Mississippi Blood

  “I think something clipped my lung . . . can’t breathe right. How close are we to the river?”

  “Close.”

  “Don’t go too fast. The last thirty yards top a little berm, and there’s nothing but river after that.”

  It takes inhuman restraint to slow the Harvester, but as I battle the fear coursing through my body, I remember Colonel Eklund describing my father’s actions in Korea. If Dad could do what he did in the face of almost certain death, then I can ignore what’s behind us and slow down to keep from launching us into the river.

  “See any lights behind us?” Lincoln asks in a hoarse voice.

  “Not yet. Do they know Snake has a boat out here?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s pray that boat was Snake’s ace in the hole. Maybe they think they have us penned against the river.”

  Without warning the truck tops a rise and the Mississippi River appears like the dark edge of an ocean. I kick the brake pedal, then ease back enough so as not to skid, and finally the old truck shudders to a stop.

  “Where’s the boat?” I ask.

  “It was tied to a tree this afternoon. Look to your left.”

  Sure enough, about thirty yards downstream, I see gleaming chrome rails bobbing in the powerful current.

  “Can you make it if I bring the woman?” I ask.

  “I’ll make it. Is she alive?”

  “I don’t know. Yell out if you need help.”

  As I go around to the passenger door, I remember that Wilma Deen is the woman who blinded Keisha Harvin. But it’s not her I’m rescuing. It’s the testimony about Snake Knox killing Viola that Wilma began back in the stinking shack. Will she ever repeat those words? I wonder as I catch her under the arms and drag her from the truck. Or is all this for nothing?

  It takes me nearly two minutes to drag her limp body down to the tree where the boat is moored. By the time I get there, Lincoln has pulled the ski boat over to the bank.

  “I can’t help you lift her,” he says.

  “Just hold the boat.”

  As I did with Sleepy Johnston three months ago in the basement of Brody Royal’s house, I get down and work myself under the woman until I’m in position to get her into a fireman’s carry, then heave her into the air by main strength. My knees nearly buckle from the strain as I struggle erect, and before I make it, the familiar rumble of engines makes my heart stutter.

  “Throw her in!” Lincoln shouts. “In thirty seconds we die.”

  “You get in! Use the ladder in the back.”

  As four headlights top the rise, I roll Wilma over the gunwale, then climb into the boat like a kid rolling over a fence.

  The key on Snake’s ring fits the ignition. One glance into the stern shows me Lincoln dropping to the deck and waving for me to go. As the boat drifts away from the riverbank, I lower the motor’s trim, hoping to get some separation from the shore without having to crank the motor and pinpoint our location.

  The headlights on the bikes cut through the mist over the water like spotlights in an old war movie. What are those guys thinking? That we rode into the river and drowned?

  Just as I think we’re going to slip away clean, one of the bikers sweeps his headlight right to left along the surface of the river. There’s nothing to do now but run. With a turn of the key and a little choke added, the inboard roars to blessed life, and when I shove the throttle forward, the boat throws me back against the seat with reassuring power.

  But light travels faster than matter, and the headlight picks us out before we make much headway. Another burst of gunfire kicks my heart into overdrive, this time accompanied by blinding muzzle flashes from the bank receding behind us. Shoving the throttle to the wall, I crouch low and pray for deliverance.

  The next shots come from Lincoln, who’s kneeling in the stern with his right arm outstretched, emptying the clip of his pistol at the shore. Get down, I urge silently, afraid he’ll be killed by the last stray bullet fired in anger, like some soldier who dies an hour after a peace treaty is signed. The bikers’ return fire chops up our growing wake, and then a bullet punches through the hull. If they hit the engine, we’re screwed.

  “Get down, you crazy bastard!”

  After a few more reckless seconds, Lincoln drops to his knees and crawls slowly up to the captain’s chair to my left. Blood streaks the deck beneath him. Looking back, I see that we’ve cleared the range of anything but a rifle, and not even one-percenters carry rifles on their bikes. Sawed-off shotguns, maybe, but not long guns.

