One Mississippi (29 page)

She swept the sunglasses off her face. “When I left the hospital that night, I promised God that if he would let Eddie live, I would get every last layer of that wallpaper off those walls. But he didn’t pull through. And yet — I didn’t see any reason to stop. So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Around the clock, pretty much.”

I was growing uneasy myself, remembering how blue jays could suddenly fly out of nowhere to alight in the mind of Mrs. Passworth.

“In one corner where the paper was loose, I was down to probably the second- or third-to-last layer,” she said. “And then here they come again. The same lights as before. Only, my goodness! Something’s new! And it hits me. It’s the same lights, a little brighter than normal — but it’s not even dark out. It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

Tim nudged me. I took a step sideways, out of nudging range.

I was wondering if the August sun over Mississippi is hot enough by itself to drive a person insane. Everyone seemed stunned into silence by the heat, the weight of the air. I remembered that bad day in algebra, when we all sat paralyzed, waiting for Passworth to stop talking. Out here in the graveyard there was not even a bell to save us.

Most of the mourners appeared hopeful that this story was leading on an ingenious roundabout path toward some wise observation about Eddie.

“There’s a period of time I can’t account for,” Passworth said. “I remember being in my kitchen, looking at the clock, it was ten minutes to two. And the next thing I know, I’m out on the front porch with my shoes off. It’s dark. And there’s this smell, like someone burned the toast.”

Reverend Poole’s smile had congealed on his face. His eyes darted between Passworth and the thundercloud gathering over Mrs. Smock.

Passworth was oblivious. “They don’t give out much information to any one person,” she said. “But I think when it all becomes public, it could be bigger than Pearl Harbor and the Beatles put together. Everything will be revealed pretty soon. I’m just sorry Eddie wasn’t able to hang on a little longer. Anyway, God bless him. That’s all, folks.”

She blinked, and hesitated, as if to make sure she was finished. Then she put her wide sunglasses on and went to the back of the crowd.

Mrs. Smock exhaled loudly through her nostrils, a kind of cough that might have been a
hmph.

Reverend Poole shook himself from his trance. “Dearly beloved, let us raise up our voices in praise to his precious name, Hymn 113.”

Wan voices rose up.

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

I’d like to know who was picking these hymns. That one went on for about six verses. Reverend Poole raised his arm. “Folks, you know you’re in trouble when even the
breeze
feels hot. Edwin’s brother, Lawrence, will now make a presentation, and we hope he will keep it short, as the heat out here could be fatal to some of the elderly among us. Lawrence?”

A fat boy of twelve shuffled forward from the line of family, cradling a bulky cassette player in his arms. “Uhm, I just want to play one of Eddie’s songs,” he said, gazing down at the casket. “That’s the thing he liked the most, writing all these songs.”

His thumb pressed
PLAY
.

That box produced a nice Elton John–like opening flourish on piano, and Eddie was singing. Eddie always did have a nice voice, a strong clear tenor with almost no vibrato.

I recognized the song, though I’d never heard it sung slow and ballady like that, in a minor key. I had to smile. At last, Eddie had managed to get this song into a show!

I’m just a man, and I walk the path of righteousness

But sometimes I stumble and fall

I don’t recognize him, as he whispers in my ear

Temptation is the nature of his call

Bless the devil —

He shows me the way not to go

Bless the devil —

Without him, how would I know

Bless the devil —

When he puts me to the test

That’s how I know

I love Jeeeeee-sus more!

Lawrence Smock cradled the player, his smile just as comfortable and sweet as if he was holding a baby, not a cassette player emitting the clear tenor of his brother singing about Satan.

The lyrics brought Reverend Poole out of his prayerful reverie. His face turned the same shade of red as Mrs. Smock’s.

I saw that Mrs. Passworth had moved away from the crowd. Somehow her hat had got turned around so the veil draped the back of her hair. Her lips were moving, as if there were parts of her speech she still needed to say.

The song ended. Lawrence Smock pressed
STOP
and went to stand behind his mother.

