“What?”
“Yeah, it don’t make no sense to me either.”
“You told me you got rid of ’em.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’. I thought I did. I mean, I got rid of something,” Crail said. “But I didn’t have any way to listen to ’em, so I guess it coulda been something else.”
“Like what?”
“How am I supposed to know that? You just told me to—”
“Jesus,” she interrupted. “All right, gimme a minute.”
While she was thinking, Crail said, “Listen, I’m gonna need some mora them antibiotics.”
“What?”
“For my knee. It’s not red anymore. It just looks a little bruised,” he said. “But it’s still not a hundred percent.”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll see if I got anymore,” she said. “Now listen. It’s not all bad. You’re down there anyway to do that other thing. And if they’ve got the tapes, at least you know where to find them, right? And since you’re going over to the station anyway, you just need to take care of things before they play the tapes. You understand? We can’t afford any more screwups.”
“Well, baby, I don’t think I’ve—”
The phone beeped at her. “Damn, I got another call. You just take care of that problem and I’ll buzz you later.” She clicked over. “Hello?”
“Cuffie.” A man’s voice, serious as a guilty verdict.
“Oh hey, Papaw Henry, I just talked to our mutual friend,” she said with a wink in her voice.
“Yeah? Well, I just talked to Shelby Jr.”
“Oh, bless his heart. How’s he doin’?”
“He’s worried.”
“Awww, about what?”
“ ‘Bout you hiring that private investigator to find Suggs and Woolfolk, just before they got killed.”
Cuffie paused, wondering how on earth he knew this. “What are you talkin’ about, Papaw?”
“Cuffie? Don’t. This is serious,” Henry said. “I know the whole thing. You two’re trying to find those damn tapes.”
Figuring she had to give her innocence one more shot, Cuffie said, “Tapes?”
“Goddammit, you know what I’m talkin’ about. And you’ve put yourself and this whole family in harm’s way over nothin’, goddammit. Them tapes’re long gone. And if that boyfriend of yours doesn’t get to that smart-ass Shannon before he tells the cops who hired him to find those men, you’re goin’ to prison. Nothin’ I can do to stop that.”
“Papaw, that’s impossible.” This time she tried it with a roll of the eyes and a small chuckle in her voice. “I just talked—”
“He saw your picture, Cuffie! He ID’d you!”
She almost dropped the phone. Her anonymity was the only thing standing between her and large matronly prison guards with butch haircuts and a taste for sorority girls.
Before she could say anything else, Henry continued, “Now let’s face it, that Pitts boy ain’t about to go bowlegged totin’ his brains around and, frankly, I don’t think the little he’s got’re nailed down real tight, he kept twitchin’ when I saw him, so I have no doubt he screwed something up when he killed Suggs and Woolfolk, bound to have left some evidence an investigator’s trying to connect to a name. And once he gets that name, I guarantee you they’ll find a way to connect it to you. And we can’t let that happen. You understand?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“No buts,” Henry said. “Now listen close. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this, but if he gets caught, he’s gonna point a finger at you. That’s just how it works. And you’re gonna deny every bit of it and agree to testify against him.”
“Papaw, I—”
“Shut up, girl! That’s how it’ll play out if it goes bad. I’ve seen it enough to know. Your phone records’ll show you and him talked, probably on the days he killed them. But you’ll say you never knew what he was doing or why he was doing it. You were just in love and it turned out that son of a bitch was using you, trying to get at those tapes, ’cause he thought they were worth some money. You’ll say he’s the one got you to hire Shannon in the first place, threatened to hurt your family if you didn’t. Now I know that’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s either him alone or both of you. And I don’t wanna see you strapped onto no gurney.”
“Dammit, Papaw,” she snapped. “Listen for a minute! They have the tapes. They’re going to play ’em on that station in Vicksburg tomorrow night.”
