by Parrish, PJ
“I killed him,” Grace said.
Louis just stood there, too shocked to move. Finally he turned to look at Abby, who had drifted away to stand at the fireplace. “You knew?” he whispered.
Abby nodded numbly. Tears fell silently down her face.
“How long?” he asked hoarsely.
“I just told her. Detective, only about an hour ago,” Grace said.
Louis looked back at Grace, dumbfounded. Grace shivered slightly and walked slowly toward the fire, stopping several feet away from Abby. Louis watched her, wanting to spin her around, shout at her, shake her in anger. How long had she expected him to rot in that damn jail? How long had she intended to let him take the blame?
Grace turned to face him. Her mouth quivered and she shook her head. “I’ve called the sheriff,” she said.
“What?”
Her fingers curled over the top of the chair. “When I heard you downstairs, I called them.” Her shoulders were shaking. She was trying so hard to maintain her composure. “Don’t worry. Detective. I’ll tell them the truth.” She paused, lifting her chin. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have let you go to prison. I’m…sorry.”
Louis came around the chair and slumped into it. He pulled in a deep breath and ran a trembling hand over his face and down over his raw neck. He closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he repeated in a whisper.
He felt a touch on his arm. He looked up into Grace’s pale blue eyes. She blinked rapidly and let her arm fall. She moved away into the shadows. Louis looked up at Abby, but she was staring down into the fire as if mesmerized.
“Why?” Louis asked. When Grace didn’t answer, he turned to look at her. “You didn’t have to kill him. There were other ways.”
Grace was standing at the window, holding back the drapes, seeming to look out at the falling snow. She shook her head without looking back at Louis. “You don’t understand,” she said softly.
“Yes, I do, Mrs. Lillihouse,” he said. “I’ve seen this situation before. I’ve seen women who’ve been abused who manage to get out, who—”
“I didn’t do it for me,” Grace interrupted. Her eyes went quickly to Abby. “I did it for her.” She looked back at Louis. “I did it for you.”
Louis waited, unmoving.
“He was going to kill you that night,” Grace said. “He told me before he left. He told me he was going to find you and kill you. He hated you, hated the thought of you and Abigail together.” Grace put out a hand to the piano to steady herself. “I…I followed him,” she went on, her voice quavering. “I thought I could talk to him. I thought…I don’t know, I thought…”
Grace brought up a trembling hand to her forehead. Louis watched her, ready to catch her if she fainted. But she drew in a deep breath and with an unsteady step, went to a bookcase. She pulled out a book and came over to him, holding it out. Louis looked up at her questioningly.
“Do you recognize it?” she asked.
It was a poetry book, the one Abby had brought to his room that night. He took it, turning it over in his hands. Suddenly it was all clear. “It’s a copy,” he said slowly. “It’s a copy of the book we found with Eugene Graham.” He looked up at her. “You replaced it, didn’t you, after he disappeared with it?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “So my mother would not know I lent it to him.”
Louis shook his head. “Mrs. Lillihouse, why did you show me this? What does this have to do with you killing your husband?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Everything.”
Grace drifted away, returning to the window. Louis looked over at Abby. She was dry-eyed now and was watching Grace carefully. As if coming out of a trance, she went to the window, put an arm around Grace’s shoulder and led her back to the wing chair. Grace sat down heavily, closing her eyes.
“Tell him. Mother,” Abby said gently. “Tell him what you told me.”
Grace did not move. Louis waited, holding the book between his hands. The room was growing cold.
“Gene took care of the horses,” Grace said softly. “He came every week, on Friday. He would walk over from Sweetwater.”
Louis fingered the book, letting her talk.
Grace opened her eyes, but her gaze was distant. “Gene was different, different from the other Negroes…” She focused on Louis and smiled gently. “I’m sorry…from the other black men we had working here. He loved books, any kind of book. But especially poetry.”
Louis glanced up at Abby, standing over the chair.
