Wisdom of the Bones

by Paul Christopher

  Ray ducked his head and looked towards the school building. Sure enough there was a large television aerial at the back of the roof peak. Principal Pinkers ran a progressive school.

  Ray sat down on the glider and wiggled his toes inside his shoes. Even when he took the water pills the toes were squeezed together and his instep bulged. Another few weeks and he’d have to go up a size or move away from the loafers he favoured and buy some lace-ups he could keep loose.

  Principal Pinkers appeared a moment later with two tall glasses of iced tea, each one with a slice of lemon tucked down among the chips of ice. She handed a glass to Ray and then sat down beside him. He took a sip of his drink and was surprised to find that it had been made perfectly, tart sweet, just the way he liked it.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘I’m not one of those old ladies who likes everything sweet. Not my nature.’

  ‘How long have you been teaching at the school?’ Ray asked.

  ‘Forty-five years this July. Started after my husband was killed in the war. Didn’t have any children of my own, didn’t have any desire to marry again, so this was just fine.’ She sipped her tea. ‘So what do you want to know about Lucille?’

  ‘Who her friends were?

  ‘Everybody in the school. Always twenty or thirty in the class. Only black school for quite a way around. Even sneaked in a few from Wilbarger. Kept them the week in my own house. Their mommas or their daddies would come and get them for the weekends.’

  ‘The ones who didn’t stay, they generally walked home?’

  ‘Anybody close. Mile or two. Rest would get picked up, usually a bunch all going the same way and one of the fathers with a hay wagon or a pickup.’

  ‘But Lucille walked.’

  ‘Every day except Tuesday.’

  ‘What happened Tuesdays?’

  ‘Bobby Clay drove the Co’-Cola truck up from the Haynesville store. Last stop on his deliveries. He’d use 240 to get back to Burkburnett and drop off the kids on the way.’

  ‘He take any special interest in Lucille?’

  ‘I know where you’re going, Officer Duval, but you can just turn around and come back. Bobby Clay had three kids of his own and played Santa Claus at the school every Christmas. Always brought a couple of crates of Co’-Cola with him to give to the kids.’

  ‘Still alive?’

  ‘Heart attack. ’Fifty-four. Sugar diabetes too. All that Co’-Cola, I guess. Cut off both his legs but it didn’t do any good. Smoked as well. Wasn’t even fifty years old.’

  Ray took a long draft of the iced tea. ‘Lucille have any special friends?’

  ‘They were all special. I remember that class as clear as day. They were all close.’ She took a sighing breath. ‘Just an old woman feeling the grave but I always thought they knew.’

  ‘Knew about Lucille?’

  ‘No. Knew that they were doomed, a lot of them.’

  ‘Doomed? Dark word.’

  ‘Dark times.’ She eased herself up from the glider, taking her now-empty glass with her. ‘More?’ she asked, nodding at Ray’s glass.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She disappeared for a moment and then came back out onto the porch, her glass filled again and a framed photograph in her hand. She handed the photograph to Ray and then sat down again.

  ‘Lucille’s front row, exactly in the middle.’

  There were three rows of ten and one row of five. The girl in the middle had a broad smile on her face, her hair done in braids, wearing a gingham dress and sandals. Not especially pretty but happy-looking. Ray stared at the image for a long moment, then looking more closely saw that a lot of the males’ faces had small, inked X’s beside them.

  ‘The X’s?’

  ‘Like I said, I think God must have put shadows over them right from the start. Most of them in that picture are no more than thirteen or fourteen. One or two were a little older. We had all classes in the school, up to high school. In ’forty-one they all joined up, every man jack of them. They all joined the army infantry. An all-black combat unit. The ones there with the X’s never came back.’

  ‘More than half,’ Ray said quietly. He looked more closely at the photograph. The boy directly behind Lucille seemed to have his hand on her shoulder. Ray commented on it.

