by Safran, John
The woman touches her red fingernail to one of the names on the page: André de Gruy. He was the lawyer who represented Daniel Earl Cox in 1995.
He works not far from here, she says.
Plan D: André de Gruy
The sixth floor of the Robert E. Lee Building holds the Office of Capital Defense Counsel, the people who’ll take care of you if you’re broke and the district attorney wants to execute you. Sitting at a wooden table in the corner is André de Gruy, with blue eyes and a Roman nose, gobbling on a chicken sub sandwich.
Yes, he remembers Daniel Earl Cox. Yes, he’s dead. No, he doesn’t keep copies of affidavits from 1995. No, he says indignantly, he was not the man who tipped off Mike Scott about the incident. He says he’s unclear about client-lawyer confidentiality when the client is dead, so he can’t say more. He kicks me down the street to the Office of State Public Defender.
Plan E: The Office of State Public Defender
The Office of State Public Defender will take care of you if you’re broke and the district attorney doesn’t want to execute you. It looks like a bed-and-breakfast from the outside, or perhaps a nice, tucked-away Italian restaurant.
The bald public defender, William LaBarre, sits in a big office that’s a crack den of manila folders. They tower in piles all over his desk and floor.
I darted out of Mike Scott’s office four hours ago, and in some circular serendipity he happens to be in this building, walking past William’s door, as I begin to tell William my story. I had dropped Mike’s name to William not a minute ago. Am I a wizard?
“Hey, Mike,” shouts William, “you know this guy?”
“I do,” says Mike. “I did not send John over here, by the way.”
“He was asking me about Daniel Cox,” William says. “I don’t know if he’s dead.”
I tell William and Mike he is dead.
“I had a copy but I can’t find it,” says Mike.
William scans the crack den. “I had a copy of it, too.”
William remembers this particular document because soon after Richard Barrett was killed, André de Gruy foraged around his office for it so he could tip off Mike Scott about the incident.
William swats his hand on the far end of his desk like he’s killing a fly.
“Here it is,” says William.
William and Mike shrug back and forth about whether I’m allowed to have it. Usually, probably not, but the fact Daniel is dead may make things different.
William blows out his cheeks and slides the affidavit across the desk.
The Affidavit
In the Circuit Court of Hinds County, Mississippi
First Judicial District
State of Mississippi
VS No. 96-1-64 DANIEL COX, DEFENDANT
STATEMENT OF DEFENDANT
I am Daniel Earl Cox, the defendant in the above numbered case. I have been charged by way of indictment with the offense of grand larceny. I am giving this statement on my own free will and everything contained herein is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.
Sometime in June 1995 I was at a gas station in south Jackson, where I met a man who gave me some money for gas for my motorcycle. We discussed some work the man had for me clearing land. He told me where he lived, and I went to his house the next day.
The man invited me in his house, where he had a lot of photography equipment set up. The man started talking about taking photos of me. I felt he wanted me to pose nude for photos. I became very uncomfortable and let him know. As I started to leave, he became angry. He followed me out of the house and was yelling at me. I have not seen the man since that day, nor did I take anything from his house. The first I heard about his accusations were at the time of my arrest.
This is all I know about the accusations made against me.
A lot of photography equipment set up. But Jesus! Why did it have to say “I felt”? I felt he wanted me to pose nude for photos. Why couldn’t it just be He 100 percent, unambiguously, no question, asked me to pose nude and got angry when I refused? But that’s not how this story works. It’s not how most things work.
Is it possible the difficulty I had in finding the document says as much about Richard as the document itself? I’ve never been sure about the high-power connections Richard claimed to have. But could those connections have erased details off the police computer and emptied files from law enforcement filing cabinets?
I slide the affidavit into my folder, under the photo of Vincent McGee, topless in the hallway, with his eyes gently shut.
Southern Hills Baptist Church
I’m running out of time in Mississippi, but not places to burrow for a smoking gun. Why, for instance, was Richard booted out of the Southern Hills Baptist Church in the 1990s? I suppose a book set in Mississippi was always going to end up in church at some point.
“Lord, we come to you with our families and friends who need you to intervene medically for them to live!” the pastor cries, thumping the altar. “Agnes is back in the hospital. She usually tells us everything to pray for. We pray for her knee operation, and hopefully she’ll be able to go home the next day!”
I’m squashed between the pastor’s wife and a man so sour, he’s twitching. Ten minutes ago joy stretched his smile and sparkled in his eyes, before I spoke these words: I’m writing about Richard Barrett. The man, Milton, said we could talk later in the back room.
Later, five church members squish around the table in the small back room. Three look like their anger may escalate into spasms. The pastor and his wife, however, are more recent additions to the church and have never met Richard Barrett.
Milton says this all started when Richard had bumbled into church one Sunday morning, walked down the apricot carpet, and asked the previous pastor, Pastor Farris, if he could join.
