The Truth Hurts (7 page)

“Go to your daughter’s,” she instructed her maid.

“Stay with your mama,” she advised their gardener/driver.

“Eulalie,” Clayton commented upon overhearing her, “don’t you think they can decide for themselves where they want to spend the night?”

She started to snap at him but suddenly realized the truth of what he was implying—that she was treating a grown woman and man as if they were children or slaves—and Eulalie Fisher flushed with embarrassment. She leaned forward so that Clayton caught her in his arms and gently embraced her.

“So much of the worst of us is purely habit,” she murmured.

“That’s the truth, my darling,” he said. “We’re all unconscious creatures, even the best of us, and even at the best of times.”

“I’m frightened, Clayton.”

“Don’t be, Eulalie. We’ll be all right.”

“Oh, Clay!” She pulled away from him in exasperation. “Even you can’t possibly find a silver lining in this!”

He smiled tenderly at her. “But my dear, we haven’t even seen a cloud yet.”

“No cloud! What do you call the absence of thirty-two guests at my party?”

“Good riddance?”

“Oh, Clay, you’re impossible!”

Even in her indignation and anxiety, Eulalie had to laugh at his joke. That’s what he could always do for her, make her laugh when she didn’t want to. It annoyed her no end, but she needed it, and she knew that she did, especially tonight. With a grimace of exasperation, she took his hand and pulled him back into the living room to be with their guests.

When the speech was over—and just shortly before Medgar Evers got ambushed in Philadelphia, Mississippi—the remaining six guests started nervously gathering their belongings. One by one, and fairly quickly, they moved up to Eulalie to give her a peck on the cheek and to Clayton, who kissed the ladies good night and shook their husbands’ hands. To one another they said ambiguously, though the meaning was clear to all of them, “Y’all call us if you need anything tonight, y’hear?”

“And that’s when it happened,” Eulalie remembers, with a shudder.

The first sign of trouble was the sound of the doorbell, which Clayton went to answer by himself. His guests were still in the living room, finishing their good nights to his wife. He returned to them with two suited FBI agents at his back. Twenty additional agents and local police officerscame around each side of the great old house, all of them carrying weapons, and some of those guns were drawn.

“As if it wasn’t Miss Eulalie’s house!” Eulalie, herself, remarks indignantly, many years later. “As if I had submachine guns stashed in my potato salad and Bolsheviks under my bed!”

That was bad enough, but it was going to get a lot worse.

The eight members of Hostel—Goodwins, Wiegans, Reeves, and Fishers—were walked—not driven—down to the Sebastion jail that night.

It was a deliberate public spectacle that drew vicious attention: hollering, name-calling, tomatoes and rocks thrown, horns honking, even a few hotheads flinging themselves at the detainees and getting in a few punches at the men before the agents or cops slowly . . . so slowly . . . pulled them off.

“That parade they made of us, that was the point,” Eulalie recalls from the safety of her boudoir forty years later. “They had put out the word before we even set foot downtown. They wanted to show us off so everybody in town would know who their enemies were.” She takes a puff, more like a sip, from her cigarette and delicately releases the smoke into the pretty room. “Nothing was ever the same in Sebastion after that, which is maybe the way it should have been, all along.”

They were paraded to the jail, fearing for their lives with every step.

But nobody in the dinner party was arrested that night, and not ever.

Frightened to death, yes, and threatened with prosecution, jail time, and worse, but not a single one arrested. They were all released after an hour of hassling, and they were even driven back to their homes.

“We couldn’t figure it out,” Eulalie admits. “Until later that night.”

That’s when they found out where the actual arrests were taking place—across town where black members of Hostel lived and where they, too, had gathered together to watch the Speech. Their cheering had broken out just about the time that another phalanx of FBI and local cops burst in—less politely, by far.

Every black member of Hostel who could be found that night was arrested and jailed. Within the month they were tried and convicted by an all-white jury of any charge that could be trumped up against them. By and large, the black men served prison terms ranging from three to six years. The women were either acquitted or served token sentences and then allowed to return home—except they had no homes.

On that night of June 12, 1963, all of their houses were burned down.

“As much as anything,” Eulalie says, “what destroyed us was what Sebastion looked like the next morning. Tuesday, June thirteenth. Not a one of the white people was in jail or charged with a single thing. We’d been singled out, yes. But not actually harmed beyond the damage to our reputations, which were hypocritical at best, anyway. But in the black end of town, there was pure devastation. I think they—the black folks—looked at the difference and they gave up on us that night. I really do. After that, they weren’t interested in our help. They’d still take our money donations, but they wouldn’t look us in the eye. They’d use any lawyer we hired for them, but they never said thank you, and why should they? The FBI and the cops told them that we had bought our safety by handing them over. It wasn’t true! We knew we hadn’t done that, but we knew who did do it. There were only two other white people who knew the identities of everybody in Hostel, the only two white Hostel members who didn’t quite manage to make it to my party that night.

