Southern Exposure, page 21
Stoney knew Elsie Fenton was only mouthing the general consensus of the town. He babbled some excuse about work and was about to leave, when he noticed the smug satisfaction in her eyes, her assurance that she was right about Maum Chrish. It was a look he had seen, without really acknowledging it, all his life. It meant: we don’t say it these days but we all know “one of them” can’t be trusted. It was a visual password shared even by enlightened Southerners, sometimes without their realizing it. No one confronted it, so it never really went away.
“But why?” Stoney asked, staring at the woman who lived beside Marian Davis. Did Elsie Fenton secretly include Marian in “one of them”? “Why would Maum Chrish kill Sarah? She’s never hurt anybody before. Is it just because she’s black?”
Elsie Fenton looked as though she’d been slapped. “You have no cause to speak to me that way, Stoney McFarland. I knew your grandmother, and I know your parents taught you better than that.”
The older woman marched off and Stoney turned back to Sarah’s house, wishing for the first time that he and Anna had just stayed in Washington. Traffic and pollution and noise were almost easy to contend with—when compared to the subterranean precepts of a small Southern town.
While Anna McFarland was avoiding the swamps these days, Seth Von Hocke was not. This was the summer he would always remember, that brief page of childhood wherein he explored the world totally independent of the known and the understood. For every child there is this season of genesis, when the patterns of personal evolution are etched onto the psyche in a secret code the adult spends a lifetime trying to unscramble. So Seth ran and jumped and swam and swirled in the full energy of his own consciousness. Still young enough to be attracted to difference rather than repelled, he was making love to the exotic, roiling in that which went beyond the known confines of his world.
Almost every day he tied his bamboo fishing pole to the back of his bicycle and peddled down the swamp road. He always stopped in the same spot, unstrapped his pole and his can of worms, and disappeared into the woods. The daylight swamps no longer frightened him, and he knew the best fishing was where the water barely moved. So he would settle down by the black water, within sight of her shack. His first visit had been to test himself, to assure himself of his courage now that he was almost a teenager. Most days now he’d munch on an apple and lie on the moist riverbank almost carelessly, staring up at the tree-framed sunlight.
The first time she had appeared she acted like he wasn’t even there, she didn’t yell at him to leave or anything. Sometimes he didn’t see her at all. Once or twice, though, even when she saw him sitting there, she came out of her house and lifted off her robelike dress and dove naked into the dark river. Now it wasn’t any big deal. When she climbed out of the water, sometimes she would kneel in front of the fire and sing or pray. Later she’d put on another robe, this one always white, and put something on the spit over the fire. Soon he’d smell sizzling fish; she had two lines that stayed in the water all the time. Occasionally she’d motion him over to eat. They rarely spoke. Seth liked that. With most old people you had to talk, you felt weird around them if you didn’t say something, but not with her.
This morning’s sun was a brilliant ball of hot wax almost dripping onto the live oaks, the fickle sun that these days was frequently mummified with haze before ten o’clock. Inside the shelter of the trees, where Seth set his pole down and baited his hook, it was cool and protected. He leaned against a tree and threw his line in, looking around for her briefly. He fished for a while. Everyone in town was afraid of her now, even Donny, who kept asking where Seth was going every day. Seth grinned. He enjoyed doing something that scared Donny.
In a few minutes Seth heard her behind him and he turned around. She sat down on the ground and waved him over. He propped his pole between two stones on the riverbank and walked toward her. She was sitting on the ground and had the cards spread out in front of her. Seth gazed at them. He loved it when she played with the cards; they were so bright and interesting, not like any playing cards he’d ever seen before. He even liked the unfamiliar words under the pictures that she’d taught him in one of their rare verbal exchanges—Hieroplant and Magus were his favorites. And Lust. When he asked her to explain it, she didn’t act the least bit embarrassed, just said it straight out like it was nothing at all.
