Hellbound

by Chester Campbell

  As Marge let her eyes flutter and close, Betty Lou watched her old friend with a growing sense of apprehension. She did not think the problem was anything Marge had eaten. They often joked about her “cast iron” stomach. She could eat the spiciest Mexican dishes with no difficulty. Betty Lou could recall other times when Marge had suffered similar attacks, though not in recent years. She couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, of course, but Betty Lou was convinced the incidents had something to do with that fateful journey Marge and Keith had taken to West Virginia in 1965. The trip from which she had returned a basket case.

  Marge sat with eyes closed, her thoughts racing back to the real cause of her queasiness, which had started in the darkness of the music hall when she heard a rustling sound behind her. Looking around, she saw Bryce head toward the hallway entrance. Although she had enjoyed the music, the heat and the closeness of all the bodies in that small enclosure had become stifling. She slipped out of her seat to join him in the hallway.

  Curious, she paused and watched as Bryce stopped near the front entrance, apparently gazing at something out in the street. Then a sudden shock jolted her as she saw him look around, reach into a table drawer, pull out a pistol and turn back toward the street. What was he doing? Surely he wasn’t about to shoot someone, she thought. But why else would he be standing there brandishing a gun? The uncertainty triggered a flood of horrible memories from that dreadful summer more than thirty years ago. The summer when she and Keith had driven up to visit friends in West Virginia. She cried out Bryce’s name as the images poured back into her mind like a tidal wave, overwhelming her, touching off a churning within her stomach that brought on the nausea similar episodes had caused so many times in the past.

  She recalled a more recent day a few years back when Herb had confronted her with a shocking revelation, triggered by her statement that she was leaving him. True to her mother’s wishes, she would not file for divorce, but she had put up with all of the jealousy and abuse she could take. Then Herb had stunned her with his knowledge of the secret she had so closely guarded all those years.

  “You are not going anywhere, lady,” he said in that icy, commanding tone that had undoubtedly made his Navy subordinates cringe. “Unless you want the world to know about your brother.”

  Marge gasped. “What...about my brother?” He could not possibly know, she thought. It stretched belief. After all, she had found out only by being in the right place at the right time.

  A diabolical grin broke out across his face. “I wasn’t positive about it until now. That look tells it all.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Oh, I think you do. And more important, I know who he is, and where he is.”

  Then he began to detail the complex web that had brought the puzzle together for him. Back during World War II, Herb Hunter had been a seaman on the same ship in the Mediterranean as her brother Ed James’ classmate, the one who reported encountering him in the white kepi of a French Foreign Legionnaire. Marge had told Herb earlier about her brother’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War and the report of his enlistment in the Legion. Herb was quite intrigued to discover Ed on board his ship.

  “I found him exercising on deck one day and told him who I was,” Herb said, “that I had been dating his sister. He growled at me like a mongrel dog and grunted, ‘I am no longer Edward James and I have no sister.’ I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but then he held out his right arm and pointed to a red tattoo. It said Freedom, and below that seven-dash-seven-dash-three-seven. Then he gave a bitter grin and said, ‘That’s the day I left Nashville. July seventh, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven. I will never go back.’”

  At that moment Marge’s faint hopes caved in. She knew what was coming. The tattoo was one of the ways she had identified her brother back in 1965, a time that qualified without doubt as the most traumatic period of her life.

  Early that year the newspapers were full of stories about the bloody mutilation slaying of a family of seven in rural West Virginia. Vivid accounts of the crime horrified readers across the nation. A drifter had stopped by their farm looking for work. Neighbors said the family took him in and treated him as one of their own. But two weeks later, when another farmer came by looking for a tractor attachment, he discovered a grisly scene. The man and his wife lay dead in their bed, shot with the farmer’s own gun, then literally butchered with a large carving knife. Their two boys and three girls had been shot and bludgeoned, their skulls shattered by blows from a pick handle. Evidently the slayings had occurred during the night. The drifter was missing.

