Turning Angel

  “Isn’t there a price to be paid in every relationship?”

  She gives me a wry look. “Point taken.”

  “I didn’t mean us.”

  “But it’s true.” Caitlin wags her finger at me. “No sugarcoating.”

  She’s silent for a bit, but I can tell she’s thinking. “You know,” she says, “one thing you might bring up in Drew’s defense is the fact that he had very little choice of partners.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m talking about his affair with Kate, not the murder. After the economic downturn here, the middle class vanished. There simply aren’t any single women between thirty and forty here. Not the kind Drew would be interested in. The bright women in this town of that age are married or divorced. And if you’re looking for brilliant ones, forget it. To start fresh, he almost had to go with someone as young as Kate, because girls like that leave here at eighteen and never come back.”

  Caitlin is right, although her argument would probably offend every woman on the jury.

  “I mean,” she goes on, “who the hell would you be dating if I hadn’t shown up here?”

  I don’t even want to think about that. I put down my fork and look into her eyes. “Earlier you said that you couldn’t imagine being with anyone else but me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you with anyone else? When you’re away, I mean.”

  She looks at me with disbelief. “Absolutely not. I’d never do that to you.” She starts to take a sip of wine, then stops with her glass poised in midair. “Are you?”

  “No. Not even close.”

  She watches me a little longer, then drinks her wine. After she swallows, she takes a bite of stuffed potato and says, “Mia’s in love with you, by the way.”

  A lump of duck sticks in my throat. “What?”

  “You haven’t realized that yet? I saw it through your window in five minutes. I’m not saying she knows what love is, just that she thinks she’s in love. So, for all practical purposes, she is.”

  “And I should do what about this?”

  Caitlin looks up at me, her eyes inscrutable. “Be careful. We were just discussing the lack of available partners. Drew is a handy object lesson.”

  “Jesus.”

  “No evolutionary nirvana for you, buster.”

  I take her hand and smile. “You’re evolutionary nirvana for me.”

  She smiles with genuine pleasure. “I am ten years younger than you, old man.”

  I laugh so loudly that the waiter sticks his head into the room. I motion for him to leave us alone.

  “So, are we sleeping together or not?” Caitlin asks in a casual voice. “I miss it.”

  “Do you?”

  Her voice drops in pitch but becomes richer somehow. “This is the longest I’ve gone without sex in years. So anytime you’re ready, you let me know, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She gives me one of her feline smiles. “Couldn’t we declare détente and return to hostilities in the morning?”

  I reach out and take her hand.

  “Finish your duck,” she says. “Annie’s waiting for us, and I don’t want the movie to take all night.”

  Two hours later, I’m sitting in the glow of the flat-panel television in my home theater, a converted guest room on the first floor. Annie has nestled between Caitlin and me, her eyes glued to the television as Nemo swims brightly across the screen. Above Annie’s head, my fingers are threaded into the soft hair at the base of Caitlin’s neck. The last few minutes of our dinner at the Castle seemed so natural, they could have happened before any of our tensions came into being. But despite the promise of sex in the air, something seems wrong.

  It’s been too long since Caitlin and I made love. I miss it at least as much as she, and yet…something is short-circuiting the desire I should feel for her. The pessimism in her dinner speech really hit me wrong, and some of what she said actually offended me. Caitlin truly was a liberal when she arrived in Natchez, and she routinely chastised me for being too conservative. But now it seems that her liberal “convictions” weren’t convictions at all, but rather easy opinions based on the lectures of Ivy League professors. After a few years in the South, she’s ready to give up on racial harmony and flee to more “enlightened”—read homogenous—environs.

  As for my sexual desire, that’s been running in overdrive for weeks now. Like Drew, I have consciously turned away from many women willing to ease that tension. Opportunity is always present in a town like this, where wives easily become bored with their limited routines. Every day those women present to the world a perfectly coiffed and manicured lady, but inside they’re like captive panthers pacing their cages. I haven’t yet sought solace there during Caitlin’s absences, but tonight, with Caitlin actually lying beside me in anticipation of sex, I don’t want solace here either. It’s a predicament, but my solution is simple and time tested—though never by me.

  I’ll simply fall asleep.

  I don’t even think Caitlin will mind that much. She’s checked her cell phone for text messages a half dozen times during the movie. And no matter how understanding I want to be, that irritates me. But these are small issues. My real dilemma is simple, my choice a stark one: love or duty.

  A woman or a town?

  Chapter

  29

  Sonny Cross’s funeral is very different from those of Kate Townsend and Chris Vogel. It’s held not in a church, but downtown at McDonough’s Funeral Home. The benches reserved for the family are filled, but there are several empty rows at the back of the funeral parlor. Many mourners in the pews are cops, most of them in uniform. Sonny’s flag-draped casket stands at the head of the center aisle, and a picture of him as a much younger man stands on an easel to the right of it.