“We used to talk,” Grace went on. “About the poems, about life. I loved Emily Dickinson.” She smiled slightly. “‘I’m Nobody / Who are you? Are you Nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us / Don’t tell! They’d advertise, you know…’ Gene loved that poem.”
A log fell in the hearth, briefly bathing Grace in gold.
“We talked about what we were going to be when we grew up and got away from this place,” Grace said. “He wanted to be a baseball player.” She looked at Louis. “Did you know that?”
Louis nodded.
“He said he would become rich and then he would come back and be a teacher.”
Louis leaned forward, elbows on knees, staring blankly at the book.
“Gene didn’t deserve to die,” she whispered.
Louis shook his head. “Mrs. Lillihouse, you had to have known what this would lead to. You had to know what would happen if you and Eugene—”
Grace closed her eyes. “I didn’t…We didn’t.” She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re right, of course,” she whispered. “I should have known.”
She twisted back to look at Abby. “But we did nothing wrong,” she said, her voice pleading. “You have to believe that. We did nothing wrong.”
Louis saw the tears welling in her eyes. He rose and went to the bar, returning with a small glass of sherry. Grace took it, gripping it with trembling hands.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Louis sat back down in the chair, watching Grace’s wan face as she sipped the sherry. He suddenly thought of the two photographs of Grace, from her high-school annual and her wedding. Two photos, taken just a year apart, but so different.
“Mrs. Lillihouse,” he said softly. “Do you know what happened to Eugene?”
Grace stared at him for a moment, gripping the tiny glass. Suddenly her face crumbled. She began to weep softly. The glass fell to the carpet.
Abby knelt in front of her. “Mother, don’t. You don’t have to.”
Grace shook her head. “No, I’m tired of it,” she said. “I’m tired of holding it inside me. It has made me ill and I want it out, I want it out!”
Grace took several deep breaths and brushed a strand of hair back from her face.
“One night my father came to my room,” she said. “It was just before my seventeenth birthday. He said he had heard that I had been with the Negro Eugene Graham.” Grace’s eyes glistened as she looked at Louis. “‘Been with…that was the words he used.”
Louis watched Grace’s face harden as the memories came into focus. “I told him it wasn’t true, that Gene was just my friend. But Daddy…he wouldn’t believe me, and he said things. Things about his only child, his daughter, disgracing the family.” Grace’s voice had become a low monotone. “Daddy never talked to me like that before, he had never looked so sad. He said he was ‘disappointed’ in me. It was so…ugly.”
Louis looked up at Abby. It was obvious from her pale face that Grace had not told her this part.
“But then Daddy told me that everything was going to be all right,” Grace continued. “He said he was going to take care of ‘the situation . He said that I was going to marry Max.”
“Your father arranged your marriage?” Louis asked.
Grace nodded woodenly. “Daddy said that no decent man would have me if they found out about Gene.” She lowered her head. “But Max didn’t care. Daddy said. Max said he’d marry me no matter what I had done.”
Louis closed his eyes, now seeing the faded news
paper photograph of Grace Ketcher just after she was crowned Miss Magnolia. She had looked like a princess, and that’s the way her life had been, carefully laid out for her by her father, right down to the prince who would come to her rescue. Grace Ketcher had been just a girl, a weak girl who trusted Daddy to chart out her life and then allowed Max to destroy whatever was left of it. Grace’s wedding portrait came back to him, and the sad blankness in her pretty young face. He looked at her now. He could see an echo of it still, as if someone had just erased her.
“I wanted to talk to someone, I needed to talk to someone,” Grace said. “I waited that Friday for Gene to come, but he didn’t. I thought Daddy had fired him. And then when Gene disappeared, I thought he finally had just left, gone to play ball like he said he would.”
Louis’s eyes dropped to the book in his hands; he couldn’t bring himself to look at Grace.
“Max was the one who told me,” Grace said suddenly.
Louis looked up at her. Her face was streaked with tears.
“Max told me that Gene had been killed,” she said. “He told me that Daddy had arranged it.”
“What?” Louis said.