  With heroic effort, Lincoln struggles into the captain’s chair and faces forward. His breathing is alarmingly ragged.

  “How long, you figure?” he asks, coughing.

  Natchez lies roughly twenty-five miles south: one river bend, then a long, straight shot down to the big bluff and the landing at Under-the-Hill. “Forty minutes, max. Thirty if we’re lucky.”

  Lincoln nods, then grimaces.

  “Can you make it?”

  “Somebody needs to live through this shit. Might as well be me.”

  Snake’s speedboat is making fifty-three knots now. The broad river runs silver-black under the moon tonight, the Mississippi shore looming high on our left, the Louisiana Delta fading away on our right. Clouds of stars fill the sky over this dark stretch of water. A mile ahead, the lights of a pushboat and its barges are rounding the bend. At long last, I realize, we are headed downstream. Even if our engine fails, the river will carry us home.

  “Hey,” I say. “Where’s home for you? Chicago?”

  Lincoln considers the question. Then he shrugs. “Ain’t got one, really. Not anymore. Guess I need to find me a new one.”

  “Or an old one.”

  “What’s that mean? Mama’s dead now. Nothing here for me.”

  “Maybe. But at least you’ve got a start here.”

  “What you mean?”

  I laugh quietly, thinking of Serenity. “You’ve got Mississippi blood, man.”

  “Mississippi blood? Shit. What’s that mean?”

  I recall reading Serenity’s galley in my basement, and with that memory comes the taste of her skin and the scent of her hair. “Just something that writer put in one of her books. Something her uncle used to say. An old pulpwood cutter named Catfish.”

  “Yeah? What was that?”

  “He said, ‘Mississippi blood is different. It’s got some river in it. Delta soil, turpentine, asbestos, cotton poison. But there’s strength in it, too. Strength that’s been beat but not broke.’”

  Lincoln grunts. Then, after a period of reflection: “I reckon that describes Mama pretty well. If she hadn’t had that, she’d have died a long time ago.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  I can tell from his breathing that he’s turned the chair to face me.

  “What is it?” I ask, a little anxiously.

  “What you think about what Snake said? About your mama being the one?”

  I turn to him and shake my head. “No way. She tried to do what your mother wanted, and she failed. The Double Eagles murdered Viola. Just like they killed Henry, and Caitlin, and Walt, and Sleepy Johnston, and all those black boys so long ago. And now they’re dead themselves. The ones who did the worst of it, anyway.”

  Lincoln nods slowly, weighing my words. “Are you sure you killed Snake back there?”

  “Brother . . . that Harvester crushed three Harleys after it hit him. He’s nothing but a pile of meat on that road. The possums and coons are already eating him. Don’t give it another thought. It’s over.”

  I turn my gaze back to the dark water, and to the faint dome of light over the horizon that marks the presence of Natchez and Vidalia. Already fewer stars are visible overhead.

  “Mississippi blood, huh?” Lincoln murmurs.

  I nod and smile into the wind. “You got it on both sides.”

  Epilogue

  Against all odds, Wilma Deen survived her throat wound. I hoped she might feel some gratitude to me for
saving her life, but I should have known better. Thus far she has shown no inclination to repeat the accusation that Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield murdered Viola Turner. John Kaiser told me she’s hired a tough lawyer, one who’s trying to negotiate the most generous plea bargain he can get for his client. And because the U.S. attorney is disinclined to bargain with the woman who blinded Keisha Harvin with acid, I have no idea yet whether Wilma might possibly help me get Dad released early from prison.

  Cleotha Booker came out of her coma after dawn on Saturday morning, only a few hours after Snake Knox died. Her condition is guarded, her prognosis fair. According to Kaiser, Dolores St. Denis has refused to leave the Baton Rouge hospital where the Cat Lady is being treated. Kaiser had hoped that Dolores would send Snake Knox to death row at Parchman, but I’m glad she won’t be put to the test. I’m not sure she could have faced Snake in a courtroom and recounted the terrible events that had bound them together for so long.

