No Defense (11 page)

I parked next to the horse barn. I could see
the horses grazing in the east field at the top of a small rise a
few hundred yards away. As I entered the barn to get a halter, I
was overwhelmed by the smells of my childhood: an unforgettable
mixture of hay, horse shit, and horse sweat. It was wonderful.

I grabbed the worn green halter from the
stall marked “Glory” and walked across the soft ground toward the
field. The rain had stopped.

Glory, a golden palomino with four white
feet and a white mane and tail, stood out even from a distance. I
fingered the sugar cubes in my jeans pocket and started to walk a
little faster, anxious to touch her.

“Glory,” I called when I was a few yards
away from her. She and the two horses next to her turned and
stared. One of them was Balzac, a black thoroughbred. He turned
back to his eating, while Glory’s dark hazel eyes looked me over.
Then Glory walked up and pushed her nose against my pocket. Her
nostrils flared a little.

“You’re the smartest horse I ever knew,” I
said. I gave her the sugar and gently hooked the halter over her
head. “Come on, Glory. Let’s go.”

In the barn, I put her in crossties and
retrieved a tack box. Equipped with a hoof pick, I faced her and
gently ran my right hand down the front of her right leg; she
shifted her weight to her other three legs and lifted her front
right leg. I bent over and dug in.

I was never one for mindless labor, unless
it involved horses. Then, bring it on. As a girl I’d been happy to
muck out stalls all day, as long as I got to ride when I was done.
I figured it was only fair that I had to do a lot of dirty, boring
work before I was able to do something as incredible as ride a
horse. For me riding was the ultimate contradiction: It put you in
your place and set you free at the same time.

During the six-week break between leaving
Atlanta and taking over the Steak House, I often dropped by the
restaurant and sat with the Bledsoes in their corner booth, where I
could chat and learn, or I relaxed with my father and his friends,
the members of the Coffee Club, along the wall booth.

The Coffee Club, as it had come to be known
over the years, numbered between five and fifteen men who met most
weekday mornings and afternoons at the Steak House. They always sat
at the same tables, along the wall booth, where they drank coffee,
talked, laughed, and sometimes yelled as they tried to solve a
multitude of problems ranging from the personal to the
political.

Other members of the Coffee Club, besides
Daddy and Junior, included Bev Carter, the sheriff who’d been
deputy when my father was sheriff fifteen years ago, Skip Palmer,
the druggist; Buddy Sheppard, the luggage-plant owner; Dr. Roy
Stuart, our family doctor; Larry Potter, the garment-factory
manager; Claude Vines, a retired state representative; and Cooper
Bowe, who owned Bowe’s Department Store; as well as several judges
and deputy sheriffs. Most worked within walking distance of the
Steak House. A few drove in for the company and the
conversation.

On several occasions I encouraged Eddie to
drop by and join them between classes or on his way back and forth
to the college, but he wasn’t interested.

My last weekday off before I started working
full time, I packed a picnic lunch, put on shorts and a shirt over
my bathing suit which I could finally fit into again-and drove out
to Clark Lake. Unfortunately, Eddie couldn’t join me because of a
college faculty meeting he had to attend.

I spent the morning on my parents’ dock,
swimming and soaking up the sun. Daddy was at work, and Mother was
off with Jane on some Junior League project, so I had the place to
myself Except for a few houses in the distance, there was nothing
but lake and pine trees, and a deep blue sky overhead.

After swimming for an hour, I slept. Almost
two months old, Hank had started sleeping through the night, but
Will seemed determined to be ornery and hadn’t followed Hank’s
lead. Anticipating the demands of my job, I’d weaned the boys
completely to daytime bottles but still breastfed them in the
evening and during the night. Over the last few weeks I’d had time
to catch up on my sleep most days, but I was a little concerned
about how I’d survive once I was at the Steak House full time.

After my nap and a quick swim, I tied my wet
hair back with a hair band, pulled on my shorts over my bathing
suit, and put on my tennis shoes.

