“No. My daddy owned land. I rent this house now … with my Social Security. Anyway, Bobby Jeter and me cut school to go fishin’ … near the ford at Long Creek not far from here. Didn’t have a bridge back then … built one the next year. Back then you had to go a mile to a bridge, but it was so shallow at the ford you could drive across.
“We heard a car coming … and ran to hide. It pulled up on one bank. A minute later, three or four men rode up on horses on the opposite side. They didn’t cross the creek. Waited on the top side. We hunkered down. Heard ’em talkin’ but couldn’t … make out what they said. Before long, we hear some whistling … clopping along the road. John Riggins. His mule started acting up … ’cause of the crowd waiting, I reckon. I ’member Riggins calmin’ it down … just ’fore they came into the open. Riggins stopped when he saw the men. He bent down and talked in the mule’s ear. We were so close I heard him say, ‘We gonna let these men pass.’ He backed his mule … and pulled it to the side. He was close to us … where we was hidin’.”
Charlie gazed into the man’s clouded eyes. Patterson broke contact and looked out the dirty kitchen window. “There was four men in the car. The men on horses … splashed across and the others got out of the car … the little fella with a face like the devil was one of ’em. He got out and waded across … splashing water. Ike Cutchins, wavin’ his arms. Riggins looked at him and said, ‘What you want, Ike?’ I never talked to the man … but everybody knew him, he was the only colored man … left in the county. Deep booming voice. I could tell he didn’t respect Cutchins. … I bet Cutchins’ veins was bulging … to be talked to … that way by a … well, you know how it was back then.” Patterson shook his head. “It’s the lowlifes … always wanna be called sir. Don’t get me started … on Ike Cutchins. I ain’t got the breath for it.”
He asked for a drink. Charlie couldn’t find a clean glass so he washed one. He filled it from a leaky kitchen faucet that spurted airy water and waited for the man to collect himself. The interview was taking a tremendous toll on him. Patterson took a few sips, then continued.
“‘You know why I’m here,’ Ike says. Riggins says he don’t. ‘Tell ’em what you did to my woman!’ Ike shouts.” Patterson coughed. “Riggins says … he didn’t do nothing. Ike goes into a rage, like a little demon. Stomping up and down, shoutin’, ‘You a liar. You was, you was!’
“As soon as he says that, he pulls a pistol … out of his waistband. Shoots the mule in the head. It flops over … thrashin’ around. The other men yell at him … for not getting a clean shot. He always was a lousy shot. My dad said when he’d go out hunting … he’d as likely shoot out … the neighbor’s window … as bag a rabbit. Riggins is stuck under the mule. Ike laughs. ‘Who’s the big man now?’ Riggins doesn’t say anything. Cutchins kicks him.” Patterson paused for another drink of water and wiped away some moisture from his eye. He started coughing again and pulled out his bloody wet handkerchief. “I need a Kleenex.”
After a minute’s search, Charlie found a box of tissues in the living room. Patterson hacked weakly and this time wadded up the tissue without looking to see what landed in it. A few moments passed before he continued. “Riggins wiggles his way out … from under the mule while Cutchins jaws at him. Somebody with a shotgun … Tom Dempsey … puts the mule out of its misery. Tom turns to Cutchins … says, ‘Get it over with.’ But Cutchins ain’t through. Says ‘Beg for your life, nigger!’ Riggins says … ‘Go on.’ Cutchins screams, ‘I wanna hear you beg for your life, nigger!’ And Riggins, say what you will, he was a man.”
Patterson choked up and tears welled in his eyes. “He say, ‘I’m not gonna beg for something I got a right to. You can’t give me life. You can just take it away.’ ‘Then I’ll take it away,’ Cutchins says. Riggins knew he was a dead man. No point in being a pussy about it. He wasn’t givin’ Cutchins no satisfaction. He tries to stand up … Cutchins pistol whips him. Riggins a big man. Strong. He just keeps gettin’ up … towers over Cutchins, who’s pointing the gun at him. He grabs the gun. They fight over it. Cutchins is cussing. Riggins says, ‘You ain’t … gonna be the one to kill me.’ That’s the last … thing he said. Tom Dempsey runs up … clubs him from behind with the shotgun butt. Riggins staggers backward … lets go of the gun. Cutchins shoots him in the gut.”
