Bottomland: Based on the Murder of Rosa Mary Dean in Franklin, Tennessee

by Trey Holt

  “And then we heard you scream.” I wiped the tears away from my face with the back of my hand.“We heard you scream a couple of times.”

  “‘Holler’would be a better word,”he said.“I don’t think I‘screamed.’“

  “Whatever you did, we heard it,”I told him.“And then we all went and looked under the stone and found you there. Fred Burkitt said,‘Shit, boys, he’s still breathin’. I saw him hidin’over here, but I thought he’d run before I knocked it over on him.’I wasn’t tryin’to hurt the son of a bitch, I swear.’Ronnie Langford even got down there on top of you and checked your pulse somehow that he knew to. He said he thought you was gonna be all right…was probably just knocked out.”

  Percy turned to the corner of the room. He made some gesture, but caught himself.

  “Van even said that he thought it was you. He got down there with Ronnie Langford and looked real close. He said it three or four times and....”

  I kicked him in the ass until he raised back up. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of you, Percy. It was just that I thought they might do something else crazy if they knew that I was kin to you…and how much I loved you. That Burkitt man was drunk out of his head…crazy as a lunatic. No…bad word. They were both out of their heads. Ronnie had always been nice to me before. Hell, we wouldn’t have even been there if it hadn’t been for Van. He was brown-nosin’Ronnie that day, like he does everybody.

  I picked the next words quickly, afraid I would again lose him to the pig.

  ” …it was so dark and I couldn’t tell if it was you or not. Maybe by then they had started to sober up a little. And they started sayin’that they could leave whoever it was there and he’d either die or they’d find him there in the mornin’and figure that his last bit of tearin’-up had gone wrong. They even said they was gonna call the police and tell them that they’d seen somebody over there. They said that’d cover their ass if anybody had seen us. That’s when they told us they’d cut our dicks off.”

  “Last chance for lunch,”a different woman told him, her broad face barely visible through the crack in the door.

  “No thank ya. I’m fine.” He studied my face like he might believe me.

  “Do you want me to tell Lucky?” I asked him.

  “No…he said he didn’t want to hear anything else about Walter. This medicine they got me on takes away a lot of my memory. But I remember him sayin’that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Lucky wouldn’t be any more likely to believe you than Walter. They both know the truth and never waiver. See…I said somethin’good about you,”he said into the corner.

  “It might get you out’a here,”I told him.

  “This had been in the makings a long time,”he responded.“It’s bigger than you and me both. Leave it alone. Grace. Grace is the most important thing in the world. It means lovin’somebody when they don’t deserve it. Hell, none of us deserve it. We’re all bastards. The bastards of God!”

  On the way there, Lucky had observed, both this week and the last, that Percy was“fixated”on religious things. Seeming impressed he knew the word when he told me, he said that’s what Dr. Guppy had told him shortly after they had Percy admitted against his will. Threatened him with going to jail for destruction of state property, or even Federal charges, being a military cemetery..

  “Love, in its own way,”said Percy,“means suffering. The two are inseparable. Grace meansforgiving somebody even before they ask you. It means we live in a state of perpetual forgiveness.”

  “You sound like Brother Myron Brown,”I told him.

  “I don’t mean to,”he said.“But I’ve been thinking on that a lot. Walter, when he’s in a good mood, talks to me about that kind’a stuff a lot. He says if I learn things like this, then he won’t ever have to use his big, nasty teeth on me.”

  I drew in enough air to push the choking out of my chest. I nodded and stood, afraid that Lucky had begun to get drunk or mad waiting on me. Or both.

  Percy stared into the corner for a few moments, wagged his finger at the nothingness. Did his best to make a mean face.

  Randomness. A Planned nature of Things. Basic Human Frailty.

  + + +

  I hoped the ride down Hillsboro Road would clear my head. From the moonshine. From my round with Lucky earlier in the day. From having to see Percy like this again. I’d hoped against hope, I guess, that he would never return to the state of eight years before. I felt the grief that comes with the early recognition of something you have dreaded. My heart sank in a different way when thoughts of him passed out of my head and her presence came in.

