Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “I miss this,” she said in a fierce whisper.

  “I do, too. More than you know.”

  “If you’re ever passing through Atlanta—”

  “I know. I will.”

  But as we broke apart and went our separate ways, we both knew that I wouldn’t. For if I passed through Atlanta, Annie would almost certainly be with me. Even if she wasn’t, she would still be waiting at home. And that worry didn’t begin to address the realities of Serenity’s personal life, which were undoubtedly complicated. As I rejoined my group, my mind and heart remained with Tee, walking alone through the tombstones, back to her rental car for the long drive back to the airport. I felt the tidal pull of sexual gravity from her receding body, and keen regret that I hadn’t lowered my face to hers for a kiss. I saw relief in my mother’s face as I laid my hand on Annie’s shoulder, but for my part, I felt none.

  We got back to Natchez a lot faster than we’d expected to. John Masters offered us a ride in his plane, which was a first for Annie. The nearest commercial airport to Natchez is ninety miles away, so having the Masters Media jet drop us only ten miles from our house was a real treat. As soon as I got Annie settled at home, I climbed into my Audi and headed through the night toward St. Catherine’s Hospital.

  When I asked the duty nurse if Lincoln Turner was still in the same room, she frowned and told me he’d checked out against the advice of his physician, about four hours earlier. I stood there blinking, trying to divine what impulse would have compelled Lincoln to do that.

  “He left you a note, Mayor,” the nurse said, and then she retrieved a sealed envelope from a drawer.

  My name was scrawled across the front. I ripped the end off the envelope, pulled out the folded paper, and read the brief letter with a dazed feeling.

  I’m going back to Chicago. I need to think. I’m sorry for all the trouble. I’m glad we did what we did, and that the right people got killed, for the most part. Don’t try to find me. You don’t owe me anything. Maybe we’ll cross paths again someday. L

  I stared at the note for a long time, a missive from a man without a living mother or a father he will accept. I studied the words so long that I was stunned when the elevator dinged behind me. When the door opened, an older doctor I recognized smiled and said hello. I nodded and walked past him, then took the stairs down to the silent lobby and into the parking lot.

  The night air is cool, the parking lot mostly empty. Instead of going to my car, I walk out toward the Highway 61 bypass. Not far from the tar-stinking frontage road stands the same little flower bed and the light pole where I waited for my father when I was a boy of eight. The night he left me alone for hours while he made love with Viola on the colored side of town. The flower bed is now filled with pea gravel and ornamental rocks, as though this were New Mexico, but the relentless weeds of Mississippi are already sprouting through this façade. I stand under the humming streetlight and watch the cars go by, just as I did almost forty years ago, fighting the tears of a little boy abandoned. Now, though, I realize that I endured only a few hours of the sadness and anxiety that ran through Lincoln’s life like an undertow, always pulling him away from the light, into darkness.

  My father had two sons, and one of us was doomed to be an orphan. Looking back over our lives, I’m glad it was Lincoln. But now I understand something I did not before: that the happiness of my childhood was bought with the pain of a black boy who had hurt no one. Tonight that grown-up boy is driving northward, following the twisting river and the dark old vein of Highway 61 as far as Cairo, Illinois; there he’ll shoot straight up Interstate 55 to Chicago, where so many of his ancestors fled before him.

  We are brothers, Lincoln and I—half brothers, anyway—and long after my father passes from this earth, his blood will flow through both our veins. The genes of Northern Europe are my legacy, and my destiny, but Lincoln carries the genes of both Europe and Africa within him. I hope that someday he can free himself from the lies that shrouded his youth and become what Viola must have dreamed he could when she carried him down the streets of that cold and unfamiliar city: a man who embodies the best of both his parents. With a father who chose the cruel path of duty and a mother who chose martyrdom, who deserves it more?

