The Chamber (41 page)

“You saw this happen, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Where were you?”

“Over there,” she nodded, but didn’t point. “In my pecan tree. Hidden from the world.”

“Sam couldn’t see you?”

“No one could see me. I watched the whole thing.” She covered her eyes again and fought back tears. Adam eased onto the porch and sat beside her.

She cleared her throat and looked away. “He watched Joe for a minute, ready to shoot again if necessary. But Joe never moved. He was quite dead. There was some blood around his head on the grass, and I could see it from the tree. I remember digging my fingernails into the bark to keep from falling, and I remember wanting to cry but being too scared. I didn’t want him to hear me. Quince appeared after a few minutes. He’d heard the shot, and he was crying by the time I saw him. Just running like crazy and crying, and when he saw his father on the ground he started screaming like any child would’ve done. My father raised the gun again, and for a second I knew he was about to shoot the boy. But Quince threw Joe’s shotgun to the ground and ran to his father. He was bawling and wailing. He wore a light-colored shirt, and soon it was covered with blood. Sam eased to the side and picked up Joe’s shotgun, then he went inside with both guns.”

She stood slowly and took several measured steps. “Quince and Joe were right about here,” she said, marking the spot with her heel. “Quince held his father’s head next to his stomach, blood was everywhere, and he made this strange moaning sound, like the whimper of a dying animal.” She turned and looked at her tree. “And there I was, sitting up there like a little bird, crying too. I hated my father so badly at that moment.”

“Where was Eddie?”

“Inside the house, in his room with the door locked.” She pointed to a window with broken panes and a shutter missing. “That was his room. He told me
later that he looked outside when he heard the shot, and he saw Quince clutching his father. Within minutes, Ruby Lincoln came running up with a string of children behind her. They all collapsed around Quince and Joe, and, God, it was horrible. They were screaming and weeping and yelling at Joe to get up, to please not die on them.

“Sam went inside and called an ambulance. He also called one of his brothers, Albert, and a couple of neighbors. Pretty soon there was a crowd in the backyard. Sam and his gang stood on the porch with their guns and watched the mourners, who dragged the body under that tree over there.” She pointed to a large oak. “The ambulance arrived after an eternity, and took the body away. Ruby and her children walked back to their house, and my father and his buddies had a good laugh on the porch.”

“How long did you stay in the tree?”

“I don’t know. As soon as everybody was gone, I climbed down and ran into the woods. Eddie and I had a favorite place down by a creek, and I knew he would come looking for me. He did. He was scared and out of breath; told me all about the shooting, and I told him that I’d seen it. He didn’t believe me at first, but I gave him the details. We were both scared to death. He reached in his pocket and pulled out something. It was the little Confederate soldier he and Quince had fought over. He’d found it under his bed, and so he decided on the spot that everything was his fault. We swore each other to secrecy. He promised he would never tell anyone that I had witnessed the killing, and I promised I would never tell anyone that he’d found the soldier. He threw it in the creek.”

“Did either of you ever tell?”

She shook her head for a long time.

“Sam never knew you were in the tree?” Adam asked.

“Nope. I never told my mother. Eddie and I talked about it occasionally over the years, and as time passed we just sort of buried it away. When we returned to the house, our parents were in the middle of a huge fight. She was hysterical and he was wild-eyed and crazy. I think he’d hit her a few times. She grabbed us and told us to get in the car. As we were backing out of the driveway, the sheriff pulled up. We drove around for a while, Mother in the front seat, and Eddie and I in the back, both of us too scared to talk. She didn’t know what to say. We assumed he would be taken to jail, but when we parked in the driveway he was sitting on the front porch as if nothing had happened.”

“What did the sheriff do?”

“Nothing, really. He and Sam talked for a bit. Sam showed him Joe’s shotgun and explained how it was a simple matter of self-defense. Just another dead nigger.”

“He wasn’t arrested?”

“No, Adam. This was Mississippi in the early fifties. I’m sure the sheriff had a good laugh about it, patted Sam on the back, and told him to be a good boy, and then left. He even allowed Sam to keep Joe’s shotgun.”

