The first thing he noticed was that Walter Cohen’s shoes were no longer there. Hope rose in this throat like a sob. The best scenario was that someone, with luck not law enforcement, had already been to the crime scene. If they were friend to those who’d done it, evidence would be secreted or destroyed. That might include Laura Anne’s daddy’s pistol. He could replace the gun as a gift for his future father-in-law and apologize for losing the original during a scuffle with a snake they’d encountered on a picnic during their honeymoon in Memphis. Yes, he thought, that would work well enough to sow the peace. During his solitary ride, he’d decided he’d marry his girl as soon as this unwholesome chore was over. He was not going to repeat his father’s mistake of moving too little too late. He walked down the path where he’d tripped over Jeffrey Harris’s severed foot, hoping that was gone, too.
No such luck.
There it was, looking just as gruesome as it had the night before, only more so, because now it looked chewed up along the edges by the Lord knew what. Mickey Moe swallowed bile, shivered in the night air, and looked around for Lot Needleman’s gun. Clouds came to cover him in darkness, and he knelt down in the dirt to feel about with his hands. It wasn’t long before he hit cold metal. The joy that surged through him was as powerful as a shot of morphine. Flush with the exhilaration of success, he hopped up and started to walk as fast as he could down the dark path when he heard movement in the brush and voices. He spun around seeking their source and saw two round shafts of light scouring the path ahead maybe twenty yards behind him.
Terror struck him down to his knees again. He crouched low and listened. The first voice was male, but young, a tad high-pitched. A teenager’s. I know it’s here someplace, Wesley. It’s got to be.
An older voice, gruff, gravelly, mean-sounding answered the fairer one. That’s if some wild dog or bobcat didn’t carry it off. Keep lookin’.
They were close enough so that Mickey Moe could see their shapes in outline behind the flashlights’ beams. One was tall and thin, the other short and round. Both wore hats. The first wore a cap, the other a fedora of some kind. As they got close, Mickey Moe’s heart beat so hard, his ears throbbed. He wanted to tear it out of his chest before it betrayed him. He didn’t know who these men were. They could be FBI for all he knew. They could be the dirty kluckers who’d killed Jeffrey Harris and tortured Walter Cohen. Whoever they were, he didn’t need an introduction.
I’m gettin’ tired, Wesley. Why’d we have to put the truck so far away?
Christ, boy. Think I was sober enough to know exactly where we were? Wesley laughed in a thin, nasal way.
I wouldn’t think nobody was. This is gonna take all night.
I tole you bring the dogs.
Glinda had the bloat last week, you know that. I didn’t want to stress her. And the others. Dang, but they won’t go nowhere without that bitch.
They were very close now, and the moon had peeped out from cloud cover enough for Mickey Moe to see the men had a large canvas bag with them. It was at least a quarter full of something that rounded out its bottom. O Lord, Mickey Moe thought, I do not want to know what’s in there. Please do not let me have to see it.
This thought more than any other coursing through his head made him stand up suddenly in the nearly full light of the moon and run like heck toward his LTD on the road by the downed tree with the pink flowers lying in a ditch. He knew the men would see him, but he figured he could outrun them. That’s all he had to do. Run very, very fast. A shotgun blast rang through the air. Then another. The kluckers were yelling, and he couldn’t tell what. He prayed it wasn’t for reinforcements. Their voices were louder than they should be. They were closer than he’d hoped. He must be slower than he’d thought. O Lord, he thought, O Lord.
Without determining whether Lot Needleman’s gun was loaded, he did what instinct told him to do. He turned, still running, and pointed the gun in the general direction of his pursuers. He pulled the trigger. God was with him. The thing went off.
There was a crashing sound, the sound of a heavy object falling into the brush and the yelp of a high-pitched teenaged voice screaming, Wesley! Wesley! You’ve been hit! as if the man now groaning loud as a bear did not know it.
He got my shoulder, boy! Git him!
