The trees, p.18
The Trees, page 18
“It’s Beale Street, man.”
“It’s still Tennessee.”
81
Damon was shaking. He was sitting on the bed in Mama Z’s guest room. There was a crazy quilt folded at the foot of the bed that was mostly purple. He didn’t like purple. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked.
Gertrude was standing across the room, leaning on the closed door as if blocking his escape.
“Are you guys murdering people?” Damon asked.
“Murder is a strong word. I don’t know if it applies. Do soldiers murder when they shoot an attacking enemy?”
“They do,” Damon offered without hesitation. “That’s precisely what soldiers do.”
“We’re simply offering a little retributive justice.”
“So, why am I here?” Damon asked.
“You’re the smartest person I know,” Gertrude said. “You’re here to chronicle this thing. You’re here to make sense of it. You’re here to figure out a way for all of this to make noise and yet keep all of it secret.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Mama Z told me you were writing down the names.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How did it feel?” Gertrude asked.
“Horrible.”
“And?” she asked.
“What?”
“What else did it make you feel?”
“Free,” he said. “In a weird way, free.”
“Alive,” Gertrude said.
“I guess.”
“Well, those people are dead. Their names are alive, but they are dead. They don’t get to say their names anymore. Do you understand? They don’t get to hear their names.”
“What does murdering people have to do with names?”
“Nothing,” she said. “And everything.”
Damon stared at her. “Well, the smartest person you know can’t figure out what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Gertrude sat on the bed beside him. “Maybe I’m not making any sense. That’s possible. But we’ve got a different problem now.”
“What’s that?”
“We killed only those related to the murderers of Emmett Till. And his accuser.”
“How many is that?” Damon asked.
“Three.”
“Only three. Well, congratulations. What restraint you people have shown. Who’s next? The grandchildren?”
“I admit it’s really messy, but what about justice? And don’t say it’s in God’s hands.”
“I don’t believe in a god,” Damon said.
“Precisely,” Gertrude said. “There has to be some way to have these deaths be symbolic. Don’t you see?”
“Mama Z, that old lady, one-hundred-and-five-year-old Mama Z, she’s the mastermind behind all of this? Is that what you’re telling me? That’s what you’re expecting me to believe?”
“Yes. She’s seen it all. She’s seen enough.”
“You’re crazy. You’re all crazy. This is what I think: I think that none of you killed anybody. I think you’re all delusional, suffering from some kind of mass hysteria. Maybe it’s even viral. You’re infected, that’s what it is.”
“Stop.” Gertrude put her hand on his leg.
“What? Is that hand on my leg supposed to calm me down? Is it supposed to make me realize that you all are, in fact, actual killers and at the same time make me relax?”
“Stop,” she repeated.
“So, when you called me down here about the same body showing up at these murder scenes, you already knew what was going on?” he stated as a question. “You lied to me and now, if all of this is true, I’m implicated in this crime. I’m an accessory after the fact of murder.”
“I know this is a lot. But this is a war. One that’s been going on for four hundred years, and now we’re fighting back.”
Damon looked at Gertrude for a long, hard moment. “You believe all of this.”
“I believe it because it’s true.”
“That’s very nice rhetoric, but it doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me. Why did you want me here? Why am I here?”
“Somebody’s got to tell this story,” Gertrude said.
“Bullshit.”
“Damon.”
Damon lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Close the door on your way out. I need to process this.”
82
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch in a cornfield,” Harlan Fester said. He was still wearing his work clothes from the paper mill. “Somethin’ is afoot, y’all, and it ain’t good.” Harlan was addressing other members of the Whites for Social Justice Committee online. Their virtual meeting had started some ten minutes earlier. Now that they were done with the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer, Harlan had initiated the night’s business. “As you know, I am vigilant in my coverage of the internets. I follow all the newspapers and monitor all the police blotters and feeds. Nothing happens in the country without me knowing about it, and I’m tellin’ y’all, somethin’ is afoot.”
“What you done learned spying on the web, Brother Harlan?” Pete Rupter said, his face on the left upper corner of Fester’s screen.
“Somebody or bodies is killin’ White people,” Harlan said. “Our kind of White people.”
“People gets kilt every day,” Morris Lee Morris said. He was sitting on the deck of his house in Temecula, California. It was still light outside for him. He was doing something in front of him.
“What you doin’, Morris?” Rupter asked.
