Natchez Burning (70 page)

A lot of grown men and boys had cried that week. Others had cussed a friend, punched a stranger, or spat in some cracker’s mashed potatoes before they served his plate. But despite this anger, a deep and shameful fear had been born in the hearts of many black men in the parish that night. That fear had ultimately driven Sleepy away, all the way to Detroit. For if the Klan could kill a respected businessman like Albert Norris and get away with it, what chance did he have?

Sleepy thought about Albert as he watched the red glow rising in the
Beacon
’s door. Albert had given Sleepy his nickname because of the perpetual haze in his eyes—a haze induced by the reefer Sleepy and his cousins regularly ferried up from their auntie’s house in New Orleans. Sleepy had always wanted to work for Albert, like Pooky did, but Albert didn’t tolerate drug use among his employees, even though it was epidemic among the musicians he served. Still, Sleepy had loved the old man (“old” to the boy he’d been then, anyway—Sleepy was now ten years older than Albert had been when he died). Somehow, Albert had sensed that Sleepy had a tough home life, and always had a kind word for him. He’d also made sure that Sleepy stayed employed as a musician, usually with road bands.

When he wasn’t on the road, Sleepy had lived part of the year in New Orleans and part over in Wisner, a few miles from Ferriday, but he often slept in the attic of a cousin who lived near Albert’s store. That was where he’d been on the night he heard the explosion that changed his life. Running out into the empty road, he’d seen three white men leap from the window of the burning store. One had been the man whose name was now painted on the door of the truck parked in front of the burning newspaper building. In 1964, talking to the police was not an option for a black boy, and Sleepy had left town as soon as he could. But not before the next afternoon, when Pooky had come to him wild-eyed with terror, crying that the Klan was combing the parish for him with dogs. Sleepy had known Pooky was fooling with a white girl, and he’d warned him about it, but Pooky wouldn’t listen. The fool had pussy on the brain and couldn’t think straight. And back in those days, white pussy was a powerful drug—a lot more powerful than the weed Pooky filched from Sleepy’s stash when he thought his friend wasn’t looking.

The furnace glow from the
Beacon
’s door pulled Sleepy’s gaze like the fires of hell. Waves of heat distorted the air above the building.
Why are they doing this?
he wondered.
They already stabbed poor Henry Sexton.
Guilt made Sleepy squirm in the seat of his truck. He knew the reporter had been looking all over the parish for him. He thanked God Pooky’s mother had kept her promise and held his name back.

Sleepy looked down at his cell phone and thought about dialing 911. It would be so easy. All he’d have to do was report that a Royal Oil truck had smashed open the door of the
Beacon,
and some men had set the building on fire. He wouldn’t even have to mention Old Man Royal. But he
could
…

“And then what?” Sleepy wondered aloud. He could still see the hawk-eyed white devil he’d known as a boy. And if Brody Royal could order a hit on a famous white reporter like Henry Sexton—even today—what chance did a retired electrician’s helper have?

“Ain’t nothing changed down here,” Sleepy mumbled. “That motherfucker still owns this town. That’s why he’s burnin’ up the newspaper like he don’t care who comes along. He
don’t
. He don’t have to.”

At bottom, this was the reason Sleepy hadn’t contacted Henry Sexton. Because in spite of all the progress since the bad old days, nobody could protect you from bastards like Brody Royal. Henry Sexton couldn’t even protect himself. Oh, they’d sing your praises at your funeral for doing the noble thing, but you’d still be dead.

Sleepy touched the baseball card he’d taped to his dashboard before driving down from Michigan. The card bore the image of Gates Brown, one of the black stars of the 1968 Detroit Tigers team, which had won the World Series. Sleepy had actually made it to three of those games, and not much in life had come close to the joy he’d felt there. Feeling a part of that season was what had finally enabled him to tolerate living in the North. Ever since, he’d carried the Gates Brown card as a good luck charm, and it had often brought him peace during tough times.

“I could throw my cell phone in the river,” he thought aloud. “After I called 911.”

