True Fires (15 page)

31

Lila Hightower sits on the floor surrounded by the stacks of file folders pulled from her father’s cabinets.

“What in tarnation you lookin’ fuh?” Sissy asks, setting her tray on the desk, hoisting the coffeepot to pour Lila another cup.

“Hmmm—” How could she explain the eerie sense that she was the survivor of a family shipwreck, that, before she could move on, these files, her father’s flotsam,
had
to be sorted out? “I’m not exactly sure,” Lila says, snapping the file in her hand shut, dropping it on the “looked-at” stack to her left. “Guess I’ll know it when I see it,” she adds, reaching for the steaming cup. “Thank you.”

“Welcome.” Sissy crosses her arms and waits. “Sheriff had hisself a busy week,” she says flatly.

“You mean the newspaper office downtown, killing that poor dog and all?” Lila’s flipping through the next file.

“No.”

Sissy’s tone, quiet, insistent, draws Lila’s eyes to her face. “What then?” Lila asks, trying not to sound impatient.

“Ah mean sendin’ them Klanners to tear up the back of one uh Big Nick’s jooks.”

“What?”

“Number Five Jook, out Sandy Hill Road toward Langhorn? Klanners come in just ’fore midnight, scared ever’body ha’f to death, tore th’ game room to hell and back.”

“Good God!”

“God ain’t got nuthin’ to do with this, Miss,” Sissy says, her look and tone accusatory.

“Sissy, what
are
you tryin’ to say?” Lila snaps.

“Ah’m sayin’ the Sheriff got wind of somethin’ he didn’t like, ’bout Big Nick and that Mistuh Fred Sykes who wuz here t’other day. Ah’m sayin’ . . .
somebody
’bout to open up Pandory’s Box, and there’ll be hell to pay for the folks on t’other side.”

“You sayin’ that somebody is me?” Lila demands, point-blank.

Sissy pouts; her old eyes flash angry. “ ’S one thing to meddle in white-man’s politics. Call up th’ Mayor, sweet-talk th’ Guv’nor. Judge did it all th’ time. But, pullin’ in Big Nick, Missy. You startin’ somethin’ mah folks kain’t finish.”

“But how in the hell did Kyle find out?” Lila asks, rising to her knees.

“Lordamercy, girl!” Sissy explodes. “You know better than to think all the cullud’s on the same side. They’s black fools, same as white!”

The truth of Sissy’s statement sends Lila, sinking, back to the floor.
Goddamnit! Now the hell what?

“If yuh’d ast me, Ah’d atold you,” Sissy huffs, stands up straight, and retrieves her tray. “Big Nick and Kyle two peas in a pod, same as yore daddy. All of ’em raised feelin’
small
. Spend the rest of they lives tryin’ to
pu f
theyselves up, bigger than the rest of us!” The heavy office door slams behind her.

Peas in a pod.
Lila stares at the closed door. Like everything else in the room, and the house, for that matter, it’s mahogany—that wild Brazilian wood—tamed by local carpenters into perfectly mitered, raised, and receded panels. Their repetitive orderliness (in sharp contrast to the disarray of the files on the floor) reminds her of a platoon in parade formation, recalls, for her, life in Washington. Days disciplined by the protocol of military life: Chain of Command, Rules of Engagement, Standard Operating Procedures. In the Army, a renegade like Kyle DeLuth would’ve been thrown in the stockade, busted to Buck Private, maybe even booted out as dishonorable deadwood.

But thoughts of her days in Washington begged her to remember her nights. And, just now, nights in Washington were entirely too painful to contemplate.

Of course, he’d called the afternoon after the story broke.

“Hooah, HiLi! What d’you think?” At The General’s use of her intimate nickname, Lila had winced. More than the military contraction of Hightower, Lila; it was a sideways reference to the High Life they’d savored in liberated Paris, in the heady days when it was clear to the Supreme Command that victory was imminent; when, bivouacked at Versailles, they’d managed overnight leaves in small, outer arrondissement hotels, late nights in the steamy, smoke-filled jazz clubs the French called
caves
. Liberated Paris had been heaven. Which, in comparison, made the bureaucratic pencil-pushing of Eisenhower’s Washington hell.

“Excuse me,
sir
.” She’d pictured him seated at his desk, three-star khakis, all starch and polish and self-justification. “I thought you wanted
out
of Washington?”

