Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  The old lady nods soberly. “Then you’ve seen him.”

  “Who?”

  “Him. The serpent of old.”

  We share another uncomfortable glance. “If there is a devil,” Serenity says, “I’ve seen him all right. In every country in the world.”

  The Cat Lady nods. “He can move anywhere, child, anytime. But at least I know I won’t be putting something in your mind that it can’t handle.”

  I say, “Why don’t you tell us what happened to your son, Mrs. Booker?”

  “He was killed by demons. White demons.”

  “Do you mean the Ku Klux Klan?”

  “No. The Klan wore white robes back then. These demons wore black. Black or green.”

  Serenity cuts her eyes at me. She’s wondering whether Mrs. Booker is in full possession of her faculties.

  “And this happened at the place people call the Bone Tree?”

  The old woman crosses herself. “That’s the place. A pagan altar, that’s what it is. Ask any of the old folks down around that swamp. They’ll tell you.”

  “Will you tell us what happened?”

  The persistent calico jumps soundlessly into Mrs. Booker’s lap and settles there. The old woman sighs in surrender and scratches the animal between its ears.

  “Sam was a hardworking boy,” she says. “Lots of ambition. He left Athens Point and moved north just as soon as he was old enough. He worked in Detroit, Michigan. Sam didn’t like being too far away from me, but work here was slow. After he’d had enough, he came back home. But he wasn’t alone. He had a woman with him. A wife, I should say. Dolores. We all called her Dee. Sam had married her up there. She was young and pretty, which was all fine and good. But she was also white, which wasn’t.”

  This catches Serenity’s interest. “Your son married a white woman up north?”

  “Well, I thought he had. And so did everybody else ’round here. Dee’s skin was so light, and her hair so straight, that she could pass, you know? Without even trying. Much lighter than you, baby. Up in Detroit, most people just treated her white, and she didn’t bother correcting them. Didn’t hurt nobody, did it? But Dee was proud of her family, and she didn’t mind saying she was black. Her daddy was black, and she loved him. Though I don’t think she quite knew what it was to be treated black. Not Mississippi black, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” Serenity says softly. “Did Dee tell people here in Athens Point she was black?”

  Mrs. Booker nods sadly. “That’s where the trouble started. Dee lived black here from the start—went to the colored church and doctor—but the fact was, nobody believed her. Not even black folks. She wasn’t even high yellow, to look at. Dee was so fair, people just thought we was lyin’ to cover up the truth. White folks started sayin’ my boy didn’t know his place. Said he’d gone off north and come back with biggity ideas.”

  I’m suddenly sure I don’t want to hear the rest of this story. But I can’t see how to avoid it. Nothing would make Serenity leave this house now.

  “First, they fired him from the sawmill,” Mrs. Booker goes on, “even though the foreman said Sam was the best man he had. But the klukkers had a lot of power then. So Sam went back to hauling pulpwood, like his uncles. Dee went to work, too, at the dollar store. But she caught a lot of trouble there, from the other women. They were all jealous of her. The men wouldn’t leave Dee alone, either, white and black. Always trying to touch her and stir up trouble. Sam should have taken her back to Detroit right then, but he had too much pride. He didn’t like to back down, and back then that was usually a fatal condition for a black man in Mississippi.”

  I can tell from Serenity’s gaze that she feels bonded to this woman in a way I never could.

  “It was my fault, much as anybody’s,” she goes on. “If I’d told Sam to go, he probably would have. But I didn’t. I was selfish and wanted him close to me.”

  Serenity says, “When did the demons come into the picture, Mrs. Booker?”

  “Pretty soon after that. They took Sam and Dee right out their house one July night, just up the road from here. It happened so fast I didn’t even hear a dog bark. Turned out later they’d killed Sam’s dog. Cut its throat. Anyway, I didn’t know anything was wrong till dawn the next day, when poor Dee came stumbling up my steps in a bloody slip and nothing else. No shoes . . . nothing.”

  Serenity is staring at the old woman with hypnotic intensity. “What happened to her?”

