Natchez Burning (47 page)

“I’ll walk you out,” he says, taking his cigar from the edge of the desk and getting to his feet with a cartilaginous creak. Then he leads me up the hall with a shuffling gait that’s painful to watch. When we reach the door to the garage, he squeezes my arm.

“I know you don’t understand my actions, but that’s only natural. More of my friends are dead than alive. You’re in a different stage of life. Don’t forget what I said about Royal and the Knoxes. That’s not your war.”

“How much danger do you think there is?”

“That depends on what you do over the next few days. If you’re really going to drag the Jericho Hole, maybe you ought to get some protection. Have you thought about calling in Daniel Kelly on this?”

“I tried to reach him earlier. He hired on with another security firm, and he’s back in Afghanistan.”

“Well … then arm yourself and keep your eyes open. I’d put a guard on Henry, too. They say the Lord watches over little children and fools, but I think Henry’s about used up his allotment of grace.”

Without quite meaning to, I reach out and hug my father, tight. “Good night, Dad.”

“Good night. I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much.”

I want to tell him I love him, but the lump in my throat prevents it. My mind spins with memories of Will Percy, a Mississippian of legendary accomplishments. A hero of the Great War, a Princeton-educated poet, a graduate of Harvard Law School and founder of the Yale Younger Poets, Will Percy represented everything that was best in an educated southerner. Yet in the crucible of the Great Flood of 1927, after being placed in charge of flood relief for Washington County, this man of honor had utterly failed the black population he hoped to save and done irreparable damage to race relations in Mississippi. Does my father see himself in Will Percy? Were the 1960s my father’s Great Flood? I seem to remember that Will Percy’s greatest mistake was failing to stand up to his own father when it mattered most. I can’t afford to make the same mistake.

As I turn away from him and make my way back to my car, I realize that I don’t know much more than I did before I arrived. But I do know this: today Shadrach Johnson, Sheriff Billy Byrd, and Lincoln Turner declared war on my family.

The first casualty of that war will be Shad Johnson.

TOM LAY IN
bed beside his wife, who until a few minutes ago had been reading a novel whose plot she would forget in a week. Peggy Cage read more than two hundred books a year, her way of coping with the troubling transition from wakefulness to sleep, an insomnia that worsened a little each year. Now she snored softly beside him as she had for more than fifty years.

After Penn left, Tom had stood in the darkness for several minutes, smoking silently. He suspected that Partagas might be the last he would smoke for a long time, maybe forever. Strangely, this didn’t concern him much. Lying to his son had altered something inside him, and not for the better. The moment he’d denied being Viola’s lover, he’d felt as though some deep part of him had generated malignant cells that would proliferate until they killed him. Yet how could he answer such questions? Did he have a duty to confess to his son every last sin of his life? He didn’t think so. Penn would learn the most painful of laws in his own time: If a man lived long enough, his past would always overtake him, no matter how fast he ran or how morally he tried to live subsequently. And how men dealt with that law ultimately revealed their true natures.

Tom stuffed a pillow between his arthritic knees, then turned on his side and listened to Peggy snore. Her regular breathing comforted him. Viola’s death had shaken him so profoundly that he felt detached from the material world, like an astronaut drifting away from his mother ship. This sense of dislocation reminded him of those sleepless weeks forty years ago, when he and Viola had stolen every private moment they could. But he was no longer the man he’d been then. A quarter century ago, surgeons had cut vessels from his legs and grafted them into his coronary arteries, allowing him to survive into his late fifties. Since then, various stents had been inserted to keep him alive, and they’d held up pretty well. But now his heart itself was failing. He sometimes had to take seven or eight nitroglycerine tablets simply to get through the day. If tomorrow morning brought the sheriff to his door … what then?

He’d always known it would come to this. As Penn had said, the past was fighting its way to the surface, like a sunken corpse filling with the gases of decay. Knowing what tomorrow might bring, Tom had allowed himself two shots of bourbon along with his evening cigar, then sat up reading
The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion
. Tonight he had reread the order, given at Gettysburg, that had placed the “University Greys” of Ole Miss—Penn’s alma mater—in the first wave of Pickett’s Charge. Lee’s fatal mistake had doomed every last boy in that unit, and the Confederacy with them. To Lee’s everlasting credit, after he was beaten, he had forbidden any guerrilla activity that would extend the conflict, and had supported Reconstruction.

