Death Sentence (13 page)

Ronnie worried constantly about his mother, whose life was getting no better. Velma had remained with her mother, and during the previous year she had bounced between jobs at three different textile plants, holding none for more than three months. In November she was arrested again for passing a bad check for $115. The prosecutor failed to look up her prior record, and she was ordered to pay restitution and sentenced to thirty days in jail, suspended for six months, but she kept this from her mother and her children.

Her brother Tyrone had married and moved away, but he was in the National Guard and still came to Parkton once a month to attend drills. He always stayed with his mother, and she often complained to him about Velma and her drug taking. Velma staggered around like a drunk, Lillie said, sometimes falling, and she couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t understand why Velma was like this. She worried that something bad was going to happen.

Lillie also told Tyrone that her checking account was out of sequence. They discovered that some of her checks were missing. Later, the checks began showing up, signed with her name, but she knew she hadn’t written them.

Clearly, Velma was forging the checks and using the money to buy her prescriptions. Lillie didn’t want to take legal action. She didn’t even want to confront Velma, fearful of stirring animosity. Tyrone took her to the bank to make certain that no future checks were cashed without her authentic signature. He also arranged for his mother to keep her checkbook under lock and key.

By early 1974, Velma had quit work, and her drug taking was at dangerous levels. One day Pam came and was met at the door by her grandmother.

“She’s took a bunch of them pills again,” Lillie said.

Pam found her mother in bed, foaming at the mouth, unable to speak, chewing her tongue. She forced a spoon into her mouth to keep her from further damaging her tongue and called the rescue squad.

After this trip to the hospital, Velma remained unemployed and seemed to have no interests other than maintaining her supply of medicines.

The relationship between Velma and her mother had been growing more strained. The two argued often. At times they didn’t speak. Later, Velma would say that her mother treated her as she had when she was a girl, ordering her around and expecting her to be a slave. Anybody who came to the house was apt to hear a sharp exchange between Velma and Lillie. One day Ronnie was there when Lillie told Velma that she needed to do the laundry, and she exploded, cursing and throwing clothes. Ronnie tried to calm her, but she was defensive and didn’t want to listen.

“I think there was more anger in my mom then than I had ever seen,” Ronnie would say years later. “And it was a different type than I’d seen before, all directed at my grandmother. She just seemed to have a lot of resentment. She resented having to depend on her mother.”

In the summer of 1974, Lillie was struck with stomach cramps and vomiting. The pain became so severe that she got Velma to take her to a doctor in Fayetteville who admitted her to the hospital but was unable to determine the cause of her problem. He theorized a virus. When the pain began to abate after several days, Lillie was released and returned home.

Not long after her mother’s hospitalization, Velma was to be temporarily relieved of money worries by the death of somebody else close to her.

On Friday night, August 23, Ronnie and Joanna drove to Fayetteville to see a movie. On the way home, they encountered a traffic tie-up on U.S. 301. Flashing emergency lights. State troopers. An accident.

The next morning, Velma called, distraught. Al was dead, she said, killed in an accident.

Ronnie drove to his grandmother’s house and found his mother high on pills and crying. He had to quiz her to find out what had happened.

She had gone the night before to see Al at a motel where he was staying while working on a construction project near Fayetteville. Al went across four-lane U.S. 301 to a convenience store for beer.

“I shouldn’t have let him go, because he had been drinking,” Velma said, “but he wanted to.”

She hadn’t worried at first when he didn’t come back—sometimes he’d get to talking to people—but then she’d heard sirens, and she looked out and saw all the emergency lights, the traffic backed up. She hurried out and asked somebody what had happened. A man had been hit by a tractor-trailer, she was told, killed instantly, and she had started crying. She knew it was Al.

“When was this?” Ronnie asked.

“Last night, ten-thirty or eleven, I don’t know.”

Only then did Ronnie realize that he and Joanna had passed the accident without knowing that Al was involved and that his mother was by the side of the road, alone and in agony.

His heart went out to her. He held her and let her cry. What was it about his mother that drew so much tragedy, anguish and sorrow? Was it any wonder that she had to lean on her medicines to get by?

All the same, Ronnie could not bring himself to attend Al’s funeral. He had never liked him and thought his presence would be hypocritical.

Not long after the funeral, his mother called again. She needed help. Al had left her the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. She had made several calls to the company without result. She wanted Ronnie to drive her to Greenville, South Carolina, to collect. Ronnie took her, and she returned with a check for $5,000. At least she wouldn’t have financial problems for a while, Ronnie thought. Later he would realize that he should’ve known that it wouldn’t be long before he would be having to rush to her rescue again.

That fall Joanna took a break from college, but Ronnie returned to class, although he would withdraw before the semester was over. He was still delivering newspapers and pursuing his dream of miniature golf riches. He had hopes of appearing in the TV matches, where the payoffs were as much as $50,000, and was working hard on his game.

One afternoon in October, Ronnie stopped to see his mother and grandmother on his way to Fayetteville to play golf. He usually dropped in a couple of times a week.

Nobody answered the door, and when Ronnie let himself in he froze in fear. His mother was sprawled on the dining room floor, a pool of blood beneath her head. Had she been murdered? Had she managed to get a gun and kill herself? Where was his grandmother? There was not a sound in the house.

He saw no gun when he reached his mother’s side. She hadn’t killed herself. “Mama, Mama,” he said, touching her head. Suddenly, she moaned.

The front door opened, startling Ronnie, and his grandmother stepped inside, a paper sack in her arms. She had walked to the Corner Grocery.

“What in the world?” she said.

Velma had taken too many pills, fallen and struck her head on the corner of the table. Ronnie took her to a hospital in Fayetteville, where her head was stitched and she was released.

