She sighs. “Are we going to refight the Civil War here?”
“How long have you lived here, Caitlin?”
“Sixteen months.”
“You could live here sixteen years and you’d still be on the outside. And you can’t understand this place until you see it from the inside.”
“You’re talking about the social cliques?”
“Not exactly. Society is different here. It’s not just tiers of wealth. Old money may run out, but the power lingers. Blood still means something down here. Not to me, but to a lot of people.”
“Sounds like Boston.”
“I imagine it is. The structure is concentric circles, and as you move toward the center, the levels of knowledge increase.”
“Were your parents born here?”
“No, but my father’s a doctor, and doctors get a backstage pass. Probably because their profession puts them in a position to learn secrets anyway. And there are a thousand secrets in this town.”
“Name one.”
“Well . . . what about the Del Payton case?”
“Who’s Del Payton?”
“Delano Payton was a black factory worker who got blown up in his car outside the Triton Battery plant in 1968. It was a race murder, like a dozen others in Mississippi, only it was never solved. I’m not sure anybody really tried to solve it. Payton was a decorated combat veteran of the Korean War. And I’ll bet you a thousand dollars we’re sitting within five miles of his murderers right now.”
Excitement and awe fill her eyes. “Are you serious? Did the Examiner cover the murder?”
“I don’t know. I was eight years old then. I do know Dan Rather came down with a half dozen network correspondents. The FBI was up in arms, and two of their agents were shot at on the road between here and Jackson.”
“Why was Payton murdered?”
“He was about to be hired for a job that until then had been held exclusively by whites.”
“The police must have had some idea who did it.”
“Everybody knew who did it. Racist cowards motivated by the tacit encouragement of white leaders who knew better. A year before, they bombed another black guy at the same plant, but he survived. My father treated him. This guy was on the hospital phone with Bobby Kennedy every day, had guards all around his room, the works.”
“This is great stuff. My aunt went to school with Bobby.”
Her self-centered dilettantism finally puts me over the edge. “Caitlin, you’re so transparent. You want to hear the same thing every other Northern journalist wants to hear: that the Klan is alive and well, that the South is as Gothic and demonic as it ever was. Terrible things did happen here in the sixties, and people who knew better turned a blind eye. As a boy I watched the Klan march robed on horseback right out there on Main Street. City police directed traffic for them. But that has nothing to do with Natchez as it is today.”
“How can you say that?”
“You want to assign guilt? The Examiner printed the time of that Klan march but refused to print the time or location of a single civil rights meeting. Is the Examiner the same newspaper it was then?”
She ignores the question. “Why haven’t I heard people talking about the Payton case before? Even the African Americans don’t talk about it.”
“Because if you live here, you want to make the best life you can. Stirring up the past doesn’t help anybody.”
“But cases like this are being reopened every day, right here in Mississippi. The Byron de la Beckwith case. The retrial of Sam Bowers, the Klan Wizard from Laurel. You must know that the state recently opened the secret files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission?”
“So?”
“The Sovereignty Commission was like a racist KGB. They kept files not only on African Americans but on hundreds of whites suspected of liberal sympathies.”
“So?”
Caitlin looks at me in bewilderment. “So? Newsweek just ran a big piece on it, and Peter Jennings’s people have been calling around the state, trolling for stories. The Payton case could be reopened at any time.”
“Glad to hear it. Justice should be better served than it was in Natchez in 1968. But this isn’t some old trial with an all-white hung jury. This is an unsolved murder. A capital murder. No defendant. No suspects, as far as I know. No crime scene. Old or dead witnesses—”
“Nobody said winning a Pulitzer is easy.”
A light clicks on in my head. “Ah. That’s the plan? Winning a Pulitzer before you’re thirty?”
She gives me a sly smile. “Before I’m twenty-nine. That’s the plan.”
“God help this town.”
Her laugh is full and throaty, one I’d expect from an older woman. “Did you know that some of the Sovereignty Commission files are going to remain sealed?”
