Those we thought we knew, p.15
Those We Thought We Knew, page 15
30
On the other side of Moody Bridge a road cut off to the right to follow the river back toward Caney Fork. Purple martins swept the air above the water, and along a seam of current midstream Coggins thought he saw a trout rise to feed. This stretch had always fished well, though it was too hot right then for a man to do much of anything.
Tim McMahan lived on a pretty piece of property just above the road with a modular home on a painted block foundation. There were no shade trees and the sun beat down on his freckled back as he poured a quart of motor oil into the little red Mazda he’d driven forever. When he was done, he wiped his hands on a grease-stained rag and shook a couple belts to make sure they were tight. He didn’t hear Coggins pull up or see him come across the yard.
“Is it burning oil?” McMahan flinched as Coggins spoke. The sheriff stepped up to the open engine compartment and peered in. The tiny four-cylinder looked like it might’ve come off a lawn mower or go-kart.
“No . . . no, it’s not burning oil,” McMahan stuttered. He had his hair trimmed high and tight, a thinning carrot top on its last leg. “There something I can help you with, Sheriff?”
“I guess you heard what happened to Ernie Allison.”
“No, sir. Can’t say that I have.” McMahan unhooked the prop rod and let the hood down gently. When there were two or three inches to go, he dropped the hood and let the weight slap it closed. He turned then and rested against the front of the truck so that he was facing the sheriff while they spoke. “Wait, do you mean what happened between him and Nick Lovedahl? I did hear—”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then, no, sir. I don’t know what you mean.”
Coggins found it hard to believe he hadn’t seen the story on one of the local stations or heard it from someone around town. The whole county was abuzz with what had happened to Ernie and Toya. “Two mornings ago a fellow on the parkway found Ernie beaten within an inch of his life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Guy pulls into a parking lot to take a leak and finds Ernie laying there with his brains stomped out. You not got a TV in that house? You not watch the news?”
“I’ve been out of town, Sheriff. Had a couple days off and took the kids up Hazel Creek to camp and fish a little bit before school started. Just got home this morning.”
Coggins glanced at the front door, where three or four fishing rods were leaned against the railing. A tackle box sat on the porch.
“Is he okay?”
“They don’t really know,” Coggins said. “They’ve got him stable. But there’s some swelling on the brain.”
“Shit, Sheriff. I had no idea.”
“Well, that’s what brings me over here.”
“I’m sorry?” McMahan phrased this as a question.
“Ernie told me you and him had a little bit of a row the other week at the gas station. I was thinking you might be able to tell me what that was about.”
“You want to go in the house and get out of this heat?” McMahan wiped the sweat from his forehead. His shoulders were red and sunburned. “Think the wife’s got some tea in the fridge.”
“This won’t take long,” Coggins said. “Just wondered if you could tell me what the two of you were arguing about.”
“Wasn’t nothing, really. He’d helped out on an arrest. Guess he just didn’t like the way it was handled. Thought we should’ve done things differently. That’s all.”
“That’s not exactly how he put it.” Coggins was feeling him out. “The way Ernie told me, the two of you’d found something in that car.”
The color left McMahan’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheriff.”
“I think you do. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. And the thing is, where Ernie wound up makes me think those two things might be connected. Matter of fact, I’d about lay a bet that where he wound up had something to do with that notebook y’all found in that car, the one that just up and disappeared.”
“What do you mean where he wound up?”
“He was found at the Confederate Veterans Memorial Forest. That doesn’t seem like some accident. That seems like a message, don’t you think? So what I’m saying is I believe he’d spilled the beans on some folks that didn’t like having their names thrown around.”
The gravity of what the sheriff was saying came down on McMahan like a felled tree. His face went slack and he looked scared to death. The door on the house opened and a little boy about four or five years old poked his head onto the porch.
“Mama said to tell you lunch is ready,” the child said to his father, but he was staring right at Coggins. The sheriff smiled and the boy dropped his head and covered his grin with his hand.
“Tell her I’ll be there in just a minute.”
The boy ducked back into the house and the door slammed closed. Cicadas were wailing from the trees along the river. There was no air stirring at all.
Tim McMahan walked over to the porch and grabbed a T-shirt and ball cap that were hung on the landing newel of the front steps. He slipped into the shirt and ran his hand across the top of his head to clear the sweat before placing the cap.
McMahan had taken a seat on the steps and the sheriff inched closer so that he was standing directly over him when he spoke. “You know, it’s like that old saying goes. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, or something along them lines.” Coggins shoved his right hand into his pants pocket and jingled his keys. “Now, I’m not here because I think you had something to do with what happened to Ernie. I’m here to find out why you lied about that notebook and those names. You’ve got a chance to do what’s right. And all I want to know is what you found and who told you to cover it up.”
