by Greg Hall
“That’s only three bodies? I saw the heads, but I could have sworn it was more,” Randy said as he leaned against the house. He closed his eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Word is, that the same thing happened in Maringouin and Melville,” Henri said, remembering what Modeste had told him.
“Not that I’m aware of. Where’d you hear that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Henri said, as he caught a glimpse of Modeste embracing Betsy. He wondered if she had lied to him. He wondered what she would have to gain about lying about something so tragic. He didn’t trust her, but so far, she seemed harmless. Much less than he assumed her to be.
“In any event, cases involving negroes aren’t being reported. In all honesty, had you mentioned they were negroes, I wouldn’t have been sent out at all,” Randy said, taking one more breath before heading back to his car.
“You’re going to find the killer, right?” Henri asked.
“Did you hear what I said? The state ain’t going to invest any money into this. I’m paid per body. That’s it.”
“It will happen again,” Henri said as he made his way to block Randy.
Randy looked the priest up and down. He was well over a foot taller than the priest. He had a gun and cuffs, so Henri didn’t plan on arguing.
“And your point?”
“We can’t let it happen. People are scared.”
“Negroes will be scared. Tell them to keep themselves hidden,” Randy said as he leaned forward to speak quieter and with a sly grin. “It will keep the rest of us happy, right?”
Randy pushed past Henri. Their shoulders knocked, and Henri was tossed aside.
Henri’s small frame wasn’t much. He rarely did any physical labor. He spent a few hours a week in the garden, but that was it. The simple act of gardening caused more pain in his muscles than anything. His back had seen better days. His knees were becoming shaky and unstable at times. His nonexistent biceps were, well, nonexistent.
Henri noticed Modeste disappearing around the back of the Boyd house. The sheriff was already getting into his car, so Henri decided to follow her. Henri had a strange feeling that he was supposed to follow her.
When he went around the back, he watched as Modeste ran her fingers across the hinges of the door. There were pieces of splintered wood sprayed out in different directions. She was favoring her right leg as she placed more weight down on the cane. She swayed back and forth as if just standing there was a struggle.
“What are you doing?”
“It must have got in somehow.”
“It?” Henri asked.
“The bloodsucker.”
Henri started to argue, but Modeste raised her hand to silence him. She used her other hand to point out a slivered area around the hinge. “Look at this.”
Henri stepped closer. He was intrigued by what she might have found. Henri placed his right hand around the hinge and felt the chunks of wood missing. He looked down at the hinge closest to the ground.
“Looks like it removed the hinges.”
Henri stared at the door dumbfounded. It was easy to notice, and he felt anguish that no one investigated this when the Boyds first went missing. Henri felt an intense shame when he realized that he had followed the crowd. He should have thought for himself and helped Betsy. Admittedly, at the time, Henri didn’t think much of the family of three vanishing . They disappeared at night, and as much as he loved the family, he thought that they probably left, leaving Betsy behind. It wasn’t unheard of, and he had seen it before, parents leaving children behind, especially in poorer areas. Despite the atrocities he witnessed, nothing would have prepared him for what had been waiting for him in the house.
“There were three bodies. That kind of damage can’t be done by one person.”
“Maybe,” Modeste replied, but Henri noticed that it was just an automatic response.
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“Bloodsucker. They can put a spell on you.”
“A real explanation.”
“You choose what you want to believe, Father, but I gave you an explanation.”
Henri remained distraught by her reasoning. There was something else that was troubling him. It had bothered him from the moment he heard Besty’s lonely cries at the church. “Why did the killer let Betsy live?”
“His own amusement, most likely. It wanted a witness to find the bodies. Not just any witness. It feeds on anguish. It doesn’t have the same effect if it weren’t a family member.”
“Great,” Henri sighed with impatience as he stepped away from the door. He turned his attention to a trail leading from the house. It was only a foot wide and led to the Atchafalaya River. The killer could have performed whatever he was doing anywhere between here and there. Henri listened closely to the rushing water in the distance. None of this made any sense to him. “I spoke to the Sheriff. They’re not going to do anything.”
“I could have told you that.”
“It’s not right,” Henri said. He turned back toward the house and was startled by Betsy standing by the edge of the house. Her eyes, swollen and bloodshot, locked onto Henri. He wondered how long she had been standing there, and if she heard any of their conversation.
“Betsy…” Henri started, but his mind was blank.
“They ain’t gonna do nothing, are they?”
All Henri could do was shake his head. He couldn’t meet her gaze.
Modeste stepped forward, her cane gripped tightly in her hand. When she stepped, she put all of her weight on her left leg. Every step she took seemed to be a pained one.
“I’m sorry, but…” Modeste started.
“But they ain’t gonna do shit. He told me you were the only ones who could stop it.”
“Betsy, please. You need to rest,” Henri said, realizing that he didn’t know what else to say. She was in pain. There was nothing he could say to console her. Her family was dead, and the state wasn’t going to do anything to help find the killer.
