One Night in Mississippi (10 page)

Amblan, 2008

I didn't see him again
for a couple of days. I'd come back to town on Friday to grab a few final items, figuring that I was ready to hunker down for a bit. If the storm kept me locked in for any length of time, I had my magazines and food and gas for the generator so I was ready. The cab stopped at the crest of the hill, and the driver said he wouldn't go any further, despite the chains that he had illegally wrapped around his tires. It was one of the rare times that I wished I were still driving, but I hadn't had a licence since I'd come to Ontario.

I paid him and walked the rest of the way. The wind was down, but an occasional gust still whipped biting blasts across my cheeks. There were tire tracks, already mostly filled in, but they still gave me a somewhat shallower trench to hike through, and given the conditions, I had no concerns about walking down the middle of the road. It was a quiet road at the best of times, just an occasional hunter driving into the bush, but when it stormed, it was all but abandoned.

The snow was falling thick and heavy, and by the time I had walked a hundred yards the tracks were completely filled in. My legs ached. It was not much farther, and I was eager to get home, but I was careful to move slowly. I knew that moisture, not cold, was the danger, and I didn't want to perspire.

When I got to the front step, I struggled to pull the outer screen door open against the wind. My fingers were stiff, and I was grateful that I didn't have to pry them around a key. Not locking my door was one of the most difficult adjustments I'd made when I moved here. It seemed naïve to leave the door unlocked, but after I came to understand the remoteness of the house, the space between neighbours, and the familiarity of everyone in the town, it eventually seemed more foolish to lock the door than not.

The mat inside the front hall was already wet with melted snow.

“Hello?” I called out.

The foyer was just a small square meant to brace the rest of the house from the cold of opening doors and, as such, didn't offer a view into the other rooms. I hung my coat on its peg, slipped off my boots, then pulled off my wet socks as well.

I walked slowly into the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place.

“Hutch?”

The house echoed silence, an accusation of foolishness aimed at an old man. The mat had probably just not dried from when I left in the morning. I poured myself a glass of water from the tap and went to sit in the living room. I flicked on the television, but most channels were either wavering columns of black and white or completely obliterated with buzzing static. I knew that turning the antenna wasn't likely to produce results any more favourable.

It was when I stood up to select a DVD from the shelf that I noticed the empty rack above the fireplace where my rifle should have been hung. I heard footsteps on the stairs.

The black man appeared in the archway, his face stony. He still wore his coat, and his boots leaked dirty water onto the hardwood floor. He was hunched into his shoulders as if he was unable to shake off the cold, and his short grey hair still shone with gathered snow. His expression was difficult to read, but he had the look of a hard man, of someone who had suffered and survived. Hutch was right, he didn't look like much of a woodsman, but I had no doubt that he knew how to use a rifle and that he was willing to do so. I'd seen him in the restaurant, seeming to struggle with his right hand, but he held the rifle steady, and he looked sure of himself. His stare didn't waver as he lifted it and pointed it at me.

I raised my hands and waited, sure of what he would ask before he spoke. His mouth opened onto the past. His lips were white and cracked, and a name eleven years dead formed in the space between them.

“Are you Earl Olsen?”

There was no need to answer. I left the DVD on the shelf and sat.

New York, 1962

I took my father's
first name as my last. Daniel Olsen was born in 1919 in New York City. My grandparents tried five times to have children, but only two survived birth — my father, Daniel, and my uncle, Patrick. From what I was told, they grew up in relative comfort, but like most families they lost almost everything during the Depression. My father dropped out of school at sixteen and lied about his age to get a job in a foundry. He worked fourteen-hour days, smelting iron for a fraction of the pay that the other workers were getting.

