She shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I can probably find out. Is it important?”
Chapter Nineteen
With very few exceptions, African-Americans in Pottersville lived in one small part of town—one still referred to by many as the Quarters.
Poverty was part of life in a small town like Pottersville. There were very few good jobs, very few opportunities of any kind. But it was far worse for the small percentage of black men and women for whom inequality and disenfranchisement, living without in the land of plenty, was a way of life––and had been for generations.
Over the past few years, as despair had increased so had the abuse of alcohol and drugs. More and more meth labs were being found, more and more young men were going to prison. The senselessness and hopelessness, the raw futility, was overwhelming.
Dad was campaigning this afternoon, courting the black vote, and had asked me to meet him near Merrill’s mom’s house. By the time I arrived, I was depressed and disgusted.
I was driving a tricked-out black 1985 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS with T-tops, red pinstriping, a V-8 engine with a four-speed automatic transmission, a six-inch lift kit with twenty-six-inch chrome rims, a trunk full of speakers, illegally dark tinted windows, and a loud dual exhaust system.
It had been seized in a large drug bust and would soon be auctioned off by the sheriff’s department, but until then it was on loan to me. Dad’s justification was that I was consulting on the case and that I had destroyed my vehicle while attempting to stop an inmate escape. It still seemed like a dangerous thing to do during an election year but he assured me it wouldn’t be an issue. And at the moment I didn’t have a lot of options.
He had the screen door open and was stepping off her front porch when I pulled up behind his car, and met me by the time I got out.
“You look like a drug dealer,” he said.
“Already been pulled over three times,” I said. “You ought to see the looks on their faces when they see a white man in a clerical collar.”
He smiled.
We were quiet a moment, already beginning to sweat.
“We got the prelim back today,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows, inviting him to continue.
“Our vic wasn’t lynched,” he said.
“Well, yes he was,” I said.
“I mean that’s not what killed him,” he said. “He was dead long before he was hanged.”
I nodded, thinking about it.
Unlike most of the dilapidated clapboard houses and faded single-wide trailers with multiple satellite dishes on them, Ma Monroe had a red brick home with freshly painted trim. In contrast to the trash, discarded appliances, and shiny pimped-out luxury cars in many of the other yards, hers was clean and neatly manicured with a modest mid-sized Ford—all of which Merrill was responsible for.
“Cause of death?” I asked.
“He was beaten to death,” he said. “He had massive blunt force trauma. His liver was lacerated, his spleen ruptured, and he had an acute subdural hematoma.”
I thought about it some more.
“I think whoever killed him wanted it to look like something other than what it was,” he said. “Hang a black man from a tree and everybody automatically assumes it’s racially motivated, that it’s a mob or the Klan. Be a smart thing to do no matter who the killer is. Be brilliant if he’s black.”
I nodded.
As we stood there near the street, Dad waved to every vehicle that passed by—whether log truck or gold-trimmed SUV with spinning rims. Not his usual understated wave, but his big I’m-your-best-friend politician wave. I felt self-conscious and embarrassed, and I questioned why he had asked me to meet him here, which added guilt to the other experiences I was having.
From an early age, I had been as comfortable around black people as white, and I was sensitive to and angered by the rampant racism in Pottersville. It was probably due in part to the fact that the woman who cared for me during my most formative years was black, partly because of my relationship with Merrill, and perhaps partly because of an innate and intense hatred of injustice, but it had separated and at times even alienated me from my family.
My parents were of the “you can work with them, even be casual friends with them, but shouldn’t get too close to or even think about dating or marrying them” generation. Their formative years were prior to the Civil Rights movement. They were in school at the time of integration. Much of the conflict Dad and I had during my teenage years was related to my anger at his subtle and not so subtle racism. He was different now, having rid himself of much of the residual racism still present in Jake, but he still wasn’t as accepted or as comfortable as I was among the people of color of Pottersville, and I wondered if he had asked me to meet him out here because he wanted to remind them that I was his son.
“We should have a more complete autopsy in a day or two.”
He could have told me all of this on the phone. Maybe I was right about why he had asked me here.
“Still no ID?” I asked.
He shook his head. “If he’s in the system we’ll have it in a few days. If he’s not … I don’t know what we’ll do.”
I looked over at the old white wooden AME church on the other side of Ma Monroe’s house. It was small and leaning, and needed to be painted, its tiny steeple spotted gray and black with mildew. I shivered slightly when I looked at the woods beyond it and thought of the horror it held for Merrill.
“Do you know anything about a preacher from Marianna being killed back in those woods?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed, his expression one of alarm. “What? When?”
“Ever,” I said. “But specifically twenty-nine or thirty years ago.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Why?”
“Merrill saw him get killed when he was little.”
He shook his head. “I was a deputy back then. I would’ve known about it.”
“Not if it was never reported.”
“True. He would’ve been, what, three or four? He sure?”