“Rest? You want me to rest while my family’s killer is out there somewhere? God told me you could help me. Are you telling me God’s will isn’t worth a dime?”
“I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through. But Modeste and I cannot go after a killer.”
“So you’ll deny God’s word?”
“God didn’t speak to you.” The words slipped out of Henri’s mouth. He wished he could reach through the air and grab them, shove them back inside.
“And now I’m a liar,” Betsy yelled, before disappearing around the corner of the house.
“Good one,” Modeste said as she hobbled her way in the same direction.
With all the commotion, Henri hadn’t noticed the sheriff standing near the corner of the house. Henri wasn’t sure how much he heard, but he didn’t care either.
“Everything all right out here?” Randy asked, with a smirk.
“Yeah. Everything’s good,” Henri lied.
“You mind giving me a hand?” Randy said as he stepped down and stopped a few feet from Henri.
“With what?”
“I get paid per body. I don’t know what goes where in there.”
“You want me to help identify parts so you can get paid?”
“Yeah. Any help would be great, Father,” Randy said with a face full of pleasure.
“I can’t do that,” Henri said, turning from the sheriff. He wanted to find Betsy and talk it over with her. Help her find some comfort in such a tragic time. In a selfish way, he also wanted to explain himself. He didn’t like how the conversation ended with her, and he needed to clear the air.
“I heard about you. Friend to the negroes.”
Henri stopped in his tracks. It took a minute for his mind to digest what was just said to him.
“What was that?”
“The priest who opened his doors to the negroes. You like them. You want some of that equality for them.”
Henri turned back arou
nd. He had no idea news of his church had spread much beyond Morrow. He didn’t think it was a big deal. The church was still segregated. The last four rows of pews were designated for people of color. They had a separate entry and exit. Heck, they even had a particular time for communion. In Henri’s personal opinion, he wasn’t doing them any favors; he was simply giving them a place to worship.
“Everyone deserves a place to worship.”
“Yeah. Sure. Next, you’ll let the dogs and pigs enter,” Randy said. “You give an inch, they take a mile.”
“If you’ll excuse me, sheriff. I have something to do.”
“Yeah? Run back to your negroes?”
“No. I’m going to stop the killer, since the law is refusing,” Henri said. At that moment, Henri decided that he would be doing what God had told Betsy he should do. Even if he didn’t believe that the Lord spoke to Besty, his heartfelt admiration for Betsy was enough for him to come to the decision.
He was going to get justice for Betsy.
4
Henri sat alone at the front of the parish. A quarter bottle of corked whiskey rested in his hand.
The wooden pew was harder than he remembered. It had been many years since he had been on this side. Everything looked different from down here. The man on the cross that hung above the pulpit gazed to the side in complete agony. A physical pain that Henri would never know but understood all the same.
His mind raced with the images of decapitated heads. Their empty sockets staring at him. Their gaping mouths frozen in a scream. It was bad enough that Henri was plagued with images of Eli’s little body floating in the water, but now he had even more horrific images to his nightmares. Finding Eli’s body was the first thing to cause Henri’s wavering faith, but the discovery of the Boyds’ bodies shook it to its core.
He envisioned the boy calling out to him in his nightmares, screaming for him to help. In these dreams Henri was on the sidelines, forced to watch, unable to act as if some dark force was binding him to the edge of the water. Every night, the muffled screams of Eli drowning in the bayou woke Henri from his nightmare. Every night when Henri woke, he would turn to the bottle with the hope that he would forget.
Henri stayed up night after night, harrowing over why God would let something so senseless to happen to such an innocent boy. He could never fully accept why his God would allow it to happen.
When Henri entered the Boyd house after the murders, all those questions rushed back. The images of the body parts still flashed through his head. Ever since finding the boy in the water, Henri found himself looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle. Yet, every morning, Henri woke with regret and a throbbing head.
When Henri first arrived in Morrow, he decided he would never touch the stuff again. He wanted a fresh start, and no matter how many sleepless nights he spent thinking about Eli, he was going to face them with a clear head. He kept this half bottle of whiskey as a reminder of a life he tried to leave behind.
“Father?” a soft voice called out from behind him.
Henri didn’t have to turn to know it was Betsy. It was the main reason he was still sitting in the pew; he had given up his private quarters so Betsy could get some rest. He doubted that she would get much, but it was at least a quiet place where she could feel safe and find some solitude.
“Betsy, did my light keep you up?” he asked apologetically.
“Not at all,” Betsy said as she took a seat on a pew opposite aisle of Henri. “Ain’t no way I was getting any sleep tonight.”
Henri finally turned toward her. Betsy’s eyes were puffy and barely open. She kept her eyes directed at the ground. Her hands were shaking as she wiped remnants of tears from her cheek. Henri wanted to reach out to her; embrace her.
He didn’t.
He remained in his pew and let the silence between them linger. Every few moments, the silence was broken by a soft whimper from Betsy.
