by Stuart Woods
“No, sir, Chief. That one was doing a clear fifty, and I only wrote him up for forty-five.”
“Okay, then. You mind the store for a while. I’m going home for my dinner.” It was only just past eleven, but the Chief had a bad back and liked a nap at midday. Sonny knew he wouldn’t be back before two. Thompson was relying more and more on him to run things, and that was just the way Sonny wanted it.
“Yessir, Chief. Enjoy your meal. Say, if I clean up that old roll-top desk, can I use it regular?”
The Chief glanced at the disused piece of furniture across the room, piled with old notices and circulars. “Sure, Sonny. Time some of that stuff was cleared out of here, anyway.”
Sonny spent half an hour sifting through papers, throwing away most of them, then another ten minutes dusting and polishing the old desk and oiling the roll-top. Didn’t look bad, when it was done. He sat down and began rummaging through drawers. The debris of half a dozen past small-town policemen filled most of them—notebooks, wanted circulars, a rusty old handgun taken from some drunk years before, some loose rounds of ammunition, various calibers. Sonny dumped it all into a cardboard box.
In the bottom drawer, though, he found a neat bundle of files, tied with string. There was a note with them: “Files of Chief of Police William Henry Lee, Deceased,” it read, and was signed in an indecipherable hand. Sonny was about to put the bundle on the Chief’s desk for him to check before discarding, when the aged string broke and, before he could recover, some of the files spilled onto the floor. A corpse stared up at him from a photograph.
Sonny had seen many corpses in various attitudes, but he could not remember ever having seen a photograph of one. There were several photographs, in fact, taken from different angles. The kid had been beaten up. Sonny noticed a quickening of his pulse, then dismissed it. He started to read a typed report clipped to one of the photographs. When he finished that, he read another report, neatly handwritten on ruled notebook paper. As he read, he referred frequently to the photographs, connecting the boy’s injuries to what had been written about them.
He looked at the signatures on the reports. He had never heard of the doctor, but he remembered the Chief—Colonel Billy Lee’s old man. He must have been six or seven when that nigger killed him with the shotgun. He remembered that the nigger had been tried two or three times before they finally got the conviction to stick. It had been the first execution in the electric chair; he remembered talking about that at school.
He had no memory of them finding this kid, though. Shit, old man Lee had had himself an unsolved murder on his hands when he died. How about that? Sonny leaned back in his chair and had a sudden fantasy about going around and checking for clues and solving this old murder that went back to… when was it? 1920. More than twenty-five years. There was no statute of limitations on murder, he knew that. Maybe it was some solid citizen did it. A headline: “Butts Pins Murder on Banker Hugh Holmes”. He laughed aloud. He’d be a fucking hero all over again, no doubt about that. He stacked up the photographs and the two reports neatly and was just turning to a second report in the same handwriting when there was a commotion in the hallway outside the office. He stuffed the bundle of files quickly back into the desk drawer—he would keep them to himself—and walked into the hallway to see what was going on.
His fellow officer, Charley Ward, was pushing a black man, obviously drunk, down the hall toward the cells. It was a local, “Pieback” Johnson, so named for his reluctance to do any heavy work. The man was in jail overnight at least twice a month. Charley gave him a kick to move him toward the cells faster.
“Jesus, Pieback,” Sonny said, “you getting tanked up in the middle of the week now? I thought you was a Saturday night special.”
“Caught him panhandling right in the middle of Main Street at high noon,” said Charley. “Can you believe that?” Pieback groveled his way into a cell, dodging another kick.
“Naw, suh, I ain’t really drunk. I jes’ had a little nip or two of shine; I ain’t what you’d call true drunk.”
Sonny slammed the cell door, not bothering to lock it. “Well, you can just get yourself true sober in there for forty-eight hours. The JP ain’t holding no special sessions for something like you.” Sonny remembered that Pieback had stayed out of the draft by showing up for his physical drunk as a skunk. He’d been classified a 4-F because of his chronic alcoholism. “You just sleep it off, and if you start snoring I’ll come in there and kick your ass up around your ears, hear?” Pieback flopped onto a bunk and heaved a deep sigh. He might have just come home to his own bed after a hard day’s work.