Pam was dismayed when she heard about this incident. She was now living in the same trailer park in Lumberton where Ronnie and Joanna lived, driving a Tom’s snack route. Early that year she had met Kirby Jarrett at a nightclub in Fayetteville. They began dating regularly, and that summer they set a wedding date: November 23. The wedding was now only weeks away, and she was sure that her mother was going to be in no condition to take part, afraid, as Ronnie had been, that Velma would do something to embarrass her.

But once again Velma did fine, even helping to arrange and host the reception afterward, and both her children were proud of her. Pam and Kirby went to Myrtle Beach for a brief honeymoon and returned to live in Pam’s trailer in Lumberton.

Christmas had always been a big occasion for Lillie. She loved cooking and having her children and grandchildren gather. This year Christmas fell on Wednesday, and not everybody could come. Arlene and Erroll were in Greece. Tyrone and his family couldn’t get there until the weekend. And John, who lived in South Carolina, planned to wait until New Year’s. But all the other children would be there, as would many of the grandchildren.

Lillie didn’t like the fancy Christmas trees that came from distant places. She still preferred a pine, the kind of tree she and Murphy had when her children were young and, a week before Christmas, Ronnie took his saw to the woods and cut a young pine for her, the fullest he could find. Velma joined in decorating it, and as Christmas approached she seemed in a good mood.

Lillie was never happier than when she was in her kitchen, cooking for her family. For Christmas, she baked coconut and German chocolate cakes, apple, pecan and pumpkin pies. She cooked a turkey, a ham, collard greens, speckled butter beans, sweet potatoes, made potato salad. Velma even helped, making a fruit and nut salad that always brought compliments. The last thing to the table was Lillie’s hot biscuits. Everybody always raved about them.

Ronnie and Joanna went to her parents’ house on Christmas morning, but they got to his grandmother’s in time for the big dinner that afternoon. Everybody had a great time, even Velma, who laughed and gabbed with the others. After dinner they all gathered around the tree to open presents. Ronnie had bought his grandmother bedroom shoes and a nightgown, and she went on about how pretty they were and hugged him and Joanna. Ronnie left that night feeling good. It had been a great Christmas. He couldn’t have imagined the bizarre turn of events that was about to take place.

When Tyrone brought his family to his mother’s house on the Saturday after Christmas, Lillie pulled him aside. She had something to show him. The strangest thing, she said. A dun from a finance company had just come in the mail. It said that payment was overdue on her loan, and if it wasn’t made promptly, her car would be repossessed. She hadn’t taken out any loan, and there was no lien on the car. Murphy had paid off the car years ago. It had to be a mistake, Tyrone told her. She shouldn’t worry about it. But if they kept dunning her, he’d look into it.

Whether Lillie talked to Velma about the dun, nobody would ever know, but on Monday night Joanna answered the phone shortly before ten and grew somber.

“When?” she said. “Where? … How is she?”

Ronnie tensed. He knew immediately that something was wrong.

“That was Lucille,” Joanna said, hanging up. “Your grandmother’s at the hospital in Fayetteville. They don’t know if she’s going to live.”

“We’ve got to go,” Ronnie said.

After calling Pam, he and Joanna stopped to pick her up. Ronnie drove fast to Cape Fear Valley Hospital. Velma was crying in the hallway when they got there. Olive was with her; he’d been crying, too. John had just arrived. They looked stunned.

“Oh, Ronnie,” Velma said, rushing to him. “She’s gone.”

Ronnie couldn’t believe it. His grandmother dead? What had happened?

Velma was in no shape to talk.

Olive said his mother had become sick after lunch, had started throwing up, then developed diarrhea. Velma had called the doctor, who said a stomach virus was going around. He would call in something to the drugstore.

Velma called her niece, Robin, Olive’s daughter, and asked her to go the drugstore for the medicine, which turned out to be paregoric and Dramamine. Velma gave it to her mother but it did no good. Lillie kept complaining of severe stomach cramps and pain between her shoulders. By dark she could no longer sit up. She writhed and moaned in pain and at one point threw up blood. Velma called Olive. When he came, he couldn’t believe the condition his mother had fallen into so suddenly. They had to get her to the hospital. He called the rescue squad, then her doctor. Velma rode in the ambulance with her mother, and Olive followed in his car.

Lillie was in shock and cyanotic by the time she reached the emergency room, extremely restless, and she could barely tell the doctors where she hurt. She was taken to intensive care, and two hours later, at 10:30, she was dead. The doctors had no idea what had killed her.

What kind of illness could work so fast? That question was on the minds of all the family as they gathered at the house later that night, a house that felt eerily empty now with both Lillie and Murphy gone. Nobody slept. They sat up all night crying and asking what could have gone wrong.

Except for her migraine headaches, varicose veins, and phlebitis in her legs, Lillie had no health problems that anybody knew about. It seemed unreal that she could have fallen ill and died so quickly, especially when she had been feeling so well.

Everybody kept quizzing Velma for details. When had the attack started? Had she been feeling bad earlier?

Velma, who had received a shot at the hospital to sedate her, was as befuddled as the rest. “I did everything I could for her,” she kept saying, “everything I could.” And she would break into tears.

Everybody felt sorry for her. She had gone through so much. Tragedy and unhappiness seemed to stalk her. Even in their grief, they all reached out to her.

That night Lillie’s children decided that they could never rest without knowing what had taken her life. They all agreed, Velma included, that they should request an autopsy.

Just twenty-one months after the family had gathered at Green Springs Baptist Church for Murphy’s funeral, they came there again for Lillie’s. She was buried beside her husband at LaFayette Memorial Park in Fayetteville. Velma stood sobbing at the graveside, comforted by her children.

“What am I going to do now?” she asked.

Don’t worry, they told her. They were there. They would take care of her.