  The police put out a statewide alert and soon found the suspect hitchhiking westward some fifty miles away. He had spatters of blood on his clothing, which he claimed came from a cut finger. The cut, however, turned out to be only superficial. Tests later showed the blood was not his type but matched that of some of the victims.

  Hailed in the press as one of the nation’s worst mass murderers, the man was identified as Grantland Hemingway. He carried a New York driver’s license and a recently-acquired Social Security card. His fingerprints were sent to the FBI, which found no match in their files. This meant he had no criminal record and had not served in the military.

  The news media quickly jumped on the story and learned Hemingway had worked briefly in New York City as a service station attendant. But his fellow workers and neighbors could only reveal that he was a loner, not at all talkative, not one to make friends. Nothing was known about his family or where he had come from. He steadfastly refused to talk about himself, appearing to enjoy total anonymity. He did confess to the murders, however, after learning that West Virginia had done away with the death penalty the previous year. Editorial cartoonists had a field day depicting him as the personification of evil.

  When pressed for the reason he had committed such atrocities, Hemingway calmly explained that the farmer had insulted him by accusing him of stealing a watch. But why kill the others? They were all tainted with the same bad blood, he contended.

  Psychiatrists examined him and branded him a sociopath, but quite sane and able to stand trial. A lawyer assigned to his defense sought to get the confession thrown out but only succeeded in having the case moved to a court in the capital, Charleston. The trial was set for July.

  Marge read about the case in the Nashville newspapers. She was intrigued by the name Grantland Hemingway. The only other time she had heard the name Grantland was of a local sports writer named Grantland Rice when she was a kid. It was also close to the name of the street she grew up on, Gartland Avenue. As for Hemingway, she could only think of Ernest Hemingway, a writer she did not care for. But she recalled a stack of newspaper articles from the war in Spain with Hemingway’s by-line that her brother had collected before he left home. The thought gave her an uneasy feeling. At the moment she wasn’t quite sure why.

  Reading another story closer to the trial date, Marge noticed Grantland Hemingway’s age listed as forty-six. She recalled her brother Ed’s birthday was May 5, 1919. She could hardly have forgotten it, not after seeing that “5•5•19” he had carved in the door facing of his room so many years ago. He would have been forty-six.

  Was all of this pure coincidence, she wondered? Surely it must be. This mass murderer could not possibly be her brother.

  She had seen Hemingway’s picture before but had never looked at him too closely. However, as she studied newspaper photo now, she saw a startling resemblance to Brad James, her father, when he was in his forties.

  Was it all coincidence? She had to know the truth. She talked her husband into visiting former neighbors who had been transferred by DuPont to a plant in West Virginia. They arrived on the Fourth of July weekend and planned to make a long holiday of it.

  Marge found the mass murderer's trial the main topic of conversation in Charleston. Sandy Terry, her hostess, had closely followed the case. When the news came on television, Marge watched with a growing sense of dread a
s the upcoming trial of Grantland Hemingway was reported. A shot of him at the jail wearing a T-shirt filled the screen. And as the camera zoomed in, she saw a tattoo on his arm that said “Freedom,” and below that “7•7•37.” The same style numbers her brother had used to carve his birth date on the door facing of his bedroom on Gartland Avenue. What would this date be? July 7, 1937? She remembered it clearly. It was the day her mother had cried softly as Ed James rode off in a bus, smiling, supposedly bound for a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, actually headed for Spain.

  At that moment, it hit her with all the devastating force and fury of a hurricane. Her brother was undoubtedly the mass murderer.

  She had come completely unglued, bordering on psychotic. Bewildered, Keith had taken her home the next day. She spent most of the week in bed before getting herself together enough to face the world again. With a sheer force of will, she had managed to maintain her sanity, but one thing she knew for certain:

  She could never dare risk having a baby with the same genes as Ed James.

