Zion (26 page)

James Luke fell backward, several teeth shooting out of his lips, and Dixie grabbed at his legs as he fell to the ground. Then the second dog, Duke, scrambled out from underneath the church bleeding, and both set upon him like bulldogs, the man crying for mercy when Tom hit him another blow with the butt of the rifle. James Luke’s jaw went crooked in his head, and his lights shut cold and dark.

Sara wanted to die. She wanted to take her newly purchased .38 Special from her purse and kill herself. There was nothing left to do now, she thought, but suicide. She’d dreamed of shooting Charity with the pistol, but now she wanted to shoot herself. Killing Charity Claiborne was on her mind when she bought the gun at the pawnshop in Baton Rouge. She was ashamed now. She had thoughts of shooting James Luke Cate, and she regretted not taking action. For years after her rape, she pondered shooting him. He was the cause of every curse to come upon her family, which now evolved into an even greater catastrophe. It was too late now, her anger and despair just wasted emotions. Today, only shooting herself made sense. The irony of it all was not lost on her, the circle of events like a grand mockery of her intentions.

The main reason she’d been silent over the past decade was because Wesley belonged to James Luke, and he’d threatened the boy’s life the day he tried to kill her for sleeping with Sloan Parnell, sleeping with his enemy. He swore to her that he’d kill the boy if she ever said a word. This was the supreme irony. It was as if she’d received yet another assault on top of the previous damage James Luke had caused.

Despite the opaqueness and melancholy, the Hardin home in Zion was buzzing with people. Corrine, Martina, Sara’s sister and brother-in-law from over in Fairhope, Alabama, and several ladies from the library were at the house. The kitchen was full of casseroles and cakes, a good portion received quietly at the front door by Corrine, most of it brought over by members of Little Zion Methodist.

It was all Sara could do to stand up, trying to wake herself from the near-comatose state brought on by prescription tranquilizers and guilt. She fantasized about Tom returning from his journey with the marshal, waiting for some news report that said Wesley was not dead after all, but alive, the resurrection of the body, which never seemed to occur in this earthly life.

When she finally became semi-lucid, Sara told Corrine about the pistol, asking her to keep it indefinitely. She knew better than to go get her purse and retrieve the loaded gun. She said committing suicide would be an easy way out, and she didn’t deserve such a painless escape. Corrine took the purse from the bedroom to her car. She emptied the rounds from the Rossi cylinder and locked the now unloaded pistol into the trunk of her Monte Carlo.

It was dark out when Tom arrived at the old farm in Zion, well past midnight. The Hardin home was quiet except for the low hum of the television in the living room where Corrine sat crocheting a baby blanket for a young child in the Little Zion Methodist congregation.

In the bedroom, Tom hovered over Sara where she lay. There was the dim light of the lampshade’s forty watt bulb. She lay on the bed with a towel over her eyes. “Do you want to know what happened to James Luke?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. Rita Lott called and said he’s in jail. That’s enough. I wish they’d give him the electric chair.” She removed her towel, gazed at Tom. He was now at the dresser taking off his shirt. “I want to die,” she said.

“I could have killed him. I didn’t. He was in my rifle sights not fifty feet away. But I choked,” he said.

“You should have done it,” she said, making a fist.

“Sara, are you going to be able to make our son’s funeral?”

“What did you say, Tommy?” she asked, staring at him. There was a familiar sound in his voice that she despised, an unmistakably self-righteous tone.

“Are you planning to go? You don’t appear capable of leaving the house. I hope you can drum up the strength out of respect. I have to make plans with the mortician in the morning and figure out how long to hold the body.”

She hated herself and hated Tom Hardin, this man she’d made a life with for twenty-three years. And more than anything else, she loathed his sense of moral superiority, his solid footing on every issue. She shouted, “He was my son. My damned son! My son and James Luke’s son, you damned fool. You are such a blind-assed fool. You’re a hopeless fool who can’t see anything. Wesley was James Luke’s son. He was the father, you stupid bastard. Can’t you see it? It’s right in front of your eyes.”

Tom looked at her. He was stung. And though he was stung by the words, he didn’t shout back. “No, that’s where you’re wrong. Wesley was my son. I raised him, and no matter what you say or whatever happened, I was his father. I was the one that loved him and lived for him. He was more my son and I was as much his father as any that ever lived.”

Four days after the double homicide, the late afternoon wake was held at Little Zion Methodist Church. Dr. Myles Polk, the new college president attended. He told Tom and Sara that Wesley would be awarded his degree posthumously at the fall commencement ceremonies held at the Cow Palace on campus. Teary-eyed young people lined the inside of the church and filled the churchyard making a long line to pass by the closed casket, which was placed in the front of the church atop the dark oak communion table that Tom’s father had built in 1955. No one had ever seen the likes of the funeral service at Little Zion since Leander Brownlow died, the marshal’s father. The windows of the church had to be opened for people to witness the event from the outside because so many crowded the sanctuary when Reverend Poole led a prayer service and visitation. Tom and Sara received the mourners as if no rupture had ever occurred between them, standing side by side and bracing one another in their inconsolable grief.