“That’s incredible.”

“We were hoping he’d go to jail for a few years.”

“What did the Lincolns do?”

“What could they do? Who would listen to them? Sam forbade Eddie from seeing Quince, and to make sure the boys didn’t get together, he evicted them from their house.”

“Good God!”

“He gave them one week to get out, and the sheriff arrived to fulfill his sworn duties by forcing them out of the house. The eviction was legal and proper, Sam
assured Mother. It was the only time I thought she might leave him. I wish she had.”

“Did Eddie ever see Quince?”

“Years later. When Eddie started driving, he started looking for the Lincolns. They had moved to a small community on the other side of Clanton, and Eddie found them there. He apologized and said he was sorry a hundred times. But they were never friends again. Ruby asked him to leave. He told me they lived in a run-down shack with no electricity.”

She walked to her pecan tree and sat against its trunk. Adam followed and leaned against it. He looked down at her, and thought of all the years she’d been carrying this burden. And he thought of his father, of his anguish and torment, of the indelible scars he’d borne to his death. Adam now had the first clue to his father’s destruction, and he wondered if the pieces might someday fit together. He thought of Sam, and as he glanced at the porch he could see a younger man with a gun and hatred in his face. Lee was sobbing quietly.

“What did Sam do afterward?”

She struggled to control herself. “The house was so quiet for a week, maybe a month, I don’t know. But it seemed like years before anyone spoke over dinner. Eddie stayed in his room with the door locked. I would hear him crying at night, and he told me again and again how much he hated his father. He wanted him dead. He wanted to run away from home. He blamed himself for everything. Mother became concerned, and she spent a lot of time with him. As for me, they thought I was off playing in the woods when it happened. Shortly after Phelps and I married, I secretly began seeing a psychiatrist. I tried to work it out in therapy, and I wanted Eddie to do the same. But he wouldn’t listen. The last time I talked to Eddie before
he died, he mentioned the killing. He never got over it.”

“And you got over it?”

“I didn’t say that. Therapy helped, but I still wonder what would’ve happened if I had screamed at Daddy before he pulled the trigger. Would he have killed Joe with his daughter watching? I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Lee. That was forty years ago. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Eddie blamed me. And he blamed himself, and we blamed each other until we were grown. We were children when it happened, and we couldn’t run to our parents. We were helpless.”

Adam could think of a hundred questions about the killing of Joe Lincoln. The subject was not likely to be raised again with Lee, and he wanted to know everything that happened, every small detail. Where was Joe buried? What happened to his shotgun? Was the shooting reported in the local paper? Was the case presented to a grand jury? Did Sam ever mention it to his children? Where was her mother during the fight? Did she hear the argument and the gunshot? What happened to Joe’s family? Did they still live in Ford County?

“Let’s burn it, Adam,” she said strongly, wiping her face and glaring at him.

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes I am! Let’s burn the whole damned place, the house, the shed, this tree, the grass and weeds. It won’t take much. Just a couple of matches here and there. Come on.”

“No, Lee.”

“Come on.”

Adam bent over gently and took her by the arm. “Let’s go, Lee. I’ve heard enough for one day.”

She didn’t resist. She too had had enough for one day. He helped her through the weeds, around the
house, over the ruins of the driveway, and back to the car.

They left the Cayhall estate without a word. The road turned to gravel, then stopped at the intersection of a highway. Lee pointed to the left, then closed her eyes as if trying to nap. They bypassed Clanton and stopped at a country store near Holly Springs. Lee said she needed a cola, and insisted on getting it herself. She returned to the car with a six-pack of beer and offered a bottle to Adam. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Just a couple,” she said. “My nerves are shot. Don’t let me drink more than two, okay. Only two.”

“I don’t think you should, Lee.”

“I’m okay,” she insisted with a frown, and took a drink.

Adam declined and sped away from the store. She drained two bottles in fifteen minutes, then went to sleep. Adam placed the sack in the backseat, and concentrated on the road.

He had a sudden desire to leave Mississippi, and longed for the lights of Memphis.