  Lincoln survived his gunshot wound, but he required a lengthy surgery, plus an additional procedure on one cornea, which had been lacerated by splintered glass from the truck’s rear windshield. Three nights ago, not long after I brought him into the hospital covered with blood, Sheriff Byrd showed up and started trying to arrest us both. Rodney does lie within his county, after all. But I had phoned Kaiser for help as Lincoln and I approached the boat ramp at Natchez Under-the-Hill, and while the FBI agent was furious at me over our “freelance” expedition to Rodney, my revelation that Billy Byrd had been in contact with Snake Knox all along refocused Kaiser’s anger entirely. Within fifteen minutes of Sheriff Byrd’s arrival at the hospital, Lincoln and I became the least of the corrupt lawman’s concerns. This morning the sheriff was relieved of duty by the governor of Mississippi, and he departed office with federal charges pending against him.

  Lincoln remains in St. Catherine’s Hospital in guarded condition, both eyes covered with gauze pads. The two times I’ve been to see him, he’d been given some serious painkillers, so we couldn’t say much.

  I plan to go back as soon as I can.

  Four days after Walt Garrity died, he was buried in a flag-draped coffin in Navasota, Texas. He would have been surprised by the turnout—not only the size of the crowd, but by who showed up.

  There was an Honor Guard from the U.S. Army, their M-16s and polished hardware gleaming in the pale sun. There was a formidable cohort of Texas Rangers, some so old their faces looked like tack leather beneath their white Stetsons, others young enough to have been Walt’s grandchildren.

  The district attorneys of several counties showed up, including my former boss, Joe Cantor, from my old stomping ground of Houston. Most DAs brought their top investigators with them. You couldn’t count the cops from various jurisdictions, but I recognized many by the way their eyes took in the scene. Once a cop, always a cop.

  Walt’s wife, Carmelita, was a little short with us at the church, but in my view we were lucky she didn’t curse us out of the building. All she’d wanted from life was to spend Walt’s last years with him, and we had denied her that. Him, too.

  We had quite a contingent at the funeral. My mother, of course. Annie and Mia, too. Joe Russell and a couple of our bodyguards drove a slowly recovering Tim Weathers over from Dallas. Even Serenity flew from Atlanta to Houston and rented a car to reach the church shortly before the service started. She told me she was writing an article about Walt’s life for the Journal-Constitution.

  Jamie Lewis, Miriam Masters, and Caitlin’s father were there representing the Natchez Examiner. I was surprised John Masters had taken time out of his day for something like that, but a private jet can get you anywhere in the country pretty fast. When I first spied him outside the church, the media baron saw the surprise in my face and said, “Walt Garrity died saving my step-grandbaby. Or near enough, anyway. I think they ought to put up a goddamn statue of him.”

  The eulogy was given by Karl Eklund, the colonel who had commanded Walt and my father during the Korean War. Colonel Eklund told a few stories about Walt, some funny, others poignant. But he brought tears to the eyes of some very hard men when he said:

  “Corporal Garrity lived by a hard code. He always did his duty—in all weathers, no matter the odds—and he did it to the end. Like the Good Book says: ‘Greater love hath no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ Amen.”

  When the seven rifles cracked over the Texas plain, cops and soldiers alike looked like stone figures carved in the act of saluting. But by the time the echoes faded, some were coughing into their fists or wiping their eyes on their sleeves. My mother moved in unconscious synchrony with them, softly dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

  Annie tugged at my hand, and I leaned down for her to whisper in my ear: “I want to do something for Mrs. Garrity.”

  I thought about it. “There’s really nothing you can do for her. But you can do something for Walt. Don’t ever forget what he did for us. Thirty years from now, when you’re grown up with children of your own, and you look down at them and feel lucky . . . think about Walt for just a minute. That would make him the happiest, if he knew.”

  Annie looked up at me with confusion. “He will know, Dad.”

  I wish I believed that, I thought, looking over the heads before me at the faded funeral tent, and in its precious shade the coffin on its bier. The head of the Honor Guard handed Carmelita Garrity the folded American flag.

