beach in Waikiki. How simple police work would be if all cases had a well-plotted script to follow. And how nice to do it living scot-free on an estate in Hawaii.

  The room was cold from the drafts that squeezed in from around the old windows, and Louis got up to turn on the small space heater. As the coils began to put out a reassuring glow, Louis smelled the stench of burning rust and wondered if the odor might be lethal. He settled back to the sofa. What a way to die, he thought; of poisonous fumes in a run-down Mississippi boardinghouse.

  He rented the room from Bessie Lloyd, a widow who leased out the extra rooms in her house to anyone with ten bucks and a job. The old green-shingled house was a stone’s throw from the railroad tracks, and every night at dusk the house rattled with the undulations of the passing freight train headed north to Nashville. Louis’s second-story room overlooked the street. It was a cozy room, furnished with the basics, including a bed with a tarnished tubular headboard, an ancient rosewood table spotted with water rings and a kitchenette with a minifridge. Bessie had given Louis a handmade quilt. She didn’t usually take such personal interest in boarders, but Louis, well, he was special. He needed looking after, she had said. And right now, there was only one other boarder—Louis’s mother.

  Lila Kincaid lay dying in the room across the hall from Louis. She had cirrhosis, complicated by other conditions, including syphilis. Louis didn’t want to believe the doctor when he told him about that part of her illness. It was bad enough his mother had drunk herself near to death. The syphilis was a horrifying reminder of how she’d lived her life, and he had demanded that the doctor keep it secret.

  Louis heard Lila cry out over the noise of the television. He closed his eyes, bracing himself to get up. But he heard Bessie’s footsteps and dropped back into the sofa, a mixture of guilt and relief washing over him.

  He kept telling himself that he had no reason to feel guilty. He was here, wasn’t he? He had put his own life on hold to come back to this place he had tried so hard to forget. He was being the devoted son, even if she had been the less-than-devoted mother. But every time he looked at her now, he felt shame, the same shame he had felt as a boy. He had escaped, distancing himself in miles and years from this place and the bad feelings. It was all buried and forgotten. But now, coming back had forced everything to the surface again.

  He heard Lila moan and he got up and went into the hallway. He leaned against the doorjamb, watching as Bessie made Lila comfortable among the pillows and covers strewn over the bed. Louis gazed at Lila Kincaid’s sunken face. He did not know this woman, his mother. His blurry memories consisted mainly of the stench of stale alcohol, harsh words and bloodshot eyes. The only affection he had received as a child had come later from his foster mother, Frances Lawrence. If there was anyone to call mother, it was her. The fact that Frances Lawrence was white…well, that never mattered much to him. He was half white. That was the only thing given to him by a father he had never known.

  Half white…or was it half black? He was never sure, and didn’t really care, unless someone or something forced him to think about it. Here in Black Pool, it seemed there was no question.

  He was black. He had found that out on his first day in town when he pulled into the Texaco station. The attendant had ambled out to stare at his Mustang with its Michigan plates and then peered at Louis’s University of Michigan jacket. When Louis had asked the way to Bessie Lloyd’s place, the man had given him a sneer and some mumbled directions. It was only after Louis had driven around for a half hour out in the sticks that he realized the man had purposely misled him. What he didn’t know was whether it was because he was black or just a Yankee. Probably both.

  Black or white…

  Back home in Michigan, he was able to convince himself it really didn’t matter. But he knew it did, subtle as it was. Louis could see that look of curiosity cross a stranger’s face as he tried to figure out his race. The frank stares he would get when someone tried to reconcile his brown skin with his pale gray eyes. The box—check one—on his college application that asked: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and, at the bottom. Other. He had left it blank.

  Bessie came out of the room, closing Lila’s door softly. Her face was coal black, with full cheeks and large, white teeth. Her hair was a mass of black ringlets and she always wore brightly colored muumuus over her ample figure. The sparkle in her eyes kept Louis wondering what secrets she held.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Y’all don’t eat enough, Louis Kincaid. You need to put some meat on those bones. I cook for you and you sit up here and eat…peanut butter,” she said, wiping a smudge of it from the corner of his mouth.

  Louis smiled. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “And you don’t do nothin’ but work,” she went on. “You’re a good-lookin’ man, Louis, and if I was twenty years younger, I’d put you on a plate and sop you up with a biscuit.”

  She let loose a hearty laugh, and Louis joined in.

  “You need a good woman,” she said, “somebody to fill your belly and warm your bed. You want I should find you someone?”

  “I can do my own finding.” Louis grinned. “Thank you.”

  “Jus’ tryin’ to help.” She turned to go down the stairs.

  “Bessie,” he called, “I need to ask you something.”

  She paused, hand on the railing, waiting.

  With a look back at Lila’s door, Louis took a few steps closer to Bessie. “You knew my mother,” he said. “You knew how she was, how she treated me. Why did you call me to come here, Bessie? I have nothing to give her.”


  Bessie shook her head slowly, and something in her expression made Louis feel ten years old. “You’re wrong there, Louis Kincaid,” she said. “All good sons take care of their mamas. It don’t matter what she done or what you feel. You jus’ do what needs to be done.” She started down the stairs but turned, her face set in a frown. “A black man who turns on his mama ain’t nothing but a nigger.” Without waiting for his response, she went down the stairs, leaving him standing alone.

  He stood there for a moment, taken aback by the admonition in her voice. Finally, he went back to his room, closing the door softly. The room was warmer and he took off his robe, sitting on the edge of his bed in his boxer shorts and T-shirt. A part of him was angry at Bessie for trying to make him feel guilty. He had to come back. In the end, it had been his decision. But God knows, he sure felt out of place here.

  It was strange. Here he was, surrounded now by more people of color than ever in his life, yet he felt like a visitor to an alien planet. But in a way, these people, the blacks who shared this neighborhood, were no more his people than Lila was his mother. Maybe he was the one who was the alien.

  He went to the window and idly parted the thin curtains. He gazed down at the street, busy with traffic coming and going at the four-way stop. Rusted old cars with black plastic covering broken windows cruised in front of the house. Children played in tattered, open jackets. Despite the cold weather, they wore shorts and laceless sneakers over bare feet. Michael Jackson’s Beat it blasted from a passing car filled with teenagers.

  On the corner was a two-story building with a large metal sign on the roof that read Tinker’s General Store. Faded advertisements on the side for Coca-Cola and Lucky Strikes, told him the store had been there for decades. Kitty-corner to Tinker’s was a ramshackle gas station with two pumps, covered by a rusted aluminum awning. Weeds poked through cracked cement. Next to that was a weathered mobile home, flat tires still attached, children playing outside on discarded furniture.