A Shred of Truth

  “Who’s we?”

  “Men off the streets.” Filling his lungs, he ducked beneath the bench and edged forward until he could stand inside the tunnel. His breathing was fast and shallow.

  I turned off the fluorescent lights in the triple garage, propped a hydraulic jack in the gap between the dummy panel and the wall—I didn’t wanna get trapped in here, that was for sure—then followed my partner in crime into the cave’s intestines.

  Heading toward the cabin.

  The natural chambers had been bolstered with heavy beams and wire netting. What unlawful activities had flushed through these earthen tunnels? No doubt Chigger’s ancestors had utilized this space, perhaps for Prohibition bootlegging.

  The limestone cave’s only warmth emanated from forty-watt bulbs in ribbed metal covers. These craggy, cold innards of earth bore whiffs of rotting flesh, and my mind conjured images of ancient ravenous creatures roaming through here.

  Or, more recently, those two mastiffs.

  “This place is starting to mess with me, Freddy.”

  “Just ahead.”

  “We’ve gone too far. The house has to be back there.”

  My bearded guide stomped onward, the embodiment of an old-time adventurer. His shoulders were heaving with each breath. My wider frame grazed against the rough walls. We passed tunnel openings that wormed away into darkness, and I called out Mom’s name. Hoping. Praying.

  Nothing but echoes.

  Could Chigger be behind the past few days’ activities? Had he overhead Johnny talking in some alcohol-weakened moment about the discovered gold? Could the good ol’ boy guitarist have a personal vendetta reaching back somehow to my mother?

  I knew firsthand that the man had some strong feelings toward my brother. According to Freddy, he was also tangled up with the animosity of the Kraftsmen who molded the King James Bible to fit their views. This morning he’d flashed his ax tattoo as though flaunting his identity. As though daring me to catch him.

  Left step, right step. Breathe.

  I had to keep going, stay focused.

  By now, Chigger was in Atlanta, on the tour bus with my brother. They wouldn’t be back in town for a couple of days. Meanwhile, my mother could be here. Held captive in that cabin.

  Each step I took might be bringing us closer to each other.

  33

  Here,” my companion said, his chest still heaving. “This is it.”

  We emerged into a domed cavern large enough to accommodate fifteen to twenty people. Three bulbs protruded at shoulder height from the walls, casting shadows across the ground like crossed swords. Equidistant between the lights, manacles hung from bolted chains.

  “What is this place, Freddy?”

  “They brought us here. The Kraftsmen.”

  “The homeless guys? Why’d you follow them down here?”

  He stepped back. “You must believe. They picked us up in a van.”

  “A Dodge? Was it old and dingy?”

  “Maybe. No. A Ford, I think.”

  “Did it have any markings?”

  He shook his head. “But they told us they were with a mission. Quoted verses about the poor.”

  “Weren’t you suspicious?”

  “We were cold and wet. They fed us.”

  “So they gathered you up and brought you here. Did they tell you why? Didn’t you think it was a little fishy?”

  His toe scuffed at the dirt. He rammed his hands into threadbare coat pockets.

  “C’mon, Freddy. You talked me into coming here. Are you gonna tell me what happened, or do I have to drag it out of you?”

  “I’m … I’m afraid.”

  Couldn’t blame the guy for that. This place was spooky. Far off, the earth’s bowels rumbled, while the pitted tunnels breathed in an irregular pattern that belched cold air over my skin.

  “Just say it. I’m on your side, you know that.”

  His watery eyes wobbled. A slight nod.

  “Did they hurt you?” I asked.

  “Not me. No. Not the other white men.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Five. Or six. And the Kraftsmen. But there was a black man, just one. Older, real quiet. Sorta … slow, you know.”

  I waited. My eyes shifted to the manacles.

  “We should have jobs, the Kraftsmen told us. Should have our wives back. Our money. Houses.” Freddy C was rocking on his legs, head down. “Said it was the foreign mongrels who stole from us. And these sons of Ham, the Negroids—they corrupted our schools. Their rap music. The heathen drums.”

  The cavern’s chill seeped into my bones. Was that blood on the iron?

  “What’d they do, Freddy?”

  He lurched toward the wall. I waited for him to reply, but he seemed frozen, mesmerized by the light bulbs’ apathetic glare. I’d seen his sense of justice in action before, and I knew how tenuous his hold on reality was. Something had shaken him. If he didn’t face it, it could permanently destabilize him.

  “Don’t stop now,” I urged. “This is why you left me the pamphlet, right? Why you brought me down into this hellhole. You said I needed to tell the police.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  I paused. “Mean to what?”

