Post Facto

by Darryl Wimberley

  “Settle down, Connie.”

  “Don’t tell me to settle down! I’m not stupid, you know! I’m not gonna be stuck here forever!”

  Connie stalked away pretending to ignore the snickers following her away from the pool’s cold boil. She didn’t need Clara Sue Buchanan or anyone else, was what she told herself. As long as you believed in yourself, that was the thing.

  You just had to believe.

  Connie was sweating over a pot of black-eyed peas later on that week when her mother walked into the kitchen with a copy of the Clarion.

  “Looks like you made the news.”

  Her mother spread the paper flat on the kitchen table for her daughter to see. Connie had to catch her breath. Clara Sue had not ignored her! She’d taken a picture at the spring and sent it to the Clarion, and there it was! Front page! A grainy black-and-white framed Connie taut and tanned in her two-piece the instant before her seamless plunge into Blue Springs’ deep-fed cauldron. Looking back years later, it seemed to Connie that the single moment frozen in Clara Sue’s camera defined the rest of her life. She’d taken the initiative. She made the leap. But in the end she always came up short.

  She never made the final plunge.

  Connie saved the paper her mother brought her, preserving it between layers of tissue paper for a place in her scrapbook. She still had that fold, somewhere, in some drawer or another. She lowered the window of her Suburban. The legs of the water tower threw shadows like a sundial across the pebbled ground.

  What time was it, anyway?! She checked her watch.

  “Damn it, Marty,” she groused aloud. “You’re late!”

  Connie set aside her cell phone, rummaging in her purse to find a wallet she’d made all by herself in a leather-working class. A week’s worth of tips weighted the handmade pouch. Those tokens along with the tithe she lifted from the cash register were enough to keep her straight till the end of the month. Provided her source made his connection.

  “Where are you, Marty Hart?!”

  Officer Marty Hart was already an hour late for his appointment when he presented his photo ID to the guard manning the prison’s sally port.

  “H’lo, Ben.” He’d known the man since childhood and was waved through with barely a glance, strolling onto the parking lot with a dozen or so other guards dead tired after pulling double shifts.

  Someone said something about a bet on the homecoming game.

  “You wanta put some money down, Marty? Hornets or Tigers?”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t gamble.”

  Martin Hart always reminded himself that the parking lot was under constant surveillance, cameras swiveling from aluminum light poles that gridded the asphalt, their video recorded digitally and fed live to security personnel on duty inside. Marty was careful under that gaze never to do anything that looked interesting, much less suspicious. He never stashed his shit while in sight of a camera. He wouldn’t even answer a phone till he was through the gate and on the highway, and Marty never broke that protocol, even if he was running late.

  The prison guard heaved into his F-150, turned over the engine, and eased out between barricaded medians to find the exit leading toward Highway 27. The cache of crystal meth made a satisfying weight in his crotch. Once through the gate, Marty reached into his trousers and pulled out the stash that once belonged to Tiny Sessions. A mile south of the prison, Marty pulled off the hard road for a sandy rut that used to lead to the old Calhoun place, stopping beneath a cover of mimosa to stash the meth in a toolbox always handy in the bed of his truck. Moments later he was back on the highway.

  The whole detour couldn’t have taken three minutes, which would not normally matter except Marty was already behind schedule. He hated being late. You made mistakes when you were behind schedule. Easy to forget your routine when you’re running against the clock. It wasn’t that he gave a damn about inconveniencing Connie; that was the least of his concerns. But Marty did not want Carl’s wife loitering under the water tower for too long at a time. There was always a chance some nosy son of a bitch would start asking questions. It helped, of course, that most locals avoided the place. Even black folk steered clear of the water tower, which was inconvenient as hell for them because the damn thing sat directly between The Quarters and the only black-owned eatery in town.

  It was Connie’s idea to meet at the tower. Connie Koon! Who’d of guessed that the hot young thing he used to cum over as a teenager was now begging at his knee? She wasn’t his biggest hitter, no, but the woman was consistent. Officer Hart could count on Connie to call him at least twice a month. Woman was using regularly which put a wad of cash in Marty’s pocket every single month, and after a disastrous run of online poker Marty really needed the money.

