Deep In My Heart: Batman goes to Mayberry -- Part One

by ralph.a.gessner

During Freedom Summer a sadistic killer is preying on the folk of a friendly small town. The sheriff, who rarely wears a gun, is beyond his depth. A freelance crime fighter comes to investigate, but, because he is different, the local Klan objects to his help.

102

Gessner-Deep In My Heart

Chapter One

Thursday Night - June 11, 1998

First, let me tell you this: I've been a board-certified thoracic surgeon for twenty-seven years, and I can attest to the fact that no matter what the hue of a man's skin, his heart is always, always the same color.

I sit uneasily in the high school bleachers waiting for my son to give his valediction address. My heart's swollen with pride, but my mind is troubled by thoughts of an old man with a ruined ear and two dead men's names. Next to me sits my lovely wife. She has a video camera on her shoulder and is peering through the lens at a tall figure seated in the first row of metal folding chairs set up across the gym floor so she doesn't note my agitation. On the other side of her, my daughter Kate, my eldest, murmurs something about how handsome her baby brother looks in his long black gown and cap.

Principal Everett Williams finally concludes his "brief" remarks and introduces my boy. Before he can completely finish Kate shrieks a violent rebel yell and spanks her hands together in a rapid tattoo. After some scattered laughter the audience joins her, and my son Robbie, his coffee-with-cream colored face blush-darkened almost violet, makes his hesitant way to the podium. Once he gets there the lights of the gym rapidly fade and single spot illuminates his youthful face. I see how his nervousness falls away, and he grins to himself even in front of all of us. I have no idea what he's about to say. When I asked he said he wanted to surprise me.

"Thank you, one," he points his finger to Kate who is still clapping, "and all. Principal Williams, teachers, parents, family, and friends. It's been a long road to this night for all of us. . . ."

My mind wanders. I'm considering the raw, long healed wound I saw on the side of old guy's head and all the differing, perfectly logical, alternate ways it could have been inflicted. His face was not one I recognized, and his distraught, snowy-haired wife could give me no answers to my insistent questions. She seemed vaguely familiar, and I struggle to remember if I've ever met her before. I wonder why he'd demanded me to be his surgeon. I feel a sudden coldness along my spine and a sharp hollow sensation in my stomach as I realize I should have checked to see if his face had been altered. I should have also checked to see if his blood type was tattooed under his armpit.

The infamous Blue Hood Killer, later also known as the Butcher of Birkenau, the only person I would ever consider a human monster, could still be alive, lying in my hospital with the stitches he taught me holding the flesh of his chest together.

The auditorium erupts with laughter. My son must have told a joke. I'll have to watch the video before he has a chance to question me about how I liked it. I focus my attention on what he's saying to keep from thinking further.

"I must admit to you that I was selected to give this speech by only two tiny tenths of a percentage point. If Jennifer Dahl hadn't gotten that horrible toothache sophomore year just before the trig final she'd be up here instead of me. Mary Perrine and Shane Waldrop are maybe a point behind Jennifer. There are ten students that are within a four points of Mary and Shane. We've all spent many endless hours chained to books when we would've rather have been engaged in other, more interesting pursuits, but what I feel I must point out is that those of us with higher marks have all sometimes just been very lucky. We just happened to remember the items that our teachers chose to put on the tests. Our scores are no clear cut indication of the exact level of effort that any of us expended while attending this school. But I can guarantee no matter how much hard work and time the most studious of us has put in, none of us here tonight would have achieved anything without the constant support of our families and instructors. I'm reminded of the words of Sir Isaac Newton who wrote, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." I'd like to expand on that thought and guess that if we were to examine those shoulders beneath our feet carefully, we will notice that from them sprout a full feathered pair of shining wings. I stand here tonight to remind you my fellow graduates that twenty or thirty years from now who stood here giving a speech and what he or she said will not matter in the least. From this moment on we all start out even. What will matter is our resolve to pledge ourselves to make as much a difference in the lives of those who will count on us as those who have helped us get to this moment. I ask you my fellow graduates to please join with me in giving thanks to our personal angels for all of their help."

The light swells back to full and the graduating class stands and gives their audience a rousing standing ovation.

My son has a distinct flair for the dramatic. He gets it from his mother.

"Ah, geeze, Daddy, yew didn't." My daughter looks disapprovingly at the large fiberboard tray containing the messy remnants of a pork barbecue sandwich. Two over-crisp French fry ends stick like clipped panther claws in a puddle of catsup. Fragments of pork shoulder are tiny islands in a reddish-brown sea of sauce. There is a sizable empty paper container that used to hold coleslaw. A thick cigar smolders in the ashtray next to two chewed butts. She plucks my glass of bourbon and asks, "An' what num-bah drink would this be?"

"It would be four, I do believe." I pick up my tab and check. "Five. The first one didn't last long."

"Momma's gonna throw a shit fit. Y'all are supposed ta be watching you'self. Yew'd think yew of all people would know better that to pollute yo' body with all this junk."

"You would think," I agree. "I did two angioplasty, one bypass, and a pacemaker insertion only today. And before you remind me, we do have a history of heart disease in our family. Can I buy you a drink? Have you eaten yet?"

She grins and says, "I guess yew couldn't ver' well tell Momma on me. I'll have a tom collins and a catfish sandwich - no fries though, chips." She slumps on the stool beside me and opens her purse and pulls out a cardboard pack of cigarettes. I look from them to her face. She tilts her oval chin to her chest and looks me in the eye, challenging me to berate her. When I don't she tucks her corn rows behind her ear and gives me that "hymph" expression by subtly tugging slightly at both corners of her mouth in a not quite smile and giving me a scant "I-didn't-think-so" backwards nod. She tucks the filter on the edge of her lip and digs around in her purse for her lighter. I hand her the matches I've been using.

I signal to the bartender, a short efficient looking college kid with thick, round glasses and sandy hair styled with a crisp part like JFK used to. I tell him what Kate would like, and he points at me, slaps the bar, and scurries off to give the order to the kitchen.

It's somewhat after ten; the graduation broke up at seven so I've been here close to three hours. We are in the Black Jewel Bar on the left side of Beale Street when you stand facing the river. It's narrow, dark, and smoky the way bars are supposed to be. Paintings, photos, and posters from seven decades of blues artists line the black painted walls. On the raised stage in the back of the room a youngish white girl with large titties and a tight blue top and even tighter jeans sings passionately and well into her microphone about being a pirate turning forty. Behind her blinks the top of a neon guitar. The pink and blue lights glint off the diamond stud in my daughter's nose.

"How did you know where to find me?" I ask, idly stirring my drink with a finger.

She lights her cigarette and takes a deep, happy drag before answering, "Last year at the Holden's Christmas party I ovah-heard Doctor Meyer tell yew that the next time yew got out from un-dah Momma's steady gaze on a Thursday to give that girl on the stage a listen. Yew told him you most certainly would as this place was your old stompin' grounds back in the day. For some ray-son it seemed the only logical place t' look."

I stare at her, "That doesn't make any sense."

"Yeah, but - ya know - here we ah." She gestures around us with the glowing tip of her cigarette, making loose smoke trails in the humid air.

The bartender returns, and we watch him mix Kate's drink. He knows how to make a real tom collins, not just one that uses gin and margarita mix.

After she's taken a long swallow Kate starts to relax. For the thousandth time I wonder how despite my New Jersey barbaric yawlp and my wife's clipped Georgia drawl both my kids have still ended up with sliding Tennessee burrs in their speech. Then again, I've heard Chinese children use the same inflections when speaking to their parents in the Mandarin dialect.

I point to the lonely looking ice in my glass to order another. The kid winks at me and tilts the bottle twice and drops a few finger fulls of ice on top of the amber liquid. I don't look at my daughter as I try not to whine, "I don't do this that often. Maybe twice a year. It's not like I'm some sort of lush."

"I know, but Momma's gon' be furious anyway. At about nine-thirty when yew ha'n't shown up she decided to go to bed. She told me to tell yew that whenever yew got yo'self home yew could just tuck yo'self in in the guest room. And they's no way yo' gonna be able to hide that cigar taste outta yo' mouth by mawnin'. They don't make chewing gum that strong."

My love for my wife is very near absolute. Her passion is one of the qualities that drew me inexorably to her but, the flips side of it, her almost magnesium-intense flaring temper is truly frightening to behold. "Ya," I agree with a soft spurt of breath. I remember where I got this manner of agreement and also from whom he had in turn acquired it. I took a short pull from my freshened glass. The past is all too much with me tonight. "She could've paged me if she was worried."

"An' yew coulda called. She thought yew were gonna follow us home after the graduation. Bad enough yew were so late showing up."

"Something delayed me at the hospital. I was going to go straight home, but then at the last minute I decided to come here."

On the stage the white girl with the titties launches into a song about the femininity of mandolins. Then she croons a lullaby about a captain and his kid.

"Hey," Kate says snapping her head towards the stage. "Wa'n't that the third Jimmy Buffet song in a row?"

I don't look at her, "Was it? I hadn't been counting."

"Now, why would she do that?"

"I have no idea."

"Don't Blues singers usually vary their sets?"

"Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't."

Kate smirks at me, "Yew musta paid her!"

"Perhaps. I like to contribute to the arts now and again."

"But, Daddy, yew only listen to Parrot Head songs when yo' depressed. Somethin' must be wrong. Did Jamie's graduation bother yew that much? Do yew feel like you're gettin' old or somethin'?"

"No, not especially. At fifty-six I'd say I've only just reached the prime of my life."

"Then what?"

"It's kinda of a long story - goes back over thirty years - no - really almost sixty."

Kate's meal arrives, and she spreads tarter sauce liberally on the corn meal crust of her catfish. "The state Momma was in I'm in no hurry to get home; let's have it," she says licking her thumb.

"Maybe later. Eat your snack; I'm going to go call your mother."

"Good idea. He-ah, use my cell phone." She pulls the case from her voluminous one strap black leather purse.

"It's too noisy out here. I'll take this to the restroom." I say into her ear.

"Hey, Daddy, Doctor Meyer was right; that girl is mighty fine singer."

"Ya."

"Really good bosom, too."

I roll my eyes, slide off the bar stool, and carefully lope to the gentleman's room. The bourbon has made my nose numb and my reflexes sluggish. In the john I look at myself in the mirror. I see a not bad looking middle-aged black man with a neatly trimmed pencil-width mustache and close cropped, thinning hair that's going white in patches. I smile; still have all my teeth. I do have a little hard pot belly that didn't used to be there five or so years ago, but other than that I look pretty much as I have since I was a resident surgeon in Baltimore.

I punch my home phone number on the key pad. I notice that the keys are almost impossible to read through the accumulated gray residue of Kate's hand cream.

Rebecca answers on the third ring.

"Hey," I say. I listen to her sigh which is jaggedly edged with both relief and ire. "I've got a good explanation."

She doesn't say anything, so I slowly tell her about what happened to me just before graduation, about my terrible suspicions concerning the man to whom I'd given the late afternoon emergency pacemaker insertion.

"Oh, Lord, that is an excellent explanation. Are you gonna call him? It was part of our deal," my wife asks. The sound of her voice, her silky hill country drawl, still, after so many years, fills me with a warm, primal joy.

"Not yet. I can't really be sure until after I check on a couple things tomorrow morning." Then I confess my evening's sordid itinerary. I leave out Kate's smoking, but tell Becky pretty much everything else.

"I'm going to tell Kate what happened. I think it's time. How would you feel about that?"

She doesn't answer right away. When she's not angry Becky always needs a few moments to think, to weigh her thoughts and emotions before giving them voice. "It's probably a good idea. She's almost engaged to Spence. I don't want to be there when you dredge it all up, but, yeah, she should know. I think the tellin' would make you feel better after what's happened."

"Okay then. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier. I wasn't thinking."

"It's not okay, but I think I can forgive you. Wake me up when you get home. I wanna feel you close."

"So I can never mind about the guest room."

"Yeah, no sense messin' up two beds, least ways while Jamie's still livin' at home."

"I love you, Bet - Becky." I almost say another name, one I hadn't spoken while awake in thirty years. Becky says she's heard me call it out desperately in my sleep more than a few times over the years.

My wife chuckles throatily. "So you're also thinkin' about her, that cruel, idiot white girl who broke your heart. I do so love you too, you perfect fool of a man. Be sure to tell Kate everythin', but hurry on home."

I tuck the phone in the holder and rejoin my daughter. She's flirting with the bartender.

I hand her the phone and say, "Let's take a walk over to Confederate Park. We'll look at the lights of the bridge, and I'll tell you a story."

"Okay. Sounds like a plan." Kate downs the last of her drink.

I give the bartender some twenties and ask him to keep the change. I can tell he'd much rather have Kate's phone number. Apparently Spence Parker's name didn't come up in the conversation.

The singer blows me a kiss as we leave. I take one last peek at her titties.

A little further down on Beale we turn right onto Front Street which is a mostly deserted concrete canyon this time of night. Both of us walk with a fairly swift stride down the wide sidewalks and in no time we come to the upper part of the park on the bluffs overlooking the Wolf and Mississippi Rivers with the dark bulk of Mud Island in between. The tip of the Pyramid Arena and the lighted double-curved span of the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge are on our right. In the distance, down river, the low, flat Hernando De Soto Bridge is on our left. I sit on one of the green painted park benches and rest my feet on the above ground root of a tall poplar. There are a few beer cans in paper bags scattered on the ground, and Kate gathers them up and puts them in a trash can before joining me. It's a soft late southern evening, a little too warm and humid for my New Jersey blood, but not all that uncomfortable. A young couple strolls through the street light along the promenade of the lower, Jeff Davis Park. Olive colored World War I artillery pieces poke their sealed barrels through a jagged stone wall. The tire on one has rotted away so that it sags in the shape of a tear drop. I've been to this park a dozen times and never noticed it before. At the bottom of the bluffs the Riverside Trolley makes it's last run. The driver rings the tinkling bell as he passes across Jefferson.

Kate lights another cigarette, and I begin to speak. "The early Spanish explorers used to multiply the size of everything they discovered by ten to encourage others to visit the New World. But when they came to the Mississippi River they didn't dare relate anything except exactly what they found because they didn't think anyone would believe even the simple truth. My story is kinda like that. It began for me in the summer of 1964. I had volunteered for the Mississippi Summer Project, what's now called "Freedom Summer." About a thousand people: students, lawyers, and doctors went to the Magnolia State to try and register Blacks to vote and to teach them leadership skills and self-esteem. I was all of twenty-two and my feet hurt . . ."

Chapter Two

Tuesday Noon - June 23, 1964

My feet hurt terribly. It's because of the new, stiff steel-toed shoes I was told to buy. Steel toes shoes offer protection when the rednecks stomp on your feet. I feel a warm wet burst of dampness around my toes as another large blister breaks. I wonder if having your toes stomped could hurt worse than worse than the blisters.

It's only the second day of the Mississippi Summer Project. My partner, Terry - short for Terrance Hastings Biddlebow III - and I trudge down a long country road looking for the shanty homes of the black folk to try and convince them to register to vote. Yesterday and so far this morning we haven't had much luck. No one seems to be home when we knock.

Terry and I are still trying to make conversation; we haven't gotten to the stage where we can just be together and be quiet. He's a Boston Brahmin who has another year of "Hah-vahd" and I've just graduated from Rutgers. Our conversation of yesterday consisted of his informing me of his illustrious family history which was entwined like creeping ivy with the Kennedys and my feigned awe in murmured replies. I haven't told Terry that I graduated magna cum laude and was my class valedictorian. I don't plan to either, just as I won't tell him I've earned a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins Medical School in the fall. Even though my future seems to me as bright as his family's past, if the conversation does come around to me or my lineage I'll have to admit my step-father's a barber - albeit one with a five chair shop - and my mother, before she died this past January, ran a lunch counter besides all the odd jobs and clothes washing she did to get extra money to help me attend college. I have the strong impression that Terry is a sniffer and my humble antecedents will give him much reason to sniff for the next eleven or so weeks we are in Kingdom County, Mississippi. He probably assumes something much like the truth but by not speaking it aloud I hope to give him some cause for doubt which should preclude the more pointed sniffing.

Tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow for us, I plan on wearing my Keds. Perhaps that sounds fatalistic but the conversation Terry and I are trying to avoid concerns the three missing guys in Neshoba County. We touched on it briefly yesterday afternoon in between the recitation of the careers of his great uncle Colin Biddlebow and his second cousin Patricia who married one of the Fitzgeralds. Terry had asked me how well I knew the James Chaney fellow. I informed him, perhaps too coldly, that just because I am a Negro doesn't mean I've met every other Negro in the Project. I told him that the only contact I have had with the three is that Andy Goodman cuffed me lightly on the ear last week during the harassment workshop. It was part of the orientation we'd been through at the Western College for Women in Ohio. Andy was playing the ignorant peckerwood and I was the dreaded "outside-agitator-commie-slash-nigger."

Terry frowned at me for pointing out his faux pas, apologized lightly, and continued with his narrative.