McMahan stared vacantly into the yard as he started to speak. He never once looked at the sheriff while he explained what had gone on that night, how they’d gotten a call about a drunk-and-disorderly outside Harold’s and how when he arrived he found the stranger asleep in the car. He told Coggins about what they’d found during the search, about the robe and the notebook and the gun. And as Tim McMahan confirmed everything Ernie’d told him that day in the office, the sheriff’s mind wheeled to those names he’d shared.
“I got off that next morning and about midday I got a call from my lieutenant wanting me to come back down to the station. Didn’t say what it was about and there’d been rumors floating around about layoffs, and so I was afraid it had something to do with that. But when I got down there he told me the man I’d arrested the night before had been released and that the charges had been dropped. Didn’t say why and at first I thought I’d done something wrong, but he said he’d read through my report and just wanted me to know it was nothing I’d done.
“Now, I hadn’t put anything in the report about what we found in the car except for the gun since the rest of it wasn’t taken into evidence, but I did mention it to another officer at shift change and I guess that had gotten back to my lieutenant. He told me not to mention it again. Said from that point forward, it hadn’t happened.”
“And that didn’t seem odd to you?”
“Of course it did. I kept thinking about the chief’s name and phone number being on that list, but what was I going to say? Like it or not, that’s who I work for. And that was my commanding officer telling me to forget it.”
Coggins didn’t answer.
“Look, Sheriff, I knew something was off, but I got two little ones running around that house and another on the way this fall. This is about the only line of work there is anymore with good benefits, at least the only one I’m cut out for. Maybe I could get on with the county or go work shit hours at the paper mill, but I like what I do. I enjoy the work and I enjoy helping people.”
“Did he happen to mention who’d told him to call you in?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m assuming this order came down the chain of command, so when your lieutenant told you this, did he happen to mention why?”
“No,” McMahan said. He dug a can of Copenhagen out of his pocket and packed the box but didn’t take a dip. “I assumed it had to do with Holt. I mean, the chief’s name was the one we’d seen. Pretty obvious why he’d want to keep that under wraps.”
“Can you think of anything else, something he might’ve said or any other names that might’ve stuck out that night?”
“No, sir.” McMahan shook his head. He opened the tin of tobacco and pinched a wad of long-cut between his fingers. “You don’t really think the chief could’ve been involved with what happened to Ernie?”
“I don’t have a clue, son,” Coggins said. “But until Ernie wakes up we don’t have much to go on. So like I told you, I don’t think him laying where they found him was any sort of coincidence.”
McMahan loaded his lip with tobacco and pushed it to the side of his jaw with his tongue. He stared off at the river as if in deep contemplation.
“You think of anything else, you give me a call, all right?”
“I will, Sheriff.” McMahan rose and held out his hand but Coggins had already turned for his truck. “Sheriff,” he called when Coggins was halfway across the yard.
The sheriff stopped.
“If you ever have an opening, I sure would like the chance to work for you.”
Something about his having the gall to say that right then hit Coggins the wrong way. The sheriff marched back across the yard so that what he said next would not be taken in jest.
“You know, I’m usually pretty good about reading folks, Tim, but I’ve been wrong a time or two. I’ve made some mistakes and took some chances on folks I probably shouldn’t have,” Coggins said. “But you give a man enough time and he’ll almost always show you who he is. Sometimes it’ll surprise you.”
McMahan had a dumb expression as he tried to decipher what the sheriff meant, but Coggins wanted there to be no confusion.
“Thing is, Tim, you’ve already shown me who you are.” Coggins stared him down until McMahan averted his eyes. “I wouldn’t be expecting no phone call. That’s what I’m saying.”
31
Nearly two hundred people gathered downtown for the candlelight vigil. Everyone from Zion, her close friends, and a dozen or so other familiar faces she recognized from Liberty Baptist had come, but most of the crowd was comprised of people Vess did not know. Some were dressed in dark clothes, as if attending a wake, others looking as if they’d just come from work or home or simply broken away from whatever lives they led to be here. There were solemn looks on their faces and they stood there in silence as if waiting for direction.
They were gathered where the protest had taken place. Five chairs faced the crowd and a podium and microphone were set off to the left. The sheriff sat on one end with an empty seat beside him. He’d been with the family all day, and though he was not the type to show emotion, he’d seemed on the verge of tears from the moment he walked in her house. Coggins was dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and red tie. He was hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, blank-faced as he stared straight off toward the other end of town with eyes bloodshot and tired. Vess sat with her daughter on one side and her best friend, Lula Shepherd, on the other. The reverend was at the podium, nearly finished now with his address.
He was a young minister in his mid-forties named Carson Tillman. His hair was rippled into waves and it shone like black water in the streetlights. His beard was trimmed close and lined up with hard edges, everything cut straight and sharp as if he’d just stepped out of the barber’s chair. Carson carried a slight grin at all times, the wheels constantly turning in his dark eyes. Most days he wore a pair of slacks, a white dress shirt, and a checked wool vest, but rarely a tie. He kept his collar loose and on Sunday mornings he sang with one of the most beautiful voices Vess had ever heard.