“I’m cleanin’ my pistols,” Morris said. “We got to be ready.”
“Never was more true words spoke,” Fester said. “I got me a new Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, five-shot.”
“Pussy gun,” Morris said. “This here is a Desert Eagle, fifty-caliber.”
“Shit, that ain’t shit,” Rupter said. “By the time you get off a second round, niggers will have put twenty caps in yo ass. From one of them, what do you call ’em, MAC-10s.”
“Bullshit,” Morris said.
“Stop fightin’,” Fester said. “We got bigger fish to fry. Seems like some suicidal niggers is out there killin’ Whites.”
“What do mean by ‘suicida’l?” Morris asked.
“I mean these niggers been killin’ us and then they up and kill themselves. At least that’s what some cops is sayin’.”
Rupter whistled.
“We got to get the membership together and get prepared. That race war I been tellin’ y’all about is here, I fear,” Morris said.
Rupter laughed.
“What you laughin’ at, Rupter?” Morris barked. “And why you cover yer mouth with yer hand like some kinda Korean girl?”
Rupter took offense. “You know I’m sensitive about my missing teeth. And what you know about Korean girls?”
“I fought in Korea,” Morris said.
“Fuck you, Morris,” Fester said. “You was too young to go to Vietnam. And you was too old for the Gulf War.”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll shut up,” Fester said, sarcastically.
“But what were you laughin’ at?” Morris kept on it.
“You rhymed,” Rupter said.
“What?”
“You said the war is here, I fear. You rhymed. I thought it was kinda funny. Sorry.”
“Jesus Christ,” Morris said.
“Shut up, both of y’all,” Fester said. “You act like children.”
“Fuck you, Harlan.”
“Hey, sorry I laughed,” Rupter said. “What we gonna do?”
“We have to get everybody together,” Morris repeated.
“You make it sound like we got numbers,” Rupter said. “Far as I can see, we got us and two other people. Where’s this war taking place? My boy’s got Little League this week.”
“Yeah,” Fester said. “We is scattered all over the country. The very thing that makes the FBI afraid of us is our weakness.”
“Amen to that,” Morris said.
“Aw, shit, I forgot to tell you the worst of it,” Fester said.
“What’s that?” Morris asked.
“The White men had their balls cut off.”
“What the freegone fuck you say?” Rupter said. “You mean their testiculars?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Talk about burying the lede,” Rupter said.
“What kind of animal would do that?” Morris said.
“They sure it was niggers that done it?” Rupter asked.
“I don’t know,” said Fester. “At one of the places the nigger was holding the White man’s nuts in his hand.”
“Lawd-a-mercy,” Morris said. “We’d best clean every goddamn gun we got. This thing sounds for real. If it’s true, what will we do?”
Rupter laughed.
“Jesus, Pete.”
“Sorry, but rhymin’ is funny. You know there ain’t no rhyme for orange? You’d think there would be, but there ain’t.”
83
Thunder sounded in the distance. Beale Street was not overly crowded but was littered and dirty as if it was. The bad weather didn’t help. Ed and Jim walked without their ties or their weapons. This made them happy and somewhat nervous. They weren’t policemen in Tennessee, just a couple of Black men. They didn’t want to end up the subjects of a 60 Minutes segment with Mike Wallace shaking his big White head. Electric blues spilled out of every bar they passed.
“What makes the blues sound so …” Ed searched for the word.
“Nasty?” Jim offered.
“Yeah.”
“Because it’s nasty,” Jim said. “You know, that good nasty. What did Louis Armstrong say? Oh yeah: the blues is when a woman tells you she’s got another mule in her stall.”
“That would be the blues, all right. What do you think those ball-less White boys were singing at the end?”
“I don’t know. What goes around comes around?”
Ed nodded.
“You ever been to Graceland?” Jim asked.
“No.”
“I was there once.”
The rain started to fall again. Ed looked up at the sky. “You think a tornado is coming? I’ve lived my entire life in Louisiana and Mississippi and I’ve never seen a tornado.”
“I saw one when I was a kid. At least I think I saw one. I was asleep in the back of my family’s station wagon. I woke up and thought I saw the storm and fell back asleep. I used to wake up in the back of that car and see lots of shit.”
“Do you think ghosts are showing up to kill rednecks all of a sudden?” Ed asked.
“No,” Jim said. “I wish, but no.”
