No Way Home (7 page)

Their eyes met and an unguarded flicker of sorrow passed between them. Lillie withdrew her gaze at once and looked at Bessie. The old woman barely reached Jordan’s shoulder. She peered with tear-filled, failing eyes at the order of the service in her hands. Lillie felt her own tears well up again as she looked at her. Bessie had been a true grandmother to Michele, spoiling her, sewing her dresses, letting her try to help in the kitchen. She had been the grandmother that Jo Evelyn had never wanted to be. She had reminded Lillie of her own grandmother.

Pink twisted around in the pew. “What a turnout,” he said.

Lillie could hear the pride in his voice and immediately she knew what he was thinking. She knew him too well. He was hoping Haynes would be impressed. He wanted his brother to think that this large crowd somehow reflected Pink’s importance in this county. Lillie bit her lip to keep from saying something mean. He can’t help it, she told herself. Leave him alone.

Her gaze was drawn back to the coffin as the Reverend Dale Luttrall took the pulpit. The reverend was in his sixties now. He had baptized Lillie and her children, and many of the people who sat in this church. He began the service in his familiar, sincere tones. Lillie heard the ebb and flow of the voices around her, but she kept having the eerie sensation that she was alone in a silent room. Just herself, and her child, confined forever in that coffin.

All of a sudden she noticed Grayson, who was seated beside her, look at his watch and then sigh softly and look back up at the altar. Lillie’s head snapped up and she stared at him. She could feel her heart hammering with anger in her chest. “Is this boring you?” she whispered angrily. “Is there somewhere you have to be?”

Grayson drew back and stared at her, as if baffled by her question. “Come on, Mom. This is all like a bad dream. I’m sorry but I just wish it were over. I can’t believe it’s really happening.”

He’s right, she thought. It is a kind of torture to sit here, staring at that casket, knowing that this is the end. She felt him reach over and take her hand. She squeezed his hand and gave him a pained, fleeting smile.

“When something like this happens to us,” said the Reverend Luttrall, “we feel angry. We ask, ‘Why did God allow this to happen to our family?’ We want someone to pay for this. For doing this terrible thing to our precious child.

“My friends, I cannot tell you why, for the Lord works in mysterious ways. But I will tell you this. That as long as you feel hatred, you will suffer. Revenge is not the answer. Forgiveness is the answer. We must learn to forgive because we will never find peace in our lives until we do.

“Michele has found her peace. This child—” The preacher’s voice cracked for a moment, but he waited, silently, until he regained his composure. The sound of muffled weeping could be heard from all corners of the church. “This child sits with God now. She sits lightly beside him, one of his angels, and she whispers forgiveness in our ear.”

Lillie’s tears splashed down on her cold hands. Wedged between her husband and her son she wept for herself, for the emptiness that lay ahead of her without her Michele. On her left, Pink’s stout frame shuddered with sobs. On her right, Grayson’s dry hand clutched hers as if to break it.

THE DAY AFTER MICHELE BURDETTE WAS BURIED,
the Reverend Ephraim Davis grimly contemplated his options. He knew very well what his duty was, but he was resisting it. He had spent most of his long life avoiding the business of white people, and it had worked out for the best that way. He didn’t ask anything of them, didn’t get in their way, and most certainly did not seek or desire their company. In fact, he didn’t think very much about them at all, if he could help it.

But ever since Monday morning, when he had heard the news on the radio as he was saying grace over his breakfast, he had been preoccupied with the murder of a white girl, and the strain was beginning to show. His blood pressure was up. He could feel it. And his regular medication wasn’t helping. He’d been sleeping poorly.

Yesterday had been the funeral and he had avoided driving in that part of town. This morning he felt as if he couldn’t avoid the issue for another day.

