Rush had a deep rivet of discolored scar tissue that ran up and down his calf. He kicked his foot forward and pushed down on the sock to create a depression where his three middle toes otherwise would have been found.
“See? The grand dragon and me, we got something in common!”
Rush made the observation with such enthusiasm that Battle wondered whether he had waited months for this very moment, but that, of course, was impossible. She was shocked by the revelation and by the fact that he had actually shared it with her.
Battle considered him. His look—with tangled red hair, hazel green eyes, and a narrow nose that curved slightly left—created a messy but intriguing profile. He looked mischievous but benevolent. She could see him sitting in a room for hours, waiting for someone but not saying a word about who or why. He was a mystery of motivations, and now his history as some kind of permanently injured mountaineer just added to the maze that was his background.
“How the hell?”
“Lost them on a mountain. Frostbite. Still can’t feel most of my left foot from the nerve damage. Guess I’m lucky I lost just three.”
“When?”
“I was climbing with a friend years ago when he got real sick, real fast at high camp—cerebral edema. I thought he was too ill to descend given the terrain, so I left him behind to find help. On the way, I slipped on a nasty ridge and went down.
“Snapped my lower leg and tore open a climbing boot, exposing my foot. I was in a bad way, so I ended up spending a very cold night out alone. Climbers can recover from most anything, but severe frostbite will take a piece of you.” Rush stopped talking, then added, “And a cerebral edema will kill you.”
“So you were alone when you fell?” asked Battle, now with the intensity she used to examine a witness.
“Yeah, I was trying to help someone but couldn’t.”
“What would have happened if you still had a partner with you?”
“The ropes I suppose.”
“Ropes?”
“Climbing’s a peculiar alchemy of opposite imperatives. You’ve got to take every step on a mountain by yourself, but your life almost always depends on others.”
“So the lesson of the mountain is don’t go it alone, and bring a rope?”
“Something like that,” he said. “I made a mistake up there by not short-roping him down myself. I left him up there, and he died.”
“Maybe, Adrien, you have to accept that you can’t save everyone.”
“But we have to try.”
They waited on each other in silence.
Battle finally pushed up from the edge of her seat. “I should get home to my girl.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Rush said.
“Girlfriend, silly.”
“Oh.” He laughed aloud. “We’ve covered a lot of ground today.”
“We certainly have.”
“Congrats to you.”
“You too, and of course, to our absent Lee Mercer.”
They clinked glasses one last time.
25
AMBITIONS REWARDED
The day after the verdict, Rush slept in and spent the day alone, ordering delivery for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The next morning, he checked out of the Twins and drove to the US attorney’s office, the last trip with a deputy marshal escort. Cristwell bear-hugged Rush and produced Cohibas for their immediate use and theoretical enjoyment. Cristwell had provided extensive interviews with reporters during Rush’s absence, the US attorney’s beaming face and legal pronouncements appearing on television and in newsprint on nearly every driveway across Lynwood.
“Where’s Battle?” asked the US attorney. “Should I give her a cigar?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Me neither, but I reckon I’ll give her the choice. How’s that?”
“That’s up to you.”
“It’ll help the town move forward.”
“Giving her a cigar?”
“No, the trial—the verdict. You see my quotes?”
“Yes, but we didn’t get to tell the bigger story about Lynwood’s past.”
“It was all hanging in the air. Not everything that’s understood gets told.”
Cristwell worked his smoke with smooth, deep draws while Rush took shallow drags, hoping his gift would burn itself out.
“The threat added some midgame drama, but the conviction will settle things down,” Cristwell said.
“I hope so.” Rush didn’t want to dwell on the issue. His ambivalence about the extortion was a mixture of not knowing the culprit and maybe not wanting to know. “By the way, Kris Battle’s a keeper. You probably know that, but I wanted to say it anyway.”
“As surely as the sun rises. Most folks in your neck of the woods dismiss me as a country bumpkin, and to be sure, I am one, but I know people. I know my people.”
“Does the Klan case help you in your possible race?”
“It helps on lots of fronts, but that don’t make it any less righteous.”
“Of course.”
“I suspect we’ll have more of your kind of business here. Make a point of coming back for it. I mean that.”
“I reckon I might,” Rush replied.
They both laughed at Rush’s attempt at the southern vernacular.
. . .
At the airport Rush couldn’t sit still, and he kept wandering to the gate to find out if the plane had arrived. The guilty verdict, the celebratory alcohol, even the lingering cigar smoke had combined to conjure a sudden and brazen notion of opportunity in his head. He changed his DC flight to a new destination—New York City. He waited several hours in Atlanta Hartsfield on a layover and took the time to rehearse his lines. The first two would be easy, the rest a gamble. In New York, he took a cab to a diner near West Forty-Third Street and eventually dialed her number.
“Hi. It’s Rush. I mean, it’s Adrien. I’ve got some good news to share.”