  I’m sitting in a rocking chair on the gallery of Edelweiss, waiting for Annie to come home from school. After deciding she was ready to rejoin her classmates at St. Stephen’s, my daughter also declared that from now on we should live in the house that Caitlin had intended to share with us. I wasn’t so sure, but I’m willing to try anything that gives Annie a sense of control over her life. With my father in prison in the Mississippi Delta and my mother traveling there every week, Caitlin’s ghost is a welcome force in our lives—at least for the time being.

  Annie brought a few of Caitlin’s things to the new house: a favorite coat that’s a little too big for her, Caitlin’s laptop, mementos of vacations we took together. Mounted above the fireplace in Annie’s room is Caitlin’s Pulitzer Prize, the award she won for her coverage of the Delano Payton case. John Masters sent it to Annie the week after Caitlin’s funeral, with a written note expressing the hope that she would work as hard as Caitlin had to reach her dreams. I hope the same thing; I only pray that Annie doesn’t have to pay as high a price to attain them.

  Surrounded by these artifacts, I remember how happy Caitlin was that I’d bought this house, and that we would finally begin our own family, as well as make her status as Annie’s new mother official. On one mantel inside sits a photo of the three of us, taken by my father only weeks before Caitlin died. In it, Caitlin and I are swinging Annie between us: me gripping her ankles while Caitlin holds Annie’s wrists with the surprising strength in her lithe frame. The photographer captured us at the point of tossing Annie into a pile of autumn leaves. We’re all laughing, the girls’ hair flying, the moment frozen forever in the stream of time. Sometimes I look at that picture and see joy made eternal; other times I see a brutally truncated history, an amputated life.

  “Hey, Penn! You’d better fill out that change-of-address form soon, or you won’t see me for a while.”

  My mailman is walking up the sidewalk from the direction of State Street. Theo Driscoll is about my age; he went to the public school when I was at St. Stephen’s.

  “I can’t keep giving you this special treatment,” he says with a smile, “even if you are the mayor. You need to un-ass that rocking chair, man. The main post office is only four blocks down Broadway!”

  “I’ll go do it as soon as Annie gets home,” I promise.

  Ignoring the copper box mounted on a brick pillar on the ground floor, Theo climbs the right-hand staircase with a sheaf of mail in his hand.

  “Got another letter from Europe,” he announces. “I still can’t believe they publish your books in all those languages. How many now?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “What would Mrs. Holland say about that? Too bad she didn’t live to see it.”

  Mrs. Holland was a legendary English teacher who taught at both the public and private schools during her long career. “She lived to see my first one published. That’s good enough.”

  I reach out for the mail, but he doesn’t hand it to me yet. Like a lot of people I went to school with, Theo likes to talk.

  “Went to the clinic two days ago. Had a damn boil on my leg. Drew Elliott had to lance it. It’s so damn different without your daddy there. The nurses feel the same way. Melba said they might not even keep her on much longer.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that. Drew will probably take her over.”

  Theo looks skeptical. “I don’t know. She’s old school, like Doc Cage.”

  “I’ll check into it.”

  “Are you making any headway on getting him out? I swear, not one person in this town thinks he was guilty.”

  I’m not so sure this is true, but Theo means well. “It’s complicated, Theo. But I’m not going to quit. There’s still reason to hope.”

 
The mailman’s face falls as he picks up the truth in my tone. “That Parchman’s a wicked place, Penn. My cousin’s boy had to do a stretch in there on a dope charge. His parents couldn’t hardly stand to visit him.”

  “All penitentiaries are grim, Theo.”

  “I guess. Well, you keep at it. I know things’ll turn out right in the end. Everything happens for a reason.”

  For half a second I want to smack Theo Driscoll in the face. His throwaway assertion carries such a muddle of childish faith, fatalism, and predestination that it would take me an hour to properly respond.

  “That is technically true,” I say in a restrained voice, but in my mind I hear Inigo Montoya saying, I do not think that means what you think it means.

  Looking confused and a little put out, Theo hands me the mail.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “If you fill out that change-of-address form, you will. Otherwise I’m sending everything back to Washington Street.”