If he could only talk to Elizabeth, he thought. She was sensible and, in her own shy way, she was strong. Through the thirty years of their marriage he had trusted her with many a tricky problem. But Elizabeth had decided to stay in Memphis when he was called to fill in at the Felton parish for a month. The Reverend Davis was one of a dwindling lot of circuit preachers. Like his grandfather and his father, he traveled through the great state of Tennessee, visiting one small black parish after another, spreading the Word and enjoying the hospitality of the good people of each town. Unlike his grandfather, who drove a horse and buggy, Ephraim drove a two-tone green Ford station wagon. Sometimes Elizabeth came with him, but on these long visits, when he was filling in for quite a while, she stayed in Memphis with their daughter and their grandchildren. Elizabeth was used to her husband’s weekend travels. It had been that way from the very beginning of their marriage when she had always gone along, liking the traveling and the church people they met. But as she got older she preferred to avoid extended stays in other people’s houses. She liked to be in the comfort of their own home, in her own bed with the rose-patterned spread, and spend every free minute with the grandchildren. With their African names and their boldness, she found them exotic. Secretly it gave her pleasure to see that they did not have the same fears in the world as she.

In a way it was just as well, Ephraim thought. It would worry her terribly to know the problem he was in. Anything that had to do with violence scared her like a little rabbit. He had thought about calling her, but Bill and Clara Walker, who were putting him up, kept their phone in the front parlor, and he couldn’t very well outline the situation to Elizabeth without the whole household hearing about it. No, he had had to keep his own counsel. But now, the day after that poor girl’s funeral, his mind was made up.

It was incumbent on him to tell what he knew. He had seen the girl and he had seen the fellow who was most likely her killer that night. Not that he had suspected any such thing at the time. If he had, he could have prevented it. But there was no way to know. And it was too late for “what ifs.” He walked into the kitchen where Clara Walker was cleaning up after breakfast.

“May I use your phone, sister?” he asked.

“Of course, Reverend. Our house is your house.”

The Reverend Davis went into the parlor and dialed the county sheriff’s office. He had the number memorized by now from thinking about calling it. When Francis Dunham answered, he asked for the sheriff.

“Sheriff’s not here,” said the dispatcher.

“Where can I reach him?” the reverend asked politely.

“He may not be back for a while,” Francis replied. “He’s over at the murder scene.”

“All right, thank you,” said the reverend. He hung up the phone and stood there lost in thought, stroking his grizzled cheek. Clara Walker came into the parlor, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I’ve got to go out, Clara,” he said.

“Will you be back for lunch?” the old woman asked pleasantly.

“Oh, yes. Long before lunch. I hope,” said the reverend.

On the morning after his daughter’s funeral, Jordan Hill awoke in his boyhood bedroom. He could smell biscuits baking in the kitchen and the tinny radio was tuned to the gospel show that his mother had listened to for as long as he could remember. Her clear, small, deliberate voice faltered on the words of “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”

Jordan lay with his eyes closed and let the bittersweet ache of the past envelop him. Here, in this bed, he had dreamed of fame and he had burned with love. He had crept home to this bed on the night that Michele was conceived, meadow clover still in his hair from where he and Lillie had rolled in the summer night. They hadn’t dared to stay out the whole night. They were too young. Their parents would guess. It was a shame, he thought. He wished now that they had slept there, as they wanted to, in that sweet-smelling field, in each other’s arms. Before they knew it they were married and had a child, and then he had left.

He heard his mother tap on his door. “Breakfast, honey,” she said, as she always had. And now here he was, back in that same narrow bed. Not married. Not a father. Not a dreamer.

“I’m coming,” said Jordan, and he got up.

Jeni Rae was already at the table finishing a cup of coffee. Jordan kissed his mother’s dry cheek and sat down opposite his sister, who looked at him with sad, nervous eyes.

“I have to go back today,” she said apologetically. She had a good job, working with computers in Chattanooga.

“I know,” said Jordan. He unfolded a napkin and took a biscuit, although he did not feel the least bit hungry. “I didn’t even get to ask you. How’s the new fella? Burt, right? Mama told me about him.”

Jeni Rae looked up at her mother in exasperation. Bessie continued to busy herself around the stove, oblivious to the conversation, her eyes distant and pink from the intermittent weeping.

“He’s okay,” Jeni Rae said cautiously. “He’s divorced. Pretty nice guy.”

She had never had much luck with men. She was too smart for most of the Felton boys when she was growing up and not pretty enough to be proud of it. She would have to be considered a spinster now, Jordan thought, but he still had hopes that she would find someone and get married. It would suit her now, much better than it would have when she was young.

“Well, you tell him to treat you right or your little brother’ll come after him,” he said.

