The Tree of Forgetfulness (10 page)

She picked up the brush and pulled it through Libba's thick, dark hair. By the time she got to fifty strokes, they'd settled on stewed chicken for the next night's supper. Then Libba started to sigh and smooth the white dresser cloth. Finally, she looked up at Minnie in the mirror, one hand on her cheek. Her blue eyes were like searchlights. “You know, Minnie, I look forward to the day when this whole terrible business will be behind us,” she said. “We all just have to do our best to make that happen.” She gestured around the room as if the terrible business had happened right there.

“Yes, ma'am.” She looked at the two of them in the mirror, Mrs. Aimar in her dressing gown and she in a white gauze blouse Libba had given her when it started to look worn, a hand-me-down with a row of small pearl buttons all the way up the high collar and satin stripes on the sleeves and bodice.
Let it pass
. Only an hour ago she'd given Zeke the same advice.

And then the hundred strokes were done, and she was standing
outside the closet in the downstairs hall where she straightened the coats and hats and galoshes every week. She was opening the door, stepping inside. It was pitch-black dark in the closet, but she needed no light. The croker sack was behind the boots and shoes lined up under the coats on the back wall, and her hands found it easily. She'd been wrong to tell Zeke that nothing could be done. The old had no right to pass on their fears to the young like they were God's commandments struck in stone. She should have told him that as long as you had breath in your body, you could do something. You could reach behind those coats and shoes and boots and pick up that croker sack and carry it down the back steps and across the yard, holding it away to keep it from touching you, not knowing what you'd do when you opened it and saw what was in there. You could do all that without a thought about what came next, knowing that if Libba asked what became of those good shoes that Mr. Aimar had ruined in the dove field, you'd think of something. White people weren't the only ones who could look a person in the face and lie.

H
E EASED THE
black Ford in under the low limbs of the water oak that grew between the courthouse and the jail, killed the spark, climbed out. He unlocked the gate in the high stone wall, locked it behind him, and trudged across the bare yard. It had been a dry fall, but today was warm and muggy, the sun a blurred patch of light in a hazy sky. Not as hot and smothering as summer, of course, more like a memory of summer, but warm enough to bring a sweat. Closer to the jail he heard a clatter of pans from the kitchen, a few whistles from the barred windows on the second floor. As usual, the prisoners were watching, waiting for him to look up so they could joke with him, but he couldn't be bothered with their foolishness this morning. It was barely seven o'clock, but his bones already felt as heavy as they did at the end of a whole day's worth of trouble.

The words that weighed heaviest were the ones Curtis Barrett had written about the men who claimed they'd talked to the lynchers, before and after the crime. He'd like to talk to those men himself, ask why in hell they hadn't brought the sheriff what they knew instead of running their mouths to some New York reporter who'd hung flypaper all over town for them to blunder into. Barrett had come to the jail half a dozen times now, always with a new batch of questions:

On what grounds did you arrest Dempsey Long after the judge set him free?

Why didn't you stay at the jail the night of the killings? Didn't you think there was any danger?

Walk me through that night one more time. I'm a little unclear about the details.

Then Barrett would watch and wait for him to trip himself up, as though in the thick of all the shouting and flailing and stumbling around in the pitch-black dark that went on that night, he should have kept track of everything and everybody.

“Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then,” his mother always said, and sure enough, Barrett had found Jesse Finley, the lumberman, and published Finley's boast that he spoke for 90 percent of the people in town who were glad the Longs had been killed. All week Finley had been carrying the clipping in the pocket of his overalls, pulling it out to show to anyone who'd stand still long enough to listen to him read it, proof of what a big shot he was.

Personally, he had to reach back a long way to remember a time when a newspaper had said something good about him. He had to go all the way back to the story of how he'd been named sheriff right after Bud Glover died. They'd printed that one up under the masthead on the front page of the
Aiken Standard
and spread a big headline over the picture of him looking like the man the write-up said he was: the one who had no favorites, who followed the law as it was written.