A small man ran from an alley, chased by a heavy woman dressed only in an orange thong. The man wore one shoe and held the other in his hand. His other hand held his pants closed and up. Still, he managed to put distance between himself and the woman.
“It’s going to take a while to unsee that,” Jim said.
“It’s strange we didn’t feel that way at any of these crime scenes. What do you think that means?” Ed asked.
Jim shrugged. “Let’s find some blues.”
They walked into a tavern called the Mississippi Goddamn. The bar was long and had vintage scrolled woodwork at the corners. They sat at it and ordered a couple of whiskeys from the old woman pouring and mixing drinks.
“Where are your guns, boys?” the woman asked. When they just stared at her, she said, “You’re cops, right?”
“We’re that obvious?” Jim asked.
“As clear as you’re Black,” she said.
“That makes me sad,” Ed said.
“Things is what things is, baby. Ain’t no shame in it,” she said.
“Yeah, but you don’t walk into the dentist’s office and get recognized as a bartender,” Jim said.
“True dat,” she said. “I’m glad y’all is cops. Don’t want them all to be lily white.”
“We’re not Memphis cops,” Jim said.
“Oh I know, honey. I know.”
The sound of a guitar came from the tiny stage across the room. A gray-bearded man sat alone and started to play. His guitar playing was simple, his voice was gravelly, and neither Ed nor Jim could understand a word he was singing. His blues were slow and seemingly heartfelt, perhaps because of the minor key. He played slide with a bone on his little finger.
Jim leaned toward the bartender when she came back their way. “What’s he singing?”
“Hell if I know. He sings in here every night. I don’t know his name, where he comes from, nothing. I sure as hell don’t know what he saying.”
They listened. “It doesn’t matter what he’s saying,” Ed said.
“What?” Jim asked.
“It doesn’t matter what he’s saying.”
“How long should we sit here?” Jim asked.
“I don’t know. All night?”
“Sounds right.”
84
Charlene stood in her backyard next to the empty pool and watched her next-to-youngest toddler try to pedal his lime-green Big Wheel through the overgrown, yet brown grass. Lulabelle rubbed more rouge on her cheeks and yanked at her mother’s leg.
“Hot Mama Yeller, did I put it on right?” the girl asked.
“Lawd-a-mercy, child, don’t bother me now. I’m thinkin’.”
“What you thinkin’ on, Hot Mama Yeller?”
“I’m thinkin’ grown things you wouldn’t understand. Like how I’m gonna pay the rent on this here house with your daddy all dead. And when is Pete Built gonna call me on the CB radio?”
“Who is Pete Built?”
“Never you mind.” Charlene lit a cigarette and took a long pull on it. “Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“You hear any noises last night?”
“Yeah,” Lulabelle said.
“I mean strange noises, not just yer brother tootin’ gas.”
“No, I heard me some strange noises. At first I thought I was dreamin’, but then I seen I was awake, and I still heard ’em.”
“What was they like?”
Lulabelle closed her eyes and tried to recall. “One noise was like a chain being dragged. Then I thought I heard a scream. Then I heard me some laughin’.”
“Like men laughin’?”
“Yessum.” The child looked up at her mother. “Is that what you heard too, Hot Mama Yeller?”
Charlene ignored her question. “Lulabelle, you look a fright. Your rouge ain’t even, and your lipstick don’t match your eye shadow. Have mercy.”
“Is that what you heard too?” the child repeated.
“Go over there and push your brother’s Big Wheel out of that mud. I gotta go in the house and make a call.”
Lulabelle walked to her brother, muttering. “I cain’t even get my makeup on because of this dang fool baby.”
Inside the house, Charlene picked up the handset of the CB radio. She set it to channel 19. “This here that Hot Mama Yeller. I’m lookin’ for that Pete Built. Y’all out there?”
A scratchy voice replied. “I sho is girl. You got that Pete Built. Come back.”
“Switchin’, baby.” Charlene changed the channel to the one she and Pete Built shared to speak somewhat privately.
“Where you at?” Pete Built said.
“You know I’m at home,” she laughed. “Where else would I be? Question is, where you at?”
“Got out early this mornin’, and now I’m just about forty miles south of Money on that Highway Five Eighteen. Wait a second. What’s that? There’s somethin’ on that road up ahead there. Looks like a couple of people is laying on the shoulder. Another one in the weeds there. Somethin’ looks wrong. I’m pullin’ over now to see what’s goin’ on’.”
“What is it, baby?” Charlene asked. She turned the squelch up get rid of the static.