Tom thought about the Lost Cause myth, and how Jim Crow had grown out of Reconstruction as surely as World War II had grown out of Versailles. In so many ways, the primary issue of the Civil War had never truly been settled, and both North and South were complicit in this tragedy. A hundred years after the dreadful sacrifice at Antietam, President Kennedy had been forced to call out the National Guard to get a single black man admitted to Ole Miss. Kennedy’s assassination a year later had set LBJ on the road to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which opened the way for black leaders to carry their struggle onto Main Street, USA. And God, how white America had fought back—both North and South.

Tom’s life was inextricably bound up with the tumultuous events of that era. His seven-week affair with Viola had begun two days after they had patched up Jimmy Revels, Luther Davis, and the Double Eagles after that highway brawl, and it had ended—truly ended—on the day Frank Knox died. One day prior, Viola had asked Dr. Lucas to switch her to Dr. Ross, leaving Tom crazed with longing and emotionally adrift. When he arrived at the clinic the next morning, he’d been thinking only of himself, with no idea what fate had in store for him. Within sixty minutes, Viola Turner would teach him just how blind a man could be to the world around him, and even to those he loved.

As per Dr. Lucas’s orders, Viola began that day working under Dr. Ross, who was elated by the new arrangement. Tom got Anna Mae Nugent, an older white nurse, as a substitute. He went through the motions with his first five or six patients, then told Anna Mae that he needed to make some calls from his office. He’d just closed the door and removed his stethoscope when he heard a shout from up near reception. A moment later, Anna Mae came barreling up the hall.

“They just brought a man in from Triton Battery!” she cried. “A pallet of batteries fell on him. He’s tore up bad, Doc. Looks like a hospital case, but he was already here, so I told them to put him in the surgery.”

Tom grabbed his stethoscope and walked calmly toward the surgery, his grief over Viola easing with every step. Dr. Lucas was performing an appendectomy at the Jefferson Davis Hospital, but even if he’d been in the clinic, Lucas would have expected Tom to take this case. Dr. Lucas liked nice, clean surgeries scheduled far in advance. Surprise traumas weren’t to his taste. The upshot of all this was that Tom wouldn’t even have to ask for Viola; it was understood that she assisted on all trauma cases that came to the clinic.

“Do you need help, Tom?” Jim Ross asked from a doorway to his right. “Anna Mae said the guy looks bad.”

“No, I’m fine,” Tom said quickly. “I’m just going to stabilize him, then get him transported to the emergency room. I’d appreciate it if you’d call an ambulance for me.”

“Done.”

“Anna Mae?” Tom called. “Pull the man’s record.”

“I’ll have it down there in a second.”

Tom turned the corner and almost plowed into Viola, who was hurrying up the hall from the direction of the surgery.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Who’s with the patient?”

“Two of his friends.”

“No nurse?”

“No.” Viola’s face was taut, her eyes dead. “I’m not treating him.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’m not treating that man.”

“Who is it?” Tom asked, stunned by her defiant tone.

“Frank Knox.”

Suddenly Tom thought he understood. It was Knox and two Klan buddies who had assaulted Jimmy and Luther seven weeks earlier. It was only natural for Viola to hate the man. But refusing to treat him was unacceptable.

“Viola, you have to get in there.”

Her eyes flashed fury. “Anna Mae can do it.”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“Bad enough. Head injury. Cracked ribs, maybe a pneumothorax.”

“Anna Mae can’t handle that! I need you.”

Viola closed her eyes, and he saw then that she’d probably slept as little as he—maybe less.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you don’t have a choice. I don’t, either. Get back there.”

She averted her eyes and muttered something that sounded like curses in French. Then she set her jaw and looked him dead in the eye. “I won’t work with his friends in there,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Kick them out, then! Hell, I’ll do it.”