  The whole episode put a severe strain on their relationship, but Keith stood by her to the end, even though he never understood what had happened. She was thankful her parents had not lived to witness their only son convicted as a despicable mass murderer. She feared they might have made the same connection that she had.

  Now in his eighties, Ed James was still biding his time in the West Virginia State Prison at Elkins, still maintaining the anonymity of his infamy. And years after she had finally reconciled herself to living with that ghastly secret, Herbert Hunter had gleefully thrown the horror back in her face. He explained how, while stationed at the Pentagon in 1990, he had attended the christening of the USS West Virginia, an Ohio class Trident ballistic missile submarine. The governor had invited him to visit Charleston. As a result, Captain Hunter was there during the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Grantland Hemingway trial, which, to the governor’s chagrin, triggered a new wave of newspaper and TV rehashing. When Herb saw pictures of the tattoo, he remembered having seen the identical lettering on Ed James’s arm. He put the rest together much as Marge had. But he said nothing, because he was not certain of his facts. Not until the day he had confronted her with the horrible truth.

  The prospect of her relationship to the mass murderer becoming public knowledge was unthinkable. The family name would be blackened forever, making her the subject of unbearable harassment from the press and television news crews.

  Tonight, when she saw Bryce brandish a gun as if about to shoot someone for no obvious reason, all of the trauma and pain and hurt she had gone through because of Ed James had been suddenly and shockingly resurrected. And, she now realized, all for naught. Bryce had merely handed the gun to the man at the door.

  As they walked toward the bus in the street outside Preservation Hall, she turned to him, keeping her voice low. “What was that all about with the gun you gave the man at the door?”

  Bryce’s smile was apologetic. “I saw it lying out in plain view, in the open drawer of that table. I told him he’d better hide it. I was afraid somebody might get it and do something really stupid.”

  As Bryce climbed aboard the bus, he looked around in an attempt to spot the Mafia hoods but saw no trace of them. He was certain they would be lurking somewhere nearby. But the most troubling element he had to contend with concerned that tormenting moment in the corridor of Preservation Hall.

  Would he really have pulled the trigger if Marge had not called his name?

  30

  Bryce awoke early on Thursday and stared into a virtual void. The room’s lone window flanked an interior hallway. The heavy drapes allowed only a faint glow to penetrate around the edges. But he felt right at home in the dark as he hadn’t the foggiest idea what might happen next. So far he had managed to survive in the protective custody of his small circle of newly-acquired Silver Shadows friends, but the trip was fast winding down. Even if he succeeded in keeping the bad guys at bay for two more days, which would likely be no mean task, he faced the prospect of being cast out on his own once back at Lovely Lane Church in Madison. But he had an uneasy feeling that Locasio wouldn't be willing to wait that long to make his move.

  Surprised there had been no overt effort to get at him thus far, Bryce knew he had misread the intentions of the trio that had crossed the street in front of Preservation Hall last night. Was that an indication they still had not pinpointed which of the bus passengers was the real Pat Pagano, he wondered? If so, he might have a little grace period left.

  That was small consolation.

  Of equal concern was the possibility of getting his new friends, particularly Marge Hunter, caught in the crossfire. He had too many black marks on his record already as a result of blundering choices that proved fatal to those around him. He felt like the personification of that old line from Pogo:

  “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

  As he lay there in the darkness, Bryce replayed over and over in his mind the scene at Preservation Hall when he had seized the revolver and prepared to eliminate the opposition. Judging by her question later, Marge left no doubt she had seen him brandish the gun. But how much had she seen? Was she watching when he picked it up? Had that influenced her to call out his name?

  Seated across the aisle from her on the ride back to the hotel, he had darted frequent glances in her direction along the way. He had begun to question whether the distress she showed really stemmed from a reaction to the crawfish they had eaten for dinner. By the time Chick deposited them back at the hotel, she appeared to be suffering no more ill effects. He wondered if her problem might have been more related to trauma? The shock of seeing him holding that gun. He had a troubling feeling there was much more involved here than there seemed to be.