But the boy didn’t move, or at least Mickey Moe didn’t see or hear him move. He did not even try to git him, either out of fear, or because he did not want to leave Wesley on his own. It really didn’t matter which as far as Mickey Moe was concerned. He kept on running. When he reached his car, he jumped in and floored it. He roared out of those backwoods like the hounds of hell were following him, and in his mind they might well have been.
When he got back to the motel, it was ten o’clock in the evening. Laura Anne was sitting up in bed in her nightgown reading a magazine with the TV on. Pack it up, honey, he said. We’re leavin’. Right now.
She saw the way he looked. He was half-crazy, his shirt all sweated through with leaves and dirt sticking to it. She saw her daddy’s gun dangling from his right hand. She didn’t speak. She didn’t ask questions. She just got up and did what she was told.
Well, at least you didn’t kill him, she said once they were on Highway 61 and he’d had the chance to get his story out.
He took his eyes off the road to give her a wild-eyed, half-second glance that gave her gooseflesh.
But I could have. I would have.
If you had to.
That’s right. If I had to.
They were silent awhile.
I guess your parents are right. Blood will tell. I’m just like my daddy.
Oh now, darlin’. . .
I could be a murderer.
If you had to be.
That’s right.
They didn’t get married on the way back home to Guilford, although they did spend the night just over the Tennessee border, because they felt safe in Mississippi though neither of them could tell you why. They felt safe, and they needed to catch their breath and clean up before their next hurdle, that of confronting Beadie Sassaport Levy. There was more to the life of Bernard Levy they wanted to know. According to Aurora Mae, Beadie knew it.
They pulled up to the old house on Orchard Street. Mickey Moe surveyed the front yard with its purple hydrangeas and blue creeping phlox, the broad-columned porch in desperate need of whitewash, the lion’s head door knocker his mama said Daddy had affixed there just after he was born. Home the place said to him, only it didn’t feel like home anymore. It was a place built on blood money and lies. It wasn’t that he blamed his daddy for what he’d done. He could see the reason in it and the love. It was that it’d been kept from him his whole life, as if he wasn’t worthy of truth, and couldn’t be trusted with it. Why had his mama done that to him? Hadn’t she seen how he’d suffered growing up the son of a scoundrel? Especially in that place and in that time? Hadn’t she cared?
Those were his feelings as they walked together, hand in hand, from the driveway up to the front door. Laura Anne held on to him tight. She sensed his turmoil and wanted to help. Her loyalty, her affection was what she had to offer. He squeezed her hand back.
No one came to the door to greet them, which struck Mickey Moe as odd. Where was Sara Kate? Where was Eudora Jean? Where was Mama? He always thought those women had secret antennae for company. They were headed to the door before visitors finished framing the idea of paying a call in their minds. How many times did people drop by to find them sitting there on the porch with a tray of sweet tea, lemon slices, and extra glasses at the ready? It was too early an hour for a lie down. So where were they?
The foyer was unlit, dim, quiet. They set their luggage down and poked their heads into the sitting room and the dining. No one.
Mama? Mickey Moe called out. Mama?
I’m in here.
Mama sounded faint, feeble. They found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table all alone polishing silver. She wore rubber gloves and an apron over a blue dotted-swiss dress.
She had jewelry on, a pearl choker and her good gold watch pinned to her chest like a brooch. Her hair was done up as if she was going out. She looked at them with an expression of long-suffering despair. Her greeting was delivered deadpan, without nuance or spirit.
So, she said. I have not been entirely deserted after all. The prodigal has returned. One of ’em anyway.
Dismayed as he was with Beadie, Mickey Moe, like all good old boys, loved his mama. Her demeanor alarmed him. Mama, what’s wrong?