  He could run tardy on Carl’s wife without penalty. Not so with that other crowd. You made an appointment with those boys, you better be on time. Even so, he didn’t want the homecoming queen to panic. You could never tell with amateurs. They’d high-tail if the moon wasn’t right. Better give the lady a call, but not on his personal phone. Marty wasn’t that stupid. He leaned across the truck’s bench seat to fish out a prepaid mobile from the glove box. He didn’t want Connie getting spooked and anyway it would only take a second to let her know he was on his . . .

  FIRST I heard of the accident was off the scanner we keep at the paper. Most small-town papers scan EMS and police frequencies for breaking situations. It helps to keep a page of codes handy. They vary by county. For instance, in our county if I hear a 10-15 I know there’s a prisoner in custody. A 10-24 means some lawman needs immediate help. That afternoon I heard the dispatch respond to a 10-47 followed almost immediately by a 10-71 which is a request for an ambulance.

  With that information and the officer’s confirmation of location, I grabbed my camera and headed out Highway 27 in the direction of the prison. Couple minutes later I saw an EMS van and a fire truck pulled off on the far side of the road, those lights tumbling along with a black-and-tan from the highway patrol. Colt Buchanan’s souped-up Dodge rounded out the field.

  Where was the wreck?

  I crossed lanes to ease my Toyota 4-Runner onto the shoulder south of the scene. The highway runs straight as a string on this stretch of 27. The weather was clear; we hadn’t seen a drop of rain in weeks. Across the highway, in fact, a local cattleman was on a front-end loader unloading enormous cylinders of hay from the flatbed of a semitruck to a dust-dry field. A modest billboard overlooked the scene in testament of another sort of drought.

  Pray for Our Nation

  Returning my attention to the accident side of the highway, I noted a single-wide house trailer half-covered in kudzu that was situated behind a badly kept fence forty yards or so off the road. Housing for migrants probably. I checked the batteries in my camera but until I stumbled past the screen of law enforcement and emergency vehicles, I didn’t see the Ford pickup that had clipped off a telephone pole as neatly as a stick of celery before slamming into the iron trunk of a hickory tree.

  The whole front end was crushed into the cab like a soda can. The front tires were flat and flared out beyond the fender wells. Steam hissed from a broken radiator, transmission fluid and oil gushing onto the blacktop. A volunteer from the fire department was foaming down the engine block and surrounding grass. Sheriff Buchanan barely glanced up at my approach.

  “Sheriff. Looks bad.”

  “No injuries. One DOA.”

  I remember thinking at the time that I should have been able to match the truck with its owner, but it’s surprisingly hard to place a vehicle pretzeled around the trunk of a tree.

  “Driver’s killed then?”

  “Yep,” Colt answered.

  “Got an ID?”

  “It’s Marty Hart.”

  The Weasel? This was Marty’s truck?!

  “Jesus, what happened?”

  A better question would be what could have happened? It was a clear day. There was no other traffic involved. C
ould an animal have run out in front of the truck? Many’s the driver killed himself trying to dodge a deer or dog or some other critter, but in that case you’d expect to see skid marks from an application of brakes. Either that or a set of antlers on the hood. I drew a line in my mind’s eye from the wreck to the road and I didn’t see rubber anywhere. Not even on the grass of the shoulder.

  “He never touched the brakes,” I declared, and the sheriff grunted to agree.

  Well, this was getting to be a real puzzle. It wasn’t a case of somebody nodding off at the wheel. Marty had just finished his shift at the prison; he couldn’t have been on the road more than four or five minutes.

  “And besides, we know he was dialing somebody on a cell phone,” Colt said.

  A highway patrolman nodding sagely from behind his aviator shades.

  “Damn mobiles kill more people than alcohol.”

  I made a note to find data supporting that detail.

  “Who has the phone?” I asked and the patrolman nodded to Colt.

  “Sheriff’s got custody.”