I walked around my parents’ lake property.
Not far from the property line between their land and Connie Ream’s
vacation home was the chapel, the price my father had paid to get
Mother to move out of town. He’d grudgingly gone along with her
plan to build the chapel, but only if she put the small wooden
building a good ways from the house, where he wouldn’t have to see
the large cross balanced atop the pointed roof every time he looked
out the windows.

I’d only been in the chapel once, right
after Mother and Daddy moved out to the lake a year ago. Inside
there was room for two people. On the left was a bench with a
purple velvet pillow and on the right a portable piano. Two
stained-glass windows the size of record albums provided muted
natural lighting. On the altar were candles and a two-foot-high
brass crucifix that Mother had bought on a church trip to Mexico
several years ago.

I didn’t really understand my mother’s
religion-what motivated her, what she got out of it, or why the
chapel meant so much to her. Jane and Buck were just as devoted to
the church as she was. Daddy and I were the odd ones out. He went
to church for political reasons, but had confided to me over the
years that he didn’t buy a lot of what organized religion had to
offer. I’d quit attending services the first week of my freshman
year at college.

I left the chapel and was about to head back
to the dock when the sunlight glancing off the glass windows at
Connie Ream’s place caught my eye. I’d heard from the Coffee Club,
a primary source of town gossip, that the
Washington Star
reporter Ben Gainey had rented the Ream house during his stay in
Tallagumsa.

I walked through the woods up a steep
incline toward the modern A-frame. A light blue boxy BMW with
Washington, D.C., plates was parked in the driveway. I leaned my
head to the side and squeezed the water from my dripping ponytail,
then knocked. No one answered. I peered inside, saw no one, and
began to walk away when I heard a man calling out, “Hello. Hello
there.”

Ben Gainey approached from the direction of
the lake, wearing a navy-and-yellow swimsuit, a bath towel draped
around his shoulders. Drops of water fell from his hair onto the
towel.

“Hi,” I said, walking toward him with my
hand extended. “You probably don’t remember me. I’m-”

“LuAnn Hagerdorn Garrett,” he interrupted as
we shook hands. “Newly returned to town, with husband and three
children, to take over the Tallagumsa Steak House.”

“I guess you do remember.”

‘Junior has talked a lot about you. He
thinks I should interview you.”

“Great. I’ve been enjoying one of my last
days off before I take over the Steak House, and I thought I’d say
hello. My parents’ house is right over there.” I pointed in that
direction. “Past the chapel.”

“I was wondering about that chapel.” He
looked toward the cross. “Your parents must be very religious.”

“Mother is,” I explained.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked. He
briskly rubbed his hair with the towel and gave me a warm, friendly
smile.

“Sure, for a minute. Thanks.”

The main door of the Ream house opened into
a large room with a cathedral ceiling. The kitchen was separated
from the dining room-living room area only by a section of base
cabinets. Several ceiling fans hung down from extended poles.

“Make yourself at home,” Ben said. “I’ll be
right back.” He walked down the hallway.

I sat at a round butcher-block table covered
with piles of papers, a portable tape recorder, and at least
fifteen steno pads. On the floor next to the table was an open
portable file drawer, with files and papers stuffed inside.

Ben returned with his hair combed and
wearing Docksider shoes, a green polo shirt, and white shorts. He
was very preppy looking, cute but not my type at all. I could
imagine him as a boy on the family sloop, sailing into the bay as
the sun set. Buck wasn’t totally wrong: Something about Ben Gainey
reminded me too of Robert Redford.

“What is all this?” I asked, gesturing
toward his papers.

“A mess,” he said. “Let me get you something
to drink.” He sneezed twice.

“Bless you,” I said.

“Allergies,” he explained. “Bad allergies.
How’s coffee sound? Is that all right?”

“Perfect,” I said, yawning. “After swimming
and then napping, I’m a little out of it.”

Ben pulled a bag of coffee beans out of the
freezer, ground them, and started the pot.

“All that mess on the table is my life now,
actually,” he said. “The book I’m writing-or trying to write. My
future.”

“Sounds serious,” I said.