  “The devils came in black masks and knocked Sam out. Then they loaded him and Dee into a panel truck and drove them to the edge of the Lusahatcha Swamp. The men blindfolded them and tied their hands. Then they put them in a boat. There was three, she said. Three boats. They set out through that damned swamp with lanterns on the bows, Sam and Dee in different boats. They trolled slow for a long time, and then they hit land. When they pulled off Dee’s blindfold, she saw a cypress tree bigger than any she’d ever seen before. She said one of the men showed her old rusted chains hanging down from one of the limbs. Said they’d been hanging there since slave times.”

  In the pause that follows this statement, Serenity shudders.

  “Sam had come to by that time, but his hands were tied, and he couldn’t do nothing. They started beating him. Dee screamed, but the devils just laughed. Said there wasn’t nobody to hear but snakes and alligators.”

  “Were they still wearing masks at that time, Mrs. Booker?”

  “I believe so. They started beating on Sam, kickin’ him, and callin’ him all kinds of names. Crazy religious names, Dee said. Some of it she didn’t even understand. Lord, they were filled with hate. One was howling scripture during all this.”

  “What did they want from Sam?”

  “Want? Vengeance, baby. They said he’d married a white woman, and there was only one penalty for that crime. Death. Mis-ce-genation, they called it. I looked it up in the big dictionary at the church. Race-mixing is what it means. They said Sam was guilty of defiling a white woman, and he couldn’t be bringing no mud babies into the world. Mud babies. Which is just pitiful, when you think how many white men fathered babies on black women. Probably some of those very men doing the beating.”

  “You know they did,” Serenity whispers. “What happened next?”

  “When Dolores realized why they was beating Sam, she started screaming then that she wasn’t white. She told ’em her daddy was as black as Sam, and she hadn’t ever pretended to be white. But it didn’t do no good. They didn’t believe her, see?”

  The old woman shakes her head, then raises one hand to wipe her eyes. “Dee realized then that they meant to kill Sam. And she was right. Somebody got a rope out the boat and slung it over a limb. Sam was only half-conscious by then, thank Jesus. Dee begged and pleaded, ‘Why do you have to kill him?’ she kept asking. Finally, one of them turned to her and said, ‘Because he’s a nigger. And he defiled your womanhood, you whore.’”

  “Jesus,” I breathe, barely able to believe this happened less than forty miles from my childhood home.

  “You know what Dee did then?” Mrs. Booker asks.

  “Tell me,” Serenity whispers.

  “She broke loose and threw herself down over Sam to protect him. They started beating her, but when they stopped to catch their breath, she said, ‘He hasn’t broken your law! Can’t you see what’s right in front of you? I’m a nigger, too, you damn fools! I’m a nigger, too!’”

  Neither I nor Serenity speaks while the old woman takes a Kleenex from the table beside her and dabs her watery eyes. Then at length Serenity says, “Dolores told you all this?”

  “When she got to where she could talk straight, she did. It took most of a day to get her in her right mind.”

  “How did she get away from them?”

  “They dropped her about a mile from my house when they was done with her.”

  I close my eyes, wanting not to ask, but I know Serenity won’t let it go any more than Caitlin would have. “What else did they do to her?”


  The old woman’s eyes seem to deepen with infinite sadness. “You know what men like that do. They had their way with her. That’s what they wanted all along, I think. Sam was just in the way.”

  “Why did they let her live?”

  The old woman takes some time with this. “I’ve asked that very question for years and years. Maybe they were so arrogant that they didn’t think anything could happen to them. And they were right, weren’t they? Maybe they figured if they let her live, they could take another turn with her on down the road.”

  “Did they hang your son?” Serenity asks.

  “Yes, ma’am. Right in front of his wife. Lynched him. Happened no more than ten miles from here.”

  “What year was this?”

  “Nineteen sixty-six.”

  The summer of my first-grade year. “Did you report it to the police?”