“There’s a nigger walkin’ over.”
Charlene listened. “What he want? Be careful, Pete Built. What’s that nigger want?”
“Hang on, Yeller. What’s goin’ on out there, boy? What’s that on yo hands? What you doin’, boy? Oh, my sweet-smellin’ Jesus! What the fuck? Jesus! Lawd-a-mercy!”
“Pete Built!” Charlene shouted. “Can you hear me? Let go of the button, baby. Pete Built! What’s happening, baby?”
“Jesus Lawd!” Static.
“Baby? Pete Built? Honeybunch?” Charlene let the handset drop.
Lulabelle came in through the kitchen door. “That baby can push his own damn trike. What’s wrong, Hot Mama Yeller?”
“Get the hell outside!”
Charlene picked up the phone and dialed 911.
85
The scene on anything-but-scenic Highway 518 caused the rough and seasoned Mississippi state trooper to do a double take. He even removed his mirrored sunglasses and pushed up the brim of his big hat to get a clearer look. There were five dead bodies in all; four were White and one was Black. The Whites were covered and soaked with blood; the Black man was covered with dirt, his hands bloody. The first troopers on the scene had effectively blocked off traffic in either direction and had detained the couple of drivers who had stopped to check out what had happened. A willowy White woman leaned against the hood of her BMW and cried into her hands. A large Black man paced in front of his Chevy three-quarter-ton pickup and kept an anxious eye on the state troopers.
“Goddamn,” the old trooper said. “This is a shitload of blood.”
“Pretty messy,” another trooper said.
“You got ID on any of these folks?”
“All of them had identification on them,” the young trooper said. “Exceptin’ the nig—” He glanced over his shoulder at the Black man by the truck. “Weren’t no ID on the Black man.”
“And it definitely ain’t no robbery,” the other young one said. “That one and that one had lots of money in their wallets, damn near six hundred bucks. Nothing at all in the Black’s pockets.”
“It kinda looks like their nuts have been cut off,” a young one said.
“What?”
“They’re scattered all around here.”
“What are?”
“Their nuts. Testicles. All of them got their pants pulled down some. Except for the—the Black man. I tell you it’s sick, like some Charles Manson shit, or somethin’ cultlike.”
“It’s still Tennessee.”
81
Damon was shaking. He was sitting on the bed in Mama Z’s guest room. There was a crazy quilt folded at the foot of the bed that was mostly purple. He didn’t like purple. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked.
Gertrude was standing across the room, leaning on the closed door as if blocking his escape.
“Are you guys murdering people?” Damon asked.
“Murder is a strong word. I don’t know if it applies. Do soldiers murder when they shoot an attacking enemy?”
“They do,” Damon offered without hesitation. “That’s precisely what soldiers do.”
“We’re simply offering a little retributive justice.”
“So, why am I here?” Damon asked.
“You’re the smartest person I know,” Gertrude said. “You’re here to chronicle this thing. You’re here to make sense of it. You’re here to figure out a way for all of this to make noise and yet keep all of it secret.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Mama Z told me you were writing down the names.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How did it feel?” Gertrude asked.
“Horrible.”
“And?” she asked.
“What?”
“What else did it make you feel?”
“Free,” he said. “In a weird way, free.”
“Alive,” Gertrude said.
“I guess.”
“Well, those people are dead. Their names are alive, but they are dead. They don’t get to say their names anymore. Do you understand? They don’t get to hear their names.”
“What does murdering people have to do with names?”
“Nothing,” she said. “And everything.”
Damon stared at her. “Well, the smartest person you know can’t figure out what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Gertrude sat on the bed beside him. “Maybe I’m not making any sense. That’s possible. But we’ve got a different problem now.”
“What’s that?”
“We killed only those related to the murderers of Emmett Till. And his accuser.”
“How many is that?” Damon asked.
“Three.”
“Only three. Well, congratulations. What restraint you people have shown. Who’s next? The grandchildren?”
“I admit it’s really messy, but what about justice? And don’t say it’s in God’s hands.”
“I don’t believe in a god,” Damon said.
“Precisely,” Gertrude said. “There has to be some way to have these deaths be symbolic. Don’t you see?”
“Mama Z, that old lady, one-hundred-and-five-year-old Mama Z, she’s the mastermind behind all of this? Is that what you’re telling me? That’s what you’re expecting me to believe?”