Grace shook her head slowly. “I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to believe Daddy could hurt someone.” She paused, wiping at her face. “But I knew how Daddy got his way about things he wanted done.” Tears fell down Grace’s face. “And I knew that Gene never would have left without saying good-bye.”
Louis shook his head in disbelief. “And you never spoke to your father about it? You never asked him if Max was telling the truth?”
Grace’s shoulders slumped. “I couldn’t I couldn’t. I was seventeen, don’t you see? He died two years later.”
Louis’s eyes went up to the portrait of Colonel Ketcher that hung above the fireplace. The man’s handsome face was inscrutable in the dark. Louis looked down into Abby’s eyes. No more, they pleaded, no more, let her he.
“I hated him,” Grace said quietly. She was looking up at the portrait now. “I hated him until the day he died for killing Gene.”
Louis sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He hung his head, bringing the poetry book up to his forehead. He closed his eyes. For a moment it was so quiet he could hear Grace’s ragged breathing.
“Mrs. Lillihouse,” he whispered.
Slowly he looked up. Abby was watching him, her hand on Grace’s shoulder. He set the poetry book on the table.
“Mrs. Lillihouse, your father didn’t kill Eugene,” he said gently. “Max did.”
For several seconds, Grace didn’t move. Then she blinked rapidly and her hand fluttered up toward her neck as if she were choking. Abby grabbed her hand, holding it tight.
“How do you know this?” Grace whispered.
Louis hesitated. “I have proof,” he said softly, hoping she wouldn’t ask anything else. “I have proof that Max killed Eugene, with the help of…other men.”
“Who?” Grace demanded.
“Mrs. Lillihouse—”
“Who? Tell me, please!”
Louis let out a deep breath. “George Harvey, Earl Mulcahey, and one other…I don’t know who for sure.”
A strange look came over Grace’s eyes, as if she had suddenly been carried off somewhere. She closed her eyes, but her hand was still gripping Abby’s.
“What happened?” Grace said.
“No, Mother,” Abby said, her eyes frantically going to Louis’s.
“Mrs. Lillihouse, I don’t really know how—”
“Yes, you do,” Grace said. She let go of Abby and sat forward in the chair. Her eyes burned into Louis, glistening with tears.
Louis could feel the plastic bag against his skin beneath his waistband. How could he tell her the truth? She was far too fragile.
Grace reached out for his hand. Her fingers, cold and soft, closed tightly around his. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
“Mrs. Lillihouse—”
“I want to know!” she said, her eyes bright with tears. “I was never told anything but lies. After thirty years, I have a right to know. I want to know what happened to Gene. Tell me the truth, please!”
Louis slowly withdrew his hand. He reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out the plastic bag. He took out the journal papers and handed them to Grace.
Chapter 30
From the Journal of Earl Mulcahey, August 25, 1976:
I have to tell this about what happened that night. I don’t know if anyone will ever read it hut I figure if I write it down maybe it will mean something.
It was June 9,1955. The sky was real black and it was a warm, sticky night. I remember the frogs chirping like there was a million of them. There was four of us. Max was driving a big black convertible he got from his daddy’s car lot. It was in there for repairs and the muffler was real loud. We were drinking Dixies and we tossed the beer bottles out of the car. I remember the wind in our faces and us laughing and the bottles crashing on the road behind us as we drove down old 234 by my house. I never drank much before that night and I never touched a drop since but that night it just seemed like the right thing to do. It was the only way I could be one of them.
We were rounding the curve by the creek when we saw him. He was walking home toward Sweetwater from his school in Cotton Town. Max saw him first and his face got all twisted up and his eyes got all fire-like because Max hated Gene. You got to know Gene sometimes did some horse-grooming stuff for Grace Ketcher. Grace was a real nice girl with a soft heart and she liked Gene because he was one of the few Negroes around who went to school and could read the stuff Grace liked.
Anyway, Max thought Gene had a crush on Grace or maybe vice versa and that made Max real mad. Whether she did or didn’t I didn’t know but either way Max thought so and to Max that’s all that mattered.
