The Bone Tree (79 page)

WHEN I ENTER
the broad door of the AME Church for Henry Sexton’s funeral, less than eighteen hours have passed since I cradled Caitlin in the shadow of the Bone Tree. Were it not for Annie, I probably would not have come here. But after awakening groggily from what I would soon learn was drugged sleep, I found her sitting beside my bed, dressed for church.

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“We’re going to Mr. Sexton’s funeral,” she said.

I blinked and tried to think of ways to dissuade her, but before I could voice the first objection, Annie said, “That’s where Caitlin would be today, and she’d want us to go in her place.”

There was no arguing this point, and after my mother sided with her, I resigned myself to the fact that sulking in my tent was not a viable option. After a shower and three cups of coffee, I found myself in Mom’s Camry, driving across the river I’d come to curse in the past few days. Annie had appropriated Caitlin’s cell phone from the box of her personal effects, and though my daughter could not break the passcode, she held the phone tightly as a kind of talisman. She also asked whether she might wear Caitlin’s engagement ring around her neck on a chain, but this request I gently refused. I could see that my mother agreed with me, and that made me feel a little better as we left the house. We can’t let Annie slip back into the kind of paralysis she experienced when my wife died.

I assumed that Henry would be buried from a white church in Ferriday, Louisiana, but as we crossed the bridge, Mom informed me that he would be buried from a black church in Clayton, a few miles away. Knowing this, I expected to come upon a white saltbox standing at the edge of an empty soybean field, with maybe fifty cars in the parking lot. Instead I saw a white saltbox that appeared to be floating on a sea of
automobiles, with more lining the highway for at least a quarter mile.

Inside that box I found a crowd that probably violated the fire code by a factor of five. Like most black churches in this part of the South, this one was built from cheap pine and stands on wedge-shaped concrete blocks. If set alight, it would burn to the ground in less than twenty minutes; yet it has stood for nearly seventy years.

The demographics of this parish are simple: 70 percent black, 30 percent white, give or take a few percent, with no mixed churches or cemeteries, and the white kids in segregated private schools unless they can’t afford the tuition. Today, however, quite a few white faces salt the pews of the AME Church. They look slightly confused at finding themselves here. Yet here they have come, to honor Henry Sexton. I recognize Jerry Mitchell from the
Clarion-Ledger,
and one older reporter from the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. Beyond the smattering of journalistic luminaries, I see John Kaiser and at least half a dozen FBI agents standing near a door behind the altar. This comes as a surprise, since Kaiser must surely have more pressing business than Henry’s funeral.

Spying me as we move up the crowded aisle, Kaiser points to a few empty seats in the front rows that have been reserved. As we take our places, he walks over, leans down to me, and whispers, “How’s your daughter coping?”

At least he didn’t ask me how I’m doing. Rising again, I say, “Better than I am, so far. What are you guys doing here? Has there been a bomb threat or something?”

Kaiser shakes his head. “They found Harold Wallis early this morning, dead.”

“Where?”

“Behind a Baton Rouge crack house.”

I close my eyes, absorbing this news at the gut level. “Doesn’t matter,” I say softly. “He was just the bullet. I want the man who aimed the gun.”

Kaiser’s eyes tell me he remembers telling me the same thing about the Kennedy assassination. “You probably don’t know, but the Double Eagles were released this morning.”

This penetrates the haze of my grief. “
What?
After killing Sonny Thornfield?”

Kaiser gives me a cagey look. “There’s a method to my madness. I
have them all under surveillance. But Snake Knox has temporarily lost his tail. Keep your eyes peeled for him, if you’re out and about.”

“Great. Where’s Forrest Knox now?”

“Holed up with his sidekick at the Valhalla hunting camp.”

“You haven’t gone after him?”

“We’re close. I’m working with the Louisiana State Police now.”

“Forrest
is
the state police.”

Kaiser shakes his head with confidence. “Not quite. We’re going to get him, Penn. I can’t tell you how, but it’s only a matter of time now. And not much, at that.”

“So what are you doing here?”

