by Lila Beckham
“I thought you said her brother and sister?”
“Yes, you can’t tell by the clothing - one is a boy, the other a girl.”
“Oh… I see,” he said slowly, although he could not tell much difference between them; they both wore dresses.
“Boys younger than school age often wore dresses back in those days,” Vivian said. “Look at their hair - his is just a little shorter,” she turned the page. On the next page was a picture of two girls, both about twelve. One was the older girl from the first picture and the other was a blonde-headed girl.
“Is this you and Annaleigh?” Joshua asked. He could not bring himself to call the young girl in the picture his mother.
“Yes, it is. They took that picture the same day as the others. The orphanage took these photos to show to couples seeking to adopt. At least they tried to get us adopted. The sisters that ran the orphanage were leery of letting girls our age be adopted though. Mostly they taught us how to cook and clean, and gave us a good education. About the only time a girl our age was adopted was when widows or spinsters wanted to adopt someone to help them out around the house.
By the time she and I were sixteen, we were both working at the courthouse; the orphanage was only a short walks distance.” Vivian turned to the next page. On this page, the two teenage girls were standing in front of the courthouse; they wore mid-calf length skirts and knit sweaters. Their hair was bobbed short and he could tell they were older.
“This was taken about 1921,” Vivian smiled. “It was the first day of our new jobs as stenographers; we were so proud of ourselves. Anna kept a journal with all her family’s information in it, such as her parent’s names and that of their parents. She thought if she worked at the courthouse that eventually she could get a look at the adoption records of her brother and sister. That would not be the case. She met your father when he came home from fighting in the war. He had come to the courthouse to document his return and register his honorable discharge from the army.
He struck up a conversation with her at the vendor’s cart outside.” Vivian smiled again. “Your mother was instantly infatuated. Who could blame her? Your father was a handsome man; he was tall, charming. You resemble him somewhat, but you look more like your mother; your mother was a beautiful woman… do you remember much about your mother, Sheriff?” Vivian asked as she turned the page.
“No, I don’t, just flashes, mostly. You said they met at the courthouse. My grandmother told me they met at a high school football game,” Joshua said as he gazed down at the next picture.
“The first date they actually went on was to a football game,” Vivian smiled.
The next picture was of a bride and groom standing on the courthouse steps. He recognized his father immediately. He bent down to get a closer look at his mother’s face. In his mind, he began to put the face in the picture together with his memories. He reached down and touched it, stroking his finger the length of his mother’s body.
“So, she quit looking for her brother and sister after she married my father?”
“Just for a bit; would you like for me to take it out?” Vivian asked, jarring him from his concentration of the photograph.
“No,” he replied quickly. “I was just… you said after a bit.”
“Yes, after you were born and while you were a child, she again tried to find them. She even hired a lawyer to try finding them.” Vivian turned to the next page. This picture was of his mother, Vivian, and an old black woman with a rag tied around her head! Joshua immediately recognized the old woman from his dreams. “Who is that?” he asked, pointing at the old woman.
“That was my Mattie LaRue, she was my… a— I inherited her when I married my husband. She had been a part of his family since her birth. Her parents were slaves of my husband’s grandparents. She was free to go wherever she wanted, but she had always chosen to stay with the family. She was our cook; she was also a mystic. Mattie had a gift. She told our fortunes by reading our palms and she could read tealeaves. Your mother and I got her to do so quite often.”
“I’ve seen her in my memories,” Joshua said. “I was sitting in there in the chair watching y’all through an opening in the curtains. In those visions, I see her swirl a teacup, stare into it a moment and then she takes my mothers hands, but I never see my mother’s face. Then, the old woman - Mattie, she stares at me through the opening; her eyes are always so intense. I wondered what she was thinking.” Vivian turned another page; on it was a picture of his mother and the old woman, Mattie. A young boy sat in his mother’s lap. “Is that me?” Joshua asked, staring into the face of his mother.
It was as if a floodgate opened and gallons of memories come pouring out, memories of her patting the couch for him to come and sit beside her. She talked to him about the boy who had been saying bad things about her, saying she was a McIntosh Cajun and not an Indian. He could feel those feelings as if they had just happened, and this time he could see her face and hear her voice unlike the other times when he had only seen her hands folded in her lap. Joshua’s heart ached.
“You said that Annaleigh hired a lawyer to help her find her family; would you happen to know his name and if she ever learned their whereabouts?”
“Yes, it was my husband, John Xavier Bradley and no, they never found them.”
“Earlier, you said that you never believed that she just ran off like my father said she did, but how can you be so sure?” Joshua wanted her to go into more detail, to tell him why she felt such a way.
“I feel as though I am being grilled by a policeman, as if I were a common criminal. But, that is what you do isn’t it…” Vivian said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bradley. I did not mean to offend you, but as you can imagine, I have wondered what happened to my mother for nearly forty years, and you are as close as I have ever come to obtaining any information whatsoever; I don’t mean to be harsh.” Vivian smiled weakly and took another draw of her cigarette before she spoke.
