“Get out your gun,” Quarles said as they started up the steps.
Presley swallowed hard but drew his revolver.
Quarles drew his own weapon, stood to one side, and opened the screen door. He slapped the front door hard with his palm. “Open up! Police!”
The house stayed silent — or was there a furtive creaking from inside? Quarles looked up at Presley. “Better go round back, Harm. You be careful.”
Presley swallowed again, nodded, and went down the steps. He edged around the house, past the pecan tree and the car. He saw the man just as he dropped from a back window. “Hold it!” he ordered, bringing his revolver up.
The man, a black man, landed on all fours, like a cat.
Like a cat he ran, heading through the overgrown backyard and toward a swagging, vine-grown wire fence. “Stop!” Presley yelled, and fired a shot in the air.
The running man dropped as if he had been hit. Presley yelled, “Got him, Sam!” and went over to the figure, his gun trained on the defenseless back.
The man wore a dirty white vest-type undershirt and jeans. He was barefoot: the pinks of his soles looked like raw flesh to Presley. As Presley came up, the man covered his close-cropped head with big hands. “I ain’t done nothin’,” he said into the dirt.
“Get up, you,” Presley said. “Slow.”
The back door of the house banged open, and Quarles came out. “Hold him, Harm,” he said.
The man lay still. “You gonna hafta kill me layin’ down,” he said.
“Goddamn it, get up,” Presley repeated.
“Huh-uh. You gonna hafta shoot me alayin’ here. Ain’t done nothin, man.”
Quarles knelt beside the man, patted him down. “Get up,” he said. “Nobody’s going to shoot you.”
Slowly, the man rose. He was very dark, young, maybe twenty-five or -six. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish tinge. He wore a thin mustache, and his left cheek was welted by a diagonal three-inch scar. Quarles finished frisking him. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Billy Resaca,” the man mumbled.
“What were you doin’ in that house?” Quarles said.
The eyes were sullen. “Live there, man.”
“What?”
“I says I lives there, sir.”
“Well, that’s a little better. Do you know Mollie Avery, Billy?”
“Yes, sir. She my wife.”
“Your wife?” Presley snorted.
The sullen eyes darted sideways. “Common-law,” Resaca said.
“Well, Billy,” Quarles said, “we’re gonna have to take you in. You gonna be good for us?”
“I didn’t do nothin’, sir.”
“Then you don’t have nothin’ to worry about, do you?” Quarles took his cuffs from his belt. “Hands behind you, Billy.”
The three men came around the corner of the house to find the scene changed. Black men and women stood on porches and in yards, arms crossed, eyes unreadable, all up and down the street — except at the two houses on either side of the body. Tom Davies, looking pale, stood at the end of the hedge, his camera dangling at his stomach. Presley heard the intermittent drone of flies. The sun was well up now; it must be six-fifteen or later, he thought.
“Take Billy in, Harm,” Quarles said. “Don’t tell him anything. Keep him in the fightin’ cell until I get in.”
“Okay, Sam,” Presley acknowledged. “Come on, you.”
Just before Presley could shove him into the rear seat of the patrol car, Resaca twisted away from him. “Help!” he shouted to a group of three blacks across the street. “They killin’ me!”
“Harmon!” yelled Sam from back at the hedge.
“Come on, get in,” Presley said, grabbing for Resaca.
“They gonna kill me!” Resaca wailed, dropping to his knees in the street. He bit at Presley.
“God damn!” Presley hit Resaca open-handed so hard that the man’s head bounced off the quarter panel of the patrol car. Then Presley picked him up bodily and heaved him into the backseat like a sack of flour.
His hat had fallen off. He picked it up, jammed it on his head, and climbed behind the wheel of the car. He made a U-turn. The cluster of blacks across the street took a couple of steps backward.
He passed the ambulance at the foot of the street. “What is it, man?” Resaca asked from the backseat. “What you think I done?”