  The old woman stares at me as if I’m crazy. “Baby, like as not, some of the men behind those masks were po-lice.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “The FBI got wind of what happened some way, and they sent two men to talk to me. One was very kind. But I couldn’t tell him anything. What he most wanted to know was where to find that Bone Tree, but I didn’t know, and Dolores had no real idea where those devils had taken her. Of course, I heard they found that tree back around Christmas time. A girl died over there, finding it.”

  “That was my fiancée,” I say softly.

  “Oh, no. Lord Jesus.” The Cat Lady lowers her head. “Now I see. So much pain in this world.”

  “But you knew something,” Serenity says in an incisive voice. “Didn’t you? Dolores remembered something about those men, or she saw something, and you kept it from the FBI.”

  Mrs. Booker watches Serenity for a while without speaking. Then she says, “The FBI told me they found some of Sam’s bones under that tree. They used DNA to identify them. My pastor’s gonna do a pretty service at the church after they get released to me.”

  “Mrs. Booker,” Serenity says insistently. “Miss Cleotha. You know something, don’t you?”

  The old woman just stares straight ahead.

  I take a folded page from the Examiner from my pocket, then get up and kneel beside her. “Mrs. Booker, there are over a dozen unsolved murders from the 1960s in this area, including your son’s.” I unfold the page, revealing headshots of Snake Knox, Brody Royal, Sonny Thornfield, and half a dozen Double Eagles. “These men are suspected in many of them. I think they might have been behind those masks the night your son was murdered.”

  The old woman doesn’t look down at the page.

  “My fiancée and a very brave journalist did a lot of work to try to punish the men who committed these crimes, Mrs. Booker. They died for it. And a young woman was hurt the other day for trying to carry on their work.”

  “I believe I heard about that, yessir.”

  “Will you look at these pictures? I know you’re afraid, and you’ve had reason to be afraid for a long time. But things are finally changing, Mrs. Booker. Several of these men are dead already. I killed one myself, though I can’t say that outside this room. Maybe the worst one.”

  At last she turns to look at me, piercing brown eyes set in sclera so yellow they look jaundiced. “God bless you, child.”

  “But that man’s uncle is still alive. He’s still hurting people like that young reporter.”

  The old woman closes her eyes, then gently pushes the calico off her lap and fixes me with an unsettling stare.

  “I know things are changing,” she says. “But they don’t change everywhere at the same speed. Down here time moves on a different clock. Down here it’s still forty years ago, in some ways. Back then, I knew if I told those FBI men something, and they started questioning people around here—or up at Natchez, or across the river at Ferriday—word would get out that somebody had talked. And sooner or later, those devils would come back around here. The FBI men always promised protection, but they couldn’t protect anybody. They weren’t gonna move into this house with Dee and me. And Lem was already dead when all this happened. If we’d told anything, we’d have died within a month. And nobody would have made a fuss, either. In white folks’ minds, Sam and Dee had upset the natural order of things, and they got what they deserved.”

  I remember my father telling me how his fear of retaliation kept him from telling the FBI things he’d known about the Double Eagles. If a white physician couldn’t summon the courage to talk to the FBI, how could anyone expect a poor black woman to do it?

  “What happened to Dolores?” Serenity asks. “Did she go back north after that happened?”

  Mrs. Booker pets the cat distractedly. “Eventually. I tried to get her help here.” She nods at me. “I took her to several doctors, but she wouldn’t open up to any of them. Not even Dr. Cage. Your father tried hard, son . . . but nobody could break through that darkness. Dee finally went back to Detroit, with her parents. But she never really got away from that tree. She was beyond mortal help, you see? And she’d given up on God. She had no way back to the light.” The old woman lowers her head. “Dee took her own life about a year after she got back home. Laid down in a hot bath and slashed her wrists. I got a telegram from her daddy. Two lines, that was all. Her family never forgave Sam for bringing their baby south.”

  I look at Serenity, who, to my surprise, has tears pouring down her face.

  “Why don’t we talk about something else?” I suggest. “We shouldn’t have put you through this for so long.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, baby,” the Cat Lady says, laying her other hand over mine. “It’s Sunday. Pastor Sims will come by and check on me this afternoon. And I’ve got my babies to talk to.” She makes a cooing sound in her throat, and a large gray cat silently springs from some unseen shadow into her lap, taking the calico’s place. The big cat seems to land with purposeful gentleness, as though aware that its owner can’t take much weight.