I nodded.
“I’ll check into it,” he said, “but I can’t imagine it hasn’t come out by now if there was anything to it.”
“If Merrill says he saw it … ”
“I’ll look into and let you know,” he said. “Speaking of Merrill … I need your help.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“I need you and him to help me with the black vote,” he said. “Would you talk to him?”
I hesitated. He was putting me in an awkward position. I hated politics and I felt uncomfortable even asking Merrill for his own vote, much less to work on Dad’s behalf, but there was no way I could refuse this man who had done so much for me for so long, no way I could not do all I could to help him in any way I could.
“If you don’t,” he said, “I’m going to lose the election.”
Chapter Twenty
Ordinarily Carla and I had Rudy’s to ourselves late at night, but with rotating teams of officers and deputies searching for the escaped inmate around the clock, the cowbell above the door kept clanging, the jukebox kept playing, and the coffee pot kept emptying.
I wasn’t even sure why I came. Carla didn’t need looking out for now that she was no longer spending all night every night alone in an open diner on the side of a rural highway, but here I was again, walking through the door at a little after nine.
Rudy’s Diner served Southern fried food just like all the no-name cafés in small Southern towns, but it didn’t look like one. With stools and a counter fronting a grill and booths next to plate glass windows it looked more like a welfare Waffle House than anything else.
Jake and Fred Goodwin were in a booth in the back on the opposite side of the restaurant from the booth I considered mine. I was sure they had just come in from the woods and were probably talking about the search or the weather—anything but the election, but it looked conspiratorial, as if Jake were somehow betraying Dad.
Next to them four men I recognized from the prison but didn’t know were laughing loudly when not shoveling grits, eggs, bacon, and toast into their mouths. Across the room, Carla’s boyfriend slouched in a booth with a group of guys his age, their posture conveying how bored they were with life. Todd and Shane sat in a booth next to them, and at the counter in the center Sandy Hartman sat alone, his head down, shoulders hunched, sipping coffee.
Beyond him, Carla, hair fallen, face drawn, fatigue obvious, was balancing plates on her hands and arms. She gave me a half smile, then looked away. As she carried the food over to Todd and Shane, I walked over to Sandy.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
He looked up at me, squinting against the light above us, frowned, and shrugged. “It’s going.”
I waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t.
“You okay?”
His eyes widened and locked on mine. He then glanced around the room to see if anyone was witnessing our interaction.
“I’m just fine. Thanks. You?”
It was a dismissal.
I nodded then walked over toward my booth, nodding to Carla’s boyfriend, Cody Gaskin, and his friends as I did. They didn’t respond.
I stopped at Todd and Shane’s table.
“You gotta concentrate to be that cool,” Todd said, looking at the boys. “Can’t be distracted by nodding or speaking.”
I smiled.
What made that funny was the way Todd was just like them when he was that age and wasn’t that much different now.
Looking down at Todd and Shane I realized again how much alike they looked.
Todd and Shane had thick necks, crew cuts, and even sitting, bowed out their chests and flexed their muscles against the tight, too small T-shirts they wore. Completing their look of pseudo-soldier, their camouflage fatigues were tucked into their black tactical boots.
There was one big difference though. Shane was nearly twice the size of Todd. It was as if Todd was a smaller version of Shane, a to-scale model that maintained the exact proportions in miniature. They even had identical razor wire armband tattoos around their right biceps.
The boys were talking so low it sounded like whispering, but occasionally I heard a string of words well enough to make out most of a sentence. “If I caught one throwin’ my bitch a bone I’d damn sure do it.”
Shane was saying something but I was too distracted for it to register.
“How often you tappin’ that ass, man? She looks like she can hardly walk.”
Before I realized what I was doing I had stepped back over to their table.
“That’s because of how tired she is,” I said. “And if I ever hear any of you say anything like that about her again, you’ll be walking funny for the rest of your little lives. Promise you that.”
“Shit, man, chill out,” one of them said.
He was a pale, pimply faced boy with a bad haircut and wounded, angry eyes.
“Stop it, Sean,” a boy I recognized from the football team said. “Just stop.”
But Sean couldn’t.
“I’s just kiddin’,” Sean said. “Besides, I wasn’t talkin’ to you.”
“But I am talking to you,” I said. “And you better listen.”
“We hear you, okay?” the other guy who wasn’t Cody said. “He’s a dick. We’re sorry. We won’t let him say anything like that again.”
“Okay?” Sean said. “So will you leave us the fuck alone now?”
Cody had yet to utter a sound or look me in the eye.
I stared at him.
After a few moments of him refusing to look at me, I shook my head and walked back over to Todd and Shane’s table.
“What’s wrong with him?” Shane said.
I looked back at the boys who were now dropping their napkins on the table, preparing to leave.
“No, him,” he said, nodding over at Sandy. “Somethin’ just ain’t right with him.”