  ‘That’s her brother. Marcus.’

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘He was fourteen, she was twelve. He blamed himself for her murder. Usually he walked home with her but that day he stayed back to play some baseball with his friends.’

  ‘Whoever took her might have taken him as well.’

  ‘I know that but he still feels it, even today.’

  ‘He lives around here?’

  ‘When he came back from the army he rebuilt the old place. Still lives there. Farms an acre or two, few chickens for eggs. Pays for the rest with his veteran’s pension.’

  ‘Close by?’

  ‘Mile or two. Down to Moeller Road, then south to the first bend. Big oak tree where they did Titus is still there. Same place Lucille was heading for that afternoon.’ She sighed again. ‘I think he feels close to her there and the cemetery’s not too far. He goes every Sunday. I’ve seen him there. I go there too, to think about my Carl.’

  ‘Your husband.’

  ‘Yes. There’s a headstone but Carl’s somewhere in France. Never buried, just ground into the mud in some place I never heard of, some place I’ll never go.’ She shook her head. ‘When I’m gone there won’t be anyone to remember him. Half the graves in Carla Cemetery are like that. Old, overgrown, untended. Sad.’

  Ray let a moment pass, staring out over the porch to the sun-drenched field and the road.

  ‘Who do you think killed Lucille?’ he asked finally.

  ‘God,’ she answered immediately. ‘Same as my Carl. I spent a lot of my life believing that God was God and Jesus was my Saviour but all that went away when Carl died. A monster killed Lucille, stole her perfect innocence, fouled her, threw her in a garbage dump. That’s God’s work. His wonders to perform.’ She was crying freely now, the tears running down the seams of her old face. She shook her head. ‘My Carl wasn’t taken up to heaven on a golden chariot. He was blown into blood and bone, then ground underfoot. Lucille was torn apart like an animal’s prey. God’s work, all of it.’

  ‘A monster?’

  ‘Not someone from around here,’ she said, regaining her composure, wiping at her tears with a curled arthritic finger. ‘That kind of a thing in your mind you can’t keep secret from your friends. It would have come out. And he moved on, like Lucille and those other two girls were practice for the white ones. He came from hell and then he went back and I don’t think you’re going to find out anything after all this time.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Ray. ‘But I think it’s important to try.’

  ‘Why? Going to bring her back or her daddy?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Ray. ‘Maybe in a few people’s hearts it will bring them both back.’

  ‘You truly think that? A white man?’

  ‘I truly think that, Mrs Pinkers. I truly do.’

  ‘Then you go on, son. You go on and give it your best.’ Ray thanked the old woman for her help, then climbed back into the Bel Air and headed down the road. It took him less than five minutes to reach his destination.

  * * *

  The Monster flicked on the light switch just inside the doorway then came down the basement steps, his bare feet padding lightly on the stairs as he descended. He’d chosen the Oak Cliff rancher because the garage led straight into the kitchen and was high enough to accommodate his van and the full-height basement that ran the length of the house gave him plenty of room to work in and plenty of privacy.

  The basement was divided into three distinct spaces: the furnace room and service area at the foot of the stairs, a normal-enough-looking workshop in what had once been the recreation room and finally, hidden behind a floor-to-ceiling hinged sheet of pegboard for his tool
s, a third room for his little captives. The room was windowless, the walls covered with narrow mattresses, the space between the rafters in the ceiling stuffed with rolls of insulation. The room had once been a laundry and it still had an extremely useful drain in the middle of the floor, a pair of cement sinks and a copper-tub Maytag washing machine from the thirties. He’d installed a big turquoise Hotpoint fridge that was only a couple of years old. Across from the appliances there was an old metal bedstead with a thin mattress. So far he’d only used it once since his return but he knew it would give him a great deal of pleasure in the months, or perhaps even years, ahead.

