“Well, Morris and Reece, you’re welcome to come by in an hour. ’Til then I can’t help you, even if I wanted to. There are laws.”
“We know about laws,” Morris said, calmly removing a gun from what must have been a holster hidden by that long shirt. “And we know about the breaking of ’em.”
She froze. The pistol that was on her person during business hours was tucked into one of the kitchen drawers.
“Boys, I ain’t got much money at the moment. I do my banking each morning at ten on the dot, so you’re too late.”
“We ain’t here for money.” Reece spoke for the first time. “We’re here for our other brother, the one you killed.”
She realized she hadn’t been nervous enough, because now she was nervous.
Her throat seemed to constrict on her, all the spit gone. It seemed insane that despite all her successful brushes with danger by the darkness of evening, of all the bizarre things she’d seen and endured between the hours of, say, eleven at night to two in the morning, that the fated arrival of the Grim Reaper would come on a brilliantly sunny October morning like this, and her with a goddamned broom in her hand.
“Look, boys, I am sorry about your brother. I took no pleasure in that. But he was beating a man to death with his bare hands, and on my property besides.”
Both men walked toward her. Reece sank one of his enormous hands into his overalls and then brandished a gun of his own.
Somewhere nearby a woodpecker was getting out its frustrations.
“We’d like to hear all about it,” Morris said. “Lean that broom down on the floor real slow.”
She obeyed, and when she’d finished they were standing on the porch, the floorboards groaning beneath their impressive weight. They had seemed large from the distance, but this close it was almost absurd. Their guns were entirely unnecessary. Never before had firearms looked so unthreatening in strangers’ possession, petite in their enormous hands. She was accustomed to being in the presence of all manner of rough men, but these two with their massiveness and dead stares and the full thrust of vengeance behind them left her feeling cold in a way she hadn’t before.
“Tell us what happened,” Morris said. Both of their guns were pointed at the porch floor, as if they were nothing more than metallic fingers.
The Irons brothers had no doubt made note of the fact that only her car was in the yard when they’d arrived. What they hadn’t realized was that her Negro cook came on foot each day. Diller was a simple man of about forty who also, she knew, had a gun on him most times on account of that long walk he had to take each night, in a county with far more whites than Negroes. From the porch she and her unwanted guests would have been plainly visible to anyone in the dining room, but the kitchen was on the other side of a wall. There was a small gap in that wall for orders to be placed, and she hoped Diller would glance through it before one of the Irons boys caught a glimpse of him.
“It was late,” she said, “and pretty quiet. Letcher had just left and I happened to look out the window, and because it was dark out and with that distance I probably shouldn’t have been able to see anything, but those robes being so white I could just make them out, and then I realized, well I’ll be, there’s a Klan beat-down happening on my lawn and ain’t nobody asked me for permission.”
She wasn’t one to talk so long without a period in the middle of it but she wasn’t herself in their presence. Morris stared at her, as if convinced she was lying and determined to spot the exact location where her story diverged from truth. Reece, meanwhile, continued his gnomic way of gazing out at the oak, and beneath the porch banister, and under the two rocking chairs, like some idiot savant detective who can detect a previously overlooked clue so many days later.
“Klan beat-down?” Morris asked. “He was wearing a robe?”
“Yeah, him and two others. They were behind him, and they had guns.”
The two remaining Irons brothers looked at each other. Tense felt nausea pulling at her insides like a trapdoor.
Morris said, “We ain’t heard nothing about the Klan being involved. Not at the funeral, not from the police.”
“Well, the police wouldn’t want to talk about that.”
“Tell me about this sheriff of yours. He covering something up for the Klan?”
“I don’t have any idea. All I know is they were in Klan robes clear as day, yet you’re telling me you didn’t know about that. If I was the police in charge, then I’d be telling the family of the victim all I knew.”
“What a nice sheriff you’d be.”
“Sheriff part of the Klan?” Reece spoke.
“Course he is.”
“Why would the Klan go after this Letcher fellow? He got a nigger girlfriend?”
“Hell no.”
“Catholic? Jew? Red? He in a labor union or some such?”
“He’s a banker. I never heard of the Klan beating on bankers. Usually it’s bankers in the Klan, but things are getting all backwards these days.”
The sound of a truck. Both men looked down the drive, and it occurred to her that this would have been her one moment to run. But they’d gun her down in a second, and the thought of trying instead to knock one of their guns away was comical, big as those hands were.
The sound receded, yet it reminded the Irons brothers that they were out in the open.
“Let’s go inside,” Morris said, motioning to the door. She opened it, the brothers following.
Inside, the smell of onions thickened and even from here they could hear the chopping.
“Who’s back there?” Morris asked her, voice hushed.
She could have lied, but she feared the repercussions. Hoping she wasn’t condemning him, she said, “My cook, Diller.”
Morris raised his hand and pressed the barrel of the pistol into her left temple. She could smell the oil he must have used to clean the gun that very morning.
“Call him out here real natural like.”