Last night we learned that Chaney, Goodman, and the third guy, Mickey Shwerner had been arrested prior to their disappearance and were released just after dark. This morning when our project director, Franklin D. R. Toomes, dropped us off at the end of the road he again warned us that if such a thing were to happen to stay in jail even if we had to punch the sheriff in the face in order to do it. "Punch him hard," Frank had said with an odd smile.

Another set of facts I don't plan on telling Terry is that Frank took me aside during orientation and explained to me that Kingdom County, which is in eastern Mississippi up on the Tennessee border, is one of the least dangerous for civil rights workers and that while the sheriff may trouble us some for appearances and his deputy was sort of slow, they'd both most likely make sure nothing bad happened to us. I protested that as someone with medical training I wanted to and should be in the thick of the struggle. I was fully prepared to serve and, if it happened, be wounded or killed in the nonviolent war for freedom being waged this summer. Frank patiently explained that the Movement needed me alive to finish medical school and serve as an example of what black people are capable of. I wondered aloud why Terry was assigned to Kingdom County. Frank said that besides me and another special case he'd been given the dregs to work with. Terry's entrance interview indicated that he was a whiner; no one else wanted to put up with him, but because of the Kennedy connection they didn't want to turn him down. Then I asked if he would tell me about the special case.

Frank grinned, "Don't let on that you know, but it's the daughter of some white judge from a small town in Georgia just outside of Atlanta. After the judge couldn't talk her out of coming here a large under the table donation was made to COFO to ensure she'd be posted in a nice safe assignment. A small part of it paid for your fellowship. Some more of it will go to the rent on the Freedom School building where she'll be teaching. It was lucky in a way; otherwise we'd probably have left Kingdom County alone."

Though I didn't ask why Frank was in Kingdom County he told me anyway. "God assigned me to it. I was born there."

Terry stops at a fork in the road and rubs the sweat from his heavily freckled face into his red crewcut. Terry is rather chunky and the perspiration makes his white cotton shirt cling to the bulgy parts. The back of his chinos are damp like he wet himself. "God, it's hot. Let's go right. I see a trailer down that way."

"Frank said to go left when we came to this fork."

Terry speaks to me very . . . slowly . . . in his irritation-lathered Back Bay accent, ticking off his points on his puffy fingers, "Maybe he made a mistake. That road doesn't look as well used. This one's graveled and that one's just got old wagon ruts. We can always do that direction later. We have all summer."

Just as carefully and haltingly I explain, "But after we finish in Juneapple we have to cover the towns of Pecan, Mount Blue, Welty, and Dumas. If we finish in Kingdom early we could move into Alcorn or Ford Counties." I - it's a miserable expression considering - ape Terry and touch my fingers as I list the towns.

Terry sighs, "Look, B.J., I'm very thirsty. It's almost lunch time. Our canteens are empty. Let's just go to that house and get some water to go with our peanut butter sandwiches. If we don't find any Negroes, we'll come right back and go your way. Does that sound fair?"

I'm somewhat thirsty too so I agree, though I feel I shouldn't. Frank told me to make sure not to let the white boy think he was in charge just because he was teamed with a Negro. I was supposed to crush any indication of it abruptly. The factor that decided it for me is the thought that I could put my feet up. They're throbbing as steadily as twin heart beats inside of my new shoes. We head towards the trailer.

The trailer is very old. Rusty trails leak from the rivets holding the loose outer panels to the frame. The roof sags on the left side. The trailer's color could have been originally pale mint or beige. It's hard to tell. However, the plywood skirt surrounding the bottom is freshly painted forest green and the unfinished four by six pine boards that make up the steps and tiny deck still ooze sap. The windows are very clean. Red and white checkered curtains can be seen through them. At the end of the wide gravel driveway beside the trailer is a plastic pink flamingo. Behind the trailer to the right is the charred shell of a house. The backyard has been recently dug up to change the septic and well pipes from the house to the trailer so I guess that the house burnt not very long ago, many a matter of weeks. Next to the remains of the house is a scorched live oak with a truck tire swing hanging from a thick hemp rope tied to an upper branch. The tire has been melted into the shape of tear drop. The grass has been mowed that morning, and a wicker rake stands beside a fresh pile of trimmed cuttings. Between the house and the trailer is a sizable vegetable garden.

While I'm looking things over Terry has gone up the steps and knocked on the door.

An older Negro woman answers. Terry gives me a smug look. I point his attention back to the woman who's waiting to hear what he wants.

While Terry reads about our mission from the mimeoed form I study the woman. She's short and slender. Her broad face looks made to smile very widely. She's wearing a blue cotton house dress with lilies printed on it and ruffled white lace edged faded pink apron with pockets in the front. Her front is lightly dusted with flour or corn meal. I wonder why she looks familiar. She wears a high chocolate brown wig that must be hot in this weather.

"You feet hurtin' you, boy?" she says to me, interrupting Terry.

"Yes, ma'am," I answer.

"Why don' you two come in and sit a spell. I'll fix you some nice ice tea. Caty'll be home in while and you can have dinner with him."

"But," Terry starts.

"Don' worry; you keep makin' yo' speech whilst I fry Mr. catfish."

We enter the trailer and sit in the wooden booth that serves as a table. As with the outside the place is very old but well kept up. Potatoes and greens are boiling on the stove. In a black cast iron skillet lard bubbles. There are fish tails as wide as my hand sticking out from a rolled up newspaper.

"My name be Gertrude Toomes, though prid' near ever'body call me 'Aunt G.'"

I realize that Terry had skipped the introduction, the crucial part that was supposed to build trust with our clients. I open my mouth but Terry is already talking, "Mrs. Toomes, I'm Terrance Hastings Biddlebow the third. This is B.J. Phillips."

"What the B.J. stand fo'?" Aunt G. asks.

"I don't know," Terry says turning to me. During the last half week of orientation in which we were divided up by target county, the godawfully long drive down from Ohio, and the day and half we've been canvassing together, Terry has never thought to ask.

"Bernard James," I say.

Aunt G. smiles, "Nice name. Real southern. You should use it." She pours us tall glasses of ice tea from a pitcher in the refrigerator.

"My mother and father were both from Mississippi," I admit.

"Really? Where abouts?"

"She never did say exactly. Somewhere's in Jordan County. I didn't think to ask while she was living. Before I saw the project flyer this April I hadn't ever expected to come here. She left the state after my father was killed, a couple of months before I was born."

"Was he lynched?" Terry asks.

"No. He got caught while cleaning a gin. It took his arm off, and he bled to death."

Terry snorts. "Is that a funny way of saying he drank too much? I never heard of having to 'clean' gin before. It usually looks pretty clear in a glass."

"I think the boy means a cotton gin, Mr. Biddlebow," Aunt G. says.

"Imagine large rotating drums with lots of nails coming out of them," I tell Terry.

"Um, sorry. I didn't know," Terry stammers. Having to admit he's wrong must not be a normal thing for him. He's not very good at it.

"You boys like catfish?" Aunt G. asks. "People tell me I do a good job of it."

"I haven't had it before," Terry answers. I hadn't either and said so.

"You be in for a treat then," Aunt G. giggles. "I think I have some chinaberry pie left from suppah last night too."

"Say, Mrs. Toomes, are you any relation to Franklin Toomes?" Terry asks. I hadn't made the connection. I think of Frank as "Frank." I realize that when they talk Frank and Terry call each other "Toomes" and "Biddlebow."

Aunt G. nods happily, "Yes, he be my nephew. How do you-all know Frankie?"

"He's our summer project director, Mrs. Toomes," Terry says. "He seems to be doing a good job."

"I thought I done tol' you to call me Aunt G. I ain't no Mrs. Toomes."

"But using courtesy titles for Negroes enhances their self-esteem," Terry quotes.

Yes, he actually said that. I wished for a second that someone would show up and disappear both Terry and me, I'm so embarrassed. Just that instant I see a police cruiser pull into the driveway.

I grab Terry's arm, "Terry, look. It's a cop. We don't want to get this woman in to any trouble. We're going to leave now, Aunt G. Pretend you're throwing us out."

She shoves me down in the bench. She's plenty strong for a small woman. "Don' be foolish. That just Sheriff Caty home for his noon vittles."

The sheriff pulls his uniform top out of his belt, takes it off, and lays it on the rail of the small deck. He lights an unfiltered cigarette, sits on the stoop in his tank top, and stares at the charred house. I relax. He's not even wearing a gun.

Aunt G. pours the sheriff an ice tea, opens the screen door, sets the sweating glass beside him, and says, "Sugah, we gots company for din-nah. Why don'cha be a deah an' get some ripe to-mate-ahs outta the gah-den fo' me?"

The sheriff mumbles something.

Aunt G. opens the newspapers and grasps a catfish in her callused hands. She cleanly slices the head off. Then she swiftly dresses the belly cavity. She tucks the head and purple and yellow intestines into an empty coffee can in the fridge. "Fo' soup," she explains when she sees the question on my face. She daubs the fish in buttermilk then dredges it in herbed flour and corn meal. She sets the fish in the smoking lard. A sizzle and rush of fragrance fill the close air.

"You in luck today. Yes, you is. My neighbor Harold Mun-roe caught a big mess of catfish early, early this mawnin'. Caty told me to lay in extra food case he had to jail some of them Yankee outside aggie-tatahs ever'bodies all hepped up about."

Terry who started to look a little queasy when Aunt G. cleaned the first catfish turns a tad green when she attacks the second. After six years of nights, weekends, and summers working in a hot dog factory I'm unfazed.

Aunt G. frowns. She stands on her tippy toes and calls, "Caty, deah?" He is either ignoring her or doesn't hear.

She rinses her hands, checks the fish that's in the fat, and turns the gas knob down a bit. She shuffles out to the deck and squeezes his shoulder. The cop looks back at her. Under his bushy dark brows, his eyes are red and desperate. The skin on his protruding cheek bones looks damp and raw. Salty tears cling to his day old beard. The cigarette is almost burnt down to fingers. The long, curling ash hangs in the hot air. He is a tall, medium built man in his early thirties. His coal black hair is cropped close on the sides with a large pomaded curl in front.

The cop whispers; his piney woods accent is softer than hers, but it's there, "What's up, Aunt G.?" He looks like he's ashamed that she caught him grieving but very tired of holding it in. He appears grateful to her for a slight moment but quickly looks away. "Did-ja wan' somethin'?"

Aunt G. pats his arm, "I'd like a couple of them garden to-mat-ahs, Sugah, if you please."

The sheriff slides off the step but in doing so knocks over the ice tea with his hand. He looks at the spreading liquid in bewilderment. Aunt G. stoops to collect the glass and spoon and kicks the ice off the deck.

"That's okay. I get it. Just head on into the gah-den."

Aunt G. seems worried. She starts to hum, picks the shirt off of the rail, and comes back into the trailer. She turns the cooking fish over and takes the shirt into the bedroom where an ironing board is set up. She touches up the wrinkles on the uniform blouse and puts it on a wire hanger. She then forks the catfish out of the lard, lays it on a grocery bag to drain, and lays the fish's twin in the pan.

Terry and I watch the cop wandering around the vegetable garden like he forgot what he's doing there. He walks past rows of corn and snap beans around a pea fence to staked tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants. He's lit another cigarette and squints one eye to keep the smoke out of it. He pulls his handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes his face. Then he sort of snaps to and plucks two ripe tomatoes and cups them in his left hand. He looks again in the direction of the charcoal ruin of the house. He takes a drag from the cigarette. He's staring under the melted tire swing. His hands begin to shake, and he has tough time getting the cigarette back on his lip. That's when I notice the bright yellow of a discarded Tonka truck at the base of the tree.

Suddenly, something else grabs the sheriff's attention; he becomes instantly alert. I get up and walk to the screen door. Terry follows me. In the distance, down the long yellow-red clay road I can see a cloud of dust coming closer and closer. I wonder if it's Frank coming to pick us up early and if he'll turn left at the fork. I'd hate for him not to find us. It's six or more miles back to where we're staying - assuming we're not going to disappear. A very fine, large black car surges ahead of the dust. It's not Frank's beat up yellow Dodge, that's for sure.

The sheriff tosses his cigarette into the ashes of the house and walks to the front of the trailer just as the car barrels into his driveway, smashing into the pink flamingo, sending it flying several yards on to the lawn.

"It's a Rolls Royce Phantom IV!" Terry hisses into my ear. "There are only nineteen of them in the whole world. They're only sold to royal families or other heads of state. That baby can crawl slower than a man can walk for parades or go over one hundred miles per hour. Under that long hood it's got a 5675 cc B-80 engine with eight in-line cylinders, in a cast iron block with an aluminum alloy head, overhead inlet and side exhaust. The car is a four speed with a single dry plate clutch and hydraulic front and servo-assisted rear drum brakes. It looks like laundaulette coach work - that's when there's a partition between the driver and the passenger, only used for limousine service. What . . . A . . . Beauty."

I'm amazed. Terry admitted that at Harvard he was carrying a "Gentleman's C." which meant as long as he shows up for every class he passes otherwise he'd flunked out freshman year. "How do you know all that?" I ask.

"My uncle Lesley owns a Silver Wraith. The Phantom IV is a lengthened and strengthened version of it. He took me with him when he picked it up and the dealer let me have some of the literature. I adore classic cars."

"I like the way the fender over the rear wheel is a short wave like a sideways comma and the front is a nice long sideways half question mark. I especially like the spare on the side in front of the running board. The lamp head lights are nice too."

Terry looks at me like it's my head that's ailing instead of my poor feet. For a change I wanted to keep up my end of the conversation. I guess I shouldn't have bothered.

"Did you notice that it's got Quebec tags," I ask.

"You're right. That's very peculiar," Terry marvels.

The front driver's side door opens and a huge figure disembarks. The very wide, very tall man is dressed despite the heat in a dark greenish-gray long trench coat and a gray snap-brimmed hat. He's a Negro so dark that, as my mother would say, he could leave finger prints on coal. He has a pink raised scar on his left cheek. He is in his late thirties. Mumbling to himself he rushes over to the flamingo. He picks it up and examines it. One leg is badly bent but the plastic shell is unharmed. The dark man reaches deep into the coat and pulls out a really weird looking wrench that reminds me of a drawing compass attached to needle nose pliers that have the pinchers perpendicular to the handle. He straightens the metal leg, walks back to the end of the driveway, and pushes the flamingo back into the yellow-red clay. Then he pats it with an ebony hand and replaces the tool in his coat.

The sheriff, while trying to peek into the smoked back windows to see who the passenger might be, watches all of this from the corner of his eye with steadily mounting anger. In a raspy voice he hollars, "Whatcha doin', Boy?"

The big man looks for a boy behind him. Seeing none, he softly replies in a shy but extremely deep voice with a mild French accent, "Excuse me, but perhaps you are talking to me?

The sheriff walks close to the man and glares at him. The sheriff is tall but the top of his head only just comes to the black man's nose. "Yeah, Boy, you. What're you doing to my flamingo?"

The dark man is very apologetic, "I, uh, hit him. My driver was . . . killed last month. I haven't found a replacement yet. I am not a very good with my motor car. She confuses me." He pauses and looks down at the flamingo. "I think I fixed him, your flamingo that is. If he's not to your satisfaction I would be glad to purchase another for you." The dark man smiles.

The sheriff's face dissolves from wrath to utter shock as he realizes, "There's nobody in the back seat? That's your car!"

The dark man wipes a bug from the silver raven hood ornament and replies, "Ya."

The sheriff shifts from foot to foot. He examines the leather upholstery and speaks to the dark man from the corner of his mouth. "So, where did you get it? Steal it? Win it off a white man in a rigged poker game?" The sheriff runs his finger along the steering wheel. I can tell he'd really like to sit in the driver's seat, maybe as much as Terry who's panting low in my ear that the wheel is carved mahogany.

The dark man doesn't seem to get upset over these insults, "It was a gift from Queen Elizabeth in return for a small service I performed for her mother. I have the papers if you require them."

The sheriff walks around to the back of the car shaking his head. "Queen Elizabeth. Right. Uh-huh. Yeah, lemme see them papers."

The dark man reaches into the coat again, and the sheriff tenses. He fingers the air on the side of his belt. He eyes the door and frowns when he sees Terry and I standing in it. The dark man opens a leather portfolio and passes vellum documents to the sheriff.

The sheriff studies the forms. The dark man waits patiently until the sheriff finishes. He holds out the ebony hand to shake.

The sheriff ignores the hand and grunts, "I guess they look all official. Doesn't seem right though, a niggah owning a car as pretty as this one. What-cha doin' here, Boy."

"My name is Robert Anthony. I am seeking Sheriff Decatur Fairchild. A man in town told me he lived on this road. Do you know where I can find him?"

"I'm Sheriff Fairchild. What's your bid-ness with me?

"I am a consulting detective. To that end I engage a clipping service that searches newspapers for accounts of certain strange events, inexplicable deaths, odd sightings, things of this nature. I have read of your difficulties. I wish to be of help in catching the fiend or fiends responsible, if I may."

