No Defense (12 page)

“This is going to sound strange coming from
a reporter, LuAnn, but I’m sick of digging up dirt on people. That
was my life in D.C. At least for a little while, I’d like to look
at the positive side, the good things people are capable of” He
looked at me as he sipped his coffee. His dark brown eyes were
flecked with gold. “If I can survive these allergies,” he added,
sniffing.

“See no evil, right?” I covered my eyes with
my hands.

“Give a guy a break. That’s not what I’m
saying. I know the issue is there, but I don’t have to write about
every issue in the world.”

“What did you get from that-what kind of
information request did you make?”

“Freedom of Information Act. FOIA, people
call the statute. Here, you want to see what we got?” He handed me
the file.

I flipped through the papers inside. They
were on FBI stationery. On each page words and in some cases full
sentences had been blacked out. “What is all this?” I asked,
pointing.

“That’s called redacting. It’s what the
government does when it’s unwilling to reveal information
supposedly for some legitimate reason. Usually it’s just to protect
someone, typically the government, from embarrassment.”

The whole file consisted of four short
memoranda. Fascinated by this opportunity for a glimpse of the
inside workings of the FBI, I read them.

MEMO

To: Carl Best, Chief, Atlanta Field
Office

From: Special Agent Dorr

Re: Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson

Date: August 28, 1963

I have confirmed that ------------- in the
murders. Thus I expect a speedy resolution of the matter.
Hopefully, the State of Alabama will bring indictments here.
Perhaps they will be able to get convictions with ------------- If
the State refuses to go forward, however, as often occurs in these
cases, this would definitely be a good candidate for federal civil
rights charges.

MEMO

To: Carl Best, Chief, Atlanta Field
Office

From: Special Agent Dorr

Re: Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson

Date: August 30, 1963

Agent Moon and I will attempt to interview
------------- and other possible witnesses. As always in this kind
of case, if we can secure even one cooperative witness we will be
lucky, particularly here where, according to -------------

Tallagumsa, Alabama, the town outside of
which the killings occurred. For what it’s worth, there is a rumor
around town that -------------

MEMO

To: Carl Best, Chief, Atlanta Field
Office

From: Special Agent Dorr

Re: Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson

Date: September 5, 1963

As you know, it appears that the shells
found at the scene of the crime came from the -------------

As I mentioned over the phone, -------------
After spending a few days in town, we’ve discovered that
------------- This was not a complete surprise. We had some reason
to believe that ------------- In a similar Mississippi case
-------------

MEMO (marked URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL)

To: David Metzger, Assistant to the
Director

From: Carl Best, Chief, Atlanta Field
Office

Re: Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson

Date: September 7, 1963

We recommend strongly that the Bureau
--------------------------

Without our involvement, they will not bring
a case. As you pointed out, ------------- Not only is our best
evidence gone, but any trial might ------------- civil rights cases
in the Deep South.

A few more interviews have been scheduled,
just to tie up loose ends. One is with -------------

“They can just delete anything they don’t
like?” I asked, shaking my head. “That’s outrageous.”

“Yep,” Ben said. “You get used to seeing
documents like this in my line of work. The paper appealed, as a
matter of course, but we’ll never see anything else, I bet. We
rarely do.”

“Who did you appeal to?”

“I think the first appeal is to someone in
the Justice Department.”

“Reading about the murders is strange,” I
said. “When it happened I was twelve. I didn’t even know the FBI
was in town. No one ever told me. You know, these aren’t totally
useless. You have something to work with here.”

Ben put the documents back in the file.
“This is my work now,” he said, waving his arm across the papers on
the table. “And I have a lot of it. In fact, I’m spending the rest
of today and the weekend summarizing the interviews I did in
Charleston and Nashville. Then I’ll get to you and the rest of your
town. Would you like a sandwich or yogurt or something? I’m getting
hungry.”

“Thanks, but I already ate.” I looked at my
watch. “I told Jolene, our babysitter, I’d give her a break after
lunch, so I’d better get going.”

“You seem pretty relaxed for someone who has
three little children,” he said.

“Jolene is better than Mary Poppins, that’s
why. Do you have children?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“I’d bore you with pictures, but I left my
purse in the car over at my parents’.” “Next week you should stop
by the Steak House and visit. I’ll show you a picture of the kids
then. You should also come for the good food and to talk to people.
Everyone who’s anyone in town is there at least once most days,” I
bragged.

“So I’ve heard. In fact, I’m meeting your
father there on Monday morning. See you then.” He extended his hand
and smiled. “And good luck, though it doesn’t sound like you’re
going to need it. In fact, maybe you could send a little my way.”
He turned to go inside.

“My pleasure,” I said, giggling like a
school girl. I wondered why I suddenly felt so lighthearted.

At my parents’ dock, I hurriedly took off my
shorts and shoes and dove in, unable to resist one more dip in the
lake’s cool, calm water.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

The twins were two months old the day I began
my new career as owner and manager of the Tallagumsa Steak House.
Will still wasn’t sleeping through the night and had woken up the
night before the big day for a three o’clock feeding.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, tossing and
turning, excited about work. At six in the morning I left home in
the pouring rain. Eddie and the kids were still asleep. Jolene
would come a little before nine, when Eddie and Jessie would leave,
Jessie for morning summer camp and Eddie for the college.

At the Steak House, I parked my car in a
space in front and unlocked the double glass doors into the foyer.
Inside, I closed my umbrella and shook it out, then turned the bolt
back to lock the door for the few minutes remaining until we
opened.