Then Sleepy realized that he knew too little about technology to feel safe even if he did that. Brody Royal probably knew people who could backtrack a 911 phone call and tell him exactly who’d made it. Sleepy was still arguing with himself when Royal stumbled out of the burning building and leaned against the side of the truck. The sight of the old man in such a vulnerable position made Sleepy want to drive down the street and squash him between the two trucks. His hand was rising to his ignition key when Royal’s son-in-law ran out of the building and pulled off his heavy backpack. Sliding down low in the seat, Sleepy watched the two men from beneath the arc of his steering wheel until the truck backed away from the burgeoning fire and disappeared down the dark street.

With shaking hands, Sleepy cranked his own truck and followed them.

WALT GARRITY CRUISED
slowly up the gravel road in pitch darkness while Tom studied the scope monitoring the GPS tracker on Sonny Thornfield’s truck. A hundred yards down the slope to their left lay Old River, once a great bend in the Mississippi River but now a lake created by a cutoff dug by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1932. You could still access the Mississippi from Old River, through a channel a half mile east of here, and that’s why all the fishing camps along Old River were built on thirty-foot-high stilts. When the Mississippi flooded, Old River did, too, and the only way in or out was by boat. But the people who owned camps here loved that isolation, and that, Tom figured, was what Sonny Thornfield had come here to find.

“Let’s hope he’s alone,” Walt said.

Tom had made house calls down here before. A few of the camps were luxurious, but most were little more than shacks on stilts, with three flights of iron steps for access. All had makeshift elevators, metal cages hauled up and down a metal track system by a truck winch mounted at the top.

“Shouldn’t that one be it?” Walt asked, pointing up into the darkness, where a faint yellow light burned.

“I think so,” Tom said, still trying to decipher the screen.

Walt made a sharp left into an empty driveway next door to the camp where Thornfield had parked, and cut his engine. “No point wasting time,” he said, touching the derringer that hung on a chain beneath his shirt. “Same signal as the steak house, okay? If you see anything strange, start the engine.”

“I will. You be careful.”

Walt saluted, then got out of the van and silently closed the door.

Tom quickly lost sight of him in the darkness, but he felt confident that Walt would succeed in his mission. A seasoned hunter of men, the old Ranger wouldn’t hesitate to use force if things got dicey. Walt had given Tom a handheld radio to monitor, and reiterated that Tom must leave his cell phone switched off. Tom felt exposed sitting in the empty driveway, even in the dark. But at least most of the camp houses had RVs of various types parked beneath them. As he waited in the van, alone but for the ticking of the cooling engine, his mind began to wander.

All day, he had been quietly contemplating a biblical tale his father had despised. On the Day of Atonement, the priest of the temple had chosen two goats by lot. One would be sacrificed on the altar for the sins of Israel, the other cast out into the desert, bearing the sins of the people on its head. The first goat was known as the Lord’s Goat. The second—the
Azazel
—became known as the scapegoat. Because the scapegoat was sent away to perish, it came to represent any person blamed or punished for the sins of others, or to distract attention from the real cause of a crime. The Bible was replete with examples: Eve blamed for original sin, Jonah for a storm at sea. Barabbas, the thief, was allowed to live while Jesus, the Lord’s Goat, died for the sins of man. In the New Testament, Satan had become the scapegoat for God’s harsher side.

Tom’s father, a man of rigid moral rectitude, had condemned this practice as an expression of man’s basest urges. He’d recounted countless historical examples: Alfred Dreyfus rotting on Devil’s Island; royal whipping boys beaten bloody; medical patients scapegoated for epidemics; Jews being led to the ovens as Tom approached puberty. Percy Cage had ingrained in his son the conviction that a man of honor admitted his mistakes, took responsibility for them, and stoically accepted his punishment. Evading responsibility for sin was cowardice, plain and simple. Yet in the present circumstance, Tom thought, he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live with his family for the final year of two of his life, and not in a locked cage.

He thought of Glenn Morehouse, the simple-minded factory worker he’d treated so long ago. Morehouse was probably the least guilty of all the Double Eagles, because he’d had the least free will. He’d also possessed some remnant of a conscience, because he’d been murdered for trying to unburden his soul before death. But Glenn Morehouse, too, had committed murder. He’d participated in Viola’s rape, and probably countless other acts of brutality. Few tears, if any, had been shed at his death. And since Morehouse
was
dead, what more fitting scapegoat could there be for Viola’s murder?