“I taught him many Sundays at my Sunday School class,” snaps another man at the table, Doug. “I had a great conflict with him over the fact that not only did he despise blacks, he despised Jews. My Savior, in the flesh, was born as a Jew!”
Whispers blew back to Pastor Farris and the congregation. Richard had been on the radio, blurting that he and the church were fighting the same fight for segregation.
“This is a place of worship and service to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!” cries Doug. He waves his arms about and probably would wave more, but his elbow would smash the walls in this small room. “Well, Richard Barrett, when he came here, the main purpose in coming was because he felt that our ideas coincided with his ideas. And they only did in part.”
Pastor Farris called Richard to the church. He told Richard to stop yapping to the media that the church backed his views. Richard did not stop yapping. Pastor Farris summoned Richard again. This time for a meeting with the whole congregation. And despite agreeing not to bring the press, Richard marched up the stony road toward the church with news crews fluttering about.
Pastor Farris screamed, “Hold up!” He told the newspeople they’d have to wait at the tip of the church’s driveway. Richard marched into the church.
“We gave him a chance to speak,” Milton says. “We did it by bylaws of the church constitution. And a great majority of the church voted against him, you know, to get him excommunicated.”
Richard would not leave the church.
“Remember the night?” Milton asks the table. “He got so mad. He went to the piano.” Richard pounded away at “God Bless America,” over and over, refusing to stop, sweat flying from his face.
Even after that he didn’t let things rest, bashing on the door of Pastor Farris’s private home, threatening to bash Pastor Farris.
There’s a dimension to this story that is being flicked to me in crumbs, and it’s taking my brain a while to roll it together.
Did Doug say before that Richard Barrett, when he came here, the main purpose in coming was because
he felt that their ideas coincided with his ideas and they only did in part? Which part?
Doug leans forward, agitated and defensive, and explains.
“Now, we inherited a school system called the Council school system. It was given to us because the people who established it, basically, so far as school, so far as gatherings in the church and all that, they were basically for the white race.”
“The Council” is short for “the White Citizens’ Council.” After the US Supreme Court told government schools they must integrate in 1954, pro-white groups set up “segregation academies.” Because they were private institutions, they weren’t bound by the court ruling. Southern Hills Baptist Church took over several of these academies, although it ran them as separate entities. The church was overseeing these academies when Richard bumbled in and asked to join the congregation in the early 1990s.
Doug flaps his finger and his cheeks pink up.
“But the reason this church voted to accept that school system,” he cries, “was simply because we saw it as a means of extending the name of God in those young people. Not necessarily to teach racism, but to expand and extend the kingdom of God in their hearts.”
Thirty-five segregation academies survive in Mississippi today. That’s the figure from a Columbia University report. Richard didn’t spin a globe, poke his finger out, and randomly hit Southern Hills Baptist Church. He chose this church because it ran segregation academies.
When Richard blurted to the media that he and the church were fighting the same fight, he was kind of right.
James Rankin said that Richard was never more thrilled than when he discovered something was legal. His whole leverage that he took pride in, was the legalities and all that.
Did some Mississippians not like Richard because he drew attention to things—ugly, lawful things—they would prefer remain discreet?
11.
REAL TALK
Chywanna
The Peach Street Café does not sit in a street lined with peach trees; it sits in a megastore parking lot. Each time the door opens, the scent of exhaust fumes dances down the aisle and up my nostrils.
“I’m eighteen years old and in college now,” Chywanna tells me over the phone. “I’m studying dental hygiene.”
Chywanna is weaving down a corridor to class as we speak. Students bustling in the background is a nice alternative to the primal screams from prisoners in the East Mississippi prison for the criminally insane.
You know I got a new girlfriend, her name’s Chywanna? Vincent told me on the road trip. They have since broken up, he updated me yesterday. It’s not always easy for me to keep up. Chywanna is different from China, the girl he pimped out, my notes confirm.
“I was in, what, fifth grade,” Chywanna says. “It was fifth or sixth grade when I was seeing Vincent around and I kind of had a little crush on him ’cause he’s cute, you know?” She giggles. “I mean, there was a lot of girls that had a crush on Vincent ’cause he was cute.”
Chywanna tells me she wasn’t aware she and Vincent were dating last week. They’ve only dated for one stretch of time: over a year ago, for a month and a half.
“And why did you break up?”
“Well, it’s just that my parents didn’t really agree with me talking to him, ’cause they really wanted me to be with somebody who was in school and trying to do something with their life.”
“And did he have tattoos on his face when you knew him?”
“Yes. He had, I think, six or five maybe. Yeah, my parents didn’t approve of that, either.”
“He doesn’t like being rejected, but he seems to do things that will make people reject him. Like, you know, getting tattoos on his face, for example.”
“Yeah. He really . . . I mean, the tattoos on his face really say that he really didn’t wanna do anything with his life. I don’t really like the fact that he had tattoos on his face, but he was a nice person toward me.”