“After your father bought the general store out there in Wilmer, your mom did not get to come over as often as when y’all lived a couple of blocks away. When she did come, we talked the entire time. She had told Mattie and me that she had been working at the store with your dad. At the time, he could not afford to pay for more employees. She would run the cash register and straighten up.
Anna said that she usually left the store at six to go home and cook supper, your father stayed until closing, which was eight o’clock. She walked the short distance from the shop to home by herself most of the time because you wanted to stay there with your father and come home when he did.
Anna told me that a young man had begun hanging around the store and then he wanted to walk her home - he claimed it was for her safety. She did not trust this young man at first, she said there was something creepy about him; however, your father assured her that he was ‘okay.’ He said that the boy’s father had been coming to that store for years.” Joshua was thinking back, trying to remember walking home with his mom.
“This young man worked for L. B. Price Mercantile like his father did - you know those traveling salesmen. We use to have one that came here twice a month. He came regular as clockwork. Do you remember when they use to ride all over the place in station wagons and stop at people’s houses to sell those wares? The one that came here had all sorts of stuff for sale - blankets, curtains, tablecloths, towels, even kitchen wares… anyhow, sometimes your mother had you with her on her walks home for the store. This traveling salesman, he would leave his car parked at the store and tag along, he even tried to befriend you. Your mother did not like it very much at all. Then he joined her church and she felt better about him, but she was glad when your father finally hired someone to work the register and she could stay home.
She thought that would be the end of it, however, she said the salesman began coming to her house instead of the store. She said he began coming about mid-morning every other week. At first, he came on Wednesdays, so she be
gan leaving those mornings so she would not be there and have to see him. She thought he would get the message and quit coming, but he would come back the next morning when she was not expecting him. Then he began showing up on a random morning so that she never knew what day of the week he was going to come. She was a nervous wreck the last time I saw her… I told your father all of this about a year after your mother disappeared.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell him of this?” Joshua wondered aloud.
“I tried, honestly I did; however, he refused to speak with me right after she disappeared. I think he thought I helped her to run away or something. I reported what Anna had told Mattie and me to my husband, and to the chief of police.
The police did not pay much attention to what I told them though. They all assumed that Anna had run away with this young man because he disappeared too! I even told them what Mattie had seen when she read the tealeaves and your mother’s palm. Of course, the police really frowned upon that. They said that Mattie was just an old soothsayer and folks that believed in all of that stuff were just plain gullible.”
“What did she see?” Joshua asked quickly.
Vivian hesitated, smoothing her skirt and then she asked Joshua if she could have one of his cigarettes. He handed her one, lit it for her, and then lit one for himself.
“Mattie saw danger surrounding Anna. She broke down, grabbed Anna’s hands, and told her she must avoid this man. Anna thought she was talking about the young salesman, however, Mattie said ‘the Elder is the Cock of the Roost.’”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Joshua asked, quickly trying to figure it out in his own mind. Who was the Cock of the Roost?
9
The Cock of the Roost
“We asked Mattie to elaborate on her vision,” Vivian said, “However, she became all flustered over what she saw when she took your mother’s hands. She stared through the curtain at you, said ‘poor child’, and then became still and quiet. She was squeezing Anna’s hands very tightly and Anna tried to pull away. We thought Mattie was going into a trance of some sort.” Vivian took a long draw off the cigarette. Joshua waited for her to speak again, although it was hard for him not to question her.
He wondered why no one had ever followed up on her telling them about the young salesman stalking his mother; that was what it was, stalking. Neither his father nor the police had followed up on it that he knew of, because he had checked the records for the year she disappeared when he first became a cop.
His mother’s disappearance was why he had joined the police force in the first place; much like her wanting to work at the courthouse hoping to find records of her brother and sister. If his mother did keep a journal, maybe she wrote that man’s name in it. Maybe she wrote her feelings in it. Maybe it contained what he needed to find out what had happened to her. Maybe it was stored with the rest of her belongings!
Joshua realized that he was still staring at the picture in the photo album and that Vivian remained quiet. She had remained quite so long that Joshua looked up from the photo album and asked again, what was it that Mattie had seen when she looked at his mother’s palms. Vivian was rigid and white as a sheet. At first, he thought she was in some sort of trance, but suddenly she moved and snubbed her cigarette butt in the ashtray. Then she asked if she could have another one. She said that it was too early in the day to have a glass of wine. Vivian said that she had been quit smoking for thirty years, but now felt she needed one. Joshua obliged, and then waited until she had taken a long draw.
“My sweet Mattie wasn’t going into a trance, Sheriff, she was having a stroke. Whatever she saw that day, she was never able to tell us. I know that whatever it was it haunted her. After the stroke, she tried to talk. Many times, she tried to write something too, but it was just chicken scratch on paper. Mattie died two weeks later. Anna and I tried to figure it out but never could. Anna said that there had not been any older men bothering her or watching her that she knew of. She had not had to work at the store with your father for several months, therefore had not encountered any new people.
