Hunting Season (35 page)

Whatever questions Barnette had been preparing for, this was not among them. For an instant he was nonplussed. "Vehicle?" he said as if the word were foreign to him.

"Car, truck, motorcycle, John Deere," Anna said to jog his brain.

"What does she want?" his mother demanded shrilly.

"She wants to know what kind of car Doyce had," Raymond said loudly.

"I'm not deaf," the woman snarled.

Raymond gritted his big teeth.

"A
truck. Doyce had a truck," Mama Barnette said. "What else would he have? Damn fool."

Anna wasn't certain whether the last referred to her, Raymond or the deceased. Probably all three. The woman's malice was apparently universal in nature.

"What kind of truck?" Anna asked Raymond.

"Why ... a Chevy I think, older model. It wasn't worth anything." If he harbored any maniacal memories regarding his brother's pickup, he was disguising them brilliantly. Anna pressed on, adhering to the theory of leaving no stone unturned. One never knew what might crawl out from under the most innocent-looking rock.

"Where is it?"

Her tone, harsh because she was tired and because the Barnettes and their creepy house made her uneasy, was wearing away Raymond's good cheer.

"Why?" he demanded. "It's at my place. I used it to haul wood. That's not illegal far as I know."

Realizing she'd alienated him to no purpose, Anna schooled herself to be nice. "No. No. Nothing like that. Sorry if I sounded officious. Occupational hazard." She smiled at him and he smiled back. An image of hostile dogs baring their fangs at one another filtered through Anna's mind. "We just need to know where it was the morning after your brother was killed."

"Here," Barnette said promptly.

"I didn't notice it when we came to tell Mrs. Barnette of the ... incident." Anna was being delicate in the face of the deceased's mother, more out of habit than necessity, she suspected. Mama Barnette, crouched in her chair, eyes sharp, turning her head this way and that, trying to make her failing ears catch every word, seemed more a preying falcon than a grieving mom.

"Doyce kept it parked out back. Mostly we come and go through the kitchen. Nobody much uses the front door except strangers. I came and got it that night, and seeing as Doyce wasn't going to be needing it..."

Raymond must have realized he was sounding callous. He stopped talking altogether and for a half minute—a long silence in a small room choked with heat and people—the only sound was the pop of the fire and the hiss of the radiator.

Claudia plowed into the awkwardness with a tray of cups and a pot of tea, bringing normalcy with her in a welcome cloud.

When the clattering and sugaring had been accomplished, Anna asked, "Is the truck at your place?"

"Yeah. There in the drive."

Anna and Barth would check it out but she doubted it was the truck they were seeking.

"Why the interest in Doyce's truck?"

Anna's brain shifted gears effortlessly. Even if the truck had not been used in an attempted murder, it was of interest.

"If Doyce didn't drive himself the night he was killed, then somebody must have come by here and picked him up. Mrs. Barnette, did you hear or see anyone come to the house that night?" Anna pitched her voice louder but kept the tone conversational. It was the voice she used with people who were hard of hearing but who grew angry if anyone else noticed it.

"I keep to myself," the woman said. "What Doyce did was his business."

"Mama's apartments being at the back of the house like they are, she can't much see or hear folks coming to the front," Raymond explained.

"I see and hear just fine," his mother reproved him. "Doyce parks right out back, there," she pointed a bent and knobby forefinger at a heavily draped window opposite where Anna sat. "I'd of heard if he drove in or out and he did no such thing."

"Did anybody else drive in or out?" Anna asked.

"If they did they didn't come to the back. Everybody who knows us, everybody welcome in our house, knows to come to the back."

Anna had been put in her place and acknowledged it with a nod. The information wasn't without value. If Doyce had not taken his truck and his killer or killers had come to the front of the house to fetch him they were, by Mrs. Barnette's definition, not friends. Yet he knew them and trusted them enough to leave the house and go with them.

"That's helpful, Mrs. Barnette. Thank you."