“Goddamn Dulles, all this talk about the military’s New Look. ‘We’ve got The Bomb,’ he says, ‘so who needs a standing Army?’ Can you believe that crap? And Ike—
Ike, for
Chrissake
—appears to be buying his massive-retaliation bullshit! Max says Ike’s talking about cutting the budget, gutting the ranks. No way can I walk away now, no way in hell.”

Lila felt stung. The Army had always been The General’s first and favorite mistress. “With all due respect, sir, I thought we had a deal.” Her tone had come out sharper than she had intended.

She’d heard his quick intake of breath, pictured him stiffening his spine. There was a pause. “Look, Lila,” he’d said raggedly. “Can’t you think of this as added acreage to our little dream farm in Virginia?”

“You do that, sir. All I see is the added months—
years,
no doubt—of pretending to be something I’m not.”

“What’s wrong with Special Assistant to the Assistant Chief of Staff?” he’d groused.

“Titles don’t do for me what they do for you, J.P.”

“Goddamnit, Lila! I thought you’d be thrilled for me. For
us
!”

“Negative, sir,” she’d replied, deliberately adding fuel to his fire.

“Christ Almighty, woman!”

She’d cut him off. “My regards to the lovely Kitsy, sir. Gotta go now, sir. Good-bye,
sir,
” she’d said, then slowly, deliberately, hung up the phone.

Of course, Jazz had sent flowers pleading “Patience, Ella. Love, Art.” Pink roses, which meant Paris to both of them. So far, she’d not replied, would not reply until the full force of her anger and disappointment subsided. Maybe, she wouldn’t reply at all.

Lila squints at the door’s polished brass fittings, gleaming in a slant of midmorning sun.
What if I don’t go back? What
would the Assistant Chief of Sta f do then?

Lila reaches for her coffee.
Bleh!
She sticks out her tongue at the gone-cold taste.
A hot cup would be nice, but
—she sighs—
there’ll be no more co fee out of Sissy this morning.

Aimless, in search of distraction, she returns to the stack of files in front of her, fingers the tabs whose typed titles list legal cases and rulings.
Nothing here,
she thinks, and pulls another stack toward her.

On these folders, the tabs are handwritten in her father’s slashing scrawl. Some files are more interesting than others— particularly those with the names of local and state politicos. It would be easy, she thinks, to chart the Judge’s rise to political power, his increased fortunes in citrus and cattle, through the number of chits, favors, and payoffs, given and received, and carefully noted, in the margins of his chronological files. Through the years, she sees, his sidebar comments show a keen astuteness, an instinctive sense of timing, advantage, and opportunity.
Sly old bastard,
she thinks, begrudging him her respect.

In another stack, there’s a file hand-tabbed simply and mysteriously “Ben.” Inside: a Certified Pedigree and Receipt of Sale for one “purebred gray Brahma herd sire, calved June 30, 1950, at 87 lbs., purchased April 3, 1953, at a certified weight of 1,029 lbs. Registration transferred from Breeder B. T. Hallwelle, Houston, Texas, to Owner Howard T. Hightower, Lake Esther, Florida, on April 3, 1953, for the sum of $750.00 plus shipping.”

Hooah!
Lila thinks, wondering if this is the very same blue-ribbon bull promised to Big Jim Yates, the soon-to-be-ex-Governor, at his panhandle ranch next spring.

In other files are other Receipts of Sale for other bulls and cows,
a whole herd,
which Lila sets aside for forwarding to her father’s estate attorney, Paine Marsh. There was no specific mention of cattle in the Judge’s will, she recalls. Kyle claimed, and everyone assumed, the Judge had “transferred the herd to him months back.” Maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t. She’d have Paine inquire.

In the meantime, what
was
she looking for, really? Would this be the place to find it?

Here was another file tabbed simply “Missy” in her father’s own hand. She’d been surprised at how many “Missy” files there were, seeded throughout his cabinets, containing odd pieces of artwork, or school assignments, her Red Cross swimming certificate, a handmade Christmas card “To Daddy, From Missy-toe.” She and Louis must’ve been in first grade at the time, maybe second, about the same age as Franklin Dare’s little ’Becca.

It was impossible to imagine the old man saving such things, tucking them away in tidy file folders with her nickname on it. Why were they still here? Had he forgotten them? Or, deliberately left them for her to find? Proof that, no matter what had passed between them, he was a good and loving father after all?
Sonofabitch, manipulative to the end, weren’t you?

Lila checks her watch—
quarter to twelve
—and wonders what her chances are of getting lunch. Sissy’s a tough old bird and, when riled, likely to pout till supper.
I’ll give her another
half hour,
Lila decides,
then make a sandwich myself.