  Serenity gets to her feet, then leans over and kisses the old woman’s hair. “You take care, Auntie. We’re going to leave you in peace.”

  Mrs. Booker looks up at Serenity with more alertness than I’ve seen in her eyes for several minutes. “You children are doing good work,” she says. “I can see that. But please be careful. Justice is God’s business. Nothing ever balances out equal in this world. Only in heaven.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Serenity promises, and she starts to turn, but the old lady holds her hand tight. “And take a little advice from an old country woman. Most people get snakebit because they tried to kill a creature they should have left in peace. You think about that when you make your plans.”

  As Serenity and I walk to the car, the Cat Lady stumps out onto her porch, gripping her walker. Surrounded by circling felines, she watches us like a mother making sure her children are safe until they leave her sight.

  After I shut my car door, I say, “The worst story in the world?”

  “Not even close,” Serenity says, buckling her seat belt. “But for something that happened in the good old U.S. of A., it’s right up there.”

  “I don’t think Mrs. Booker heard the whole story. I think Dolores spared her a lot. The Double Eagles were cruel sons of bitches. They liked to take trophies from their victims.”

  Serenity looks at the old woman watching us from the rickety porch. “Too bad Dolores offed herself.”

  The coldness in Tee’s voice puts me off, but I sense that she meant no harm by it. Brutal frankness is just her way. I wave at the Cat Lady, then turn the key and start the engine.

  “What is it?” Serenity asks. “Why aren’t we leaving?”

  Cleotha Booker is still standing on her porch, watching us like she plans to spend the rest of the day standing there.

  “Penn?” Tee prompts.

  “Give me a second,” I say irritably. “I’ve interviewed a lot of witnesses in my time. After a while . . . you develop an instinct about people.”

  “And? What are you
saying?”

  “Why is she still standing up there?”

  “Because she’s a lonely old lady. And we made her think about some horrible shit.”

  I shake my head, still focused on the old woman’s hollow eyes. “She’s afraid.”

  “Of course she is.”

  “Not of the Klan, though. Or the Double Eagles. She’s afraid of us.”

  “What do you mean? Why would she be afraid of us?”

  “Because she’s hiding something.” A surge of certainty blasts through me, and I switch off the engine. “Let’s go find out what.”

  The second I start back up the gravel drive, the Cat Lady’s composure collapses in on itself. The mask of the doddering old woman falls away, and fear and calculation flash from her eyes in equal measure. By the time we reach the porch steps, her whole body is quivering.

  “Don’t come back up here,” she begs. “Please.”

  “Why not?” Serenity asks from beside me.

  Mrs. Booker sighs wearily, almost in surrender. “I knew you’d come back. Dr. Cage was no fool. Still, I fooled him like the rest. But maybe the son’s just a little sharper than his father.”

  “What are you talking about?” Serenity asks. “What did you do?”

  “Dolores isn’t dead,” I say, keeping my eyes on the Cat Lady. “She never killed herself. They told everyone that to protect her. So the Eagles would never go after her, the way they did Viola. Right?”

  Serenity is staring at the Cat Lady in disbelief.

  “Right?” I press.

  “It was the only way to be sure,” the old woman says. “God forgive me, but I’d do the same thing again.”

  “Where is she?” I ask. “Still in Detroit?”

  “I’ll never tell you. Never.”

  But I know she will. I have a secret weapon to make people talk. Her name is Serenity Butler.

  Chapter 18

  Despite Serenity’s best efforts, Cleotha Booker did not tell us where her daughter-in-law is living. But she did eventually agree to contact Dolores by phone and ask if she’d be willing to talk to us about what happened at the Bone Tree back in 1966. During the ride back to Natchez, I can tell that Serenity has developed a new respect for me, and I feel some pride at that. It’s good to know my instincts about people haven’t completely deserted me during my long night of grieving Caitlin.