Dark of the Moon

by Parrish, PJ

  The scene was typical of small towns across the South. He had learned that much during the drive from Michigan. The thought, mingling with memories of the bones in the shallow grave, left him depressed. What a haunted place Mississippi was, the air thick with ghosts and history. He gazed down at the street. Even on these four corners, there was history—enough to write a book.

  History…history. He straightened, frowning slightly as the realization hit him. He had been thinking about what the sheriff had said; that no one would talk to him about the lynching. He had been trying to figure out where to start his investigation, and here it was, right under his nose. If he wanted to find out about Black Pool’s history, all he had to do was step outside. He threw on some jeans and a navy-blue University of Michigan sweatshirt, and hurried down the steps of the boardinghouse.

  The sun was setting through the remnants of storm clouds, and the black branches of the trees stretched up into the pink sky. The cool air felt good on his face as he jogged across the street to Tinker’s General Store.

  The coffee-skinned girl behind the counter eyed him as he came in. Louis had been in the store several times for peanut butter and Dr. Pepper, but had never spoken to her except to say thank you.

  Louis strolled to the back, looking around. There were fresh vegetables piled in a cooler against the back wall. Lima beans— called butter beans here—greens, sweet onions, okra and, of all things, artichokes. Next to that was a shelf lined with small hardware items such as nails, screws, and light bulbs.

  He stopped at an old metal drop-in cooler and slid back the door. It held small white cups and he reached it and picked one up. It was light and he lifted the lid slowly. It was just dirt. Oh, man…a worm. Earthworms. Christ. He put it back and moved on.

  He passed a cooler full of soda pop: Southern Lightning, Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper. Then came the milk, eggs and butter. Louis noticed there was no beer or wine. That was unusual for a convenience store, but then again, this wasn’t a convenience store, it was a country general store.

  He made his way back to the counter. Next to the register there was a huge jar of pickled pig’s feet and a display of Red Man chewing tobacco. Behind it, amid the usual no credit and no CIGARETTES SOLD TO MINORS signs. Were homemade clocks, carved out of what looked like the middle of a tree. They were all different, some with blooming magnolias painted on them and others with shellacked photos of the Mississippi River or country streams. They were quite beautiful, Louis thought, and he found himself wondering how much they cost.

  His eyes fell upon a needle-stitch with a solitary flower embroidered in the middle of a white cloth. Underneath it said, BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED.

  The young girl finished waiting on a woman, then came out from behind the wood counter. Her oversized black sweatshirt hung to the knees of her scrawny legs. She wore black spandex pants and tiny slip-on shoes. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that sprouted into a bouquet of finely woven braids, each fastened with a different-colored clip.

  “You need some more Jif?” she asked, hand on a hip that jutted to the side.

  “Is the owner here?” Louis asked politely.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Louis Kincaid.”

  “You’re that cop. You workin’ for the sheriff,” she said, her brown eyes narrowing. “My granddaddy ain’t done nothin’.”

  “I didn’t say he had. I just want to talk to him.”

  “He don’t got nothin’ to say to you, either.”

  “How about if we ask him that, okay?”

  The girl spun away. “Can’t get no peace. If it ain’t white ones, it’s black ones. We don’t take kindly to any color cop, you know that, don’t you? You hear what I’m telling you, mister?”

  “Teesha, mind your tongue,” said a baritone voice from the back doorway. A large man filled the door, his face the color of pumpernickel bread, his body clad in bib overalls. A frayed straw hat shadowed weary eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles.

  Louis extended his hand. “My name is Louis Kincaid.”

  “I know who you are,” Tinker said, ignoring the outstretched hand. “What do you want?”

  “I just want to talk to you, if you have time.”

  Alfred Tinker nodded to his granddaughter and she went back behind the counter.

  “On the porch?” Louis offered.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Tinker followed Louis to the porch, and when Louis sat down in one of two wooden rockers. Tinker remained standing. Louis looked up at him. “Please, sit down.”