Patterson stopped talking and gasped for breath. Charlie pushed the glass of water toward him, but Patterson shook his head and held up his hand to signal for time.
Charlie listened to him wheeze, accompanied by the ticking of a clock and birds singing outside. After a couple of minutes, the old man continued: “Riggins don’t go down at first. He wobbles on his legs for a minute … then drops to his knees. Cutchins laughs and says, ‘Looks like I am the one to kill you!’ Then Cutchins shoots him in the face … two or three times. Riggins falls over. My buddy pisses himself … and runs away, making a racket in the underbrush. The men hear him. They run after him and catch him … but they don’t see me. He don’t tell ’em about me. They drag him … over to Riggins … and Cutchins orders him to shoot the body. He didn’t want to … but they tell him, ‘You’re one of us now.’ Bobby’s cryin’.”
Patterson’s voice broke again and he sobbed. “Cutchins is a sick bastard. You put that down.”
Charlie nodded grimly as he jotted on his pad.
“Bobby told me years later … he had a thousand nightmares about it. I told him … the man was dead already. What they did was bad wrong. Murder. But it was even worse, makin’ … a child be part of it. I know … now … we was all a part of it. It wasn’t just a thing that happened. We all had to own it. It wasn’t just a thing.”
Another pause. Patterson drummed the table. “What Cutchins does next … he pulls down his pants and pisses on Riggins. Laughin’. He says, ‘I ain’t even started yet.’ Then he runs to the car and gets some gasoline … kerosene … coal oil or something. Douses the body and somebody else … Joshua Logan—”
“Really.”
“—he gets some rope and throws it over a tree and makes a loop. ’Cause I guess you got to have a hangin’, even though it makes no sense. One of the men rides off on horseback … takes Bobby with him. And they haul the corpse across the creek. Logan puts the rope around Riggins’ neck. A bunch of them pull him up and Cutchins lights him … and Riggins hangs there burning.”
Charlie broke in: “Were you still hiding? What were you thinking?”
“I was still in the brush … I thought they were going to kill Bobby. Afraid they’d kill me.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought they were … in league with the devil. They mighta been. They didn’t … care about nobody. But the devil … don’t take you … where you don’t want to go.”
Charlie didn’t want to dwell on that statement right then.
“Did you ever talk to anyone about this?”
“Other than Bobby and my niece, not till today. I figgered it wouldn’t do no good. But now … I got nothin to lose.” Patterson took a sip of water. “They left Riggins hangin’ … took a picture.”
Charlie pulled out the photograph. “Can you identify these people?”
“Yeah,” the old man said with disgust. “That’s Ike Cutchins, lookin’ like … he caught hisself a fish.” Patterson sneered as he pointed. “He’s the only one … still alive.”
Patterson named the other men in Cutchins’s mob: Joshua Logan, then fifteen years younger than the dying man Charlie had dreamed about; Tom Dempsey; Bob Parkhurst; Hank Suches; Tom Montgomery. Eight men in all, six in the picture, most of them clad in overalls and dungarees. Charlie struggled to contain his excitement as he wrote down the names, especially Montgomery—Cecil’s father and Joshua Logan’s brother-in-law. (Charlie had figured out that both Logan and Montgomery were Lillian Scott’s great-uncles.)
The seventh man, who owned the car and had enough sense not to pose at a crime scene, was named Carswell; he’d been the photographer. Patterson’s mention of that name c
aused Charlie’s eyes to light up and his heart to beat even faster. The Carswells had practically run Forsyth County back in 1912 and for many years before and since. Plus Bernie Dent and Thomas Oscar had been executed on Carswell land. “I forget his first name,” Patterson said. “But it won’t be hard to find. He was mayor of Cumming … during World War II.”
“What about the man who rode off with Bobby Jeter?”
“That was Bill Roark. He was Bobby’s next-door neighbor.”
