God'll Cut You Down (11 page)

Okay, so anyway, the Klans came to the house. Mom, she was very young, said they came to the house on horses. She said she remembered eight horses carrying. Eight horses. She said they heard them coming, the horses galloping in the dust before they got there.

And the children went and told their mother—my grandmother—that they were coming. And my grandmother hid up under the house with the Bible. And my grandmother wouldn’t come out and the children wouldn’t tell the Klans where she was.

And the Klans started beating them. The Klans had . . . my mom called them “billy jacks.” She said they were sticks. And she said the Klans were on the horses and they would run past and hit them with the billy jacks. “So you better tell us where she is or we are gonna kill.”

And so she come out, but she didn’t have the Bible with her. She hid it under the house. And they start asking her where was the Bible. She wouldn’t tell and so they just run by her, run over her, with the horses and hit her, beating her in the head with the billy jacks.

After, she just passed out on the ground.

And the youngest child, I call her Aunt Beatrice. It was twelve children to my grandparents and Aunt Beatrice was the youngest. And I never knew why Aunt Beatrice had a scar across her forehead. It was about the size of my finger, and she was crossed-eyed. And Mom said
that Aunt Beatrice ran up and said, “Stop hitting my momma! Stop hitting my momma!” So she ran up and tried to save her mom. And they hit her, they struck her across the head, and knocked her into some barbed wire. They had to untangle the barbed wire off her and then she had the scar across her forehead.

Eventually one of the children, one of the older brothers, went under the house and got the Bible and gave it to them to keep them from beating the mother and them.

And my grandmother, as a matter of fact, she died. She died in 1945, because I was born in 1946 and she died a year before. And she died from injuries to her head.

“Richard Barrett, he was a Klan,” Vallena says sharply. “He was the biggest snake, biggest crook, biggest terrorist that you don’t want to see.”

It seems to me she’s been tied to a piece of elastic her whole life, drawing her to this event, too.

“How did you end up getting involved with the Richard Barrett and Vincent McGee case?”

“I was in Dallas with my job, training with the Chamber of Commerce. And one of the employees from Mississippi, she came to me and said, ‘Have you heard the news about the Klan who’s been killed in Pearl? I understand that it’s a teenager, a young black guy, who killed him.’ So, of course, I was concerned. And especially when I found out it was Richard Barrett. So the first thing that came to my mind was,
What did he do to the teenager, the black young male who killed him?
Because that’s just unheard-of, a young black male killing the Klan. So I never thought of it as a murder. I looked at it as a killing.”

Vallena knew it was going to be a heavy trial and Vincent was going to need funds for a good lawyer. She had her eyes on Chokwe. She had known him a long time and knew his history of helping poor people.

“So I called Chokwe and I said, ‘We are going to raise the funds, would you be interested in taking the case?’ And he said, ‘I will think about it, but see what else you can find out about the case.’ So I decided that we would do our own investigation to find out exactly what happened.”

Vallena and her friend organized to drop in on the McGees. Vincent’s immediate family, and some of his extended family, squeezed in on the couches in the living room.

“So we asked them actually what happened,” Vallena tells me. “And I wanted them to be real open, because in the back of my mind I just know the history of Klans murdering and hanging and terrorizing a young black man has to do with the white woman. That’s most of the history, I think. So, all the time I am thinking,
It’s got to be a white female somewhere involved in this.
”

Tina McGee and Alfred Lewis, Vincent’s stepfather, are relaxing on the benches in their front yard.

A black pickup truck rolls into their driveway. Out slides the white man from three houses up. Tina had seen him now and then, mainly pedaling his bicycle up and down the road. But she doesn’t know him, as such.

The old white man says he keeps a property about an hour away, in a town called Learned. He needs some help painting and raking and cutting grass. He had seen her son drifting about the street. Would he like the job?

Tina smiles. Since leaving prison, Vincent has just been loafing around the house with the blinds down, watching television. And that was over a month ago. This is good work. This is a prospect.

