by Ace Atkins
We all knew each other. Hilda had started the RBA’s women’s auxiliary in ’52. She was a firecracker. A female version of Hugh Britton who would run with any assignment that old Albert Patterson had given her, from campaigning to visiting officers at Fort Benning. She didn’t think anything of talking down to some generals in the most genteel language about what services were offered for the soldiers.
She kept on with the arrangement, adding in some long-stemmed roses, measuring the stem and then cutting a bit back.
“Hey there, Hilda,” Britton said.
“What do you boys want?”
“We need some help.”
“Lamar, can you tell Joyce to call me? I’ve been trying to get an appointment all week. I need to get my roots done.”
“She’s been a little busy.”
“’Spec so, with you playing sheriff.”
“I’m not playing sheriff, Hilda. I am the sheriff.”
“Appointed, Lamar. Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “So what’s the favor?”
Britton ran a hand over the back of his neck and remembered to take off his hat. “We want you to swear out a warrant on Bert Fuller.”
She kept on arranging. No expression on her face as she pulled out the ferns and then added some sprigs of little white flowers. She poured some water on a green sponge and set it back in a vase.
“Can you believe the cost of roses these days?”
“Will you do it?” Britton asked.
“We can offer you protection,” I said. “The Guard.”
“I don’t want those boys hanging out at my shop. It’d be hell on business.”
She gave a little laugh and stepped back from the arrangement, her hands in the pockets of her dress. She smiled at what she’d done and then looked back at us. “Of course I’ll do it. What’s the charge?”
“You remember when Fuller was taking ballots out of voters’ hands a couple years back?” Britton asked.
“Sure, I filed charges then. But Sheriff Matthews just laughed at me.”
“File ’em again,” I said.
“Don’t you all have bigger things to charge that boy with?”
“It’s coming,” I said. “We just want to hold him here awhile. We just need some time to find some witnesses. We can get you before the judge later today. But I warn you, Hilda. You gonna have to stand up there in court, and Fuller may be there. The newspapermen will hound you, too.”
“I understand. I understand. You want me to do it or you want to sit there and try to scare me out of it?”
“So?” Britton asked.
“Don’t you boys want to bring something nice home for your wives? I mean, they put up with all your mess. We are having a sale on the most gorgeous little summer mix.”
“Sounds nice, Hilda,” I said. “Maybe later.”
“Lamar Murphy, I do believe you are the cheapest man I have ever met.”
“I AIN’T EVER BEEN A FAN OF RED PUSSY, BUT I’LL BE GODDAMNED if it ain’t sweet as hell,” Big Jim Folsom told Fannie Belle in the bed they shared at the Capitol Motel in Montgomery. The light barely broke through the shades, and due to the headache Folsom had from the fifth he’d drunk last night he couldn’t tell the time.
“Glad you like it, Governor.”
He leaned over the bed and looked at the watch on the nightstand.
“Baby, you mind turning on the television? I believe it’s time for Gene Autry.”
“You like cowboys?”
“I like his horse, Champion. I believe that’s the smartest damn horse I ever seen.”
Fannie Belle got up in all her white-fleshed nude glory, her sizable but shapely butt swishing to and fro, pulling the knob on the TV on just in time for the theme song “I’m Back in the Saddle Again” to start playing.
Fannie walked to the curtains on the second floor of the motel and moved them out of the way to look at the little horseshoe shape of the two-level units and down into a soft green swimming pool filled with kids splashing around and giving their parents hell.
Over at the little dresser, she poured out a little more Jack Daniel’s, handing Big Jim the glass. He took it but didn’t thank her, and watched as Gene and Pat Buttram found their way into another western town and more adventure. This one having to do with a hidden gold mine and some mean desperadoes beating up an old man.
Fannie, still as nude as a jaybird, lifted her arms up in the weak light of the Capitol Motel neon sign and played with and straightened her red hair, still stiff with spray. She cocked a hip and smoked a cigarette, looking down at the huge man watching a kids’ show, a glass of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.