One evening Chywanna told him it was over and watched him amble away down the street, slowly shrinking from a man to a speck in the distance. Two weeks rolled on before she saw him again. This time he shuffled into her family’s living room, through the television, in his yellow prison jumpsuit.
“Had you seen that side of him before?” I ask. “Like, him being angry enough to kill someone?”
“No, not at all,” she says. “He didn’t act that way toward me at all, so it was really shocking.”
“What about his mother?” I ask. “Did you like his mother, Tina?”
“Yeah, she was pretty nice. She was really nice, but I mean, he, he would disrespect her a lot, though. Like, you’re supposed to talk to your mom in a respectful way, but he didn’t. It’s almost like he was a controlling husband over his mom, instead of his mother’s son.”
Chywanna clucks, then blows a little huff.
“I feel like, if I would never have broken up with him, I feel like I could’ve at least stopped him from killing the man. You know how somebody makes you mad and you call your friend and you’re like, ‘Man, guess what happened to me today? This man tried to do this and this. I think I’m going to do this to the man for doing that to me, you know?’ So I thought maybe he would tell me about it, and I would be, ‘You know, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’”
Chywanna says he called her on the morning after he’d lit the house on fire but before the police pointed a gun in his face and cuffed him.
“He told me that he wanted to see me, but I couldn’t because I was at school, on my way to class. I was like, ‘I can’t.’”
“Yeah, it was probably lucky you couldn’t catch up with him, because everyone who he rang up that morning and who met him ended up being dragged to the police station.”
“Really?”
“Don’t tell him I told you this, but I think you’re very lucky to get away from him.”
“Everybody says that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I can’t help thinking about Daisy and China. “He’s a very nice . . . On one hand he’s very . . . I’m just telling you this, you know, just in case . . . Not that, you know, you don’t know how to take care of yourself, but I’ve been talking to him a bit and he’s definitely a bit volatile and prone to breaking into violence and stuff. So, yeah, you should be careful. But he’s going to be in jail probably for decades, so you should be okay.”
“Yeah. And he . . . he calls me all the time and he’s talking about he wants to marry me and stuff like that, but I don’t want to tell him that I have moved on—but I have.”
I think of how a normal family life stopped Chywanna from being drawn into the madness.
Because she was off to school, she couldn’t catch up.
Real Talk
“Mike Scott found another man,” I tell Vincent, straightening the affidavit on my coffee table. “Another man complained Richard Barrett sexually harassed him.”
I slurp a mouthful of black coffee.
“For real?” Vincent says, surprised.
I tell him for real.
“Damn, yeah? I don’t know nothin’ about it, right? Like I said, the motherfucker ain’t did me no kind of way like that, you hear?”
I squint at the topless photo of Vincent next to the affidavit.
“Someone also sent Mike Scott a photograph of you. In the mirror it looks like Richard Barrett is taking the photo of you.”
“No! Hell no!” Vincent laughs, then shouts, “Hell no! That’s bullshit! The only motherfucker who takes photos of me is me!”
“There’s someone’s arm.” I laugh, too. “He definitely looks white.” I roll my finger down Vincent’s arm. “I didn’t know you had a Satan’s star on your shoulder.”
“Man, listen, I got a whole lot of tattoos you don’t know about. That ain’t no satanic star, though. I ain’t no satanist, you hear?” he says. “You tryin’ to make me
out to be a devil worshipper?”
“No, no, no.”
Vincent tells me he’s still trying to get me a visitation. I tell him I’m leaving in exactly a week.
“Now tell me,” he says, “what all you and Chywanna talked about me? You weren’t talkin’ that sideways shit. You didn’t bring up that bullshit that he tried to make sexual advances?”
“It was in the newspapers,” I say, weaseling out of the question. “People know about it. They don’t know if it’s true, but they’ve heard about it.”
A primal “AAAARGGHHH” ricochets off the walls in Meridian’s East Mississippi Correctional Facility.
“Hold up!” Vincent says to me. “Hold up!”
Vincent pushes his face to the bars to suss the source of the AAAARGGHHH.
“Someone’s started a fire or some dumb shit,” Vincent tells me.
“Is everybody mentally unstable in Meridian?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Vincent says. “I ain’t got no mental problems, though.”
I laugh. “Well, you know, you do seem to have a propensity for violence.”
“Man,” he says, exasperated, “everybody’s violent, goddamn it.”
“But most people don’t do all the violent stuff you do. I’m just being honest with you.”
“I’m sayin’ everybody is violenter than me in prison. I’m the only person that seems like I’m sane. Everybody else is crazy.”
“Do you remember being really young and not being violent?”
“I used to, like, find dogs and shit, you hear? We’d take those bitches and hang them in trees.”
I put down my coffee. Have I misheard or misunderstood? My arms don’t think so. They’ve prickled up with goose bumps.
“You hung dogs in trees?”
Vincent names a relative. It’s a name I haven’t heard before.