Sheriff Fairchild is nonplused, "Help me. How?"

Mr. Anthony motions in the air with his hands while he speaks, "If I am right, there is a man in your town that I have pursued before. I could be of great aid in capturing him."

The sheriff looks like Mr. Anthony spat on him, "I don't know what you-all are talking about. And if I did things ain't so bad that I need the help of a niggah. Get back in your fancy car and fly the hell out of my county. Best keep goin' until you're outta Mississippi while you're at it."

It's Mr. Anthony's turn to be shocked and perplexed, "You refuse my help because of my race? But I know how this evil man thinks. We . . . "

The sheriff was on his way back to the trailer to see what we're doing in his home. He spins around. His face is a grimace. "We ain't doin' nothin', Boy. You get gone or I'll jail your black ass right this minute."

Mr. Anthony, flustered in his disbelief, stammers and stutters hurriedly, his foreign accent getting much thicker, "Listen to me: zee next victim will die in water. It will again seem like an accident but if you examine zee body closely some-sing will seem not quite right. It will be someone related to a person in your municipal government. Not very high up. Definitely not zee mayor. A clerk. That level. Most likely a female. In less than two days. I got here as soon as I figured it out. I wish I could have come sooner."

The sheriff lets out a tortured, snarling yell and heaves a tomato smack into Mr. Anthony's face. It hits his forehead with full force and splatters. Pulp, pips, and juice run down his wide nose and lips.

The sheriff growls, "I said leave, Niggah. I don't like repeating myself."

Mr. Anthony breaths in slowly. Despite the tomato and the insults he has kept his dignity and has regained his calm. He seems very apologetic that he must continue. He whispers, but even his whisper has power, "I understand. The second and third victims were mother and son. They were related to the head police official. They were shot and burnt to death. It is very sad. I am sorry, Monsieur Sheriff, bon jour et bon chance. I will be in town until the end of the week if you change your mind." Mr. Anthony gets in his car and jerkingly drives away.

The sheriff looks at the other tomato in his hand. He looks back at the departing car. He frowns, gulps air. From the way he holds his shoulders I can tell he's in lots of pain. He crushes the tomato and heaves the skin and seeds at the ground.

Aunt G. edges past us and goes to him. She takes him in her arms and coos, "Po' Caty, fo' a long time you needed someone to get really mad at. But why didn' you listen to him? He sounded like he knew what he was talkin' about."

"The whole town thinks I'm worthless these days. If I start listenin' to niggahs they'll fire me and get someone else. That's just the way things are. 'Sides how could he know any of that stuff?"

"Well, let's have dinnah. I made catfish, fresh caught this mawnin', an' we gots company."

"Aunt G., I'd rather not have tomatoes today."

She walks him back to the trailer. "That'd be just fine, Sugah."

Chapter Three

Wednesday - June 24, 1964

"You didn't have to hit him," I say when I'm sure Terry's awake. I've waited all night before speaking. Yesterday after letting his housekeeper give us a wonderful lunch the sheriff arrested us for trespassing on his property. I pretty sure it's not a charge he intends to pursue; I think he just wanted to let us know who was boss in Kingdom County from the get go.

"Toomes told us to," Terry snaps from his cell.

"Frank didn't find out where we were until eight, because, well, for some reason we weren't where we were supposed to be. It wasn't even dark yet. Do you think he'd pick us up if it were dangerous? Don't you think if that were the case he'd have hit the sheriff himself?"

"I knew what I was doing," Terry asserts.

"Like you knew what you were doing when you led us to the only Negro in Kingdom County that's already registered to vote?" I ask. "There are 6,842 people in Kingdom County. Of this 2,189 are Negroes. One is registered. And you found her."

Aunt G. had laughingly told us while we ate her excellent catfish that she'd been allowed to register as a birthday present right before Caty's first reelection. She said all she wanted that year was the opportunity to cast a vote for her little boy all growed-up.

Then as now, Terry, the Boston chowderhead, clams up. Once again a conversation with him doesn't go very far.

We are in the Kingdom County jail in lovely downtown Juneapple, Mississippi. The town reminds me of a fort in an old movie western. On four sides of a paved square there are shops and offices in low, one- and two-story buildings with flat or gently sloping roofs, all connected except at the corners. In the center of the square stands the three-story red brick county and city municipal building that everyone calls simply "the courthouse." On one side of the ground floor is the sheriff's office, courtroom and jail, on the other is the tiny town library. Both sides of the second floor are filled with various county offices for the clerk, the nurse, the farm agent, etc. On top and in the center of all this is the dormered mayor's office and city council chamber. In the front of the courthouse which, like most post-Civil War municipal buildings, defiantly faces south is a three arched portico. To the right of the portico is fountain with brass statue of a chubby cheeked young boy holding up a leaking cavalry boot. Surrounding the statue are six labeled drinking fountains, five white and one colored.

The sheriff's office/courtroom is a large open area with two cells in the back with low wooden railing that separates the jail area from the rest of the room. In the middle of the room is a gray metal desk with a olive drab rubber top. Eight wooden chairs are arranged under the high front windows. Another wooden witness chair with curved arms sits beside the desk. A metal and vinyl chair with wheels is behind the desk. A shiny brass name plate that says "sheriff" is next to a candlestick style Bakelite black phone. Wooden file cabinets and a rifle rack line the side wall. A large map of Juneapple hangs on the wall behind the desk. Off to the side is a small alcove with a cot and hot plate. From there come the sounds of the deputy's soft whistling snore.

When I get sick of staring at the room I roll over and remember the face of the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

It was just before we left for Juneapple. Terry and Frank were already in the Dodge waiting, and I was walking across the broad lawn back from having used integrated facilities one last time before the long trip and summer began. A low champagne tinted Cadillac convertible coupe slowly rolled past with five young women in it. They stopped in front of me, and the bubblegum-snapping redhead driving asked me if I knew where the Freedom School check-in was. The Freedom School teachers were being given their orientation a week later than the voter registration workers like Terry and me.

All I could do was point further up the long college drive. My attention was completely centered on a goddess in the back seat of the car. She had very short, very dark hair and skin the color of sun through Tupelo honey. There was an air about her, something stiffly formal, yet bravely open. She slid her cat's eye sunglasses down her nose, locked her hazel eyes on mine, and murmured a soft, crisp thank you.

"You look at a white girl like that in Mississippi, and I gon' have the unhappy task of cuttin' yo' body down outta a tree," Frank warned after they have driven out of view, and I've stumbled to the back door of his car. Terry had already claimed shotgun.

"Are you sure she's white?" I was hoping she, like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Diane Nash, and Diann Caroll, was beautifully touched with a tar brush and someone safe to care for.

"Nope. That rich, well-tanned white flesh. The kind that leads to an over-tight hemp necktie and empty air under your shoes. Stay focused on the job, boy. They be plenty of women for you in Baltimore after the summer's over. I don' want another Everett Till on my hands."

"Who's Everett Till?" Terry asked.

"He a kid from Chicago on summer vacation in Mississippi who whistled at the wrong white woman in public and ended up tied by the neck with barbed wire to an old electric motor and throwed in a deep part of the Tallahachie River. I thought you Yankee civil rights volunteers had all of our southern atrocities memorized."

"There's so many of them," Terry complains.

I wasn't listening to them, "She sure was lovely."

"The redhead?" Frank said. "She okay."

"No, the one in the back on the right hand side."

"I didn't notice her."

"Then how do you know she was white?"

"Randolph College sticker on the bumper. So far they only let in two colored and they both brothers. Look, you probably'll never see her again. Only two girls comin' to Kingdom County. Two out of five hundred or so teachin' volunteers. Them long odds."

"Shouldn't we be singing Freedom Songs?" Terry asks interrupting my reverie. Instead of a heavenly face and hazel eyes I'm looking at the jaundice colored cinderblock wall of the jail.

"Go right ahead."

"I don't remember the words to any."

"Me either. Sing something you do remember and I'll jump right in."

There is a long moment of silence he begins:

"Sheriff Fairchild, Sheriff Fairchild,

"Where are you? Where are You?

"Could'na caught us if we weren't in your kitchen,"

"Din, din, don. Din din don." we sing together. Within a few minutes we've forgotten our squabble and are taking turns having sport with the local constabulary to the tune of "Frere Jaques."

Our voices trail off when the scrawny Deputy Tommy Poteet struts out of the back room. His oiled hair furls off his narrow upside-down pear shaped head like a dark brown rooster comb. He smoothes the hair back and clamps on a visored police cap. He's a pasty skinned white man with the complexion of under-cooked macaroni. He looks at us with blinking buggy eyes. His tie is loosened and askew and one corner of his uniform is untucked from his trousers. He wears a revolver in a that looks ridiculously large for him on a Sam Brown belt that crosses his thin hips and chest. He purses his wide lips and takes a deep breath and looks at me, "I thought you colored folk were all supposed to be able to sing. It's in your blood or something. Now the Mick, he does okay, but you, young man are just terrible. Now listen to how a trained and gifted voice lends weight to your recital." He closes his eyes and sings in a horrible flat tenor,

"Sheriff Fairchild, Sheriff Fairchild,

"Where are you? Where are You?

"Have to take off your shoes to count to twenty"

"Din, . . . ."

"Tommy, what're doin'?" the Sheriff asks from the doorway. Standing beside him with a dish cloth-covered wicker basket is a smiling Aunt G.

Deputy Poteet looks away. The deep scarlet on his face looks like a rash. "Uh, just getting the prisoner's confidence so's they'll spill where them three Neshoba boys are hid."

The Sheriff shakes his head and sighs, "Don't be foolish. You've met Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price at last year's the state law enforcement convention. They both just hate the colored and they're Klan. Those three boys are dead as a snake half way cross the highway."

"That's not what the Governor Paul Johnson told the President," Deputy Poteet quickly counters.

"He's just using that as an excuse to keep the Marines outta his state. Both Johnson's are putting on a political show. It's no wonder that 'Johnson' is another nickname for 'prick.' Sorry, for the rough talk, Aunt G."

"It okay, Mistah Caty. Lemme feed the younguns they breakfast." She bustles over sets up plates of food on the Sheriff's desk. "Mistah Tommy, open them there doors so they can eat. I brung you a plate too, so you don't gotta go to that foul diner." She pulls a few chairs close.

Deputy Poteet takes a key off a hook within reach of my hand and opens our cells. I hadn't noticed the key before. He hurries over and tucks a checkered napkin in his collar. "You only say that because your sister cooks there. When are you and Mary Claire ever gonna make up?"

"I dunno, Mistah Tommy, I dunno. Sometimes it feel like it's gonna take 'till Judgment Day when the Good Lord Jesus tells us directly."

Terry and I look at the open doors then at each other questioningly. We wonder if this is a trick to get us out of our cells.

"Come along, your eggs getting cold," Aunt G. chirps.

Sheriff Fairchild points at the food, "Do as my mammy says. You're already in trouble with me. You don' wanna get in trouble with her."

Aunt G. hymphs at Terry, "Yes. What ever made you hit my boy, anyway? I heard you Harvard men had some kinda ree-fined manners."

I sit down and uncover my plate. There's a mound of scrambled eggs, a thick slice of country ham, biscuits with sausage gravy, and fried corn mash. Aunt G. hands me a tin of syrup that's printed to look like a miniature log cabin.

"That not really Towles' Syrup. I just kept the tin and fill it with Karo. It's much cheaper. Well, young man, you gonna 'splain yourself?"

I pour the syrup carefully on the corn mash and eat while Terry haltingly tells her what Frank told us to do to avoid "disappearing." The food is excellent, though the ham is much saltier than I'm used to.

"I see. So it all just an misunderstandin'. I guess Mistah Caty gine ta have to let you go."

"Now, just wait a goldarn minute; it's assaulting a police officer." Sheriff Fairchild protests.

"It was a first offense," Deputy Poteet, says through a full mouth of eggs, not a great sight to see while eating.

"You hush up. I'm the one with the black eyes."

Aunt G. swats his arm, "Oh, don' be such a baby. The swellin' almost gone down. You' nose didn' even bleed all that much. You don' want to get in trouble with yo' mammy, do you, the one whats taught you to turn the other cheek?"

Sheriff Fairchild makes strangling noises but doesn't get an opportunity to answer as a tall, thin man with a huge Adam's apple and extra-wide ears bursts through the courthouse door.

"Caty, Caty, come quick. It's momma. She's fallen in the tub," he says with a nasal whine.

"Harold, calm down. We need to call Doc Kale."

"He's out of town 'til tomorrow, visiting those friends of his in Texas. Oh, please, come now."

"Um, I should go too," I say. "I majored in pre-med. I have first-aid training."

"Take him along, Mistah Caty. Frankie tol' me he first in his class," Aunt G. says.

"You never mentioned that," Terry says in disbelief. I shrug.

"Let's go," Sheriff Fairchild says to me. The sheriff, Harold, and I jump into Harold's car, and it squeals away from the courthouse.

"I don't know if you should have brought the nigger, Caty. Momma's not dressed."

"How about we let him save her life first, then we hang him," the sheriff suggests.

"That would work," Harold agrees. I hope he's just distraught and so not thinking clearly.

We head south on State Road 15 which runs the length of Kingdom County from the Tennessee border in the north down to the Union County line in the south. A short way out of town we pull into a long driveway leading up to a large frame house on a low hill and stop with a spray of gravel. We all pile out of the car and rush through the already open door up the stairs to the second floor bath. Harold leads the way with me then the Sheriff following. "I got up this morning and breakfast wasn't ready so I looked in on her." He points through a doorway.

I walk in and find a very fat woman bent forward with her face in the half-filled pink clawfoot bath tub. I needn't have come. I can see the dark blood already has pooled along the pale sides of her arms and front of her torso. I touch the side of her neck just to be sure. The cold skin has no pulse. I try to only look at the long yellow-gray hair floating in the water. I notice the bathroom walls have been painted like a trompe l'oeil garden. I marvel at the detailed azaleas, hydrangeas, and Easter lilies.

The sheriff looks to me and I shake my head.

"What the nigger doing in there with my momma?" Harold cries.

"Medical thangs," Caty answers. "You stay put. I'll supervise." He enters the bathroom and closes the door.

As I bend her elbow to test the degree of rigor mortis I notice something odd about one of her puffy wrists. "Ask him where he was last night."

"Harold, what'dja do last night? Were you home?" the sheriff calls.

"Me and Ernie went to the drive-in in Pecan. We'd already seen the show at the theater down town. Didn't get home 'till eleven-thirty. Momma'd already gone to bed. How is she?"

"Did he come into this room?" I ask quietly.

"He wouldn't've. He has his own lavatory with a shower off of his bedroom. This was his momma's private domain. When we were kids he got a terrible lickin' once for just peekin' in here."

"Look at her wrist. Doesn't this look like rope burns? I think she was murdered."

The sheriff looks at me with momentary scorn, "No. Not Mrs. Fenton. Everybody in town loved her. It musta been an accident. Maybe she hurt herself with her watch or bracelet somehow before she slipped."

I look at the other wrist, and it's even more scraped. I gently pick up her head and point to her face. "This discoloration is just the blood collecting. There's no sign of a bruise or trauma. If she had slipped there'd be some indication of the impact."

The sheriff rubs his own purple and yellow mottled face, slides down on the floor, and whispers, "This is isn't possible."

"Yeah, but it's just exactly what Mr. Anthony said would happen." I say as I cover the huge body with eight or nine wide bath towels.

Chapter Four

Wednesday Afternoon through Thursday Evening - June 24 & 25, 1964

"So wouldn't you know that Harold chose the exact moment I was about to insert the rectal thermometer into his mother to burst through the door to see what was going on?" I tell Frank.

"Why were you doing that?" Terry asks from the back seat.

"A corpse doesn't cool all at once. I was trying to determine a more exact time of death from the body's remaining core temperature."

"So when'd she die?" Frank asks turning on to his road; we are going back to his house where Terry and I are staying for the summer to have lunch before getting back to voter registration canvassing in the afternoon.

"I couldn't say. That'll be for Doctor Kale to determine. I just found out that she was about fifty-five degrees at 7:12. The rigor seemed to indicate a good eight or nine hours. The doctor'll have to weigh her and look it up in a forensics table. I don't have those memorized and didn't think to bring one to Mississippi with me."

Frank rubs the sweat from his shaved head with a red handkerchief, "They be handier than you think 'round here. How did Harold take having a buck coon sticking something up his momma's bare hienie?"

"Not well. He started screaming and clawing at me. My non-violent training came in real handy. I dropped to the floor and curled up in a tight ball like my trainer showed me. He kept kicking me and pounding on me with the backs of his fists. The sheriff finally peeled him off and cuffed him to the wall mounted toilet tank to get him to settle down. It took a bit to convince Harold that I hadn't killed her. The sheriff then explained to Harold exactly what I was doing and why the procedure was necessary and asked if Harold wanted to do it himself. Harold declined and requested in a very calm way for the sheriff to do it instead."