Jeni Rae smiled. “Burt’s first wife had a crush on you. She used to watch your nighttime series.”

“Well, a woman of good taste. And one of the few, I might add,” said Jordan. “Still, he’s well rid of her.”

Jeni Rae smiled. “You ought to come on down to Chattanooga one of these days,” she said. “I’ve got a pull-out sofa bed. You could meet him then.”

“That’d be nice.”

Bessie walked over to the table and put a cast-iron skillet down on a trivet on the table. “Fried corn,” she said gently. “I know you don’t get this up North.”

“No, ma’am,” said Jordan, taking a heaping spoonful and ladling it onto his biscuit, although his stomach churned at the sight of food. It was little enough to please her.

“Jordan, will you drive me to the bus?” Jeni Rae asked.

“I sure will,” he said. “I’m going out anyway.” Maybe that’s why his stomach felt so bad, he thought. The thought of going over there, where it happened, made him feel clammy all over, but he meant to do it anyway. It was almost like something he had to prove to himself he could do.

“You’re a good brother,” she said, and she patted him on his graying head as she passed him on her way to her room.

The Old Stone Arch Bridge, known alternately as Three Arches or just the Arches, was located at the end of a short dirt road, not too far from Bride’s Mill. At one time the sturdy old stone bridge had been part of the main route used by local farmers, but by now the mill was closed and the farmers drove their trucks on smooth bridges over modern highways. Trees and vegetation had overgrown the base of the Arches and nearly hid the bridge from view as you approached it. It was normally a quiet, deserted spot, but today the rutted road was dotted with cars. Three deputies, two in uniform and one in dungarees and a sweatshirt, scoured the bushes and the decaying riverbank where Michele Burdette had died. The rain from the day before had left the area muddy, and their clothes were already dirty as they rooted through the area in search of a murder weapon. A number of cars came and went at intervals along the road as people arrived to look.

This familiar, all but forgotten spot had taken on new interest now that a murder had been done there. People came to stare and to shudder, as they imagined the body on the riverbank, as it had been described in the county paper, a frail girl face down in the muddy weeds, one leg twisted by the trunk of the weeping willow tree, arms outstretched to the bridge abutment, her head bashed by force of some blunt object not yet in evidence.

The Reverend Ephraim Davis slowed his Ford wagon at the top of the street and pulled over. He had not come to gawk or to speculate, and it bothered him to see the parade of people coming and going. He could see them shaking their heads and murmuring to one another as they returned to their cars, but he knew that beneath that display of dismay they found it exciting. Ah well, he thought, it’s only human to be that way, and this is a small town. An event like this murder is not taken matter-of-factly.

All the Reverend Davis wanted to do was to get out of his car, walk down there, find the sheriff, and tell him what he had seen. Then he could go home with a clear conscience. It seemed simple enough, and yet the preacher remained in his car. Another car pulled up, a brand-new Mercury Marquis, and the reverend recognized the man who got out. He was the local pharmacist, Bomar Flood. The wiry druggist was wearing a bow tie and Wallabees, and he fairly bounced down the road toward the bridge. The reverend recognized him because he had gone into the pharmacy to get a refill on his high blood pressure medication, and when he had admitted to the inquiring druggist that he was under a lot of stress, the nosy but nonetheless kindly man had pressed upon him some vitamin samples that he recommended to help relieve tension. The reverend had tried the vitamins, but he knew there was no capsule that could relieve his symptoms.

The Reverend Davis sighed and chewed his lip. A family was emerging from the road now, the man in a flannel work shirt, the wife shepherding her two kids as if they had just taken them to an amusement park. Why, he wondered, had it been God’s will that he should see what he had that night? He was virtually a stranger in this county, and a black man to boot.

He tried to imagine himself telling it to the sheriff the way it happened. Founders Day had been festive and tiring. The black people of Felton held their own fish fry to celebrate, and in this case, segregation was a matter of personal taste. The Reverend Davis had eaten his fill and then decided to take a basket of the leftovers to a shut-in from the parish who lived outside town. On his way home from seeing the old woman he was tired from the day, and her peach wine, and half indignant for her difficulties, so he was distracted and somehow got on a road he didn’t recognize. As he drove slowly along, looking for a turn he was familiar with, he saw the white girl walking down the road up ahead.