The FBI agent smiles and nods at Annie and my mother. “I’ll explain later. Just be cool, no matter what happens.”

Before I can ask what he means, he drifts back toward the door beyond the rail.

The hum of voices in the church is like the low rumble before a big high school graduation. People are still squeezing through the double doors at the back, and after the younger men give up their seats to women, the rear of the room swells with bodies, and the balcony creaks from the collective weight of children. I start to offer my seat to a woman standing against the wall, but Annie holds me firmly in my spot.

As we wait for the service to begin, I look to my left and right. The deeply creased faces around me have seen more toil and pain than I ever will. Life here has always been hard. In 1927 the river inundated the Louisiana Delta for miles inland, trivializing the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. Raccoons and poisonous snakes filled the trees, while rat-covered logs and rotting cattle floated between the hacked-through roofs serving as islands of grim survival. On the levees near the river, Red Cross camps struggled to treat refugees suffering from pellagra and other maladies. Out here, the only food or medicine arrived on small boats sent by the federal government. Yet still these people refused to leave their land. More than a few of today’s mourners look like they lived through the ’27 flood, and most of them probably remember the 1960s like they were yesterday.

The humming voices drop to nothing as two men wearing suits wheel in a coffin of dull gray metal. After they depart, a tall black man
who must be at least ninety walks out to the lectern carrying an ancient Bible. He is the Reverend John Baldwin, a legend in this parish. Probably six feet four during his prime, Baldwin now has the subsident stoop of osteoporosis, but the wise eyes behind his large gold spectacles communicate dignity and compassion.

A hatted matron seated at an upright piano up front begins the service with a hymn I don’t recognize, but none of the black people in the pews need a hymnal. They sing with full-throated passion, tempered by the sadness appropriate to the occasion. After the last chord fades and dies, Reverend Baldwin looks over at another preacher who appears to be a younger version of himself. When that man nods, Reverend Baldwin begins to speak.

“Greetings, brothers and sisters,” he says in a deep baritone ravaged by time and cigarette smoke, “friends and neighbors. My son Richard recently took over as pastor of this church, but today I will preside over the funeral of my good friend, Henry Sexton. I ask you new folks to be patient with me. I’m ninety-two years old, and it takes me a while to say what I mean to, but I can only hope that you find what I say worth the waiting.”

Reverend Baldwin turns his head slowly and takes in the sea of faces upturned to his. Then he smiles with a generosity of spirit that makes many of the whites in the pews smile in return.

“This is more white folks than I’ve preached to since 1964, when the children from the white colleges up north came down to help in the struggle. That makes me happy, despite the sad occasion. People say the most segregated day of the week in America is Sunday, and they’re close to right. But today, in this church, that’s not true.”

Reverend Baldwin looks down at his Bible, but he’s not reading anything. He’s thinking, or perhaps praying. Then he turns around to where the long coffin lies on a bier draped with a cloth to hide the trolley wheels beneath it.

“First I want to answer the question some of my parishioners are asking themselves. Why is that white man lying here, in our church, instead of in the white church down the road? Ain’t that the way it’s supposed to be? Well . . . yes and no. That’s the way it
is
most times, I’m sad to say. But it’s not the way it
ought
to be. When a man gets to where Henry Sexton is now, he ought to be where he belongs, and Henry
belongs
right here
. His mother knew that, and that’s why she asked me to preside over his funeral service. And when she asked, I knew this was something I had to do—indeed, I’m
proud
to do. Why, you ask? Because every member of this church owes Henry Sexton something. What, you ask? What do I owe that white man?

“First, your prayers, brothers and sisters. And your thanks.”

Reverend Baldwin takes out a white handkerchief and dabs sweat from his brow. “Last night I thought about comparing Henry to a hero from the Bible. But that was an age of heroes, if the stories aren’t exaggerated. Being a hero in our time seems particularly hard. Our children don’t even know the names of the martyrs who freed them from the chains of bondage. They know Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers
maybe
. But ask them who Wharlest Jackson was, or Jimmy Revels, and watch the blank look come over their faces. If it’s not on the TV, they don’t know it. Well, Henry Sexton—the man who brings us together today—is a hero from
our
time.