IN HIS SHAME, Shelby started to drink. The moment Henry hung up on him, Shelby’s regrets got the better of him, so he sneaked a bottle out of the cabinet hoping to drown his guilt. He’d had three by the time Jessie found him in the sitting room, going from photograph to photograph, talking to his family, like Dick Nixon seeking counsel from the portraits of dead presidents.
“Mr. LeFleur, gimme that bottle,” she said. “You know you ain’t s’posed to drink.”
Shelby fought the best he could, but she was half his age and she got it away from him. “I’ve dishonored his memory,” he said, looking into his father’s eyes.
“That’s too bad,” Jessie said. “But agonizing your liver just gone make it worse. What’s got into you?”
“Shame,” he said, slightly drunk. “Shame at what I’ve done and what I haven’t.” He gestured for Jessie to push his chair over to a table where he pointed at a photograph of himself and Henry standing next to the transmitter tower of their radio station. “That was the day we first broadcast,” he said. “Boy was too lazy to farm, but he’d break a sweat looking for an easier way to earn a living.”
Jessie knew Shelby was in his cups and in the mood to talk, so she sat on the sofa and said, “Yes, sir. That’s a shame too. I know you and Missus raised him better’n that.” She followed that with a solemn nod, as if she’d seen the whole thing.
Shelby cranked his head back and looked toward the mantel at the photograph of his beautiful young wife. “We tried to teach him right from wrong, didn’t we? Went to church and read the Bible together.” He turned to look at Jessie. “We didn’t want him thinking the way some people around here were.”
“Yes, sir. I know that’s right.”
“But he turned his back on everything. Got involved with that Citizens’ Council, bunch of ignorant crackers, full of nothing but hate. And he used that radio station to get cozy with that jackass governor who named him to the damned Sovereignty Commission.”
“Sometimes chirren just don’t act right,” Jessie said, as if talking about a six-year-old.
Shelby stabbed a finger in the air, saying, “You believe the things they did? Poorest state in the nation and they spent tax dollars investigating whether the sanctity of construction sites in Mississippi had been compromised by the presence of integrated toilets.”
“Mmmm, mm.” She shook her head. “It’s a shame, all right.”
“God forgive ’em,” Shelby said. “Could’ve educated people, helped ’em get out of the hole we’d dug for ’em. And that wasn’t near the worst of what they did, either.”
“No, sir, sure wasn’t.”
“Now, you’re too young to know about the way things were, that long ago.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jessie said with a coy laugh. “People always confusing me and that Alicia Keys. But I’m older’n you think.”
“You haven’t seen half what I’ve seen,” Shelby said.
“That’s true,” Jessie said. “But my mama told me about how it used to be and I saw plenty of it on my own. Still do.” Her mother had been a maid all her life, cooking and cleaning for other people and raising their children along with her own. She never made much but somehow saved enough to send Jessie to nursing school. And she was proud of that. Her own daughter, a registered nurse. Something unthinkable for her own generation. “She likes to say she’s retired now,” Jessie said with a smile, thinking about her mom, sitting on the front porch of the little house she owned, not much more than a shotgun shack by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Gree
nville, just rocking away in a rusty old lawn chair, not thinking about regrets.
As Jessie talked about her mother, Shelby’s mind began to wander. He started thinking about all the things he’d witnessed, all these people still suffering the terrible transition from a culture of slavery to a forced coexistence, all mixed with the Bible and the relentless humidity. He thought about how vestiges of the past continued exerting influence on the present, keeping people where they’d been for too long, all the half-assed reformers he’d seen come and go without reforming anything except maybe their bank accounts. But in the end, he returned to his biggest disappointment. His son. Shelby said, “You know why I invested in that radio station? It was a chance for that boy to make a positive difference. I remember telling him the day we took that picture. I said you don’t just set up a transmitter and start broadcasting.” Shelby’s voice began to rise and he shook as he spoke. “You are granted a license and with that comes the responsibility to serve your community. And the Lord knows they needed that.”
“Now don’t get all worked up,” Jessie said, thinking of his blood pressure. She got up and crossed the room, returning with a sphygmomanometer.