  My senses felt as alive with memory as they had when what I was remembering occurred. Her smell remained instead of the scent of the trees lining the road. Her taste remained with me, even though I should have been tasting the sore in my mouth. My crotch throbbed, even though the throbbing should have been in my back and ass from Lucky earlier. The sun just starting to lose its color to a sky greying around its edges, I remembered from the night before—which surprised me—that she had said she was working from ten o’clock to six o’clock in the evening.

  Castner Knott, so-named, I had been told, after the two men that founded the department store, was on the west-central edge of Nashville, bordering a neighborhood called Green Hills, that had sprung up after World War II and the prosperity that came in its wake.

  As I sat at the stop light, gunning the throttle over and over, I listened to the engine combust then fire, combust then fire, so quickly that one movement couldn’t be separated from another. As the light changed, I took the straight shot of Franklin Road leaving town.

  All the usual voices made themselves present in the silence of the toiling engine. Percy telling me how Hood followed Schofield to Nashville down Franklin Road. The insanity of it all. Lucky having a belly laugh after Percy called somebody insane. This was the long fucking way around, Lucky would tell me. Going through Brentwood to get to Green Hills. Why in the hell would you do that? That’s four or five miles out of the way. Maybe six. Because, Franklin Road clears my head. Like a soothing voice or calming music, it turns the voices quiet in my head. You sound like Percy, he would tell me. What voices in your head? Am I gonna need to take you for a few a’them treatments, too? He laughed because he couldn’t let himself cry about it. Then he’d be back on my ass about the extra few miles. You kids that didn’t live through the Depression just don’t understand it like we do. The money that you’d spend on the extra gas you burn meant somethin’then. There wasn’t no extra anything. Hell, then right on its heels came the war. Rations out the ass. People tryin’to make do on as little as they could. Then everybody come home—or at least them that come home—and built them a little house on their GI Loan and people act like we’re gonna have everything forever. You take Ronnie Langford, if he had come home, he’d just be glad to have anything. Then there’s that Burkitt boy. Life just ain’t fair, Henry.

  Just thinking about the diatribe made me madder than it had that morning when he kicked me in the ass…when he held my head close enough to the dried vomit I could see the fine details of any food that had been left in my stomach. Maybe we all get what we deserve. Maybe I did this morning. Maybe Ronnie and Fred did. Or maybe it’s just dumb luck.

  I never did quite get over that Langford boy, Lucky would tell me. Boy gave up everything when they were startin’to wind down the draft. You know how he got killed, don’t ya? I’d nod, but he’d never notice. On that goddam island. Okinawa. They were shuttin’it down. Almost had it completely captured. He went in less than a week before they finished it off. He got there on the June the 14th, died on the 19th. He was just one of twelve thousand killed.

  And then you take that Burkitt boy....

  As the horn blared, I jerked the handlebars so hard that I nearly veered off the road. I caught myself with my right foot, kept from spinning out in the gravel and going down. I gave him the finger, after I made sure it wasn't Lucky. Lucky might have sat o
n the horn but he wouldn’t have swerved. Giving me the finger back, I watched Van make his way down Hillsboro Road. Son of a bitch could’ve killed me.Sitting behind three cars at a stop light, I tried to force my hands to stop shaking. Told myself that I’m the halfback, Van the tight end who wanted to be the halfback but was too slow. That’s what Mr. Nedler’s told us in Spring practice anyway. Van’s taller, has more reach, longer limbs to throw blocks. I’m smaller, faster…tougher. He actually said that, in front of Van, but he acted like he didn’t even hear it. Big Shit Van.

  + + +

  I never felt as small-town as I did when I went to Nashville. To me, it seemed like every eye was fixed on me, the people behind them knowing that I was from somewhere else…didn’t come someplace like this often. Women’s Dresses, she had told me. Sometimes Men’s Sportswear. Sometimes, behind one of the makeup counters.