My father went to a local soup kitchen each afternoon, the only meal that he allowed himself. It was there that he met my mother. They married quickly and were youthfully happy for a couple of years, but the Depression was worsening. Shortly after I was born, my father lost his job and couldn't find another one. He spent his days scavenging for scrap metal to sell, or for any stray items that might be useful. He would come home carrying assorted pieces of junk that my mother would then scrub clean and try to spin into treasures. She painted rusty tin jars and set them out as colourful planters, polished sections of old cast-iron fencing and hooked them together to make elaborate ornament shelves, even hung a section of branch from the dining-room ceiling and wrapped it with white Christmas lights to serve as a rustic chandelier.

She tried to work the same miracle with my clothes. They were sewn together from scraps, and cardboard filled the holes in my shoes. My father sometimes brought home a few stalks of wilted flowers that he'd found or picked somewhere. Mother would coo over them and place them in an empty pop can filled with water for display, mostly to salvage my father's pride. Despite the hardships I learned of later, there were seldom arguments.

I have clear memories of baseball. Every weekend the kids from the neighbourhood would mill around in the streets, waiting for enough people to show up or for someone to find a piece of wood that was sturdy enough to be used for a bat. We would play until dark and afterwards, when most of the kids had left, my father would return home. He would stay outside with me for another hour, just throwing the ball back and forth under the flickering streetlights. I would always greet him the same way.

“Find anything good today?”

He would shrug. “A few things. We'll see what your mother can do with them.”

“I could help. I could go with you.”

I offered every time, and every time he would just smile and toss the ball back to me.

My favourite moments came when my father was able to find books. We would gather at night by the light of candles wedged into the tops of old pop bottles, and he'd read to me from the stained and yellowing pages. Sometimes there were pages missing, and Dad would fill in the story as best he could, either from memory or imagination.

There were rarely visitors. Uncle Patrick is the only one I recall, and although times must have been as hard for him as for us, he never showed it. Whenever he arrived, his shoes were shined and his shirt was gleaming white. His face was flushed, as if he ran over to our house each time to visit. He was loud and charming and full of plans. I secretly wished my father were more like him.

It was Uncle Patrick who went south first. He convinced my father that manufacturing and industry were dying and that the only chance a man had was agriculture. He was working on a deal to secure a piece of property in Mississippi and wanted us to move down there with him. It led to one of the rare arguments in our household. I lay in the bed at night, listening to snatches.

“We're getting by, Daniel. Things aren't great, but we're getting by.”

“Getting by? We're not getting by. Almost everything we own is made out of garbage. There's no work, and there ain't likely to be any for a while. Patrick can get us a piece of land.”

“Your brother is always chasing some scheme, Daniel. You told me so yourself. Are you going to put our future in his hands? Earl's future?”

“Oh, don't throw that at me! You know I want what's best for Earl just as much as you do. But what future does he have here?”

“Whatever future we make for him.”

My mother and father continued whispering their disagreement to one another, voices occasionally rising to the point that I could make them out, then dropping again.

I never heard another word about it after that night, but I could tell by the sudden hush whenever I entered the room that the discussion continued for several weeks, and I could tell by the look on their faces who was winning. Uncle Patrick visited us a final time in our tiny house in Queens. Father clapped him on the back and assured him that we would be on our way to join him soon. My mother smiled faintly, but offered no objection, and it seemed the issue was settled.

Shortly after that, my mother's coughing began.

In hindsight my mother went quickly, but it didn't seem that way at the time. She tried to hide her symptoms at first. I would see her stop and tremble occasionally while she was scrubbing our clothes or peeling potatoes for dinner, and I knew that she was fighting to contain the raw hacking with which she began each day. She had an old kerchief that she used, and I tracked her descent by the colour of the cloth — at first speckled with red spots, then stained a dark maroon, then black.

She spent shorter and shorter periods on her feet, and within a couple of weeks, she was bedridden. She became a shape beneath the sheets, a flash of golden hair splayed across the pillowcase, the hair growing thinner and paler as she grew smaller, as if the bed were slowly absorbing her into itself.