“No.”
“Forty-two of them. Some of them on major politicians. I heard Trent Lott’s was one of them, but that turned out to be wrong.”
“That’s no surprise. A lot of the most sensitive files were destroyed years ago.”
“Why haven’t you explored any of this in your novels?”
“A sense of loyalty to the place that bore me, I suppose. A lot of people would have to die before I could write a book like that.”
“So, until then you write fluff and take the easy money?”
“I don’t write fluff.”
She holds up her hands in contrition. “I know. I did a Nexis search on you. Publishers Weekly named False Witness the fourth-best legal thriller ever written.”
“After what?”
“Anatomy of a Murder , The Caine Mutiny , and Presumed Innocent.”
“That’s pretty good company,” I murmur, painfully aware that False Witness was four books ago.
“Yes, but it just seems so obvious that you should be writing about all this. Write what you know! You know?”
Caitlin picks up the check and walks over to the cash register, her movements fluid and graceful despite the phenomenal energy that animates her. The restaurant is empty now but for the cashier and our waitress, who chooses this moment to come forward with her copy of False Witness. I take the book, open it to the flyleaf, and accept the pen she offers.
“Would you like me to personalize it?”
“Wow, that would be great. Um, to Jenny. That’s me.”
“No last name?”
“Just Jenny would be cool.”
I write: Jenny, I enjoyed meeting you. Penn Cage.
She blushes as she takes back the book, then glances at Caitlin, who stands waiting for me. “I’d love to talk to you sometime,” she says in a quavering voice. “Ask you some questions, maybe.”
I recognize the nervous tones of an aspiring writer. “I’ll be in again. A friend of mine owns the place.”
“Wow, okay. Thanks.”
I join Caitlin as she walks out onto the brightly lit street.
“Did you get enough for your piece?”
“More than enough.” She tucks her copy of False Witness under one arm and buttons her jacket. “AP will probably pick it up, and it’ll be reprinted all over the South. They like fluff as much as anybody.”
I sigh wearily.
“I’m joking, Penn. God, take it easy, would you?”
“I guess I’m a little tense.”
“A little?” She takes False Witness in both hands, then bends at the waist and touches the book flat against the sidewalk, displaying a limberness that makes my back hurt and draws looks from several passersby. “Mmm, I needed that.”
“If I tried that, they’d hear tendons popping across the river.”
She smiles. “Not if you practiced. We should do this again. You can be deep background on Southern crime and psychology.”
I start to decline, then surprise myself by saying, “I might be able to help you with that.”
Her eyes sparkle with pleasure. “I’ll call you. And I’m sorry again about the airplane. Tell Annie I said hello.”
/> She holds out her hand and I take it, not thinking anything of it and so being all the more surprised by the shock I feel. When our eyes meet, we recognize something in each other that neither expects and both quickly look away from.
“The story will probably run Wednesday in the Southern Life section,” she says in a flustered voice, and awkwardly releases my hand. “I’ll mail some copies to your parents. I’m sure your mom still clips everything about you.”
“Absolutely.”
Caitlin Masters looks at me once more, then turns and walks quickly to a green Miata parked across the street with its top down. I am acutely aware of her physical presence, even across the street, and inexplicably glad that she suggested another lunch. With that gladness comes a rush of guilt so strong that it nauseates me. Seven months ago I was standing at my wife’s deathbed, then her coffin. Seven seconds ago I felt something for another woman. This small and natural response causes me more guilt than sleeping with a woman out of physical necessity—which I have not yet done. Because what I felt was more than physical. A glacier consumes whole forests by inches. As small as it is, that glimmer of feeling is absolute proof that someone else will one day occupy the place Sarah held in my life.
I feel like a traitor.
CHAPTER 6
My father wakes me by slapping a newspaper against my forehead. After I rub the sleep from my eyes, I see my own face staring up from the front page of the Natchez Examiner, above the fold. They’ve scanned my most recent author photo and blown it up to “this man assassinated the president” size. The headline reads: PRODIGAL SON RETURNS HOME.