Then somebody came in about a lost bicycle, and there were a couple of phone calls, and Sonny didn’t get back to the old files. The boy’s murder stuck in his mind, but he had not read Will Henry’s account of the second murder.
6
BILLY LEE sat on a Coca-Cola crate in the shade of a pecan tree and watched his wife charm and bully a variety of carpenters and other building tradesmen into doing things exactly as she wished to their half-finished new home. He had forgotten, after nearly four years in England, how hot it could be in Georgia in July. Patricia loved the heat. She had been cold all her life, she said, and it couldn’t get too hot for her. In the distance he could see two black men repairing a barbed-wire fence.
He had not really had a hell of a lot to do with the planning and building of the house, because his new clients, the bank and the cotton mill, were working his tail off; because Holmes was marching him to every Kiwanis, Rotary, and Jaycee meeting in the TriCounties, and to every church social and barbecue they could find; and because Patricia had said she didn’t want him in the way. She had, to his astonishment, produced a finely rendered set of plans for a two-story Georgian house from her trunk, based on one she had known in England, and had proceeded to assemble the materials and people necessary to construct it in record time, considering the postwar shortages. Thus, in a few weeks more, they would be living in a four-bedroom, three-bath house all out of proportion to their needs or income. When he had protested, she had, reluctantly, revealed to him that she had a bit of money of her own, that she would spend it as she pleased, and that she pleased to spend it on a house they could live in for the rest of their lives, since she had no intention of moving about like a gypsy. He had gone back to work and campaigning and left her to it.
Now, from far down the Raleigh road toward Delano, a column of dust arose, led by a small dot of a car. Soon it was visible as a police car, and it eventually turned into Patricia’s newly paved driveway and pulled up before the house. Sonny Butts and Charley Ward got out.
“Afternoon, Colonel,” Sonny sang out. A lot of people referred to Billy as colonel, and only partly because of his military rank. In Georgia, as in much of the South, attorneys were called that. Billy had never known why.
“Sonny, how are you?” He got up and shook hands with both officers. He had seen little of Sonny since their return from the war, only an occasional glimpse of him patrolling on the motorcycle or directing traffic.
“Just fine, Colonel. That’s going to be some house.” Sonny looked admiringly toward the structure.
“Yes, well, my wife never seems to do anything small. What can I do for you?”
Sonny handed him an envelope. “Got some good news for you. Fellow just showed up at the station with a brand new Chevrolet for you. Said he couldn’t find you at your office or the trailer park, so he reckoned it’d be all right to leave it with us. Here’s the papers and keys. We put him on the bus back to Atlanta.”
“Oh, that’s great.” He took the papers. “Fellow I was in the service with has a dealership in Atlanta.” Billy had sent him a large deposit a month before and agreed to take whatever he could get. “I appreciate your keeping the car for me and coming all the way out here.”
“Glad to do it. Anyway”—Sonny nodded toward Billy’s ‘38 Ford—”I wondered if you’d be interested in selling the convertible. I been looking for one.”
“Sure, come have a look at it.” They walked toward the car. “Wasn’t much when I got it, but I’ve put some money into it—a ring job and some rewiring and four recaps. It’s in good shape now, except for a little rust here and there. Spare’s not so hot, but it’s okay for a spare.”
Sonny walked around the car, kicked the tires, asked some questions, listened to the engine. They haggled, agreed on a price. Sonny wrote a check. Patricia came down the temporary front steps and was introduced to the two policemen.
“Sonny’s just bought himself a snazzy Ford convertible,” Billy said to her.
“How much are you paying him to take it away?”
Billy looked pained. “He got it for a song. The two of them sandbagged me.”
“I’ll miss it, Officer Butts. You take good care of it. Billy’ll never buy anything that romantic again.”
“Don’t you worry, Miz Lee. I’m going to fix it up even better.” He turned to Billy. “Who did the engine job for you? Mickey Shelton?”