“Michael and Lyda. Our founders. Our traitors. That’s who betrayed all of us, their white friends. We got over it, more or less. But they downright ruined the lives of a lot of black families that terrible night. An FBI agent Clayton knew even told him so a few weeks later. The agent told us it was Michael Folletino who handed over the list to the local police. Clayton asked him,
Why?
Why did Michael do that to us? And the FBI agent said, Michael never was your friend, Clayton. Michael Folletino worked for us.”

6
Marie

So there it is, the rest of the story, all that I know except for a little bit having to do with my parents and how they met. But who knows what any of it means? They seemed, in this telling, to be acting like a couple who feared for their lives. If they were planning to disappear, they don’t seem to have prepared for that possibility ahead of time.

I toss the pages aside, the way I’d like to toss Michael and Lyda Folletino aside, for good, and just then my phone rings. Without waiting for Deb to get it, I pick it up and say hello.

It’s Connie, my young publicist.

“That was fast,” I praise her.

“I have a friend there. The name you want, the source for that terrible story, is Paul Barnes. Need me to spell it?”

“No.” I’m silent for a second, absorbing this useless confirmation of the name on the E-mail that was sent to me today. “Where’d they send the check?”

“They didn’t pay for it, Marie. He didn’t charge the tabloid for it, he said he was doing it for free.”

Damn.
“So he can’t be found that way,” I muse aloud. “Connie, do you know how the tip came in?”

“E-mail, they said. Supposedly, they tried to reach you to get your reaction. Did they?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” When she wants to talk about other interviews, I make an excuse and hang up, telling her I can’t talk right now.

Well, at least now I know one small thing that Paulie Barnes doesn’t know that I know. He lied when he said he would spend his five-hundred-dollar reward on surprises for me.
Big deal.
That is worth exactly what he got paid—nothing.

“I’m going home now,” Deb announces, sticking her head in to tell me. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, if this day ever ends,” I grouse, and then I wave her out the door, but she surprises me with a quick, warm hug before she leaves.

Is it still Thursday? How can that be? What a day this has been! I’m exhausted. The publicity campaign to counter the tabloid story is well under way here and in New York. Tomorrow, Deborah will continue to field phone calls and E-mails with a careful response we all worked out together. In New York they’re figuring out ways to capitalize on the publicity. As for me, I haven’t forgotten the strange little E-mail from the person claiming to have been the source of all this trouble and bother.

Even so, when I check my E-mail one last time before going to bed, I am taken unpleasantly by surprise to open one from [email protected] and find that it holds another message from “Paulie Barnes.” Once again, the other address, [email protected], is typed in the body of the text, instead of in the actual E-mail address line.

This guy seems to have a talent for jumping out of the bushes.

Is this more than one person who’s sending these, or is it one person with multiple E-mail addresses?

For a moment I just stare at this second one, feeling snakebit, and debating whether or not even to open it and see what he says this time. His first little message felt nearly salacious, the way he kept repeating my first name, as if he got some kind of perverse pleasure out of the mere act of typing it. It gave me a nasty feeling, as if I’d touched something vile, even though there wasn’t a single “dirty” word in it, nothing overtly sexual.

“Hell,” I say, and double click on it to open it:

Dear Marie,

I wonder what you’re doing tonight.

Are you rereading today’s publicity about you?

You can thank me for any extra book sales that generates for you. Although I must say, I have in mind another way for you to express your gratitude.

But that can wait a little while.

Why don’t I tell you what
I’m
doing tonight, right now, at this moment. I’m seated in front of a computer in a public library—can’t say which one, can’t say where—and I’m writing this E-mail to send to you. We are now officially in Step Two, Marie. Perhaps you didn’t recognize Step One for what it was when it arrived today? Wait until you see Step Three. I feel sure you will recognize it for what it is, quite easily.

But I was setting a scene, wasn’t I?

To my right, there is a huge cinnamon bun dripping with white icing. Can you smell it, can you taste it? We’re not supposed to bring food in here, but who’s to stop me? To my left, I have one of your books turned over so I can see your photograph on the back cover. Very nice! There you are in full color, close enough for me to touch, as I am doing . . . now. When I run the tips of my fingers over your pretty face, over your throat, your shoulders, your breasts, the glossy paper feels as smooth as your skin must surely be.

Now don’t get me wrong, Marie.

Don’t misinterpret these words.