  “What happens now?” Annie asked softly.

  “Usually the people leave at this point.”

  “Who finishes burying him?”

  “The cemetery has men that do that. Gravediggers.”

  “With shovels?”

  “In the old days, yes. Now they use a backhoe for most of it.”

  Annie looked concerned about this. Rising on tiptoe, she peered between the bodies of the slowly dispersing crowd.

  “I don’t think they’re going to get to use their backhoe today,” she said.

  Looking toward the grave, I saw Colonel Eklund and three other men picking up shovels lying near the tent. One man took hold of the chemical-green Astroturf covering the dirt pile and tossed it to the side. Then Colonel Eklund gave a quiet order, and the old soldiers spaded their shovels into the Texas earth and began to fill the open grave. I started when I realized that one white-haired man was missing. If Dad were here, he would have said to hell with his failing heart and picked up a shovel himself, and not even my mother would have asked him to stop.

  “Tom should be here,” Mom whispered in my ear. “Those are his men.”

  I squeezed Annie’s hand, then walked forward and stood behind the oldest man laboring to fill Walt’s grave. After two more shovelfuls, he turned unsteadily, met my eyes with a questioning gaze.

  “Tom Cage’s son,” I said quietly.

  He put the shovel in my hand.

  This is how it should always be, I thought, spading the metal edge into the dirt.

  It meant something to be with those men—a quiet band who had bled for their country and for their brothers. During those sweaty minutes, I had the feeling that everything I’d believed as a child was true: that right meant more than might; that being faithful and good meant more than being rich; that honor superseded all.

  If only that feeling could last.

  While the crowd dispersed, our group clumped together near the grave. As we spoke in hushed tones, I saw Serenity hovering at the periphery, her gaze on me. When the chance presented itself, I slipped through the black-clad bodies, took her hand, and led her under a tree about twenty yards away.

  “It’s good to see you,” I told her. “Away from everyone else.”

  She smiled at that and squeezed my hand. “I’ve missed you. That was an intense few days.”

  I nodded but said nothing. What could I possibly say that would convey my true feelings in that moment? I very much wanted to kiss her, but how would Tee react to that? Or Annie? Or my mother? I knew that if I looked back towa
rd the grave, I would see Mom peering at us from between the mourners.

  “How are your burns?” I asked as we pulled apart.

  Tee waved her hand to dismiss my concern. “Coupla more scars to show in bars, that’s all. How’s Lincoln doing?”

  “I think he’s going to be okay. I’m going to see him tonight. We’re flying back after the funeral.”

  She absorbed this news with a forced smile. “Good. Maybe you guys can find a little common ground now.”

  “Maybe.”

  A gust of wind kicked up, sending a blast of Texas grit flying against us. We turned our backs to it and huddled shoulder to shoulder.

  “Penn,” Tee said softly, looking past me to my mother, “something’s been bothering me. I’ve tried to forget it, but I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “My head’s full of things like that.”

  She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Remember that last night we were together? The night your mother walked in on us in bed?”

  “Of course.”

  “You spoke to Quentin on the phone that night. And he basically ordered you not to pursue the report that the sheriff’s deputies were tampering with the hair-and-fiber evidence.”

  I tried to keep my face impassive as I looked back at Serenity, and perhaps I succeeded, because she went on without noticing my discomfort.

  “The thing is, that made absolutely no sense. The cops already had a match on your father’s hair, so why tell you not to pursue the tampering? Who could Quentin possibly have been trying to protect?”

  My breathing slowed to almost nothing. Serenity’s dark eyes probed mine, not with intrusiveness, but with genuine puzzlement. “Am I crazy?” she asked. “Have you ever figured that out?”

  Without quite meaning to, I raised my hands to her upper arms and took hold of her, my eyes never leaving hers.

  “You’re not crazy. But I can’t go any further than that. Okay?”

  She looked back at me, still lost, but then her eyes widened and she swallowed hard. Just when I thought she was going to ask another question, she laid her face against my chest and hugged me tight.