Natchez Burning (8 page)

“Thanks, Mom.”

Before she can say anything else, I click off. But instead of dialing my father’s office, I set the phone on the cradle and leave my hand on it. For the past few weeks, I’ve assumed that my father, after nearly fifty years of practicing medicine, has been dealing with his traumatic but inevitable decision to retire. Seven weeks ago he suffered a myocardial infarction that he survived only by virtue of luck and heroic medical intervention. Had not my mother, one of the most compulsively prepared humans on the planet, insisted that Dad keep portable defibrillators both in their house and at his clinic, my father would probably be dead now. He always argued that defibrillators only helped in certain types of heart attacks, so keeping them around didn’t justify the cost. Thus, no one was more surprised than Dad when, after dropping to the floor in his office, he was brought back to life by his young partner, Drew Elliott, using the defib unit Mom had demanded be always ready to hand.

Despite this brush with death—not his first, by far—my father has been driving to his office occasionally to catch up on charts, and making trips to the nursing homes to check on special patients during his “convalescence.” Dad and Mom have been arguing about his driving alone, but you can’t tell a doctor anything, so I decided not to intervene. His continued work has surprised no one, since despite several chronic illnesses—plus multiple heart and vascular surgeries—Dad has always soldiered on with a determination so relentless that his patients and colleagues have come to see it as normal. Chalk that up to the work ethic of a man born in 1932. I’d hoped that his desultory dabbling in medicine over these past weeks was part of the weaning process, leading slowly but surely toward full disengagement. But if Shad Johnson is right, Dad has been actively treating at least one patient during his recuperation period, and going to great lengths to do it.

“Miss Viola,” I murmur, wondering when I last spoke that name before today. “My God.”

According to the district attorney, my perfect vision of a nurse came back to Natchez after thirty-seven years in Chicago not to retire, as so many Natchez natives, both black and white, do—but to die. If Dad has been treating Viola, he has his reasons. And if her death was hastened a little in the name of lessening pain or maintaining dignity, he had reasons for that, too. I’d like nothing better than to leave all this between my father and his former nurse. Unfortunately, I don’t have that option today.

Lifting the phone, I dial the private number of my dad’s office. Sometimes he answers this line (if he’s between patients, for example), but today it’s answered by a warm, alto female voice I recognize as that of Melba Price, my father’s head nurse. Much like Viola in the 1960s, Melba is my father’s right hand in the clinic, and like every other woman who’s occupied that position since 1963, she is black. I’ve never questioned the reason for this, and now that I do, I see one obvious possibility. Since more than half my father’s patients are black, perhaps he feels that black nurses make those patients more comfortable in clinical situations. Or maybe he just likes black women.

“Melba, this is Penn.”

“Lord, Penn, have you seen your daddy this morning?”

“No, but I need to.”

“He’s not here, and I haven’t seen him. Nobody has.”

“He didn’t leave word where he’d be?”

“No. But some of the things on his desk have been moved. I’ve wondered if he came in last night and worked on his records like he does sometimes.”

Since Melba occupies the position that Viola herself once did, I wonder if she shares the confidence my father placed in Viola. “Melba, I’m calling about a patient. A special patient. I know about the HIPAA rules and all that, but this has to do with Dad’s personal welfare. Do you know if he’s been treating a woman named Viola Turner? She has lung cancer.”

I hear a short inspiration, then a long sigh. “I wish I could help you, Penn. But that’s your daddy’s business. I can’t get mixed up in that. I’m not sure you should, either.”

Oh, boy
. “I don’t want to, Melba. But I don’t have any choice. Viola’s dead, and there may be legal repercussions because of it. Problems involving Dad. Do you understand?”

“You need to talk to your father. Have you tried his cell phone?”

“He never answers his cell, you know that.”

“Try it anyway. He answers it sometimes.”

I thank Melba and hang up, then dial Dad’s cell phone, a number I use so rarely I can barely remember it. The phone kicks me straight to voice mail, which hasn’t even been set up to accept messages.

