Kel could feel the earth shudder faintly as his father rotated in his grave—he had always thought Errol Flynn was something of a fairy. “Yes, ma’am, he was some kind of handsome. Sure was. I appreciate you sayin’ that.”
“You’re not from around here, are you, Mr. Levine?” she asked, shifting her attention from Kel’s face for the first time. Levine was already badly used by the heat, and it wasn’t even noon.
“No, Mrs. Trimble. I’m from New York.”
“What Mike’s not saying, Miss Grace, is that he’s now livin’ in Memphis,” Kel added quickly before the words “New York” had an opportunity to imprint negatively on her brain. He also adopted the formal informality of using her first name. He checked her eye for any sign of offense and saw none. He crossed his legs and rocked gently, phasing his movement to that of her glider.
Grace Trimble looked rather blankly at Levine momentarily before turning her face to the street. “No McKelveys around here anymore. They all moved away some while ago. Was a time when they were purdy thick around here. There’s still a lake named for them to the south of town.” Her glider clicked pleasantly amid the sound of the midmorning cicadas, which throbbed and pulsed like chains being pulled across gravel. There was the faint sound of a lawnmower in the distance, and down the street the boys had finally begun torching the bagworms and were whooping and dancing about the tree trunk. She returned her attention to Kel. “How’s your daddy? Your momma’s from Mississippi, isn’t she? Met her once when they were passin’ by on their way somewhere. Quite some time ago, now.”
Almost forty years,Kel thought,at least the last time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Levine shifting his weight in his chair. Not rocking, but shifting from one hip to another like he had piles. Kel could tell that the heat was getting the better of him, but more important, he sensed that Levine was growing impatient with these conversational formalities, not appreciating the function that they played in southern culture. You don’t simply go from point A to point B down here, not with strangers anyhow. And right now they were definitely strangers. If you want cooperation, you take the time to establish some common landmarks to use in navigating the way. It was the same in Vietnam or North Korea. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid he died a few years back. My mother’s doin’ well, though, and yes, ma’am, you’ve got a fair good memory; she’s from Biloxi originally. My parents met down in Mobile durin’ the war.”
That seemed to satisfy the initial background check. There was a short pause before Grace Trimble asked, “What can I do for y’all, Mr. McKelvey? You sure have come a long way. I believe you said on the phone that I might be able to help you.” There was tenseness in her voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m hopin’ you just might. As I mentioned briefly when we spoke, I’d like to talk to you for a minute or so about…umm…your son, if you don’t mind. You see, my job is to try to identify U.S. soldiers who never came home from the Vietnam War, and I have a situation now that is causin’ me some fair measure of confusion.”
“Are y’all the folks that identified my son, Jimmie Carl?”
The reality was that Jimmie Carl Trimble had been identified through the Ton Son Nhut Mortuary in Vietnam during the war and not by the CILHI, but Kel suspected that any attempt to clarify the two systems now in her mind would only have the opposite effect. A better course of action was to do as a British military officer had once recommended to him on another case and “exercise an economy of truth.”
“Yes, ma’am. Not me personally, of course, but the army, that’s right.”
Grace Trimble leaned forward, steadying her hand on the arm of the glider as she slowly rose—her knees issuing soft reports like distant gunfire. “Can I offer you boys somethin’ cool to drink? I made some tea a little while ago after you called.” Having stood, she paused, swaying ever so slightly, while her limbs synchronized, and then she began walking to the screen door. “Y’all best come inside now.”
Kel had stood when she did and gently touched her elbow, offering support. “Yes, ma’am, Miss Grace, I think we both could go for some iced tea. I know I could.” He stepped forward and opened the screen door, holding it while the elderly woman negotiated the opening.
Kel looked around the front room as Grace Trimble busied herself in the kitchen. The interior reminded him of his grandparents’ home. Colorless but not characterless. The furniture looked as old and brittle and thread-worn as its owner. It smelled like an old woman too—dust and camphor and lilac soap all stewed together with kitchen spice. Several old black-metal oscillating fans slowly swept the floor. The room felt dark despite the thin, white lace curtains that covered the front and side windows. But what caught Kel’s attention were the photographs. Dozens and dozens of photographs. Hung on the wall and free-standing on tables and bureaus. Anywhere there had been an open space. Two had been in color once, now blue-washed by years of sunlight, but the rest were black and white and gray and yellowed with time.