“Yes. She’s seen it all. She’s seen enough.”
“You’re crazy. You’re all crazy. This is what I think: I think that none of you killed anybody. I think you’re all delusional, suffering from some kind of mass hysteria. Maybe it’s even viral. You’re infected, that’s what it is.”
“Stop.” Gertrude put her hand on his leg.
“What? Is that hand on my leg supposed to calm me down? Is it supposed to make me realize that you all are, in fact, actual killers and at the same time make me relax?”
“Stop,” she repeated.
“So, when you called me down here about the same body showing up at these murder scenes, you already knew what was going on?” he stated as a question. “You lied to me and now, if all of this is true, I’m implicated in this crime. I’m an accessory after the fact of murder.”
“I know this is a lot. But this is a war. One that’s been going on for four hundred years, and now we’re fighting back.”
Damon looked at Gertrude for a long, hard moment. “You believe all of this.”
“I believe it because it’s true.”
“That’s very nice rhetoric, but it doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me. Why did you want me here? Why am I here?”
“Somebody’s got to tell this story,” Gertrude said.
“Bullshit.”
“Damon.”
Damon lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Close the door on your way out. I need to process this.”
82
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch in a cornfield,” Harlan Fester said. He was still wearing his work clothes from the paper mill. “Somethin’ is afoot, y’all, and it ain’t good.” Harlan was addressing other members of the Whites for Social Justice Committee online. Their virtual meeting had started some ten minutes earlier. Now that they were done with the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer, Harlan had initiated the night’s business. “As you know, I am vigilant in my coverage of the internets. I follow all the newspapers and monitor all the police blotters and feeds. Nothing happens in the country without me knowing about it, and I’m tellin’ y’all, somethin’ is afoot.”
“What you done learned spying on the web, Brother Harlan?” Pete Rupter said, his face on the left upper corner of Fester’s screen.
“Somebody or bodies is killin’ White people,” Harlan said. “Our kind of White people.”
“People gets kilt every day,” Morris Lee Morris said. He was sitting on the deck of his house in Temecula, California. It was still light outside for him. He was doing something in front of him.
“What you doin’, Morris?” Rupter asked.
“I’m cleanin’ my pistols,” Morris said. “We got to be ready.”
“Never was more true words spoke,” Fester said. “I got me a new Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, five-shot.”
“Pussy gun,” Morris said. “This here is a Desert Eagle, fifty-caliber.”
“Shit, that ain’t shit,” Rupter said. “By the time you get off a second round, niggers will have put twenty caps in yo ass. From one of them, what do you call ’em, MAC-10s.”
“Bullshit,” Morris said.
“Stop fightin’,” Fester said. “We got bigger fish to fry. Seems like some suicidal niggers is out there killin’ Whites.”
“What do mean by ‘suicida’l?” Morris asked.
“I mean these niggers been killin’ us and then they up and kill themselves. At least that’s what some cops is sayin’.”
Rupter whistled.
“We got to get the membership together and get prepared. That race war I been tellin’ y’all about is here, I fear,” Morris said.
Rupter laughed.
“What you laughin’ at, Rupter?” Morris barked. “And why you cover yer mouth with yer hand like some kinda Korean girl?”
Rupter took offense. “You know I’m sensitive about my missing teeth. And what you know about Korean girls?”
“I fought in Korea,” Morris said.
“Fuck you, Morris,” Fester said. “You was too young to go to Vietnam. And you was too old for the Gulf War.”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll shut up,” Fester said, sarcastically.
“But what were you laughin’ at?” Morris kept on it.
“You rhymed,” Rupter said.
“What?”
“You said the war is here, I fear. You rhymed. I thought it was kinda funny. Sorry.”
“Jesus Christ,” Morris said.
“Shut up, both of y’all,” Fester said. “You act like children.”
“Fuck you, Harlan.”
“Hey, sorry I laughed,” Rupter said. “What we gonna do?”
“We have to get everybody together,” Morris repeated.
“You make it sound like we got numbers,” Rupter said. “Far as I can see, we got us and two other people. Where’s this war taking place? My boy’s got Little League this week.”
“Yeah,” Fester said. “We is scattered all over the country. The very thing that makes the FBI afraid of us is our weakness.”
“Amen to that,” Morris said.
“Aw, shit, I forgot to tell you the worst of it,” Fester said.
“What’s that?” Morris asked.
“The White men had their balls cut off.”