“The scripture says, ‘He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.’ Well, Henry Sexton did not live by the sword. Yet he died by it. Henry never resorted to violence—not until his last day on earth, anyway. And even then, he only did so to save the lives of others. I have preached nonviolence all my life, but that’s not an easy road, I can tell you. I served in the navy during the war against Japan. But I wasn’t allowed to carry a gun, not even in a combat zone. I was a cook, like Jimmy Revels. And there were times, such as when we were being attacked by kamikaze airplanes, that my greasy, shaking hands itched to have a gun in them. But they never did.

“After the Lord brought me home, though, I finally picked up a gun, to defend my family and protect my flock. Henry wrote an article about us, the Deacons for Defense. He must have asked me five hundred questions for that story.” Reverend Baldwin smiles in fond remembrance. “He pestered me night and day. Henry asked what I’d think about when I laid in a ditch all night with a shotgun to keep marauders from burning down our churches and homes. I told him that when I wasn’t praying, I was asking myself the same question my good friend Wharlest Jackson used to ask: ‘How can we change the white man’s heart? How can we make him see that we’re all the same inside?’

“Over the years, I’ve asked myself what made Henry different from
other people. One answer is that he spent his younger years in the company of Albert Norris and his family, some of whom we have with us today.”

“
Amen,
” says a soft voice.

Stretching my neck, I try to see who the pastor might be talking about, but this is foolish. I wouldn’t recognize any of Albert Norris’s family even if I saw them.

“For another,” Reverend Baldwin goes on, “Henry was a musician, and music always brings a man closer to his fellow man, and to the Lord. I’ve known very few men with music in their hearts who hated their brothers and sisters.”

“Hallelujah!” someone calls.

“Yes, Lord!” chimes in another.

“But as much as Henry loved music, that was not his calling.” Reverend Baldwin looks slowly around the room, as though he has all day to speak to this crowd. “Do you know what Henry’s calling was?”

“Tell us, Reverend.”

“Henry’s calling was
truth
.”

“Praise Jesus.”

“Henry’s calling was
justice
.”

“
Yes,
Jesus!”

Annie looks around to find the authors of these cries, but she doesn’t seem disturbed by them in the least.

“When other men reached for swords,” Reverend Baldwin says in a stronger voice, “Brother Henry reached for a pen. And with his other hand he reached for a shovel. And with that shovel, he dug for the truth. You know, the truth isn’t hard to find, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. Truth waits just under the surface for any man brave enough to scrape a little dirt away. But most people are too afraid or too lazy to get dirty. They’re afraid to ask the right questions. The
hard
questions. Brother Henry asked the hard questions. And after he got his answers, he took his pen and wrote them down.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Henry wrote the whole truth, too. Not half the truth. Not a sanitized truth. He wrote the
signified
truth, and he wrote it down for everybody to read. From his tiny little newspaper, right down the road, Henry shook the foundations of this great nation. He shook the capitol
in Jackson, Mississippi, and he shook the FBI building in Washington, D.C. Look around at all the strangers sitting here with us today, and you’ll see what one man can do with a pen and the truth.”

“Yes, Jesus.”

“Brother Henry,” Reverend Baldwin says softly. “Our brother Henry proved an old saying that we all hear from the time we’re children, but one we never quite believe.” The old man holds up his long right arm, and in his hand is a fountain pen. In full voice he cries: “The pen is mightier than the sword!”

A swell of emotion fills the church, and cries of praise ricochet through the echo chamber created by the seasoned wood that holds us. When the calls finally subside, Reverend Baldwin still holds the pen high, like a wand that might spew lightning at any moment. “‘The word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword,’” he quotes, “‘penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.’”

“Amen!” shouts a woman close to us, and Annie’s mouth falls open in wonder.

Reverend Baldwin pauses, and the brief silence is filled by the sound of shifting bodies and gurgling babies. Then he speaks in the voice of a grandparent recalling his grown child as a toddler.