  Standing perfectly still at the foot of the stairs he reached down and touched himself lightly, feeling himself beginning to respond, either from expectations for the future or from memories of past enjoyment. He wasn’t an old man by any means but recently he’d begun to notice that he was living more and more in the past and sometimes he wondered if that was a sign of something wrong within him, an omen. On the other hand he enjoyed his memories almost as much as each new conquest, the way you’d enjoy a favourite book or the taste of a familiar wine on your tongue.

  He still remembered the first one. The police always thought it was the Edmonds girl but they were wrong. He’d taken a girl from school out to Eagle Flat in the old man’s truck but everything went wrong. She wasn’t too bright and not too pretty but she’d been easy enough, which is why he’d taken her to the Flat in the first place, but when he tried to do it all he could see was his father’s face and all he could hear was his mother’s voice and he hadn’t been able to do anything. She’d laughed at him and in the end she did him with her hand but it hadn’t been enough. The rage had been like a living thing inside him but he caught himself before he did anything more than slap the girl around. He took her home then drove fifty miles to Vernon on the edge of town on the road to Paradise Creek. He waited for hours in the darkness and finally his opportunity came. A young, pretty little whore, no more than eighteen or so, had come out of one of the one-room tin-roof shacks and started walking towards town. He’d pulled up beside her in the truck and offered her a lift and that was the beginning of it all.

  When he was done he drove out to the dump, which he knew well enough, chopped her into pieces with the old man’s kindling hatchet and stuffed the pieces into an old icebox he found. He never even knew her name and apparently no one else did either. She’d never been missed or discovered or at least there was no news of her. The power of his secret had lasted him for almost a year before he struck again.

  Standing at the foot of the stairs he saw that he was fully aroused and naked he walked towards the little room. He slid his worktable to one side, pulled on one of the empty pegboard hooks and opened his hidden door. So far the child had only known the fear of being bound up in the darkness; now he would show her the way to Paradise. He stepped into the little soundproofed cell and closed the pegboard door behind him.

  * * *

  The big oak tree was there, just like the old woman said, and Ray could see an old scar where a thick branch had once overhung the short dirt drive that led to the house. The house itself looked a lot like Mrs Pinkers’s, one storey, shingle roof with a porch in front, in this case screened rather than open.

  Behind the house was a chicken coop with an enclosed run and a shed hung with a dozen or more frames holding stretched muskrat skins. Behind the shed there was an outhouse.

  Ray parked the car and got out. Also hanging from the shed wall he could see three or four big jackrabbits and a pair of quail. He slammed the car door to announce himself and thirty seconds later a man appeared on the porch. It was the boy he’d seen in the photograph grown to manhood and into middle age. He was half bald and what hair remained was shot with grey. He opened the screen door and came down two steps, stiff on the left leg. Ray took a few steps forward, then stopped, keeping his distance for the moment. ‘You Marcus Edmonds?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘My name is Ray Duval. I’m with the Dallas Police Department. Mrs Pinkers at the school sent me over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To talk about your sister.’

  ‘Lucille’s been gone for twenty-five years.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out who killed her.’

  ‘Why? She was just another black kid then, so what’s changed?’

  ‘A man in Dallas was recently killed the same way.’

  ‘Was he raped and sodomised?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They find jism in his mouth and all the way down his throat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t killed the same way as my sister.’

  ‘He was torn apart just like Lucille, then put back together again. He had his genitals cut off and stuffed into his mouth. He was crammed into a refrigerator and left at the Dallas dump. That sound familiar, Mr Edmonds?’

  The man stared at him for a long moment. ‘You’d best come inside,’ he said finally. He reached down with both hands and turned the left leg, then went back up the two steps, swinging that leg wide. Ray suddenly realised that it was artificial. He reached the top step, opened the screen door and disappeared. Ray followed.