  As he descends the opposite staircase and heads toward the Parsonage, I flip through the mail. A couple of bills go through my fingers; then I see the letter Theo mentioned. The one from Europe. April is a royalty month, and the envelope is made of the ultrathin paper I associate with foreign communications. Whatever’s inside feels heavy, though, and padded. The postmark looks unfamiliar, which is surprising after years of receiving letters from readers around the world. The postmark is smeared, too, so I can’t even read the name of the country. The stamps show a coat of arms in yellow and orange, but the words beneath are printed in French. There’s no return address, either. Just my name and our old Washington Street address, above u.s.a. printed in block letters, as though by a child.

  Opening my eyes wide, I hold the letter farther from my face and look down my nose at the smeared postmark. Finally the name of the country of origin comes clear: Andorre.

  “Andorra,” I whisper, a chill racing along my arms. “Billy Knox?”

  After a moment of paranoia, when I visualize opening the letter in a little cloud of toxic powder, I rip the end off the envelope and pull out the paper inside.

  The thrice-folded sheet appears to be blank. As I start to unfold it, what I felt through the envelope falls out into my palm. It’s a coin. Dull silver, about the size of an American half-dollar, with a leather cord tied through a hole near the edge of it. It is a half-dollar, I realize.

  When I turn the disk over, my hands go cold. The eagle I was looking at has been replaced by an image of President John F. Kennedy in profile. Below the line of his neck is the date 1964. And right about where his ear should be, another hole has been punched through the coin. This hole is rimmed with torn silver, as though bored by a speeding bullet. On its inner lip I see small dark flecks, just like the ones I now see in the tiny grooves on the coin’s edge.

  “Blood,” I say, surprising myself. “Jesus.”

  Unfolding the paper that held the coin, I find a neatly typed note.

  Dear Mayor Cage,

  I’m happy that things turned out okay for you and your family, especially your little girl. I hope that with my daddy gone you can finally get some peace. I never cared for all that Klan shit my family was into. I just wanted to hunt deer and turkeys, produce my TV show, listen to my Allman Brothers and Jimmy Buffett. Lay back, you know? But we can’t choose our families, can we? That’s why I’m living the “Banana Republics” lifestyle over here in Europe. Maybe I was always meant to be an expatriot. (sp?)

  But in spite of that, I believe Daddy’s story was important, especially the stuff about Uncle Frank and the JFK thing in Dallas. Like History Channel important. That ghostwriter I hired was salivating over all the stuff I have, but I fired him. He was only in it for the money and the heat. Had no feel for the South, man. No understanding. I’ve read a couple of your books now, and you know the South all right. You know where the dirt roads go. So guess what? YOU’RE the man to write Daddy’s story. And look, I’ll split the money with you 50/50. All you have to do is write the book.

  I start to laugh. If I could count the times I’ve heard that proposition . . .

  Now if a movie or something comes out of it, like that Oliver Stone one with Kevin Costner, only better—more real, you know?—we’d have to renegotiate, of course. But I’m open to whatever. I’m a fair guy.

  I hope you and your little girl are doing real good now.

  Peace+

  Billy Knox

  P.S. I sent you the coin as a sign of good faith. I got no use for it. Never did.

  The closest thing to relief I’ve felt in months courses through me like a rising breeze, and I get to my feet, the coin and the letter still in my hand. The rest of the mail falls to the porch when a Honda SUV pulls up to the curb in front of my house. As the back door opens and Annie gets out and struggles to shoulder her heavy backpack, I wave, then look down at the coin in my hand. Not long ago, this JFK half-dollar was hanging around the neck of Snake Knox.

  “What are you looking at?” Annie calls, running up the stairs under the weight of her pack.

  “Nothing,” I tell her, closing my palm. “Just a foreign royalty statement.”

  “Oh,” she says, instantly bored.

  I hug her tight. “Do you want to know a secret, Boo?”

  “Yeah!” she cries, her eyes lighting up.

  “This is one you can’t tell a soul.”

  “You know I never tell secrets.”

  Amazingly enough, this is true. “You . . . are my very favorite daughter.”

  Annie shakes her head and laughs, the sound like crystal tinkling in a cabinet.