  Why won’t the goddam door open? I asked myself. I continued to shove on it until I realized it said PULL. Saw a couple of people laughing at me. The building air felt cool. Smelled like inside air, like it had been turned over and over until mostly everything but perfume had been filtered out of it. A loudspeaker called out people’s names…specials every once in awhile. Women and men were both dressed like they were going to church. I tried to look like I had been there before. Squinted my eyes a little, scanned as far as I could see as I was made my way a few feet inside.

  “Why’ve you got a leather jacket on in May?” Her hand touched my shoulder as I turned.

  “I rode my bike,”I told her, still squinting like I might be looking for something else. Somebody else.

  “You rode your bicycle?” she said.

  “My motorcycle,”I told her. I felt a twinge in my gut.

  “Oh,”she laughed.“Sorry. I forgot you said that. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  She was digging in her purse for something. Her time card, she said. She took out a piece of gum, folded it and put it in her mouth. Offered me one. I took it.

  “Well, I was just wondering. You seemed a little funny.”She waved at somebody that walked close to us.“She works in Men’s Sportswear. She’s a sweet lady. Walk this way with me,”she told me.“I’ve got to clock out. You stay right here. I’ve got to go in this little room, punch my card in this machine. Chink-chink, it goes. The chink-chink machine, I call it. So they know what time I left. Did you know what time I was leaving? Is that why you came now?”

  “No…actually I—”But she was gone. In the door where the chink-chink machine was. So they’d know what time she left.

  I leaned on the wall outside the door, trying to make myself look like I’d been there a thousand times. Trying to convince anybody that looked at me that I was waiting on my girlfriend. Telling myself that I was desperate and rough in my leather jacket, the one out of the Sears and Rare-back catalogue, as Lucky liked to call it. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to run into Percy again. The son of a bitch couldn’t walk this far. Not in a day anyway. He’d been holed up upstairs at our house that afternoon, smoking one cigarette after another, his fingers as yellow as a daisy. He’d offered me one just before he’d tried to explain to me what he had been doing.

  I took it, drew long and deep on it. Felt the first hit that convinces you the shit is somehow good for you. Nodded emptily at him.

  “I could have done somethin’else this mornin’besides get up on that car. I could’a gone down to Frank’s and carried on a bunch of bullshit like most other men in this town, George Preston and a few others not included. I could’a gone over to Sammy Samuels’auction barn and seen what he had. I could’ve just come here and talked to you. But we all have a drive inside us that we can only turn a deaf ear to so long. I’m not sayin’it’s good.”

  “Lucky’s gonna have your ass,”I told him.“Or at least I’m imaginin’he wants to.”

  “Lucky-Scmucky,”he said. He laughed.

  “It’s like all good preachin’,”he told me.“I'm talkin’to myself. Tellin’myself what I need to hear. I’m just not sure how it all comes together…I mean, how it’s related, one thing to another.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked me.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,”I told her.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “My uncle,”I told her as she shut the door to the time-card room.

  “The one we saw last night?”

  “I’ve only got one.”

  She took my hand in hers and led me through the plate glass door to the sidewalk that surrounded the building. The air felt stiller than when I had entered. Fuller of heat. Two weeks would bring the beginning of the weather that felt like summer.

  “What’re you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,”I said.“I guess I thought we might go to get something to eat or somethin’.”

  “Can we ride your motorcycle?” she said.

  I nodded as we began to walk toward it.“Here,”I said, handing her my leather jacket,“You probably ought to wear this. It’s easy to get cold even when it’s really warm.”

  She nodded then slipped the jacket on before she raised her leg over the seat of my bike, a little more carefully than I had, because of her skirt.“We’ll probably get arrested,”she said.“Indecent exposure.”

  “Nobody’s gonna say anything,”I told her.

  “It’s not very lady-like, though.”

  I nodded. Laughed. Fired the throttle as I kicked the Indian started.

  “Van’s your cousin, right?” she said into my ear as she wrapped her arms around my rib cage.

  I nodded.“Why?”

