The trees, p.4
The Trees, page 4
“I guess don’t mention that,” Jetty said. “Well, I reckon we don’t need them special detectives no more. We found our body.”
“Is that who we run into coming out of the station?” Brady asked.
“City cops,” the sheriff said. “Slicker than snot on a doorknob. Smart-asses. Think we’re just rubes.”
“Want us to show them the way out of town?” Brady asked. “Make sure they stay away?”
“Shut up, Brady.”
“How did that dead guy get here?” Delroy asked.
Jetty didn’t answer. “Damn it.” The sheriff marched back into the house and to the bathroom. Delroy and Brady were on his heels.
“What is it, Sheriff?” Brady asked.
“Did either of you check the nigger for a pulse?”
“I didn’t,” Brady said. “You, Delroy?”
“Nope. Scared to touch him.”
Jetty kneeled next to the tub, his knee settling into the blood on the floor. He put his fingers to the Black man’s throat.
“Nothing. This man is ice cold.”
“He’s really dead, then,” Delroy said.
“He’s really, really dead.”
15
Jim Davis put away his cell phone. “That was Sheriff Red Jetty of Money, Mississippi, calling to tell us that they have recovered the missing Afro-American individual’s body and that our help is no longer required.”
“Did he say where they found him?” Ed asked.
“Nope.”
“Did he say whether the man is dead or alive?”
“Nope.”
“Do you want to swing by the station and check this out before we drive all the way back to Hattiesburg?”
“Yep.”
Ed pushed his half-eaten pie away. “Me too.”
Jim put down a generous tip. “Bye, Dixie. Thanks.”
“Y’all never did tell me your names,” Gertrude said.
“That’s Ed. I’m Jim.”
Gertrude nodded. “Come back.”
“You’re going to mess around and get yourself shot,” Ed said once they were on the street. “She could have some crazy-ass husband or boyfriend. You know, a stupid redneck with a gun.”
“That’s redundant.”
16
The Doctor Reverend Fondle fell to arthritic knees and leapt into prayer when he saw the second murder scene, especially the dead Black man. “Oh, Gawd Jesus, I knows you have a plan, but us poor White mortals is scared to death down here with this strange nigger you keep sending. Is he an omen, oh Lawd, a sign, or is he the devil, and should we dismember him and burn his body right away? Jesus Gawd Almighty, it’s clear that you ain’t aimed to take the best of us, givin’ you chose to take Wheat and Junior Junior, but still we’re all terrified down here. So, a clear sign would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Lawd, for yer time and consideration. Amen.”
“Are you done yet?” Jetty asked.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
“Are you sure they’re both dead?” the sheriff asked. “You did examine them this time, touch them?”
“Yes, I did. And yes, they are dead.”
“Put them in the wagon so we can get out of here and leave this family to their grief,” Jetty said.
Delroy and Brady covered Wheat’s body, face and all, and zipped him up tight out of respect for the family. Still, Charlene, the four kids, and Granny C stood and sat on the porch and cried as he was carried past them. They had only the one body bag and saw no reason to cover the Black man, even though he was so gruesomely disfigured about his neck and head. The sight made the children and even Charlene scream in horror, but Granny C made no sound whatsoever. She froze there in her chair and stared off into nowhere like a mannequin, her lower lip slack, her fingers clamped around the cracked and split vinyl of her wheelchair armrests.
“Granny C, y’all awright?” Charlene asked.
“Granny C, Granny C,” the children called to her.
Charlene shook her. “Granny C, snap out of it.” She slapped the old woman across the face. Nothing. Charlene shouted out into the yard, “Reverend Doctor Fondle! Reverend Doctor Fondle!”
“Yes?”
“It’s Granny C, there’s something wrong with her.”
Fondle climbed back onto the porch and examined the old woman, took her pulse, and looked into her eyes.
“Is she dead?” Charlene asked.
“She’s alive. Unresponsive, but alive.” He looked at her pupils. “What do you call her?”