She turns back to the stack. Midway down is another folder tabbed “Louis.”
Bastard,
Lila rails at her dead father. Her twin brother’s files, scattered as randomly as her own, tugged at her in ways nothing else could. Flipping this one open, expecting some yellowing certificate from Pop Warner football, she’s surprised by the two small pieces of paper: On top, an address and phone number, written hastily, almost illegibly, in her mother’s hand. In “Jaxvile,” which was, no doubt, Jacksonville, Florida. The second, a personal check, also in her mother’s looping script, made payable to—she feels her heart fist inside her chest—“Bill Roy Thompson” for fifteen hundred dollars. With the Jacksonville phone number written on the memo line, bottom left.

Lila knew the date without looking: January 9, 1943, the day before she and Louis turned twenty-one, when, legal at last, Louis had planned to announce his engagement to Lynette Thompson, Bill Roy’s only daughter.

The day of the party, Lynette went missing. Louis spent hours looking for her, and, that night, accused the Judge of buying Lynette’s father off.

“Where is she, you sonofabitch?” he’d roared, oblivious to all the others in attendance. “Tell me, or I’ll shoot your god-damned head off!” he’d threatened, brandishing the Judge’s own revolver in his face.

The Judge had sworn “before God and these witnesses” that he knew nothing about Lynette’s disappearance.

“Besides, Louis-honey,” Violet, already deep in her cups, had crooned, “everybody knows that girl’s nothing but trash. Even Kyle’s had her,” she’d said, slick as a snake. “Haven’t you, Kyle?”

And, right then, in front of everybody, Kyle DeLuth had bald-faced lied, “Sure. Matter of fact, we had a kinda slipup. She’s in Jacksonville right now gettin’ it taken care of.”

Everyone was stunned. Louis was shattered. And, the betrayal—not by Lynette, Louis knew her heart—but by his own parents and his supposed best friend propelled him into a spitting, flailing, pistol-whipping rage that took half a dozen grown men to subdue.

In the end, it was Hamp, talking calmly, who took the gun, gently, out of Louis’s hand. And walked him out of the house, a companionable arm flung around his shoulder, to “get some air.” Lila could have, should have, joined them. But she’d felt frozen, statue-like, in place, wondering if what she’d seen had actually happened. Was it possible she’d imagined the whole thing?

Afterward, Louis left. Without one single word to her. On the joint birthday that was supposed to get them both out from under the Judge’s thumb forever. It wasn’t a deliberate cruelty—her brother wasn’t capable of the kind of calculated abuse that was so clearly their parents’ stock in trade. The pain Louis caused was haphazard, accidental, on account of his lifelong inability to see the big picture.

They found his car outside the Army recruiter’s office, who confirmed he’d presented himself “for immediate enlistment” and been transported to basic infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

No doubt he would’ve contacted her eventually. But, before that happened, Louis Hightower, her heart’s twin, was dead in Tunisia—in the bloody hand-to-hand fighting beneath the date palms of El Guettar—and, in a manner of speaking, so was she.

After the funeral, the dismal folding of the flag, the bleak descent of the coffin, she’d meant to drive home, meet Hamp. But the road east, to the coast, came first. And she found herself turning, following the narrow black ribbon through miles of brooding hammock and pine woods to the broad blank sands of Daytona Beach. She’d stood for hours, staring at the gray ocean of tears whose far side wept on the shores of North Africa.

Her own eyes were dry. Numb with grief, dumb with despair, she must have drawn the attention of the women, dressed in olive drab, strolling the boardwalk. Someone took her hand, drove her car, parked it near the pier in front of the W.A.C. recruitment office, escorted her onto the bus, and into the nearby basic-training camp. Weeks later, way too long to ever make it right, she realized, with a jolt, that she’d done to Hamp exactly what Louis had done to her.

STILL ON THE FLOOR, Lila rocks back, shaking off the same sense of dizzy paralysis that kept her away from high places, the tops of tall buildings. What some people called fear of heights was, for her, the terrifying urge to jump.

She looks down at the check, surprised to find it still in her hand. The truth, the shocking proof, of—
Wait a minute.
Questions and answers fly up, hard and fast, out of the looping holes of Violet’s signature: The check was drawn off a joint account. But when, in Paine Marsh’s office, Lila had wondered why all of the Judge’s accounts were in his name only, Marsh had replied, “Oh, your daddy took your mamma off things years ago.”
How many years, exactly?