by Pam Durban
The week before the flower show, a group of these men had decided the town needed a pep talk, and they’d chipped in for a full-page ad in the Standard. Three lines of heavy black type,
Tell the World
You Are Proud to Live in
AIKEN,
stacked above a drawing of a stern man slamming his fist onto a table. “Surely you have every reason in the world to be thankful you live in AIKEN,” the copy read.
Compare Aiken with New York, Chicago, or any of the larger centers of the country. There it is—“Everybody for himself. Get what you can, but get it! And the devil take the hindermost.” It’s hustle and bustle every minute, with never a thought or a kind deed for a neighbor’s welfare.
How different the spirit is here. Your neighbor’s interests are your own. He thinks, “What can I do to please others? What can I do to help improve the town, help it grow, and make it a better place in which to live?” Your thoughts are the same. And through your actions AIKEN has become the best little old place in the world.
He had helped to write the copy for the ad. “How different the spirit is here,” was his contribution.
At six the band began to play “Tea for Two,” and the doors were opened into the adjoining dining room. Zeke lit the candles under chafing dishes that held English peas and au gratin potatoes. He stood behind the serving table, white jacket buttoned up under his chin, inspecting the blade of the long knife he’d use to carve the enormous ham in front of him. The buffet line began to move past Zeke and then Minnie, who stood next to him, ready to serve the peas and potatoes. She was dressed in her own black uniform with stiff white apron and cap. Howard moved along the serving line, adding up the money again. Every year Zeke and Minnie were paid a lump sum for setting up and serving the buffet line and cleaning up afterward. This year, however, Libba had informed him that Minnie and Zeke wanted twenty dollars extra for the cleanup. “They’re a team now, is that how it goes?” he’d asked Libba as he’d handed over two bills. He couldn’t say exactly how it had started, but he only spoke to Minnie through Libba now, and Minnie did the same, and if Libba noticed that she’d become a go-between, she said nothing. “You tell Minnie we’re square,” he said. When he passed Minnie’s serving station, he made sure he was talking to the man behind him in line so that all he had to do was to hold out his plate for the peas she ladled onto it.
When dinner was over, the crowd flooded back into the ballroom and stood among the flower-covered tables. The tall arched windows had filled with night and reflected the blazing chandelier. It was the moment the day had been building toward, the apex of Libba’s year, when she and Howard and Lewis went onto the stage and Libba stepped up to the microphone to announce the recipients of the smaller cash prizes and finally, the grand prize winner. “Welcome, all, to the Fifteenth Annual Aiken Flower Show,” she said, and everyone applauded. She touched her hair, said, “Goodness, has it been fifteen years? As many of you know, my mother started this show. As a young woman, I worked at her side, and since her passing, I have endeavored to carry on the tradition in her memory. And so life goes on, so it continues, and aren’t we all grateful for this day that brings us together every year to celebrate earth’s bounty as well as our deep affection for one another? And now, without further ado, I’d like to introduce my dear husband Howard, and my little man, my beloved son Lewis.”
As the crowd applauded, Lewis held still, nearly rigid with importance, in his bowtie and vest, his white shirt and knickers and shiny new shoes, all bought especially for the occasion. He bowed quickly, one hand at his waist, the other behind his back, the way his grandfather had taught him. While the applause rolled on, Howard looked out at the crowd, picking out the men he sat down to lunch with on Mondays at Rotary Club, the men from the Knights of Columbus who raised their swords for the priest to walk under on his way to the altar on Christmas Eve. Were they trying to judge, as he was, to what degree they were implicated? They were all men of good character, good conscience. How had they gone to that place and stood in the dark? How had that happened to any of them?
He pulled the silver case out of his pocket, took out a cigarette and tapped it on the box, tucked it into his mouth, and lit it, without looking up. The business with the cigarette carried him through the applause, and when he looked up again, he saw Barrett leaning against the back wall, watching him. When Howard caught his eye, Barrett nodded as though he were answering a question or agreeing with Howard about something.