  The service is conducted by the elderly Baptist pastor of the Second Creek Baptist Church, one of the most rural white churches in the county, a strong Klan area in the bad old days. He preaches a sermon of anger, not love, venting “righteous outrage” at the loss of a man who gave his life so that the rest of us might live in peace. I don’t care for the pastor’s tone, but I can’t argue with his sentiments. When he begins the eulogy, I discover something I didn’t know: Sonny Cross served as an infantryman in Vietnam, and was decorated for battlefield gallantry. I knew the man for four years, but he never once mentioned this. I never would have guessed it, either. He must have been drafted right out of high school.

  As I ponder Sonny’s life and death, it strikes me that, whatever his prejudices, he was one of the quiet heroes of this country. He never made much money; he rarely if ever got his picture in the paper; he never asked for special recognition. He simply worked hard to protect the ideals he was raised to believe in, and in the end, when called upon by fate, he gave the last full measure of devotion. When a plain woman with waist-length hair rises from the front pew and begins to sing “Amazing Grace” without accompaniment, I realize there are tears in my eyes.

  The singer is wearing a cotton dress that looks hand-sewn from a Simplicity pattern. As she sings about toils and snares, I relive the moments when the Asian face was illuminated in the window of the Lexus, when the holes appeared in the door below that face, and then me turning and seeing Sonny standing in his combat stance with his pistol, returning fire in the face of an automatic weapon. Sonny Cross was no movie actor with nothing to fear, but a man of flesh and blood facing his last seconds on earth with remarkable courage. That brave last stand was what sent the Lexus fleeing down the road. In retrospect, it almost certainly saved my life.

  And what did Sonny Cross say as he lay dying on the ground? Did he scream, “Call an ambulance!” Did he beg me not to let him die? No. He told me to check on his sons, to make sure they hadn’t been hit. Then he told me to make sure that the wife he’d divorced knew that he was sorry, that he was thinking of her at the end. Today those boys and that ex-wife sit in the wooden “family box” at the side of the funeral parlor, the
ir faces rigid with the stoic resignation of Appalachian hill people. Only the youngest boy has the glitter of tears in his eyes. There’s a man in the box, too, elderly but big, with the rawboned hands and red skin of a day laborer. His face is a more weathered likeness of Sonny’s. The father, I’ll bet.

  When the hymn is done, the pastor motions for the pallbearers to come forward. Eight deputies rise as one and lift the casket from its bier. Sheriff Billy Byrd stands at their head, his rigid jaw making plain that he’s more than ready to deliver the righteous retribution that the pastor demanded during his service. As the casket leaves the parlor by a side door, I rise with the rest of the mourners and walk out into the sunlight.

  Unlike the City Cemetery, Greenlawn Memorial Park has existed for only fifty years. It’s a more conventional graveyard, sited on rolling hills in the blue-collar area of Morgantown Road. People of all denominations may be buried here, so long as they’re white. There are probably more Baptist “residents” here than anything else, originating from the staggering aggregation of Baptist churches in the state. It always struck me as telling that Mississippi has the highest per capita number of churches in the nation but the lowest literacy rate. Yet somehow, out of this strange marriage of extremes, we produce some of the greatest artists in the world.

  About thirty people have gathered around Sonny’s open grave: family members, cops, an honor guard from Camp Shelby. There’s no pretense here. The pastor quotes some scripture; the honor guard fires its salute—seven rifles, three shattering volleys; then, as the echoes fade, a strange new sound floats across the hills.

  Bagpipes.

  I turn toward the sound and squint. Standing on a hill about sixty yards away is a lone piper wearing a tartan kilt and a black beret. Again the tune is “Amazing Grace,” but this time it carries a stark and lonely beauty that accomplishes what words and gunfire cannot: it pierces our veil of denial and makes us one with the departed, even as we find comfort in the sound. When the piper finishes, the honor guard folds the flag and delivers it to the mother of Sonny Cross’s children. She may be his ex-wife, but no one is arguing legalities today. True widowhood has little to do with the law.

  The crowd breaks up swiftly, and soon only the family is left by the grave. The big, red-faced man stands talking to Sonny’s widow. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit, almost certainly the only one he owns. Cross’s sons stand a few yards away, looking awkward and uncomfortable as they watch the cars in the lane drive away. As I study them, the oldest of the two seems to recognize me. He lifts his hand in a little wave, then walks toward me. I meet him halfway and offer my hand.

  “You were there when my dad died,” he says.

  “That’s right, Sonny,” I say.

  “They call me Junior.”

  “Probably not after today. I think you’re going to be Sonny from now on.”

  A look of utter seriousness takes possession of his face. Then, slowly, pride replaces it.

  “I know this is tough,” I tell him. “My wife died of cancer, and she was a lot younger than your dad.”

  This gets the boy’s attention. “Really?”

  “Yeah. It takes a long time to get over something like this. In some ways you never really do. But it gets better.”

  The boy bites his lip and kicks at a stick on the ground.

  “If you guys need any help, I want you to call me. My name is Penn Cage. I’ll be glad to help you out. That’s what your dad would have wanted.”

  “Okay.”

  “Has the sheriff asked after you boys? Is the department doing anything for your mother?”

  Anger tightens little Sonny’s face. “The sheriff’s a son of a bitch. He’s making out like my dad did something wrong. Not in public, you know, but with us. He said my dad took things from work he wasn’t supposed to take.”