“What do you say, Governor? You gonna give Phenix a break?”
“Sure thing, baby. Whatever you want.”
She moved over to the TV and pushed in the knob. The shooting and yelling stopped and the screen went dark.
“Now, why’d you do that, baby?”
She kept the cigarette in her mouth, hands on her hips, and stuck her big chest out. “Figured we need to talk a little.”
“I told you not to worry. Them boys will be out of Phenix City before I even take my oath.”
“Your friend Bert Fuller is gonna fall hard.”
“He didn’t kill Patterson.”
“I want your word you’ll get those troops out of Phenix.”
“Let them make their arrests and give a little show.”
“What about Fuller?”
“There is no one in their right mind who would testify against Bert. I have it on rock-solid authority that Bernard Sykes will never make a case for the Patterson killing. Hell, he has about fifty investigators who can’t even turn up a witness. What are the chances of them finding one now?”
“You think you can talk to Mr. Sykes? Get him thinking about his future in politics?”
“I better leave that one alone, sweetie.”
“You wanna bet?”
Fannie opened up the bedspread and crawled inside, laying her body across Big Jim and moving herself against him. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
“You don’t tire much, do you?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I guess I never get tired of bourbon and pussy.”
“That’s why you’ll always have my vote, Governor.”
Big Jim leaned back and Fannie straddled him, as he hummed the opening notes to Gene Autry’s theme song.
QUINNIE KELLEY STOPPED BY AFTER SUPPER, MAYBE A week after those first raids. He was sweating and hatless, and it was one of those hot summer nights where the temperature only seemed to grow in the darkness. I invited him in, but he shook his head and wanted to talk outside. So I walked him around back, near the shed and Joyce’s beauty shop, and we sat at a little picnic bench right near my canvas heavy bag.
Quinnie took off his glasses and cleaned them on the lip of his light green shirt and put them back on his face. He put his hands in the little pockets of his pants and rocked back on his heels, looking down into the dirt.
“You got something to tell me, Quinnie?”
The night air was filled with night sounds, and among the crickets and cicadas, head still down, Quinnie told me that he was sorry. He said he’d lied.
“I did see someone that night Mr. Patterson was killed.”
I waited.
“I seen a man come around the back of the post office and cross Fourteenth. I was standing right on the stoop of the courthouse, on account of making sure they was done with that Boy Scouts meeting. But I don’t think he saw me ’cause I’d just cut off the lights. He passed right in front of my face, right on the courthouse lawn, and ran around back behind to the jail.”
I rubbed my face and massaged my wrist, which had grown sore from a loose punch on the heavy bag. I walked over to it and let it rock on its chain, and it groaned and squeaked with its weight and gently pushed back on me.
“You see his face?”
He nodded, staring up at me. His face filmed with a light, sweaty sheen
. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I prayed about this. I talked to my wife and my minister. Don’t get me wrong, I never met a fella more evil in my life than Bert Fuller. But when I heard y’all was about to charge him with murder, well—”
“Who was it, Quinnie?”
“Ferrell.”
Quinnie stood before me and shook, his glasses fogged from the humidity. But he held his ground and returned my stare.
“You can’t be sure of that. Can you, Quinnie?”
“I heard them shots. I thought they was kids playing with firecrackers, but not ten seconds later did I see Mr. Ferrell in an all-out run pass right in front of my face.”
“You sure it was Arch Ferrell?”
He nodded.
“Will you testify to that?”
Quinnie looked away for a moment. In the little back window of my house, I could see Joyce and Anne doing the dishes. One of my neighbors played a ball game on the radio.
“If they let me live,” Quinnie said. “What are the chances of that?”
“I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything,” Quinnie said, hitching up his pants and standing as tall as Quinnie Kelley could ever stand.