But the content was all the same.
A few showed a striking young dark-haired woman holding a young boy. The boy’s age varied from photograph to photograph but the look of joyous ownership on the young mother’s face never failed. The other photos showed only the child, taken at various waypoints in his life. One of the largest was a black-and-white portrait shot of a sad-looking young man in a narrow-lapeled suit and thin dark tie. His hair was short and sharply parted and had a Vitalis shine. It was a yearbook photo. Beside it was a photo taken at about the same age, and it appeared to be among the last made. It showed the same young, awkward-looking young man wearing a black high-school graduation robe and a somber expression. The mortarboard accentuated the angle of his ears and the tassel hung ridiculously over the corner of his left eye. Beside him in what appeared to be a dark-gray suit was a tall, handsome, big-shouldered man, beaming like an early August sun.
Also framed and hung on the wall were a series of military decorations. There was a Purple Heart and the Vietnam Service medal, but the one that caught Kel’s attention was at the top. It was a bronze cross patée with a navy blue-and-white-striped ribbon—the Navy Cross.
Levine walked over to Kel and leaned into his space. “You were killing me out there, Doc,” he hushed at Kel. “You forget what you came here to ask or are you courting this woman?”
“You ever pull up kudzu,Fed?”
“Spare me the Huck Finn shit, will you?”
“I’m serious.”
“In that case, Doc, no. Can’t say I have.”
“Funny thing about kudzu, you try and pull it up too fast and you break the stem right off at the root.”
“Say it ain’t so. Damn, the things I missed growing up in the city.”
“Point is, you need to cultivate some patience,Fed . It doesn’t pay to rush. Pull too fast and you won’t get all you’re after,” Kel responded, turning away from the photographs on the wall and casting an eye toward the doorway to the kitchen. He could hear the lever of a metal ice-cube tray cracking and the clatter of cubes being dropped into glasses. “Can I help you with anythin’, Miss Grace?” he called out as loudly as he reasoned to be polite. He received no response and was preparing to call out again when Grace Trimble reappeared carrying a tray with three tall, slender glasses of pale-brown iced tea.
Levine took the tray from her unsteady hands, setting it on a sturdy, low-slung coffee table in the center of the room. They waited for their host to settle into the flowered sofa and then took seats themselves.
There was a long silence during which Kel caught Levine’s eye and smiled as if to say, “Remember—cultivate some patience.”
They waited for Mrs. Trimble to take a glass of tea before picking one up themselves.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Kel said after taking a long sip, the ice clinking pleasantly in the glass, “tastes like the tea my mother used to make for my father—don’t get iced tea like this in Hawaii. They seem to think you gotta put fruit juice in
it.” He looked up to see Levine pressing his chilled glass to his forehead. The heat was killing this guy.It’d kill me too if I was wearing a dark, worsted wool sport coat all the time. Why don’t you take that sonofabitchin’ thing off? he wondered.
“I was noticin’ your photographs. Are those all your son? Jimmie Trimble? He was quite a good-lookin’ young man.” Kel made a show of looking around the room at all the photographs. “He looks so solemn, though.”
That was putting it politely.
“Oh, mercy no, Mr. McKelvey,” Grace Trimble said as she too surveyed the wall—her eyes seeing what Kel’s could not. The topic energized her. “Jimmie Carl was quite the scamp, always laughin’ and playin’ jokes on his friends, always makin’ other people laugh. Very popular. He was a good son. But he didn’t like to smile for photographs none at all. Somethin’ happened…he had an accident when he was a boy, you see, and he never liked his smile after that.” She paused and then abruptly renewed their porch conversation. “My son was buried a long time ago, Mr. McKelvey; I’m not sure what problem you think I can help you with.”
“I’m not either, Miss Grace, I’m not at all sure myself. The situation is that I have the remains of a young soldier that I’m tryin’ to identify and return to his mother. Initially we thought that it might be the young Marine that died with your son…”
“The colored boy? Chester Orel Evans?”