Shelby kept talking about how he thought the radio station could give folks a sense of belonging to something, give them a voice, bring people together, heal the collective wounds they’d all suffered. He shook his head grimly. “But that sorry-assed boy didn’t give any of that a second thought. Just used it to further his ambitions.”
Jessie rolled up Shelby’s sleeve and fit the cuff around his thin arm. “Now, Mr. LeFleur, don’t get yourself agitated.”
“My own boy! Sorry as he could be!” Shelby made a derisive snorting sound as his head flopped back down. “I’m too old to be nice about it anymore, Jessie. I’ve been holding my tongue till it hurts not to say it.” He hit the arm of his chair.
“Hold still,” she said.
“Gave him every advantage, could’ve done anything, pursued any dream he had, but what’d he do?” Staring at the blanket covering his lap, the old man just shook his head.
“I know,” Jessie said. “I know.” She pointed at the meter. “Now look how your pressure is. You gotta calm yourself, you gone have a stroke.”
“That boy brought us so much shame, I don’t have words. He didn’t care about folks too poor to afford a dream, let alone chase it. And now got the nerve to complain the government doesn’t do enough for them while making sport of poor folks waiting for their checks.”
“Mmmm, hmm. I heard that.” Jessie removed the inflatable cuff and set it on the table. She rolled his sleeve down and gave him a comforting pat on the arm. Then she sat on the sofa and waited to see if he’d said his piece.
Shelby was quiet for a minute before he said, “Hell, everybody would’ve been better off if we’d just picked our own cotton.”
“Now, don’t get started again,” Jessie said. “You just get upset.”
Shelby waved her off. “No point in being upset,” he said. “It’s over and done.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Ain’t no goin’ back to change the past.”
He snorted and said, “You’re right.”
“Well, okay then. That’s a good attitude. You just relax now.”
Shelby looked up at her with his eyes as bright as she’d ever seen. He said, “But I can do something about the future.”
29
CRAIL WAS STANDING at the altar with Big Jim at his side. They turned slightly when the organ began to play the wedding march. Cuffie floated down the aisle, like an angel, on her daddy’s arm. Big Jim gave Crail a nudge and said something lewd about the honeymoon. Crail smiled and nudged him back ’cause he’d been thinking the same thing.
A beaming Monroe LeFleur handed over his daughter under the approving gaze of a church full of LeFleurs and Pittses. Crail glanced at the front row on the groom’s side and saw his mama wiping a tear from her eye. The preacher said the words and asked the question and Cuffie said she did. And when Crail’s time came, he said he did too. And when he said it, the squirrel to whom he had spoken scampered up the tree, bringing Crail back to the wooded area across from WVBR where he was having his most fully realized hallucination yet.
He was in a good spot for a shooter, directly across from the front of the station. He backed his car between a couple of large pines, then spent an hour stumbling through the woods in a narcotic haze gathering branches and moss and leaves that he used to camouflage his position. His nuptial fantasy had started when he’d paused to take a leak. It was a tremendous relief and it seemed to go on forever. The pleasurable sensation lulled his eyes shut and he began to breathe deeply and nearly fell asleep where he stood. When the squirrel chattered and Crail regained a sense of where he was and what he was doing there, he tucked himself back into his jeans and got back in the car, thinking about how beautiful Cuffie was in a wedding gown.
He’d been sitting there a few minutes when he tilted the rearview mirror down and stuck out his tongue. It seemed to be swollen. And the eruptions around his eyes and mouth were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. He wondered if maybe the antibiotics had expired and lost some of their potency. He took a couple more and chased them with some whiskey. Then he picked up his phone and punched a number. After a moment he said, “Hey, Mama, it’s me. I got some good news,” he said. “Well, I talked to this man who’s gonna take care of that insurance thing.” He paused for her reaction. The thrill in her voice made him feel grand.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s good as done.” She asked how he’d managed this and he said, “Oh, I’m just gonna do him a favor, Mama, you know, no big deal. He said you’ll get whatever you need. So it’s all gonna be all right.” When his mama told him how proud she was of him, it just about made him cry.