Tim leaned close to my ear. “Now
that
is a strange-looking girl.”

O
N THE WAY HOME
we got to laughing so hard that Tim had to pull over. We sat there in the dark and just howled.

It scared me so bad, looking into that red hole going down into darkness. There is nothing more final than that hole in the earth. It was so scary I felt like laughing hysterically for whatever years I had left.

After a while we managed to stop laughing. Tim drove on.

“So what’s with the guns in the back?” I said.

He didn’t blink. “I’m keeping them for my Uncle Bob. They’ve got kids, his wife doesn’t like guns in the house. I’m supposed to hang on to them for him till deer season.”

“You ever shoot ’em?”

“Sometimes,” Tim said. “We shoot bottles and stuff on his farm.”

I’d never heard him mention Uncle Bob or a farm, but I didn’t say that. I told him how Bud and I used to shoot squirrels at Granny’s place. We drove on in the darkness. We talked about Eddie, and Mrs. Passworth. We laughed at poor Mrs. Smock’s pig nose.

“Man, we’ve got to get busy,” Tim said. “We’ve got a lot to do before school starts.”

“Like what?”

“Dumwood, please! Have you forgotten our ol’ pal Dudley?”

“Pretty much. I don’t like to waste the energy it takes to think about him.” I hadn’t laid eyes on Red since that day he came to the river to talk to Arnita. That was weeks ago.

“He played his little trick with the garbage again the other night,” Tim said. “My mother comes out to get the Sunday paper and finds, like, our soup cans and coffee grinds and shit scattered all over our yard and halfway up the block in the neighbors’ yards. I think it’s about to give her a nervous breakdown.”

“You sure it’s not just some dog? That’s what it sounds like.”

“It’s not a dog. For God’s sake.”

“But you’ve never actually caught Red doing it, have you?”

“I don’t have to, Skippy. I know him. It’s just part of his plan. What is it with you? Ever since he eased up on you and started bearing down on me, you act like I’m making it up. Like I’m blowing it out of proportion.”

“I told you. If you would just ignore him —”

“Do you realize school starts a week from Monday? Red will go right back to torturing both of us the first day. Do you want to spend your whole senior year as Five Spot and Stinky?”

“No, but what can we do about it?”

“Not there yet, but soon,” he said. “Sometimes it’s better to plan ahead.”

“What are you gonna do, shoot him?” With the guns and ammo in the hatchback, it didn’t seem all that far-fetched.

“Who’d be upset if I did?” he said. “Soon all shall be revealed, O great Skippitus Maximus. I think I have figured out a way to convince him to leave us alone. All in good time.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” Tim was always scheming up new ways of revenge upon Red, but he never seemed to follow through on his ideas. I was sure that was just as well.

South of Yazoo City, a sign for
REST AREA.
Tim switched on the blinker.

“Gotta pee?” I said.

He gave me an unfathomable look, a measure of affection but also something alarming: an accusation, old hurt, as if there was some angry secret between us. “I just need to stop here a second, okay?”

“Fine with me.”

On one side of the rest area was a parking lot for eighteen-wheelers, on the other side a smaller lot for cars. Between them was an A-frame building with restrooms, maps, a drinking fountain. Tim drove slowly through the passenger car lot, then backed all the way to the entrance and cruised down the truck side. He parked at the end of the truck lane, in a spot partly screened by some bushes.

“I’m going in for a minute, okay, Skip? You sit here and if anybody comes, like some police-type person, tap the horn a couple times.” He demonstrated: tap tap. “Keep your eyes open. I’ll be right back.” He reached back under the seat for a small paper bag.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“No questions, Skippy.”

“Tim. Tell me what you’re up to.”

“Just — trust me on this one, okay? Please.” His urgent voice. He got out of the car and hurried in.

I switched the key to
ACC
and found the Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” (witcha bay-beh!). And here came cruising a silver car with a map of Mississippi on the door and a full rack of blue lights on the roof.

I bopped the horn lightly — beep beep!