Man plans, God laughs,
reads a framed cross-stitch on my wall, in both English and Yiddish. My first literary agent sent it to me. Placed around this proverb are framed advertisements from my mayoral campaign against Shadrach Johnson.
If you want a mayor for black people, vote for the other fellow. If you want a mayor for white people, vote for the other fellow. If you want a mayor for all the people, vote Penn Cage.
And this one:
Historic Change for a Historic Town.
Then my personal favorite:
I don’t owe anybody in Natchez a favor. I owe everybody.

I wrote those slogans myself, but two years after being elected mayor of my hometown by a wide margin, I have inescapably failed to deliver the changes I promised. The reasons are legion, but at bottom I blame myself. Two months ago (after two years of beating my head against a wall of indifference), I decided to resign the office and return to writing novels. Then God laughed, and a series of shattering events suggested I might not have the moral right to abdicate the responsibility I’d so blithely taken on. My parents, my daughter, a good friend, and my fiancée reinforced fate’s suggestion, and my father’s heart attack finally crystallized my resolve to serve out my term.

In the weeks since, I have worked like a man possessed, dividing my time between cleaning up the fallout from the near sinking of a riverboat casino below the Natchez bluff and remaking our local government by forming improbable alliances, calling in favors, and raising money from the unlikeliest of sources. Working at my shoulder throughout this period has been my fiancée, Caitlin Masters, publisher of the
Natchez Examiner
. And pulsing beneath all this activity have been the preparations for our wedding, scheduled to take place twelve days from now, on Christmas Eve. Ever since the district attorney’s call, an itch of intuition has told me that whatever my father did last night is ultimately going to require the postponement of my wedding. I shudder to think of how my fiancée and my daughter would react to this eventuality.

“Mr. Mayor,” says Rose, “I’ve got your father on line one.”

Relief surges through me. “Thanks.” I press the button on the phone base. “Hello?”

“Penn?” In a single syllable, my father’s powerful baritone inspires calming confidence. “Peggy told me you were looking for me.”

“Dad, where are you?”

“Just running some errands.”

Errands!
With my father, that could mean anything from shuffling through old bookstores to searching out ammunition for a Civil War–vintage musket. Before I blunder into a conversation about Viola Turner’s death, my lawyerly instincts kick in with surprising force. I spent most of my legal career as a prosecutor, but I’ve always known the first rule of defense lawyers: never ask your client if he did it. Even those who protest their innocence will be putting their lawyer in an untenable position. For if your client gives you one version of the truth, you cannot knowingly put him on the stand later and listen to him tell another. And no defense attorney wants to be bound by something as unforgiving as the truth.

The most alarming thing about this train of thought is that I can’t remember a single occasion when my father lied to me. So why am I planning for the possibility now? Paranoia? Or is the knowledge that Shad Johnson is an unscrupulous man with no love for my family forcing me into such pragmatism? “Dad, is anybody with you?”

“No. Why?”

“I got a call a couple of minutes ago from the district attorney. I don’t want you to say anything until I finish telling you what he said. All right?”

He hesitates before replying. “All right.”

As concisely as possible, I brief him on my conversation with Shad Johnson. “Viola’s son is still in Natchez,” I conclude. “He’s pressing Shad to charge you with assisted suicide. At first he asked for murder, but he’s since checked the Mississippi statutes. Now, I’m not asking you to tell me what happened at Cora Revels’s house, or even if you were there last night. But will you tell me if you have been treating Viola?”

Dad waits a considerable time before he answers. “I have.”

“Does anybody know that?”

“Melba knows. And Cora Revels, of course.”

“Mom?”

Another pause. “No. A local pharmacist knows. Maybe some people who lived near the Revels house. I’ve stopped by there every couple of days, sometimes once a day, for the past six weeks. People out that way know my car. Viola was in bad shape, son.”

“Lung cancer?”

“That’s right. It metastasized some time ago.”

The very word
metastasized
brings back all the horror of my wife’s illness. Almost against my will, I ask for details. “
Were
you at Cora Revels’s house last night?”