“I already heard. Congratulations. I wish I could have been there for the verdict. My grandmother was relieved. She was very nervous about the trial.”
“As I learned, she’s the same remarkable person on the stand as in her home, but you already knew that. I’m jealous she’s yours.”
“I’m not sharing,” DuBose deadpanned. “What’s next?”
“Sentencing in sixty days or so.”
“Will he go to prison?”
“Yes, but the final sentence is up to the judge.”
“You’re having a good week. I appreciate the call—”
“Actually, I’m in New York right now.”
“You’re not in Lynwood?”
“I don’t waste a breath or a step.”
“Why New York?”
“Meetings.”
“What meetings?”
“With people.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize there was any other kind.”
“If you don’t have plans, would you have dinner with me? To celebrate the verdict in the case?”
“Dinner together? When?”
“Tonight.”
“Where did you say you were?”
Rush had parked himself in a restaurant booth blocks from her magazine’s office building for an hour getting the gumption to call, but he knew the same short distance also separated determination from obsession, so he left his specific whereabouts out of the conversation.
“I can meet you—”
“I’m headed back to the magazine’s midtown office. Now, where in the city are you?”
“I’m—”
“Are you here to see me?”
“Truth is, I am. The guilty verdict gave me the courage, or the nerve, to come.”
One waited, while the other considered. The silence ended when she laughed.
“I’m not sure whether you’re plain crazy or oddly endearing, but I’m willing to find out. Let’s meet at the Algonquin at seven thirty.”
“Perfect!”
“See you this evening.”
26
MERCER’S LYNWOOD
Thunderstorms struck Lynwood in violent bands with lightning breaking the sky, booms rattling stacked cups, and gusts kicking loose objects over fences. The daylong deluge washed the streets of accumulated grime, with the dirt disappearing down and through the underground drains into the Concordia River. The wide body was an impartial boundary and accepted discharge from both banks. The storm debris formed a slow-moving mass in the river’s middle. The storms eventually passed, but the water remained opaque and impenetrable.
. . .
The next morning, despite the coolness in the air, Mercer rested on the swinging bench anchored to the ceiling of his front porch. He read his newspaper with only an occasional sneeze interrupting his weekend ritual. He was no exception to the southern habit of savoring all things good or pleasurable. Two weeks after the verdict, the continuing coverage of the Klan conviction’s consequences gave him even more reason to linger above the fold.
“Daddy, come inside,” pleaded his daughter from behind the screen door. “It’s too wet out there.” Samantha was in second grade, tall for her age and ready to claim the world’s attention, including her father’s that morning.
“OK, buttercup. Just want to finish reading something.”
“Reading what?” she asked.
“The Sunday paper.”
“What’s the Sunday paper about?”
“It’s about me!” Mercer pointed to the editorial page and tossed a grin her way. “Might be better to say it’s about a case of mine.”
“You?” asked Samantha, ignoring the clarification.
“The case that went to court,” Mercer said. He was used to, and loved, his daughter’s dogged questioning. “That man who scared folks like us by burning crosses around town.”
“Why’d he burn crosses?”
“Maybe because he believes—” He couldn’t distill it all into a succinct sentence, so he stopped. “He’d have to explain it for himself.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, he didn’t. He admitted to it, but he didn’t much talk ’bout the why.”
“Can’t you ask him?”
“Someone did already, but he didn’t say.”
“Then ask him again.”
“He doesn’t have to answer our questions.”
Samantha tilted her head in light of her father’s surprising pronouncement.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna remember that next time Mom’s asking me questions!”
“OK, you do that!” Mercer laughed, got up off the swing, and made his way inside for a leisurely breakfast with his family.
. . .
After breakfast with the kids, Mercer’s wife weighed in on the events of the past year. She told him it was too much to hope that certain folk would alter their fixed stances or soften their sharp edges just because the Klan’s handiwork had been rejected by twelve votes. It was impossible to know what went on inside their neighbors’ fences, much less in the homes of total strangers clear across town, so he needed to be realistic. She also told her husband it was time to invite Adrien Rush over for dinner when he was next in town. Mercer let out a sound like he was expelling something deep inside, nodded, and agreed it was time.
The end of the Klan case did allow Lynwood’s leaders to claim victory, and freed them of public self-flagellation. Normalcy returned to Lynwood, replacing the case’s disruption of a town where gradual often was uncomfortably fast. The Klan became yesterday’s news. White sheets looked again like simple tablecloths, not costumes hiding secret identities. And the carrying of the cross seemed to return to the sacrifices of the Lenten season.
Despite all the preening about progress for all, the actual consequence of the verdict beyond the courtroom was more tacit acceptance than insight, more convenience than catharsis. Unseen to most of Lynwood’s residents, perils—the same as before, the same as always—still swirled beneath the surface of the Concordia’s muddy water.