Charlie listened to the birds outside for a moment, hoping in vain that Patterson could use the time to catch his breath. “Murder by lynching,” Charlie muttered. It had been a cold-blooded killing in broad daylight on a pretext so flimsy it was only worth mentioning due to its perverse irony. “What was it that Ike Cutchins claimed Riggins did to his wife? Was he trying to claim there was a rape?”
Patterson snorted in disgust. “There was a rape all right. Not the way he claimed.”
Charlie’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”
“Well … I didn’t see this myself. Bobby told me a few years later. I asked him how come Ike Cutchins … ended up with John Riggins’ farm. He said Parkhurst told him … Ike Cutchins went to Riggins’ house … later that day and told Riggins’ woman to leave … Forsyth County or he’d kill her, too. And then he … made her sign somethin’. But he wasn’t through. Then he … had his way with her. That’s what Bobby told me.”
“Oh my God.” Charlie’s head throbbed. This was too much.
“Then that posse of his … run her outta town next day … burned her house down. I was just a kid,” Patterson said. “Nuthin’ I could do.”
“Nobody did anything back then.”
“Everybody wondered why … they even bothered livin’ here when they was the only ones for years in either direction.” Patterson paused to catch his breath, then continued. “More recent … in the 1960s. The civil rights movement. I remember hearin’ Cutchins brag … about the good ol’ days and killin’ niggers. But he kept his mouth shut … about the specifics. What he did was cold-blooded murder. And what he did after was worse … you ask me. I hear he’s gonna sell the land for a ton of money. Special place in hell waitin’ for him. Maybe … he made a deal with the devil already. That’s all I know.” He took a long pause, then said, “I’m tired a talkin’.”
Charlie let out a deep breath and slumped in his chair. Both men were quiet for a moment. Charlie thought, Damn, I got it. “Thank you.” he told the old man. “This was important, what you told me. People need to know.”
“Well … we made a deal. And I ain’t eaten in a day. So go get me … them eggs and grits. Cup a coffee. Sugar. Cream. Pack of Camel straights.”
This was the best deal Charlie had ever made. “I’m on it,” he said, then stood up and wiped sweaty palms on his pants. Before Patterson could protest, Charlie pulled out a small camera and took a snapshot of Patterson’s age-lined face, then grabbed his things and hustled out the door.
It took awhile to find a Pancake Hut, and almost as long to get service. He just had incredibly bad karma when it came to that restaurant chain. He was gone for more than an hour, and when he came back with the food, he saw an ambulance and a car beside the house. He passed by the driveway and turned around a minute later. He returned in time to see a black car pull off the road onto the shoulder right where Patterson said one had been parked the day before. Charlie would have liked to check in on the old man, but he knew it was best to keep moving. He’d forgotten the Camels, anyway. He also had the feeling that Danny Patterson was about to leave the house for the last time, poor guy. At least he’d gotten that terrible secret off his chest. Charlie owed him a moment of silent remembrance—when he had a spare moment, that is.
Charlie stopped at a park in Cumming and ate the food he’d bought for the dying man. The egg yolk and grits ran together on the Styrofoam plate. He stirred the mess around, sopped it up with buttered toast, and sipped lukewarm coffee. While he ate, Charlie listened to the recording of Patterson’s faltering voice telling the tale in both past and present, an acknowledgment that, to those who remember, what was, is. And then Charlie realized he had not told Patterson his name. All in all, he felt luckier than he did sad, like he’d cheated death somehow—or at the very least, eaten its lunch.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time he read Danny Patterson’s funeral notice in the next morning’s paper and finally observed that promised moment of silence, Charlie had already typed a transcript of the conversation, made copies of the audio file, and stashed spares in his safe deposit box. The death notice stated that Patterson died of a lengthy illness, but Charlie’s mourning turned to concern for his own safety when he considered the possibility that his eyewitness had fallen prey to Black Car Syndrome. The more he thought about it, the more he believed the man had been a victim of foul play, not nasty habit.
After all, Forsyth folk had a history of violence, and so did the Cutchinses: death threats on July Fourth, Momo’s general behavior, courthouse arson, John Riggins, a thousand blacks fleeing Forsyth for their lives (surely Pappy’s father had scared a few out of town). Plus, there had already been a burglary, and Charlie figured that when the evildoers found out that they’d missed the thing they sought, they would return.
