by John Grisham
“It’s not a fun visit, Aunt Lee.”
“Just call me Lee, okay.”
“Okay. I’m going to see Sam tomorrow.”
She carefully placed her glass on the table, then stood and left the patio. She returned with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and poured a generous shot into both glasses. She took a long drink and stared at the river in the distance. “Why?” she finally asked.
“Why not? Because he’s my grandfather. Because he’s about to die. Because I’m a lawyer and he needs help.”
“He doesn’t even know you.”
“He will tomorrow.”
“So you’ll tell him?”
“Yes, of course I’m going to tell him. Can you believe it? I’m actually going to tell a deep, dark, nasty Cayhall secret. What about that?”
Lee held her glass with both hands and slowly shook her head. “He’ll die,” she mumbled without looking at Adam.
“Not yet. But it’s nice to know you’re concerned.”
“I am concerned.”
“Oh really. When did you last see him?”
“Don’t start this, Adam. You don’t understand.”
“Fine. Fair enough. Explain it to me then. I’m listening. I want to understand.”
“Can’t we talk about something else, dear? I’m not ready for this.”
“No.”
“We can talk about this later, I promise. I’m just not ready for it right now. I thought we’d just gossip and laugh for a while.”
“I’m sorry, Lee. I’m sick of gossip and secrets. I have no past because my father conveniently erased it. I want to know about it, Lee. I want to know how bad it really is.”
“It’s awful,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“Okay. I’m a big boy now. I can handle it. My father checked out on me before he had to face it, so I’m afraid there’s no one but you.”
“Give me some time.”
“There is no time. I’ll be face-to-face with him tomorrow.” Adam took a long drink and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Twenty-three years ago, Newsweek said Sam’s father was also a Klansman. Was he?”
“Yes. My grandfather.”
“And several uncles and cousins as well.”
“The whole damned bunch.”
“Newsweek also said that it was common knowledge in Ford County that Sam Cayhall shot and killed a black man in the early fifties, and was never arrested for it. Never served a day in jail. Is this true?”
“Why does it matter now, Adam? That was years before you were born.”
“So it really happened?”
“Yes, it happened.”
“And you knew about it?”
“I saw it.”
“You saw it!” Adam closed his eyes in disbelief. He breathed heavily and sunk lower into the rocker. The horn from a tugboat caught his attention, and he followed it downriver until it passed under a bridge. The bourbon was beginning to soothe.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Lee said softly.
“Even when I was a little kid,” he said, still watching the river, “I loved history. I was fascinated by the way people lived years ago—the pioneers, the wagon trains, the gold rush, cowboys and Indians, the settling of the West. There was a kid in the fourth grade who claimed his great-great-grandfather had robbed trains and buried the money in Mexico. He wanted to form a gang and run away to find the money. We knew he was lying, but it was great fun playing along. I often wondered about my ancestors, and I remember being puzzled because I didn’t seem to have any.”
“What would Eddie say?”
“He told me they were all dead; said more time is wasted on family history than anything else. Every time I asked questions about my family, Mother would pull me aside and tell me to stop because it might upset him and he might go off into one of his dark moods and stay in his bedroom for a month. I spent most of my childhood walking on eggshells around my father. As I grew older, I began to realize he was a very strange man, very unhappy, but I never dreamed he would kill himself.”
She rattled her ice and took the last sip. “There’s a lot to it, Adam.”
“So when will you tell me?”
Lee gently took the pitcher and refilled their glasses. Adam poured bourbon into both. Several minutes passed as they sipped and watched the traffic on Riverside Drive.
“Have you been to death row?” he finally asked, still staring at the lights along the river.
“No,” she said, barely audible.
“He’s been there for almost ten years, and you’ve never gone to see him?”
“I wrote him a letter once, shortly after his last trial. Six months later he wrote me back and told me not to come. Said he didn’t want me to see him on death row. I wrote him two more letters, neither of which he answered.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m carrying a lot of guilt, Adam, and it’s not easy to talk about. Just give me some time.”
“I may be in Memphis for a while.”
“I want you to stay here. We’ll need each other.” She hesitated and stirred the drink with an index finger. “I mean, he is going to die, isn’t he?”
“It’s likely.”
“When?”
“Two or three months. His appeals are virtually exhausted. There’s not much left.”
“Then why are you getting involved?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we have a fighting chance. I’ll work my tail off for the next few months and pray for a miracle.”
“I’ll be praying too,” she said as she took another sip.
“Can we talk about something?” he asked, suddenly looking at her.
“Sure.”
“Do you live here alone? I mean, it’s a fair question if I’m going to be staying here.”
“I live alone. My husband lives in our house in the country.”
“Does he live alone? Just curious.”
“Sometimes. He likes young girls, early twenties, usually employees at his banks. I’m expected to call before I go to the house. And he’s expected to call before he comes here.”
“That’s nice and convenient. Who negotiated that agreement?”
“We just sort of worked it out over time. We haven’t lived together in fifteen years.”
“Some marriage.”
