No Daughter of the South (23 page)

I went straight to Forrest’s study. First, I made sure the curtains were completely closed. Then I put a small table lamp on the floor before turning it on. I cursed myself for not thinking of a flashlight.

The photograph albums were on the lower shelves, about two dozen of them. I sat down on the floor, and pulled them out at random, flipping through the pages. They were, just as Etta Mae had described them, monuments to Forrest’s vanity. A photo of Forrest shaking a politician’s hand, a yellowed newspaper clipping of the mayor naming the Little League field after its benefactor, Forrest Miller. At first I looked at each picture, but I soon got bored with the seemingly endless tributes to Forrest. I started skimming over each page quickly, then turning to the next. I was so intent on my search that I lost my awareness of my surroundings, and the danger, until I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening. I scrambled to my feet as fast I could and looked frantically around the room for a means of escape. I considered climbing out the window, but rejected it as too slow and too noisy.

On a hunch, I went as quickly and quietly as I could to slide open the top desk drawer. Bingo—there was a gun. I picked it up carefully. I did know, of course, that pulling the trigger was the way to make the thing fire, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I had heard of a safety, but had no idea what it looked like or where I would find it. I didn’t know how to tell if the thing was loaded, either. Since I had no intention of shooting anyone anyway, I wrapped both my hands around the handle, fastidiously avoiding the trigger. I planned to rely only on its deterrent capacity, and that only if necessary. My favorite scenario would be to hide quietly, undiscovered, in the study until I could escape unnoticed—the use of the firearm never required.

I dropped to my knees and crawled under the desk awkwardly, with the gun still in my hands. I made myself as small as possible, pressing my knees up against my wildly thumping heart. The footsteps were fairly light. I hoped it was Mrs. Miller out there. Explaining to her what I was doing there was going to be a little rough, but it seemed infinitely preferable to attempting the explanation with Forrest or one of his thugs.

The footsteps stopped right outside the study door. I held my breath. The door opened slowly.

“Hey, Laurie, you in here?” It was Susan.

I tried to scramble out from under the desk, banging my back pretty good along the way.

“Susan?”

She stared at the gun in my hand which I put down on the desk slowly.

“I was worried about you. I came to help.”

“I love you, Susan.” I didn’t know why, but it seemed important to say that.

She looked uncomfortable. “Me, too. Uh, Laurie…?”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t tell you everything. I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. I was so ashamed.”

She looked so unhappy and I felt so bad for what I’d done to her. She’d done the best she could to make a life for herself under difficult circumstances, and I’d popped back into it just to make things worse. “Ah, Susan, don’t be ashamed. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Look, I know all about your sister. About Billie.”

“You do? I don’t even know all about Billie. But, Laurie, the photographs. They used to be in here.”

“You knew all along? You’ve seen them?” That hadn’t occurred to me. I was dumfounded.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I already said that.” She stopped, for a moment, and then shrugged. “You know, I tried hard not to think about it. Ever. Like if I didn’t think about it, then it didn’t happen.” Her expression started to break, the lines in her face sagging. “They all shot, at one time. So no one would know who did it. Then they mutilated his body. Then they threw him in the stream.” Her voice was expressionless, like she was reciting a verse in a language she didn’t understand.

“How do you know all this?”

She shrugged again. “I listened. When they thought I wasn’t around, or that I wasn’t paying attention. When I was a kid. When the men would get to drinking and talking. This was a big event to them—having their chance to kill a ‘nigger’ and get away with it. But then, things changed. By the time I was old enough to understand the implications, they didn’t talk about it anymore. You could tell ‘nigger’ jokes, sure, and be dead set against integration, but what they did would have been called murder by then, and investigated by the state police, even the FBI. The Klan had dwindled down to almost nothing around here. Momma was after Daddy to get out. They fought about it a lot. But I think they were really fighting about my sister. My mother hated my father for what he did to my sister, and she hated herself for not being able to save her. But how could she save a daughter who did what Billie did?”