Then Wallie says something like, “Let’s play with him.” So Max pulls the car over and all the sudden we’re all in this circle around Gene and his eyes get big and he’s acting real nervous-like. Now, Gene wasn’t stupid and he knew he couldn’t fight all of us so he tries to reason with us. But Max and Wallie were pretty tanked-up, and there was no reason. So they started shoving him and finally Max grabs him and starts shaking him and telling him to keep his eyes off Grace.
Gene got scareder and started throwing wild punches. By now I was scared too because I had decided this wasn’t what I had in mind when I went along on the ride.
Well, Gene decides he ain’t going to win this fight no way, no how, so he takes off into the woods. Now, Gene is a pretty good runner but Max was our school’s best sprinter and he caught him a quarter mile or so into the trees. I couldn’t keep up with the others so good, the branches and everything cutting me when I ran. When I got there Wallie was kicking him but Max was doing most of the hitting, smacking him on the head. Gene was bleeding pretty good when Max pulled out his pocketknife. I knew things was getting crazy but I couldn’t talk. I just couldn’t. Wallie took a piece of the tree and was hitting Gene with it and all Gene could do was scream and hold his hands over his head. Max and Wallie kept yelling things at him like “white woman fucker” and “nigger filth” and Gene just kept screaming.
Max stabbed him around the shoulders and on the arms but Gene was still yelling. George hit him a few times with a branch but mostly George stayed back just watching. His eyes was strange-looking and he was sweating real heavy. Then Max says we need to do this right. He tells George to go back to the Olds and get the rope out of the trunk. Max pulls Gene to his feet and sets him up against a tree, slapping at his face. Max used his lighter to see better and it was then I could see Gene’s face. His eyes was half closed and he was crying.
Gene was wearing a rope around his waist for a belt and Wallie unties this and jerks Gene’s pants down and Max puts his knife right up to Gene’s penis. Gene is crying real loud now and tries to protect himself and Max just keeps slashing away at his hands. Gene’s only got one good hand but he doesn’t pull them aw
ay and they both get all sliced up. Max keeps cutting and cutting but Gene doesn’t pull them away.
George comes back with the rope and Wallie makes a noose. I think I said something then but I can’t remember. Nobody was listening anyhow. They tied his hands first with the rope from his pants. Then they put the noose over his head and jerked it up so Gene stood on his toes. Gene looked right at me quiet for a second like he was asking me to do something. But it was like I was frozen.
Then Max cuts off his pecker. It wasn’t a clean cut cuz the knife wasn’t real sharp and it took a long time and blood got all over. I knew someone would hear the screaming. They had to because it was the loudest screaming I ever heard.
Max held the penis with a piece torn off Gene’s shirt and threw it at Wallie, laughing about not wanting to touch it and be a homo. Then they threw it in the trees. They told Gene he wasn’t such a big boy now and that it wasn’t true that niggers had bigger dicks than white boys and now Gene was living proof of that.
I think Gene passed out by now because it was so quiet I could hear the rope scraping against the tree as they hefted Gene higher in the air. They tied the rope off somewhere and we all stood around for a minute, the leaves blowing around our feet and a dog howling somewhere far off. The wind was blowing and it moved Gene’s body back and forth real slow.
Then it was like all of a sudden they realized what they had done because Max and Wallie took off whooping and disappeared in the woods. George and I looked at each other and then ran, too. Max dropped me off at the road to our farm and I remember puking on the way up to the house. See, I only lived a quarter mile or so from the place where we stopped, and my daddy owned the land on both sides of 234 so it was my daddy’s property they killed him on.
The next morning as the sun was just coming into view I got up and went back. I knew where it was because I knew those woods real good and I walked through the trees till I found him and cut him down. I had a small shovel and a tarp with me and I dug him a grave but I couldn’t dig far because the ground was so hard. But I dressed him back up proper and took his shoes off because my daddy always said people aren’t buried with their shoes. So I took them with me.