The house grew dingy and grey. Tufts of dust collected on the baseboards. The sculptures and trinkets that she had cleaned and crafted turned back into garbage, rusty and old. My mother had transformed our home through sheer force of will, but as her will faded, the house and everything in it reverted to its natural state. My father started sleeping in the living room. He stopped lighting candles at night.

I woke one morning in early April, the air still cold and dry, the sun strong enough to gleam through the curtains. There was no coughing. The door to my mother's bedroom was closed. There was nothing my father needed to say.

My father and I spent a full day scrubbing the house. We hosted a small service and sent everyone home too quickly. My father was too proud to let everyone know we couldn't afford a burial. My mother was interred in the paupers' section of the graveyard with no headstone and no marker. My father spent the next month in a fugue-like state, barely functional. When he emerged, we began to pack for Mississippi.

Amblan, 2008

The man sitting
across from me looked different than he did on television. In the interviews, his eyes had looked like they were rimmed in shadows, his cheeks sunken and thin. Sitting across from me now, he appeared stronger and more vigorous than I remembered: his face was round, the cheeks almost plump, though sagging. The sockets of his eyes were dragged down as well, showing a thin line of red above the lower lids. It gave his face the impression of being intently alert. His skin was grey from the cold, and he looked bulky, still bundled up in his coat.

His left hand rested loosely on the rifle, and his right hand was hidden in his pocket. The boots continued to leak dirty water on to the living room floor. I asked him to remove them, and for a second he blinked and looked confused.

“Your boots,” I said. “They're wet. I'd appreciate it if you would remove them.”

He ignored the request and shifted the rifle on his lap.

“I'm guessing you know who I am,” he said. His words came out in a slow, deep rattle, the sound of a man who didn't have to raise his voice to be heard.

“I've seen you on television. Newspapers too. News this far north doesn't care much about stuff down in the States.”

“Well, you must have gone to some trouble to get it then.”

“And you must have gone to some trouble to get here.”

We stared at each other for a moment.

“You look awful cold. I could fix you some tea. I'm guessing from the looks of you that we'll be here awhile.”

I rolled out of the chair and ambled past him into the kitchen, not waiting for a reply. I listened for sounds of movement while I boiled the water and poured two cups, but didn't hear a thing and when I walked back into the room with the tea, it looked as if he hadn't moved. I handed him the cup, and he took it carefully in both hands. I could see why he had kept the right one hidden — the outside two fingers were clipped and what remained had atrophied. The other two fingers were hooked as well, though less so, and there were dark scars raised along the skin on the back of his hand and down onto his wrist. He blew the steam from his cup and, catching me looking, twisted his right hand towards me in a mock wave.

“I got this for touching a white girl.”

I didn't know how to respond. To say it had nothing to do with me would likely make him angry, to offer an apology would probably make him more so. He was clearly on edge, and I felt like any mistake might set him off. When he dropped his hand he rested the fingers on the trigger guard.

“I'll answer your question,” I said. “I am Earl Olsen. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to you.”

“No surprise. Bit surprised to hear you own up to it, though. You know, a lot of folks seem to think you're dead.”

“Well, they probably ain't far off with their guess.”

“And you been hiding up here, all this time.”

“I told you. Folks up here don't care much about all of that.”

“But you've been keeping an eye out.”

I sipped my tea and forced myself to remain calm while I tried figure out what he wanted. If it was just revenge, he could have shot me clean already. If he wanted to bring me to justice, maybe he was secretly taping our conversation and planned on turning me over to the FBI. If so, he already had my name and that was about all he needed. That didn't seem to be his motive, though. In pursuing the others involved in the case, he had always leaned on police and news investigators to do the work. He was just the name applying pressure, the face showing up at the end of the trail to shine a spotlight on the case. The fact that he had come here by himself meant that this was something different. I couldn't find any way to spin that fact that didn't mean trouble for me, but I wasn't just going to sit meekly by and be threatened in my own house.