“What the freegone fuck you say?” Rupter said. “You mean their testiculars?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Talk about burying the lede,” Rupter said.
“What kind of animal would do that?” Morris said.
“They sure it was niggers that done it?” Rupter asked.
“I don’t know,” said Fester. “At one of the places the nigger was holding the White man’s nuts in his hand.”
“Lawd-a-mercy,” Morris said. “We’d best clean every goddamn gun we got. This thing sounds for real. If it’s true, what will we do?”
Rupter laughed.
“Jesus, Pete.”
“Sorry, but rhymin’ is funny. You know there ain’t no rhyme for orange? You’d think there would be, but there ain’t.”
83
Thunder sounded in the distance. Beale Street was not overly crowded but was littered and dirty as if it was. The bad weather didn’t help. Ed and Jim walked without their ties or their weapons. This made them happy and somewhat nervous. They weren’t policemen in Tennessee, just a couple of Black men. They didn’t want to end up the subjects of a 60 Minutes segment with Mike Wallace shaking his big White head. Electric blues spilled out of every bar they passed.
“What makes the blues sound so …” Ed searched for the word.
“Nasty?” Jim offered.
“Yeah.”
“Because it’s nasty,” Jim said. “You know, that good nasty. What did Louis Armstrong say? Oh yeah: the blues is when a woman tells you she’s got another mule in her stall.”
“That would be the blues, all right. What do you think those ball-less White boys were singing at the end?”
“I don’t know. What goes around comes around?”
Ed nodded.
“You ever been to Graceland?” Jim asked.
“No.”
“I was there once.”
The rain started to fall again. Ed looked up at the sky. “You think a tornado is coming? I’ve lived my entire life in Louisiana and Mississippi and I’ve never seen a tornado.”
“I saw one when I was a kid. At least I think I saw one. I was asleep in the back of my family’s station wagon. I woke up and thought I saw the storm and fell back asleep. I used to wake up in the back of that car and see lots of shit.”
“Do you think ghosts are showing up to kill rednecks all of a sudden?” Ed asked.
“No,” Jim said. “I wish, but no.”
A small man ran from an alley, chased by a heavy woman dressed only in an orange thong. The man wore one shoe and held the other in his hand. His other hand held his pants closed and up. Still, he managed to put distance between himself and the woman.
“It’s going to take a while to unsee that,” Jim said.
“It’s strange we didn’t feel that way at any of these crime scenes. What do you think that means?” Ed asked.
Jim shrugged. “Let’s find some blues.”
They walked into a tavern called the Mississippi Goddamn. The bar was long and had vintage scrolled woodwork at the corners. They sat at it and ordered a couple of whiskeys from the old woman pouring and mixing drinks.
“Where are your guns, boys?” the woman asked. When they just stared at her, she said, “You’re cops, right?”
“We’re that obvious?” Jim asked.
“As clear as you’re Black,” she said.
“That makes me sad,” Ed said.
“Things is what things is, baby. Ain’t no shame in it,” she said.
“Yeah, but you don’t walk into the dentist’s office and get recognized as a bartender,” Jim said.
“True dat,” she said. “I’m glad y’all is cops. Don’t want them all to be lily white.”
“We’re not Memphis cops,” Jim said.
“Oh I know, honey. I know.”
The sound of a guitar came from the tiny stage across the room. A gray-bearded man sat alone and started to play. His guitar playing was simple, his voice was gravelly, and neither Ed nor Jim could understand a word he was singing. His blues were slow and seemingly heartfelt, perhaps because of the minor key. He played slide with a bone on his little finger.
Jim leaned toward the bartender when she came back their way. “What’s he singing?”
“Hell if I know. He sings in here every night. I don’t know his name, where he comes from, nothing. I sure as hell don’t know what he saying.”
They listened. “It doesn’t matter what he’s saying,” Ed said.
“What?” Jim asked.
“It doesn’t matter what he’s saying.”
“How long should we sit here?” Jim asked.
“I don’t know. All night?”
“Sounds right.”
84
Charlene stood in her backyard next to the empty pool and watched her next-to-youngest toddler try to pedal his lime-green Big Wheel through the overgrown, yet brown grass. Lulabelle rubbed more rouge on her cheeks and yanked at her mother’s leg.
“Hot Mama Yeller, did I put it on right?” the girl asked.
“Lawd-a-mercy, child, don’t bother me now. I’m thinkin’.”