  “You’re in my chair.”

  Louis slid over to the other chair. Tinker sat down and the rocker began to squeak as he put it in motion.

  “Mr. Tinker, I’m a police officer—”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Well, okay, the other day—”

  “I know about the bones too.”

  “Then maybe you can help me.” Louis leaned forward.

  “With what?” Tinker stared at the cars coming and going at the stop sign.

  “I need some information about the past, Mr. Tinker, and I was hoping, since it’s obvious you’ve been here for some time—”

  “And what makes that so obvious?” Tinker interrupted. “The fact that my name’s on a run-down store in the worst part of town?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I mean— I meant…I assumed you were well established in Black Pool, grew up here, that’s all.” Louis sighed. “Mr. Tinker, about the body—”

  “I can’t help you with your dead man.”

  Louis waited but Alfred Tinker continued to stare at the street, rocking.

  “Then tell me about the sixties,” Louis pressed. “What was it like here then?”

  “If you don’t know that, you should be ashamed to call yourself a black man.”

  “I’m not sure I call myself anything, Mr. Tinker.”

  For the first time. Tinker looked at him. The stare was so cold that Louis looked away.

  “I know what I read about the sixties,” Louis said after a moment.

  Tinker returned his gaze to the cars. “The Mans version, Mr. Kincaid, the Mans version.”

  “All versions,” Louis said.

  The rocking stopped suddenly. Alfred Tinker faced him again. “And what did you learn? If you learned anything at all, you learned some things don’t change.”

  “One thing can change, Mr. Tinker, right here, right now.”

  “How?”

  “With the man who died.”

  Tinker resumed rocking. “‘Liberty and justice for all’, right?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “You call it that.”

  Louis stared at Tinker’s profile. He ran a hand over his eyes and leaned forward. “Mr. Tinker,” he said softly but firmly, “a man was murdered, a black man. What do you want me to do? March around in front of the state capitol with a protest sign? I am trying to do something, in my own way, by talking to you. I’m a policeman. This is how we get things done.”

  “You’re a token, Mr. Kincaid. You’re living in a white man’s world, breathing his air, working for his justice. You don’t know about us. You don’t even know about yourself.”

  Louis was so stunned he couldn’t think of a reply. He stared at the old man with a mix of anger and frustration. He rose slowly. “I believe there’s such a thing as justice,” he said.

  Tinker gave him a soft, mirthless laugh. “You should have marched with King. He was a dreamer, too.”

  “Dreams can become realities.”

  “Reality, justice, history…just words. You want to know about history, just look around you. This is reality, this pestilence spreading like cancer. This”—he said, motioning toward the run-down street—“is your history.”

  “I need your help, Mr. Tinker, I need to know what things were like then.”

  “Things don’t change, Mr. Kincaid. When you’ve been here long enough, you’ll understand that. You’
ll understand the fear. You’ll feel it, living inside you, always there, like footsteps that follow you home at night.”

  Louis shook his head. He was getting nowhere. He rose and started down the steps, then stopped and looked back at Alfred Tinker. “You don’t think I’ll find out who did it,” he said. “You don’t think I’ll solve it.”

  “You might find out who the dead man is,” Tinker said, “and you might even find out who killed him. But you’ll never solve it, Mr. Kincaid. Because what you’re trying to solve isn’t a crime. It’s a state of mind.”

  “So you’re saying I’ll never find out the reason.”

  “You look for reasons where none are to be found. You’ll never find the answer because you don’t know the question,”

  Louis was tired of Tinker’s ambiguities. “I don’t understand,” he said with a sigh.

  The steady squeak of the rocking chair blended with the sound of crickets and passing cars. “You will,” the old man said, “when you hear the footsteps.”