"Did he?"

"Yes, but I had to help spread the woman's cheeks for him. It was a long way down to that anus. Luckily for us she'd must have had a bowel movement just before she was killed so there was no leakage when the muscle relaxed in death."

"Geeze louise, B.J., we're going to have lunch soon," Terry says. We pull into the spot beside Frank's small shack.

"So Caty agrees with you that it was a murder?" Frank asks, setting the parking break.

"He says he's not convinced just yet, but he's not ruling out the possibility. He wants to wait until Doctor Kale has a chance to examine her when he returns to town tomorrow evening." We get out of the car and enter the shack. It seems cooler inside as the tiny building is in the shade of a couple of tall butternut trees.

"What did he tell Harold?" Frank asks as he scoops thick peanut butter from a government surplus can and spreads it on a slice of homemade white bread. Then he drizzles honey from a mason jar on another slice and hands the sandwich to Terry.

"Just that she died sometime the prior evening, and we wanted to know exactly when so Harold would know what time to stop the clocks. Apparently that's an important tradition down here when a loved one passes."

"Then what happened?"

"While we took the temperature the sheriff called the garage and got these two brothers named Cooter and Skeeter . . ."

"The Dox twins. They got almost a whole brain between them."

"How did they get such strange names?" Terry asks. I take a large bite from my sandwich. I'm starved as I didn't get to eat much breakfast. It's a pity as the fried corn mash was delicious.

"Their momma named them "Jeffrey" and "Jeremy" but them monikers didn't last long. A "cooter" be another name for a turtle here abouts. You mighta notice Cooter, he really, really slow."

"And Skeeter?"

"He just powerful annoying."

"Anyway, these two huge guys show up fifteen or so minutes later and help haul the body down the stairs. The sheriff strongly requested my presence tomorrow when the doctor gets back in case he has any questions."

"Fine, but after that we gotta make the local white folk solve their own problems. While you were out playing detective the FBI announced that they found the car the three missing guys were driving. They keep spoutin' that they only do investigatin', Let's leave it to them. You boys been doin' just about everythin' here-abouts except registerin' voters. Let's see if we kin get some real work done this afternoon an' down the right road this time."

"It was very thorough job on this lad's part to collect as much data as he did," Doctor Kale says in whisper the next evening. Unlike everyone else I've met in Mississippi he hasn't the trace of a drawl. His accent sounds a touch like the Jewish kids from Brooklyn I met in college. It has the same studied attempt to sound like Walter Cronkite.

"Thank you, Sir. I tried my best," I say as I look at the diploma he has hanging on his office wall. It's from the University of Michigan Medical School. The full name, "Doctor Bergan Kale" is somehow familiar to me. I look closely at him. He's of medium height, fairly stout with a full white head of hair and beard. He looks to be about fifty and resembles a southern Civil War general. He has intense gray eyes and very pale skin, almost translucent.

"So when'd she die and was she killed?" Deputy Poteet asks anxiously.

"Ya, I would have to agree she was murdered, probably about quarter of ten last night. The assailant or assailants tied her hands behind her back with a sharp cord and kept her face in the bath water until she drowned. I found traces of bubble bath in her lungs. There is no indication that she fell, and I found bruising clearly in the shape of fingers on the back of her neck under the hair."

"I didn't think to look there," I say.

"From what I understand you did not have very much time before Mr. Fenton interrupted your investigation. If you had not been there and noticed what you did, I doubt I would have been given the opportunity for my more leisurely examination. The pair of Doxs would have taken the body right over to the undertaker's. Am I not correct, Sheriff Fairchild?"

"Yeah-up, that's pretty likely. I wa'n't lookin' for nothin' like this. Is they anythin' else you can tell us," the sheriff says in dreamy voice. He seems lost in his thoughts much of the time.

"The killer has very large hands. The finger spread almost encircled Mrs. Fenton's rather wide neck. He must also be very strong; Mrs. Fenton is not a petite woman."

I pop almost out of my chair and fairly shout, "Doctor Bergan Kale! Holy sheep-dip! You wrote the definitive text book on heart attacks due to fatty arterial blockage! I'm reading it this summer."

"Well, we didn't know you-all were famous, Doctor Kale. How come you didn't let us know this before?" the deputy asks shyly.

"This is a small practice. I chose to remain modest because some of my patients have a difficulty coming to me as it is. I have much free time so as a hobby I write a book; it is not that big a deal. I'm surprised a young man with only a undergraduate degree knows of my work. It was intended for second year surgical residents."

"I . . . I read a lot," I stammer. "It was such an excellent book. How did you manage the necessary research in Juneapple, Mississippi?"

"The case histories were collected when I was younger. Now, gentleman, I have nothing further to add and must get back to my duties. Since I have been away there have been a number of matters in which Nurse Appleton wishes my opinion. But again, let me compliment the young man on his excellent attention to detail."

As the doctor leads us out from his office in the small Kingdom County Hospital Deputy Poteet is fairly jumping with excitement. "You know what I'm thinking, Caty. Huh, huh, Cage? It must be that big darkie you told me about who come to your house. You're thinkin' he did it, ain't cha? That Anthony fella! He's big enough. And he's a uppty nigger you said."

Sheriff Fairchild starts to demur, "Now, I dunno, Tommy . . ."

The doctor had stopped following us. He abruptly leaps to catch up, grabs Deputy Poteet's arm, and rasps, "A large Negro named Anthony? You must tell me about him."

Deputy Poteet yowls and tries to pull free, "Not so hard, Doc. That hurts."

The doctor releases the deputy and pats the place he had held, "I apologize. Please tell me about Monsieur Anthony."

"I don't know any more. Caty's the one that saw him."

"'Robert Anthony,' he said his name was. Come over to my place on Tuesday and warned me this was gonna happen. Said he's after someone he'd been chasin' for years. I didn't pay him no mind. How do you know him?"

"No, I do not actually know him. It is just a person of the black race coupled with the name. Right before the war, the Second World War, there was much to-do about a Negro doctor named Anthony who murdered several dozen or so people in Paris. I followed the affair in the papers. It was rather notorious at the time; his execution received equal space with Hitler's visit to Paris. I remember being very interested as to why a doctor would commit such unspeakable acts."

"No! Not the Blue Hood Killer, the Black Butcher of Paris! Not right here in Juneapple!" Deputy Poteet shouts. He looks to me and sniffs, "I read all the detective magazines. Gotta keep up on the professional literature when you're a lawman."

"That was the name the press used. He always put his victim's heads in blue velvet bags," Doctor Kale says, curling his colorless, long fingers through his snowy beard. "Fortunately for civilization he was captured and guillotined. I recall reading he had a young son. Perhaps this man who visited the sheriff is a relation?"

"Maybe we outta go find out?" The sheriff says with a wistful frown.

Robert Anthony sits exactly in the middle of a makeshift bed fashioned from thick welded iron pipes and a section of sagging canvas reading a yellowing paperback when we find him. By calling around the county the sheriff discovered Mr. Anthony's staying in a slovenly cabin in the 'niggertown' section of Mount Blue. He's dressed in an expensive tailored suit. His dark tie is very narrow. His trench coat is folded beside him on the bed with his snap-brim hat neatly placed on it. The room has only a cracked mirror and crude, obscene drawings in red paint on the walls. There is a white tin chamber pot in the corner. The floor is made of uneven, splintered, and dusty pine boards. There is a chair against a wall with a torn cane seat. The windows openings are covered with a rusty metal mesh and propped open unpainted plywood shutters. A unshaded bulb hangs from the ceiling. Mr. Anthony hadn't gotten up; he called for us to enter when the deputy knocked.

Sheriff Fairchild and Deputy Poteet walk into the center of the room. The deputy has his hand on the butt of his pistol. I stay where I'm told, safely in the doorway.

Mr. Anthony looks at his visitors and blandly says, "I must apologize for my accommodations. My reservation at the so-called 'white' motel seemed to have been lost and there were no vacancies at present. I am not usually forced to entertain company is such shabby surroundings." He plucks a strip of newspaper from his lap and places it in the book. He starts to tuck it in his jacket pocket. The sheriff pulls it out of his hand.

"Whatcha reading, boy?" the Sheriff Fairchild asks with equal mildness, not looking at the cover.

"Intruder in the Dust, by your fellow Mississippian, Mr. William Faulkner.

"How is it?" Sheriff Fairchild says reading the news clipping.

"The cover copy and illustration seem to promise a murder mystery, but it is rather something else. A bit too dense for my taste. However, book stores are quite lacking locally unless one is entertained by reading religious tracts."

The sheriff holds up the section of paper, his usually ruddy face ashen, "This is about my son."

"Yes. An unsolved 'hunting accident,' a mystery much more interesting. Are you finally here for my help in catching your son's killer?"

"No, I'm here to arrest you, Nigger, for the murder of Mrs. Cora Fenton."

In a motion that seems too swift to be possible Robert Anthony is suddenly towering over the sheriff. He glares down into Sheriff Fairchild's unblinking eyes. Deputy Poteet fades backward and struggles to remove his revolver from his holster.

In a gentle but menacing tone Mr. Anthony says, "I didn't say anything the first time you called me that word because I was an uninvited guest on your property. However, you will no longer use the term in my presence. I am a member of the Negro race, but, as I understand it, that epithet is supposedly belittling. I cannot accept it applied to me. Address me as 'Monsieur Anthony' or, if you must be discourteous, just 'Anthony.'"

Deputy Tommy finally gets his weapon free. Mr. Anthony takes it from him in one smoothly fluid motion. He shoves the barrel in the open pipe at the end of his bed. With no apparent effort though his muscles swell under his loose jacket, he leans back, bends the barrel slightly, and hands the ruined pistol to the sheriff. The deputy's eyes bug out even more. "Furthermore I also dislike being called 'boy.' Do we understand each other, Sheriff?"

Sheriff Fairchild passes the bent gun to the deputy who tries unsuccessfully to straighten it. "Yeah, Monsieur. Now, hold out your hands so's I can cuff them."

When we get back to the courthouse there's a drunk in one of the cells sleeping it off. The sheriff guides Mr. Anthony into the other chamber. He takes the handcuffs off and locks the barred door. He doesn't put the keys on the usual hook. The deputy hangs the big man's coat and hat on a rack by the door.

"This sucker's heavy. Whatcha got in here?" he asks.

"Tools. Investigative instruments. I promise you, no weapons of any sort. I would prefer it in my cell."

"Yeah, well the people in H. E. Double Toothpicks are screaming for ice water. It stays out here." Deputy Poteet points dramatically.

Mr. Anthony sighs and sits on the cot, "A mattress! Much better than my last room." Then he flushes the toilet and chuckles. "Ahhh! I missed that sound. I disliked the chamber pot intensely."

The drunk wakes up, looks at his company, and does a perfect double take. "Caty! You put a nigger in jail with me."

The sheriff seats himself behind the desk. His voice is deadpan as he says, "He don' like to be called that, Ernest. Tommy'll let you out if you think you're ready."

Ernest nods forcefully so Deputy Poteet opens his door. Ernest scuttles out the door in a less than linear fashion.

The sheriff puts his feet on his desk. He's studying the clipping. Without looking up he says, "Tommy, whyn't you go fetch the prisoner some supper from the café? After you get back I'll run young Junior Coroner Phillips here out to Frankie Toomes' place. That okay with you, B.J.?"

"I guess," I say as I sit in the witness chair. I'm still tingling as the sheriff had me drive Mr. Anthony's car back to Juneapple. I honestly didn't get that huge a thrill out of it, but I just can't wait watch Terry's face when I tell him what I've done.

"But why, Caty? It's way past time for vittles. He's probably already eaten," Deputy Poteet protests.

The sheriff still doesn't look up, "You're hungry, ain't you, Monsieur Anthony?

Robert is still bouncing happily on the cot. He looks blank for a moment but then his eyes narrow, "Uh, ya, famished. I, uh, missed lunch, too."

The deputy looks from the sheriff to Mr. Anthony, "I don't see why we have to spoil him. He should have to wait until breakfast."

The sheriff gives the deputy a stern look, "I told you to run along now. Get the blue plate special. Do you want anything, B.J.?"

The early supper Frank's mom sent over is still stuffing my poor, happy tummy. I tell him, "No, thank you."

The deputy stamps his little foot. "Promise me you won't start to 'terigate him till I get back, will ya? I don't want to miss any of the details."

The sheriff rolls his brown eyes, "Okay, I promise. You can hear everything. Now, gowan, git." The deputy rushes out the door.

Mr. Anthony sits very straight on the bed, not relaxed, yet not at all nervous, You know I DID NOT kill anyone, Sheriff."

The sheriff is again engrossed in the clipping, "Now, Monsieur, how do I know that?"

Mr. Anthony inhales deeply, "I just arrived in this county on Tuesday. If I had tried to sneak in three or four months ago both my car and I would have very quickly spotted. As it happens I was in Montreal giving a lecture at a police department fund-raiser the early May morning your wife was killed by an arsonist. My passport will show that I was in Tunisia the April afternoon your son was shot. I was in Washington D. C. consulting with your FBI on a section of their report to the Warren Commission the night in March when the mayor's daughter fell while inexplicably climbing the town water tower. I'm certain between Tuesday noon and tonight you have checked up on me and have found that I have been of great aid to various police organizations worldwide for almost two decades. For most of last evening I was at a speak-easy trying to develop leads on our quarry. I can name many witnesses. I suspect you arrested me to be able to talk to me without raising unwanted questions from the hoi polli.

The sheriff put the fragment of newspaper reverently on his desk, "What's 'hoy polloy' mean?" he asks me.

"I believe the local term is 'crackers,'" I answer with a smile.

The sheriff gets up, goes into the alcove, and pours himself a cup of coffee. He offers some to me. I shake my head, "no."

He looks to Mr. Anthony who asks, "Do you have tea?"

"I'll send Tommy back for some."

The sheriff puts his coffee on the desk untouched, walks over to the window, and leans on the sill looking out for anyone coming into the courthouse. He tries to appear relaxed, but I think he's fighting back tears.

Mr. Anthony looks at him, tilts his head slightly to the side, and starts clicking the back of his tongue rapidly.

"Whatcha making that noise for?" the sheriff asks with a thick voice.

The clicking stops. "Oh, when I'm excited I sometimes do that without thinking."

"Why're you-all so excited?"

"It seems to me that you are very much relieved because you finally believe me. If I am right then you can be sure that your wife, who from all accounts you loved very much, didn't commit suicide. Even though the few papers listed it as an accident, common opinion runs otherwise. Also you don't have to feel as guilty for the way your son was shot if the person did so on purpose. And it means you will finally let me help you, and we begin to bring this villain to justice."

"What's his name?" the sheriff says through his teeth.

"I believe the killer is named Conrad Pell. He's Bavarian. Average height. Slender build. Shoulder length blond hair. Dishwater colored eyes. Forty-nine years old. Clever in a way only the truly evil can be. We were close friends once. Somewhere along the line he became truly mad. He is . . . dangerous."

"You can really help me catch him?"

"I almost caught him once before, twenty-four years ago, but I made a terrible mistake. I learned a valuable lesson. Once we form any kind of opinion, vanity keeps us from seeking the truth. I believed that the killer was someone other than Pell."

"Who did you think it was?"

"My father. My error took my father's life. I've dedicated my life to apprehending criminals to make up for my failure. Four years later Doctor Pell and I met again, but that time he escaped from custody."

"Oh. So you think this Pell's killing in my town?"

"I'm quite positive, yes. But this time, together, we will catch him and see that he is punished."

"I'm sorry about my behavior tonight, and . . . about the tomato. I guess I'm not being very hospitable even to a nig . . . Negro."

"Is race really that important to you Southerners? Can you people really treat another human being in such a way and think nothing of it? I have, of course read about your regional bigotry, but I found it hard to believe. The man at the hotel thought I was a servant who was putting on the airs of his master before he realized I was the one who had made the reservation. He spat on my coat and sent me to the colored section of town to rent that filthy cabin without even refunding my deposit."

The sheriff doesn't move away from the window, "It's not all that simple. This way o' life is just somethin' ya learn while growing up. Makes sense sometimes, sometimes not. But Southerners are consistent and above-board with how we feel. Around here a man knows where he stands with his neighbors. Look, they's nothin' I can do to change the way thangs are. If you wanna help me you'll have to remain in that cell. I'll bring you whatever you need. If you want to leave I'll let you loose. But I'd very much appreciate whatever you can do to help me catch this Pell."

"Being in a jail will limit my effectiveness, but I guess I will stay and do what I can. It might be better this way. Yesterday I was refused access to both your library and your town archives."

The sheriff sort of almost relaxes. He doesn't speak for a long moment. He just nods his head. He takes the keys and opens the cell door. He carries Mr. Anthony's coat to him. Finally he manages to gasp, "Thank you. Is there anything we can do now?"