The state trooper glanced over at me as he rolled by. His car hesitated, then kept going toward the on-ramp. Suddenly his blue lights blazed to life and he raced onto the interstate.

With you, with you,
wailed the Spinners,
with you, with yooooooo-hoohoo.

A minute later Tim hurried out, stuffing whatever it was back into the brown paper bag.

“There was a state trooper, but he’s gone,” I said when he opened the door.

Tim slid in. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hang on a minute.” I stepped out of the car. “I gotta pee.”

“What?” He was annoyed. “Now?”

“Sorry. Power of suggestion, I guess.”

“Well okay. No — Durwood, wait — no, never mind. Just hurry, okay?”

I went to the stall on the end. I smelled fresh paint and saw the shiny blob of white on the wall, the trickle running down. I peed and zipped up.

I checked every stall and found the same blob of fresh paint in each one.

I washed my hands and went back to the Pinto. Getting in, I glanced to the floor well behind Tim’s seat, the brown bag containing the can of spray paint.

“Everything come out okay?” Tim said.

I sat silent for a moment. Then I said, “What did you paint over back there?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean.” He flashed his fakiest smile.

“Come on, Timmy. This is me. I’m not going to tell on you.”

“Nah, sorry. I don’t think so.”

“The paint was still wet, you know. I could have wiped it off and read it for myself. But I didn’t. I decided I would come back and let you tell me.”

He sighed. “You’ll just think I’m an idiot.”

“Like I don’t already?” For the first time I had some small power over Tim. The first whiff of it made me feel a little high.

“I thought it would be funny.” His voice was quiet. “It didn’t turn out that way.”

“What did you write on the wall?”

He breathed out.

“Something dirty,” I prompted.

“Not what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“Probably you think it’s something perverted. But it had nothing to do with me. I put Eddie’s name up there, okay? And the phone number at the church office. I thought it would be funny if people would call.”

“Just his name?”

“Oh, you know — ‘for a good time call Eddie,’ like that. It was really stupid, I know.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I told you, I thought it would be funny if people would call.”

“Well, it’s not,” I said. “What did Eddie ever do to you?”

“Just a dumb joke,” he said.

“It’s worse than that, Tim. It’s sick.”

“Okay, now you shut up!” he cried. “First you practically force me to tell you, then you give me this holier-than-thou crap? You think I’m sick? I’m a sicko? Well, you should probably get somebody else to drive you around, then. You don’t want to be seen with a sicko!”

“Where else did you write Eddie’s name?”

“One other place,” he said. “We’re going there now.”

“Another rest area?”

“Maybe.”

Why hadn’t he just driven me home and come back on his own to run this errand? What part of him wanted me to witness this awful thing he had done?

Maybe this was a test. If we could still remain friends after this, he would know for certain that I would always be his friend, no matter what.

Or maybe he wanted me to stop him before he did something worse.

I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was that Tim was headed down a dark road, and he was not going to take me with him.

The radio announcer sounded so excited about Herrin-Gear Chevrolet’s unbelievable low low prices.

“I bet nobody even called the damn church,” Tim was saying. “Passworth said something about some calls, but she’s so crazy, who knows what she’s talking about? I thought it would be smart to get rid of the evidence, just in case.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Smart.”

22

I
WASN’T SURE
I would go through with it until I was already in Jeff Magill’s office and talking. So many times I had pictured myself making this confession in a shadowy room under an idly turning ceiling fan, with a spotlight hard in my eyes. In fact the light was greenish and came from buzzing fluorescent tubes overhead. Jeff Magill didn’t have an office of his own, just a piled-up desk in the corner of a room he shared with three other detectives. He pulled a chair over from another desk for me. An overworked window-unit air conditioner chugged trying to recirculate the smoky air.

I was sweating from walking the whole twelve miles from the Reid Motel in Minor to the sheriff’s office on East Pascagoula Avenue, downtown Jackson. I’d tried sticking my thumb out a few times along the way, but apparently I wasn’t the kind of hitchhiker people pick up.