“No, it was Marshall Parker, the colored fellow who opened up over by Braytown. Did a good job, too. I recommend him. He’s a lot cheaper than Micky.”
Sonny shook his head. “Well, I never knew a nigger could fix any kind of machinery more’n a wheelbarrow. I hope you’re right about him, seeing as how I’ve bought the thing.”
Billy looked at the ground. “Marshall’s good. He was pretty good in the army, too, from what I hear. He picked up a bronze star at Anzio.” Billy wanted to change the subject. “I hear you were in the Bulge.”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty rough, I guess.”
“Only for those guys who couldn’t take it. I didn’t have no problem. We got along without Eleanor’s Niggers.”
Billy could feel his anger rising. “Hope you like the car, Sonny. Stop by the office tomorrow, and I’ll give you the registration.”
“Sure thing, Colonel.” Sonny got into the Ford and drove away, followed closely by Charley Ward in the police car.
“Funny,” said Patricia. “He never even noticed you were annoyed about the way he talked about Marshall Parker.”
“Yes, he did,” Billy said, looking down the road after Sonny. “He was putting the needle in. I knew guys like him in the army. They liked to see just how far they could go with you. He noticed.”
Sonny turned off the Raleigh road onto Highway 41 and drove the two miles to Delano at seventy-five miles an hour. He took his hands off the wheel for a moment and noticed that it vibrated slightly at that speed. At sixty it was solid as a rock. Shit, he’d have gone another two hundred for the car if Billy Lee had pushed him. Stupid bastard.
As he approached the city limits he saw a sign he hadn’t noticed before: “Parker’s Garage—repairs on all makes & models.” Billy Lee had said the nigger was a lot cheaper than Mickey Shelton. Sonny whipped into the bare dirt space before the converted barn and killed the engine. He could see a pair of feet sticking out from under an old Plymouth. He got out of the car and walked inside.
“Be with you in just a minute.” The voice came from under the car. Sonny waited impatiently for a moment, then tapped the sole of one of the protruding shoes with his foot.
“Come on, I ain’t got all day.”
“I’ll be with you just as soon as I tighten this bolt.” There was an edge in the voice. Sonny didn’t like that from a nigger. After another moment’s wait Marshall pushed himself from under the car, riding on a slab of plywood mounted on casters. He stood up, wiping his hands with a rag. “What can I do for you?”
Sonny glared at him for a second before speaking. “You know how to balance wheels?”
Marshall waited a beat before replying evenly, “Sure do.”
“Well, I got a little shimmy in the front end at about seventy-five. I figure it’s a balancing job.”
Marshall looked at the convertible. “You buy Colonel Lee’s car, did you?”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t steal it.”
“I balanced the wheels on it last week. You might have a little alignment problem, though.”
“Listen, I’m due back at the station, I haven’t got time to argue with you about it. Just get the front wheels off and balance them right this time.”
“I balanced them right the first time. Them’s recaps on there. They won’t never run as true as new tires. But if you want to bring it back in the morning I’ll check the front end alignment. I’m gon’ be tied up ‘til this evening on this job.”
Sonny flushed. “Whose rattletrap is that, anyway?”
“Smitty’s.” Smitty ran the grocery store in Braytown.
“Well, you just call up Smitty and tell him you gotta work on Police Officer Butts’s car. He can come back tomorrow.”
“I don’t have no phone yet—they bringin’ it next week—and, anyway, Smitty’s mama is sick up in Atlanta, and he’s got to go up there tonight and carry her home. Now, it ain’t gonna hurt it to drive it tonight the way it is, and if you bring it back in the morning I’ll do the best job I can on it. Tell you what, I’ll pick it up at the police station and fix it and have it back to you by dinner time if it ain’t nothing serious and I don’t have to order no parts.” Marshall knew Sonny was getting mad, and he didn’t want any problems with a uniformed policeman who was also carrying a gun, so he said all this as placatingly as he could manage, considering that he was getting pretty mad himself.