She felt a hand touch her own and without turning she knew it was Lula. Lula Shepherd wore a teal skirt that hit her just below the knee with a dark green jacket and a hat that matched the skirt. A heavy gold necklace hung low to mid-chest and stood bright against her black blouse.
Lula’d been sitting beside Vess for years, every Sunday at church, across the table as her partner in spades when both of their husbands were still alive and they’d gather to play cards on Friday and Saturday nights. Vess turned and looked at her best friend and it struck her how old she looked—the wrinkles, the slight slump in her shoulders as her posture fell, the tissue-paper skin of her hands. They were only three months apart in age and it hit Vess then how old she must’ve looked as well.
Nowadays, Vess and Lula made up one-third of the congregation at church most Sundays. Once there’d been nearly a hundred people filling the pews, but they were lucky if six to ten showed anymore. For the most part, the children had moved away, some by choice, others priced out by rural gentrification and a lack of job opportunities. Regardless of how they’d left, Vess and Lula represented the last of a generation, that generation the last of this community. When they were gone, that would be that, a way of life and a people blinking out like a meteor.
When the reverend finished speaking, he took his seat between the sheriff and Dayna. He rolled the papers he carried into a small bat, leaned back, and crossed his legs. Dayna stood and slowly approached the podium. They’d told her she didn’t have to speak, that she didn’t have to come if she didn’t want to, but she’d been insistent that if people were gathering in her child’s name, then she would be there.
Most times she wore dark clothes, pantsuits and drab pencil skirts. She’d said you didn’t want to pull attention in the courtroom, that you wanted the evidence and argument to stand for themselves. But this evening she wore a sleeveless tangerine blouse and a pair of high-waisted slacks that fit tight at the hips, flowed loose over her legs, and cinched down into cuffs at her ankles. The pants were a light, oat-colored hemp fabric that seemed to float as she walked. This was an outfit Toya had put together, and it showed. Dayna was bright as a Turk’s-cap lily standing there before the crowd.
“While I sat and listened to Reverend Tillman I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say or if I was going to say anything at all, and the truth is I still don’t know what to say. But one thing I’m touched by is the fact that so many of you, probably most of you, didn’t know my daughter at all. And yet here you are. You are here, and that is a testament to who she was. That’s a testament to her and the power she had over others. You could not stand beside that girl, you could not be in the same room and breathe the same air, and not feel her presence. Toya carried that kind of energy all her life. She was a fire, and to be around her was to feel that heat in your bones.
“So what I’ve decided I want to do tonight is to tell you about her so that you might leave this place having gotten to know her a little better.” Dayna placed her palms on the top of the podium. She looked up into the sky for a moment before she continued. The sun was nearly down, so that the horizon along the ridgeline was rim-lit white and transitioned to blue, then darker, the first stars just beginning to pierce the night above them. They stood in the glow of streetlamps that had just flicked on and buzzed as the bulbs warmed inside their rippled glass globes.
“Everyone’s heard or asked this question before, I’m sure,” she said. “You ask a child what they want to be when they grow up and you’re liable to hear anything. I had a little boy tell me one time he wanted to be a stripper.” A few in the crowd got tickled and Dayna briefly smiled. “But soon as Toya could talk, she wanted to be an artist. That’s what she said. And the difference between her and most kids is that she became exactly that. It was as if she knew from the very beginning what she was sent here to do, like it was a calling . . .”
Her words trailed off as a large dually Dodge diesel with tinted windows came roaring up the road from Dillsboro. A pair of flags rattled and whipped behind it, one secured to each side of the tailgate. The truck was revving its engine loudly, so that Dayna was forced to hold off. She stared down at the podium and slowly rocked from side to side, biting her lip and waiting for the moment to pass. Vess struggled to read what was written on one of the flags as the truck slowed behind a line of traffic caught at a light.
It was an American flag with a cross centered between two assault rifles, the words god, guns, trump written along the top and bottom. On the other side, the stars and bars fell limp. The traffic light turned and the driver floored it to cast a cloud of black smoke into the air and over the crowd. In a moment, the truck was gone and the crowd lumbered and whispered for a few seconds before falling quiet. Vess wasn’t sure her daughter would say anything else, but in a moment Dayna picked up where she’d left off as if nothing had happened at all.
“I remember the day I had her and the doctor laid her in my arms for the very first time. He looked at me and said, ‘There’s something special about this child,’ and at the time I figured that was something he told every mother whose baby he delivered, but the more time’s gone on, the more I don’t think that’s what it was at all. I think he meant it. I think he felt the very same thing every one of you standing here tonight felt. She was special. She was a fire and you couldn’t help but want to stand close—”
All of a sudden the diesel was upon them again. The driver had circled the block. There was no red light now but the truck stopped beside the crowd and revved its engine until the air popped and cracked like firecrackers, each time bellowing smoke from a basketball-sized tailpipe as the turbo crescendoed and whined. The crowd covered their faces with their hands. They shielded their eyes and ducked their noses inside their shirts so as not to breathe or be blinded by the exhaust.