“It works quite well, actually. I take his money, and I ask no questions about his private life. We do the required little social numbers together, and he’s happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Most of the time.”
“If he cheats, why don’t you sue for divorce and clean him out. I’ll represent you.”
“A divorce wouldn’t work. Phelps comes from a very proper, stiff old family of miserably rich people. Old Memphis society. Some of these families have intermarried for decades. In fact, Phelps was expected to marry a fifth cousin, but instead he fell under my charms. His family was viciously opposed to it, and a divorce now would be a painful admission that his family was right. Plus, these people are proud bluebloods, and a nasty divorce would humiliate them. I love the independence of taking his money and living as I choose.”
“Did you ever love him?”
“Of course. We were madly in love when we married. We eloped, by the way. It was 1963, and the idea of a large wedding with his family of aristocrats and my family of rednecks was not appealing. His mother would not speak to me, and my father was burning crosses. At that time, Phelps did not know my father was a Klansman, and of course I desperately wanted to keep it quiet.”
“Did he find out?”
“As soon as Daddy was arrested for the bombing, I told him. He in turn told his father, and the word was spread slowly and carefully through the Booth family. These people are quite proficient at keeping secrets. It’s the only thing they have in common with us Cayhalls.”
“So only a few know you’re Sam’s daughter?”
“Very few. I’d like to keep it that way.
”
“You’re ashamed of—”
“Hell yes I’m ashamed of my father! Who wouldn’t be?” Her words were suddenly sharp and bitter. “I hope you don’t have some romanticized image of this poor old man suffering on death row, about to be unjustly crucified for his sins.”
“I don’t think he should die.”
“Neither do I. But he’s damned sure killed enough people—the Kramer twins, their father, your father, and God knows who else. He should stay in prison for the rest of his life.”
“You have no sympathy for him?”
“Occasionally. If I’m having a good day and the sun is shining, then I might think of him and remember a small pleasant event from my childhood. But those moments are very rare, Adam. He has caused much misery in my life and in the lives of those around him. He taught us to hate everybody. He was mean to our mother. His whole damned family is mean.”
“So let’s just kill him then.”
“I didn’t say that, Adam, and you’re being unfair. I think about him all the time. I pray for him every day. I’ve asked these walls a million times why and how my father became such a horrible person. Why can’t he be some nice old man right now sitting on the front porch with a pipe and a cane, maybe a little bourbon in a glass, for his stomach, of course? Why did my father have to be a Klansman who killed innocent children and ruined his own family?”
“Maybe he didn’t intend to kill them.”
“They’re dead, aren’t they? The jury said he did it. They were blown to bits and buried side by side in the same neat little grave. Who cares if he intended to kill them? He was there, Adam.”
“It could be very important.”
Lee jumped to her feet and grabbed his hand. “Come here,” she insisted. They stepped a few feet to the edge of the patio. She pointed to the Memphis skyline several blocks away. “You see that flat building facing the river there. The nearest to us. Just over there, three or four blocks away.”
“Yes,” he answered slowly.
“The top floor is the fifteenth, okay. Now, from the right, count down six levels. Do you follow?”
“Yes,” Adam nodded and counted obediently. The building was a showy high-rise.
“Now, count four windows to the left. There’s a light on. Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Guess who lives there.”
“How would I know?”
“Ruth Kramer.”
“Ruth Kramer! The mother?”
“That’s her.”
“Do you know her?”
“We met once, by accident. She knew I was Lee Booth, wife of the infamous Phelps Booth, but that was all. It was a glitzy fundraiser for the ballet or something. I’ve always avoided her if possible.”
“This must be a small town.”
“It can be tiny. If you could ask her about Sam, what would she say?”
Adam stared at the lights in the distance. “I don’t know. I’ve read that she’s still bitter.”
“Bitter? She lost her entire family. She’s never remarried. Do you think she cares if my father intended to kill her children? Of course not. She just knows they’re dead, Adam, dead for twenty-three years now. She knows they were killed by a bomb planted by my father, and if he’d been home with his family instead of riding around at night with his idiot buddies, little Josh and John would not be dead. They instead would be twenty-eight years old, probably very well educated and married with perhaps a baby or two for Ruth and Marvin to play with. She doesn’t care who the bomb was intended for, Adam, only that it was placed there and it exploded. Her babies are dead. That’s all that matters.”
Lee stepped backward and sat in her rocker. She rattled her ice again and took a drink. “Don’t get me wrong, Adam. I’m opposed to the death penalty. I’m probably the only fifty-year-old white woman in the country whose father is on death row. It’s barbaric, immoral, discriminatory, cruel, uncivilized—I subscribe to all the above. But don’t forget the victims, okay. They have the right to want retribution. They’ve earned it.”
“Does Ruth Kramer want retribution?”
“By all accounts, yes. She doesn’t say much to the press anymore, but she’s active with victims groups. Years ago she was quoted as saying she would be in the witness room when Sam Cayhall was executed.”
“Not exactly a forgiving spirit.”
“I don’t recall my father asking for forgiveness.”
