by Lori Roy
Chapter 62
TILLIE
Today
Tillie opens up the shop later than usual. He tapes on OPEN sign on the plywood that now covers the broken glass in his front door, sweeps the yellow pollen from the sidewalk, and unlocks the register. Mrs. Tillie didn’t come in this morning. Tillie will tell folks she isn’t feeling well. You know, he’ll say, we’ve been fighting what ails her for ages. They’ll be headed to the Coulter place once Imogene calls them to say come on over. She’s tangled in a worse mess than Tillie. Jo Lynne is dead, Eddie’s sitting in a cell, and Garland ain’t been seen since last night. Imogene said she’d explain but not just yet, so Tillie’s waiting for her call. After years of hoping the Knights of the Southern Georgia Order were behind them, he and Mrs. Tillie are back to being as fearful as they were the day Tillie first left them.
Robert took his watches when he left the shop, and Tillie called out after him that he didn’t have nothing to do with Edison Coulter stealing them and that he didn’t have no idea where Natalie Sharon made off to. Only time will tell if Robert believes him. So far, there have been no reports of Tillie’s car being spotted, but just as he is thinking it and hoping Natalie Sharon is well beyond Tennessee by now, a blue sedan pulls to a stop outside the front door and Detective Warren Nowling steps out.
“I hear your car’s been stolen,” the detective says. His eyes are red and his lids are hanging too low.
“And I hear you got a hell of a mess there at the Coulter place,” Tillie says, nodding that, yes, his car’s been stolen. “Don’t know nothing about Natalie Sharon, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m guessing Natalie is safer with me not knowing,” Warren says. “So, no, ain’t here about her. Here to ask a favor of you, Mr. Tillerson.”
“Happy to help if I can.”
“The pines, can you take me?”
Tillie starts to ask what Warren means by the pines but stops because if Warren is asking about that place, he has good reason, and Tillie’s so damn tired of hiding.
“Who you expecting to find out there?” Tillie asks, afraid he’s thinking he’ll find Natalie.
“Got a missing woman on my hands. Not expecting to find her there, but fearing I might.”
“We’ll need to head south,” Tillie says, locking the shop behind them and hoping like hell they don’t find Natalie.
The two men don’t say much during the drive. Warren sometimes goes with Imogene, though Mrs. Tillie says a person could hardly call it that, and so Tillie isn’t sure what he thinks of the man and his intentions. Still, Tillie owes it to Imogene to help him. She’s going through some kind of terrible mess, and if this fellow means anything to her, she’ll be leaning on him. It’s time she leans on someone other than Tillie.
“How long’s it been?” Warren asks as he slows and parks where Tillie tells him to. He knows Tillie was once part of the Klan, and it’s why he asked for Tillie’s help finding the pines.
“Forty years,” Tillie says.
“Never had call to go looking for this place since I’ve been in town,” Warren says. “When’s the last time someone turned up out here?”
As far as Tillie knows, it’s been fifteen years, but he doesn’t tell Warren that. Maybe he should, and then Warren could tell Imogene the truth about what happened to her real daddy. Tillie sure never could. He doesn’t tell about the young fellow who died here forty years ago either. Instead, he shrugs. “Really couldn’t say.”
The road has brought them around to the south side of the river. This is where the thick clay of north Georgia gives way to sand. The hickories on the north side grow tall and have a wide green canopy that can’t be beat for its yellow coloring come fall. But here on the south side, the pines crowd together, and their long needles litter the ground at the base of their trunks. To the north, the land is higher and it falls here to the lower ground of the south and the river falls with it. It’s as if the whole of Georgia split in two right here just outside of Simmonsville.
“How far?” Warren says. He has to holler because the fall of the water is loud this close to the river.
Tillie points to a spot he remembers better than he’d have thought he would. It doesn’t look so different from when he was last here, what with all the trees being of the slow-growing sort. While the path is mostly gone, he still knows the way. Giving Warren a wave, Tillie leads him straight into a thick mess of pines. They stand close together like maybe they’re all waiting on something.
Tillie never thought much about the noise of the water falling from the north down into the south, but it’s loud and it never stops. As he and Warren walk, the noise grows because they’re following the river and walking closer to that split that causes the fall. Tillie never realized it before. He’s tried not to think about this place since he was last here, though he sometimes wakes and feels as if he’s been trapped in the middle of that mess of pines, unable to find his way out. The fellows always came to this place because the noise was good cover. No matter how loud a man screamed, no one would ever hear him over the fast-running water.
Just up ahead, the pines will stand aside. They’ll give way to an open patch where the wire grass takes over. When Tillie reaches that spot, where he feels like he’s crossing over a threshold, he stops.
Back then, all them forty years ago, it had been a windy day. Tillie remembers because he’d been standing right alongside Robert Robithan as his wife told them the story. The three of them stood on the sidewalk not far from Tillie’s shop when she pointed across the street with one hand and used the other to hold her hair from being blown across her face.
“He was right there,” Edith Robithan said. “Just before you got here, he whistled at me. Heard it clear as a bell.”