Behind them the band struck up “April Showers” again. Libba was about to open the envelope and call the first winner to the stage when a commotion started back near the French doors, and the sheriff and Frank Bell began to shoulder through the crowd. “Make way,” he heard the sheriff say. Zeke was backing through the swinging door between the ballroom and the dining room, carrying a tray of coffee cups, and when he turned and saw them, he looked around wildly as though he might try to run, but then the sheriff grabbed one arm, and Frank Bell took the other.
By the time Howard got down the three stairs and pushed through the crowd, Barrett was there too, and the ballroom was getting quiet. Even the band had stopped playing. The piano dropped out first, then the drums. The guitar player plucked a few more notes then put down his instrument.
Howard took the tray from Zeke’s hands. “What’s the trouble, sheriff?”
“Nothing you need to worry about, Mr. Aimar,” he said. “It’s just your boy here’s under arrest.”
“Sheriff, I have committed no crime,” Zeke said, taking care with every word.
“Be quiet, Zeke,” Howard said, never looking away from the sheriff. Minnie came through the door then. He heard her gasp, and he handed her the tray of coffee cups.
“Mr. Howard, sir,” Zeke said.
“Zeke, shut your mouth, and keep it shut,” he said. “What’s the charge, sheriff?”
“Transporting whiskey, Mr. Aimar,” the sheriff said, as if the idea bored him. His big raw face was chapped, and his pale blue eyes looked watery, as though he’d just come in out of the wind. “Nothing that concerns you, I guess.” Minnie staggered as though she’d been shoved; the cups slid on the tray, and Howard took her elbow to steady her. Zeke looked at her and shook his head. “Go sit down, Minnie,” Howard said, but she didn’t seem to hear. She stared at Zeke fiercely, as though trying to tell him something urgent with her eyes.
For weeks, for years, for the rest of Libba’s life and beyond, as long as there was anyone left to tell the story, people talked about her bravery that day. Her mother would have been so proud of her, people said. In fact, many of the women who had known them both believed that the night the sheriff barged into the flower show and arrested Zeke was the night when Libba finally and fully became her mother’s daughter. When the ruckus started, Lewis yelled, “Zeke!” and tried to squirm out from under her hand, but she held onto him and bent down and said something in his ear, and he stopped fidgeting and stood still. Then she held him by the shoulders in front of her, and the two of them waited as though she had perfect confidence that what was happening between her husband and the sheriff near the dining room doors had been planned and prepared for and expected, and if not, then it must be met and would be met with grace and dignity.
She turned and spoke to the bandleader, and very quietly, the men picked up their instruments and began to play “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” and Libba and Lewis stood and waited, as if they were as comfortable standing on a stage in front of the whole town while the sheriff arrested their girl’s son as they would have been at home in front of the fire, as though they could wait as long as they needed to wait for this unfortunate incident to be over so that life could go back to being the way it had always been. Meanwhile, her husband and the sheriff traded angry words in voices so low no one could report with any certainty what was being said. Her husband leaned in close to speak to the sheriff, and the sheriff got in just as close to speak to him, until it seemed an afterthought that Ze
ke was being arrested right there in the middle of her flower show, in front of the whole town, not to mention the New York reporter, who watched it all with a self-satisfied look on his face, as though he’d finally got what he’d come for. During all that Libba stood quietly on the stage, just as her mother would have done. And never a word from her afterward about how disappointing it must have been. Never a word of complaint about how the day had been ruined. Not one.
Of course the sheriff could easily have waited, they said. He could have had the decency to arrest Zeke Settles outside the hotel, in the dark, where nobody would have been forced to watch. But you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Not that you wanted a lawman to be too silky; the job was rough, and it took a rough man to do it right. Still, the way Aubrey Timmerman bulled into the hotel ballroom that night was crude and uncalled for. But what did you expect?