Oh, nothin’ I suppose. Nothin’ a woman accustomed to abandonment might not have anticipated. I could take it when you up and left without a word. I figured, well, Mickey’s a man, can’t tell those creatures what to do in the best of times, let alone when they’re head over heels with a rebellious young girl who’d crush her parents’ hearts again and again like they were crumbs underfoot. I put caution in my heart and wished you wisdom.
She saw they were hanging on her every word, and so she paused to punish them. She thought about insulting Laura Anne a little more directly but then considered that after recent events, she might need her around. Of course, she couldn’t have her under her roof in their current state of sin. She’d have to insist they correct their situation. Maybe they already had. She squinted up her eyes and made a grim line of her lips.
You all get married or somethin’? she asked.
No, Mama. Not yet. But we will very soon.
She sighed, looked down, and muttered. Mickey Moe wondered if she’d had some kind of breakdown.
Where’s Eudora Jean? he asked, thinking she must be at the pharmacy getting whatever it was Mama needed to help her through.
At his question, Mama started to bawl into her rubber gloves.
She left me! She left me with that traitor, Sara Kate! The day after you took off she announced out of the blue that she and Sara Kate were leaving together! I had to let Roland go the next day. I couldn’t have him stayin’ here with his wife run off with my daughter! People would say we were . . .
She shuddered, unable to utter what calumny the neighbors might spread.
Mama, what do you mean they run off together?
She put her hand to her chest.
Do not make me say it. Use your imagination. I had to. All she said was that she never had such a good time in her life as when she went to the village to spend time with Sara Kate and her people. That she felt like she belonged there with them. Once she mentioned to Sara Kate how she felt, a dam burst. For both of them. Now what do you think that meant? Hmm? What do you think that meant?
Mickey Moe and Laura Anne were speechless.
Exactly, Mama said. Exactly. It’s disgustin’. Now I’m afraid to go anywhere. My canasta ladies came by this afternoon to pick me up, and I could not go. What would I do if they asked for Eudora Jean? Tell them she’d discovered she was a . . . she was a . . . oh, I can’t say it.
Her son sat down in the chair beside hers and put an arm around her while she whimpered.
Well, Mama. Now this is a shock, of course it is. Best you can say is it was in her blood. From Daddy’s side.
Beadie Sassaport Levy froze. She went stiff and still as a board. When she spoke, her voice was again flat, barren of inflection.
Whatever are you talking about.
I know everything, Mama. I spoke with Aurora Mae Stanton.
My stars, she said after a bit. My stars. And where did you find that . . . that . . . person?
In Memphis.
Mama shook her head. Of course you did. Of course.
It all came out then. The full story of what happened the day of Rachel Marie’s sixth birthday party, when Aurora Mae emerged from the cornrows, demanding to see Bernard.
She’d been on the road three days, I think, Beadie said. Lord, she was a dirty, ragged mess. She needed to know where Bald Horace was. He’s her brother. You know that now, right?
We know almost everything, Laura Anne volunteered.
Beadie gave her a low, level-eyed stare, trying to decide whether an interloper ought to be there, listening to all this. Her eyes went from her son to his beloved, and she saw that he’d tell her everything anyway. She took two noisy little breaths and continued.
There was some fish story about a cousin, Mags, I think was the name. A cousin who died unexpectedly. Mags’s grown-up daughter, Sara Kate, and her son-in-law—that’d be Roland—needed jobs after their mama’s farm went to payin’ the medical and the funeral bills. Your daddy said they could work here, never mind that I had a perfectly good couple already. Findin’ jobs for those two was only an excuse. That Aurora Mae came here to get him back.
Your daddy told me all about his past that day. Everything. Endin’ with how she walked all the way here to bring him back to Saint Louis with her. I suspect life without a man got tough for her in some way, don’t ask me how. And who else would have her? But, you know, Daddy had me by then, and you and your sisters. It was too late. He told her she had to go. And she did. Every once in a while, I happen to know, she’d visit her brother, that Bald Horace, and your daddy would sneak out and meet the two of them. I know that for a fact. And don’t you think I didn’t make him pay for it, too.