“What you thinkin’ on, Hot Mama Yeller?”
“I’m thinkin’ grown things you wouldn’t understand. Like how I’m gonna pay the rent on this here house with your daddy all dead. And when is Pete Built gonna call me on the CB radio?”
“Who is Pete Built?”
“Never you mind.” Charlene lit a cigarette and took a long pull on it. “Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“You hear any noises last night?”
“Yeah,” Lulabelle said.
“I mean strange noises, not just yer brother tootin’ gas.”
“No, I heard me some strange noises. At first I thought I was dreamin’, but then I seen I was awake, and I still heard ’em.”
“What was they like?”
Lulabelle closed her eyes and tried to recall. “One noise was like a chain being dragged. Then I thought I heard a scream. Then I heard me some laughin’.”
“Like men laughin’?”
“Yessum.” The child looked up at her mother. “Is that what you heard too, Hot Mama Yeller?”
Charlene ignored her question. “Lulabelle, you look a fright. Your rouge ain’t even, and your lipstick don’t match your eye shadow. Have mercy.”
“Is that what you heard too?” the child repeated.
“Go over there and push your brother’s Big Wheel out of that mud. I gotta go in the house and make a call.”
Lulabelle walked to her brother, muttering. “I cain’t even get my makeup on because of this dang fool baby.”
Inside the house, Charlene picked up the handset of the CB radio. She set it to channel 19. “This here that Hot Mama Yeller. I’m lookin’ for that Pete Built. Y’all out there?”
A scratchy voice replied. “I sho is girl. You got that Pete Built. Come back.”
“Switchin’, baby.” Charlene changed the channel to the one she and Pete Built shared to speak somewhat privately.
“Where you at?” Pete Built said.
“You know I’m at home,” she laughed. “Where else would I be? Question is, where you at?”
“Got out early this mornin’, and now I’m just about forty miles south of Money on that Highway Five Eighteen. Wait a second. What’s that? There’s somethin’ on that road up ahead there. Looks like a couple of people is laying on the shoulder. Another one in the weeds there. Somethin’ looks wrong. I’m pullin’ over now to see what’s goin’ on’.”
“What is it, baby?” Charlene asked. She turned the squelch up get rid of the static.
“There’s a nigger walkin’ over.”
Charlene listened. “What he want? Be careful, Pete Built. What’s that nigger want?”
“Hang on, Yeller. What’s goin’ on out there, boy? What’s that on yo hands? What you doin’, boy? Oh, my sweet-smellin’ Jesus! What the fuck? Jesus! Lawd-a-mercy!”
“Pete Built!” Charlene shouted. “Can you hear me? Let go of the button, baby. Pete Built! What’s happening, baby?”
“Jesus Lawd!” Static.
“Baby? Pete Built? Honeybunch?” Charlene let the handset drop.
Lulabelle came in through the kitchen door. “That baby can push his own damn trike. What’s wrong, Hot Mama Yeller?”
“Get the hell outside!”
Charlene picked up the phone and dialed 911.
85
The scene on anything-but-scenic Highway 518 caused the rough and seasoned Mississippi state trooper to do a double take. He even removed his mirrored sunglasses and pushed up the brim of his big hat to get a clearer look. There were five dead bodies in all; four were White and one was Black. The Whites were covered and soaked with blood; the Black man was covered with dirt, his hands bloody. The first troopers on the scene had effectively blocked off traffic in either direction and had detained the couple of drivers who had stopped to check out what had happened. A willowy White woman leaned against the hood of her BMW and cried into her hands. A large Black man paced in front of his Chevy three-quarter-ton pickup and kept an anxious eye on the state troopers.
“Goddamn,” the old trooper said. “This is a shitload of blood.”
“Pretty messy,” another trooper said.
“You got ID on any of these folks?”
“All of them had identification on them,” the young trooper said. “Exceptin’ the nig—” He glanced over his shoulder at the Black man by the truck. “Weren’t no ID on the Black man.”
“And it definitely ain’t no robbery,” the other young one said. “That one and that one had lots of money in their wallets, damn near six hundred bucks. Nothing at all in the Black’s pockets.”
“It kinda looks like their nuts have been cut off,” a young one said.
“What?”
“They’re scattered all around here.”
“What are?”
“Their nuts. Testicles. All of them got their pants pulled down some. Except for the—the Black man. I tell you it’s sick, like some Charles Manson shit, or somethin’ cultlike.”