"Unfortunately, no. We have about a month until he kills again. He's on a lunar cycle, usually during the dark of the moon. This is extremely rare, which is why I think it's Pell. In the morning I'll ask you to get me some files from around town."

"How did you know so much? Are you one of those ESP folks?" the sheriff asks.

"No. I just see patterns. Multiple killers always have them. The mayor's daughter died in the air, your son by earth, your wife by fire, and the clerk's mother by water. See? A pattern emerges. There is nothing random about the actions of men like Pell. In their minds they dance a very complex ballet of obsession and release. That is how I catch them. Actually, I had not noticed before, but I am somewhat hungry. What exactly is a "blue plate special?"

"I don't know. Lately I've had trouble remembering what day of the week it is. Maybe meatloaf."

A few moments later Tommy bursts in the door with a towel covered tray in his hands, "Did I miss anything? Hey, Caty, the cell door's open."

The sheriff takes the tray and puts it on his desk. He beckons to Mr. Anthony and pulls off the towel to reveal fried chicken, collards, sweet potato, and watermelon.

"What is this?" Mr. Anthony asks.

Deputy Poteet frowns at him, "Nig . . . Negro food. Now, Caty, regulation 1365 dash M says the prisoner must be in the cell with the jail door securely locked at all times."

"Never mind. Go on back and get the Monsieur some tea."

The deputy stage whispers to the sheriff, "I get it. We pretend to be nice to him he'll confess. Next thing he'll know he'll be in the gas chamber."

Mr. Anthony examines his meal like it was covered with bugs. Come to think of it his last few meals might have been. "Earl Grey if they have it. No sugar. Touch of milk, not cream." He slices off a section of the chicken and puts it in his mouth. He looks thoughtful at first, but delight crosses his face. "Voyons! This is very good. Quite flavorful.

Deputy Poteet pretends to be nice to him but does it badly, "If you like that you oughter try Jilly's chicken fricassee. Maybe tomorrow night. Now about those killing is there anything you want to tell us?"

The sheriff snaps, "Tommy?"

"Yeah, Cage?"

"Get the tea."

Just after Tommy leaves the phone rings. The sheriff hold the ear piece to his head. He listens intently for a little while and says, "Uh-huh. I'll be right on out there. See ya soon." He grabs a rifle from the rack and tells me, "Hank Karish up in Pecan seen some stranger foolin' his mail box. I gotta get go check. You call Frank and tell him I think it's best if you stay here tonight. I'll bring you home in the mornin'."

"Will you let me come with you, Sheriff?" Mr. Anthony asks.

"No, eat your supper and get back in the cell. Tell Tommy he's to continue bein' nice to you. If he gets on your nerves, send him back for pie."

After the sheriff leaves I ask the night operator to connect me with Frank. He agrees with Sheriff Fairchild. "I've heard rumors that there's Klan activity since the news of Mrs. Fenton's murder leaked around town. Some people are unclear as to your involvement. You're probably safer there than here," he tells me.

Mr. Anthony uses his fork to take a bite of watermelon. He chews thoughtfully and grimaces, "There are seeds in this fruit."

"You're supposed to spit them out," I tell him.

He looks incredulous, "Spit?"

Chapter Five

Thursday Night into Friday Morning - June 25 & 26, 1964

Deputy Poteet is sitting in the sheriff's chair with his poorly shined dress boots up on the desk. His thin arms are folded across his concave chest. A busty blonde young woman wearing a powder-blue striped waitress uniform is seated in the witness chair gawking at Mr. Anthony. She's about my age and would be considered kind of attractive in a cutesy cute way if she would get her seriously chipped front right incisor fixed. The deputy sniffs deeply and tilts back his police cap.

"Yep, Jilly. We done caught us a killer jungle bunny. Big one too. Jungle jack rabbit, I guess you'd say." He chuckles. "I'm pretty well connected in town, y' know. The people, they trust me. I keep tabs on everything going on in my county. So when Doc Kale tells us that the low life what 'cooled' - that's lawman talk for 'murdered' - poor Mrs. Fenton was powerful strong and had huge hands, I knew exactly who musta done the deed. Yep, a fine tuned deductive mind beats in this dashing crane-ator."

He taps his head seven times slowly. Why I count them or keep listening to this rubbish I don't know. I wish I could fall asleep like Mr. Anthony did after he finished his tea, but I'm not a bit tired. I walked a lot today too. I even came really close to getting someone to agree to register to vote. A surly old guy told me he would when pigs fly. Now all I have to do is chuck my medical career, become a geneticist, and cross some swine with poultry. It seems as plausible as Deputy Poteet's version of events.

"I heard of this stranger, see. I told Caty we oughta go check him out. Sure enough we found him at the nigger cabins in Mount Blue studying a suspicious newspaper clipping. Caty didn't know what it was, but I helped him figure it out. Boy needs help sometimes. Don't get me wrong. I love him like a brother, but sometimes I think the wrong man is sheriff."

"What did the clipping say?" Jilly asks in wide blue-eyed wonder.

"Uh, well, it was about poor Happy getting shot last April. I think the murders are connected. Anyway, we went in there and this big buck stands up. I could tell Caty was a little nervous so I pulled out my gun . . ." With great difficulty the deputy manages to yank the ruined pistol from his holster. ". . . and bent it right under the coon's nose. He just held out his wrists to be cuffed."

Jilly runs a long-nailed finger down the warped barrel and asks, "Why didn't you point the gun at him or just shoot him?"

Deputy Poteet coughs, "Um, ah, . . . because I wanted him to respect me not my weapon. Yep, Jilly, you can rest easy now because me and Caty have caught our mystery killer. He's all locked up in the hoosecow like he belongs." Again he sniff deeply, a long, satisfied sniff too.

The courthouse door slowly creaks open. Deputy Poteet and Jilly stop talking and watch it make a slow arc to rest against the low railing. There is a small thunking noise when the heavy door makes contact against a small brass plate. For a moment they just wait and listen to the quiet.

"Musta been the wind," Deputy Poteet swallows. "I'll go close it." He slides his feet off the desk.

That's when the first hooded Klansman dashes in and thrusts the barrel of a large shotgun in Deputy Poteet's quivering face.

"All clear," barks the white draped figure. Eight others sidle through the door moving with comic opera-like gestures to take defensive positions about the tiny courtroom. Many of them carry shotguns or outdated Army rifles, some have pistols, and a few tote sharp or pointy farm tools. Jilly hikes her fingernail collection up by her beehive hairdo.

"The building is secure, Sir!" snorts a twitching Klansman by the door.

A last Klansman dressed in an ornate silk robe with a huge embroidered purple and gold cross on the left breast strides into the room and hisses, "Just be easy, Deputy. No need to get up." His drawl has a whistling lisp to it on the fricatives and the sibilants.

"I think I had a need, but it's too late now," the miserable deputy counters.

"Oh, gawd dang, Tommy, what is that smell?" moans a short Klansman as he knocks Tommy's useless revolver from the desk to the floor.

"Well, I had this big supper, see . . . and then you guys kinda surprised me . . ."

"Just shut up and hand over your cuffs and the keys to the cell."

The deputy passes the handcuffs to the short Klansman who tosses them to the leader.

"How about them jail keys?" the leader asks.

"Caty took 'em with him," Deputy Poteet fibs. I'm impressed that he was brave enough to lie. I know for sure the keys are in the top desk drawer. The deputy doesn't even glance in their direction.

The first Klansman moans, "Dag! Now what we a gonna do? We can't wait here 'till Caty comes back. I gotta get home before two. Myrtle warned me about an all nighter during chopping season."

"Just shut up," the leader snarls. "I'll think of somethin'."

"The cells, they are not locked," Mr. Anthony says. He continues to lie very still, then, in one smooth, swift motion he seems to fly right off the bed and all but pops out of his cubicle. He holds out his hands. "Gentlemen, I assume you have a plan."

The leader puts the handcuffs on Mr. Anthony. "Yeah, Nigger, we figure we're gonna give you a brief but fair trial and then we're gonna hang you-all from a tall poplar. What'cha y'all think 'bout that?"

"I have nothing better on my schedule for the remainder of the evening," Mr. Anthony grins.

The headlights of several cars eerily light up the flat, low cotton field on one side of the narrow country road. The cotton is about knee to waist high. On the other of the road is a dense thicket. There is a flatbed farm truck with a red cab parked under a huge tree. The Klansmen huddle in groups around the truck, passing pint bottles of bourbon back and forth and carefully smoking without fully removing their hoods. An additional half dozen or so have joined the ten that were at the courthouse. On the truckbed stands Mr. Anthony with his hands bound behind his back. Two armed Klansmen hold his huge biceps while the leader finishes making an overly ornate and impassioned speech about the sanctity of Southern womanhood. There is a thick rope around Mr. Anthony's neck. The rope is lashed to a branch of the tree overhead. I'm tied to the tree like a damsel in a silent movie. Mr. Anthony objected to my being brought along but for some reason his protest weren't given much consideration. He was promised that I was only to be a witness to justice served. I would be allowed to live to spread the warning to any Negroes who got it in their minds to flaunt the Southern way of life. Besides, Doc Kale had told one of them how I had helped the sheriff understand that the crime had been committed in the first place.

The leader holds up his cupped hands and intones in his tea kettle lisping voice, "Up in the North just this week they convicted a nigger for killin' and rapin' a white girl. Thirty-eight o' her neighbors watched the whole thing happen with out liftin' even a finger to help her. Down here we do thangs different. We protect our own. And so on behalf and by the power of our holy tribunal, I, the Magnificent Exalted Lord Warlock of the Kingdom County, Mississippi Klavern of the White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan do hereby sentence you to immediate death. May God have mercy on your commie heathen soul as you begin your inevitable decent into the burnin' flames of Hell."

"Excuse me, while I was something of a communist when I was younger, I've always been a badly lapsed Catholic. I believe the correct phrase should be, 'May God have mercy on your commie-Papist soul, et cetera.'"

The warlock looks at Mr. Anthony. "You one smart ass nigger, you know that?"

"Ain't we gonna cut off his balls?" the twitchy Klansman asks.

"Naw, the victim wa'n't molested, just killed. We got to do what's proper and nothin' more," the warlock answers. "Let's get this bid-ness done and go on home."

The Klansman in truck cab struggles to put the vehicle in gear.

"That's it, Jerry, if you can't find 'em, grind 'em," the warlock yells.

The truck hiccups in two short bursts and starts moving forward but quickly stalls. The twitchy Klansman hollers to Jerry to get his ass out of the truck and let him drive. Jerry twists the key and pops the clutch.

I peek though squinted eyes as Mr. Anthony's shiny black wing tip shoes start sliding across the red dust of the truck bed. Then the feet just disappear and are replaced by silver handcuffs which make a puffy small pink cloud when they land on the dirty mobile platform. A cursing Klansman is flung from the truck; he makes a meaty impact with in the ditch at my feet. I look up to see Mr. Anthony swinging on the rope into the warlock and then giving the other guarding Klansman a slashing side kick to the head. Faster than my eyes can follow Mr. Anthony seems to flow up the rope into the darkness of the tree's upper branches.

The Klansmen mill around looking into the tree. The truck comes to an abrupt stop five yards down the road. Jerry jumps out of the cab and points his pistol into the air and shoots until his weapon is empty. They all begin firing in a mad, noisy torrent. Bits of twigs and leaves drift to the ground.

"We musta got 'em," the twitchy one moans. "Nothing coulda lived through that." They all look skyward anxiously, pointing their smoking barrels in wide arcs.

The rope drops out of the tree and coils in the dust. Several jumpy Klansman shoot the rope, narrowly missing their brother goon's feet.

The leader, his nice robe all streaked with dirt, yelps for order, "Calm th' hell down or someone's gonna get hurt. Hollis, climb on up there and see if you can push the body down."

Hollis, the short Klansman, takes off his robe, leaps for a lower branch, and starts to scale the slippery bark. He uses my head as a foot hold.

"They ain't nothin' up he-ah," Hollis calls down.

"Let's all spread out in pairs and find him. Don't shoot unless yo' sure it's him. Yo' dead, Nigger, ya hear me? Dead!" the warlock bellows. "Maybe we'll take yo' balls anyway."

Two Klansman walk out into the field to see if distance will show them someone moving in the copse of trees. Twin whistling projectiles burst out of the darkness and smack both of them in the forehead. They collapse into the green shoots.

"Shit! Danny, di'n' you search him?" the warlock brays.

"Yeah, I did. He wa'n't carryin' anythin', I swear."

Their eyes are almost bugging out of their hoods. They frantically wave their shot guns in front of themselves as they spread out. Up the road, past the truck, I spy two black hands reach out of the darkness and grab a couple of Klansmen by the tops of their hoods and bash their heads together. The Klansman barrel into the underbrush in that direction. Noises around me continues for some time. Stray shots spank the silence. I hear muffled oaths and the resonance of blows.

Finally there's only the one Klansman left. He's standing beside me guarding the leader. Then he too collapses at my feet. The missile that felled him is a large, old walnut.

The warlock looks out into the dark. "Hollis? Jerry? Sam? Charlie? Ed? Anyone?"

Suddenly a mass of white rags fall on the warlock. They take a while fluttering down. The warlock lets loose both barrels of his shotgun and empties his pistol into the darkness. Then, a huge black arm encircles the warlock, yanking him from his feet. A black hand peels the warlock's hood like a banana before giving a short chop to the back of his red neck.

Booming with laughter, Mr. Anthony unties me from the tree.

When the sheriff's car pulls up about a half hour later, Mr. Anthony has already gathered up and bound all of the Klansman.

"Dab nab it, Jack, you better not've hurt him! He's not the killer. He's an innocent man!" the sheriff calls.

"It's all right to answer him," Mr. Anthony quietly tells the warlock.

The warlock yells, "Over here, Caty."

The sheriff walks past the truck where we're waiting for him. He has a huge flashlight. A grim faced Deputy Poteet follows with a rifle.

"I don't think any of them need medical attention," I say. "He managed to subdue them without serious injuries."

Mr. Anthony is struggling to get out of a Klan robe. He wanted to try one on to discover what the fun of it might be. I told him they were all too small, but he's very stubborn. Finally he rips just the cloth off. He looks sheepish.

The warlock looks up at the sheriff, "Caty. Lemme loose. Arrest this coon. Look what he did to the boys."

Mr. Anthony smoothes out his suit and shrugs his huge shoulders, "They were going to hang me. I objected. Is this a crime in Mississippi?"

"It depends." The sheriff answers as he checks each Klansman to see if what I said was true. Besides lots of cuts and bruises, they're fine.

"They are lucky that I am not a killer, no?" Mr. Anthony smiles.

The sheriff looks the warlock in the eye, "Jack, we go way back."

"Third grade," the warlock says.

"How 'bout I let y'all go, and you leave the Monsieur alone? He's promised to help me find the man what killed my Happy and France and Mrs. Fenton and maybe the mayor's daughter, too."

"He's a nigger what's hurt white men," the warlock giving Mr. Anthony his best hate stare.

"Come on, Jack. It's not like he went outta his way to put a hurt on you-all. He was just defendin' his-self. Let's let it be."

"It's gonna give ideas to others o' his race, if'n we let this slide."

"I doubt that. He ain't no ordinary colored boy. I need him. Please."

"Okay. But after it's all over, we may want to get even."

Mr. Anthony gives him a truly scary smile, "I will look forward to a rematch. Though no one asked me, I also do not care to press charges. So, Sheriff, may I trouble you for a ride back to my suite? We have much to do in the morning."

Chapter Six

Friday - June 26, 1964

"Caty, Caty, you gotta come with me. Ra't now, ra't now. Let's go. Come on."

We look up from our breakfast at Cooter, the slightly taller Dox twin. He's wearing his gray filling station overalls with his name stitched across his breast in thread the color of dandelions and has a grease and sweat soaked duck billed cap askew on his odd shaped head. His fleshy lips hang slackly so his crooked, horsy teeth show. His dull blue eyes shift rapidly from side to side like he's watching some metronome that only he can see. He nervously rubs his huge oil stained hands on his thighs and paces back and forth just inside the door.

The three of us, the sheriff, Mr. Anthony, and I are gathered around the desk as Aunt G. spreads out the food: raspberry flap jacks made with preserves, smoked country sausage, hash browns, reheated baked beans, eggs sunny side up cooked in bacon fat so the edges are crisp, fresh squeezed orange juice, and a large pot of coffee flavored with chicory. The combined smells alone make me limp with hunger.

Mr. Anthony and I had just put our red and white checkered napkins in our laps and the sheriff had tucked his in his collar when Cooter burst through the door completely out of breath. The sheriff immediately stands and pulls his napkin free.

"Nowm, Mr. Caty, what could be so all fired impo'tant that couldn't wait 'til you eat yo' breakfas'?" Aunt G. asks. She has her hands on her hips and her chin up. "They's plenty here. If no one else's dead, Cooter you come sit yo'self down an' eat too. They's plenty."

"What's the problem, Cooter?" the sheriff asks.