“The goddamn phone hasn’t stopped ringing,” Dad growls. “Everybody wants to know why my son is disparaging his hometown.”
Beneath the author photo is a montage of smaller shots, like a family album: me as a lanky kid with Dad’s arm around my shoulders, printed in a Father’s Day issue in 1968; as a high school baseball player; as the flag runner in the annual Confederate pageant; my Ole Miss graduation photo. I quickly scan the columns, recognizing most of what I said yesterday, laid out in surprisingly faithful prose.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “What’s wrong with this?”
“Have you been in Houston so long you’ve forgotten how things are here? Bill Humphreys said you set back thirty years of good race relations.”
“I didn’t say anything you haven’t said a hundred times in our kitchen.”
“The newspaper isn’t our kitchen!”
“Come on, Dad. This is nothing.”
He shakes his head in amazement. “Turn the page, hotshot. You’ll see something.”
When I turn the page, my breath catches in my throat.
The banner headline reads: 30 YEARS LATER “RACIST COWARDS” STILL WALK STREETS. My stomach flips over. Underneath the headline is a photo of a scorched Ford Fairlane with a blackened corpse seated behind the wheel. That picture never ran in the Natchez Examiner in 1968. Caitlin Masters must have dug up an old crime-scene photo somewhere.
“Jesus,” I whisper.
“Harvey Byrd at the Chamber of Commerce thinks you may have single-handedly sabotaged the chemical-plant deal.”
“Let me read the thing, okay?”
Dad plants himself in the corner, his arms folded. The story opens like a true-crime novel.
On May 14, 1968, Frank Jones, a scheduling clerk at the Triton Battery plant, walked out to his car in the middle of the third shift to run an errand. Before he could start his engine, he heard a boom “like an artillery piece,” and a black-wall tire slammed into his windshield. Thirty yards away, a black man named Delano Payton sat burning to death. Jones was the sole eyewitness to the worst race crime in the history of this city, in which a combat veteran of the Korean War was murdered to prevent his being promoted to a “white-only” job. No one was ever arrested for the crime, and many in the black community believe that law enforcement officials of the period gave less than their full efforts to the case. Best-selling author and Natchez native Penn Cage characterized the killers of Delano Payton as “racist cowards,” and stated that justice should be better served than it was in Natchez in 1968.
Former police chief Hiram Wilkes contended that leads were nonexistent at the time, and said that despite exhaustive efforts by law enforcement, and a $15,000 reward offered by Payton’s national labor union, no suspects were turned up. The FBI was called in to work the case but had no more success than local police. Former Natchez police officer Ray Presley, who assisted on the case in the spring of 1968, stated, “It was a tough murder case, and the FBI got in the way more than they helped, which was par for them in those days—”
I reread the last sentence, my heartbeat accelerating. I had no idea Ray Presley was involved in the Payton case. I want to ask my father about him, but with the blackmail issue—and my mother’s suspicions about Presley—hanging like a cloud between us, I don’t.
“You’ve been dealing with the media for twelve years,” Dad grumbles. “That publisher must have shown you a little leg and puréed your brain. I’ve seen her around town. Face like a model, tits like two puppies in a sack. I know what happened. It took her about five seconds to get Penn Cage at his most sanctimonious.” He grabs the newspaper out of my hands and wads it into a ball. “Did you have to dredge up the goddamn Payton case?”
“I just mentioned it, for God’s sake. I thought we were off the record.”
“She obviously didn’t.”
I try to remember the point at which I asked to go off the record. I can check my tape, of course, but I already know what Caitlin Masters will say: she thought I wanted the Jungian analysis and the comparison between Germany and the South off the record, but not the Del Payton remarks, which were an extension of our earlier conversation on racism. At least she honored my request not to mention the Hanratty execution.