“We calls her Granny C,” Lulabelle said.
“Granny C?” Fondle said. “It’s like she’s in shock. But why wouldn’t she be? Her son was just brutally murdered and castrated by a strange nigger who was not only presumed to be dead, but in fact was found dead just feet from her son’s body.” He paused and looked at Charlene. “You do see what I mean. Take her inside and put her in bed and see if she’s better tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Charlene said.
17
“I told you I don’t need you boys,” Sheriff Jetty said when he walked into the station to find Ed Morgan and Jim Davis. “We found our missin’ dead man, and this time there ain’t no question about him being dead.”
“Just for the purposes of our report,” Ed said, “can you tell us where you found the body?”
Jetty looked around the room. “Come into my office.” Jim and Ed followed him in. “Close that door.”
Jim did.
Jetty looked out his window, then closed the blinds. “We found him at the scene of another homicide. Terrible, just like the other one. He was grippin’ the balls of this victim, just like last time.”
“You know that this man is the killer?” Ed asked.
“Who else could it be? He was holding another man’s testicles in his fist. This time it was in a bathroom in the family’s house. One door, no window. Wife, children, and mother in the home at the time.”
“Did anybody see him enter the house?” Jim asked.
“No. Ain’t nobody seen shit.”
“If no one saw him, why couldn’t someone else have been there too, also unobserved?” Jim asked.
“I don’t know, Special Deeetective.”
“You know how this is going to go, Sheriff,” Ed said. “We’re going to drive all the way back to Hattiesburg just to have our superiors tell us to come back here and try to sort this out.”
“Actually, I don’t have any superiors,” Jim said.
“You two are real funny,” Jetty said. “So what are you telling me? You want to see the evidence?”
“And the scenes,” Ed said.
“Why didn’t you just say? One of the scenes has been cleaned up already, though none too good, I’m sure,” Jetty said.
“We’ll take a look anyway,” Jim said.
“You’re serious about this.” Jetty lit a cigarette. “You know this here is Money, Mississippi?”
“What are you saying, Sheriff?” Ed asked.
“This ain’t the city. Hell, this ain’t even the twenty-first century. It’s barely the twentieth, if you know what I mean. It’s your business, though. I’ll have one of my deputies go with you.” He picked up his phone. “Hattie, tell Delroy to come in here.”
“We’d prefer not to have your man with us,” Jim said. “No offense. We tend to work better alone.”
“You do, do you?” Jetty stared at them. “Have you two been listening to me? This here is M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-P-P-I.”
“We don’t need him,” Ed said. “But I liked the song.”
The door opened and Delroy poked his head in.
“Never mind,” the sheriff said. “Go out and patrol something. Tell Brady to set up a speed trap at the bridge.”
“Yessir.”
Hattie opened the door immediately after it had been closed. “Reverend Doctor Fondle on the phone. Sounds upset.”
Jetty picked up the phone, listened, then put it down.
“What is it?” Ed asked, looking at the sheriff’s face.
“That was our esteemed coroner,” Jetty said. “Seems we’ve lost our Negro man again.”
18
Charlene Bryant somehow managed to get her crying children to sleep that night. Granny C was still in her bed, staring blankly toward the cracked and peeling ceiling, muttering something over and over again that none of them could make out.
Charlene washed her face and brushed her teeth at the kitchen sink. She could not yet bring herself to use the one bathroom. She’d had the kids pee in the yard, and now they were buried under quilts. She prepared herself to go back and scrub the tiles and tub with bleach, though she already knew that the grout would be forever stained pink, not that it was clean, but at least it wasn’t pink.