Cooter looks at the food and licks his lips before continuing, "The Colonel wants ta see ya, Caty. He sent me to fetch ya."

"Why didn't he just call?" I ask pointing at the phone.

"Probably 'cause he didn't want Sandra at the switchboard a spreadin' it all around town what it's about," Cooter says still dodging back and forth.

"What is it about?" the sheriff asks.

"I dunno. Packer didn't say. The colonel sent Packer down the mountain to tell me that I should ask you to see him as quick as possible."

"Colonel ain't a patient man. I best be going now. Wrap up mine and I'll have it later," the sheriff says. "I best make m'self presentable." He goes into the alcove and opens a small bureau and pulls out a thin dark tie and loops it around his neck.

Cooter finally catches his breath, "Th' colonel said fer you ta bring the Northern nigger kid with ya. He had somethin' ta say ta both o' ya."

"I don't think I can go. I have to check in with Frank," I tell the sheriff.

Cooter stops for a second to gasp, "Oh, Frankie'll be there too. At the same time Colonel sent Skeeter ta git him. But the colonel say ta be sure ta leave the big Frenchie nigger at the jail. He wan't invited."

"Who is this 'Skeeter'?" Mr. Anthony asks as he stirs sugar into his coffee.

"My brother. Me 'n' Skeeter're twins. Lot o' folk don't think that because we don't look all that much alike like twins is supposed ta. He's shorter and has a bigger nose. But we's born on the same day with the same momma an' everythin', so we is. Twins, I mean. E'en we did look alike you could still tell us apart 'cause I wear a cap and Skeeter always has on his a-vi-a-tor helmet just like Captain Midnight, even when we go to preachin'. We have different tastes, too. I like ta read comic books on my day off - I like comics with horror, war, and westerns, don't care for the romances or the superheroes - and Skeeter, he likes ta hunt all sorts of thangs. I like chocolate ice cream 'n' Skeeter favors strawberry. I chews Juicy Fruit and Skeeter chews Bazooka Joe, but we twins just the same," Cooter says.

"And who's the colonel?" I ask rolling a sausage in a pancake and stuffing it in my mouth shamelessly.

"He's not a real Army-like colonel. It's kinda honorary 'n' special title. The colonel's the richest man in th' county. He owns prit' near ever'thin' hear'bouts: th' cotton gin, th' filling station where Skeeter and me work, th' general store, th' dairy, th' bank, the plywood mill, th' . . ."

"Cooter, that's enough. Let's be about it," the sheriff says. He's recombed his hair and put a little brighter shine on his black work shoes. He'd shaved before breakfast, but I can see he found the spot under the right side of his chin that he'd missed earlier.

"Sheriff, before you depart, may I see whatever files you have concerning the prior incidents?" Mr. Anthony softly requests.

"Sure, but I don't have time to dig them out now. Finish your breakfast. Tommy'll get in 'bout half hour. Tell him I said to give you anything you want."

I take a slug of juice to wash down the food I've gobbled, look wistfully at all the rest I'm leaving behind, and follow Cooter and the sheriff out of the courthouse. We walk past Cooter's haphazardly parked pickup, pile into the squad car, and head north up Highway 15. It's a blistering hot day already. The gritty dust from the road is carried by the heated air through the open window straight up my nose. The sheriff gives me his handkerchief when I start sneezing uncontrollably. He can't roll up the windows or the car would be like an oven. He says he doesn't want to sweat since he's to see the colonel. After eight miles the sheriff turns left on to Lake Road and then right onto Clowers Lane. It think it's odd as almost all the other roads I've seen in Kingdom County have numbers instead of names. We drive up a wide, curvy, well kept road which runs through thick stands of pine and climbs steadily uphill.

"Colonel had this here mountain built. It's all flat bottom land or little foot hills here abouts but he di'n' wan' live like no flat lander so's he had the Army Corps of Engineers haul the rock and dirt during the 'Pression. He planted all these Christmassy trees and then he built his mansion at the top," Cooter tells me.

We break free of the pines and see a huge cream-white-column fortress rising above a high granite wall. It is the same size of my high school building but much more ornate. We drive through the open iron gate under a stone arch and park in front of the house beside a lime green Ford Mustang convertible that Cooter says belongs to Skeeter. We are swiftly escorted by a liveried black footman along a cobblestone path around the left wing of the house under high, gunmetal blue shuttered windows to a wide, red brick verandah in the back which has a startling view of what must be Kingdom Lake. The half-mile-wide shimmering blue surface is held in on the left by a long lime-green grass covered dike; the lake curves around a pine-green point of land on the right. From here I can see the wooden tables of a public picnic area and heavy old men sitting on camp chairs fishing from a low dock.

"That's where all th' dirt come from," Cooter explains in a whisper. "When m' daddy was a boy that was just a iddy biddy stream and this mountain was a swamp. See that lil' black tar roof way down there through the trees? That's mine and Skeeter's place."

I'm happy to see Frank in his white tee shirt and faded overalls sitting in a barn red Adirondack chair under a wide powder blue canvas umbrella next to a tiny, pale, very old man with white bushy eyebrows and wings of snowy hair on both sides of his bald head. The older man kind of looks like an ancient, much smaller version of Bozo. He's wearing a white silk suit and a bone ruffled shirt with a black ribbon tie. He's sitting on a thickly padded recliner sipping tea. A pretty colored girl in a starched maid's uniform is on her knees giving him a pedicure.

Skeeter slouches against the low stone wall dressed in dungarees and a gray shirt buttoned up to his neck. The points of his collar curl up, and he has his short sleeves rolled up over his massive biceps. His forearms are hairy as a pair of cats. Just as Cooter said he's wearing a scuffed leather flying helmet with the straps hanging unbuckled. He frowns when he sees us and his one dark eyebrow gets shorter. "Hidy, Caty," he says, cracking his grimy knuckles.

"Colonel Clowers, you wanted to see me, Sir?" the sheriff asks.

"Now, Caty, you come sit beside me. Boy, you go over there next to Frankie. Cooter, Skeeter, that'll be all. You-all go on to the garage and make yourselves busy." The Colonel's voice reminds me of the dangerous drone of angry yellow jackets, a low, flat buzz with occasional spark of a menacing whine on some of his harder consonants.

After the pair of Doxes leave the colonel tells the girl she can finish later. She scoops up her instruments, gathers up the clipped nails, and shuffles away, keeping her neck stiff and looking always at the ground.

"Thank you for being so prompt in visiting an old man. Caty, you were always a bright boy growing up. When you worked with your daddy at my gin you were more the foreman than he was. You were reading the Bible on your own at seven while your daddy could never make it through the whole alphabet."

"He was good with numbers, Sir," Caty blurts.

"Yes, he was. Don't get me wrong. I thought he was a wonderful man, one of my favorite people, God rest his soul, but he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Shame he died of the diphtheria like that while you were away in Korea. I always thought I'd have you replace him at the gin when you got old enough. After you got home from the war with your new bride I could see you were cut out for bigger things. I picked you to be my sheriff when Bud Parks run off with that Culver woman. These ten years you've been a fine public servant, kept apple pie order in my county. I'm proud and happy with the decision I made."

The sheriff leans forward in his chair so that his elbows are on his knees. He blushes a dusky pink. "Thank you, Sir. I've tried very hard to do my best, to live up to the trust you've placed in me."

"Caty, I hear from my good friend the doctor that lately things have gotten out of control."

"Yes, Sir, I'm sorry to say they have. What's worse is that they've been that way for a while and I didn't realize it. I thought the deaths were all accidents. I didn't know what was happenin' right under my nose. I failed you, Sir."

"Now, Caty, I want you to know that I do not blame you. Whatever's going on, whoever the culprit may be, he's obviously a little more than what even an exemplary back county sheriff can reasonably handle. Your skills are better suited to the regular disputes that naturally occur among the good country people of Kingdom. I'm not at all disappointed that you come up short when faced with a cold-blooded, calculating murderer. I make it a point to know all of what really happens in this part of the state and even I was fooled. Now that we know what's-what we must consider our best options for going forward."

"Yes, Sir. When I get back to the office I'm plannin' on calling in the State Police for help."

"That might be a good idea, but let's talk this through first. If we involve the State Police it might call the wrong kind of attention to our county. What I mean is media attention. What with that mess in Neshoba and the other pranks Frankie's pals are pulling around the state we could quite easily find Juneapple, one of the friendliest places in these United States, depicted in Life magazine or on the national tee-vee news as 'The Murder Capital of Mississippi.' We wouldn't want that would we?"

"No, Sir, we wouldn't."

"I hear that you have some Negro detective, a Robert Anthony, already involved. You didn't check with me first, but that's all right. I understand how difficult it would be to explain because of his race. I have some friends high up in the FBI, and they tell me he's good at investigating these kind of things and keeping it quiet. Let's give him a chance to nose around for a while before we decide to pull more outsiders. Just to be sure this Anthony fellow has all the help he needs, I want the boy there to work with him." Much to my surprise the colonel has indicated me with a jerk of his chin. "He noticed that poor Mrs. Fenton had been subjected to foul play and took steps that aided in the accurate determination of her time of death. Doctor Kale thinks he'd be a great help."

"That's not why B.J.'s here in Mississippi," Frank flatly interrupts.

"Frankie, you're forgettin' your manners. You should call the Colonel 'sir,'" the sheriff says with a tight, embarrassed voice.

"That's all right, I'm used to your brother's sass by now. What I had in mind, Frankie, was a sort of a deal. You have your boy help Anthony for as long as it takes - probably not more than week or so if his reputation is anywhere near accurate - and I'll see to it that Jack Morgan and his bunch leave your little project alone for the whole summer. I'll also spread the word that any Negroes that can reasonably qualify have my permission to register to vote. Now, doesn't that seem fair? You help us, and we, in turn, help you."

Frank thinks it through before responding, "I guess. What do you mean by 'reasonably qualify'? The voting registration test has always been pretty much rigged against us. The four people we managed to get to go to Howard all failed because they didn't put their postal code on their addresses. Time Magazine didn't even start using the new postal code until last week. I'd like to be of help, but B.J.'s crucial to reaching my goal of five hundred Negro voters."

"I was thinking 'reasonable' meant closer to twenty, but to save on pointless dickering, let's agree to an even hundred."

"Do you wanna do this?" Frank asks me.

I nod, "Yeah, I do. Frank, did the colonel just say that you and the sheriff are brothers?"

"Well, well, the boy is a mighty sharp one. He pays attention," the colonel croons. "So do we have a deal?"

"Caty or I'll tell you about it sometime, but not right now," Frank says to me. He turns back to the colonel with a happy smirk, "I don't want to dicker either, but let's make it a much more round one-fifty, Sir."

Caty rolls his eyes, but the colonel says, "Done and done." He and Frank shake hands.

The summer is turning out much differently than I could have ever guessed.

Chapter Seven

Saturday - June 27, 1964

The round, metal, robin's-egg-blue water tower makes a long, thin shadow across the spot in the tall, green Johnson grass where the mayor's young daughter's body was found. It's almost nine in the morning and for the first in days I've managed to have a good breakfast. The sheriff and the deputy point out to Mr. Anthony exactly how the body lay. The sheriff is still skeptical that all four deaths are connected so we are beginning our investigation with the first. Yesterday we read all the sheriff had in his files about each one. Today is for field work.

The huge detective looks again at the black and white pictures taken by the local reporter who, the sheriff explained, is given a small monthly retainer by the county to shoot crime scenes photos when necessary. Before the last four months these had been confined to the rare auto accident and even rarer discovery of a homemade liquor distilling apparatus.

I'd seen the pictures of the body the day before. Mr. Anthony had clicked his happy approval of my being given over to his service and handed me a thick pile of files to go through, most of which were police records. The girl, a pretty young woman of thirteen, was found face up which, at the brief inquest, led to the quite logical conclusion she had been climbing the tower for a thrill when she had accidentally fallen. From his voluminous coat which he wore despite the intense mid-morning heat Mr. Anthony pulls out a slim, coiled cloth tape measure. He hands the end to me and instructs me to hold it against the base of the metal ladder running up the tower. He strides back to where the sheriff and deputy stand.

"Fourteen feet, four inches. The path up the ladder slopes inward, does it not?" he asks.

"Yum," the deputy agrees.

"Were she to have fallen backward, then would she have not been found nearer the base?"

"Yeah. Are you saying she jumped?" the deputy says, shading his eyes from the mid-morning sun.

"No, I am saying she was thrown. Bernard, what did the autopsy report suggest to you?" he asks me.

"She died from the trauma of an abrupt impact to the posterior of her body. It crushed her lower spine, snapped her third vertebrae at the base of the neck, and caved in the back of her skull. But there's no way a girl of eighty-nine pounds could have worked up sufficient velocity to sustain that level of injury even from the very top of this tower. She might have broken a limb or at worst snapped her neck if she's made exact contact with the metal ladder, but nothing like what was noted."

"Good. What else?"

"She was killed sometime long before she came off of the tower."

"And why do you conclude this?"

"The close-ups show that her blood had collected in her nose and cheeks as if the body had been lying on its front for several hours right after death. I bet if we asked the mortician he might remember the staining the length of her whole anterior."

"The victim was only four-foot-eight. Would you assist me, Deputy Poteet?"

"Hey, I'm not that short," Deputy Poteet protests.

"Then would you please to bend your knees the required amount?"

The deputy does so and Mr. Anthony continues. "Remembering the descriptions of the points of impact, bruises along the spine, deeper at the waist and upper shoulders, what would you guess happened?" he says while pointing to the areas on the deputy's back.

The sheriff sucks in a long, anguished breath and answers before I can respond, "She was hit by a truck."

"Ya, good," Mr. Anthony says. "The murderer might have run into her by accident or maybe he saw her walking home from visiting her aunt which was the last place she was seen alive . . ."

". . . out on the Lake Road. The mayor and his sister both live on the Lake Road."

"Ya, exactly, Sheriff. He might have seen her and felt the sudden urge to twist his wheel slightly, maybe only to scare her . . ."

". . . or hit her deliberately. Then he tossed her face down in the back of the truck. and hid her somewheres. When it was night, he threw her off the tower."

"Ya, very good. There was no moon that night. The weather service report said it was also partly cloudy. Sheriff, the evidence from the recent crimes suggests I was incorrect when I surmised that the murderer in this case could be Doctor Conrad Pell. The wounds on the neck of Mrs. Fenton are from huge, very strong hands. Doctor Pell has slim, nimble surgeon's fingers, completely unlike your killer. He was in excellent physical condition when I last saw him, but it is unlikely that Doctor Pell could have carried even a small body way up that tower and thrown her so far off. I think that after the fiend got away with the first murder he then looked for an opportunity for newer prey. He found he liked the taste of killing, particularly those who are related to people in authority. There is nothing more we can learn here. Let's move on to a month later and the shooting of your son."

"We were playin' hooky," the sheriff says as we walk along the wide, dusty, yellow dirt path leading from the road to the backmost cove of Kingdom Lake. "There's somewhere else we both shoulda been, somewhere dull, and it made the absolutely choice mornin' all the better. My son was suppose ta been slouched in his cramped school desk doodlin' airplanes on a wide-lined page of his notebook while that old battle ax, Miss Crabtree, tried to make early American history sound even more inspirin' than over-written text said it was. At my office there were at least a dozen lengthy and way too complex reports that needed completin' before the end of the month, which was the day after next. But somewhere on the road while takin' my son to school I turned around and headed back toward the lake.

"'Where we goin', Pa?' the boy asked.

"'Fishin',' I said.

"'But the season don't start 'till next month.'

"I laughed, 'So we best keep an eye out for the sheriff. He's a nasty one.'

"The boy giggled into his fist. The freckles danced on his cheeks. I reached over and rubbed my hand over my son's head to smooth out a spiky, sandy-colored cowlick. The color he got from his momma, the cowlick from me.

"Just then the radio squawked loudly, startlin' us both. It was Sandra over at the switchboard who doubles as a police dispatcher.

"'Caty? Caty? Where you at? Mrs. Peabody's been callin' for you. She says that the moron-next-door's hounds are gettin' on her nerves. They're runnin' loose again so she cain't take her poodle out her walk, over.'

"I looked at my son, Decatur, Junior, who we called 'Happy', torn between not respondin' or takin' the call since we was so close to Mrs. Peabody's place already.

"'Tell her we lost, Pa,' Happy said with a grin. 'We don' know how we'll ever get back.'

"I smiled, pointed to Happy in agreement, plucked the microphone from its holder, and held it close to my lips, 'Sandra, me and the boy've gotten lost. Don't reckon just how it happened. I musta taken a wrong turn somewhere. I don't know when we'll be in, over.'

"The radio was silent for a moment, then through the static, Sandra chirped back, 'Should I send Deputy Tommy?'

"'Lord, no, Sandra. 'Member the last time he went out to Skeeter's place to round up the hounds?'

"'Tommy didn't need all that many stitches. At least this time we know that none of them's rabid.'