Adam turned and sat on the ledge with his back to the river. He glanced at the buildings downtown, then studied his feet. Lee took another long drink.
“Well, Aunt Lee, what are we going to do?”
“Please drop the Aunt.”
“Okay, Lee. I’m here. I’m not leaving. I’ll visit Sam tomorrow, and when I leave I intend to be his lawyer.”
“Do you intend to keep it quiet?”
“The fact that I’m really a Cayhall? I don’t plan to tell anyone, but I’ll be surprised if it’s a secret much longer. When it comes to death row inmates, Sam’s a famous one. The press will start some serious digging pretty soon.”
Lee folded her feet under her and stared at the river. “Will it harm you?” she asked softly.
“Of course not. I’m a lawyer. Lawyers defend child molesters and assassins and drug dealers and rapists and terrorists. We are not popular people. How can I be harmed by the fact that he’s my grandfather?”
“Your firm knows?”
“I told them yesterday. They were not exactly delighted, but they came around. I hid it from them, actually, when they hired me, and I was wrong to do so. But I think things are okay.”
“What if he says no?”
“Then we’ll be safe, won’t we? No one will ever know, and you’ll be protected. I’ll go back to Chicago and wait for CNN to cover the carnival of the execution. And I’m sure I’ll drive down one cool day in the fall and put some flowers on his grave, probably look at the tombstone and ask myself again why he did it and how he became such a lowlife and why was I born into such a wretched family, you know, the questions we’ve been asking for many years. I’ll invite you to come with me. It’ll be sort of a little family reunion, you know, just us Cayhalls slithering through the cemetery with a cheap bouquet of flowers and thick sunglasses so no one will discover us.”
“Stop it,” she said, and Adam saw the tears. They were flowing and were almost to her chin when she wiped them with her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he said, then turned to watch another barge inch north through the shadows of the river. “I’m sorry, Lee.”
Eight
So after twenty-three years, he was finally returning to the state of his birth. He didn’t particularly feel welcome, and though he wasn’t particularly afraid of anything he drove a cautious fifty-five and refused to pass anyone. The road narrowed and sunk onto the flat plain of the Mississippi Delta, and for a mile Adam watched as a levee snaked its way to the right and finally disappeared. He eased through the hamlet of Walls, the first town of any size along 61, and followed the traffic south.
Through his considerable research, he knew that this highway had for decades served as the principal conduit for hundreds of thousands of poor Delta blacks journeying north to Memphis and St. Louis and Chicago and Detroit, places where they sought jobs and decent housing. It was in these towns and farms, these ramshackle shotgun houses and dusty country stores and colorful juke joints along Highway 61 where the blues was born and spread northward. The music found a home in Memphis where it was blended with gospel and country, and together they spawned rock and roll. He listened to an old Muddy Waters cassette as he entered the infamous county of Tunica, said to be the poorest in the nation.
The music did little to calm him. He had refused breakfast at Lee’s, said he wasn’t hungry but in fact had a knot in his stomach. The knot grew with each mile.
Just north of the town of Tunica, the fields grew vast and ran to the horizon in all directions. The soybeans and cotton were knee high. A
small army of green and red tractors with plows behind them crisscrossed the endless neat rows of leafy foliage. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, the weather was already hot and sticky. The ground was dry, and clouds of dust smoldered behind each plow. An occasional crop duster dropped from nowhere and acrobatically skimmed the tops of the fields, then soared upward. Traffic was heavy and slow, and sometimes forced almost to a standstill as a monstrous John Deere of some variety inched along as if the highway were deserted.
Adam was patient. He was not expected until ten, and it wouldn’t matter if he arrived late.
At Clarksdale, he left Highway 61 and headed southeast on 49, through the tiny settlements of Mattson and Dublin and Tutwiler, through more soybean fields. He passed cotton gins, now idle but waiting for the harvest. He passed clusters of impoverished row houses and dirty mobile homes, all for some reason situated close to the highway. He passed an occasional fine home, always at a distance, always sitting majestically under heavy oaks and elms, and usually with a fenced swimming pool to one side. There was no doubt who owned these fields.
A road sign declared the state penitentiary to be five miles ahead, and Adam instinctively slowed his car. A moment later, he ran up on a large tractor puttering casually down the road, and instead of passing he chose to follow. The operator, an old white man with a dirty cap, motioned for him to come around. Adam waved, and stayed behind the plow at twenty miles per hour. There was no other traffic in sight. A random dirt clod flung from a rear tractor tire, and landed just inches in front of the Saab. He slowed a bit more. The operator twisted in his seat, and again waved for Adam to come around. His mouth moved and his face was angry, as if this were his highway and he didn’t appreciate idiots following his tractor. Adam smiled and waved again, but stayed behind him.
Minutes later, he saw the prison. There were no tall chain-link fences along the road. There were no lines of glistening razor wire to prevent escape. There were no watchtowers with armed guards. There were no gangs of inmates howling at the passersby. Instead, Adam saw an entrance to the right and the words MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY spanning from an arch above it. Next to the entrance were several buildings, all facing the highway and apparently unguarded.