“I don’t want you to tell a soul what you told me tonight.”
His face dropped.
“You’re not hearing me,” I said. “Just keep it to yourself until the time is right. And when it is, I’ll protect you.”
“How you gonna do that, Mr. Murphy?”
I looked away. I shrugged and put my hand down on his shoulder. “I guess I’ll figure it out.”
BERT FULLER HAD TOLD EVERYONE THAT HE WAS INNOCENT, but not a damn person would listen. He knew what people had been sayin’ about Arch Ferrell protecting him, but that was the biggest dang lie that had ever been told. Arch Ferrell thought just because he was a college boy, a war hero, and his daddy was a judge, that he couldn’t be soiled. But Judgment Day would be comin’ on that man’s soul, and all the stones he’d been throwin’ wouldn’t protect him a lick. When Phenix came a-tumblin’ down, every finger came pointing at the sheriff and his right-hand man, because that was easy. Those newspapermen couldn’t know what it was like to keep order in a town like Phenix. Sure, he’d kept a little nut away for himself, but he’d deserved it, trying to keep those Machine boys in line. It would take a powerful man to try and walk a mile in his boots.
Fuller finished up adding some clean shirts, blue jeans, and underwear to his old leather suitcase, and tossed in his pearl-handled .357s and his family’s King James Bible. On last thought, he grabbed the framed picture of him with Lash LaRue and buckled it closed. He buttoned his shirt, put on his boots, and tried on his Stetson hat.
It was midnight and time to get the hell out of Dodge. He wasn’t taking the rap for this mess.
Since they’d taken away his squad car, he had his girlfriend from church pick him up at the curb, and just as he got to the door he heard the motor running.
The air was thick with heat and crickets, and he tossed the suitcase into the backseat and sat down. He clutched a silver cross that had belonged to his mother in his gun hand.
“Where to?”
“Atlanta. Get me out of Alabama.”
She turned the car around, the headlights catching the shrubs and dense magnolias around his garage apartment, and she headed north, far away from the two bridges that would be watched by the National Guardsmen. Fuller took off his cowboy hat and rested it on his knee. His girlfriend, Georgia, turned on the radio to a gospel station out of LaGrange, and the good ole-time church music made Bert Fuller know that he’d found a new path.
He figured he’d catch a bus or a plane in Atlanta. When he pulled out the whore money he’d been squirrelin’ away, he figured he could pretty much go where he liked.
“Did you tell anyone?” Georgia asked.
“No. This is between us.”
“Take me with you, Bert.”
“I’ll send for you. I promise. I must go where the Lord takes me.”
“You remember when I told you that I was pregnant?”
“I do.”
“I wasn’t. I just had gas. I’d eaten some bad chicken.”
“Well, that’s good, baby.”
“I’m glad you’ve changed, Bert. You sure aren’t the man I used to know.”
“Thank the Lord,” Bert said and gave a drowsy smile, as they rounded their way by the airport and headed fast up Park Hill, up to Summerville and to Lee County, where they’d head east again. “We have the rest of our life together. I know a little spot just on the other side of the Rio Grande where a white man can live like a king for pennies a day.”
“Mexico?”
“You said it, baby.”
“Are those people Christians?”
“They got more churches in Mexico than in Alabama.”
“That a fact? But they speak Mexican.”
“They speak Spanish.”
“When will you send for me?”
“Just as soon as I get my land,” Bert said and placed his mother’s cross in Georgia’s palm.
“Oh, Bert.”
He affixed the cowboy hat on his head and had a big smile on his face, almost feeling that county line coming up. He tapped the dashboard in time with “I’ll Fly Away” and grinned and grinned. That was until the light grew bright on the highway ahead, and he soon saw the red lights and white lights mix and the squad cars and the jeeps and men holding rifles up in their arms.
Georgia slowed the car, and a guardsman asked her for her license. She reached across Bert into the glove compartment, and Bert looked away even as the deputy crossed a flashlight over his profile.