I said good morning to the portraits of Mimi
and Howard Bledsoe that hung above the stairway to the second-floor
dining rooms. The pictures, dedicated on the Bledsoes’ last
official day at the restaurant, were their son’s idea. I hadn’t had
the heart to say no, even though they were ghastly. The background
for Howard’s was a pale wispy blue, for Mimi’s a pale green. The
artist had given the Bledsoes a strangely angelic look, as if they
were already dead, not just retired.

Two waitresses were setting up for the
breakfast rush in the front dining room. Like all the waitresses,
they were dressed in identical mustard-colored uniforms, and their
first names were embroidered in black above their left breast
pockets: “Cleo” and “Doris.”

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning, hon,” Cleo responded.

Cleo was over sixty and had worked at the
Steak House since the year she turned thirty, when her husband had
died in a tractor accident, leaving her with six children to
support. Doris was in her thirties and had worked at the restaurant
twelve years.

“Ready for your big debut, Sugar?” Cleo
asked, approaching me and kissing my cheek.

The smell of the hair spray that permitted
Cleo’s hair to defy gravity made my stomach chum. Maybe I did have
stage fright after all.

“I guess,” I said. “I hope.”

“You’ll do fine,” Doris said, popping her
gum.

I knew I didn’t have to ask her to get rid
of the gum when we opened at six-thirty. I was lucky to have a full
staff of qualified and committed waitresses.

“You think business will be slow with this
downpour?” I asked.

“There’s no tellin’,” Cleo replied.

I went into the coat room halfway down the
hallway and opened the small storage door next to the cigarette
machine. I took out four black rubber mats and carried them two at
a time to the foyer, where I covered the floor with them. With the
heavy rain, the foyer would soon be home to a messy, dangerous
puddle.

While Cleo, Doris, and two other waitresses
prepared for the breakfast rush, I climbed the five stairs to the
restaurant office, a small room with windows on all four sides
built on a raised platform in the hallway between the front and
back dining rooms. A customer once told Howard Bledsoe that the
office looked like a glass elevator from a Hyatt hotel stuck
between the first and second floors.

I liked being up in the office, particularly
during the busy hours at the Steak House. Inside the office was
quiet but not too removed, and from it I could see both dining
rooms and the kitchen.

I sat down at the beat-up wooden desk. From
my large shoulder bag I pulled two pictures, one of Eddie and me on
our wedding day, one of Jessie and her twin brothers on the
side-porch swing at our new home. I placed the photos on the desk
between the old Smith-Corona typewriter and the phone.

Gazing at the handwritten list of lunch
specials Roland had left on the desk, I opened the typewriter and
began to type. At the top of “Today’s Specials” I typed the date,
“June 5, 1978.” For appetizers Roland had listed tomato juice,
cabbage and carrots, fried oysters, and a quarter head of iceberg
lettuce; the main dishes were chopped steak with onions, fried
catfish, barbecued chicken, sirloin patty, and corned beefhash; the
vegetables were mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, onion rings,
fried okra, and black-eyed peas; and the desserts were key lime
pie, pudding parfait, pineapple upside down cake, rainbow sherbet,
and Boston cream pie.

I had talked to Roland about introducing
more interesting and healthy food-”city food,” he called it-and
he’d agreed to give it a try, slowly, maybe one new entree a month.
At the end of this month he’d agreed to try a pasta with salmon and
asparagus. I knew he could cook it. The question was whether anyone
would eat it.

I was halfway through typing the list of
specials when a busload of gospel singers arrived for breakfast. I
saw the line of customers filing in at the same time Cleo appeared
at my office door begging for help. This was a part of the job I
definitely knew. I had a ball.

A few hours and nearly two hundred breakfasts
later, the dining room was quiet, deserted except for a few late
breakfast customers. The Coffee Club members would arrive soon.
Everyone else was off to work and errands or back on the road. I
turned the “Hostess Will Seat You” sign inside the front door
around so that it read “Please Seat Yourself.”

I glanced behind the beige plastic lattice
barrier that separated the dining room from the waitresses’ station
to check the progress of lunch preparations. In the glass-fronted
refrigerator were four chocolate meringue, three lemon meringue,
two key lime, and three Boston cream pies. The coffee creamers were
cleaned and refilled. Plenty of chocolate and regular milk cartons
were neatly stacked inside.

Only six of the twelve brown plastic butter
tubs had been filled. I peeked around the comer into the back
dining room, an area that didn’t open each day until lunchtime. Two
waitresses sat at a table finishing that job with the remaining
butter tubs, sheets of butter squares, and a pail of crushed
ice.

In my office, I completed the list of daily
specials and copied it, clipping each copy into the menu of items
we served every day. The menu cover featured a drawing of the main
block of Tallagumsa, including SP Drugs, Smith Hardware, the Steak
House, and Bowe’s Department Store. I was considering a new cover
one day, maybe something with an art deco design. A black, gold,
and red geometric pattern would be nice, but I didn’t want to make
too make many changes too fast.

Like Perrier water. I’d asked the Bledsoes
what they thought of adding mineral water to the menu.

They laughed. “Nobody in his right mind
would pay more for water with bubbles in it than they pay for a
Coca-Cola.”

“Good point,” I said.

When I’d assured myself that I had time to
relax for a few minutes, I sat down in the Bledsoes’ booth-now my
booth. With one leg tucked under me, I chatted with several
customers who stopped by the booth, looked at the morning
newspaper, and drank a cup of coffee.