"'Give Skeeter a call over at the fillin' station. He's probably just hangin' out there with Cooter. Tell him I said ta get his-self home and herd them dogs back ta their kennels or he's gonna have to pay ta get Mrs. Peabody's Oriental rug cleaned again, over.'

"'Okay. Have fun bein' lost. Catch one for me; I haven't had fresh fish in a long time. Base over and out."

"We parked the squad car in that clearin' back there. Before getting the rod cases out of the trunk we picked up ten or so beer cans strewn by some partyin' teenagers and tossed then into a paper sack in the back seat. We both hated litter. Me and Happy trotted down the path whistling the theme to Bonanza. Butterflies flitted about in the still chilly early morning Spring breeze. Robins and meadowlarks snatched mud and twigs from the sides of the path to built nests in the top most branches of the tall live oaks and poplars.

"Happy looked up at me and squinted, 'Pa, d'ya mind if I don't become a sheriff when I grow up?'

"'Naugh, not as long as you're doing something useful. What do you expect you'd like to be?'

"'I wanna to make cowboy movies.'

"'That's still like bein' a sheriff, ain't it?' I said pullin' a cigarette out of my breast pocket and lighted it with a wooden kitchen match I flicked with my thumb.

"'Nope. I don' wanna be the star. I wanna be the director feller. I think that would be the bestest job in the whole world. That way you can have all the keen stuff happen just like you want it to and leave out the borin' and mushy parts. And you always know how the cliff-hanger is gonna turn out a week earlier.'

"'I suppose that'd be okay.'

"'I could be rich and famous. I'd make you proud o' me.'

"'I'm proud o' ya now.'

"'I know. That's why I'd still fly home to go fishin' with you, even when you're old.'

"I smiled so broad and felt at peace with the world. I thought ta m'self that I hoped I'd always remember that moment. Now I don't want ta forget a second or single detail of that whole mornin', but I cain't ever stop thinkin' about the afternoon."

The sheriff stops suddenly at a wide place in the middle of a curve in the path.

"It was right here, at this spot. I think it was one-thirty - two o'clock. We'd fished all mornin', had our lunch, and rested a spell before headin' back. I only got one little crappie, but Happy'd caught his-self three fat bream. He was holdin' 'em up to show me again when it happened. I cain't fully remember which I'd noticed first: the faint, strangely familiar chuff hittin' my ears or th' bright splash of wet, red blood splatterin' the knee of my uniform pants. I turned my head ta look to my son and saw the boy droppin' ta the dirt with a large hole in the middle of his green and orange striped shirt. I dove ta catch him, ta try ta do somethin' ta save his life, but the small, empty body fell too quickly. The high-top sneakers, barely sticking out of the rolled up dungarees, kicked several times in the air. I thought that if I'da caught him I coulda saved him, but as I turned him over I realized that catching Happy wouldn'a made no difference. His colorless eyelashes twitched once, twice, and it was over.

"I got real calm. It made me angry at m'self because I druthered gone stark ravin' mad. I wanted ta feel a blind rage an' beat to a droolin' pulp the idiot poacher who killed my boy. But I spent two years in Korea, an' that robbed me of somethin' and gave me somethin' else in return. I carried Happy to soft grass along the side of the path and hollered in the direction the shot had come from. 'Come on out of there. This is the sheriff speakin'. Just leave the rifle behind. I know you didn't mean to do it.'

"But there was no answer. None at all. I searched the thicket for over an hour but I didn't find no trace of the shooter, not even the brass bullet casing. There were no foot prints, no disturbed twigs, nothing. It's as if the bullet has come out of nowhere."

Mr. Anthony looks around, clicking the back of his tongue again, and opens Happy's file. For this incident Doctor Kale had understood the importance of detailed autopsy photos. "Would you mind looking at these two pictures?" Mr. Anthony asks the sheriff who blinks and takes them. I look over his shoulder at the posterior and anterior shots of the boy's body. In each the manicured hand of the county nurse holds a yardstick against the entry and exit wounds.

"Don't focus on the width of the hole. Notice the distance from the shoulder to the beginning of the entry wound. Now the greater distance to that of the exit."

"So what?" the deputy asks.

"So the shooter was much higher up than the ground," the sheriff says. He peers at the trees. We follow him away from the path, as he retraces the search pattern he took that terrible afternoon. Instead of looking down, this time he's looking up. Because we know what we're hunting for it only takes about a quarter of an hour to find the camouflaged tree stand high up in a huge maple.

"From the marks there on the bark I'd guess the shooter most likely had a rope he pulled up behind him which he has since discarded," Mr. Anthony says while scaling up the tree. The sheriff follows. The deputy announces he'll stand guard at the bottom. I stay with the deputy as there doesn't seem to me like there'd be room for me up there. The little enclosed hut is about thirty feet up. I really don't have a problem with heights when I can avoid them. A few minutes later the sheriff scrambles down.

"There wa'n't nothin' at all up there. I reckon the killer guessed we might find it sooner or later and swept it clean. The Monsieur wanted to be left alone so's he could conduct a more thorough search by his-self. He told me that we could draw a line from the tree blind to past where Happy was hit and find the bullet."

Deputy Poteet gets on his knees again at the approximate point where the child was shot. With that the two reference points it doesn't take long to find the bullet hole in the bark of a large pine hanging over the lake's edge. The sheriff digs the large lump out with his pocket knife, careful not to touch the sides of the slug.

After an hour and twenty minutes Mr. Anthony's crepe-soled dress shoes smack the crusty leafed ground.

"Did you find anything?" the sheriff asks.

"Just this. It was crammed in between two boards of the floor." He hold a wax paper Bazooka Joe cartoon daintily with his massive fingers.

"What's that mean?" the deputy asks.

"I know who the killer is," Mr. Anthony answers. "But the hard part will be proving it."

Chapter Eight

Sunday Afternoon - June 28, 1964

In mid-afternoon of my second Sunday in Mississippi a miracle happened.

I'm slouched on my courthouse bunk reading Doctor Kale's medical textbook. I'm back to studying as I have done most days of my life. I'm trying to get a jump on med school, to stay well ahead of the white boys and their low expectations of my chances for success. It is a regimen my momma taught me very early on. In the other cell Mr. Anthony does a long series of very difficult calisthenics. At the exact moment of the miracle he is on his fifty-first one-arm-handstand-push-up. He does this exercise as he did them all, without even breaking a trace of a sweat. He has at least shed his snapbrim hat, topcoat, suit coat, tie, and dress shirt. He is wearing a white tee shirt on his sculpted upper torso. Through it I can see the raised lines of many odd shaped scars. The sheriff, still in his church going clothes, is sitting with his stocking feet on the desk, looking out the big pane window at to the wide town square, lost in tormented thought. We had taken the day off from sleuthing as the sheriff wanted to attend worship in the morning and didn't think it appropriate to be manhunting on the Sabbath . Later on, at about four, we three will go over to his trailer where Aunt G. is cooking us Sunday dinner. Tomorrow we will resume our investigation with the death of his wife and Mrs. Fenton in hopes that the last two cases would provide solid evidence that would bring the culprit responsible to swift justice. Mr. Anthony refuses to share his suspicions until he has real proof.

Mr. Anthony and I only have to spent only one more night as guests of the county. With the colonel's blessing Frank had finally secured the rental of the abandoned creamery for use as a Freedom School and Center. The detective had accepted Frank's invitation to stay there with the summer volunteers until this business was concluded. Tomorrow while I help search for clues, Frank, Terry, and the remaining summer project workers, the two teachers, due in Juneapple later today, would be fixing the place up for habitation.

In his even, conversational tone Mr. Anthony counts "cinquante-un" and carefully lowers his head to almost touch his knuckles as Deputy Poteet triumphantly bursts open the courthouse door dragging behind him a nun and the miracle handcuffed together.

"I got 'em, fair and square - and - I got the definite proof we've been lookin' for. Wait'll Governor Johnson sees this. Won't he be tickled! Citations! That's what they're gonna give me! And more ribbons than I can pin on one shirt. Yes-siree! I done sprung the jack pot. Two Red cherries. Bing, Bing!" he bellows and slaps a pamphlet on the sheriff's desk.

The sheriff considers his assistant crossly and, with shamed embarrassment in front of the nun, quickly pulls his unshod feet off the desk.

Then I realize the young woman chained to the nun is the goddess from the back seat of the Caddy convertible, the girl who's been filling my idle daydreams for a week. The whole courthouse seems to fade away around her beautiful face. It was a frightening thing to have happen. Everything gets all white around her, as if time and life stop. She wiggles the fingers of her free hand in my direction and grins at me.

"The handsome, helpful stranger. I thought I'd never see you again," she says. "I'm Elizabeth Margaret Hickey. I hate my nickname, 'Liz,' so call me something else. What would your name be?"

"Bernard James Phillips - B.J. for short, but I don't favor it either."

"Bernie, I was pinned just this spring to a young man with a shockingly promising future prospects that my family simply adores, but I expect we can still be good friends."

"I don't see why not, Beth."

"Good," she smiles again and reaches out to shake my hand but quickly frowns when the nun drags her back to the sheriff's desk. Beth's wearing a white cotton blouse, tan shorts, and sandals. I guess she's not worried about getting her painted toenails stepped on.

Deputy Poteet struts to the middle of the courthouse and hooks his thumb in his Sam Browne belt like he was Clarence Darrow. "These two were barreled through the stop sign at the North corner of the square . . ."

"I told you to slow down," the nun sniffs.

"I was only doing thirty, and I didn't see any stop sign," Beth protests.

"It's hangin' on wire from the second stories of the feed store and the diner. Lots of newcomers miss it," the sheriff says. "Town council voted to do it that way to save on the purchase and installation of four poles. We got signs that are about half-size too. Cheaper than big ones. Tommy, what say we give 'em a warnin' and let 'em all go?"

"One minute, Sheriff. That's only the greasy tip of the iceberg. As I was writing out the ticket I glanced in the back seat and discovered that book. Take a good long look at it. Though it may seem innocent, a trained law enforcement official like me knew instantly what it was."

The sheriff picks up the book, flips through it, and says, "It's a manual for teaching people to read."

"Look at the author. Just look."

"Gudshinsky."

"Exactly, a commie name. I bet that's all in code and it's really a book on how to teach our colored folk to be subverted to the Red cause of overthrowing our white Christian way of life. Now what do you think about that?"

Mr. Anthony after completing a half dozen more repetitions lithely springs from his handstand to his feet and laughs heartily.

Deputy Poteet points and shouts, "See, he knows I'm right. Jack Morgan told me that Anthony admitted to being a communist that night what they took'im."

Mr. Anthony pulls on a fresh shirt and explains, "There is no such thing as a communist nun. During the war the pope went so far as to praise Hitler for being his holy protector from the scourge of Bolshevism. The Catholic Church dedicated cathedrals to the Führer for fighting the Soviets."

"But you're a papist. Jack said you bragged about it."

"In my youth, in prewar Paris, one was either a Fascist or a communist. I dabbled with the latter. However, I was not a member of the clergy. It is impossible for an ordained sister to be teaching communist propaganda."

"Maybe she's wearing a disguise?" the deputy asks.

"No, that is a real nun. They have an air about them that is impossible to imitate. Also, Mrs. Gudshinsky is a very famous teacher of literacy, especially to adults."

"So I gotta let 'em go?"

"Sorry, Tommy. Now undo them there cuffs."

The nun sourly looks at the way Beth is smiling at me and says, "Perhaps you should leave them on."

"Note her attitude," Mr. Anthony whispers gleefully to me.

"That much righteous indignation would be pretty tough to fake," I agree.

"France didn't blame me; maybe 'cause she needed me too much to get through each terrible day of chokin' grief. But that didn't stop me from blamin' m'self," the sheriff tells us. We are looking over the ruined shell of his house later that evening. Another excellent meal crowds my ribs for space in my chest.

"The three nights before the funeral she cried herself to sleep - when she could sleep - clutchin' at me like I was salvation itself. When they lowered the small coffin into the red clay she stopped cryin'. After Reverend Shavlin finished speakin' about ashes and dust she dropped a handful of dirt on the polished oak coffin and seemed to just forget all about the nine years she cared for our son. Life then became somethin' different for the both of us. We became sleepwalkers who never got no rest.

"I met my wife, France, at the San Diego Zoo. I was just about to be sent to Korea, and she was down from her native Manitoba, Canada visitin' with her aunt Geraldine who just had given birth to triplets. France's parents had sent her to help out for the first year or so until the babies got settled in.

"She was so beautiful, blonde, a little plump with this milky clear skin, and eyes the color of the ocean, dressed in a rose colored gingham dress. I spotted her right off and followed her like a yappy puppy through the zoo. I kept tryin' to buy her cotton candy and peanuts to feed the elephants. France had been given a few hours off and she was just too plum frazzled to pay me no mind. She just wanted some peace and quiet. Finally in front of a large crowd by the tiger cage I dramatically fell to one knee and asked her to marry me. France just started gigglin', 'Does this approach usually work on the twelve year olds back home?' she asked.

"'I take it that's a "yes,"' I said with my clutched hands against my left shoulder.

"'How do you figure that?' France asked me, hiccupin'.

"'Cause my life would be over if it were "no," and my heart's still beatin'.

"This brought on even more gigglin' and tee-heein' until she realized I's serious. She looked me in the eye and frowned, not being sure what to do. 'If I say no but agree to have lunch with you sometime would that keep you going?'

"'Only if it were tomorrow.'

"'I can't get away that soon. I'm sorry, I'm busy tomorrow,' she said and turned back to the tigers.

"I started to make chokin' sounds and clutchin' my chest, waving one arm in the air. France just turned and walked away. She was too tuckered out for my foolishness.

"I caught up with her by the polar bears. She glared at me and said, 'Fine, I'm goin' home. If you persist I'll call a cop.' She started to leave, but I blocked her. I dunno why, but I didn't want ta let her go. She pushed me away and asked, 'Why are you doin' this? Why are you botherin' me? There are plenty of other girls that would love this kind of attention. I'll tell you right now, Buster, I'm not one of them.'

"'I don't know what else to do. Tell me the right way to get you to talk to me and I'll be glad to do what ever it takes. I just don't have all that much time. I'm shippin' out the day after tomorrah.'

"'Give me one reason why I should give you another chance to humiliate me?'

"'To let me make it up to you for embarassin' you the first time. I'm real sorry, Miss. I'm not like this. I'm just kinda nervous.'

"Somethin' inside musta loosened a wee bit. She told me later it warn't the words what swayed her; it was the cherry red blush on my Howdy Doody face. She glared at me, 'You only want to talk?'

"'Really,' I pleaded. 'Swear to God. I just want to get you to write to me while I'm over there. I got no one else. None of my kin or friends back home knows how to read 'n' write. Honest.'

"'Okay. How about this: tomorrow you come to my aunt's house. We'll chat for a while on her porch and then we'll see.'

"'What time?'

"'Ten.'

"'Thank you, Miss. I'm Decatur Augustus Fairchild, but everybody calls me "Caty."'

"'My name is Francine Fable. My friends call me "France."'

"'Miss Fable, I hope someday to be included in that select society. Thank you for your gracious invitation. I strenuously look forward to the moment.' I bowed and turned to leave her, but then stopped.

"'One more thing, Miss Fable.'

"'What, Mr. Fairchild?'

"'I would need you to give me your address, unless you would allow a stupid Southern lout to walk you home after you are finished here?'

"'Oh. Fine, then. I'll meet you at the main gate in about an hour.'

"'I'll be there countin' the minutes.'

"She waited an hour and forty minutes on purpose to test my reaction. I was just very relieved she finally showed up. So we talked on the way home and found we had a saw the world in much the same way. The next day I showed up for our porch date and handed her an armload of phlox (she'd mentioned they were her favorite) and a huge box of chocolates. France's aunt surprised her by immediately invitin' me in for lunch. France was even more amazed when all three babies started cryin' during the meal and I plucked little Trudy, the most difficult of the trio, out of the bassinet and began to coo her back to sleep. I's an only chile, but I have a couple o' . . . cousins like Frankie that I helped take care of so I knew just how to be soothin'. Lil' Trudy settled right down.

"'Yes,' France whispered.

"'Yes, you'll write me?' I asked, concentratin' on the precious gurglin' baby in my arms.

"France swallowed, 'No, I mean yes, I will write you, but also yes, I'll marry you.'

"I smiled at her, 'I knew you would. Shoot. Too bad you didn't make up your mind yesterday. Now we gotta wait for me to get back.'

"I was in Korea for two years, three months, and six days. We wrote every day. She was waiting on the dock in a weddin' dress when my boat landed."

"Can you tell us about the night she died?" Mr. Anthony asks very gently.

"Yeah, sorry. Got lost there for a bit. The phone rang at about three in the mornin' about a month after Happy was killed. It was Orson Cheadle. He heard someone prowlin' outside his chicken house. He saw a thin blond guy standing between the out buildings and let loose with a shotgun load a' rock salt. The guy dropped like he was hurt or maybe he ducked and crawled away. Orson didn't dare go check his-self.