      Twenty-seven      

E
xactly one week earlier, he had awakened with a fierce headache and a fragile stomach, and had been forced to face the greasy bacon and oily eggs of Irene Lettner. And in the past seven days, he’d been to the courtroom of Judge Slattery, and to Chicago, Greenville, Ford County, and Parchman. He’d met the governor, and the Attorney General. He hadn’t talked to his client in six days.

To hell with his client. Adam had sat on the patio watching the river traffic and sipping decaffeinated coffee until 2 a.m. He swatted mosquitoes and struggled with the vivid images of Quince Lincoln grasping at his father’s body while Sam Cayhall stood on the porch and admired his handiwork. He could hear the muted laughter of Sam and his buddies on the narrow porch as Ruby Lincoln and her children fell around the corpse and eventually dragged it across the yard to the shade of a tree. He could see Sam on the front lawn with both shotguns explaining to the sheriff exactly how the crazy nigger was about to kill him, and how he acted reasonably and in self-defense. The sheriff was quick to see Sam’s point, of course. He could hear the whispers of the tormented children, Eddie and Lee, as they blamed themselves and struggled with the horror of Sam’s deed. And he cursed a society so willing to ignore violence against a despised class.

He’d slept fitfully, and at one point had sat on the edge of his bed and declared to himself that Sam could find another lawyer, that the death penalty might in
fact be appropriate for some people, notably his grandfather, and that he would return to Chicago immediately and change his name again. But that dream passed, and when he awoke for the last time the sunlight filtered through the blinds and cast neat lines across his bed. He contemplated the ceiling and crown molding along the walls for half an hour as he remembered the trip to Clanton. Today, he hoped, would be a late Sunday with a thick newspaper and strong coffee. He would go to the office later in the afternoon. His client had seventeen days.

Lee had finished a third beer after they arrived at the condo, then she’d gone to bed. Adam had watched her carefully, half-expecting a wild binge or sudden slide into an alcoholic stupor. But she’d been very quiet and composed, and he heard nothing from her during the night.

He finished his shower, didn’t shave, and walked to the kitchen where the syrupy remains of the first pot of coffee awaited him. Lee had been up for some time. He called her name, then walked to her bedroom. He quickly checked the patio, then roamed through the condo. She was not there. The Sunday paper was stacked neatly on the coffee table in the den.

He fixed fresh coffee and toast, and took his breakfast on the patio. It was almost nine-thirty, and thankfully the sky was cloudy and the temperature was not suffocating. It would be a good Sunday for office work. He read the paper, starting with the front section.

Perhaps she’d run to the store or something. Maybe she’d gone to church. They hadn’t yet reached the point of leaving notes for each other. But there’d been no talk of Lee going anywhere this morning.

He’d eaten one piece of toast with strawberry jam when his appetite suddenly vanished. The front page of the Metro section carried another story on Sam
Cayhall, with the same picture from ten years ago. It was a chatty little summary of the past week’s developments, complete with a chronological chart giving the important dates in the history of the case. A cute question mark was left dangling by the date of August 8, 1990. Would there be an execution then? Evidently, Todd Marks had been given unlimited column inches by the editors because the story contained almost nothing new. The disturbing part was a few quotes from a law professor at Ole Miss, an expert in constitutional matters who’d worked on many death penalty cases. The learned professor was generous with his opinions, and his bottom line was that Sam’s goose was pretty much cooked. He’d studied the file at length, had followed it for many years in fact, and was of the opinion that there was basically nothing left for Sam to do. He explained that in many death penalty cases, miracles can sometimes be performed at the last moment because usually the inmate has suffered from mediocre legal representation, even during his appeals. In those cases, experts such as himself can often pull rabbits out of hats because they’re just so damned brilliant, and thus able to create issues ignored by lesser legal minds. But, regrettably, Sam’s case was different because he had been competently represented by some very fine lawyers from Chicago.

Sam’s appeals had been handled skillfully, and now the appeals had run their course. The professor, evidently a gambling man, gave five to one odds the execution would take place on August 8. And for all of this, the opinions and the odds, he got his picture in the paper.