  I swallow hard and try to hide my interest. “I don’t think your dad respected the sheriff much when it came to police work.”

  Sonny nods firmly. “That’s why he worked alone so much. He told me that.”

  My pulse quickens. This eleven-year-old knows much more than I would have expected. “Sonny, did you know I was working with your dad?”

  He nods again.

  “He told me it was up to me to finish the job. To catch the guys he was trying to get. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know the sheriff has probably asked you what I’m about to ask. But I’m not the sheriff, you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  “I figure your dad must have had a special place where he kept his work stuff.”

  The barest hint of a smile lights the boy’s eyes. “They been searching our place for two whole days.”

  “But they didn’t find anything?”

  “Nope.”

  I start to speak again, but a deep voice overwhelms my own. It’s the red-faced man from the funeral. “You boys get back to your mama,” he orders.

  Sonny and his brother instantly scamper toward their mother. This man is obviously accustomed to being obeyed. He walks toward me with a slow gait, his blue eyes focused on mine. I hold out my hand as he reaches me, and he shakes it carefully, like a man who knows he could hurt someone by simply closing his hand.

  “Hello, Mr. Cage,” he says.

  “Are you Sonny’s father?”

  “That’s right. Your daddy was my doctor back when I worked for Triton Battery.”

  I’m thankful for this. I’ve yet to meet a former patient who doesn’t have fond memories of my father. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened to Sonny.”

  Mr. Cross takes a slow breath, then lets out a deep sigh. “You were with him when he died, they said. That right?”

  “Yes, sir. I was.”

  “Did it really happen the way you told the sheriff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sonny done his duty?”

  “Mr. Cross, I never saw anything like it.”

  The big man grimaces, then nods twice as though settling something in his own mind. He’s shown no more emotion than a man making sure his son finished cutting someone’s grass as promised, but I sense that inside he is boiling with emotions that will never be outwardly expressed.

  “I saw you talking to Sonny, Junior,” he says.

  “He was saying that his father didn’t like the sheriff much.”

  Mr. Cross pokes at the dirt with his booted foot. “Billy Byrd’s a showboat. He cares more about newspaper headlines than he does about enforcing the law. That’s one way to be, I reckon. It’s not my way. Sonny’s neither.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Sonny told me you was working with him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He said you put a lot of bad outlaws away in Texas.”

  “I did my best.”

  “And now you write books?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The big man sniffs but asks no more questions.

  “Mr. Cross, as Sonny lay dying in his driveway, he asked me to finish the job for him. I mean to do that, if I can.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think Sonny kept a lot hidden from Sheriff Byrd. I think he did that because he knew the sheriff was likely to damage his investigations. But if I’m going to do what Sonny asked me to do, I need whatever evidence he had. Now, I know there were some surveillance videotapes, and I imagine he had notebooks, still photographs, and maybe even a computer. I’m also sure that Sheriff Byrd has been pressing you about this. I just want you to know the sheriff is no friend of mine. In fact, to be frank, I consider him an enemy.”

  Mr. Cross stares at me in silence for some time. Then he says, “You know where I live?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Way out Kingston Road. Almost where you turn to cut through to Liberty Road. I got thirty acres out there.”

  I wait for him to continue.

  “We’re having some family out there. Some food, some whiskey, you know th
e drill. You ought to ride out there.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s up to you. But Sonny spent quite a bit of time out there of an evening. I’d take the boys fishing or riding the four-wheeler, and he’d work. Might be worth your time to ride out.”

  My heart thumps in my chest. “I’ll do that.”

  “Just past Second Creek Baptist Church. Mailbox has a wrought-iron bronco on it. You can’t miss it.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  The bucking bronco mailbox marks a dirt driveway that leads back into the thick woods that border Kingston Road. On the way in, I pass two ponds and a baseball backstop. Then I see several pickup trucks parked before a simple frame house. I hate to interrupt a family gathering after a funeral, but Mr. Cross did invite me to come. Thankfully, as I park my Saab behind a massive Dodge truck, the big man opens a screen door and lumbers out to meet me.

  “Have any trouble finding it?”

  “No, it was just like you said.”

  Mr. Cross changes direction and walks toward a green Ford pickup. “Let’s take a little ride. My knees are too bad to do much walking these days.”

  I walk around his pickup and climb into the passenger seat.

  Mr. Cross drives onto the lawn and circles behind his house. The backyard looks about as I expected. There’s a Kubota tractor under a tin shed with some fig trees growing beside it, a glitter-painted bass boat on a trailer half covered by a blue tarp, and plastic hummingbird feeders hanging from almost every tree. Mr. Cross steers the truck into a couple of ruts and begins climbing a grassy hill. He obviously doesn’t feel talkative, so I say nothing. As we crest the hill, I spy a stand of trees beside yet another pond. Descending toward it, I make out a small camper trailer parked under the trees.

  “Sonny liked it out here,” Mr. Cross says. “I bought this place after Triton downsized me in ’eighty-six. Cost me my severance pay and all my stock options, but it was worth it.” He pulls the truck up beside the trailer but leaves the engine running. “This is where Sonny did most of his work.”

  “Is there electricity down here?”