Maum Chrish dealt several of the cards, placing them side by side in three rows. She frowned and gathered them up again and reshuffled. The same card resurfaced at the end. Seth didn’t like the look on her face when she saw it. He no longer feared the great black woman, but he did respect her. She dealt again. The same card appeared. Seth looked at it and asked what it meant but she put her finger to her lips and reshuffled. When the same card turned up again, he studied it. It had a big eye on its top and what looked like flames of a fire at the bottom. “The tower,” she said finally, her singsong voice very low. “The New Aeon.”
Maum Chrish got up and went back inside her cabin. Soon Seth heard her singing, although it really sounded more like a moan. Some days she was more interesting than others. About a week ago, she had unnerved Seth to the point that he stayed away for several days. He had come out late in the afternoon for a change, and there’d been some other people there, cinnamon brown girls in white dresses and red scarves and this old black man who just sat and beat a drum all afternoon. When Seth first arrived, they were in a circle around the fire and this huge drawing had been made in front of the fire with sand and they were sorta dancing around it. When they saw him, the girls looked worried but Maum Chrish shook her head, like she was saying he was okay, and then the girls just went back to dancing.
Ignoring the gathering, Seth sat down on the riverbank and baited his hook and threw in his line, but out the corner of his eye he watched the girls—he noticed there were now some guys dancing too. But you could tell Maum Chrish was in charge. The drum was getting louder and louder; two men produced similar drums and knelt down beside the fire and were helping the old guy with the drumming. Maum Chrish was talking, staring into the fire, but Seth couldn’t understand a word she said. Suddenly the extra drums stopped. Next a sharp beat sounded on only the old man’s drum. Maum Chrish started shaking, her whole body swaying and trembling, like a snake was crawling up her spine; she cried out and crouched low and all the others watched her, even the young goat tied up by the house.
Abruptly Maum Chrish shot up again and whirled around the clearing, reaching out to the others with her hands. Everybody got excited when she touched their hands. She moved faster and faster, turned and dipped and sailed back and forth. Then—suddenly—she stepped through the fire. Seth cringed, but the black woman didn’t cry out. Soon the others handed her bags of food and she ate as though starved. Then she whirled around some more while everyone danced and called out to her. In a moment the old drummer stopped, went over and got the goat, and led the animal into the clearing. Everyone quietly gathered around it. Seth saw Maum Chrish lean over the goat, speaking to it softly and petting it. She raised her right hand. The other people moved in closer. And the knife descended.
Seth heard the cry of the goat as he ran toward his bike. The next day he waited to see if parts of the animal would appear on anyone’s doorstep. When nothing unusual happened, he decided he’d go back out to the swamps again. Nothing like that had happened again. It was like today. He lay on the damp grass after Maum Chrish took the cards away and he fished, but Maum Chrish didn’t reappear and he didn’t catch anything. Sometimes she came out of her house and just sat on the steps and read books all day. But even when she wasn’t friendly, he liked being here. Nothing was expected of him; it was like being invisible. Sometimes he wondered if the black girl and white guy would ever come out here again, but he never saw them. Of course, he always went home before dark; he was very careful about that.
An hour later Seth picked up his pole and headed back home. On his way out to the road he noticed another set of tire tracks besides his. Made by a 10-speed with smaller tires. Sorta like that fancy Raleigh Donny had.
Things did not add up to Lou Brockhurst. He had talked to dozens of people now, and still nothing made sense. An elderly woman reportedly liked by everyone had been brutally murdered and there was no motive, no suspect, and no murder weapon. There was a guy who’d wanted her store, a guy who’d stolen from her when he was a kid, a guy who was in the right place at the right time, and who knew how many bums who’d been invited home for a hot meal? And that wasn’t even counting all the migrant workers passing through here on their way to Florida. Yet the whole town believed the murderer was an elderly black woman, a trifle off the beam, who had killed for no reason other than voodoo maliciousness. Brockhurst sighed and glanced surreptiously at the portly man in his twenties who was sitting across from him sweating profusely. The detective wanted J. T. Turner to sit a few more minutes, so he turned his attention back to Maum Chrish.