Yes, I find you attractive. And, yes, I certainly feel a certain sexual charge from moving you around like my own queen on my own chessboard, to suit my own ends. But be assured I’m no serial killer, no stalker. I am neither of those banal manifestations of evil. That would be tedious,and I’d so hate to bore you. I confess, you never bore me. Quite the opposite, I find you—and my mysterious connection to you—deeply fascinating. I feel sure that you will become intrigued, too, both by me and by what you are about to learn about yourself through me.

But I digress. Where was I?

Ah, yes, I was admiring your photograph and touching it.

Look at you! What a lovely smile you have, and natural blond hair—apparently—and you’re a little thing, aren’t you? I happen to know exactly how old you are and I must say you don’t look it. You could pass for late twenties, easily. But for as small as you are in physical stature, you have a great big presence in the world, don’t you? I wouldn’t be interested if you didn’t. The ordinary bores me. That—keeping me from being bored—seems to be a developing theme tonight, doesn’t it?

I expect you are reading this in your office.

You have an office in your home, don’t you? It’s at the southwest corner opposite the guest bedroom, on the other side of the west wall in your living room. During the day it’s bright and sunny, open and airy, just like your public face.

But what about me, you’re wondering by now?

Who is this stranger who has so suddenly and dramatically dropped into your life, this man who knows your secrets and who is writing to you so intimately out of the blue?

I will be happy to tell you more about myself.

But that can wait.

Since this is only one of the messages I will be sending to you—and you to me—there is no hurry. At least, not yet. So, relax. Don’t worry about me. It’s late. Go on to bed. Drift sweetly into “easeful sleep” as the poet says. (How do I know you will be reading this tonight instead of in the morning? Because you always do check your E-mail right before you go to bed, don’t you?) Tonight, a third communication will slip into your E-mailbox, like a burglar slipping through your sliding glass doors while you are asleep in your bedroom on the second floor of your home.

Sweet dreams, Marie.

“Paulie Barnes” it’s “signed” at the bottom, just as before.

Anybody could guess that I check my E-mails last thing at night. Don’t most people with Internet access do that?

“I’m not going to let you scare me.”

Without hesitation, I take the steps that are required to instruct my E-mail server to reject any messages from “anns” or “ftoasdr.”

What an ass this man is! Trying to make me think he has seen, or even been inside of, my home! So he knows the layout of it, so he knows it’s “bright and sunny,” so what? My house has been pictured in
Architectural Digest,
and bits and pieces of it have appeared behind me when I’ve been interviewed here. Plus, any plumber or carpenter with access to the private cul-de-sac on which I live could have scouted out my property. It isn’t difficult to look in windows that are almost always open.

As I know well, it’s easy to write or talk as if one knows more about something than one really does. I do that all the time in my books. I can take two palm trees, a dirt yard, and a sunny day and turn them into three pages of atmosphere if I need to. Apparently, this jerk can, too. His supposed familiarity with my home is not enough to convince me he’s any kind of authentic threat to me. He’s just a pervert getting his kicks, probably one of the tiny minority of my readers who ought to be chained down.

“I’m cutting you off, right now.”

You’ll have no more E-mail access to me, Paulie Barnes.

Unless he uses other addresses,
a tiny voice warns me. I override it by thinking,
And since I’m going to delete your message—right now—there will be no response from me to you, either.

“So he knows my parents disappeared, so what?”

I’m talking to myself, convincing myself, as I climb the stairs.

Out of sheer pique and perversity, I’ve left my downstairs drapes open. From the stairs, when I look down, I can see through the glass that wraps nearly around my house, out to the glittering lights along the Intracoastal Waterway. Boats are moving along it even now, so late in the evening, as they always move, twenty-four hours a day. But none of them will dock at my shoreline, because it’s a nearly sheer cliff with no docking access for any size boat.

“Anybody who lived in Sebastion at the time knows that much.”

When I reach the top, I turn around and run back downstairs again.

“I’ll just double-check the door locks and the windows.”

And the alarm system. And call the guard at our security gate to ask him to be a little extra alert tonight. And pull the drapes closed, after all. And then maybe I’ll take some pots and pans upstairs with me and hide them just inside my door so that if a burglar happened to wander in, he’d make an awful clatter and wake me up. I keep a gun in my bedside table—because I write about some truly awful men—and I’ll just check it to make sure it’s loaded.

And then I won’t give this guy a second thought.

Should I call Franklin and tell him about this?

No, I’d wake him up. He’s got court in the morning.

And anyway, I don’t want to start taking it too seriously.

He may have rumbled a day of my life, but he’s not going to spoil my sleep, or anybody else’s. I’ll take a shower. I’ll sleep like a baby. And tomorrow afternoon, I’ll drive to the Keys to be with Franklin and the children. In the Keys there will be no publicity, no interviews, no E-mails, no surprises from tabloids, and no Paulie Barnes.