She had to speak up for the wind blowing like it was. Tillie stood with one hand to the top of his head to hold his hat on. He should have asked how she could hear a whistle from across the street when he couldn’t hardly hear her talking right next to him, but he didn’t. Neither did Robert Robithan. Neither did the other two fellows who had walked up and joined them.
Tillie’s first mistake had been leaving his shop when he saw Robert and Edith out on the sidewalk, Edith looking upset. His second, and biggest, and the one he’d always regret, was not asking how Edith heard such a thing over all that wind. Beyond that, there are parts Tillie can’t remember, though he knows he did them. And there’s parts he’ll never forget. The feel of that young fellow’s leg next to Tillie’s as they sat together in the back of Robert Robithan’s car. The crease in his shirtsleeve where his mama must have run an iron over it. The way the fellow turned toward Tillie and started to smile because he knew Tillie from his shop and how the smile quickly faded. But the thing Tillie will most remember is the look of fear in that fellow’s eyes, and how that look turned so quick to acceptance and then sorrow, real sorrow, because that young fellow had always thought better of people. But he also wasn’t surprised to have been so wrong. That’s mostly what Tillie lives with now—knowing his face was the last thing that young fellow seen.
“I ain’t going no farther,” Tillie hollers.
Warren steps up alongside him and starts to ask why, but then he sees enough, same as Tillie.
“Jesus Christ.” Warren pulls out his phone and starts running into the clearing.
Strung up between the lone two pines, feet tied together and a six-and-a-half-inch fixed-blade knife sticking out of his chest, is Garland Hix.
Chapter 63
IMOGENE
Today
Imogene pours Tillie a cup of coffee and sits across from him at the kitchen table. A plate of buttermilk biscuits sits between them. They’re leftovers from what Jo Lynne made the morning after the fire. She added black pepper and bacon to them, and the kitchen still smells of both. Grated frozen butter was her secret, but even knowing that and doing the same—freezing a stick of butter and grating it into the flour—Imogene could never get as good a make on her bis
cuits. Imogene knows enough about grief to know the pain around losing her sister and the anger she feels toward her will take a good long time to work themselves out. Mama says they’ll see to giving Jo Lynne and Garland a proper burial, but it’s not going to be at Riverside Baptist.
In the living room, Mama and Mrs. Tillie sit on the sofa with Christopher nestled between them. The sunglasses Christopher is wearing were Mama’s idea and belong to her. They’re too big for his face and keep slipping down his nose, but they’ve stopped him from squinting and complaining of a headache. The doctor said after a little time, his eyes would adjust, and other than that and needing some of Mama’s good cooking and a whole lot of TLC, he was fit and fine to go. Already Mama and Mrs. Tillie have taught him the rules of Go Fish. The colorful deck of cards is spread across the coffee table between the three of them, and so far, Mama’s ticking heart isn’t causing anyone any trouble.
“What have you told him?” Tillie asks, glancing at the three of them.
“Not much. Just that they’re looking real hard for his mama.”
Imogene stretches a hand across the table and squeezes Tillie’s. He looks tired. She forgets his age sometimes and tends to see the Tillie he’d been when she and Russell were kids, running through the shop.
“Well, here’s what I’m adding to your plate,” Tillie says, scooting so his back is to the living room. “The Robithans, all them fellows in fact, they say the watches weren’t stole. Say it was a misunderstanding.”
“They’re covering up for Daddy?” Imogene says, glancing at the window when she thinks she hears a car.
“They ain’t covering up for nobody but their own,” Tillie says. “They’re saying no one was stealing, and there ain’t no debt either.”
Imogene lets out a long breath and pushes away from the table to get a better look outside. She’s tired of thinking about Robithans and watches and unpaid debts. Warren said he’d be by again as soon as he had more news, and that’s what she cares about because she’s hoping for news of Christopher’s mama. When Warren stopped by earlier, he told them about Garland being found strung up between the pines. Imogene had stared up at him as he spoke and had not one feeling for Garland. All she could think was that at least Jo Lynne didn’t have to live through this and that maybe the young woman, Beth, would know she was safe and could come home to Christopher now. As if seeing the thought in Imogene’s eyes, Warren shook his head and said they hadn’t yet found the woman Eddie first told them was named Beth.
Since being taken into custody, everything Eddie has told them fits with Beth having been the little girl who disappeared that night several years ago. Eddie also confessed to having killed the babysitter, a young Puerto Rican woman name Julia Marianna Perez. He said they wanted real Americans teaching Americans and that he went there that night to scare her and her family out of town.
“On top of everything else,” Imogene had asked, “does he really believe that?”
“I’m guessing the facts of geography don’t much matter to those fellows,” Warren had said.
When Warren’s car doesn’t appear in the drive, Imogene scoots back up to the kitchen table. She glances over at Mama and Christopher. As much as Mama is tending Christopher, he’s tending her too. It’ll be Christopher, not Imogene, who gets Mama through the difficult days ahead. If she’s feeling the loss of Jo Lynne and Garland yet, or that Eddie will spend his life in prison, she isn’t showing it. Maybe Mama has been living her whole life knowing Jo Lynne and Eddie would come to a terrible end. Maybe she’s been preparing and grieving since they were children and first slipped a hood over their heads.