“I’d prefer not to discuss it, Penn.”

“I understand. But with a family member pushing for criminal charges, you’re going to have to say something if you want to avert a very public mess.”

Dad pauses again, and I can hear him breathing. “I’m not concerned about that. Whatever happened between Viola and me last night occurred between a patient and her physician. I have nothing to say to Shad Johnson about it—or to you or anybody else. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but there it is.”

This statement leaves me speechless for several seconds. “Dad, the penalty for assisted suicide is ten years. Even without prison, you could lose your medical license.”

“I realize that. But I still won’t talk about it. If Shad Johnson wants to arrest me, he can do it. I’m not hard to find.”

Jesus Christ
. “You and I should speak face-to-face.”

“There’s no point, Penn. I have nothing else to say about the matter.”

“Silence isn’t an option! Viola’s son is an attorney. If he keeps pushing the DA, and there’s corroborating evidence, you could well be tried in criminal court. Believe it or not, Shad Johnson would like to avoid that prospect. But to help him, we’re going to have to give him your side of the story.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything,” Dad says, neatly separating his fate from my own in a tone I recognize all too well.

“Refusal to talk about what happened is going to be viewed as an admission of guilt.”

“Don’t American citizens have the right to remain silent?”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t think the Miranda rules have the word
but
in them, Penn. The Constitution, either, as I recall.”

God spare me from amateur lawyers.
“Do you know Viola’s son?”

“Never laid eyes on him.”

“Well, the vibe I’m getting from Shad is that if you handle this right, it could all go away.”

“And what would the ‘right’ way be?”

“I’m not sure. Telling the truth, maybe. Unless …”

“What?”

I close my eyes. “Unless you did it.”

This time the silence is alarmingly protracted. “I can’t say anything else about this. The doctor-patient privilege is sacred to me.”

“I’m afraid that privilege ended with Viola’s death. Under these circumstances, anyway.”

“Not in my book.”

His voice carries absolute conviction. I might as well hang up now. “Dad …
please
reconsider. You’re required by law to assist the coroner in determining the cause of your patient’s death. I’m not even the prosecutor, and what I’m hearing sounds like a doctor admitting he helped someone to die.”

“People hear what they want to hear. I told you, if Shad Johnson wants to arrest me, let him do it. I’m through talking, and I’m sorry you were bothered with this. I’ll see you later.”

“Dad!”

But he’s gone.

Reaching behind me, I take down the Annotated Mississippi Code of 1972 and page through it, searching for the assisted suicide statute, but before I can get my bearings the phone rings again.

“The district attorney again,” says Rose. “Line two.”

I stab the second button on my phone. “Shad?”

“Tell me you’ve got a miracle story,” he says. “The ultimate alibi.”

“I wish I did.”

“What do you have?”

“Nothing.”

“You couldn’t find your father?”

“Oh, I found him. He won’t talk to me.”

“What?”

“He’s giving me the Ernest Hemingway treatment. Stoic and silent. He says whatever happened last night is none of my business. Doctor-patient privilege.”

“I hope you told him that’s not going to fly.”

“He doesn’t care, Shad. He’s as stubborn as they come when he wants to be.”

“But he admitted to being there? At the woman’s house?”

“He admitted nothing. He told me he’d been treating the lady, that’s it.”

“Penn, are you being straight with me? Was my call the first you’ve heard about all this?”

“Absolutely. But I think we’d better stop the questions for now.”

“What the hell am I supposed to tell Roy Cohn down here? He wants your father’s hide nailed to the courthouse door.”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking.”

“Think faster.”

“Maybe I should talk to the son myself.”

“Forget it. I don’t want Lincoln Turner even knowing I called you. If you can’t come up with a medical justification for whatever happened last night—one that will stand up in court—your father is screwed. Turner wants Tom Cage in jail, and the evidence apparently supports his version of things. I’ll tell you something else for free: Turner is already playing the race card.”

“The race card? How?”

“He told me that if a black doctor had euthanized a white woman, and her son had complained, the doctor would already be in jail.”