“I suppose you've suffered quite a bit over the years,” I said. “I'm not gonna pretend that's not true. You're not the only one, though. You're right. I've been keeping an eye out.”

“Not the only one? Not the only one who has suffered?”

He leaned forward and snorted with disgust. His eyes narrowed and his lips curled, baring his teeth, but his expression quickly settled back to its look of bland focus. His was an old anger, flashing across his face but not holding, like an engine that wouldn't quite turn over. It was an anger he had lived with for decades and vented many times. My own anger was fresher and had never before found voice.

“My daddy didn't deserve to die in no prison.” I spit the words at him, but he didn't flinch. “Yeah, I been keeping an eye on the case all right. And I was
excited
when I first found out about it. My daddy never wanted any part of what happened to your brother. Hell, I tried to find you when I heard the case was reopening. By the time I found how to get ahold of you, you already had my daddy square in your crosshairs.”

I had watched in disbelief as my father was the first one to be dragged out his front door in handcuffs, the lone strand of white hair on his head, flopping in the wind. He could barely walk under his own power, and yet they had his arms behind his back and were herding him into the police car like some dangerous criminal, reporters throwing questions and accusations at him while he looked around in bewilderment.

The others followed, one by one, and though I had no sympathy for any of them, I grew to hate Warren more and more each time I saw that sunken look. He was the perpetual innocent, the perpetual victim. As I stared across at him now, I'm sure that hatred was naked on my face.

“I couldn't even see him at the end, you know that? My daddy. I tried to go see him, but he wouldn't let me. Knew that I couldn't show up there without letting the authorities know who I really was. My daddy died in prison all alone. Died with just a chaplain and the warden by his bedside, damn near strangers.”

The man listened with no change in expression, but his voice quivered with a barely held rage. “It's more than what my brother had. Your father got what he deserved.”

“And you saw to that didn't you? You saw that he got what he deserved. You don't know nothing about my father. You don't know what he
deserved
.”

“I know what he did.”

“What he did. What happened to that brother of yours was terrible, I know that. And I won't deny my own guilt, but my father was a good man.”

“Did your daddy ever seen this? What about you?”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a faded black-and-white photo. It was his brother laid out on a table in the coroner's office, bones broken, flesh on his chest torn nearly in strips, eyes mostly rotted so that there were just two balls of gelatin in the sockets.

He said, “The scales of justice don't work the way you think they do. They're not balanced. You do one terrible thing, it doesn't wipe out one good thing you done. It wipes out every good thing you done. So go ahead. Go on and tell me about this peach of a daddy of yours.”

I had not seen the photo before. It brought me back to that room. The plink of water dripping from an unsealed joist. The smell of damp wood mixing with the stench of the boy's sweat and shit and piss. The bloodied shirt balled up in the corner, and the rough feel of the rusty pliers in my hand.

There was another photo as well, the corner of it poking out from beneath the first. They must have stuck together inside Warren's jacket. I slowly reached across the table to separate them.

The second photo was taken on the steps of the courthouse in Jackson. They were all there — Marty Bavon with his cauliflower ears and an evil, yellow-toothed grin; Blaine Pimpton, smirking at the crowd as if sharing a joke; Rob and Barry Tywater jabbing each other with elbows like school kids; Paul Poust staring straight into the camera with a crooked smile; Uncle Patrick leading the group down the steps, suit jacket open, hands in pockets, and wearing the smug look of a man who believes himself vindicated. My father walked with his head down and I was beside him, wide-eyed and bewildered. God, I was so young. But so was the boy on the coroner's table.

I looked back and forth between the two photos. With the exception of my father, I hated every one of the men in the courthouse photo, even Uncle Patrick, and I hated myself for ever having respected them, for having wanted so badly to be one of them.

I couldn't stomach what they'd done to that boy, and I hadn't seen what ended up of him before now. The last time I saw him, I had turned away and let my father do what I could not.