  He had too many questions, too few answers. He finally climbed out of bed, realizing there was little chance of disturbing Troy, and headed for the bathroom. He had just finished shaving and wandered back into the bedroom when Troy’s travel alarm began to beep. Seven o’clock. Bryce switched on the TV as the alarm lapsed into silence. The light spilling from the bathroom and the sound of the television finally accomplished what the alarm had failed to achieve. Troy slowly sat up like a corpse rising from a casket. He rubbed his eyes, then pried them open wide as a local forecaster began an ominous report on Hurricane Nora’s overnight progress.

  “The storm is presently one hundred and fifty miles south of Port Arthur,” said the serious-faced weatherman. His wavy hair piece, like Hurricane Nora, had gone a bit askew. He pointed to a map of the Gulf coast and continued. “It has veered slightly to the east over the past couple of hours, but it is still on track to make landfall around the Texas-Louisiana state line late this afternoon. Winds of near hurricane-force are already lashing coastal areas from south of Lake Charles westward to Galveston. If Nora continues on her current path, she should hit the coast around four o’clock, with winds of up to one hundred and thirty miles an hour. This would put her on the borderline of a Category Four hurricane, whose winds are capable of extensive structural damage and flooding for several miles inland.

  “Our current cloudy and windy conditions in New Orleans are unrelated to Nora. They stem from a different weather system, one that came through last night and is moving rapidly off to the northeast. However, the National Hurricane Center has issued a tropical storm warning for the New Orleans area for later today, with strong wind gusts and rain possibly moving in by early evening. You are advised to stay tuned throughout the day for further progress reports on Hurricane Nora, potentially one of the season’s most destructive storms.”

  Troy looked up from the side of the bed where he was sitting, his face as rumpled as the sheet around him. “Sounds like our boat ride tonight may be a washout.”

  Bryce started pulling on his shoes. “At least the morning and afternoon tours should be okay. It’s just cloudy and windy now."

  "Do you think Tillie might decide to cancel everything and head for home?"


  " I don't know, but she's got an awful lot of herself invested in this tour."

  "I guess we'll soon find out."

  " Right. Want to try breakfast at the hotel restaurant?”

  “Might as well.”

  When they were ready, they knocked on the door to the women’s room. Marge stuck her head out. “I’m trying to get Sarah Anne in gear,” she said. “It takes her awhile to put her face on. You fellas go ahead.”

  “We’ll be in the restaurant downstairs,” Troy said.

  They rode down the elevator with Clara and Horace Holly. Apparently ignorant of the weather situation or its possible consequences, Clara babbled away as usual, entertaining them with detailed descriptions of her tour through the French Market Wednesday afternoon. The complex of long, mostly open-sided buildings dating back to 1813 was strung out along both sides of North Peters and Decatur streets. Its stalls offered everything from fresh produce to hot sauce to souvenirs and hats and jeans and the ubiquitous T-shirts.

  “I found the darlingest little white dress for my youngest granddaughter,” Clara said, her owlish eyes dancing. Then she proceeded to describe the garment in such lavish detail that Bryce felt he could almost reach out and touch it.

  When everyone was seated on the bus, Tillie took the microphone and greeted them. “We’re happy to have Yvonne Deschamps back with us this morning as we tour St. Louis Cathedral, then visit the Garden District. After lunch we’ll tour Mardi Gras World, where we’ll see hundreds of floats and props used in the big parades. But before we get started, I’d like to address some of the comments and concerns I’ve gotten this morning about Hurricane Nora. According to the news reports, they don’t expect the bad weather to get here until tonight. If the winds are too strong, we may have to scrub the river boat ride. Yvonne has volunteered to help us come up with an alternative. Nora is supposed to stay well west of here, but depending on how she moves after landfall, it might possibly affect our visit to Bellingrath Gardens tomorrow. We’ll just have to wait and see.”