“So, that’s the end of it, then,” Imogene says. “No debt. No missing watches. We don’t have to worry about them coming after Mama’s house.”
Tillie shakes his head. “No, Imogene, it ain’t the end of it. They’re saying them things because without a debt, there ain’t no reason they would kill Garland. No motive, no crime. They’re saying it to cover for themselves.”
“You’re giving them too much credit.”
“No, I ain’t.” Tillie lowers his voice and leans over the table. “I’m going to tell you something, and Goddamn it, you’re going to listen to me. There ain’t a doubt in this world Timmy Robithan drove that knife into Garland’s chest, and he done it because Garland stole near a quarter million dollars. Don’t you think them boys will stop wanting their money because Garland is dead.”
“Tillie, I have too much to think about right now. Let’s leave it to another day.”
Tillie stands and jerks a thumb toward the door so Imogene will follow him. Outside, the sun is full in the sky and the air is still cool. The hint of smoke hanging over the house is a reminder that everything really happened. Once on the porch, Tillie pulls the door closed.
“You know I was one of them once,” Tillie says.
Imogene nods, motioning for Tillie to keep his voice down. She’s already worried about Mama and she doesn’t need anything else troubling her. She most certainly doesn’t need to hear talk of the Klan.
“And you think I got out to tend to Mrs. Tillie, don’t you?”
“None of that matters,” Imogene says. The history here at this house and the grounds around it is too heavy, and it feels as if by talking about it, they’re feeding it.
“It does matter,” Tillie says. He rubs his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I didn’t get out because of Mrs. Tillie’s health, and I’m ashamed as I can be that I used her that way. Ashamed in a way I can never fix, because Russell died believing that’s the only reason I broke with them fellows. Probably died believing I’d still be one of them if it weren’t for his mama’s poor health.”
“He never thought that of you,” Imogene says. “Please stop.” She wants to get back in the house because even knowing Christopher is just inside isn’t enough. She wants him with her. She wants to hear every word he says and to be looking down on him every time he wakes. She wants to bend the facts of what he’s been through to protect him even though she can’t do such a thing. She wants to keep him safe.
“I got out,” Tilly says, “because I stood under those pines south of town and held a young boy’s arm while Robert Robithan spit in his face and jammed a knife in his heart. I stood there, felt the pain shoot through that child’s body, and I didn’t do nothing but run. I was a Goddamned coward. So I damn well know what them men can do, and don’t you think they wouldn’t do the same to you.”
“I understand, okay, just stop. You need to calm down.”
Tillie pulls a kerchief from his front pocket and lowers himself onto the chair where Daddy used to sit most nights. He blots his forehead and upper lip.
“They did the same to your daddy, too,” he says, lifting his eyes to look her straight on. “Your real daddy, I mean.”
Imogene turns away and crosses her arms. When they first stepped onto the porch, she felt it coming and now it’s here.
“You already knew, didn’t you?” Tillie says. “I’ll be damned. Guess I should have realized. You even come to me and Mrs. Tillie at the time and told us about the police at your house. Course you knew.”
“Edison wanted him dead.” Imogene glances back at Tillie. She’s never said it out loud, probably because that would have made it harder to deny. “Didn’t he? And Tim Robithan did it.”
That night at the lake, when Imogene almost drowned herself, she’d known her real daddy was dead and that Mama had loved him. She knew because of the way Mama cried. Imogene knew, and she wanted to die too. It was part of the gift of being young and the curse too, because for that one day at least, she knew the truth and was brave enough to believe it or naïve enough or even foolish enough. But then the truth got clouded over by her having to live in a house with Edison Coulter. If she was going to do that, she couldn’t believe her real daddy was dead, because then she’d have to believe the rest—that the Klan had killed him. Tim Robithan killed her real daddy, and Edison Coulter ordered him to do it.
Imogene’s always wondered why Mama stayed, though she couldn’t bring herself to ask. No matter how gently she might have posed the questions, there’d have been accusation in it. Mama had been protecting Imogene, simple as that, because like Tillie, Mama fully understood the danger of that kind of hate.
“I didn’t want you ever doubting your mama like I fear Russell must have doubted me.”
Imogene pushes off the railing at the sound of tires on the gravel drive. “Hand to God, Tillie. I never once heard Russell have a single doubt about you. Not once.”
Warren’s car pulls up and stops in the drive.
“You go on,” Tillie says, pushing himself out of his chair. He pauses long enough to smooth his hair, something he must still do for Mrs. Tillie. “Ask your mama; she’ll tell you about your daddy. He was a redhead too.”
Waiting until the door has closed behind Tillie, Imogene walks from the porch and meets Warren on the drive. The pecan trees north of the house will have to be trimmed soon, their branches close to clipping the top of the gardening shed, and Mama will be wanting to lay down fertilizer by the end of the month. Every Thanksgiving, they make Mama’s praline pecan cakes for the neighbors, and this year will be no different. Imogene will see to that.