  Colt didn’t seem too happy about that responsibility. I waited until the patrolman was out of earshot to inquire privately—

  “What’s bugging you, Sheriff?”

  “You mean besides having a dead man’s family to notify?”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. It’s the phone, isn’t it? Something about the phone?”

  Colt pressed the brim of his hat.

  “Off the record then.”

  I shrug noncommittally. “Try me.”

  “It’s a throwaway,” Colt told me. “Untraceable. Now, I can see why a drug dealer would have a phone like that, or somebody runnin’ around on his wife, but you got to ask yourself what’d make a prison guard conceal his calls?”

  “Maybe he’s just paranoid.”

  Colt spit carefully. “Maybe.”

  “Any idea who he’s calling?”

  “Never finished the dial. We got the local area code and 294, which could be practically anybody in the county.”

  “Well.” I brightened with sudden clarity, “If Marty didn’t finish dialing, wouldn’t that support the idea that he just got distracted? He took his eyes off the road to punch in a number and just ran himself off the road.”

  “Could well be.” Colt nodded. “Easiest explanation, for sure.”

  And then without asking me to follow, the sheriff turned away from the scene, crossing the ditch in easy strides to reach a gate in the bounding fence line. He was headed for the single-wide trailer that I noticed on my arrival, but there was no sign of activity that I could see. No kids playing outside, despite a litter of toys, a trampoline, and a soccer ball.

  “What are you thinking, Sheriff?” I asked as I hustled to keep up.

  “We might have us an eyewitness.”

  “How you know there’s anybody home?”

  “Got your recorder?”

  “Got my smartphone.”

  I slung my camera over my shoulder and fumbled through the several pockets of my ragged vest to fish out my Android. I pulled up the Tape-A-Talk app.

  “Okay, I’m set.”

  “Just follow my lead,” he directed casually, and placing one hand on the gate’s topmost support vaulted that flimsy barrier like a damn deer.

  By the time I crawled over the fence, Colt was already knocking on the trailer’s front door. He offered a couple of stiff raps and then doffed his hat, waiting for a reply as patiently as a Mormon missionary and I saw a movement at a window. Couple of seconds later a seam opened at the door from lintel to sill. The sheriff murmured some exchange with the shadow inside.

  Then he turned to me.

  “You coming or not?”

  A small, brown woman in a Florida State T-shirt, faded dungarees, and flip-flops ushered us into her home. Large, liquid eyes. No makeup, not even lipstick. She had her hair pulled straight back and secured with some cheap barrette. I was surprised how well she kept the trailer. No fast-food cartons molding on the floor. No mess in the sink. Of course the fact that I expected a migrant’s home to be in some state of sin pudor is an indicator of my own prejudice, or at least a tendency to stereotype. In fact, the woman’s trailer was better kept than my own house, an accomplishment made more impressive as it looked to be accommodating a half-dozen adults, at least, and as many children.

  Signs of poverty were evident. A long, ratted-out couch leaned on a leg patched with duct tape. A rabbit-ear television was propped on milk crates and there were clothes and towels folded in piles all over the floor. Even so, the place was warm and inviting. I saw flowers blooming in soup cans, a riot of periwinkles and lazy Susans competing in floral display. A scented candle wafted before the drone of an oscillating fan.

  I inhaled that damp vapor.

  Pictures and photos festooned the walls in cheap plastic frames, cutouts of Latina celebrities mixed with black-and-whites of family, presumably, those memorabilia looking over a wax statuary of the Virgin and her Son. Crucifixes at odd intervals. These were the iconography I expected to see, or something similar. There was one photo thumbtacked to the wall that grabbed my attention, a black-and-white of a boy who seemed familiar, but before I could fit a name to his face, our hostess ushered us to a kitchen stashed with bags of staples, rice and corn and potatoes piled all over.

  I didn’t see a refrigerator. I did see a pot of brown rice steaming on a propane stove. A smaller pot boiled water beside that bounty and on the counter I saw a jar of instant coffee. A stick of incense intermingled with the other nectars of the kitchen, a pleasant effluvium. “Please,” she said, and Colt and I took chairs at a table mounted on sawhorses. Our hostess spilled some Ritz crackers onto a saucer and fielded a pair of chipped coffee mugs from a shelf busy with paper plates and plastic implements.