She tried to swallow but there was no spit to go down. “Hey, Diller?” Hating herself for the betrayal. Hoping he might hear the terror in her voice and reach for his gun, or the one she’d stashed in a kitchen drawer. “Gimme a hand moving this table, would you?”
“Sho’ thing.”
A moment later the kitchen door swung open, and Diller had barely made it a step when Reece pistol-whipped him. Tense only realized she’d gasped when Morris told her to shut the hell up. Diller was a heap on the ground, motionless. Morris told his brother to drag him into the kitchen, then he pushed Tense forward so they could follow.
The kitchen door swung behind them and she felt even more in danger now. As if being on the porch on a beautiful day was too wrong a way to die, but here, in a dingy and greasy kitchen deprived of windows or ventilation, now here was a fitting place to be murdered.
The drawer in which she’d stashed her pistol was blocked from reach by Morris. But the stove, still on, was topped by a large cast-iron skillet, the onions almost translucent. A pot of lard nearby simmered. Both could be weapons. As could the many knives lying about, and the cleaver that smelled of garlic, not more than two feet from her grasp. She tried not to let her eyes dart toward them, yet a grin streaked Morris’s face, as though entertained by his prey’s delusions.
Reece dragged Diller by his armpits and dropped him by the back door. Diller stirred and groaned just enough to betray consciousness. Blood ran in a steady stream from his left eyebrow.
“Our brother got himself a whole trophy chest full of hardware from the US military,” Morris announced. “He was at Midway and Guadalcanal and half a dozen places a bitch like you never heard of. Shit they didn’t see fit to put in newspapers. I was in the Philippines and Reece here helped take Normandy. We done shot up a whole mess of folks and if you think adding some crone to the list gives us pause, you’d best think again.”
“I didn’t want to kill him.” She was almost whispering. “I only meant to scare him off.”
“By aiming
at his head?”
She didn’t have time to explain to him that, if she’d wasted time with warning shots in the past, plenty of drunk bastards would have done plenty of damage in her bar. “I just . . . He was about to kill that man.”
“Someone is going to die for what happened. Right now it’s looking to be you. Unless you want to point the finger at someone more deserving.”
Confusing her, he placed his gun back in his holster, then carefully lifted the pot of lard and poured some of its contents into the skillet. The sound of the sizzling onions intensified and a brief cloud of smoke rose around them.
Then he grabbed her by the hair. With one hand he pinned her head to the countertop, inches away from the stove. She had very long hair, cutting it only twice a year and typically keeping it in a bun, but today she had let it down.
With his other hand he gathered up the length of her hair and placed the ends into the skillet.
“Oh Jesus,” she whispered, though only the countertop could have heard her over the sound of the hair crackling. He was frying her hair. He’d pinned her head facing away from the skillet, and she could feel the weight of that hand and nothing else. Within seconds she could smell her hair burning.
“Why the hell was our brother out here miles from home to beat on some banker? Answer me that.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” She lost control of her bladder.
“They had some row between them?”
“I don’t know!”
“That banker do something to our brother? He have it coming to him?”
“I swear I don’t know!”
“Who were the other Klansmen?”
In the warped reflection of a pot she saw him reach with his free hand for a ladle, then dip it into the lard and pour it behind her somewhere she couldn’t see. On her hair, she realized. The acrid stench of burned hair grew thicker and it crackled and hissed on the stove.
“Hey, Reece, whaddya think’d happen if I poured some whiskey over her head? I bet it’d drip down like a trail of kerosene.”
“Only one way to find out,” the other big man said, reaching into his pocket and tossing a flask to his brother.
“I don’t know what to tell you!” she screamed. “I don’t know what you want!”
“I want to know who we should be paying back if not you! That’s what!”
He tugged at her hair again and she could feel the back of her head coming closer to the skillet, could feel the heat in the air and in an instant she knew she’d feel it so much more. She could see Diller watching in horror, and, to her surprise, he spoke: “Those same men beat on my cousin that night.”
“What?” Morris jerked at her hair again, this time farther from the skillet.
“The hell you just say?” Reece asked him.
“That same night. Two other fellas in robes beat up my cousin, not more’n two miles from here. No reason at all. Just drove into the yard where he’d been gatherin’ firewood and started clocking him. He blind in one eye now.”
“I don’t give a goddamn about your cousin,” Reece said.
“Said they were doing it ’cause they didn’t want to beat on no white man like Dale told them to.”
“Who?” Morris asked. He released her hair and she slid to the ground. Strands cascaded every which way, the ends burned to a crisp and still smoking. They felt hot on her skin and on her shoulders through her clothes and she had to reach out to hold the mass of it by the parts that weren’t afire, trying to keep it from igniting.
“I don’t know,” Diller answered. “Just what my cousin said. Said they been drinking and were telling jokes about how some fella Dale wanted them to beat up a white man. He didn’t know what it meant.”
“Who the hell is Dale?” Morris asked her.
She tried to think. She’d known so many men who came here to drown their sorrows, plenty of Donnys and a Danny and countless Davids, but no Dale.