As he hustled Zeke out, the sheriff made clear that his mind was made up: He was keeping Zeke in jail overnight; no need for Howard to come down and try and talk him out of it. “Me and old Zeke’s got a lot to hash out,” he said, looking directly at Howard, and Howard knew he’d been warned. Everybody in town knew that Aubrey Timmerman had a special relationship with the law; he used it as he saw fit. Now, with the governor promising indictments and Barrett and Wesley Barton baying like the hounds of hell after the witnesses and perpetrators, the sheriff had to be everywhere at once, swinging the law like a cudgel against anyone who might implicate him. He’d made other moves lately: permits revoked; a man threatened with a loitering citation for standing in front of the courthouse for half an hour; a flurry of liquor raids, followed by pictures in the State of Aubrey Timmerman, ax in hand, standing beside a chopped-up steamer outfit while a deputy poured the product onto the sand.
Minnie sat down heavily in a chair next to the kitchen door, still holding the tray of coffee cups. Her face looked ashy. “I’ll be down to get you first thing in the morning,” Howard said to Zeke.
“Come as soon as you can, Mr. Aimar,” Zeke said.
He put his hand on Zeke’s shoulder, felt it tremble. “I said I would, and I will.”
But what the sheriff didn’t understand, Howard thought as he trotted back up the steps and crossed the stage and took Libba’s arm, what he hadn’t counted on, was that Howard Aimar would not be threatened or bullied, nor would he stand for anyone under his care and protection to be bullied. The only way to deal with a man like Aubrey Timmerman was to bare your teeth and get your hackles up, shove him as hard as he’d shoved you.
The article on the front page of the next day’s Aiken Standard called the flower show a signal success, and of course it mentioned nothing about Zeke’s arrest. At the top of the front page was a three-column picture of the Aimars and the grand prize winner, holding up her silver tray. In the photograph Libba and Lewis smile, but Howard is a blur, hurrying off like a man who’s late for an appointment.
14
Howard Aimar and Curtis N. R. Barrett
November 1926
THE FULL MOON had risen into the clear night sky, and its light made the pine needles gleam and turned the sandy ground to snow. Under the porte cochere outside the Highland Park Hotel, Howard walked Libba toward a cream-colored Ford touring car where Libba’s cousin Lawton Hastings and his wife waited to take Libba and Lewis to their farm near Edgefield for a few days of pampering and rest, as they did every year after the flower show. Minnie followed, holding Lewis by the hand. A few minutes earlier Lawton had said he was honored to be taking Libba out of this unfortunate situation. Everyone was honored to do something for Libba, as though what they did for her now might make up for the humiliation she’d suffered when the sheriff barged into the flower show and arrested Minnie’s son and almost got into a fistfight with her husband. In spite of the rebuke implied by Lawton’s remark, Howard thought it might be good for his wife and son to be out of the picture; it would give him time and space to act on the plans he was making.
“Say, will you look at that moon?” Howard said.
Libba glanced up. “Beautiful,” she said, and she turned and spoke over her shoulder to Minnie and Lewis. “Just look what a beautiful evening it’s turned out to be.” Lewis did as he was told, his face slack with exhaustion and dismay, but Minnie watched Howard, her eyes hard and flat. He knew that Libba was just doing what was expected of her, going through the motions. He heard it in her voice, felt it in the way her hand rested on his arm. Usually when they walked together, she took his arm and held it, but tonight, coming out of the front door of the hotel, he’d had to pick up her hand and tuck it through his elbow, and even now her hand felt too light. He knew that she was thinking about Zeke and about Minnie’s fainting spell. At the end of the night he’d found Libba sitting on the hotel kitchen floor in her good velvet dress, fanning Minnie with a dish towel.
When they reached the car, Howard turned Libba to face him, leaned in close. They were not to wait up for him, he said. “Don’t wait for me to come see you off. Just put your bags in the car and get going,” he said. “I don’t want you all out on the road too late.” She nodded quickly, smiled up at him. Her lipstick had worn off, and she hadn’t replaced it. She blamed him for Zeke’s arrest; she and Minnie both did; he could tell by the pinched look of her cheeks and the set of her mouth. “I’m sorry, Libba,” he said. “I’ll bail Zeke out first thing in the morning,” he said. “Tell Minnie.”