  “Gracias, señora.” Colt accepted a cup of instantly brewed coffee with his cracker.

  I was set to pass, but a cluck of Colt’s tongue alerted me to the expected etiquette and I smiled as I took a cup of Nescafé from her hand.

  “You speak English, señora?”

  She didn’t reply.

  Was she Mexican? Cuban? She could be from Peru or Paraguay, for that matter, but her features were more Indian than Spanish.

  Not flattering to realize I can’t tell these people apart.

  “We come from Monterey.” The woman read my thoughts with perfect insouciance. “But you do not want to speak with me. You want to hear mi hija. Venir, hija. Venga aqui, por favor.”

  With that summons a charming little sprite materialized at her mother’s side, a pair of ponytails wrapped in rubber bands. She was dressed in a formless smock tie-dyed in a riot of patterns and colors over canvas shoes with white socks and I realized then whose picture it was that nagged me from the wall.

  I turned to our hostess.

  “Are you Edgar Uribe’s mother? I saw your son carving the lander for the senior float. What an eye! And this is your daughter?”

  “My Isabel,” she affirmed with a pride that embarrassed me.

  But Sheriff Buchanan seemed perfectly at ease.

  “Isabel. Nice to meet you, señorita.”

  She nodded politely.

  “Can you tell me what you saw?”

  The child turned to her mother for permission.

  “Esta bien.”

  Such dignity in a ten-year-old. She nodded to her mama and then returned fearlessly to meet the sheriff’s eye.

  “I see the truck coming and there is Our Mother.”

  “Your mother?” I asked.

  “Our Mother,” the child contradicted.

  “Let her tell it her own way,” Colt directed me. “Go ahead, señorita.”

  At first it seemed the child was not willing to elaborate at all. Colt didn’t prompt her or respond with the obvious follow-on questions. He just waited patiently and sipped his coffee. I took a sip or two for the sake of appearances. After a long moment, Isabel picked up her narrative.

&
nbsp; “She has feeling, Our Mother. I feel her. Edgar, he feel—feels her too.”

  I turned to her mother. “What does she mean?”

  Her mother smiled to me.

  “She means to say that she has shown herself to us. To our family.”

  The last thing I expected to find coming home to Lafayette County was a family of mystics! How could anyone believe such things?

  “Our Lady has appeared many times.” The mother read my thoughts, which made me wonder if this was actually a warren of sorcerers.

  “But the man was not expecting,” Isabel continued sadly. “He had a telèfono and when he look up he see her and he is surprised. Then he truck, it go off the road and I can no more see because there is the ditch, but the pole breaks and the tree shakes and I go tell Mama to call the policia because there is a great trouble.”

  And what of the Lady? Where did she go?

  “She stay to help him die,” the child answered as if that was self-evident. “And then she come to us. Here. To mi familia.”

  I tried to mask my incredulity but was once again transparent to our hosts.

  “She came,” the child insisted. “I add her to my picture.”

  “Can you show us, little one?” Colt encouraged, and her mother answered.

  “In her room.”

  Edgar’s younger sister led the way past piles of towels and plaid shirts. Just two doors down a prefab hallway.

  “Here.”

  I stepped into Isabel’s modest sanctum and gasped. A vivid illustration as large as a small tapestry occupied an entire wall! The brilliant and varied texture was rendered in a neon tempura alien to me, the Virgin of Virgins smiling over a surreal landscape peopled with children and their families, the hale and the crippled equally represented in startling detail. It seemed impossible that a child could create such a marvel, and yet there it was.

  The child’s mother regarded me closely.

  “You do not drink.” She nodded to the still-steaming cup in my hand. “I think you never will.”

  We thanked Señora Uribe for her hospitality as we left the family’s trailer. By that time a gaggle of onlookers was gathered around Marty Hart’s still-smoking Ford. Colt hopped the fence and strode over to the wreckage.