“Oh Wheat, what the fuck happened in there?” she said. Kneeling like she was on the porch, somebody might have thought she was praying, she imagined, but she was talking to Wheat, even though he was dead. He probably heard her just as well when he was alive. “Did that Negro man kill you? Did you kill him? Did you know him? Oh why did he have your nuts in his hand? That’s what I really want to know. Were you secretly funny and he was your lover? I won’t judge you, just let me know. That possibility makes you a much more interestin’ person. I wish I’d knowed that side of you. Granny C looked like she knowed that man when they toted him out. She all froze up now. Did she know you was gay? She never let on iffen she did. It won’t be hard carrying on without you, so don’t worry none. I mean you never brought home a dime and you never cleaned a dish or changed a shitty diaper. But still, you was a warm body in my bed. Not one I ever touched lately, but still, you was in it. I should have suspected you was gay by the way you liked to watch that wrasslin’ on the television. Is it true what they say ’bout them Black men? Don’t answer that. Oh Wheat, where you at now? Oh Lawd, please take care of my Wheat, though I have my doubts whether he’s even with you. And please don’t let that blood stain the tub tiles. I don’t mind the pink in the grout, but we gots to sit in that tub. Amen.” Turned out it was a prayer. She stood up and slapped off her knees.
Bleach and brush in hand, she returned to the bathroom.
19
The Reverend Doctor Fondle paced the uneven sidewalk in front of his office, his head bobbling as he muttered to himself. He looked up to see Sheriff Jetty getting out of his car. The men from the MBI had followed the sheriff in their own car.
Fondle started talking immediately. “I examined that ni—” He checked himself. “I even listened to that man’s chest with my stethoscope. Not a sound, not a goddamn—excuse me, Lawd—sound. Jetty, you saw me do it. Then we put him in the truck. Brady and Delroy put him in the back of the wagon. Jethro closed the door. I didn’t stop once on my way here. Dill was driving and I was sittin’ right beside him.”
“Get to it, man,” Jetty said.
“We opened it up, the wagon, Dill and me, and what do you think we found?” Fondle asked. “Well? What do you think?”
“Just say it,” Jetty said.
“Just one bagged body. I even looked in the bag to see if they wasn’t two of them inside it. But no, there was just one dead body, a dead White body. The ni—the Black man is missing. Again.”
“And you didn’t stop?” Jetty asked.
Fondle shook his head. “And your deputy was behind me the whole way. He can tell you we didn’t stop.”
“Jethro!” the sheriff called.
“Sheriff?”
“You was behind the van the whole way?”
“Yes, sir. Most of it, anyway. A freight train separated us for just a minute or so, but it wasn’t a long one.”
“All right.”
“Fondle, these men are from the MBI,” Jetty said. “They come up from Hattiesburg to help us find our missing body.” Jetty looked at Ed and Jim. “They tell me they is special detectives.”
“Well, I hope so,” Fondle said.
“Show us the truck,” Ed said.
“It’s right there.” Fondle pointed.
Ed and Jim walked away from Fondle and Jetty to the old Ford Econoline van. “This is some crazy shit,” Jim said to his partner.
“You’re right about that,” Ed said.
“And I got to say these inbred redneck motherfuckers scare the hell out of me,” Jim whispered.
They stared at the van, the inside of it, the doors, under it. Jim closed and reopened the doors, examining the mechanism and the hinges. The rear doors not only stuck and had to be yanked open but shook the whole truck, and were loud with creaking and clunking. “No way anybody got into this without the driver or passenger knowing.”
“Plus the deputy was following.”
“Sheriff Jetty,” Jim called.
Jetty walked over.
“Did you get photos of the Black man at the second crime scene?” Jim asked. “Are you sure it was the same man?”
“It was the same man,” Jetty said, irritated. “Jethro, grab your camera and show these special detectives the pictures of the scene.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jethro trotted to his car, opened the rear door, retrieved his digital camera case, and brought it over.
“Show them the pictures,” Jetty said.
Jim and Ed looked over Jethro’s shoulder as he fumbled with the camera. “Sorry, that was my girlfriend.”
“Congratulations,” Jim said.