“You know,” said Sonny, “I thought I’d see what kind of work you do and maybe let you do all my servicing for me, but I shoulda known better. I reckon I just better take my car on over to Mickey Shelton where I know it’ll get done right.” He turned and started for the car.
Now Marshall had to make a real effort to hold himself in. “Well, I ‘preciate you coming to me, and I wish I could fix it right now, but I promised this man his car. I done all the work on that convertible, you know, and couldn’t nobody do it no better, I reckon.”
Sonny got to the car and opened the door. He turned back toward Marshall. “Shit. You’ll be back to sweeping floors and fixing inner tubes for Mickey Shelton in a month, anyway. I don’t know why I even thought I could do business with a nigger.” He slammed the door, started the car, reversed into the road, and burned rubber driving away.
Marshall stood in the door of his garage, his jaw clamped tightly shut, looking after the angry policeman. Annie, his wife, came out of the little office cubicle at the back, where she had been working on the books.
“You shouldn’ta made that man mad, Marshall. You know what we been hearing ‘bout him. He can make us a lot of trouble.”
“Shoot, girl, I was just as polite as I could be to that white boy. You heard every word of it.”
“You know how to talk right to white folks. You coulda been talking to a colored man the way you was talking to him.”
“Listen, I’m a businessman now. I don’t have to go Uncle Tommin’ nobody no more. He can’t do nothing to us. Don’t you worry about it.” He knew she would worry, anyway.
Sonny was still angry when he got back to the station. He’d fix that nigger. He’d get him in his jail some Saturday night, and he’d fix him.
7
ON AN EVENING in early August two meetings were held in Delano. Their purposes were disparate.
In an apartment over the garage of Dr. Frank Mudter, his son, Dr. Tom Mudter, hosted a group which included Billy Lee, Bob Blankenship, the new owner-editor of the Delano Messenger; Ellis Woodall, owner of a radio shop; and Brooks Peters, the new Baptist minister. They were all young and all veterans, with the single exception of Peters, who had been too underweight to pass his physical.
This was not their first meeting. Since returning from the war they had been laying plans to establish their generation politically in Delano and the TriCounties. For more than four years virtually every healthy adult male between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five had been absent from the community, and the natural progression of the young into positions of influe
nce had been halted. Now, at the approach of the first state-wide election since the end of the war, they were working hard to make up for the lost years. Their efforts were not without resistance from an establishment that had hardened in their absence.
Among their group and among the candidates they supported, only Billy Lee seemed reasonably sure of election, and that had made him their unofficial leader. Now he called them to order. “Okay, gents, let’s hear what’s going on out there.”
Bob Blankenship spoke up. “Why don’t you start by telling us where you think the state senate race stands?”
“Well, Mr. Holmes seems to think we’re okay. Ward is a nice enough fellow, but he’s not well known outside of Talbot County, and he was a 4-F, that’s not helping him any. He could edge us out in Talbot, but we think we’ll take Harris and Meriwether without too much trouble. God knows I’ve shaken hands with every man, woman, and mule in the TriCounties at least twice. Lucky we don’t have any Republicans to worry about; the primary is tough enough without having to fight it all over again in a general election. Bob, you’re about as objective an ear as we’ll get. How’re we doing in the other races?”
Blankenship, a short, heavy man in his early forties, had bought the newspaper from Harmon Everson some six months before, and had quickly settled into the town. “The way I see it, we’ll get one seat on the city council pretty sure; maybe the second one, too, if we work hard. I think Tom is in better shape than Ellis right now, because everybody knows his daddy. I think we’d be safe in putting more of our effort behind Ellis in the five weeks we’ve got left. We ought to make a real effort with the American Legion boys. They could turn it for us.”
“That’s okay with me,” said Tom.
“What about the sheriff’s race?” James Montgomery, a veteran from Greenville, the county seat, was challenging Skeeter Willis.
Bob Blankenship spoke again. “A toss-up, I reckon. James has got the veteran vote for sure, but Skeeter’s got a lot of friends in this county.”