Barth cleared his throat. Anna's interest in the smashing of the car that she wasn't in was well and good, but he wanted her to move on. Barnette air was not healthy for a black man. Anna didn't wonder why he didn't speak for himself. Barth Dinkins as a man was interested in the treatment of African-Americans, socially, politically, historically. Barth Dinkins as a law-enforcement ranger was interested in results. Anna guessed Raymond might not be as racist as his mother, but the only way a black man would get a satisfactory response out of either of them would be with a baseball bat and maybe not then.

They'd agreed to come at Barnette obliquely regarding the little grave. Anna sipped the excellent tea as she thought about that. old people like to talk about the past. Why this was so, she wasn't old enough to understand, only that it was. "Mrs. Barnette," she began. "Raymond was showing me a picture of one of your ancestors. Papa Doyce. The photo was taken in eighteen sixty-one if I remember right. Eighteen sixty-one?" she looked to the undertaker for confirmation of this unimportant detail simply to include him in the conversation. After all, he was the one the chitchat was designed to lull into a false sense of security.

In that she'd failed utterly, though she couldn't imagine why. He was still perched on the low footstool, his teacup and saucer balanced on knobby knees, but the unexpected bonhomie with which he had ushered them in vanished. Fear replaced it, not of Anna but of his diminutive mother.

Mrs. Barnette's sporadic deafness had not saved him. She'd heard every word Anna'd said and was not pleased.

"I didn't show her the picture, Mama. She went into my office when I was in the shop." Raymond's defense was that of a frightened schoolboy.

Mama Barnette stood up, leaning on the arm of her rocker, glaring at her younger son. Her free arm was raised, arthritis making a claw of the hand. Anna watched in fascination, wondering if she was going to strike Raymond.

The hand lowered harmlessly, and she settled her frail bones back into the cushions of her chair. Plucking the shawl she'd dislodged back into place, she muttered what sounded like "no more brains than a coon."

Since the paternity of the Barnette line was not Anna's eventual goal, she shifted the conversation away from Papa Doyce. "Actually, what I was most interested in," she said brightly as if the bizarre vignette of family dysfunction had not transpired, "was the other fella. In that old photograph there were two men. Papa—your ancestor—and a colored man." Anna hoped Barth would forgive her the now politically incorrect term. She used it intentionally to soothe the old woman. African-American undoubtedly struck her as impossibly uppity. Like Barth, Anna wanted results.

Mother and son glared at her with fixed expressions. Anna was getting the same vibes she'd gotten when she did a night rotation in the psych ward for her emergency medical technician's certification. "Keep an eye on Kenny," a nurse had warned as she went off duty. "When his eyes stop moving and he just sits, he's usually getting ready to have a psychotic break." Kenny was straitjacketed and in a padded cell by 4 a.m. Anna had a loose tooth and the beefy orderly who'd finally been able to restrain him had a savage-looking black eye.

"The colored man in the picture; his name was Unk. Unk something." The brightness of Anna's tone was tarnishing rapidly and she faltered to a stop. "Unk's an odd name," she said just to say something.

"Short for 'uncle'" Barth volunteered.

"Ah," Anna said, "Restin. That was it, Unk Restin. Anyway Ranger Dinkins here has been doing historical research on—"

Mrs. Barnette came out of her chair a second time, the deep well of anger in her overflowing—erupting. The soft mouth, rubbery without dentures, pulled back, exposing bluish gums. Flecks of spittle glistened at the corners.

"Get out. You get out." Mrs. Barnette hissed rather than shouted, vocal cords and lungs papery with age. "Bringing niggers, comin' into my house. You're a disgrace."

Anna had risen but not yet moved. The woman, so small and wrinkled, hair thinning over a baby-pink scalp, struck her as the alpha and omega of human evil; the crone and the babe united in hatred. Like the apocryphal mouse with the cobra, Anna was mesmerized and couldn't make her escape.

Mrs. Barnette tottered forward, the mangy pink slippers shuffling across the carpet like newly resurrected creatures from a B horror movie. "Out. Out." The spit at the corners of her mouth speckled the air with each explosive utterance.