Jethro scrolled through the pictures. “That there is Wheat Bryant. You can see he’s dead, throat’s kinda ripped out by the barbed wire. That must hurt like hell, don’t you think? Blood on the floor, the toilet.”
“Very thorough,” Ed said.
“Thank you,” Jethro said. “And here he is right here.”
Ed nodded to Jim. “Same man.”
“What y’all thinking?” Jethro asked the detectives. “I just want you to know I ain’t like a lot of folks around here.”
“Is that right?” Jim asked.
“I went to junior college.”
“Good for you,” Ed said.
“Know what I think?” Jethro said.
“I should hope not,” Jim said.
“What?”
“Don’t mind him,” Ed said. “Tell me what you think, Jethro. Jethro, right?”
Jethro looked back to see if anyone was listening in. “I think we’re all suffering from mass hysteria around here. You see, there weren’t no Black man at either crime scene. We’re just so afraid of Black people in this county that we see them everywhere. I mean there’s Black men all around, but not dead ones. Not like this dead one.”
“How do you explain the pictures?” Ed asked.
“I ain’t ironed that out.”
“Good theory, though,” Jim said. “You keep working on it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The detective watched Jethro walk away and join Jetty and Fondle.
“What are we doing with our lives?” Jim asked.
“Beats me.”
Inside, Dill had already learned who the two Black men were and seemed willing to help. He also didn’t seem impressed one way or the other by the fact that they were Black or from the MBI. He appeared, more than anything, to be delighted to have someone not from Money to talk to.
“The son of a bitch is a fuckin’ ghost,” Dill said. “That’s all there is to it, a fucking ghost.”
“Why do you say that?” Ed asked.
Dill gave him an incredulous look and then deemed the question unworthy of any answer.
Jim pointed with an open hand down the hallway. “Why would a ghost need to push the door open?”
“You an expert on ghosts?” Dill asked.
“Point taken,” Jim said.
“Did you go to junior college too?” Ed asked.
“Three years at Auburn. Jethro thinks that junior college is college. Hell, some people think that Auburn is college. I came back to this godforsaken shithole of a town because of my mother.”
“Sick?” Ed asked.
“She’s fat. Too fat. It takes a toll.” Dill looked at Ed’s girth.
Ed cleared his throat.
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” Jim asked, sort of changing the subject. “I mean, in real life?”
“Yeah, yesterday and today.”
“Before that?”
“Nope.”
“Who discovered the body missing?” Ed asked.
“Fondle,” Dill said.
“What do you think of Fondle?” Jim asked.
Dill looked back over his shoulder to see if anyone was in earshot. “Crazier than a one-winged fly.”
“That’s very poetic,” Jim said.
“I was a creative writing major at Auburn. Poetry. I always wanted to be a Beat poet. Wrong generation. Now I stick dead people in drawers. I suppose it’s the same thing once you get down to it.”
Ed and Jim exchanged glances.
“Thanks, Dill,” Ed said.
Dill left them in the hallway.
“Okay, no more catfish for me,” Ed said.
“There’s nothing to see here,” Jim said.
20
When Jim and Ed parked in front of Daisy Milam’s split-level house, the first thing they saw was a boy and a girl chasing a piglet. Daisy was sitting on the wooden steps of the front porch holding a Fig Newton to the mouth of her disinterested toddler. Her eyes were sunken, hollow. Her hair was a mess. She was wearing a blue halter top. She looked up at the two approaching men.
“Who the hell is y’all?” she said.
“We’re policemen,” Ed said. “Mrs. Milam?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Ed said.
Jim nodded and watched the pig and children run past.
“Ma’am, we’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. Would that be all right with you?”
“What the hell else I got to do?” she said. “My Junior Junior is dead. Kilt in his own home. Them people can say what they want, but Junior Junior was a good man. He was a good daddy to these here younguns.” She watched the children tackle the piglet. “Don’t y’all hurt that pig none.” Then, to the detectives, “He didn’t have no money or a lick of sense, but he was a good man.”