  The inside of the house was spare and clean. It was basically a single room. To the right there was a kitchen area with an old wood stove and an ancient icebox beside it. Shelves beside the icebox formed a pantry. Still on the kitchen side there was an old table with four plain chairs and beyond that a braided rag rug in an oval shape. There was a worn, green-painted stand-up cupboard against the far wall, a reasonably new-looking La-Z-Boy recliner with a cane laid across the arms. Behind the chair, pinned within a cloth-lined shadow box, there were half a dozen military decorations. Against the side wall there was a metal bed with a small, home-made side table. There was a coal-oil lamp on the side table and two more hanging from the rafters. Against the front wall, below a large window, there was a plain wooden desk and another kitchen chair. To the left of the desk there was a handmade floor-to-ceiling bookcase full to overflowing, a portable radio crammed in among the books. Ray noticed it was a 1941 Zenith portable, cloth-covered and powered by a six-volt dry cell. Looking at the radio and the hurricane lamps it was obvious that Marcus Edmonds didn’t use electricity.

  The black man took the cane off the La-Z-Boy and eased himself down. He used the cane to point at the desk chair. He leaned back then used both hands to pull his left leg up onto the wide footrest. ‘You know the story about how my sister died then?’ The man had none of the country bumpkin in him. His voice was clear and educated.

  ‘I know what’s in the files.’

  ‘Not much, I’ll bet.’

  ‘No. Not much,’ Ray agreed. ‘There’s not even a mention of her having a brother.’ He paused. ‘No one ever talked to you?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Just like Lucille. Just like my father. They lynched him, you know. From that oak tree outside.’

  ‘I saw the missing limb.’

  ‘I sawed it off when I got back from the war. Used the wood in that stove over there. My father would have appreciated the fact that I put it to good use.’

  ‘Is that how you lost the leg?’ Ray asked.

  The man smiled. ‘Sawing off the limb and sawed off my own?’

  ‘In the war.’

  ‘Take a look in the case,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  Ray got to his feet, shocked at how heavy his legs were feeling without the water pills, and walked stiffly across the room to the framed medals. The case was divided into two sections. On the top there was the Buffalo insignia of the 369th Infantry Division and below it three medals, the Distinguished Service Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and the French Legion of Honour. The second line had the Black Panther ‘Come Out Fighting’ insignia of the 371st Tank Battalion and below it the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Bronze Star.

  ‘Top ones are my father’s, the bottom ones are mine. My father�
�s reward was getting lynched by his white neighbours and mine was getting my leg shot off when one of our own shells hung fire and then went off before I could get out of the tank.’

  ‘You sound bitter.’

  ‘I lost my family. I lost my leg and all of it useless. Of course I’m bitter.’

  ‘Why’d you come back here after the war?’

  ‘I didn’t right away. I went to Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. My father took us to New York just after Luci was born. Bound for glory in the big migration after the first war. My mother died in a tenement and my father couldn’t find any work better than shining shoes. So we came back.’ Marcus Edmonds made a snorting sound under his breath. ‘I tried the same thing, even got a degree, but it was no better for me than it had been for my father. So I came back too and here I am. Sure I’m bitter.’

  ‘Mrs Pinkers thinks you came back so you could be close to your sister’s grave.’

  ‘And my father’s. It seems right.’

  ‘I can find out who killed Lucille. He’s like you, I think; he came back as well.’

  ‘I doubt you can find him.’

  ‘Let me try. Tell me what you know.’

  ‘Nothing to tell. You drove from Mrs Pinkers’s, you drove the route Lucille would have taken that day.’

  ‘Then so did the killer. Maybe you saw him. Maybe you just don’t remember.’

  ‘I remember playing ball with my friends. I remember Luci coming up to me and telling me it was time to get on home and I’d probably get a spanking from Daddy if I didn’t come right then but I ignored her and she walked away and I never saw my sister again. That’s what I remember.’

  ‘What time did you go home?’

  ‘Half an hour later.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’

  ‘School was out at three. I played for half an hour or so. Call it three thirty, quarter of four.’