The next morning, Wesley was laid to rest in Little Zion Cemetery, and Poole eulogized him as a fine Christian youth slain by a cruel and violent world, snatched away from them in the prime of his life. Only God could bear such a burden, the death of a son, and so Tom and Sara would need to lean on the Lord to walk through this heartbreaking valley of death. Such compassion was seen in Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, man’s burdens placed upon His only begotten son, the suffering Savior of all mankind.

Charity, too, was interred the same morning, her burial at the Melrose Memorial Cemetery near the junior college. Both the Presbyterian minister and the fire-breathing Pentecostal preacher delivered sermons at the cemetery and placed her in a costly stainless steel casket in a marble crypt.

James Luke was treated for the gunshot wounds and a broken jaw. He was held without bail in Mississippi for the attempted murder of a peace officer, and then extradited to Louisiana and to the Baxter Parish Jail in Ruthberry for double murder in the first degree.

Tom and Sara never reconciled, even though they appeared as husband and wife during Wesley’s funeral services. But they could not fake it afterward. She moved out of the house and into a little duplex apartment by the railroad tracks on North General Pershing Street three blocks south of the college. By mid-November 1974, she had transferred to a job at the State Library of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, and she took an apartment nearby in Spanish Town. Tom filed for divorce.

The days of mourning took the edge off of Tom. He no longer needed to square every angle and plumb every line. A plumb line was only a vain illusion in this life, the appearances of having everything correct, unblemished, and perfect. He could square a wooden angle but not life itself. Over the months following Wesley’s murder, Tom learned that his standards of decorum were more of a fantasy than anything attainable. He just tried to do the best he could, to form a hedge against the cruel world he faced.

One Sunday in the early winter, Tom attended a special singing service at Little Zion Methodist Church, a late afternoon event with potluck food and music, but no sermon. “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me,” sang Priscilla Brownlow in a solo. She’d just returned from France, and even sang a verse in French. The Brownlow family had invited Tom to join them on their pew for the first time. He sat on the end of the pew near the window, the far end away from where Donald, Mary Anne, and Priscilla always sat close to the center aisle in the church. Tom listened and enjoyed the gospel song, but he now had his doubts about the whole proposition.

The congregation sang their favorite song, “Marching to Zion.” Tom had sung it at least three hundred times before in his five decades attending the church. As the piano played the fourth stanza, it caught his attention for the first time:

Then let our songs abound, and every tear be dry;
we’re marching through Immanuel’s ground,
we’re marching through Immanuel’s ground,
to fairer worlds on high, to fairer worlds on high.

Yes, Tom thought, perhaps only on Immanuel’s ground will my tears be dried. Maybe then I’ll see and understand, but not now. Not today or tomorrow. Not on this ground.

After Wesley’s death, Tom Hardin and Donald Brownlow became close friends. Brownlow retired as the Ninth Ward Marshal in January of 1975. He had plenty of time on his hands, and the two men visited each other often. Brownlow sometimes worked with wood and used Tom’s tools at his shop. Because he was retired, Brownlow used the shop more than Tom did.

In exchange for using the tools, Brownlow paid a year’s membership for Tom in the Zion-Lizard Bayou Hunting Club. Brownlow bought a young bluetick hound to use for hunting raccoons. Blue was a started dog in his second season, and the hound was capable of treeing raccoons by himself. It was dead winter, and Brownlow had persuaded Tom to go hunting with him. Tom went to the Land of Sports in downtown Pickleyville to buy a hunting license, the first he’d purchased since 1964.

Tom was beset by grief, but he was determined to go along with his life. He kept working at the junior college, reading a couple of books a week, mostly history books, and he kept up his household chores, cooking for himself, keeping a tidy house, piddling around in the shop out back, and doing the occasional small carpentry project. He missed his wife and son, and though the divorce was not yet final, they were each one dead to him now, each in their own particular way gone from his world.

He rode with Brownlow to the hunting grounds one Saturday night. The club was in an area he often traipsed during the open range years prior to January 1, 1965. Brownlow had a new pickup truck, his own personal vehicle with the big dog kennel cage on the back, which looked like a rolling jail for hounds, but there were no police lights on this truck, no marshal’s office signs on the doors. No siren. The tall hound stood in the bed of the truck. Tom could hear the bluetick howl as they drove south of Zion.

They pulled off the blacktop onto Turnpike Road. Tom unlatched the gate, and they entered the hunting club. A long straight road slipped into the timberland, property generally considered low and too prone to flooding for building subdivisions. The hunting lease went almost as far as the north edge of Lake Tickfaw.

When they stopped the truck deep in the woods, Brownlow let the bluetick hound loose from the cage, and he jumped down from the tailgate. The dog cocked his leg on a bush beside the truck in the darkness, the only illumination coming from a full moon and the battery-powered lamp that was wired to the top of the cage. When the hound quit urinating, he kicked his back legs as if to throw turf, almost like a bull about to charge, and then he bolted for the forest.