Part 2
27
YAZOO CITY FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
As the Bureau of Prisons bus transported Frank Daniels in handcuffs and leg restraints, he couldn’t miss the brick-and-cement sign at the entrance identifying his new home as the Yazoo City Federal Correctional Institution. No welcome sign was needed.
The Yazoo City FCI had three security classifications where inmates were held: low, medium, and maximum. Two high double-razor fences enclosed all of them. Daniels was assigned to the medium-security part of the facility based on his Bureau of Prisons’ point score, which included heightened risk of trouble for his Klan affiliation.
The medium-security facility had individual cells lined in corncob rows on two floors. Daniels and his fellow inmates had access to the commons inside, except at the designated times for recreation, inspections, meals, and sleep. He would do his time and come out a hero.
The staff met with every new inmate and explained the Yazoo way. Daniels and the orientation manager of Daniels’s unit sat opposite each other at a metal table bolted to the floor. The manager asked standard questions before turning to the more personal.
“What’s the deal with that?” asked the manager.
“It’s just my hand.”
“The missing fingers. Will that keep you from working, like in the chow hall?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Daniels said, sick of the unending processing and poking.
“Here’s the unit handbook. Read it.”
Daniels took the unstapled sheets from the manager. He had little interest in paying attention to him, because he had some unfamiliar accent.
“Do you know about the code?”
“I bet it’s there,” Daniels said, pointing to the papers.
“Not those rules. I mean the color code.”
“What?”
No one had informed Daniels when the court sentenced him in April to thirty months’ incarceration that he would be joining one of the most racially segregated communities in the country.
The manager looked surprised. “Your cell blocks are assigned by race. You’ll eat with your race, socialize with your own race—everything’s by color inside.”
“What I wanted anyways.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You just said—”
“Inmate Daniels, one piece of free advice: don’t lie ’bout yourself in here.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause truth gets ’round.”
The manager signaled for the guard to take Daniels to the commissary.
. . .
Daniels sat on the bed’s metal frame, where it met the end of a thin mattress. He extended his fist and touched almost every corner of the cell: the three concrete walls, a metal toilet and sink in the back corner. A narrow table was embedded into a long wall. The fourth wall was missing and had been replaced by tubular steel bars and a grinding door like those on a rail car. The place would be his home for the next two and half years.
The intercom called his block for dinner, and the platform filled with inmates. Daniels emerged, descended a flight of stairs, and fell into a loose, shuffling line that ended in a meal.
“You.”
Daniels stopped.
“You. Who the hell are you, man?” the sinewy brown-skinned inmate with a crown tattoo demanded. Daniels didn’t recognize that the tat was the symbol for the Latin Kings. He’d arrived at the federal prison ignorant about gang affiliations.
“I’m new,” Daniels said.
“Who are you?”
“Just a guy.”
“Just some guy? Man, everyone in here’s just some guy.”
“Nobody you know.”
“That’s right,” said the King with the flash of a grin. “You got that right.”
“We done?” Daniels asked.
“Depends on your answer.”
“Answer to what?”
“Who the fuck you are, man!” the King said. “Do I need to ask again?”
Other inmates slowed as they passed by Daniels and his prospective sparring partner. The crowd appeared to know something was up and wanted to see it. The spectator sport of prison was the violent takedown of a new arrival.
“Shit, you don’t hear too good,” the man said.
“What do you want?”
Daniels looked around. The congregating inmates blocked his view beyond his reach. He was about to become a punching bag and a punch line.
“You the one in the Klan?”
Daniels hesitated.
“The Kings don’t accept the Klan at the zoo. Enough white struttin’ ’round here.”
“I’m only here to do the time.”
“You Klan or not?” The words hovered over Daniels like a raised baseball bat.
By now, the two were completely surrounded by gawking inmates.
“I reckon you know already.”
“So you don’t deny?”
“I don’t deny.”
Two guards pushed through the throng to find Daniels and his interrogator squared off.
“Is there a reason why you bathing beauties aren’t making your way down the chow line?” asked one of the guards. Two more guards arrived to disperse the others.
“Just chat’n,” the Latin King said, “to see if he’d be straight.”
“Was he?” a disappointed inmate asked.
“I’d say old man winter was,” the interrogating inmate answered before leaving.
Daniels waited until more than a dozen inmates marched by, and only then did he return to the chow line.
. . .
A week into his new living arrangement at Yazoo, Daniels walked from his cellblock to the dirt courtyard that functioned as the recreation area. He planned to discuss protection with the six white inmates he had noticed were adorned with small swastikas on their fingers. As he slowed to make the turn in a tight corner where the laundry room connected to the hallway, a shadow lunged at him with a shank. It penetrated deep into his right thigh, missing his femoral artery. He made it to the outside pen before collapsing. Daniels spent the next three weeks in the infirmary and the same period again in segregation—all for his safety. A trustee, an inmate with special privileges who acted like a nurse in the infirmary, told Daniels he’d be dead if they had wanted him so.
No Truth Left to Tell Page 17