His wife had cut the article out of the paper and stuck it in her Bible; he'd had her bring it to him this morning so he could read it again before he left for work. The paper had yellowed, but the story still held true. It told how, after the Longs killed Sheriff Glover, men from every corner of the state had vouched for Aubrey Timmerman to the governor. They'd spoken of his devotion to duty, his high regard for the things the average man does not understand, and his dedication to the law, which since it is the law he must preserve it. True then, and true now. He needed to pay Finley a call, inform him that the average man needed to understand when to keep his trap shut.

The phone was ringing as he stepped into the office, but before he answered, he turned the latest edition of the
Columbia Record
face down on the battered wooden desk. “Aubrey Timmerman here,” he said, crisply. “State your business.”

“Sheriff Timmerman, hold for the governor, please,” a woman's voice said.

It wasn't unusual for the governor to phone. His Honor had called to congratulate him after his first big liquor raid got written up in the
Standard
and many times since, to talk over one piece of law enforcement business or another. Surely, this morning's call was to express outrage at the rank lie that Barrett's article had made of Timmerman's statement about being overpowered. From back in the kitchen he smelled biscuits; he felt hungry, and then he felt sorry for himself that he wouldn't be able to eat a few while they were still warm because he had to be on the phone, explaining God knows what to the governor again.

When Arthur McCormick came on the line, he was breathing hard, still winded, no doubt, from hauling his stout little self up all those steps in front of the statehouse. “You're up awful early, Your Honor,” he said.

“Sheriff Timmerman,” the governor said—his tone was not encouraging—“sounds like there's a whole lot of whispering going on down in your neck of the woods.”

“Yes, sir, it does look that way,” he said. He yanked open the long shallow desk drawer, looked at the gnawed pencil and the pad of yellow paper there, and felt sorry for himself again. Of course the governor had seen the latest headline in that New York paper: “South Carolina Whispers Names of Mob Killers.” He'd heard from a reliable source in Columbia that McCormick sent a man down to the depot every night to meet the southbound train so he'd have the latest papers on his desk first thing every morning.

“Now look here,” the governor said. “I want you—I
expect
you—to cooperate with my detective and show him every courtesy. And I am troubled by that girl's affidavit, sir, I'll not deny it.”

So what he'd heard around town was true: yesterday J. P. Gibson had hustled back to Columbia carrying affidavits from the Rainey girl and a colored man named Martin, who'd been in the jail the night the Longs were killed.

The governor cleared his throat and began to read:

I got up from the bed and went to the door and looked out through the window in it toward the stairs. It was dark, and I couldn't see anything. I could hear men talking. I could not hear what was being said, but I recognized the voice of Sheriff Aubrey Timmerman. With him were four other men. They went to Bessie Long's cell. I recognized as one of the five men Robert Bates, the jailer, who had a black robe on and was carrying a lantern. He unlocked the door of Bessie Long's cell and then stepped around to a bathroom. Sheriff Aubrey Timmerman, who I recognized by his back and his voice, said something to Bessie Long, and she got up and started putting on her clothes. He told her it wasn't any use to dress; the sheriff just wanted to see her. She went to crying and asked him where was the sheriff. They brought her on, and when she got even with my cell door, she went to crying louder; she cried until she got even with the men's cage. Then she said, “Lord, I will never see him anymore.” They told her to hush three times. I don't know who told her.

“There's things you should know about that girl, sir,” he said, but the governor kept rumbling down his own track.

“This Barrett
SOB
has us by the short hairs,” he said. The sheriff looked down at the dark wood floor, the way he would have done if he'd opened a door and found the governor compromised. The governor was a pious man, high up in the Methodist church; he chastised men for saying
damn
and
hell
in his presence. He had a favorite story, which Aubrey Timmerman had heard half a dozen times now, about Robert E. Lee reprimanding a Confederate officer for an off-color remark. “But, sir,” the officer said. “There are no ladies present.”

