All the Dead Lie Down

by Mary Willis Walker

  Molly looked with horror at the tears. She had never seen Harriet cry before, never, not when Harriet had her miscarriages, not when her husband Donald had died, not when Vernon Cates had floated to the surface of Lake Travis, not when Molly had made her move out of her house and into this place. But now Molly had made her cry. What in God’s name did she think she was doing? This was her sick, feeble old aunt who had loved and cared for her all her life. Now that it was Molly’s turn to do the caretaking, here she was bullying her, making her cry. It was inexcusable. She was acting like a spoiled child, throwing a tantrum to get what she wanted.

  Molly sat back in her chair. She’d failed to meet even the minimal standard for love and compassion. “Aunt Harriet, I’m sorry,” she said very softly.

  Harriet opened her eyes slowly. “Molly, Molly,” she said, as if she were speaking to a bad but beloved two-year-old. “You shouted.”

  “I guess I did. But I’ve always been a royal pain in the ass, haven’t I?”

  Harriet let out a puff of air that sounded exactly like a chuckle.

  Molly said, “But you did your share of the shouting, Aunt Harriet. In the old days. Oh, the fights we had! Remember the knock-down-drag-out about my staying out past midnight? And where I was going to live after Daddy was killed? You know something? I miss those fights. Now there’s no one who cares enough to fight with me.”

  They had never been demonstrative with one another, rarely expressed mutual affection, so between the two of them this amounted to a gush of emotion. Now that she’d started, Molly went on with the things she’d always meant to say and hadn’t. “All my life I’ve counted on you, Aunt Harriet. To be there for me, no matter what I did. And you always were. Always. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you, have I?”

  They looked at one another in silence for a while. Then Harriet began to sing slowly, “A-B-C-D-E-F-G-” She stopped and her eyes rolled in panic. She’d forgotten what came next.

  “H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P,” Molly carried on for her.

  “Where’s my ring?” Harriet demanded, holding her hands out. “I think they stole it.”

  There was a knock on the door. It opened and the young nurse stuck her head in. “Ladies, supper,” she chirped.

  “Fried chicken?” Harriet said, squinting at Molly. “Mashed potatoes?”

  “So I hear.”

  “Stay, Molly.”

  “I will.” Molly leaned forward and untied the pink bow in her aunt’s hair. “Of course I’ll stay.” She pulled the ribbon off and dropped it into the wastebasket. “Let’s go get your ring from the lockbox. Okay?”

  “I’ll wear it to supper,” Harriet said with a smile.

  “Yeah. We’ll go formal.”

  NO OBSERVER, SEEING THE VIOLENCE THAT FLARED

  CONTINUALLY ON TEXAs’ LONG FRONTIER, CAN

  FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE ENSUING PROBLEMS OF

  LAW AND ORDER THAT BESET THE STATE. BY 1835,

  ANGLO TEXAS WAS DRAWING MEN WHO SOUGHT

  VIOLENCE LIKE STRONG DRINK; IF THEY COULD NOT

  FIND A WAR, THEY WERE DISPOSED TO MAKE ONE.

  —T. R. FEHRENBACH, LONE STAR

  Molly didn’t use her free morning in Lubbock to drive out to the old ranch near Crosbyton. She didn’t drive by Aunt Harriet’s house either—the old Victorian house on Mesquite Trail, where she’d lived during ninth and tenth grades because her father wanted her to go to high school in Lubbock rather than the little school in Crosbyton. She didn’t call the one high school friend she still kept in touch with. She didn’t call home for her messages as she usually did. She didn’t call Grady as she had promised. She didn’t even get out of her bed at the Ramada Inn until two hours before her noon appointment with Shelby Palmer.

  She couldn’t face Lubbock—the eternal wind, the red dust, the flatness. The past. And she couldn’t face Julian Palmer’s version of her father as a depressed, womanizing ne’er-do-well. During her eighteen hours in Lubbock, she had managed to be inside the entire time except for the drive from the airport to Palmer’s office, then to the nursing home and the motel. It was possible, if you kept your blinders on, to travel to a city and never actually be there.