She sat down on the edge of the couch and looked up at me, intently, as if desperate to convince me of something. “I didn’t really understand until I was a lot older. By then, I’d sneak in here and go through Daddy’s stuff. And when I was, I don’t know, eight, maybe, or nine, I saw the pictures. In a moment, I knew it. The whole thing. What happened. And at the same time, I didn’t believe it. I was a lot younger when I heard about that stuff, and maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe it was my over-active imagination. And I closed the album and walked out of this room, and made myself forget it. I forced myself never to think about it. Because there was nothing I could do about it, and to live with it would just be too much. How could I live knowing my father was a monster when I have to eat Sunday dinner at his house every other week. He pays my husband’s salary. He’s my children’s grandfather.” She shook her head as though answering a question someone else had asked her.

“I had enough to do, just to figure out how I could get to live my own life. Billie hadn’t gotten away with it, and I was determined to. But then I kept letting myself get carried away by your crazy ideas. Skinny dipping at Deer Key. Skipping school. Smoking pot in the girls’ room. Sometimes it felt really good. And sometimes, I couldn’t quit thinking that one false step, and I’d end up like Billie. I knew I had to get away from him, but if I kept doing it your way, I’d lose. I’d never get out, never get away from him.”

She started sniffling. I put my arms around her. She pushed me away. “We don’t have time for this now. Let me show you where I think they are.”

She got down on the floor and started looking at the albums, one after another. After she’d flipped through a half-dozen, she started to seem frantic.

“You know,” I said, as gently as I could, “he may not have kept these particular pictures. Whatever else you have to say about your father, he’s not stupid.”

She didn’t look up. She pulled out a few more albums, looked through them quickly, shoved them back on the shelves. Then she pulled out a beautiful, leather-bound one, looked at the cover, and handed it to me with an awful smile.

I took it out of her hands, and I was surprised that my own were shaking. You think you want to know something, and then you see that you really don’t. But I took it from her anyway, and sat back, cross-legged on the floor. I opened the heavy covers slowly. I turned each page slowly.

Susan got impatient. She reached over and starting flipping quickly through the pages. Then suddenly, she stopped. She got up on her knees and studied the page before her for a moment. Then she sighed, sat back down, waved her hand over the page.

It was pretty dark, and I guess my eyes aren’t as good as Susan’s, because I had to take the album over to the lamp to really be able to see. I wanted the truth to be clear. Putting the album down on the floor in the circle of light made by the lamp, I crouched over the page. There were five pictures. Two in the top row, and two in the bottom, and one right in the middle of the page. They were black and white. The one in the middle was a bound, mutilated body hanging limp against a stake. The body was recognizably human only because of the clothes, and the hands. I was thankful the photograph was not in color, but black and white was plenty bad enough.

The other four were shots of the crowd standing around the body. Those appeared to have been taken after the shooting and before the mutilation. Every man had a gun in his arm or at his side. Some men were in all the photographs, and some were only in one. I had no way of knowing whether every man involved had been photographed. The first thing I did was study every face. The one I was looking for wasn’t there, and I sat back on my heels for a moment, immensely relieved. My father was not in any of the pictures. I had looked, and I was sure of that. Some of the faces had been vaguely familiar, and, if I studied them again, I would probably recognize them as younger versions of men I had known all my life. Two I had recognized immediately. Mr. Johnson, the pharmacist, was one. And Mr. Berry, Johnny’s father, was another.

I sat up again to lean into the light, and continued studying the photographs.

“You’re right to do this,” Susan said. “The Klan’s getting so big again, much bigger and better organized than it ever was before. And they’re smarter now. They even have a public relations consultant.” She was sitting right beside me, and she ran the flat palm of her hand across the top edge of the album page. “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

I was still studying the photographs. “Susan, did he ever... abuse… you or Billie?”

I was shocked at her bitter laughter. “Not the way you mean. I was spanked as a little kid, sure, but nothing you’d call a beating. And he never tried anything sexual with me. I don’t know if he tried anything with Billie, of course. I have no way to know. But don’t you see, Laurie, he didn’t have to beat us. He had complete power. He controlled us completely, and, if we were crazy enough to disobey, he could have us thrown in the looney bin. He didn’t have to rape us. It was clear our bodies were his to control anyway. That’s what killed him about me getting pregnant. I’d had sex without his permission. But then, of course, I was in Tom’s power, and Tom was in my father’s. So...”