“Shut up,” Presley said between his teeth. He wondered if he would be able to hit Resaca a couple more times before Quarles got in. He decided that if he played his cards right, he could.
He headed for the county jail.
2
Ann Lewis had been up since dawn. She rented three rooms from Mrs. Elvie Maddons, a widow of advanced years and impaired hearing; and yet Ann moved silently, as she always did. Ever since that day at school, Ann had had a fluttery stomach, a headache that eased at times but never went completely away.
She had spent most of Friday and Saturday in bed, believing that she had a touch of flu.
But after a night of little sleep she had changed her mind. Teachers were due at Gaither Elementary on Wednesday for preplanning. Try as she might, Ann could not see herself, could not imagine herself, going back into that building.
She had started and torn up the letter six times. She tried again:
Gentlemen:
I have enjoyed my years of teaching for the city school system. However, recently events have occurred which
She broke off. What would she do? Go and live with her mother? As poorly as Ann could visualize herself returning to school, she could see herself going back to her mother’s house even more dimly. And where else, in Gaither, would she get a job? The mills? The chicken processing plants? She crumpled the paper and tossed it into the wastepaper basket with the others.
Sitting at her desk beside the window, Ann closed her eyes. This is ridiculous, she told herself. Nothing happened. My subconscious acting out my feelings about my mother. Some psychological jargon — jargon. Bullshit. Psychological bullshit like that.
She sat there for some minutes, eyes closed, resting. When she opened her eyes, they were clear and steady. All right, she said to herself. I’ll go back. I won’t be alone in the building. I’ll get over this. She glanced down at the paper on the desk in front of her, a little fearfully.
It was only blank paper, nothing more. No horrible sketches or words. Blank paper. A blank page, like the new school year.
But, she thought, I’m still afraid.
A bell began to toll somewhere: the Methodist bell. Eight o’clock. Ann closed her eyes again, wearily. Forget church this Sunday morning. I couldn’t make the effort. Back to bed, try to get some sleep.
She rose, drew the blind, and took off her robe. The bedclothes lay tangled and twisted. She gave them a few halfhearted tugs and tweaks and got back between the sheets. Her head throbbed, just behind her eyes.
It’s never been this bad. I used to look forward to the beginning of school. It’s never been like this.
She felt the tension in her legs, all the way up her back, her neck. Her whole body was tight, an overwound spring. Her jaw clamped shut so hard her teeth ached.
I have to relax, she thought.
Before she drifted into an uneasy sleep, a happy thought came to her: a movie.
The theater opens again tomorrow.
I’ll see a movie.
That will help.
A movie.
3
Ballew Jefferson’s telephone rang as he was shaving himself. Jefferson had never gone for an electric shaver or even a safety razor: he used an old-fashioned straight razor, ivory-handled, shiny, sharp, and he foamed his own lather out of a clovery-scented bar of soap.
He had just nicked himself, in a minor way, when the phone in the bedroom trilled. Shaking his head, Jefferson grabbed a towel. He rubbed off the lather and a thin trickle of blood as he padded barefoot across the rug. He wore only trousers and undershirt this morning.
Th
e telephone rang again as he snatched the receiver off its cradle.
“Jefferson residence.”
“Mr. Jefferson, this is Sam Quarles.”
Jefferson rested a hip on the edge of the bed. “What is it, Sam?”
Quarles cleared his throat. “I understand you have a colored girl workin’ for you, sir.”
“I have a couple,” Jefferson said. “Mollie Avery and Aunt Ludie Estes. Though I’m not sure what Ludie does around here could really be classified as work.”
“Yes, sir. About this Mollie Avery — ”
Jefferson heaved a sigh. “Is it that buck she lives with, Billy what’s-his-name?”
“Well, sir — ”
“How much?”
The silence at the other end went on for too long before Quarles said, “I don’t think you understand.”
“I suppose the man got drunk again and you have him. Mollie needs enough to bail him out. That’s it, isn’t it? How much does she need?”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Jefferson — ”
All impatience, Jefferson snapped, “Let me talk to Mollie. We’ll clear this all up.”