“But where are you going, Howard? Why aren’t you coming home with us?”
“There’s something I need to do at the office,” he said. “And I don’t want to hold you all up.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t go at all.”
“Of course you should go,” he said. “Go and enjoy yourself, and don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about anything.”
She looked at him steadily, waiting for more, and when it didn’t come, she gave him a small bleak smile. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said. “Get in this car with me, Minnie.” The two of them climbed in and Howard closed the door, and Minnie pulled Lewis onto her lap. Howard tapped the glass, and Libba smiled and toodled her fingers at him; the fox fur on her coat collar stirred around her face. The three of them looked so warm inside the car, and he remembered what a man had written in the paper about the Aiken men implicated in the murders: “They will live and die knowing full well that they are not worthy to associate with their wives and children.” He was not a murderer, so why did he feel condemned to stand outside in the cold, looking into the warm life that once was his and now was not? Barrett answered the door with his suspenders down, shirttail out, sleeves rolled past his elbows, his face as flushed as though he’d been doing something strenuous. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” His voice echoed down the hall. Over Barrett’s shoulder Howard saw socks on the radiator, an undershirt draped across the back of a chair. A typewriter on a small table in one corner. A large domed radio tuned to dance music. Half a glass of brown whiskey was balanced on the arm of a heavy maroon chair pulled up to the window. He sits there and watches the street, Howard thought. He drinks, and he watches us pick up the papers from the depot and makes up stories about what he sees. A small life for such a high-minded man, a man with such righteous opinions.
When Howard had first come to Aiken, he’d lived in a room like this, in a boardinghouse with a palmetto outside the window that rasped and scratched against the rusty screen day and night. He’d washed out his socks and undershirts in the sink and dried them on the radiator. Above the small desk in the corner he’d tacked up a prayer card with a picture of the Holy Family printed on the front, The Husband’s Daily Prayer on the back. Every morning he’d pulled out the thumbtack and taken the card down, prayed that God would make him unselfish, cheerful, trusting, thrifty, a devoted companion. Seeing Barrett’s room now was like looking back into a bleak scene from his own past, and he felt sorry for the man, for being a man like he once had been.
“Mr. Barrett,” he said. “Will you go somewher
e with me? I have something to tell you.”
“I’m off duty,” he said. “Is this a summons or an invitation?”
“Some of both.”
Barrett leaned out of the doorway, holding onto the jambs, and glanced up and down the hall. “Where are the rest of the boys?” he said. He was smiling, but his eyes were not. Soldier’s eyes, Howard called them.
“No boys,” he said. “I dislike a mob as much as any man.”
“Damn right,” Barrett said. He hauled up his suspenders, stuffed in his shirttail, pulled a topcoat over his shirt and trousers. He looked like any other man called out on a late-night errand; he looked like a man who might understand how another man could end up someplace he never meant to go.
Out past the last houses the Columbia Highway was deserted, ahead and behind. The moon was halfway up the sky now, and its light seemed immense. On either side of the road the fields of spindly cotton plants looked stunned beneath its weight. The Ford’s headlights were weak, but tonight they were not needed; it was almost as bright as day. Howard coaxed the car into high gear, easing the throttle lever forward with his right hand, left foot backing off the clutch, feeling for neutral, until a thunk told him he’d found the cruising gear, and the engine turned over so slowly it barely made a sound.
“You saw Zeke at the jail?” he said.
“I did.” Barrett sat up straight at the edge of the passenger seat, hands braced on his knees. “The sheriff was treating him like a special guest.”
“That was for your benefit,” he said, felt Barrett studying him. “Like arresting Zeke was for mine. Count on Aubrey to put on a good show as long as he’s got an audience. Only this time it was more than a show: He insulted my wife.”