  She kept the motel room cold and dark and tried to sleep, but ended up lying in bed with her eyes closed. She hoped that if she stayed very still and pretended to be asleep the flood of mood-darkening chemicals she felt marshaling force in her bloodstream might just peter out without her feeling them.

  It seemed to work, because when she finally got up and took a long shower she felt better. She’d forgotten to buy a toothbrush, so she scrubbed her teeth with a washcloth. After putting yesterday’s clothes back on, she glanced around the room to see if she’d forgotten anything. No suitcase and nothing to pack. It sure made checking out simpler. It felt so free, Molly decided to try it more often; over the years she’d become increasingly encumbered when she traveled, hauling around accouterments like hair dryers and travel clocks, extra shoes and books, sweaters and raincoats—things she might need, but usually didn’t.

  While she was waiting for a late breakfast of cornflakes and fruit at the coffee shop, she rummaged through her purse for the paper Cullen Shoemaker had given her on Monday. She found it crumpled at the bottom. Until yesterday she’d had no intention of reading it, but after hearing his rant yesterday she felt a morbid curiosity.

  She smoothed it out and read it as she sipped her coffee. His thesis was that Jews and blacks and immigrants and women’s libbers and intellectuals and the mass media had taken over the government. They were conspiring with the ATF to disarm white Americans and then force on them their “Jewish-liberal-equalitarian plague.” The only hope was for white native-born males to band together in armed vigilance committees like the McNelly Posse to defeat the “mulatto zombies.” If violence was necessary to accomplish that, then violence it would be.

  His speech at the hearing had been a greatly sanitized version that stuck pretty much to the concealed handgun issue. This “McNelly Manifesto,” as he titled it, went way beyond that. It was hair-raising stuff. Just reading it gave her an unclean feeling.

  What was particularly unsettling about it was Shoemaker’s insistence that all forms of gun control and registration should be resisted to the death.

  It was so unsettling that Molly thought she ought to pass it on to someone, but she didn’t know who. She’d ask Grady or Parnell if she ought to do something with it.

  She drove her rental car back to the Cap Rock Office Park and again arrived ten minutes early at Shelby Palmer’s office. This time, when she walked in, she didn’t get a smile from Mrs. Palmer. “He was up all night on your matter,” the white-haired woman said. “Man his age with an ulcer ought to know better. You can go on back.”

  Shelby Palmer was wearing the same clothes, too, and he looked rumpled and discouraged, which made Molly’s fragile spirits sink. He came around from behind his cluttered desk to shake hands with her. “Miz Cates, sit down. Coffee?”

  “Never past noon. Thanks.”

  He looked at his watch. “You’ve still got six minutes.”

  “Oh, I’d love some then.”

  He hollered out the door. “Two coffees, Mama?”

  He went back to his desk and picked up a yellow legal pad. “Computer sure is a boon to this business.”

  “I bet.”

  “In the old days it would’ve taken me weeks to do what I did last night. I read the Toser file and I’m sorry I can’t let you see it, but you know how unethical it would be without Jim Ray Toser’s okay. I finally got hold of him this morning, and he emphatically did not approve my giving you access to the file. He recognized your name and said the last thing he wanted was to see this smeared all over Lone Star Monthly. But when I explained your personal interest, and promised him you wouldn’t write about this—” He paused and looked hard at her. “You do promise that?”

  Molly nodded solemnly.

  “Good. When I explained all that, Toser said it was o
kay to share with you the part about the money—the fifty thousand cash, since that’s really the item which might pertain to your matter.”

  He sat down. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing of substance to share. Dad never figured out where it came from. Tracking cash is almost impossible.” He looked down at his yellow pad. “He did narrow it down some. He talked with Crocker’s wife, who was by then about to be his ex-wife, and whoever said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned must’ve had Ruth Crocker in mind. She said Crocker was interested in two things: making money by any means and getting into young girls’ pants. The reason she finally divorced him, she said, is that he was even bringing the girls home, and some of them were younger than his own daughters. Anyway, she said that the fifty thousand dollars did not come from anything she knew of. No rich uncles, no insurance policies. And he sure as hell didn’t save it up. Crocker never had so much as a pot to piss in the whole twenty-two years she knew him. She said she didn’t even know about that house investment until Toser came around asking about it. Her bet was the money was ill-gotten, but she wanted her community property half of that house anyway.”