“Mr. Jefferson, you need to come down here, to the hospital.”
Jefferson scowled, as if Quarles were in the same room and could see him. “Hospital? Did she let him hit her, Sheriff?”
“Mr. Jefferson, just listen for a minute. We have a body here. We think it’s your colored girl. We can’t let Billy Resaca identify her, he’s a suspect. Nobody seems to know about her family. I need you to take a look at the body and see if it’s Mollie.”
Jefferson laughed. “Sheriff, you’re wasting my time. It can’t be her.”
“We think — ”
“I dropped Mollie off at her house last night. She was fine. You’ve made some kind of mistake.”
“Mr. Jefferson — ”
“I’ve got to get ready for church. You just — ”
“Goddamn it!”
Jefferson stood up from the bed, his back stiff. “Quarles, remember who you’re talking to.”
“You listen to me,” Quarles said, his voice fast and harsh. “I’ve got a dead woman here. She was carrying ID that says she’s Mollie Avery of sixteen Slattery Row. This is a bad one. I need you to come to the hospital and take a look, and if I have to, I’ll send a car to get you.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, sir, I certainly do. But do you know who I am? Well, sir, I’m the man they elected sheriff of Frye County. I may not be anything more than that, but I’m the sheriff. Now. Do you want me to send a car?”
“This is ridiculous,” Jefferson said. “It’s a waste of time.”
“I’ll have someone pick you up.”
“No.” Jefferson sighed. “I’ll come in. On my way to church.”
“As soon as you can, please, sir.”
“All right.” Jefferson paused. “What was this woman wearing, Quarles?”
The sheriff sighed audibly. “Navy-blue jacket over a light blue blouse. Navy-blue skirt. Flat-heeled black shoes. Black brassiere and panties. Blue head scarf. No stockings.”
Jefferson looked down. Beside the bed, two wadded balls: nylons.
“As soon as you can,” the voice on the phone said.
“I’ll be there,” Jefferson said. He hung up the telephone.
Something clattered to the floor. He looked at it stupidly. It was the straight razor, open, in a shallow red pool.
Where did that come from, he wondered. Where did all the blood come from?
He held up his right hand, the hand that had been clenched on the razor. A scarlet line ran across the palm just under the fingers. He stretched his hand wide open and saw the line become a gash, saw the flow of blood, half closed his hand. He could not hold it all and felt the warm trickle down his forearm, dripping off his elbow.
It doesn’t even hurt, he thought. It just feels a little stiff. It doesn’t hurt at all.
4
Services at the Gaither First Methodist Church were over at twelve-thirty. Betty Lessup, in Frank’s absence, was still “doing” for John and Alan Kirby, and they drove to her house for lunch. Alan, stiffly uncomfortable in his white shirt and clip-on tie, sat in the swing on her front porch, pushing himself back and forth with the heel of his left foot. He wished he could run across the street long enough to change clothes at least, to get into some soft jeans and a T-shirt; but Aunt Betty was tearing into lunch like a human hurricane, and he knew he would be expected to remain in Sunday uniform until after the fried chicken and biscuits.
He could hear his aunt’s voice, even though the kitchen was two rooms away and the front door was closed: “You ought to think of Alan. That’s all I’m saying.”
Alan closed his eyes. His ears burned as if the old superstition were true, as if they showed by their temperature whether or not someone was talking about him. His father’s reply, pitched lower and softer than Aunt Betty’s, was inaudible to the boy, but a moment later his aunt answered it: “That’s just nonsense, John Howard Kirby. There are plenty of women in this town who’d be glad to marry you.”
Alan squirmed in the swing. He calculated that he had at least another ninety minutes of this. His aunt bombarded his father with intimations of matrimony moment by moment, but his father, a thick-walled bastion if there ever was one, shed the bombshells with no evidence of damage.