Henri took a deep breath then began, “I’ve been in Morrow six years now. When I came here, it was hard to make an impact on the community. The parish was new, not the building, of course, and it took a while for me to call it home. Like a lot of small towns, I saw the divide in the community here. There seemed to be a stake driven between the people, and I did what I thought I should do to build the community together.”
“I ain’t traveled far, but I know one thing, Father, ain’t nobody ever done what you did when you let us worship here.”
“And you were the first to cross the threshold. Then your family,” Henri reminisced. “I remember the first time your father spoke to me. No matter all of our differences, we all had one thing in common, and that was our belief.”
Betsy smiled at him, although it seemed pained. Whether Henri’s memory sparked a deeper emotion or just a simple reminder of how she’d never see her father again, Henri couldn’t tell. He watched the tears swell up in her eyes, and Henri suddenly found himself at the mercy of his own tears.
“You know, Father, this killer ain’t going to stop.”
“Betsy…”
“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s wrong. He spoke to me. He told me you and Modeste were the only ones who could stop it.”
Henri was surprised; she did know what he was thinking. And it wasn’t that he didn’t necessarily believe; he just thought that maybe the message was mixed up.
“The things Modeste has filled your mind with, well, Betsy, they’re terrible, heretical things. Such ideas can get a man like me into trouble. I cannot associate myself with the likes of her.”
“She didn’t fill my head with anything, Father.”
Henri focused on the whiskey. The chestnut liquid swaying back and forth in the bottle with even the slightest movement. All of a sudden, Henri could swear he had the familiar taste in his mouth. A hint of caramel with a vanilla finish.
“I’ve decided that I will search for the killer,” Henri finally said.
He couldn’t believe the words came out of his mouth. It didn’t feel like something he would say, yet he said them in the Lord’s house. When he thought back to why he decided to go, he bounced between the sheriff’s apathy toward the murders, his respect for the Boyd family, to be his own penance for his past sins. Although he wasn’t personally responsible for Eli’s murder, he still felt the blame.
“What about the sheriff? He ain’t gonna do anything about it, is he?”
Henri didn’t want to answer, but he knew his silence answered her question. It was foolish for anyone to think that the sheriff would be a part of the hunt. Henri knew he was idealistic, hoping the state would step in to help. He should have known better.
“It’s not that simple, Betsy,” he said, and instantly regretted it. It was pretty simple, in his mind, and it didn’t seem fair that the state didn’t want to do anything about it.
“You and I both know that if that were white folk ripped to pieces in that house, the state would leave no stone unturned trying to find the killer.
She was right. Henri knew it. He wasn’t sure how to respond and thought better not to. He just left his eyes to fall on his bottle of whiskey. He thought about uncorking; having one sip. It brought a sensation of wetness across his lips, salivating at the thought of the whiskey in his mouth.
“You drinking that?” Betsy asked, looking over to the bottle in his hands.
“No. Course not.”
“Then why do you have it?
“It reminds me to be a better person.”
A silence fell between the pair. Henri wanted to say more to her, give her some resolution, but it was too soon, and Henri couldn’t think of the words to say. She didn’t need resolution; her family was murdered and drained dry. She had every reason to cry, lash out, be angry, curse the Lord.
“Thank you,” Betsy said, breaking the silence.
“For?”
“Believing me. If you’re going to track the killer, I know it wasn’t an easy decision.” she said, as she rose and headed back to the sleeping quar
ters.
She was right, Henri thought, but it wasn’t much of a decision as it was a spontaneous choice. Had he not said it aloud, in the Lord’s house, he still might have backed out of it.
He listened to the sound of Betsy walk away. He thought about how she was going to his sleeping quarters, and how it was only a temporary solution. Her family was dead and gone, and the reminder was in that house. If she ever goes back there, she’s going to see their lifeless faces everyday.
After the last fews days of tragedy and heartaches, all Henri knew was that Morrow would never be the same again.
5
The air was still and an ominous feeling hund above Henri, as he walked down the main road, his bag slumped over his shoulder.
He was surprised to see the Cadillac still parked in front of the Boyd house. It signaled that the sheriff had spent the night. At the very least, the law’s presence would help keep some of the community members’ minds in peace.
He wasn’t exactly sure of his plan, but he knew that if Randy, or the state, weren’t concerned for the black citizens’ safety, someone had to be. Part of him hoped that his gesture of seeking out the killer would convince the sheriff that something had to be done. As he approached the Boyd's house, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the sheriff watching from the front porch. Henri could see that the Sheriff eyes were fixated on his bag.
Henri wanted to check out Maringouin to see if what Modeste had told him was accurate. He figured that if he started there, and it turned out to be true, they would have some information about who was behind such grisly murders. And if it had happened there, then he would go to Melville to do the same.
Henri worried that if what Modeste had said was true, the killer would most likely be heading to the next town. A thought that scared Henri more than anything. IF that was the case, Henri wondered how many towns the killer would reign terror?
He didn’t know the first thing about investigations, but there was no one else who would do it. Henri’s best guess was to start at the beginning.