Tom’s radio crackled in his lap. Then Walt said, “He’s moving around inside.”

Tom’s chest tightened. He reached down into his bag for his short-barreled .357 and laid the heavy pistol in his lap.

“Get ready,” Walt said. “I think he’s coming out.”

Tom got to his feet—he had to stoop inside the van—then opened the side door and stepped out into the night. The smell of dead fish and rotting vegetation assailed him. He stuck the .357 into his waistband and crunched up the gravel driveway, then crossed over into some shadows thrown by the light beneath Sonny’s camp house. He’d barely found a place to wait when he heard a screen door bang against its frame high above him.

A new sound puzzled him for a few seconds. Then he realized that Thornfield was pissing off the deck high above. By the light of the moon, Tom saw urine falling in a thin, irregular stream to his right.
Old man’s prostate,
he thought. Tom had little doubt that Walt would make use of Thornfield being indisposed to get control of him. Sure enough, he heard a squawk of surprise, and the trickle of urine abruptly stopped.

Angry words passed above him, and then, as Walt had predicted, someone started down to the ground in the makeshift elevator. Walt had told Tom to expect Sonny in the cage, and ten seconds later, the old Double Eagle appeared, clinging to the bars of a flimsy metal elevator as the winch groaned and whined high above him.

Tom heard Walt descending a metal staircase on the other side of the elevated shack, but he seemed in no hurry. As Walt had predicted, Sonny seemed to think this was a chance for escape. Wearing only pajama pants and a wifebeater T-shirt, he peered back at the staircase, gauging Walt’s rate of descent, a sly smile on his lips.

When the cage hit the ground, he jerked up the safety bar that held him inside and started toward his pickup truck. Either he kept a spare key inside, or there was a gun under its seat. Tom stepped out of the shadows, directly in his path. The old Eagle’s eyes went wide, then narrowed when he recognized Tom.

“What you doin’ here, Doc?”

“Waiting for you, Sonny.”

Thornfield looked back up at the staircase. Walt was only about halfway down and he hadn’t increased his pace. “I need to get somethin’ out of my truck, Doc. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Tom took the Smith & Wesson out of his waistband and pointed it at Thornfield’s potbelly. The T-shirt that covered it was stained with fried egg and something dark, maybe jelly. “You wait right where you are.”

“Hey, Doc, take it easy with that. There’s a guy upstairs tryin’ to rob me.”

Tom couldn’t help but smile. “He’s not here to rob you. He’s here to help me. We need to ask you some questions, Sonny. We’ve got a proposition for you.”

Walt’s boots clanged on the metal steps as he neared the ground. Thornfield seemed to understand that once the man in the cowboy hat reached ground level, he would lose all chance of escape. Without another word, Sonny started running toward the next house over.

“Stop!” Tom shouted.

Sonny looked back over his shoulder but didn’t stop.

Tom raised his pistol, aimed between Thornfield’s shoulder blades, and cocked the hammer. The old man turned, trying to decide whether Tom had the nerve to fire.

“I’ll kill you, Sonny,” Tom said, surprised by his desire to pull the trigger. “You deserve it, for what you did to Viola.”

Thornfield stopped backpedaling and stood uncertainly between the camp houses. Tom walked toward him, still aiming the pistol. “You raped Viola when she was a happy young woman. You and Frank and the others. You ruined her life. If I kill you now, I could pin Viola’s murder on you, along with whatever else your buddies need to take off the books.”

Sonny’s eyes widened, and then his face took on the cast of the eternal loser who feels put upon by the world. “What do you guys want with me? I ain’t nobody. And I ain’t done nothin’ to you. I didn’t hurt that Viola none, neither. You got the wrong idea, Doc. Way wrong.”

Walt took a couple of steps past Tom. “If that’s the case,” he said, “I’m sure we’ll find a way to make it up to you. But right now, you need to step into that van over there.”

“No way,” Sonny said, glancing at the Roadtrek. “I ain’t gonna. I ain’t no fool. And Doc ain’t gonna shoot me.”

Walt raised his derringer and touched the barrel to Thornfield’s forehead. “Maybe not. But I’ll blow your damn brains out and never lose a moment’s sleep over it. So, you can take your chances in the van or you can die where you stand. Make your choice, bub. I need some coffee.”