After another moment, Viola turned and hurried back toward the surgery. Tom was starting after her when Anna Mae tapped him on the shoulder and passed him a manila file labeled
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KNOX.
The label had a blue border, indicating the patient was an employee of the Triton Battery Corporation. Tom flipped open the file and walked slowly back toward the surgery.

As he passed through the little waiting room near the lab, he saw Sonny Thornfield and Glenn Morehouse, the two other men involved in the assault on Jimmy and Luther, pacing the room like expectant fathers. Thornfield was still limping from the bullet wound Luther Davis had given him two months earlier.

“Hey, Doc!” Thornfield called. “Is Frank gonna be okay?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I know something.”

“He’s tore up bad,” Morehouse said. “Half a pallet of batteries hit him.”

“That colored nurse kicked us out,” Thornfield griped.

“That’s what she’s supposed to do. You guys were in the service. You know to stay out of the way. There’s an ambulance coming now, and we’ll be moving him to the hospital right away.”

“Okay, sorry,” Thornfield said. “Do whatever you can, Doc. You can’t let Frank die.”

Tom waved them off and went on to the surgery.

When he opened the door, he froze, stunned by a scene so unexpected that it paralyzed him for a few critical moments. Frank Knox lay on the floor, half propped against a cabinet, his mouth gaping, his face blue. Viola stood five feet away, staring down at Knox like a vengeful goddess watching the death of a mortal who had offended her. In her hand was a 60 cc syringe, one of the big ones Tom used to drain swollen knees, far too large to be of any use in Knox’s situation.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Tom asked in a shocked whisper. He shut the door behind him. “What’s he doing on the floor?”

“Dying,” Viola said in a monotone.

“Fuck!”
He shoved her out of the way and knelt beside Knox, holding his stethoscope to the man’s chest. He heard no heartbeat or breath sounds. “Help me get him up, Viola!”

“No.”

“What!”

Tom frantically examined Knox’s head and torso, searching for the most serious injury. The airway seemed to be open, but Knox had a massive contusion on his skull, which almost certainly meant a concussion. As Tom felt his way along Knox’s chest, he realized that the falling batteries had not only crushed ribs on his left side, but had also torn open his chest wall. Morehouse and Thornfield had no business bringing this man to a clinic. He should have gone straight to the hospital.

“Go check on the ambulance,” Tom ordered.

“No,” Viola said again, her voice almost lethargic.

Tom scrambled to his feet, enraged by her lack of professionalism. He might be an emotional wreck due to their affair, but he wasn’t about to let a patient die because of it, no matter who the man might be.

“
Go check on the ambulance!
” he repeated.

Viola didn’t even look at him. Like a little girl who’d pulled the wings off some insect, she just watched Knox turning blue.

Tom slapped her face. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Viola didn’t respond.

He slapped her again, hard.

At last she looked up, her eyes cold and dead. “He raped me.”

Something curdled in Tom’s stomach. “What?”

“He—raped—me.” Viola’s eyes seemed to focus at last, and they held an accusatory fire that cut through Tom’s bewildered anger. “That man there,” she said. “He raped me. His friends helped. The ones outside. Plus one more. They had a fine old time … yes, sir.”

Tom suddenly felt as though he were trying to think and move underwater. The man on the floor seemed far less important than he had only a moment ago. “When was this?”

“Two nights ago.” Viola cocked her head as though trying to discern some detail of Knox’s mortal suffering.

Tom almost staggered under the rush of awareness that resolved every question that had been torturing him since yesterday. “
Why?
” he asked.

“They couldn’t find Jimmy,” she said in the same monotone. “They did it to flush him out of Freewoods. This one did, anyway. The rest of them just wanted me. You know what that feels like, don’t you? To want me?”

Tom looked down at Knox, who was gaping like a landed fish on the floor. To his surprise, he felt no urge whatever to save the man. Not even in Korea had he felt this emotion, or lack of it. Indeed, in Korea he had helped to save wounded North Korean and Chinese soldiers, despite seeing horrors they had inflicted upon American prisoners. But if what Viola said was true—and Tom had never been more certain of anything—then he wanted Frank Knox to die where he lay.