Jeff Magill didn’t seem surprised when I showed up at the door of his office.

I told him the truth about everything, starting with Prom Night: How we knocked Arnita down by accident but fled the scene on purpose. The lengths we went to, letting Red Martin take the blame. How easy that was, since Red was fairly drunk and actually knocked her off the bike first, and drove off, and left her. (Even at this late date, I was hoping this would somehow count in our favor.) I told about the months I had spent doing chores for the Beechams, trying to make secret amends. I told how falling in love with Arnita was just as much an accident as knocking her off the bike.

I told him the whole thing was more my fault than Tim’s. Tim was driving that night, but it was my hand that grabbed the wheel. I could have forced him to turn around and go back at once, but I didn’t. I stood by silently while Red was arrested and charged for what we did.

I knew it was wrong. I was over at the Beechams’ every day. I could have told the truth anytime.

Magill jotted down a few things but didn’t say much. He was a good listener. I tried to make him understand how Red had tormented us, without sounding too much like a crybaby.

“We were moving to bring a case against him for the girl,” Magill said. “The mother nagged us for months. But the minute we booked him, she got cold feet.”

“What do you mean?”

“She refused to press charges. She told the DA she had decided someone else was involved, and it wouldn’t be fair to charge just the Martin boy.”

“That’s me she was talking about,” I said. “She was always suspicious of me. And she has this way of reading your mind.” All this time Mrs. Beecham could have turned me in and didn’t. I was grateful.

“Yeah, she’s quite a woman,” Magill said, with a glance at his watch. “What else you got?”

I needed something to make him take me seriously. “Tim has guns in the back of his car,” I said.

Magill thought about it a minute. “Maybe he’s going hunting.”

“He doesn’t hunt.”

“What are you saying? You think he might hurt somebody?”

I didn’t. Really I didn’t. But I wasn’t absolutely sure, and that’s what I said.

“Are you mad at him or something?” he said. “Y’all fighting over this girl? Seems like you’d like to see him get charged with a crime.”

Of course I was mad at Tim for what he did to me and Arnita, but that wasn’t why I’d come here. Or was it? “I just thought you might want to talk to him,” I said. “And I wanted you to know the truth. We’ve been lying about this since it happened. I didn’t know you dropped the charges against Red. That was the main thing.”

“I appreciate that, Dan. I know it took some nerve for you to come here.” His chair squealed as he leaned back. “How’s the family getting along? Y’all settled into a new place?”

“We’re still in a motel.”

“It might be a bit of a wait on that insurance. They’ll pay it, though, eventually. They’ll have to. Fire marshal ruled it an accident.”

“Yes sir.”

“Was it an accident, Dan?”

“Yes sir,” I said firmly. I had practiced this answer many times along the road from Minor. I had toyed with the notion that one word from me could put Dad in jail, but I knew that wouldn’t make him any nicer when he got out.

“See, I wasn’t sure,” said Magill. “I found out your father lied about losing his job. But I never could imagine a man blowing up his own house to collect on a little household policy. He just didn’t seem like the type.” He kept his eyes steady on me. “I don’t suppose you’d ever tell on him, would you?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“Any reason I should?”

“Well — I kind of thought you might.” In fact I’d expected him to arrest me and Tim both. I thought a trip to jail was the price we’d both have to pay for getting Tim the attention he needed.

Magill scratched his ear. “In our business, we pretty much have to have some evidence of a crime. Otherwise there’s not much we can do. You wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to volunteer a lie, would you?”

“No sir.”

“So if you’re not lying, you didn’t hit the girl intentionally. You ran off, but you did call an ambulance. You should have gone back to the scene, but I’m not about to try and make a case on that. Writing somebody’s name on a toilet wall — that’s vandalism, but you said he went back and cleaned it up. He’s got guns, long as he’s over sixteen and no criminal record, he can have all the guns he wants. Now if he shoots somebody, or threatens a specific person, that’s when you need to call me. Here. Let me give you a card.”

I took it and thanked him for his time.