  “How about we take a walk along the bluff? We need to run to the post office for a change-of-address form.”

  She nods excitedly. “Let me put my backpack inside.”

  “Hurry.”

  She scurries through the tall doors, drops her book sack with a thud, then rockets back onto the porch. As we make our way down the right-hand staircase and across Broadway to the great bluff that follows the bending river, I feel something I have not felt in longer than I care to remember. Safe. We have no bodyguards tailing us, no enemies hunting us. None that I know of, anyway. The sensation is so foreign that it will likely take some getting used to. The weight of the pistol on my ankle became second nature for a while, but today it feels like a burden once more. Maybe someday soon I will walk out of Edelweiss without it, and only realize after I return what I have done.

  But not today.

  Acknowledgments

  From Writers House: Dan Conaway and Simon Lipskar.

  At William Morrow/HarperCollins: my thanks to Liate Stehlik, David Highfill, Tavia Kowalchuk, Danielle Bartlett, and everybody in sales and marketing up and down the chain. Thanks also to Julia Wisdom, Charlie Redmayne, and the rest of the gang at HarperCollins UK.

  Copilots: Stanley Nelson, Ed Stackler, David Hudgins, and Laura Cherkas.

  My guide to the dark side of Louisiana: Frank Rickard (deceased).

  Experts: Mayor Darryl Grennell, Mayor Tony Byrne, Sheriff Travis Patten, Mimi Miller, Ronnie Harper, Tony Fields, Tom Grennell, Marty Kemp, Inez Mason, Keith Benoist.

  Legal guides: Scott Slover, Judge George Ward, Kevin Colbert, Rusty Fortenberry.

  Docs who rock: Roderick Givens, M.D.; Michael Bourland, M.D.; Kellen Jex, M.D.

  For a million things: Caroline Hungerford, Geoff Iles, Madeline Iles, Mark Iles.

  Amateur southern philosophers: Courtney Aldridge, James Schuchs, Kevin Dukes, Billy Ray Farmer, Jim Easterling.

  Partners in the cause of accurate history: Terrence Robinson, Beverly Adams, Deanna Hayden, Deborah Cosey, David Carter, Derrick Burt, Denzel Fort, Wade Heatherly, Tremaine Ford, Caleb Curtis, Richaye Curtis, Lou Ellen Stout, Spencer Adams, Kirby Swofford, Miranda Allen, Jamar White, Greg Easterling, and also those behind the scenes—you know who you are.

  Drone kings: Jonathan Rosso, Colby Passman, Lyn Roberts, Cecile Roberts, Jennifer Rosso, David and Wade (again), Ca
rolyne Heatherly, Mark Iles, and Alex Weadock.

  For taking a stand for all Mississippians, or helping to make it happen: John and Renee Grisham, Glen Ballard, Jimmy Buffett, Tate Taylor, John Norris, Kathryn Stockett, Archie Manning, Morgan Freeman, Hugh Freeze, Dan Mullen, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, Jack Reed Sr., John Evans, Richard Howorth, and many others.

  All mistakes are mine.

  About the Author

  GREG ILES spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was the first of fourteen New York Times bestsellers, and this trilogy continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and #1 New York Times bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl. Iles’s novels have been made into films and published in more than thirty-five countries. He is a member of the lit-rock group The Rock Bottom Remainders, lives in Natchez with his wife, and has two children.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Greg Iles

  The Bone Tree

  Natchez Burning

  The Death Factory (e-novella)

  The Devil’s Punchbowl

  Third Degree

  True Evil

  Turning Angel

  Blood Memory

  The Footprints of God

  Sleep No More

  Dead Sleep

  24 Hours

  The Quiet Game

  Mortal Fear

  Black Cross

  Spandau Phoenix

  Copyright

  Mannish Boy

  Words and Music by McKinley Morganfield, Melvin London and Ellas McDaniel

  Copyright © 1955 Arc Music Corp., Lonmel Publishing Inc. and Watertoons

  Copyright Renewed

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