He didn’t buy this voodoo nonsense; if the woman was into human sacrifice for cult reasons, she and her people wouldn’t have left the body behind. Yet why did she have the Hebrew alphabet on her wall, wasn’t that just too much of a coincidence? (If the town knew about that, they’d really be ready to march her off to a hanging tree.) Had Maum Chrish and Sarah Rothenbarger known each other, had there been something between them that ultimately resulted in murder? Brockhurst had questioned every neighbor who lived near the victim. He reached down and flipped open the small spiral notebook resting on his knee, unconsciously massaging his aching right foot. He’d talked to Elsie Fenton, Harriet Setzler, Mr. and Mrs. Loadholt, Douglas Kendall, the schoolteacher Marian Davis. Brockhurst paused, staring at the last name. Good-looking black woman living there with all those ancient white people, odd. He shook his head again. Not one of them, though, had known of any connection between Maum Chrish and the victim, not one of them had seen or heard anything that night (except Harriet Setzler, whose memory was suspect at best). Not one of them knew of any grudges against the dead woman.
Brockhurst rubbed his eyes. He hated cases in small towns; either the locals talked too much and said nothing or they just said nothing. Could be five or six minidramas going on and they were so tight nobody’d say a word. Scared as they might be, that code was sacred. You might hate ’em worse than taxes, but in this part of the world you didn’t criticize your kin or your neighbors in public. Especially to the law. Which made Stoney McFarland rather unusual. That man had obviously been trying to tell him something without saying it straight out. As a result, yesterday Brockhurst had hung around the only restaurant in town, a diner really, until Heyward Rutherford showed up for lunch and the two men had had a long chat. The town council president was a pompous son of a bitch, Brockhurst had decided, but no killer.
For a moment Brockhurst studied J. T. Turner, then cleared his throat. “Mr. Turner, I’m going to ask you again. Did you know Sarah Rothenbarger? Did you ever meet her?”
The sullen, fat man shook his head no, his guarded eyes furtively searching the corners of the room. He was being detained in an examining room of the Ashton County Law Enforcement Center, a bare eight-by-twelve rectangle of space containing only a wooden table and four chairs.
“Can you tell me, then, why you had to be brought in under restraint? Why you tried to run away from the two officers who picked you up?”
Silence. Then, “I told ’em all I know before. I didn’t kill nobody.”
Brockhurst stood up. He and Turner were both short and he wanted to loom over the other man. “Why were you afraid of talking to me?”
Nothing. But the round hulking shoulders twitched.
The SLED agent took out a pack of chewing gum, selected just the right stick, and drew it out deliberately. “If you wanted to look guilty, you sure did a good job.” He paused a half-beat and added, “Obviously you wanted to avoid being questioned again. Afraid you’d forget your story?”
Turner’s eyes narrowed and he seemed about to protest; then he stopped and said in a low guttural twang, “I ain’t done nothin’.”
Brockhurst sat back down. He let Turner sit a few more minutes. He wanted the questioning of the suspect to drag on, and he kept his voice deliberately controlled, deadly serious, throughout. “You know, someone saw you in Essex. Before this murder. That other time you were there.”
“Who seen me?”
Turner’s eyes were wide open now. The detective added quickly, “When you were there before, somebody saw you. Saw you talking to Sarah Rothenbarger.”
Turner jumped to his feet. “I ain’t never talked to her.”
“But you were in Essex before. Weren’t you?”
“I—” Turner stared around him for an avenue of escape.
“What were you doing there? Did you break in somewhere?”
Silence.
“You heard about her, didn’t you? About how she took in drifters and gave them a meal. You remembered it, didn’t you? And when you went back, you set out for an easy mark. An old lady who’d let you in the house. Didn’t you?”
“I wanna lawyer,” Turner snarled.
The Columbia policeman let out a long sigh. He’d almost had him. Damn. Oh well. That Turner had waived his rights this long had been too good to be true. But at least he’d got this much. Hell of a good hunch, if he did say so himself. He knew who Turner was now. This was a guy who made a living hitting small towns, picking up car stereos and family silver, moving on to the next town before an investigation even got under way. The family silver ended up in an antique store five states away. (He had to have a car somewhere.) Probably the sucker hadn’t meant to kill her. He’d gone back to Essex the second time because he remembered her—an easy mark, had to have money because she owned a store. But it got away from him this time. He screwed up. Then he holed up like an animal, probably ditched the loot and the knife. But why stick around to be caught?