  “Oh, no reason really. I just saw him today when he was in the store. He came over to my department and said‘Hi.’Said his parents had given him some money to come buy himself some summer clothes. I saw him a little later, walkin’out with a big bag. Well, actually I didn’t see him. He came over and told me‘Bye.’He seems like a nice guy.”

  I nodded and gunned the throttle a couple of times. Let the clutch out and felt the Indian’s power under me. Felt her squeeze hard at my rib cage as we started down the hill and out of the parking lot.

  “Where you wanna go?” I asked her over my shoulder.

  She nuzzled her head in next to mine.“I don’t care. Wherever you do.”

  I nodded. Knowing that neither did I care…as long as I was with her. Could feel her touch on my skin. Know that she was close to me.

  Chapter Twenty

  “When Police Chief Dillard Hall was asked why he had taken the negroes into custody, he responded by answering,‘The whole town thinks they did it.’And then he would answer no more questions, disappearing into the Franklin Memorial Chapel. It seems as though the Franklin Jail is being used for a holding place, so that some of its citizens will not harm others. It was always this reporter’s impression that the jail was to protect the ones on the outside, not its interior.”

  That’s how the smartass Garrison ended his commentary on my father. Earlier, he had addressed his question to Lucky on the drinking.

  “‘Lucky’as he is called, the Police Chief in Franklin for the past four years, stated it was none of the reporters’business if he had been drinking when an inquiry was made into the matter. Mr. Hall refused to answer any questions excepting to divulge some information that had been in the deceased young woman’s pocket.”

  I had been trying to appear inconspicuous reading the article as I folded papers, one lying flat at my knees. Eventually my eyes would let me go no further, the choking feeling in my throat betraying my ability to read.

  Folding by Chester Mott, he, as usual, kept his eyes and his words to himself. In his own way, he reminded me of Percy, minus the crazy. That I knew of, he had no friends; only his morning and evening route. He had lived with his mother and had thrown papers as long as I could remember; never done anything else.

  On my other side was Ralph Thompson. He was not minus the crazy. He wasn’t crazy like Percy; didn’t think that a p
ig followed him around everywhere. He was simply a few bricks shy of a full load, as I had heard it said.

  “So, your daddy was drunk again, huh?” spouted Collins from across the office.

  I checked over my shoulder. Mr. Charles was watching us close this morning, listening to what was said so he could squelch something before it got started. Ignored asshole.

  “Does he know anything else?” Mott asked me, one of the few people in the world he’d address first. Eight years, I guess, had proved I wouldn’t hurt him. Take anything that his mother had left.

  I glanced at him and shook my head, the knot still lodged in my throat, already dreading the Banner coming out around three. Mott and his Banner cohorts would see it a little after noon.

  “It’s scary,”he said.“Really scary.”

  I nodded. Realized he had spoken more words to me the last few seconds than he had in the last few months.

  “Yeah,”said Ralph Thompson.“You should’a seen her. I seen her. She was awful ugly with that huge, old cut in her throat.” He sniffed and pushed up on his nose with his palm, like he was trying to tilt the thing back. Keep it from running perpetually, like it did.”Yep. I seen her.”

  “Glad I didn’t,”said Chester.

  As they went on back and forth, each trying to comfort the other in his own strange way, Raymond Collins only mumbled for the most part inaudible phrases from the opposite corner of the room. That morning, Lucky had only briefly mentioned that Jack Charles had told him in passing about Collins and me the day before. Smiled when he talked about it. The first time I’d seen his separated teeth in days, maybe months for that matter, except for a sarcastic or melancholic laugh. Lucky liked to think about me like himself: small, but able to take care of myself. A scrapper. A fighter. That’s why, I always figured he was so concerned with my football playing. As a tailback and kick returner, I was the smallest guy on the field. Liked to think about myself as the one who gave the most. Maybe that’s why it ended the way it did. I don’t know. Van had said of me and Lucky:“Little Man’s Syndrome. That’s what they call it. Where you make up for your size with the way you act…the size of your dick, that is!” That night, I’d been too focused on everything else to worry about his smartass mouth.