“I don’t know,” said her broken voice, sounding nothing like herself. She was squatting there in her own filth and her hair smelled of burned onions and worse things and she felt so befouled and destroyed but all she wanted to do was live through this moment.
“Those white men who beat up my cousin,” Diller said. “They left a dog tag behind.”
“What?” both brothers asked in unison.
“My cousin saw it there next day. Chain musta broke off when they were beating him. Got one of their names on it.”
The brothers regarded each other. They may have passed each other secret looks, but she couldn’t see them all that clearly what with the hair in her face and the way she was panting and the tears in her eyes.
“She dies, the first person they’ll come looking for is us.”
“And they know we’re in the state.”
“Another time, then.”
Morris crouched before her. “You look as low as we could’ve brung you right now. Remember that feeling. Because it ain’t the lowest. We will bring you quite a bit lower if you say word one about this to anyone. Got that?”
She told them that she got that. Then Reece picked Diller up by the arms and the three of them exited through the back door. She wondered if she would ever again see her Negro cook of seven years, but at that moment all she cared about was that she was alive and they were gone.
Unsteadily she rose to her feet and removed her pistol from the drawer. She’d never again sweep her porch without it on her person. And if she laid eyes on those giants once more, she would send them straight to their brother.
26
“RECORDS,” SAID ONE of the voices Lucius didn’t want to hear.
“This is Officer Boggs. I need a file pulled, please.”
“Boy, I ain’t your errand girl.” She hung up.
Because the Butler Street officers didn’t have access to headquarters or its Records Department, they needed to call when they needed a file. More often than not, they were ignored or denied. Today’s particular refusal was relatively mild, thanks to the lack of cuss words.
Boggs was at the Y early, trying to do some research. His next recourse would be to put his request in writing, via McInnis, their liaison to headquarters. But the sergeant did not enjoy the fact that his job duties included delivering mail and other paperwork for his subordinates. And did Boggs really want to put this request in writing?
He wanted to know everything about Julie’s ex-boyfriend. Clearly she was scared. Even if Jeremiah didn’t have a history of violence, five years of state prison and work camps were enough to make most men develop a predilection for it.
Dewey had spoken to Boggs last night, asking if he was okay and was there anything anyone could do. We didn’t tell anyone, Dewey had said. We made the arrest and filed the report, and we mentioned he said he was the father, but we didn’t say nothing about her being your fiancée. Boggs thanked him, embarrassed that his newfound family dysfunction was known to anyone else.
He was a mess. He was so much a mess that he couldn’t figure out where the mess ended or started, didn’t know what thread to grab and pull first. The heartache and confusion over Julie lying to him again, the sudden limbo that their entire relationship had been thrust into, his own role as Sage’s replacement father suddenly in question. It was as though Lucius had known who he was—a fiancé, a soon-to-be father—but now he was neither. He didn’t know what was left.
Could he even consider marrying her anymore? He wanted to tell Smith about his dilemma—Tommy had probably experienced every conceivable woman-related predicament, so surely he had some insight—but he felt too ashamed. What did this say about him, that he could be fooled like this? What judge of character was he, and how decent a cop could he be if his own woman could deceive him?
Shame overwhelmed him. And anger, anger at Julie and at himself for being so stupid. What was her next secret? How had he steered himself into this disaster, and how could he get himself out?
Earlier that day, Boggs had tried to hide his despair
when he sat down to lunch with his older brother. He didn’t dare tell Reginald about Julie’s lies. The diner, around the corner from Reginald’s office at Atlanta Life Insurance Company, had been buzzing with activity, men in suits loosening their belts as they dined over barbecue sandwiches or pigs’ feet and collards. Lucius had been one of the only patrons not wearing a tie.
“Just tell me you aren’t marrying her out of some sense of honor,” Reginald said.
“What does that mean?”
“I swear, it amazes me you didn’t follow the old man up to the pulpit,” Reginald said. “It’s all about duty to you, right? You see a poor woman and a little boy without a father and now you feel like you’ve been called to do something about it.”
“It’s not that simple.” Yet he hated how close to the mark his brother’s arrows landed.
“But it’s part of the story, isn’t it? You like being the savior to her. The knight in shining armor. Saving her from that rundown street with the crazy neighbors and her job slaving over white folks.”
“I don’t—wait, how do you know where she lives?”
“I wrote out half the policies on that block—not that those folks have many. Which is my point.”
“What’s your point, that she’s poor?”
“My point is, you like her because she’s poor.”
Lucius felt his ire rise. “First of all, I don’t like her. I love her. Which you seem to be overlooking here, but I see it as a fairly crucial point. Second of all, I’m not marrying her to save her. If she didn’t have that little boy, I would have proposed sooner, a lot sooner. But he deserves a father. What I’m about to do isn’t easy, Reginald.”
“You’ve always liked things the hard way, brother. But why’s it have to be you? Some other man did that. Some other man walked out. It’s not your debt to pay.”
He slammed the table. “She’s not a debt, dammit. Maybe you can’t see love for what it is, you been with Florence so long, her ‘loving’ you for all those minks and jewels you put her in, you wondering whether she’d still love you if you got laid off one day.”
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