"I told France I had to go and asked her if she'd be okay.

"'Yes, but hurry back,' was the last thing she said to me.

"'I always do,' I whispered as I kissed her forehead. I scooped up my clothes from where France had folded them on the dresser and pulled them on in the hall. I lit a cigarette on the porch. It was a beautiful night, the dark of the moon. The stars were all sharp edged in the night sky. I thought I mighta heard a rustling from the hydrangea bushes, but figured I scared a raccoon or a stray cat. France was always leaving scraps out for animals. I listened carefully as I took a long drag of smoke and ambled to the cruiser. I didn't take the time to look around. I figured the sooner I was away the sooner I'd be back in France's bed.

"Orson Cheadle lived way down in the corner of the county, past Dumas almost on the Ford County line. When I got there I discovered that someone had dangled a scarecrow from clothesline strung between the chicken house and his tall Magnolia in an area where the porchlight was the weakest. They put in a lot of effort to make the dummy look like a real person. Even had a blond wig. They sewed a large rock inside the head and used a really thin string running off of the clothesline so that the dummy would drop with any kinda hit.

"'I swear I didn't mean to, Caty,' Orson blubbered from the corner of the porch. 'Like I tol' ya, I only had it loaded with rock salt. I'll testify to that on a stack of Bibles. I didn't mean to hurt no one.' Orson's an elderly widower. He was takin' long swigs a' shine from a quart mason jar. He looked real silly that night with his few remainin' hairs, usually combed over the top of his bald head, clingin' to the gray stubble of his cheek.

"I drug the scarecrow onto the porch and sat it in a wicker chair. The stuffed canvas sack had a smirkin' face painted on. The rock in the head caused the body to slump forward.

"Roy Smith, one of the two ambulance attendants called to the scene with me in case Orson had hurt someone, started to laugh. 'Who'd you piss off, Orson to have someone pull a prank like this on you?'

"Orson handed him the jar and said, 'I cain't think o' no one. Maybe some of the boys at the VFW wanted to have a little fun. I'll find out though. Scared the livin' life outta me.'

"Me and the boys had a quick smoke, passed the mason jar around a couple times, and jawed for a bit about who the likely culprits might be, then I drove back home. I could see the flames of my house from six miles away. It was a real dark night.

"When I got back here Ned Carver, the chief of the volunteer fire department, looked at me with red rimmed eyes. His tears made long streaks down his sooty face. It's disgustin' how I remember it, but I was sickened by stuff from his nose dribblin' into his thick mustache. He took me aside and told me that it looked like an accelerant was used to have it burn that quickly and completely. Something even more flammable than kerosene, he guessed. Later, the State lab boys said it was some kinda napalm like in flame throwers. Nate said he couldn't figure why France didn't try to get out. They found her in the root cellar; the smoke's what took her. Ned pointed to the oilcloth draped body on the stretcher. I walked over to the soft, covered shape and brushed the small left hand through thick fabric. I remember feelin' the ridge of simple gold band on her limp finger."

The sheriff stops talking.

The detective has been examining the charred window frame. There are blackened spikes protruding from the wood. "Sheriff, did you have anything nailed over your windows?"

"No. We had heavy shutters for when a twister come through, but they was open that night."

"Where do you suppose these large spikes came from? They are scorched so they must have been put in before the fire was set. Here are more in the door frame. Someone barricaded your wife in and torched your house."

"Why would someone do that?"

"If you kept the scarecrow I believe I can give you the opportunity to ask that question of the man who did it."

Chapter Nine

Monday - June 29, 1964

"He let out them hounds," Deputy Poteet gulps. We can hear them howling as we slowly drive up the Lake Road. He rubs the area on his left forearm where they'd bitten him before.

"During our orientation we were taught you can overcome attack dogs by giving them a karate chop on the nose," I say.

"Tommy, here, knows karate. He went to a special class at the capital. Begged me for a whole blamed month ta let'm take it. We'll let him get out first," the sheriff says.

"Judo; I know judo," Deputy Poteet protests.

"What's the difference?" the sheriff asks.

"Karate is about strikin' an opponent. Judo is the art of usin' an attacker's force against his-self. If one of those dogs grabs me around the neck I can toss him over my shoulder - if he ain't too heavy."

"Oh," the sheriff says. "Good to see the county's trainin' money didn't go to waste." He turns into the Dox's driveway. The dogs climb all over the outside of the car and savagely snap and drool at the side windows. From inside the tar paper shack comes the sound of whooping laughter. The first volley from the deer rifle spiderwebs the windshield. The four of us duck our heads.

The sheriff had kept the scarecrow in the trunk. He'd forgotten he'd put it there the night his wife was killed. Earlier this morning Mr. Anthony had taken the dummy apart and spread the stuffing on the table.

"It's garbage," the sheriff had said.

"What kind of garbage? Where would you find this kind of refuse?" Mr. Anthony asks.

I looked through the greasy rags, candy wrappers, cigarette cartons, crumpled oil cans, worn fan belts, and used windshield wipers. "A gas station."

"Yeah, so they went though the filling station's trash heap. So what?" the deputy snorted.

The detective smiled and pulled out a tiny pair of shears. He cut the left breast from the overalls that made up the body of the scarecrow and put it over the green bankers lamp on the small side desk. The illumination through the holes spell out the word "Skeeter" in a flowing, stippled script.

"Can you think of a reason why someone else would go to the trouble of picking the embroidery from Mr. Dox's overalls?" Mr. Anthony said.

"How did you know that would be there?" the sheriff asked.

"His brother told us that Skeeter likes to hunt and chews the brand of gum that comes in the wrapper we found. Not enough for a conviction or even for a search warrant. But I knew there must be something in this stuffed figure that would give us a definite link. Killers always leave something behind they didn't count on." Mr. Anthony had explained. "I believe we have enough to justify checking whether his rifle might fire a bullet with ballistics matching the slug you found."

"I reckon we'd better go see," the sheriff had said.

The second shot takes off a rearview mirror and the third flattens the right front tire. More wild laughter joins the baying of the dogs as they snort and paw the doors.

"Skeeter, you're under arrest. Now put the gun away and call off the dogs before someone gets hurt."

"Sho' nuff, Caty. You just come on 'n' git me any time you're ready." Skeeter shoots a hole in the radiator. "I'll give ya three or four minutes and then I'm gonna toss a lighted bottle of gasoline on your hood. You can go up in smoke like your pretty wife."

"Now what?" the sheriff asks Mr. Anthony from the front seat. The detective pulls a small amber vial from his overcoat and twists the black metal top. He sprinkles the liquid liberally on his and my clothes. It smells just terrible. The stench fills the car. The deputy starts to gag.

"Open your door," Mr. Anthony tells me.

"Why my door?"

"There's a woodpile right there. I shall maneuver behind it and then flank him."

"What was in the bottle?" I ask while tentatively tapping the door handle.

"Siberian tiger sweat and urine."

"Um, Sir, I don't think these sombitches ever met a Siberian tiger."

"Don't worry. Predators recognize another's spoor. You will be safe," he promises. "Trust me."

I wrap my moist fingers around the chrome handle and shift it downward. There is a loud click deep inside the door. The barking becomes more intense, and the snarling mongrels crowd the slight opening. The sound of scraping claws on the sheet metal is unnerving.

"All of you, stay in here. Do not come out until I tell you. After I achieve my first objective, Sheriff, would please yell something to distract the suspect."

"Sure," the sheriff agrees.

I carefully push on the vinyl padding with my sneaker and the door swings open. A large gray mastiff surges through the gap, opens his foam-flecked muzzle to gnash my face, stops, and scampers hastily to the back of the dilapidated shack, whimpering and shivering. The rest of the pack follow their brutish leader in a yowling, tail-tucked rush.

"Wow," I say.

Mr. Anthony dives out the door and does a forward flip and lands behind the huge woodpile. A blast of buck shot pits the edges of the neatly stacked logs.

"What'd ya do ta ma dogs?" Skeeter Dox shrieks as he pulls the second shotgun trigger, slicing away the leaves from the trees above the pile.

"Hey, Skeeter, ya got a nigger in the wood pile!" Sheriff Fairchild shouts.

A blast from the deer rifle bends in the roof strut on the sheriff's side of the car.

A large rock sails in a high arc over the top row of wood and lands on the porch on the left side of the house. The rifle barrel poking out the window swivels in that direction.

I peek through the crack where the car meets the door and see Mr. Anthony jump from the top of the woodpile to land quietly on the tar roof.

"No matter what the monsieur says, we cain't just stay here," the sheriff tells the deputy. "It's our job, not his."

There is a small pause before Deputy Poteet answers. "Yeah, I know. Ya wanna rush him on the count of three?"

"I don't have a better plan. Okay - One . . ."

They both unlatch their doors.

"Two . . ." the deputy continues.

"Sheriff, look!" I say, pointing through the cracks in the windshield at Mr. Anthony as he hooks his legs on the edge of the roof and gracefully swings his body down. The sheriff turns to grab his deputy, but he's too late.

"Three," the deputy bellows. He dives from the car, firing his sidearm blindly just as Mr. Anthony grabs the rifle barrel and pulls Skeeter through the open window onto the porch. Mr. Anthony quickly curls up out of range still holding the rifle, but one of the wild rounds slams into Skeeter's right side. The large man falls forward onto the glass and debris strewn porch.

I struggle to get out of the car and rush across the yard on to the porch. A portion step gives way, and I fall on my elbow. I ignore the pain and crawl next to Skeeter. I tear the many-stained shirt away from the wound. There is a slight sucking sound. Skeeter is already gasping for breath; his windpipe has shifted away from the hole. I stick a finger from my left hand into the wound. Skeeter wails as the air hisses around my finger. He tries to get up but the pressure from my hooked finger in his chest holds him in place.

"Relax, will ya? I know what I'm doing. I'm reinflating your lung," I yell.

I spit into my right hand, wishing it were more sterile and press it tightly over the puncture. I pull him to a sitting position and examine his back. There is no exit wound. The bullet must have lodged in his ribs where they connect with the spine. I don't have anything to pack the hole or a tube for drainage. I'm somewhat unclear exactly what I would do if I did have them. The largest thing I've ever dissected is a rabbit. This is the kind of situation I've only read about. Skeeter is pale and his heart rate, from what I can feel through my palm, is rapid. He smells like my stepfather of sweat, cigarettes, and whisky. I start to tell the sheriff to raise Skeeter's legs but he's already done so, sliding a overturned wooden rocking chair under them. He darts into the cabin and comes out with a bottle of whiskey and some smelly blankets. The sheriff drizzles some of the liquor on the wound, dumps far more into Skeeter's puckered lips, and tucks the quilts around the wounded man. Mr. Anthony brings me the first aid kit from the damaged cruiser.

"You've got a bandage, but I need something like Vaseline," I say after I've pawed around in the white metal box.

"They's a jar of Bag Balm on the kitchen counter," the sheriff says.

"I'll get it," Mr. Anthony offers.

Skeeter coughs up a small amount of bright red blood, but he's breathing a little easier. "Caty, the man in the blue hood. He told me to do it. Otherwise I wouldn't never've hurt nobody, specially lil' Happy. I'm so sorry."

"What man in a blue hood?" the sheriff asks.

Skeeter gasps, "I dunno who he was. He said he's from the Klan high command. Jack Morgan and the boys wouldn't never let me and Cooter join 'cause we was not so smart, but the man in the blue hood come out here late one night last winter and said I could be his secret Klan agent. He tol' me that they was this special plan. We had to git the dark enemy o' the white race to come here so's we could eliminate him. And so' nuff, the dark enemy, he done come, just like the man said." He starts to continue, but begins to wheeze. Mr. Anthony returns with the salve. I dump more alcohol on the wound and smear the balm on three sides and apply the bandage.

"You just take it easy, Skeeter. We'll talk more later," the sheriff says turning to look for his deputy.

Deputy Poteet is standing, weeping, in the middle of the door yard with his hands at his side. His pistol lies in the dust at his feet. "I didn't mean to, Caty. I wasn't really tryin' to hurt'im."

"Tommy, snap out of it. I need ya ta back the squad car out of the way. We ain't got time to change the tire. Monsieur, see if you can start Skeeter's truck. We gotta to get him ta Doc Kale in town right fast.

"Believe it or not, one of the earliest thoracic doctors, Michael Seretus, was burned at the stake for asserting that the blood circulated through the body. In the eighteenth century the leading medical minds were positive that the lungs were just a refrigeration apparatus to cool the heat from the constantly beating heart," Doctor Kale almost whispers as he inserts the pressurized anesthesia tube down Skeeter's trachea. The county nurse couldn't be located so the doctor asked me to help him perform the surgery. I agreed. For the first time I would be involved with operating on another human being. I'm so very happy that it frightens me.

Doctor Kale glances at the chest x-ray made from the small portable machine and sighs, "Nttch, ntch. Not good at all. Have you read about the first recorded pulmonary resection?"

I shake my head as I monitor Skeeter's heart. Doctor Kale had administered a mild sedative when we'd brought Skeeter in and established packed drainage to clear the blood from the lung. An large bore IV with the second unit of plasma was already counteracting the effects of shock. The sheriff, who knew that he had type O, had contributed a little over a quart for use while we operate. "I've been more interested in diseases of the heart," I explain, flushed with embarrassment. I don't like not having all the answers.

"It was sometime during the summer of 1883. A young doctor, H.M. Block in Danzig, East Prussia - now part of Poland - after extensive experimentation on animals, pigs and large dogs usually, presented his results to the Congress of the German Society for Surgery. He felt he'd proven that treatment could be accomplished for damage to the lungs. Like many elder medical boards they told him they would consider his findings in due course. In his zeal to try his techniques on humans he diagnosed his young cousin, Wilma, with bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis. He felt that he could relieve her constant respiratory distress by removing the diseased tissue. When he made that first, medium incision in the chest just below the young woman's bosom, what do you suppose occurred?"

I swallow, "When the opening became larger than the size of the larynx, the patient's respiration would've became rapid and labored, the mediastinum would be pulled toward the opposite hemithorax. The heart rate would have increased while the pulse grew faint until shock and cyanosis led to death."

"Very good. Even if Block were correct, post-operative sepsis would have most likely killed her anyway. It was discovered during the public investigation that brave Wilma had no evidence of tuberculosis. Her real malady was never determined. Poor Block, by all reports a brilliant physician, took his own life with a single shot to the head." Doctor Kale points at his temple and makes a popping noise. "Enough with the lecture. Bernard, I hate to bring this up, but you smell very bad."

"I'm sorry. Something spilled on me. I tried to wash it off."

"It's all right. Reminds me of my salad days for some reason. Are you ready?

I nod and slip on my surgical mask.

"Then let us begin."

The doctor hands me a glass of cherry schnapps and sits in the wicker chair beside me on the hospital's back porch. Tears are streaming down my face, not from sorrow but frustration. It's late afternoon. There's not a breath of air. Just before the end of the operation Skeeter's heart went into irregular rhythm and then abruptly stopped. Together, the doctor and I had tried everything I'd ever read about and a few other procedures that I hadn't gotten to yet, but, way too quickly, he was gone.

"You okay?" Doctor Kale asks.

"What happened? Was it something I did? Did I slow you down?"

"No. Your performance was exemplary. You have the makings of a superior surgeon. My guess? When I perform the autopsy tomorrow I will find that a fragment of flesh or bone torn by the bullet somehow entered the blood stream and blocked the already clogged veins leading to the heart. Skeeter was not a healthy man to begin with."

"That would explain the sudden cardiac arrest," I say.

"Ya. It would. These things happen."

"Is there something we could've done to prevent it?"

"If we were in a larger facility with a heart-lung machine, perhaps. Then we would have enough time to remove the material causing the obstruction. Here in this tiny clinic with these very basic instruments? Not that I'm aware of. Sometimes there is nothing we can do."

"It's so hard to accept."

"It is one of the most difficult lessons for a young doctor to learn. There are many days like this when I wish surgeons could have the same tricky operation to do again, over and over, until they get it right. That way they could see what works, discover their mistakes, until finally they find a way to save their patient and by extension many others like him. Think how that would further the study medicine. But that is not the way life works, unfortunately. You only get the one chance. You must make the most of it."

I drain my schnapps. "I can't wait to have this summer over. I want to leave this backward state and all its ignorant people behind. How can you stand it here?"

Doctor Kale answers with his customary whisper, "I have learned to love the place and - most - of the people. I understand them. Why are you wishing your young life away?"

"I want to start medical school tomorrow. You showed me so much today. You were so swift and assured during each step of the operation. Your fingers moved like music, like magic over the wound. It'll be years before I can experience that again."

He smiles. Doctor Kale is such a good man. I have this surging wish that he were my father instead of an illiterate mill worker that I never met or a quick tempered, hard drinking barber.

Of course he says exactly the right thing, "Son, you must slow down and take things as they come. You might learn other, equally valuable lessons along the way."

I had no idea just how correct he would turn out to be.