“Yes, ma’am. You know his name…”
“Of course. My son was awarded the Navy Cross for tryin’ to save him.” She glanced at the framed medals and then at the graduation photograph that Kel had been looking at moments before.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is that why you needed some of my blood? For the colored boy? I don’t really understand.” Her eyes didn’t leave the photograph.
“No…well, yes, ma’am, sort of. Truth is we were usin’ DNA to try and identify some remains.” He watched her face closely as he said “DNA,” checking for signs of recognition. He had prepared a watered-down explanation of DNA testing if it was necessary but decided that maybe it wasn’t going to be needed. “And our results showed that the remains were not those of Private Evans. The next step—even though your son was identified back in 1966—was to see if any of the remains could be his. Want to make sure that we had covered all possibilities. Just for the record.” This was the really tricky part, since Kel had no idea what Mrs. Trimble had been told back in 1966, and the news that her son was not recovered and buried “intact” might not be well taken.
“And were they? I don’t see how.”
“No, ma’am, you’re right, they weren’t, at least the DNA doesn’t match yours.”
“I still don’t know what you want me to help you with.” Grace Trimble’s voice expressed more curiosity than confusion, but the tension was there.
“Well, ma’am, ummm…now this is just for the record…ummm…I need to verify that Jimmie Carl Trimble was your birth son, that he wasn’t adopted, in other words. Umm, it would certainly be all right if he were, we’d just need to know it when we’re checkin’ the blood sample is all.” Kel cringed inside, if not outside, as he asked the question.
Grace Trimble looked at Kel, her gray-blue eyes fixing on his. There was no hesitation. “No, Mr. McKelvey, my son was not adopted. He was my flesh and blood. He was the center of my world. My only child. He was a hero. He wasmy hero. He died tryin’ to save a Negro boy that he didn’t even know.”
Kel briefly inspected his glass of tea, noting the thick slurry of sugar at the bottom, and wondered whether there was room to slither under the sofa. He felt as if he only needed an inch or so of clearance. “Yes, ma’am. I knew the answer to that question, Mrs. Trimble, but you understand that I had to establish it for the record. No offense intended.” There was a silence. Offense had clearly been taken. Kel looked at Levine for some support, but he simply rocked back in his chair, quietly cracked his knuckles, and smiled back at Kel as if to say,“Cultivate some patience.”
Out of awkwardness as much as curiosity Kel motioned to the graduation photo on the wall. “Is that Mr. Trimble with your son? I can see the resemblance.”
Mrs. Trimble didn’t respond. It was her turn to examine her tea glass; her eyes fogging and misting up with a pain undiminished by forty years. Tears welled up thickly. Finally she answered, and her soft voice cracked. “No, Mr. McKelvey…Carl was at…” She took a stuttering breath. “You see, Mr. Trimble had to…work that day and couldn’t be there for Jimmie Carl.” She lifted her chin and looked at the photograph and then directly into Kel’s eyes. “That’s Big Ray Elmore.”
Chapter 15
Split Tree, Arkansas
THURSDAY, AUGUST18, 2005
“Remind me to take notes next time,” Levine said as he fished his keys out of his pants pocket and began unlocking the car door. Despite Kel’s telling him that they were in the bosom of honesty and that he didn’t need to keep locking the car, the paranoia bred by growing up in New York or from years working for the FBI held too much sway. He opened the door to let the hot air vent. “Yes sir, that was about as slick as I’ve ever seen; the Bureau may have an opening for someone with your satin tongue. Maybe you could negotiate hostage releases.”
Kel glared across the roof of the car. “Tell me, Agent Levine, did you get the snot beat out of you a lot when you were young?”
“Yes sir, that was some masterful shit. How’d you do that again?” he said as he got into the car. He waited for Kel to get in and start fastening his seat belt before continuing. “Let’s see, how’d that work? Walk me through it again, will you, Doc? Step by step. You set her up for thirty minutes talking about your father being Errol Flynn or some shit like that and how she makes tea exactly like your mother, and then, just when she starts to relax her guard—pow—you sucker punch her with the old ‘And by the way, Gracie, is that kid you’ve made your living room into a shrine for really yours?’ Masterful.” He chuckled as he started the car and shot a look at Kel, who was still glaring. “But the best part, oh yeah—thebest part, mind you, was when you told her that her son resembled the friggin’ police chief. Quick Granny, grab the heart pills. Too bad she didn’t have another son, you could have said he looked like the milkman.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you sure are some kinda funny, and oh, by the way, did I thank you for all your help in there?” Kel finally responded, reaching over and aiming the air-conditioning vents at himself and away from Levine. “And I appreciate you not succumbin’ to heat-stroke on her floor. She’ll be boraxin’ your sweat stains out of her furniture doilies for the next two months.”