  Mrs. Palmer entered with two steaming Styrofoam cups. “What do you take, Miz Cates?”

  “Just black. Thanks.”

  “Makes it easy. Mr. Trion called,” she told her son. “He’ll be here at one-thirty. You should take a nap first.”

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  When she’d gone he said, “I checked the property records, and Dad was right on, as usual. Crocker put down $51,432 cash for the house on August 13, 1970. Where the money came from is anybody’s guess. I imagine the only people who know are Crocker and whoever paid him.”

  Molly looked down into the black depths of her steaming coffee cup and marveled at how many dead ends one question could have. Here was another. She should be getting used to it by now, but she felt as frustrated and inadequate as she always had.

  “You look lost,” Shelby Palmer said.

  “Yeah? A bag lady I ran into the other day called me Little Bopeep, because I looked like I just lost my sheep. It’s pretty bad when you have bag ladies feeling sorry for you.”

  “I know you’re disappointed, but here’s something else I can tell you. That house Crocker bought was leased by a business called Miracle Massage. It was a front for prostitution. According to Ruth and several other pretty good sources, none of whom would ever testify to it, Crocker was involved in the business and was not just an unwitting landlord. Miracle Massage is now defunct, but it operated right up to ’88. I believe the profits from this made it possible for Crocker to retire and be the gentleman farmer he now is.”

  “Where’s Ruth now?”

  “Living in Oklahoma with her oldest son and his family. Works for the city, never remarried.”

  Molly blew on her coffee. “Have there been other wives?”

  “Ah, you’re getting ahead of me. There have been two more—Jeanette and Kelly. The most recent one, Kelly, divorced him last year. When they got married she was nineteen, he was fifty-nine. She’s so angry she makes Ruth sound like a purring kitten. It seems she caught Crocker diddling girls from the local junior high—repeatedly.”

  “Junior high?”

  “Yup. She’s also mad that Crocker out-lawyered her in the divorce and she ended up having to go back to work at the Dairy Queen.”

  “I wonder if Kelly would testify if we could get an indecency with a child charge brought against Crocker?”

  He did a little drumbeat on the desk with his fingers. “I had a feeling you’d want to know that. She says she might, and if she did, she could nail his balls to the barn door—that’s a direct quote.”

  “That’s interesting. Would you call her back and see if you can get the names of some of the girls who got diddled?”

  He made a note on his yellow pad. “Sure. Now, we come to your second question—the two young women who initiated the suit against Crocker back in ’75. I don’t know if this is worth the vast sum you’re about to pay me for having stayed up all night, but I did track them down. The first one, Christine Fanon, is dead, I’m sorry to say. Heroin overdose in ’84 in Houston. Prostitute, IV drug user, long record of drug and prostitution charges. The other one—Sylvia Ramos—has a prostitution record from Austin and Houston. She’s living in El Paso now. But more than that I couldn’t get. She doesn’t have a driver’s license or pay property taxes, but she is on the voter rolls.”

  Sylvia Ramos in El Paso. Molly found her interest picking up here. “Mr. Palmer, I’d like to hire you to fly down to El Paso and follow up on Sylvia Ramos. Today, if possible.”

  “Sorry, Miz Cates. I can do the phone follow-up with the third ex-wife because that won’t take long, but I can’t go anywhere. I’m booked solid for the next three weeks at least, and so is my associate. Last night I fit you in because Mr. Quinlan had asked me to give you all possible assistance.”

  “I see. Have you got an address in El Paso for her?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s in the report Mama’s typing up for you right now.” He shook his head. “But you don’t want to do this yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  “My hunch is Sylvia Ramos lives in circumstances a lady shouldn’t go into by herself.”

  “A lady?” Molly said, raising her eyebrows at a word she hated. “I don’t see any of those around here.”