They talked for a few minutes before a vehicle pulled up to the station. “Listen, Mama, I gotta go do that favor right now. You just take care. I’ll call you later.”
Even though Cuffie had given a good description of Rick’s truck, Crail couldn’t say for sure if it was him. This was due to the fact that Crail had put so much foliage on his windshield that he could barely see out of it, so Crail turned on his wipers and leaned forward in full squint.
Up to that point, neither Rick nor Lollie had noticed the car in the woods opposite the station. And even now, as they turned to see what was rustling in the bushes, they didn’t see Crail or his car, they were so well hidden. Crusty, however, who was draped on Lollie’s arm, had some sort of primal response to the sudden movement of branches. His tail puffed and he leaped back into the truck and hid under the seat.
When Rick and Lollie turned to look his way, it dawned on Crail that he might be giving his position away, so he turned the wipers off. He took the scope off his rifle and used it to peer through an opening in the branches. He didn’t see anything that looked like reels of tape.
Lollie tried to coax Crusty from his hiding place. “By the way,” she said. “Now that we’ve invited the killers to come down here to look for the tapes, what sort of security do you have in mind?”
Rick pulled his gun from the glove compartment, clipped the holster to his belt, and gave it a pat. “We’ve got a gun and a stouthearted cat, I’m not sure what else you wanted. We could call the cops, but I doubt they’ll send anybody to watch over us based on our plan.”
“You sayin’ it’s flimsy?”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “But I’ve worked with less.”
IN THE WANING light of the late summer sun, with mosquitoes sucking bad blood from his neck and arms, Crail began to imagine himself a Confederate sniper in the back swamps near New Carthage, preparing to fire on Grant’s XIII Corps as they moved on the natural levee road looking for a route to advance on Vicksburg. He could hear cannons booming in the distance as thebig guns fired from their positions on the bluffs overlooking the river. His task was vital, he told himself. If the tapes fell into the wrong hands, the Confederacy was doomed, plus Cuffie
wouldn’t see him anymore.
As he peered through the Redfield scope, Crail saw Rick and Lollie go into the station with a peculiar-looking cat. Crail picked up the transistor radio he’d brought and tuned it to WVBR. He plugged in an earpiece and stuck the radio in his pocket. Then he remounted the scope on the M21 and got out of his car. Ten minutes later, after the other deejay left for the night, Rick came on the air talking about the discovery of the legendary recordings.
During his first commercial break, Rick ad-libbed a new Blind, Crippled, and Crazy spot, stressing the historical value of the long lost tapes. He took some calls from blues enthusiasts and put them on the air, figuring the more time he dedicated to repeating his lie, the better chance he had of getting word to Cuffie LeFleur and her partner.
Crail listened to the show as he made a wide circle around the station, dragging his dead leg along behind him like a bad habit. He was looking for a window, but there were none at the back of the station, so he came around the side, where he saw a dim yellow glow. He crept closer until he reached a large window with curtains partially drawn. Peeking into the studio where Rick was broadcasting, Crail saw CDs and albums and lots of tapes but none that were obviously what he was looking for.
Crail’s momentum was checked by a sudden wave of dysphoria as his last dose of meth wore off. His eyes began to lose focus as he stared into the studio, his face almost pressing against the glass. His breath fogged the window each time he exhaled. The tiny voice in his ear seemed to mesmerize him.
“Let’s take a call,” Rick said. “You’re on the air.”
“Yes, hello,” a young man said. “I was wondering if you planned to discuss the music in more scholarly terms instead of merely the colloquial, and by that I mean a more technical discussion about the significance of employing flatted seventh and third notes of a scale and how these tones as a deviation from the major scale of a key constitute a structure inherited directly from the classical form while at the same time being drawn from the correlate in the mixolydian scale, built on the perfect fifth degree, which is adumbrated by the third harmonic of any tone.”
Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5) Page 28