“No need to thank me, Doc,” Levine continued without a pause, “for a dumb city kid like me, it was a pleasure simply watching a professional like you work.”
“Well, speakin’ of professionals—Fed—where are we headed now? You’re drivin’ like you have somewhere to go. Don’t tell me you’ve finally formulated a plan in that little special agent’s brain of yours?”
“Nope, no plan, really. It’s too early to meet with the chief, but I thought in the meantime you might like a history lesson—you being from around here and everything.”
They drove east out of town and soon left the hardball county road, turning south onto farm roads that led between fields of dry cotton and stunted sorghum. It had been a drought year, and the crops were showing the effects. The roads had long ago powdered and now resembled lanes of light buff-colored talc two inches thick that drove like an inch of wet snow. The plume that roostered behind their car lingered in the still hot air for half an hour after their passing.
Levine finally pulled the car onto what passed for a shoulder and parked it. He said nothing but left the air-conditioning running while he waited for the cloud of dust to settle. Then he opened his door.
“We’re here,” he finally announced.
Kel followed him. It didn’t take much to figure out where they were, but what impressed Kel was how Levine knew where the “here” wa
s. Levine must have been here before to be able to drive right to the spot. Together they stood and slowly took in the vast flatness that is the Mississippi River floodplain. Nothing, or almost nothing. Acres of cracked clay covered with thousands of foot-high crawdad chimneys looking like melted centerpiece candles. A few trees were visible, usually isolated and lonely, and Kel knew from his graduate student days doing archaeology in the region that most of them were associated with houses—past and present. Fifty feet in front of them was a low, second-tier levee, only a few feet in height, running almost due north to south; the main levee was located a couple of miles farther east, and this one was placed as a backup against the hundred-year flood. A football field or so to their right were a half-dozen needy plank-and-pole buildings, probably long abandoned by the general looks of them. In the silence they could hear the cotton growing in the nearby field crackle in the heat like a bowl of cereal.
Levine had been rehearsing his presentation in his head, mindful to not expose his inexperience working homicide cases. It wasn’t that he mistrusted this anthropologist from Hawaii any more than he mistrusted everyone, it was just that the Bureau was hoping he’d step on his dick, and he wasn’t about to have anyone else help him out by unzipping his pants. He looked at Kel long enough to capture his eye and then he looked forward, while seeing into the past. “August fifteenth, 1965, wettest August in anyone’s living memory, Denton Deane, a young man on his way back from town—probably driving too fast the way young men tend to do—bogs his vehicle down in the mud, about a quarter-mile up the road…right about…about there.” Levine pointed to his left, past his own car. “It’s buried up to the axle and not coming out without some help, so he comes walking this way, probably looking for some rocks or something to wedge under his tire. Who knows? Not much luck out here, though, so he keeps walking and looking; no rocks but he does spy something sticking out of that low ridge of dirt—about there.” He looked to the levee, marking another spot with a nod of his head and then following up with an outstretched arm. “Turns out to be the fairly decomposed body of one each Leonidas Stephen Jackson, a-k-a Leon Jackson, of Natchez, Mississippi. Civil rights leader ‘wannabe,’ as you called him last night, who got his wish for notoriety by way of a rather unplanned martyrdom. He’d last been seen two and a half weeks earlier speaking to an assembled—and from all reports somewhat apathetic—group of socially downtrodden at an African Episcopal Methodist church over near the town of West Helena. Autopsy established blunt-force trauma to the head, including what they call a Le Forte fracture, I believe.” He looked at Kel, who nodded his acceptance of the term. “Also some broken ribs, fractured hand bones, some other trauma. It all added up to a terrific beating.”
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