The only places she went were here to my house, to the TG&Y, maybe to your school, and of course to church. When y’all moved out there, she had started going to that little holiness church there in Semmes. She said it gave her comfort knowing that Jesus watched over her. However, very briefly, Anna did wonder if maybe Mattie was talking about one of the men that attended the church, but she did not believe that it could be any of them.” Vivian became quiet and Joshua spoke what was on his mind.
“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed,” he recited a verse his mother had told him after the event at school when Jimmy James had called her a ‘McIntosh Cajun.’
Vivian looked at him with tears in her eyes; however, Joshua was not looking at her. He had not taken his eyes from the album since he gave her the cigarette. Then he said, “If Mattie said the elder was the cock of the roost, she was probably referring to the salesman’s father; he was also a traveling salesman, right? I can tell you right now that the nut does not fall far from the tree. If the younger man was a stalker…” Joshua’s voice dropped off as if he was thinking.
“Did Annaleigh ever tell you what this man’s name was? Did she write it in the journal?” Joshua questioned, hoping his mother had told Vivian. His mother would have known that man’s name if he and his father both frequented the area and the store.
“Yes she did. She told me his name was Dickson or maybe Dixon with an x.”
The name was like a slap in the face to Joshua. It had not dawned on him to check different spellings of the surname when he checked the files looking for information on the father of the Dixon brothers; he supposedly hung himself in the attic of the old funeral home in Citronelle. Joshua determined that he needed to make a trip to Citronelle as soon as he got the chance to do so and look through some of the local records.
“What is it, Sheriff? You look as though you have seen a ghost.”
“I have, sort of,” Joshua replied. If his suppositions were right, the murdering gene the Dixon’s carried, could go back further that just two generations.
“I need to go now. I have enough information to get me started into a more thorough investigation,” he said, still looking down at the album that was open to the picture of him, his mother, and Mattie. “Do you mind if I borrow this album for a bit. I’d like to get copies made of these photographs.”
“No, honey, I don’t mind; just please bring it back. It is all I have left of your mother and Mattie. When I look through these pictures, it is almost as if they are sitting beside me. I’m getting up in age and likely not to be around too many more years.”
Joshua looked Vivian in the eye. She was probably close to seventy; she was still a handsome woman. He smiled at her and told her that of course he would bring it back and that he would guard it with his life. He thanked her for all the information she had given him and then he walked back through the kitchen toward the front door. When he stepped into the kitchen, he saw Georgia sitting at the table peeling potatoes.
“Be careful mister police man. You know not what you find when you open doors that have been closed a long time,” Georgia spoke without looking up from the table.
“Georgia!” Vivian exclaimed from behind him. “You hush that now. Don’t go trying to frighten people.” Joshua stopped and stared at Georgia a moment.
“Do you have the gift of sight too?” he asked.
“Don’t pay her any attention, Sheriff, she just wa-” Vivian began, but was cut off.
“No’am, I not, I speak only the truth of what I see,” Georgia replied, still not taking her eyes from the table.
“Georgia is a granddaughter of my Mattie,” Vivian explained. “You and Georgia use to play together when you were children.” Both Georgia and Joshua’s eyes went to Vivian and then each other. Neither of them remembered playing together. Joshua tipped
his hat and continued toward the front door. He walked the two blocks back to his patrol car and got in, laying the photo album on the seat beside him. He placed his hand over it protectively. Flashes of memory sparked in short bursts of a picnic at the park. He had no sooner sat down when a car pulled up beside him; it was Deputy Cook.
“Where the heck have you been, Sheriff? We’ve been looking for you for over an hour.” Joshua did not feel that it was anyone’s business where he had been, however he did respond to his deputies question, but with a question of his own.
“Why have y’all been looking for me?” he asked.
“We think we caught that Mexican that killed the Vice’s and that nig-colored woman down in Theodore. The patrolman in Bayou La Batre picked him up after he stole a suit of clothes off a clothesline. A woman seen him taking the clothes and called in a description of him and her husband’s clothes that he took. They are holding him down there until you send someone to transport him to the county jail. You know they don’t have but the one patrolman down there, he can’t leave ‘em unprotected.”
“Well, what are you waiting on, you and Davis go get him.”
“Yes, Sir” Cook exclaimed, grabbing his microphone and radioing Ida Mae to tell her to get a hold of Davis for him. Joshua hoped it was the right Mexican they held and that he could get rid of the burden that was weighing heavy because of that man.
After the way he felt seeing the Vices’ and the old Negro woman murdered like they was, he did not trust himself to transport their killer. Someone that preyed on the old and infirmed did not deserve to be treated with a gentle hand. He would just as soon shoot him as to look at him and he still might if the urge came over him to do so.
Joshua lit a cigarette, and then drove through the tunnel to the Causeway. It was the only crossing into Baldwin County other than by boat or ferry; at least without having to go fifty miles out of the way.