I heard something right then, and I could tell Susan heard it, too. Two cars. They pulled up. One in the front driveway, one in the back alley. The engines were turned off. Car doors opened, and slammed shut. Voices and footsteps outside.

I hurriedly pulled the photographs off the page, and shoved them under a couch cushion. Susan hadn’t moved. I whispered, “Maybe you can crawl out your old bedroom window.”

It was too late. The front and the back doors were opened, and they were tramping through the house. With my one last calm thought, I pulled open the door to Forrest’s bathroom and pushed Susan in. “This is silly,” she protested. “This is my parents’ house.”

“Humor me,” I whispered as forcefully as I could.

I closed the bathroom door. Just a few seconds later, the study door was pushed open. A group of men I’d never seen before was standing there. I want to say that they were big, ugly, stupid looking men. That’s the picture I have in my mind when I think about it. But it’s not true. They looked like everyone else. Just five regular guys. One of them yelled to let the others know they had found me.

“We found the intruder in here,” is actually what one of the guys said.

“Intruder? Is that what I am?” I said. “Then why don’t you call the cops?” Then I smiled, tried hard to smile cute and sweet and nonthreatening.

The one that appeared to be the leader said, “That’s up to Mr. Miller. He’s the lawful owner. We’re just going to keep an eye on you until he gets here.”

“Well, in that case,” I said. “I’ll call the cops.” I moved toward the phone. One of the guys stepped forward, unplugged the phone from the wall, and stood there with the cord in his hand.

“No, Ma’am. You won’t. This is Mr. Miller’s phone and you don’t have his permission to use it.”

“Then I’m out of here. See you guys later.” I took a couple of studiously nonchalant steps towards the door. One guy stepped in front of the door, wouldn’t let me pass.

“You can’t keep me here,” I said. “This is imprisonment. You’re not the police. You have to call the police, or let me go.”

“Who are you to tell us what to do? You broke into someone else’s house, and you’re talking to us about your rights? Forget it. Wait here, and work it out with Mr. Miller.”

Susan’s voice behind me said, “She didn’t break in. She’s my guest.”

I turned around. She was standing in the open door to the bathroom, holding herself every inch the daughter of the most powerful man in town.

“Excuse us, Mrs. Dalman, we didn’t know you were here.”

She nodded her head, graciously accepting his apology. “This is my old friend, Laurie Marie Coldwater.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said one of the younger boys. “We know who she is. Coach Coldwater’s little girl.” I was both taller and older than he was.

“Well then, I’ll see you gentlemen to the front door, unless you’d like a cold drink. I’m sorry that you were troubled for no reason.” She was walking to the door. The man blocking it stood to one side to let her by. But no one made any move to follow her.

Susan looked back at them, puzzlement on her face.

“We can’t leave, Ma’am. We have to wait here for Mr. Miller, just like he said.”

Susan was trying not to show that she recognized her complete lack of power, but her face was white. “I’m going to have to ask you for that phone so I can make a call.”

“No, Ma’am. I’m sorry.” The kid talking did look sorry. “You can go wherever you want to make a phone call. But you can’t use the phone here.”

The look on Susan’s face was empty and lonely and defeated. Being the daughter of the most powerful man in town didn’t help much when he was the one she was up against.

We were all just standing there, in deadlock, when another car pulled up in the driveway. A car door opened, and then another. Two car doors shut.

Footsteps came up the driveway, and then the front door opened. One of the guys stepped around Susan to greet the newcomers in the foyer.

We heard Forrest Miller’s hearty voice. “So, boys, you catch a fox in the henhouse?”

All the men laughed. I didn’t think it was so funny.

“No, sir, Mr. Miller. Nothing so interesting. I’m sorry to say we have been annoying your daughter and her friend.”