  After a restless night of dreams filled with Alfred Tinker’s ramblings, Louis rolled out of bed, feeling as if he had gotten no sleep at all. He went about his perfectly choreographed morning routine. He turned on the radio, which poured out the usual local news, highlighted by death notices, times of funeral services, and the lunch specials at the River Bottom Cafe. After a quick shower, he dressed, ignoring the crisply pressed khaki uniform in favor of gray slacks and a white dress shirt. He was tying his tie as he hurried down the front steps of the boardinghouse at exactly eight-thirty.

  The station was quiet, as usual. Mike, one of the other day-shift deputies, hovered over the latest issue of Fish and Game with Junior, both men sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. The third deputy, Larry, sat at a corner desk, legs up, thumbing through Hustler, one of the dozen skin magazines from the cache he kept in a bottom drawer. No one looked up or said hello, but Louis had gotten used to it by now. In the three weeks since he joined the Black Pool sheriff’s department, the other deputies had kept their distance, never openly hostile but never friendly, either. Sheriff Dodie had told him there never had been a black man on the force before, offering it as something of an explanation that Louis should understand and accept.

  Louis often found himself missing the easy camaraderie he had enjoyed back in Michigan. He had been one of only three black cops there, and while the force had its share of bigots, he had never felt the sting of being an outsider. The bond among cops somehow transcended color. It was not the same here.

  Louis went to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. He glanced back at the three deputies with a vague feeling of unease. It wasn’t that he feared these men; he just had no way to relate to them. Junior was stupid but not dangerous. Mike was young, green-as-grass, and would probably be friendly if he weren’t so influenced by Larry. Larry…he was a piece of work. There was something about the man that brought a knot to Louis’s gut. Larry was fairly quick-minded, but there was a tension about him, like something inside was wound too tight. Louis sensed a meanness in the man, a meanness that went soul-deep.

  “Well, lookee here.”

  Junior was standing at the window, parting the Venetian blind to look out at the street.

  “Hey, Larry, your girlfriend’s back,” Junior said, his voice childishly taunting. Larry looked up from his magazine.

  “It’s Miss Abigail Lillihouse,” Junior said. “Come home for Christmas from college.”

  Larry didn’t get up, but his neck craned to the window.

  “Goddamn, she’s lookin’ good,” Junior went on, whistling. “Those pretty little boobs jigglin’ in that pink sweater. Larry! Quick, she’s leaving! Why don’t you go ask her for a date?”

  “Fuck you. Junior,” Larry said, from behind the magazine.

  “Larry has the hots for Miss Abigail,” Junior said to Mike, grinning. “There was a picture of her in the paper couple years ago, when she was Homecoming queen, and I caught Larry in the John with it, pounding his pud.”

  “I said shut up!” Larry shouted. Mike stopped snickering. Louis looked up. Larry shot up from the chair, threw Louis a cold look, and bolted from the office. Junior and Mike looked at each other and shrugged. After a moment, they were lost again in the pages of ¥ish and Game.

  “Junior,” Louis said, “any word from the lab in Jackson?”

  A voice came out of the huddle. “The report’s on your desk.”

  “What about the M.E.?”

  “The what?”

  “The medical examiner.”

  “Oh…they ain’t done with the bones yet.”

  Louis sighed. “Sheriff in?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any calls?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anything happening?”

  “Nope.”

  Louis set the cup down on the old pine desk. The desk’s edges were rounded with age and the scarred top bore testimony to years of cops’ doodles. Louis pulled on the top drawer, looking for a letter opener and as usual, the drawer stuck. He hit the top to release it, thinking for the hundredth time what he wouldn’t give for some decent equipment. Even a fax machine would help bring the department into the 1980s.

  He gave up on the drawer and picked up the heavy manila envelope. He tore off the top, then carefully took out the chain and the book that had been found at the grave, still secured in plastic and labeled.

  Now, why had the lab sent back the evidence along with the report? He looked back at Junior, tempted to ask him if this was standard procedure for the Mississippi state crime lab when dealing with a rural area. But he didn’t want to admit he didn’t know procedure. Most labs stored their own evidence until the city or county needed it for trial. But then again, most departments worked within their own jurisdiction, with the lab being part of the process. This place…well, that was another story.