“Vincent!” yells Tina McGee.

After a hot day of work in Learned, the black pickup rolls back into the McGee driveway. Vincent slides out and Richard drives back to his own home, three doors down.

One hour later Richard has made his way back to the McGee front yard. Tina is out on the bench.

Richard tells Tina he has a computer. Would her son like to pop on down? He could teach Vincent how to use the computer.

Tina is really liking this Richard Barrett. She’s never known his name before, and she’s never heard it before. He knows Vincent is fresh out of prison. Yet here he is, putting that to one side, to give the boy a hand in life. You need to know how to use a computer these days to get a job.

Richard leaves. A short while later Vincent wanders down to the crummy little house.

Not too long after that, Vincent comes home and bursts in the door. He’s crying and his clothes have been torn. He has blood on him. And he says to his stepfather that he has hurt Richard, and that’s what happened, and he says that Richard tried to rape him, and they got in a struggle and he killed him, or—

Vallena interrupts herself.

“No, I don’t think he said he killed him,” she tells me. “I don’t think he knew he was dead. He said he
hurt
him, to the stepfather. And the mother said she never knew anything was happening, she was just sleeping in the other room.”

Vallena says she looked around the McGee living room, where, just weeks before, a bloody Vincent had stood.

“They still never told me about the question that I was most concerned about,” Vallena tells me. “And that was,
was there a white female somewhere in there?
We talked to them about three hours, me and my friend. And as we were wrapping it up, and about to go, I think it was the sister of the mother, said to Tina, ‘You need to tell Vallena.’ And I heard it whispered: ‘You need to tell her.’ So I turned and said, ‘Tell me what?’ And I said, ‘You need to tell me whatever it is you think this is.’

Vincent had been dating a white girl six years earlier, Tina told Vallena. The girl had invited him to a party. Some money went missing. It was Chinese money, or some other foreign money. Not a whole lot, just a few dollars.

And they blamed it on Vincent. They blamed it on Vincent because the girl had cousins and uncles unhappy with her dating a black boy.

The police charged Vincent with grand larceny and he went to jail. And officers who had ties with the white girl’s family beat Vincent in his cell. Vincent defended himself, just put up his arms to block their blows. For this he was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer.

For the theft, coupled with the assault, Vincent was sentenced to five years’ jail.

“I said, ‘I knew it had to be a white girl somewhere,’” Vallena tells me, “‘because they just do that.’”

Vallena left the McGees’ house for her car. Soon her friend came from the house, pulling Tina’s sister behind her.

“And the sister said, ‘I don’t know if you needed to know this or not, but Vincent’s first cousin is married to a white lady.’ And she said that two weeks ago, before the incident with Richard Barrett, that the Klans went to their house and cut three dogs’ heads off, okay, and threw them upon the porch and spray-painted
KKK
on the house.”

I squint my eyes and my temples hurt. I run back in my head what she just said. I’m finding it hard to take it all in in one go.

“So after that I pretty much had what I was looking for,” Vallena tells me. “A motive. A motive for Richard to do bodily harm to the defendant. Because that’s the history of the Klans. That’s what they do. They burn crosses in the yard to try to scare you off. And if that doesn’t work, the next thing you know you end up hanging in a tree and you committed suicide. But if you look at the background, the young black male that
committed suicide had some kind of run-in with the white female, and it never fails. So that was the information that I needed to get back to Chokwe. It was just like Emmett Till.”

The murder of Emmett Till isn’t scorched in Earnest’s psyche alone.

“So,” I say, “you think it’s possible that Richard, through his Klan connections, knew Vincent’s cousin was married to a white woman, and they knew that Vincent himself had dated a white girl? And that’s why he attacked Vincent?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Richard just physically attacked Vincent, or also sexually attacked him—tried to rape him?”

“That, I don’t know. It might be rape, because they always try to take the manhood of the black man. They either cut his penis off or they try to turn him into a girl.”