  “I didn’t know.” His forehead touched the stone between the bolts. “This spot. They chained him here. I didn’t know.”

  “The black man?”

  “Can’t remember his name. Can’t do it.”

  “But you seem to know most of the homeless around here.”

  “Just passing through. Never seen him before.”

  “What’d they do to him?” I coaxed.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” A flutter of relief. “But you said—”

  “They didn’t do anything. They made us. Made us do it.”

  My body calcified with the horror of where this was leading. “Do what?”

  “He made us.”

  “Chigger, you mean.”

  Freddy’s head moved up and down, scraping against the sedimentary rock. “He gave us a whip. He … If we didn’t, we would stay down here. Left to die. And nobody would know.” His skull thudded into the wall. “Just like that woman. She drowned, but no one did a thing.”

  A homeless lady. I knew the story. Young punks shoved her into the Cumberland at the downtown river front, and her body caught beneath a moored barge only yards from the spot of the attack. She’d been left there for days.

  “Listen,” I told him. “I would’ve come looking for you.”

  My friend nodded, but his finger was poking at the cavern wall. “He had a gun.” Jab, jab. “Put it to the man’s head. Said he’d kill him if we didn’t … if we didn’t …”

  “Use the whip?”

  His finger kept jabbing. He needed to put his shame into words before it burrowed down.

  “Did you do it?”

  He froze.

  “Freddy. Did you whip him?”

  Jab, jab, jab.

  I waited, watched his chest swell.

  In a sob, the answer erupted from his throat and reverberated against the walls. “Only once. I … did it only once.” He pushed his palms against his eyes, but tears squeezed down his dusty cheeks. “Only once.”

  I set my hand on his shoulder, felt my own ribs tighten. Felicia’s life spilling onto the sidewalk. Her lips, frothy in death. Was there anything I could’ve done?

  Freddy shook himself. Pushed away from the wall.

  “Let’s get outta here,” I said.

  In the pale light, determination filled his eyes. “They let him go,” he said.

  “Was he badly hurt?”

  “Dropped him at the train tracks. At the Gulch.”

  “What about you and the others?”

  “Took us to Fort Negley, past the stone arches. That’s where the Kraftsmen meet. We could be part of their plan, they said. Heroes.”

  “What plan?”

  “The South will rise again.”

  “O
kay. So you went last night.”

  “But I left.” His sandy eyebrows furrowed. “And then you saw me, out on the street. I hid that pamphlet. Gave it to you. You can tell the police.”

  “Tell them what? They need something to go on.”

  “Won’t believe me. Nobody believes.”

  “Chigger’s a terrorist. He used fear to manipulate you. We need some evidence. We could go to the Gulch, try to find this guy to be a witness. Show his wounds.”

  Freddy flinched.

  “What?”

  His gaze flickered between me and the wall bolts. “He’s dead.”

  “But you told me that—”

  “Saw him. This morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Near the Marathon Building. He was hunched over on the tracks. A train was coming, and he just looked at me. Afraid. He remembered. The train blew its horn, and he never moved. Never even made a sound.”

  On some level I guess we all want to pay for our sins. While most cultures embrace the concept of a sacrifice for wrongdoing, most of us don’t want the sacrifice of another in our place. Seems unfair. Who would do such a thing anyway?

  “Freddy.” I tried to comfort him. “You know, Jesus was whipped too.”

  “Because of people like me.”

  “And me.” I felt my throat tighten. “But he still forgave.”

  Whether Freddy C defied the idea or found strength in it, I’m not sure. He ran his hands over his face, through his hair, poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. He then pivoted on one foot and faced the black maw of the cave system.

  “On through there,” he said. “The cabin.”

  “No. Let’s go back. We don’t need any more of this.”

  “Said we need evidence.”

  “First, we need to get some fresh air. Clear our heads. You can just tell me what to look for, and I’ll come back on my own.”

  “You need help. The dogs.”

  I hesitated. “They’re sedated.”

  “They wake up, they’ll kill you. I’ll be a lookout.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Friends, Artemis.” He turned. “They work together. Let’s go.”

  34

  The tunnel’s uneven stone walls curled to the right and came to an abrupt stop. Between two beams, the door to a small service elevator faced us.

  Not your usual residential appliance.

  I hit the button, and we waited like new check-ins at a hotel. The whir of motors told us it was descending. The door slid open. We stepped in. There was a panel with a keyhole and three buttons. The lowest was illuminated, and I assumed the other two represented the levels of the log cabin.