  “Sorry. I’m old-fashioned. But even if it weren’t dangerous, what is there to learn from her? That Crocker was guilty of official misconduct twenty-some years ago? We already know that and the meter’s run out on any crimes he may have committed back then.”

  Molly nodded. He was probably right, but she had a long tradition of leaving no lead unfollowed. And this was the only one left.

  “You ready for question number three?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” She took a swig of coffee.

  He looked down at his yellow pad. “Olin Crocker lives on a farm near Taylor. Alone, since Kelly divorced him last year. He’s got fifteen hundred acres. Bought them in ’82. Listed on the tax rolls as worth more than two million, but they’re in cultivation so he’s got an agricultural exemption. He’s a prosperous citizen, done right well for himself. He’s got four hundred thousand dollars in CDs at the Williamson Bank. In January of this year he registered as a lobbyist for TEXRA, just as you said. But other than that he hasn’t worked since 1974 when he left the sheriff’s office.”

  “Got an address and phone?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Both unlisted. They’ll be in the report.”

  “I understand you can’t let me read the Toser report, but could you tell me how Toser used the information? I’m assuming if there had been something indictable Toser would have gone for it.”

  “My guess is he used it to scare Crocker out of the race.”

  “Anything else?” Molly asked.

  He looked down at his pad again, then shook his head. “That’s it.”

  She stood up. “Many thanks for taking this on when you’re so busy.”

  He reached out his hand. “I wish we could’ve gotten more for you.”

  “Well,” Molly said, taking hold of his hand, “it may turn out to be enough.”

  “You aren’t going to El Paso, are you?”

  “No. I’m going home.”

  “Good.”

  On the way out Molly picked up the report from Mrs. Palmer and wrote a check for four hundred dollars for a night of Shelby Palmer’s time. It felt like a bargain.

  Molly didn’t know for sure what she was going to do until she got to the Lubbock airport and saw the flight to El Paso listed. It was leaving in a half hour, before the next flight to Austin. There was one seat left; it felt like fate beckoning. She bought the ticket and, with no bags to check or carry, headed straight to the gate. She’d planned to call home for her messages, but there wasn’t time. She stopped at the newsstand, bought a New York Times and a toothbrush, and boarded the plane, with a quivery feeling in her chest.
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  She sat down in her window seat and looked out at her hometown framed in the tiny window. The brown earth was so relentlessly flat and featureless there was almost a purity to it. As the plane taxied down the runway, the vibration of the engine set the quiver in her chest to humming a familiar tune. If she were forced to give words to the tune, it would be Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” She felt light and unencumbered, like a young girl again, running away from home and destined for danger and illicit excitement. She had felt some version of this every single time she left Lubbock.

  By the time they landed in El Paso an hour later, she’d finished the crossword puzzle and read everything in the paper except the business pages, which she always intended to read and never did. One look out the window at the encircling mountains, all mauve and rust and pale green, and she knew she wasn’t in Lubbock anymore.

  She rented a car and enlisted the agent’s help in finding Sylvia Ramos’s address on the map. It turned out to be less than two miles from the airport. Fate again.

  She’d been to El Paso only once before and that was thirty years ago with her daddy on one of their road trips. But it had made an impression on her. Ever since that visit she’d thought of El Paso as the place she’d run away to if she ever needed to lose herself. The city was an escape fantasy, as far west as you could go and still stay in Texas. It had for her that romantic, last-chance, end-of-the-line, barely civilized feel that border towns had. Here anything could happen. You could change your identity and get away with it; you could live life on the edge.

  Chester Avenue was a block from Highway 54 and four blocks from Fort Bliss, in a neighborhood that could easily have been found in Mexico. Not surprising since the border was only three miles to the south. The house was a tiny cinder-block box painted bright blue. The yard was packed dirt that looked like it had been swept with a broom recently. When she got out of the car, three nearly naked children and a skinny mongrel in the yard next door stared wide-eyed, as if she’d dropped from Mars. There was no doorbell, so Molly knocked on the unpainted, warped screen door, carefully, to avoid getting splinters in her knuckles. A man in his twenties, wearing only a pair of blue jeans, opened the door and glared at her.