They were two stubborn people, Alan realized, each in a different way. His aunt was all bustle and go, a short, plump woman who could halfway cook a meal or halfway repair a carburetor with equally clumsy aplomb. His father was a still point, a calm man whose serenity was thorough and pervasive. His aunt acted without thought; his father thought and did not act.
She was at him again: “My sister has been dead for nearly six years. Don’t tell me what she’d want. I know what she’d want. And one thing she’d want is a wife for you and a mother for her son.”
No, Alan thought. Not a mother for me. Unable to listen any longer, he got out of the porch swing and left it creaking behind him. He walked down the steps into bright sunlight and bird song, threw his head back, shaded his eyes, and squinted up at a gray mockingbird swinging on the telephone wires and throwing liquid notes into the still Sabbath air with joyous abandon.
Alan shied a pebble at the bird, missing it by a good two feet but sending it winging away, rising and dipping in its flight like a small boat on a white-water river. He went around the side of the house and inspected Uncle Frank’s fig trees. All of them were barren of fruit, for the birds got it as soon as it showed signs of ripening. But the heady scent of the figs was there, a sweetly musty reminder.
He plucked one of the broad, hairy leaves off the plant and thought about Adam and Eve. Aprons of fig leaves. Still showed a lot of skin, he thought. He pictured Eve in her botanical outfit and felt the stirrings of desire, still new enough in him to be unsettling.
He unclipped his tie and let it hang loose. He opened his shirt collar and felt that he could breathe again. If only, he thought, there were something to do.
He could go inside and listen to the radio — Aunt Betty and Uncle Frank had an RCA console TV, much bigger than the Kirbys’ Philco, but there was a house rule about not watching it before lunch on Sunday. No such rule forbade listening to the radio, but at this time of day, most of the stations would be broadcasting sermons or gospel music, anyway, and he had only lately escaped from that.
Anything else he thought of involved getting dirty, so that was out.
Of course — he had been circling the fig trees aimlessly, but he paused now — of course, he could get his book and read. He had not cracked the book on fossil hunting yet. He could sit on Aunt Betty’s porch — or even, he thought, on his own porch, just there across the street — and read.
He made his decision, crossed the street, and went into his own house. The door was, as always, unlocked: not many people in Gaither ever locked their houses. The Sunday stillness of the house was a little disconcer
ting to him, somehow different from the quiet of other days. It made him walk softly, as if he were reluctant to disturb the sleeping rooms.
He had some trouble finding the book. For some reason he hadn’t put it on the bedside table, the usual place for library books, and he couldn’t think why. After a few minutes of unsuccessful searching, he walked himself through his return from the library, a surefire technique. He left his bike in the backyard. He came into the kitchen, book in hand, right. He had been thirsty. He had looked in the refrigerator for a Coke — voilà. The book was on top of the fridge.
Alan pulled it down, frowning at himself. He didn’t usually misplace things like that. The thought immediately came to him: I don’t usually have dates to see movies, either.
He felt strange, tingly in a way, anticipatory but a little afraid at the same time.
Eve in fig leaves.
But the thought of Diane England in fig leaves, Diane who could strike out opponents one-two-three and then hit the ball a goodly country mile for a home run the next minute — well, he had to giggle a little.
The book under his arm, Alan went out the front door. He paused there. A strange car, a green Rambler, was parked at the curb in front of his aunt’s house. Alan crossed the street, wondering who could have called.
“. . . it’s true,” he heard as he mounted the steps to the porch. “He tried to kill himself, too, with a razor, I heard.”
His father’s voice — whose was the first voice, the woman’s voice? He couldn’t quite place it. But his father said, “I can’t believe Ballew Jefferson would have anything to do with a murder.”
“I don’t know.” His aunt. “When was this woman killed, Agatha?”
Click. The visitor was Agatha Islip, some kind of remote cousin to Aunt Betty. Alan saw her now and again downtown or at school functions. He vaguely knew her son Tommy, who was in fifth or sixth grade this year.
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