“I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now.
I’m behind where I thought I would be, and the whole project is
harder than I ever imagined. Makes me wonder whether I should have
just stayed home with my wife and the security of my reporter’s
job.”

I smiled sympathetically. “It’s scary taking
chances, doing something new.”

“And you? Aren’t you nervous about taking
over the Steak House?” he asked. He sat on the counter facing me
across the room while he waited for the coffee to brew. “That’s a
tough job, I know. My parents were in the restaurant business, and
the Steak House 1s a big operation.”

“I worked at the Steak House all through
high school and summers in college, and the Bledsoes have given me
a crash course the last weeks. I’m really lucky that one good
friend is the hostess and another is the chef. Both of them have
been at the restaurant a long time.” I looked up at him. “If they
weren’t at the Steak House, I’d probably be more scared. As it is,
I’m looking forward to my new life. Do you really wish you hadn’t
started your book?”

“No. I’m glad I’m writing it, but every now
and then, I wonder if I made the right decision.” He sneezed
again.

“Bless you, again,” I said. “I guess you
know Junior says you’re the best writer he’s ever known, and that
your book will change the way the country sees the South.”

Ben looked down, embarrassed by what I’d
said. “Junior’s the charter member of a very small fan club. But I
do hope to give readers a different view of this part of the
country, show them what makes the South tick now, how life has
changed for blacks and whites. Our new president is from the South.
That was something people said could never happen.”

“Only people in the North said that,” I
pointed out, laughing.

“True. There’s a lot about the region that’s
not understood.” He slowly swung his legs back and forth over the
counter edge as we talked.

“I heard you’re not including anything about
the days of the civil rights movement in your book. I don’t want to
tell you what to write, but how can you possibly do a book about
the South without something about that time period? And here in
Tallagumsa, especially? How can you ignore the murders?” I tried to
sound lighthearted, to disguise the powerful emotions I still felt
about the murders of Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson, but my voice
was shaking.

I looked away from him, out the wall of
glass. It was a quiet day on the lake, only a few fishermen and one
water skier.

“Junior told me you worked hard on getting
that memorial built for Johnson and Turnbow. Look, I can’t leave
the civil rights movement out completely, but that’s not my focus.
Books on the movement have been done and done well. What’s
interesting to me is what brings you back here, a woman who
obviously feels very strongly about the murders and civil rights.
You, Junior, Barbara Cox-all came back. Why? Your husband, Eddie,
doesn’t seem a likely candidate for Tallagurnsa life either, from
what I’ve heard and from looking at his cartoons. I think the South
today is something worth writing about.”

He turned around, hopped off the counter,
and poured two cups of coffee. “Sugar or cream?”

“No, thanks. Do you mind if I turn on the
fan?” I pointed to the nearest ceiling fan, the one above the
living-room couch near where I sat.

“Be my guest. It gets hot over there next to
the glass about this time of day. The switch is behind the floor
lamp, on the wall.”

I turned the fan knob. “I think it’s morally
wrong to ignore what happened,” I said, trying a different
tack.

Ben pushed some papers on the table out of
the way and placed the cups of coffee there. He sat down and
rummaged in his cardboard file drawer. “A few years ago I did some
detective work on the murders and I got some unilluminating
documents from the FBI.” He pulled out a thin file and lay it
across his knees. “During the seventy-six presidential campaign, I
wrote a series of articles on the civil rights movement. I was
shocked at how many unsolved murders there still were in the Deep
South. That’s when Junior was at the Department of Justice. We
talked about what had happened in Tallagurnsa, and I made a Freedom
of Information Act request to the FBI to get whatever they had on
the murders. Here’s what I got on Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson.”
He pointed at the file, then rubbed his red, watering eyes.

“So you are interested! Good!”

“I’m really not. I could spend my life
pursuing unsolved murders.”

“And why not?” I asked. “Seems a worthy
enough occupation to me.” I tried the coffee. Too hot.

“But it’s old news. I think most people
involved are dead, and I know the rest don’t give a damn.”

“That’s not true. Fifteen years isn’t that
long a time. Whoever did it is probably still around here, living a
normal life, pretending to be a regular person. And I give a
damn.”