That was another difference. Shane did most of the talking.
I followed his gaze over to Sandy, who had stood up and was dropping a few bills on the counter. He leaned over slightly as if from an unseen weight pressing down on him, and moved slowly like someone terminally ill or deeply depressed.
“Not a team player,” Todd added.
“Whatta you think it is?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Told you,” Todd said. “He’s a quitter.”
“Hell if I know,” Shane said. “Don’t know that much about women.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
Todd laughed.
I looked back at Shane.
“He quit SAR?”
He nodded.
“Any idea why?”
He shook his head.
“Still no sign of the inmate?” I asked.
He frowned and shook his head, then rubbed his hand across his military haircut. “We’ll get him.”
Todd nodded. “Hopefully before he kills anybody else.”
“You think Jensen killed the man at the river?” I asked.
He nodded. “And he’s wearing his clothes right now trying to hitch a ride somewhere.”
“Or hiding out until things die down,” Shane said, “and then gonna hop a ride outta here.”
That gave me an idea, and I made a mental note to talk to Dad about it.
After a few more forced comments our conversation dwindled and I made my way to my booth in the back. As I sat down Cody and his posse stood up and slowly walked out of the diner without paying, a couple of them glaring at me as they did.
Carla said something to Cody but he kept walking.
Cody and his friends reminded me of Todd and Shane and so many other guys around here—especially those in law enforcement—and I wondered what it was about small Southern towns that turned out misogynistic young men with such regularity and proficiency. Equally confounding were the mothers who raised such sons and the young women who were attracted to them.
“I’m so worried about him,” Carla said.
I had been staring at the door, thinking, and didn’t realize she was standing beside me. I looked up at her and gave her a weak smile.
“I’m worried about you,” I said.
“He’s usually very good to me,” she said. “Something happened. Last week he was gone for three days—just disappeared. Nobody knew where he was—including his dad. When he showed up again, he wouldn’t say where’d he’d been or what he’d been doing, and he’s so different now. Something happened.”
“Any idea what?” I asked.
She thought about it for a minute, pursing her lips, then shook her head. “Would you talk to him?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re so good at––”
“He’s not a fan and it’ll probably make things worse, but if you want me to …”
“It’s hard to imagine it being any worse.”
“At what point will you walk away?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I shook my head. “I know how––”
The bell above the door sounded and we both turned to see Anna walk in.
“Tell you what,” Carla said. “I’ll walk away from Cody when you walk away from her.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Carla had compared her two-month relationship with her boyfriend to my over two-decade obsession with Anna. It was surprisingly teenage girlish of her, but I understood what she meant. The hopeless hope love inspires isn’t easy to surrender even after two minutes.
Would I ever be able to walk away from Anna? Would I ever be free of the notion that the fates would finally relent and look with favor on us? Probably not, as long as the slightest wisp of hope remained.
As Anna crossed the room toward me, I wondered how my life might be different if we were together. Circumstances—some of them far beyond my control—had ended my marriage twice, but I wondered if Susan and I might somehow still be together if I hadn’t held in reserve som
e small part of my heart for Anna.
I hadn’t thought of Susan lately. Our marriage ended badly the first time—worse the second, but I wondered how she was doing. Was she remarried? She had never been good at being alone. Did she have kids? A pain of guilt and regret ran through me as I thought about our child that might have been.
“You don’t look too happy to see me,” Anna said.
“Actually, thoughts of just how happy I am to see you led to darker, troubling, unhappy thoughts.”
“I can tell,” she said. “Wanna talk about it?”
I shook my head.
“Sure?”
I nodded.
She slid into the booth across from me, a clean, fresh, slightly fruity fragrance following her, filling the air around us, and before I realized what I was doing, I started breathing a little more deeply, as if trying to inhale her.
As I gazed into her infinitely deep brown eyes, I wondered how much of my life I had spent doing that. I thought about all we had shared since childhood, all we knew about the other, all our eyes had witnessed of the other’s life, all the words our mouths had spoken, our ears had heard, all we had perceived of the other’s silence.
Carla walked over with a pot of coffee and a couple of cups. As she filled my cup, she said, “Y’all want anything to eat?”
I shook my head.
“No thanks,” Anna said. “And can I just have water?”
“Sure,” she said, then paused for a moment to consider her. “You look tired.”
“I am,” Anna said.
When Carla went to retrieve the glass of water, I said, “You still look great.”
Her face lit up and her eyes moistened. “Only because you’re looking through the eyes of love.”
“Without denying that’s what I’m doing,” I said, “I refuse to concede that what I said is anything but absolute and objective truth.”
While getting Anna’s water, Carla had to stop to checkout Todd and Shane and the other group of correctional officers. When she brought the water to the table, only Anna and I and Jake and Fred remained in the restaurant.
“Jake’s eating with the enemy, isn’t he?” Anna asked.
“What are they talking about?” I asked Carla.
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