So he set up a firewall by hiding his files and papers. If anyone searched Bayard Terrace in his absence, they’d find only the manuscript for Thoracic Park, his unpublishable novel about evil heart surgeons—but nothing concerning his current project, unless they walked in on him or ambushed him in his van. And then … well, publish or perish, that was the deal, wasn’t it?
Minerva called Charlie that afternoon and said she’d found another of her father’s journals while cleaning a bookcase. Then she started talking about Takira. “That girl is going to be the death of me. She’s keeping the baby. I tell her having it is good but keeping it isn’t, not at her age. Her family doesn’t have insurance, so I’ll be paying a lot of the bills and the delivery will be at Grady Hospital. Demetrious came by and told her to get rid of it. He said if she doesn’t, he will. He got her all upset, so I told him to leave. He gets this attitude, but I encourage him to stay around—when he behaves, that is. I don’t want to give him an excuse to leave Takira and abandon the baby.”
Too much information. Charlie shifted uncomfortably in his office chair. When she paused to take a breath, he asked, “When can I come by and look at the journal?”
“Tomorrow, if you want. How’s the book coming?”
“Fine.”
“Do you know who killed my father?”
“Can’t say just yet.”
A moment’s silence. “Can’t say, or won’t?”
“I still have some people to talk to.”
“I see. You’ll tell me as soon as you can.”
“When I’ve got it nailed down, I promise.”
Truth was, Charlie was troubled by his newfound knowledge and didn’t know what to say to Minerva. She’d said she was born nine months after her father died, and now he had information that Pappy had raped her mother. He was afraid of where this was taking him and dreaded the prospect of telling her it was her father who had done the killing and stealing. He also might need her help to prove this terrible fact. It was all twisted and ironic, the stuff that migraines are made of.
But there were other things to talk about. “Your father’s body was never recovered, is that correct?”
“Jasper said there was a memorial service, but there’s no grave. They had a white man go up there to find out what happened, but no one would say anything. My mother was run out of the county, and the house was burned. But we never got him back.”
“OK. Well, I’ve got work to do. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tell me what you can, when you can.”
Charlie hung up. For the next few hours, he sat at Talton’s desk, writing the death scene. John Riggins had been murdered by a mob that made it look like a lynching (as if t
hat somehow justified the killing). He ended the chapter with the body hanging from the tree. He hated the thought of Riggins rotting in the sun, but he feared the brave man’s body had been left for crows to eat. A thought burned in his mind: Perhaps it’s my job to find him.
* * *
Charlie arrived at Minerva’s house shortly after 9:00 a.m. They briefly danced around the issue of the identity of John Riggins’s killers, but Charlie wasn’t ready to tell her everything—only that more than one person had been involved.
Minerva looked him in the eye sand said, “It was a mob, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I can tell you that much.”
“Do you have names?”
“Yes. Nothing I can share yet.”
“Nothing you can share,” she said with a note of disdain.
Minerva made coffee and gave him a cup, muttering about how she wasn’t sure he deserved it, but she wasn’t going to be inhospitable. Then she left him to work while she read a magazine. Riggins’s journal—which he’d been filling in at the time of his death—was great stuff. Although no poet, the murder victim had been bright and eloquent, in a way. His college grades showed Riggins had been more interested in math than literature, but he also had a sense of history. A practical man, he kept close track of his money and was determined to succeed. “Silence is best,” he wrote after enduring catcalls in Cumming on Saturday, April 26, 1936. “Although they want me to grin at their foolish jokes and laugh at myself, I hold my peace and move on, careful not to step on any toes or gaze too long at any white women.”
Riggins clearly had not suffered Isaac Cutchins gladly. He mentioned his nemesis several times, always in relation to a conflict: “Cutchins is abrasive and confrontational, though cowardly when push comes to shove. He is a fool, but a dangerous fool. Usually, when he does anything, he makes sure he has backing.” This entry had come three months before Cutchins assembled the lynch mob.
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