It was a lot to absorb all at once. Mickey Moe didn’t ask the questions he should have immediately. They came out in dribbles and drabs. He asked, Why did Daddy come to Guilford in the first place?
Because he found out Bald Horace was here, she answered.
He asked, How’d he find that out?
I do not know.
He asked, Why did Aurora Mae tell me her visits to her brother were your story to tell, not hers?
How would I know.
He asked, Why did you never tell me all this?
She answered, Lord, I’ve raised an idiot child! Are you aware of the country you live in, boy? Are you at all familiar with a little thing called race relations? Exactly what do you think our lives would have been like if your daddy’s origins and attachments got around? I’ll tell you one thing. We would not have been livin’ here. And I like it here. It’s where my people are. No, no. It was better no one knew. I kept his secrets. Do you think that was easy? It was not, especially after he died. My heart was bereft, completely. But I put on a good show the only way I could think of. I took all his secrets and buried them in a bundle inside a bigger one. Yes, I did. I kept his secrets every day of his life and beyond. No matter what it cost.
There were other holes in her knowledge. She was sure there was more of Bernard the handsome’s gold around but did not know where. She knew nothing of how Daddy spent those years between splitting up with the Stantons and arriving on her doorstep, of how he transformed himself from a murderer, thief, river rat to a well-groomed, well-spoken gentleman everyone in Guilford knew as the heir to Levy Agricultural Supply. She suspected there was yet another woman mixed up in it.
Once he realized he got everything he could out of her, Mickey Moe got up and poured Mama a glass of sherry. She looked like she needed it. She thanked him. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, her cheeks stained with tears and silver polish. She was a most pitiful sight, and it was pity he felt most deeply for her. He put an arm on her shoulder, bent, and kissed the top of her dolled-up hair.
Mama, it’s alright. We’ll take care of you. You don’t need Eudora Jean anymore. You’ve got a good new daughter who understands what you’ve been through. Don’t you, honey?
Laura Anne quickly assented. You’ll never be alone again, she said, kissing Beadie’s cheek.
Beadie drank in her son’s affection as a desert flower does rain. The few days she’d spent in despair over the flight of Eudora Jean with Sara Kate had terrified her. Mickey Moe now came with an encumbrance named Laura Anne. She realized she’d have to like it or lump it if she wanted to live out her days with her blood taking care of her. The alternative, living alone for all the world to think no one she’d borne and raised cared two figs what happened to her, inspired her to accept Laura Anne’s kiss and decide there was someth
ing admirable in her. She’d brought Mickey Moe back, hadn’t she? And she looked ready to face the clamorous music her adventurous nature had struck up with her own folk. Another girl these days might have set up house with her lover in Jackson and avoided the families the rest of her life, wallowed in scandal, and dragged Beadie’s son down in the dirt with her. But not this one. How could she be the mad slattern she’d first assumed and bring Mickey Moe back home? Maybe she’d been wrong. The conclusion that Laura Anne wanted very much to win her affection hit her next. Well, she thought, if she’s eager to have my approval, then I might retrain her some. Why I could mold her more to my own design. The idea that here was another chance at having some kind of a daughter live with her until she died was the most encouraging thought yet. She even smiled.
Mickey Moe complained to Laura Anne one night soon after. Look at all we went through, he said, and still I don’t know everything about my daddy. There’s some very important leftover information to be had. I haven’t a clue how to get at it.
Maybe you don’t need to know everything, honey.
Huh?
You know enough. Let it go. We have a life of our own to live.
Mickey Moe went back to work directly after his first night home. By 8:00 a.m., he was out and about on his sales route, catching up with his roll of ’croppers and gentlemen farmers. He left the women alone together and was much relieved when he returned at the end of the day that no blood had been drawn. The women cooked a meal together. Laura Anne insisted on serving. You’ve had a long few days, she told Beadie. You need your rest.
One More River Page 22