“Good evenin’, Mr. Fuller,” the young boy said. “We been looking for you.”
Fuller squinted into the flashlight’s beam.
“We got a warrant for your arrest.”
He shook his head and rolled down the window, spitting out on the ground. He breathed some more and then simply said: “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
15
REUBEN AND JOHNNIE BENEFIELD sat on the farmhouse porch and watched the sun go down through a row of diseased pecans planted before both of them had been born. They drank moonshine from a jelly jar and smoked Chesterfields, Johnnie telling him about what had happened out at the Hill Top and how he’d nearly gotten taken by the Guard. Reuben stood and flicked his cigarette out into the bushes and then sat back down in a rusted porch chair. He looked over at Johnnie, who was leaned back with his old boots on the ledge.
“You sure it was Lamar?”
“Sure,” he said. “I know Lamar Murphy.”
“I’m broke, Johnnie,” Reuben said. “I don’t care much for studying on politics right now.”
“Broke?” Johnnie said, cracking a grin and polishing off a good bit of that old ’shine. “You got to be kiddin’ me.”
“I said I wasn’t gonna touch that money and I ain’t.”
“Well, aren’t you the Boy Scout. A gold star for you, Reuben.”
“We dig it up when it settles.”
“So you got it buried out here?”
“Check all you want. You ain’t gonna find it.”
Johnnie laughed some more. He grinned, smashing a cigarette against the sole of his boot. “Listen, I want you to set up a meeting with Lamar.”
“Who wants to talk?”
“Fannie. Some of the boys.”
“What boys?”
“Mr. Davis and his brother. Red. Papa Clark. Maybe Frog Jones.”
“They ain’t gonna change his mind.”
“You know how much he could get paid for just playin’ stupid?”
“I sparred with that man for nearly five years. That man’s got the hardest head ever put on this God’s earth.”
“You know I had to get rid of the Hudson? Them boys had seen it over at Fannie’s and they know I was there over at Britton’s house. I sold it off to some niggerman over in Loachapoka. He was gonna paint it and cut it down a bi
t. Said he was gonna sell the engine and paint it gold. Ain’t that just like a nigger? Makes me sad to think about that engine in another body. Rips the heart out of her. But I’ll get another. But, man, oh man, I sure loved my little Hornet.”
“Where’d you get this ’shine?” Reuben asked.
“Moon,” he said. “They still ain’t found his still.”
“They ain’t found a lot of stuff. They rootin’ around all around the county. I heard yesterday they busted in at Papa Clark’s farm and found all those brand-new horse-racing games. I also heard when they come for him, he nearly had a heart attack.”
Johnnie nodded and stood, combing the five long black hairs over his head. He cupped his hand and lit another cigarette. He wore a crisp pink cowboy shirt with a bolo tie.
“When did men start wearing pink shirts?” Reuben asked.
“I seen a magazine where Tony Curtis wears pink.”
“You ain’t exactly Tony Curtis, Johnnie.”
He shrugged and picked his nose, snorting a bit as he did. “You want some more ’shine?”
“No.”
“Listen, don’t get all pissy on me. I told you I’d come through for you and I did. Didn’t I tell you that ole Hoyt and Jimmie didn’t trust banks? Hell, Hoyt made his first dollar in the damn Depression. And I was the one who knowed people who used to work for Mr. Hoyt. That’s how I knew about the kind of safe he’d got and just how to blow that baby open.”
Reuben smoked down the cigarette and lit another Chesterfield, liking the design on the pack because he’d seen a picture of Gregory Peck smoking them while filming Twelve O’Clock High. Johnnie had brought a carton with him, and it was the first decent cigarettes he’d had in a week. The sun almost gone, just a thin little hot slit through the pecans and down at the dead peach trees. The trees died while he was getting shot at in the Philippines, but if the old man were still alive he’d be blaming him for their loss.