Three hours later, after a court-appointed attorney had been secured for Turner, Brockhurst questioned the suspect again. But this time, under advice, Turner said almost nothing. Brockhurst spoke with Sheriff Buck Henry and they agreed they could detain Turner for a few days, despite the howling of his attorney, but not for very long—they had to find hard evidence soon or he’d walk again. Meanwhile, the Ashton sheriff gave Brockhurst a copy of the rap sheet detailing Turner’s petty theft conviction in Georgia.
Back at his motel that evening, Brockhurst showered and changed his clothes and then drove out to Fairfield Plantation for dinner. The cool Federal mansion was soothing and Brockhurst eagerly took on a thick New York strip as he watched the sun set over the Salkehatchie River and its attendant acres of pine trees. As he ate, though, the case continued to tug at him, like a child at his sleeve wanting everything explained. Walking back to his state car an hour later, he concluded that it was only a matter of time before the pieces fell into place. J. T. Turner was a guy who would break. Easily. And at this point, Turner looked like the surest bet. Just a little more time. Maybe the murder that had shaken this quiet town had come from the outside in the form of J. T. Turner. Or maybe it hadn’t. Brockhurst was pleased with his interrogation of Turner today—but the jury would be out a little longer yet.
Although the relaxing meal had refreshed him, the long drive back to Essex ruined his mood. He was always edgy until a case was perfectly clear to him. There were no lights along the two-lane road and the live oaks crouched above him like vultures, each branch reaching out a tentacled claw. He smiled at his imagination, next thing he’d be believing in ghosts and hex dolls, but he drove faster nonetheless. He agreed with those who found this part of South Carolina rather sinister—it was a far cry from the sloping foothills of the Up Country where he’d been raised, or from the open white beaches of the coastline. This interior of swamps and history, of sated cities and moldering small towns, was a chasm between the piedmont and the coast; it looked like quicksand on maps, a dangerous bog from which some never emerged.
So far, this June had not been the best summer vacation for Marian Davis. Something was out of sync, off balance. One hot midnight she lay back against the pillows of her bed and stared at the four walls. Perhaps she should plan a trip, spend the rest of the summer in Charleston. She should definitely decide whether to break her teaching contract for next year. It was summer, she could read, landscape her garden, go to New York and see some shows, she could do anything. Except she had no desire to do any of it.
This damn murder. She got up and crossed to her window and looked through the miniblinds. She wished it were over with. She wished they would find the killer and be done with it. She wished it would rain. She wished people like Anna McFarland and Lou Brockhurst would stop asking so many questions. She wished she could run away and never come back here.
She gazed back out at the street again. This time she noticed something. Moving. On the sidewalk. A shadow? Instinctively she froze. Who would be out there in the middle of the night? From this window she had only a partial view of the sidewalk but she was certain someone was standing in front of her house, just out of view.
Marian grabbed the wand and twisted the blinds shut. She stood trembling for a second, thinking; then she flew down the hall. In her living room, without turning on a light, she twisted open the blinds in her front window.
The sidewalk was empty.
Had she imagined it? Chiding herself for being silly, Marian strode back down the hall to her bedroom and climbed back into bed. She turned off her bedside light. Abruptly she got up, crossed to the window, and moved a slat of the blinds to see outside. Nothing. The shadow was gone.
She eased into bed and gazed across the room at the picture of Alma. She wished she had a picture of her mother, some tangible symbol that Lonnie Davis had lived and given birth to her. But of course there were no pictures because Lonnie had feared cameras, had believed the old superstition that a camera steals a portion of the soul. Harriet had tried to take a picture of Lonnie behind the Thanksgiving turkey the first year Alma helped with the meal, and Lonnie had threatened to quit on the spot, said she wouldn’t even serve the meal if Miz Harriet made her do it. Harriet had relented, the meal had gone as planned, and there was no old black-and-white snapshot of a cleaning woman turned cook for a special occasion. On second thought, maybe that was just as well.