  He put the necklace aside, grabbed his glasses from the pencil holder and started to read. The shreds of clothing had traces of blood. The threads of the pants were denim, the shirt cotton. The necklace turned out to be silver, but it was severely tarnished and chipped. They had cleaned it, but the embossing was still indistinguishable. He set the report down and picked at the necklace with a paper clip, but his efforts were futile. The necklace needed to be in the hands of an expert.

  He was very careful extracting the book from its protective wrapping. He laid it gently on the desk, pulling the gooseneck lamp closer. Then he sat back, looking at it. It bothered him the lab had sent this back so soon. How could they be done with it so quickly?

  “Junior,” Louis called out, “do we have latex gloves?”

  “In the first-aid kit, over there.”

  Louis rose and opened a cupboard. He found the kit and dug out a pair of surgical gloves. As he went back to his desk, tugging them over his hands. Junior followed.

  “What’s with the gloves?” Junior asked. “They already done looked at it. What difference do gettin’ prints on it make now?”

  “I don’t know,” Louis said softly, studying the book. Even under the bright light, the cover was unreadable. The report said the lab had been unable to raise the title. But then, the entire report was peppered with one word: Unknown.

  It seemed an odd size for a book, about eight inches in height and five inches wide, and not very thick, maybe a hundred pages total. Bits of frayed material suggested the cover might have been light gray or beige.

  Louis could hear Junior breathing behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t you have something to do?” Louis asked.

  “I guess the sheriff must’ve told them not to worry about this stuff, eh?” Junior said.

  “What do you mean?” Louis asked.

  Junior shrugged. “They don’t usually send stuff back unless someone says we done closed the case.”

  Louis felt his muscles tense. Closed? Already? He turned back to the report. Unknown. Unknown. Unknown. He couldn’t imagine a lab being so incompetent as to not come up with anyth
ing better than this. Had Dodie told them to just slide it through? Was it over before he could even get started?

  He sighed and gingerly opened the book. The spine cracked softly. The first few pages were cemented together by mold and threatened to fall apart in Louis’s fingers. He knew he should leave further examination to an expert but someone else might not look deep enough. He focused his attention on the middle of the book, where he was most likely to find a legible page. He picked at the brittle pages with a paper clip and finally found a page of readable script. It was less than half a page, but it was something. Eagerly, he examined the words.

  Ask night how To he lost the feeling of cold Farther down the page, he could make out more words.

  day feels to be light Exposed so all may see, sharp of the sun The glare of intensity.

  More mold and dried mud. The edge of the page crumbled like ashes in his trembling fingers.

  fears that torture the dark, And days Ask me how to be both That was all there was. Louis scribbled the words on a legal pad, then he sat back. Junior was reading over his shoulder.

  “Now what are you doing?” Junior asked.

  “Trying to decipher this.”

  Junior peered at the book. “What is that shit?”

  “A poem. Or bits and pieces of one.”

  “A poem? What’s a dead guy doin’ with a poem? It don’t make no sense.”

  The phone rang and Junior returned to his desk. Louis leaned back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head. What was a poor black man doing with a book of poetry? And who had buried him? Certainly not a sentimental Klansman. Louis stared at the poem’s broken words, wishing he had paid more attention to his college literature classes. Well, Junior was right about one thing. It didn’t make sense.

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!”

  Louis looked over his reading glasses. Junior was standing, clutching the phone, his face so white the freckles looked like measles.

  “Somebody get the sheriff on the horn,” Junior sputtered. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, we got us another one.”

  Chapter 4

  Man, oh man, two bodies in less than a month,” Junior said, wheeling the Blazer around a sharp comer. Louis braced himself as the truck squealed off the asphalt, its rear tires kicking up dirt from the shoulder.