"Take it easy." Anna raised her hands to calm and, if need be, defend. "No offense meant. Thanks for the tea." She backed away until she was stopped by the solid bulk of her field ranger standing in the doorway. "Barth, we'd better be going." From behind her came a grunt of what she assumed was assent, and the reassuring wall of flesh at her back moved away.

Mama Barnette stopped advancing. Shaking with the burden of her years and her rage, she glared at them, the flames of the open fireplace painting a rosy hell behind her.

"Sorry to have upset you," Anna said, then turned and followed Barth, already halfway down the stairs. When she left, Raymond was still sitting, knees as high as his elbows, on the footstool, cup and saucer in hand. Perhaps the Barnette men chose to deal with the dead because, as children, the living they'd known were too difficult to have relationships with.

Cold struck Anna the moment she escaped out onto the porch. Drizzle had turned to sleet and was icing everything on which it fell. After the over-heated, rebreathed air of the upstairs room it felt grand, but too long out and it would chill to the bone.

"You were wise to hang on to your coat," Anna said.

"Instinct," Barth said. For a second Anna thought he was going to offer her his jacket but professionalism overcame southern gallantry and he didn't.

"Jesus, that woman. Why didn't the slaves rise up and do some real damage?"

Barth chose to answer her question seriously. "I've thought about that. Slaves weren't a people. We were from different tribes, different parts of Africa. No common language. No common history. And each plantation was its own little world. The owner the dictator. Slaves couldn't communicate with each other. Revolution has got to have either leaders and communication or a whole bunch of mad people all together, like a mob. American slaves had none of that." He said nothing for a minute, then added, "Just me thinking. No big scholarly study or anything."

"Works for me. Let's get out of here."

"You want to go back and get your coat?"

"I'd rather die of pneumonia."

"Ranger Pigeon." The call stopped Anna just as she was about to duck into the sane space of Barth's patrol vehicle. Claudia trotted out from the shelter of the front porch, exposing her pink sweat suit and unprotected head to the inclement weather. Rolled tight under her arm, safe and dry, was Anna's rain jacket.

"Your wrap," Claudia said and handed the garment over.

"Why didn't you put it over your head, for heaven's sake?" Anna laughed.

"I didn't want it getting all nasty in case you might could be having to sit in it for a while."

"Hop in," Anna said on impulse. "I'd like to ask you a couple questions if I may."

Claudia glanced back at the house, then over to Barth who, either because of good breeding or good training, chose not to get into the car until Anna did. Good backup was tough to provide from a sitting position.

Anna couldn't tell if Claudia was concerned about her employer or didn't want anything to do with law enforcement. In Mississippi, as in the rest of the country, cops whether in green and gray or blue were not the first people to whom an African-American would turn in times of trouble or reach a hand out to help when asked to assist in an investigation.

"Please," Anna said. Barth's car was equipped with a cage, a dense wire screen separating the backseat from the front to both incarcerate criminals and protect the arresting officer. Anna closed her own door and opened the rear door. She slid in first to show Claudia it wasn't a trap. "Come on," she said. "You're getting soaked."

Claudia hesitated a moment and Anna thought they'd lost her. A decision was made and the woman bundled herself in beside Anna. In a nervous reflex, when she heard the door latch, she reached for the handle.

"They're disabled," Anna explained. "But I think we can trust Barth to let us out when we're ready." She smiled reassuringly and Claudia settled. "Thanks for bringing me my coat. I didn't have the nerve to go back for it."

Claudia laughed at the admission of cowardice. "I heard. When that old woman gets the wind up, she's a holy terror."

"Do you know what set her off?"

"The Missus has a big old well of nastiness. She's been some worse just lately. A few days back when I come over she'd wore herself out somehow. Clothes were muddy, she was all over scrapes and her old hands was so sore she couldn't hardly lift a cup. She'd been rampaging but wouldn't say as to what. Since, she's been just hardly fit to live with. When she gets on a tear, it could be most anything. Her main most hatefulness gets let out when she gets on the subject of blacks—" she shot an apologetic glance toward Barth. His face was impassive, unreadable. "African-Americans," she corrected herself. Claudia was older than she looked. Closer to fifty than the mid-thirties where Anna had pegged her on first meeting.