“Sure, Dan — thank you.” We shook hands. His hand was warm, entirely dry.

I ran my thumb over the raised letters of his name, the seal embossed with the outline of Mississippi. I put the card in my pocket.

I was sure he forgot all about me before I even got out of the lobby.

It was late in the day but the heat was still stupefying. I spotted a cluster of bikes on a rack between the sheriff’s department and the Hinds County Courthouse. A white statue presided over the facade of that big white building — it looked to be Moses, from the gleaming marble tablets in his arms.

I was having trouble facing the idea of walking all the way back in this heat. Twelve miles took almost three hours this morning, when I was fresh. Maybe I could find a bus to the Jackson city limits, but Minor was miles beyond that.

I went to the bike rack intending only to check out the bikes and think about what kind of bike I would get if I had the money. My eye happened to fall on one bike, a red Raleigh ten-speed, not particularly new or expensive but it did possess one quality that set it apart from all other bikes on the rack: it was unlocked.

Look at me! said the bike. No one cares about me! Want a ride?

A smart thief would have checked the windows of the buildings all around to see if the owner of the bike happened to be glancing out at that moment. I didn’t do that.

I lifted the red Raleigh from the rack. I swung my leg over, saddled up, and rode off.

I got away clean. I stole it in broad daylight from the rack in front of the sheriff’s department, and no one ever knew. If that was your Raleigh ten-speed that went missing that hot August day, 1973, I apologize. That bike still had a lot of good miles on it when someone finally stole it from me.

If Jeff Magill no longer cared about the major felonies we had committed, what was one petty larceny? Stealing was easy, and fun! It put extra spring in my legs to be riding stolen property. I whizzed down East Pascagoula in the shadow of Standard Life, the blank eyes of the derelict King James Hotel.

Racing through on a bike, I thought Jackson was much nicer than it seemed from a car. I flew down leafy streets lined with graceful old homes. Then the homes got less graceful, then became just small shacky houses. The pavement broke up. Black kids played in the street. “Hey black boy,” one lanky kid yelled as I bumped toward him. “Hey hey hey, black boy!” That’s what I thought he was saying until I zoomed past and realized he was saying “bike boy.” He made a grab at my leg. I didn’t even slow down.

I rode past the last outskirts of Jackson, out into open country. I was thinking about what was lurking behind my conversation with Magill. Some hint of a suggestion he was trying to make, if only I could be subtle enough to pick up on it.
In this business, we need a crime. Now if Tim shoots somebody or threatens a specific person . . .

At last I came to the Minor sign, which someone had altered again:

WELCOME TO MINOR

TWO

ONE
OF MISSISSIPPI’S           TOWNS

There were lights coming on in the first subdivisions. I turned onto Bluff Park Drive, sweating and puffing over the hill.

Bluff Park was Minor’s ritzier subdivision. The lawns were large and carefully kept. It was not unusual to see three or four cars in one driveway. In front of a gray cedar rambling ranch house, I saw the car I was looking for: a red Mustang Fastback.

Cherry red. GT. Souped up, with flames down the side.

It sat behind two gleaming Cadillacs and a Chevy pickup so new it still wore dealer plates. I wheeled around and went back to check out the gray cedar mailbox with the house number, 3574, and the word
MARTIN
.

I cycled slowly away, checking out the general area. No close neighbors, lots of trees, thickets of giant azalea between the houses.

I swept down the long hill onto Minor Boulevard. I hadn’t intended to go anywhere in particular, but somehow the stolen bike found its way to the bridge over the Yatchee River.

I checked the hiding place behind the bridge stanchion, but there were no rocks. I rode recklessly down the slope where I used to kiss Arnita for hours.

That was the worst part of it. She didn’t love me anymore. Our love had evaporated in a flash — the way gasoline burns. I would never get to kiss her again. Thanks, Tim.

I laid the bike on the grass and sat by the log where we used to sit. I breathed the air in the same place, hoping it might bring back some of the feeling. The water in the river moved so slowly it seemed frozen, like deep green glass.