“He might make a good coon dog eventually,” Brownlow said. He offered Tom a plastic cup. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Sure, I might drink some,” Tom said. He pulled out his father’s watch from his blue jeans pocket. It was hanging from a leather fob. He popped open the hunting-case and shined his flashlight on it. The watch read half past eight. He placed it back in the little pocket in his jeans. “Thank you,” Tom said, taking a sip from the steaming cup in the cold night.

Brownlow poured himself a cup of coffee from the green thermos. “Reverend Poole’s been preaching out of Lamentations for the prayer service on Wednesday nights. I don’t believe I’ve ever read the book before now, nor heard a sermon from it. There are things in that book that’ll give you reason to wonder about it all. I guess he’s been preaching through Lamentations for a month or more, verse by verse at the service. He says it’s poetry. Now the first thing, it don’t seem like no poetry I’ve ever read, not that I’ve read a lot of it since high school, or even much back then. Poole says that it’s Hebrew poetry. What a thing to write poetry about, losing an entire city and no comfort in it. Your friends turn to enemies. Nothing but tears and affliction through the whole damn book. That Lamentations’ll send you to the crazy house, it’s so hopeless and dark. But I kind of enjoy it. It seems appropriate to our days here in Zion. I know you don’t normally come to the service on Wednesdays, but there are many times when I have sat there listening and thinking about you and all that you’ve gone through, and at times in prayer I remember you and Sara and all of the hell you’ve faced. I just wanted to tell you that.” He took a swallow of coffee.

“I appreciate the prayer,” Tom said.

“You know, Jim Cate will be prosecuted one way or the other the rest of his life. With trials in Mississippi and Louisiana. His wife’s money won’t help him on account she’s already filed for divorce against him, come to find out. They’ll take Jim to trial next year. Fact of business, Dr. Claiborne is the reason the judge in Ruthberry has kept him in jail without bond. The real shame is the moratorium on executions put in by that crazy-assed Supreme Court. He might never get the chair. Don’t seem like there’s a lot of justice in this old world. It don’t seem the way it ought to be to me, that’s for sure.”

Tom said, “Well, he’ll get justice either here or later. I don’t worry about it. None of it comes close to what I’ve lost and nothing can bring back my boy. I might not even go to the trial unless I’m forced to. Nothing can bring him back, and I’ve left it to the Lord. I don’t understand much of it, but it’s in the Lord’s own hands, as far as I’m concerned. It’s out of mine completely.”

Brownlow shook his head. “You could have killed him that day at the church house. Nothing would have ever come of it, him trying to shoot me down earlier with a high-powered rifle.”

“Yes, I could have and almost did. My finger was on the trigger.”

“You regret it?”

“At times. I think about it daily, and sometimes I wish I would have done it, other times not. Today, I’m glad I didn’t kill him. But like I said, it’s in God’s hands now, and I’m thankful for that. Everything else I think I can control falls short somehow.”

“You reckon there’s any good that’ll ever come from what happened?”

“No. Some people try to tell me this good or that good will come from it, the Lord having a plan and all. I haven’t ever seen it as something that good will ever come from. I see my son’s death as a catastrophe and an affront to the love of God in the world. The only thing I hope is that James Luke’ll never get out of jail and never hurt anyone else. Hopefully he’ll spend the rest of his days in Angola. And if Sara and I can just live the remainder of our natural lives in our right minds, it’ll be a witness against him.”

“You hear that?” Brownlow put down the coffee on the tailgate and stared into the darkness, his chin high in the air. He cupped his hand around his right ear.

Tom was quiet, listening.

“Blue’s done treed already. Must have run up on a coon slipping around on the ground and put him up a tree. Let’s go,” Brownlow said. He strapped a miner’s hard hat and light on his head, and Tom followed him with a flashlight in one hand and his Winchester .22 magnum rifle in the other.

It was dry out for February, almost parched, and they moved through the forest. It was surprisingly free of underbrush, the winter cold killing the thickets clear enough to walk through, and it reminded Tom of an era long ago when the cows ran free and grazed in the woods.

When they found Blue, the hound was jumping in the air and circling the base of a hardwood tree, and he barked a constant barrage of bellowing. The hound grew more intense when he saw the men and their lights coming.

“Speak to him, Blue. Speak. Speak to that old coon. Speak at him,” Brownlow hollered to the hound. The dog kept jumping up the side of the tree as if he would climb it. “Call to him. Talk to him,” Brownlow continued to holler.

Their lights shined into the treetops. The animal’s silver eyes were forty feet up. The raccoon turned away from the light beam, and Tom made the sound of a raccoon calling to another, a squalling noise deep in his throat, and the animal looked back down at him again.

“Do you want me to shoot him down?” Tom asked. He pointed the rifle at the glowing eyes.

“Might as well go ahead. It’ll be something I can take to the Widow Lazarus tomorrow. Trade it for one of her good pies.”

Tom took aim. He had a clear shot. He held the rifle a half-dozen seconds while the dog treed. He hesitated, dropping the barrel down. “Donald, why don’t you shoot? I don’t feel like killing a coon tonight.”

“Okay.”

Tom passed Brownlow the rifle. And he shot.