“No, sir, but there
are
gentlemen,” Lee answered.

“I suppose you've seen that Wesley Barton mess too?” the governor said. He was breathing easier now.

“I'm looking at it as we speak,” the sheriff answered, and he flipped over the
Record
. There on page 1 was what Mr. Barton, a South Carolina man, had written about his fellow citizens.

The serene confidence that sustained the mob leaders in the belief that they could get completely away with wholesale murder has been shattered under the cold scrutiny of the outside world that is now searching its dark corners. The “patriots” who led the mob through the open door of the county jail to play an improbable game of Blind Man's Buff in the darkened corridor where the stalwart sheriff and the jailer were so easily overpowered are not as sure of themselves as they were a month ago. Names were being whispered of organizers, ringleaders, participants, and witnesses who stood on the sidelines. They are beginning to be sensible of the fearful and rotten blight of lawlessness that must pervade Aiken County to have enabled it to muster so many human buzzards to such a feast. They are beginning to ask themselves if they have not been deluded with regard to the efficiency, heroism, and devotion to duty of their peace officers.

It never ceased to amaze him how newspaper people could take upright, decent words like
stalwart
or
patriots
or
peace officers
and make them stink to high heaven. So the governor was calling to agree with him that there is nothing worse than being betrayed by one of your own, to let him know that he would not have the good name and integrity of his peace officer undermined by innuendo or the affidavits of one whore girl and a colored criminal who hadn't had any more light to see by than anyone else that night. When he could get a word in edgewise, he'd also remind the governor that no one of any consequence had uttered a word against him.

“Yes, sir,” the governor said. “A lot of whispering. What I'm trying to impress upon you, sheriff, is that we have to take this business seriously.”

“I am well aware, Your Honor.” Two of the governor's cousins were on Leland Dawson's list of ringleaders and perpetrators. “You have my word that I will assist Detective Gibson in his investigation by every means available to me.”

“Fine, sir, see that you do,” the governor says. “I don't intend to leave office under a cloud.”

“No, sir,” Aubrey Timmerman said, and then, without a word of encouragement or farewell, the governor hung up.

The sheriff sat at the wooden desk and read Wesley Barton's article again and then Barrett's latest screed. It made his jaw tense to hear himself sounding like a mealymouthed simpleton. “Why, I just felt sorry for that girl, that's all,” Barrett had him saying. “And I don't even know Martin by name. I declare, I don't know why they got it in for me.” He stared at the new pink flesh on the palms of his hands. Yesterday Dr. Hastings had unwound the last bandage, and now he could make a fist again without wincing, though the new pink skin felt tight, binding. He stared at his hands then picked up the gnawed pencil, smoothed down the top sheet on the pad of yellow paper in front of him. He'd best start sketching out what he was going to say when Gibson came to take his affidavit.

Gibson wore a black patch over one eye, and the other eye was small and cold, an unnerving shade of amber. Just looking at him rattled some people, but not him. He'd invite the man to take a seat in a chair directly across the desk from him, to show that he had nothing to hide. Doing anything with Gibson involved waiting while he fished a can of Prince Albert smoking tobacco and papers out of the pocket of his suit coat and set up shop on the desktop, so Aubrey would sit tight while the detective rolled and licked and sealed and tamped himself a smoke. His fat little fingers were surprisingly nimble. Then, once he'd scraped his match across the desk and lit up, brushed off his pad of paper, and licked the point of his pencil, they could begin. But no matter where the detective wanted to start, the sheriff was determined to start where
he
knew the story began.

Let's go back to the night of April 25, 1925, he would say, the night of the day that Bud was gunned down, because that was where the trail began that ended on the night of October 8, 1926, and to understand one, you had to grasp the other. On that April night a crowd had also come to take the Longs, he'd say, and Aubrey Timmerman had stood in the jailhouse door with Mack and Frank Bell, and together the three of them had faced down the mob. It was a big crowd too, he'd remind Gibson, come with torches and guns.