“What about that Klan rally stuff?” Dad mutters.
“You took me to that rally!”
“I know, I know . . . damn it. I just wanted you to see that wasn’t any way to be. But you didn’t have to drag it all back up now, did you?”
“I made it clear that stuff was all in the past. And she printed my qualifications, I’ll give her that.”
“God almighty, what a mess. Do you think—”
The front doorbell rings, cutting him off.
“Who the hell could that be?” he asks. “It’s only eight-thirty.”
He walks out of the bedroom, taking the wadded-up newspaper with him.
My thoughts return to Caitlin Masters. Despite her assurances, I was foolish to say anything to her that I didn’t want printed. Maybe she did show me a little leg and lull my usually vigilant defenses. Am I that easy to manipulate?
“Get some clothes on,” my father says from the door, his face grave. “You’ve got visitors.”
“Who? You look almost scared.”
He nods slowly. “I think I am.”
Uncertain what to expect, I hover in the hall outside my mother’s living room. The hushed sibilance of gracious women making polite conversation drifts from the wide doorway. I walk through the door and stop in my tracks. Two black women sit primly on the sofa, delicate Wedgwood cups steaming before them on the coffee table. One is in her eighties, if not older, and dressed in an ensemble the like of which I have not seen since the Sundays I drove past black churches as a teenager. The skirt is purple, the blouse green, the shoes a gleaming patent black. Her hat is a flowered concoction of black straw and varicolored silk. Beneath the hat is a shining black wig, beneath the wig a raisin of a face with watery eyes that glisten amid the wrinkles.
The woman beside her looks thirty years younger and wears a much more subdued outfit, a pleated navy skirt with a periwinkle blouse. She looks up, and her gaze disconcerts me. Most black people I grew up with rarely made direct eye contact, locking their feelings behind a veneer of humility. But this woman’s gaze is unveiled, direct and self-confident.
“You keep a fine house, Mr
s. Cage,” the older woman says in a cracked voice. “A fine house.”
“You’re so kind to say so,” my mother replies from a wing chair on the other side of the coffee table. She wears a housecoat and no makeup, yet even in this state radiates a quiet, stately beauty. She turns to me and smiles.
“Son, this is Mrs. Payton.” She gestures toward the elderly woman, then nods at her younger companion. “And this is Mrs. Payton also. They’ve come to thank you for what you said in this morning’s paper.”
I flush from my neck to the crown of my head. I can only be looking at the widow and mother of Delano Payton, the man bombed and burned to death in 1968. Barefoot and unshaven, I make a vain attempt to straighten my hair, then advance into the living room. Without rising, the elder Mrs. Payton enfolds my right hand in both of hers like a dowager empress. Her palms feel like fine sandpaper. The younger Mrs. Payton stands and shakes my hand with exaggerated formality. Her hand is moist and warm. Up close, she looks older than I first guessed, perhaps sixty-five. Because she has not gone to fat, she projects an aura of youth that her eyes cannot match.
“Althea works in the nursery at St. Catherine’s Hospital,” Dad informs me from the door. “I see her all the time. And I’ve treated Miss Georgia for thirty-five years now.”
“Yo’ daddy a good doctor,” the elder Mrs. Payton says from the sofa, pointing a bony finger at me. “A good doctor.”
My father has heard this ten thousand times, but he smiles graciously. “Thank you, Miss Georgia.”
“I remember you makin’ house calls late at night,” Georgia Payton goes on, her voice reedy and difficult to follow as it jumps up and down the scale. “Givin’ shots and deliverin’ babies. Had you a spotlight back then to see the house numbers.”
“And a pistol in my black bag,” Dad adds, chuckling.
“Sho’ did. I seen it once. You ever have to use it?”
“No, ma’am, thank God.”
“Might have to one of these days, with all this crack in the streets. I told the pastor last Sunday, you want to find Satan, just pull up to one of them crack houses. Sheriff ought to burn ever’ one to the ground.”