“Lots of people are saying, though, that Richard might have been a repressed gay person and that’s why—”

“I don’t think so,” Vallena interrupts. “I don’t think he was gay, because if I’m not mistaken, I think the Klans have some kind of issue with gay people.”

“But, you know, people can be secret about it. But in this case . . .”

“I don’t think so.”

“So this was like a war, when you try to sexually humiliate your enemy?”

“That’s what I am thinking. Like I said before, when I heard about it in Dallas, the first thing I thought about:
Did he have a white girlfriend?
And most of the time, if you find out they were humiliated by a Klan, there is a white female in the background somewhere.”

On the way home I try to work out the questions the trial’s got to pick through. Did Richard attack Vincent, or did Vincent attack Richard? Was Richard killed because of something Richard did, or something Vincent did? Did Richard make a pass at Vincent, and if he did, was it because he was attracted to him or wanted to humiliate him? Or is the sex angle really about a white girl, not a white man?

Everyone seems to think it was about more than just a robbery, except the prosecution, who want to keep the death penalty on the table. For Michael Guest, race is a third version of events, after the sexual advance and the robbery. But for everyone else, it’s the first.

I’d read in Melbourne that Vincent’s lawyer was named Precious Martin.
Precious must be a woman,
I thought, because in the film
Precious
she was a she. But a niggle tickled my brain:
Precious may be a man’s name, too.
The first three pictures on Google Images were of a man named Precious, a woman named Precious, and an otter named Precious.

So, since then, Precious Martin has been an otter in my head. Striding around its law firm in a waistcoat with a fob watch tucked in its pocket. He’s remained an otter even after I found out he was a he.

But Precious won’t return my thrice-weekly phone calls, even though I’ve got footage to offer and am a potential witness to Richard’s behavior. He sees the phone memo
John Safran called
, screws up the memo in his little paws, adjusts the spectacles on his snout, and continues on to the tearoom. For a while I thought it was because I was white, but Earnest has tried a couple more times, too, and can’t get anywhere.

Who cares, Precious? Chokwe’s right, you don’t need to talk to me. Avoid me all you want. I’ll be waiting for you, to see whether you’ve done your homework. I’ll see you in court.

In the meantime, like Vallena, I’m conducting my own investigation. I’ve heard enough secondhand stories to be ready for something firsthand.

I knuckle the front door of the redbrick home, three doors up from the Murder House.

The heavens have thrown a fierce sun across the land this morning.

I knock again.

A 1980s boxy van, a Vandura 2600 Starcraft, is embarrassing itself on the front lawn.

I knock again.

I’ve told Tina I’m coming.

“Hello?” I say. “It’s John.”

“Who’s that?” says the house.

“John Safran.”

“What?”

The voice is not from behind the door. I peek right. A black hand, then arm, is forcing itself through a taut red curtain, as if the curtain is giving birth to the limb. The hand is clenching a can of Budweiser.

“Side door!” says the hand.

I go around the side and through the door there. Inside, my pupils dilate furiously, desperate for light. Black people are moving through a near-black room.

Thick material blocks every window. The only light source is a small TV, beaming blue.

My eyes slowly adjust. The arm of a green velvet armchair glows through the dark, then the whole chair. Then the people. A boy in a white singlet and shorts leaves up a hallway. I’m left with Sherrie McGee, Vincent’s sister. One hand is clenching a Budweiser, the other is clenching a Bible.

“Mama!” screams Sherrie McGee.

She scuttles up the hallway, leaving the Bible open on a coffee table. I poke my nose close.

“And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them.”

Tina McGee, mother of Vincent and Sherrie, sits down in the green velvet armchair.

I jot down
Tina McGee
, my handwriting tangled like wire, the best penmanship I can offer in the dark. By the way, why are we in the dark?

Jersey Shore
smolders in the corner, casting a little blue on Tina McGee. She offers me frightened eyes.

“Is it okay if I tape this?”

“Yes, sir,” she says softly.