  “Where to, Freddy?”

  “Never been in the house.”

  “How do you know we’ll find any evidence?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “Chigger. He said we’d understand if we saw upstairs. Said it would explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “Why he has hate.”

  “The second floor then.”

  The elevator rose with creaks and complaints. My heart accelerated with each ascending foot. What would we find up there? Were the dogs still in la-la land, or would they pound up the stairs and tear into us upon arrival?

  No doubt Chigger had built this spacious dwelling over the ruins of his predecessors. He probably felt a physical connection, a sense of honor, living off the same land that had swallowed and crushed into dust the bones of his people. Meanwhile, racism in the name of religion continued to rise through the family tree and discolor the newest offshoots.

  To rid oneself of this blight? To reprogram one’s way of thinking? I couldn’t pretend to understand what that would entail.

  Or maybe I could.

  For two years I’d been tearing free from the clutches of my own past.

  The elevator slowed, bounced once, stopped. In the small space, there was no way to press back out of sight. Head-on—that’s how we’d have to do this.

  The door opened into a bedroom darkened by heavy drapes. At the edges, sunlight sliced through and revealed wall decorations in a country-western motif—hats and spurs and chaps. No sign of the dogs, thank goodness.

  We stepped over the threshold. Floorboards cringed beneath our feet.

  Still no movement.

  I reached for a lamp by the window, my hand finding the switch even as it brushed the crystals that dangled from the rose-colored cloth shade.

  “Hello?” A drowsy female voice startled me. “Who’s there?”

  The lamplight cast warm hues onto a fourposter bed. A young woman pulled herself up against the headboard, questions on her lips and fear ballooning in her eyes. A tray of food rested on the nightstand next to a pile of James Lee Burke novels.

  “Hi,” I said. Great start. “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” She lifted a baton attached to a cord. “This feeds straight to the alarm company. I push this button, and the cops’ll be here in minutes.”

  “Hold on. Lemme explain.”

  “Does my brother know you’re here?”

  “Chigger. Uh, he’s on the road, but he—”

  “I know my family’s whereabouts. I want to know why you’re here.”

  “I’m Johnny Ray’s brother. Johnny Ray Black.”

  “Never met you before.” The baton hand motioned. “And who’s he?”

  “My friend, Freddy C. He’s harmless.”

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” he mumbled from just outside the lamp’s pool of light. In his bulky layers of coats, he cut an imposing figure.

  Trying to divert her attention, I pointed at the books on the nightstand. “You a Burke fan?”

  She set her hand on the stack. “I’m a big reader. He’s in my top five.”

  “The Dave Robicheaux books—”

  “Are the best. His word pictures, the atmosphere … He’s like a poet.”

  “That’s what got me hooked too.”

  This literary connection seemed to win her over, and she lowered the baton onto the bedspread. Fellow readers share a camaraderie that goes beyond class or sex or skin color. I felt almost guilty for taking advantage of that.

  Almost.

  “Chigger told you to come, didn’t he?” she surmised. “That hardheaded fool. He said he’d send one of his buddies to keep an eye out for me, as if I can’t take care of myself. I’m nineteen years old, you know. Not a baby.”

  “Gotta humor the guy. So everything’s okay?”

  “The dogs were going wild earlier, but they quieted down.” She pulled her ponytail around so that it draped down the front of her sweatshirt. “Next time you should call first. Didn’t your mama teach you any manners?”

  “Sorry.”

  “A girl needs a chance to look proper. Speaking of, where are my manners? My name’s Trish.” She extended her arm. “Not Tricia, not Patricia. Just Trish.”

  I shook her hand. It was cold. “Good to meet you, Just Trish.”

  “Funny man. And what’s your name?”

  “Aramis.” No use hiding it now that I’d revealed my brother’s identity.

  “Like in The Three Musketeers.”

  “Exactly. That’s where my mom got it.”

  “A woman with good taste in names and books. Ooh, I like her already.”

  Casual, keep it casual. “You sound like you might know her.”

  “Should I?”

  “I don’t know. I just—”

  “It’s not like my brother lets me out much. He’s afraid something else might happen. Since the accident, I get these blackouts. That’s why he installed the elevator—so I wouldn’t fall down the stairs during a seizure.”

  Did Chigger keep her locked up to protect her? Was she the motivation for his prejudice? I’d never even heard about his having a sister. On the far nightstand, plastic prescription bottles stood in a row. Did he keep her sedated? Or maybe there was even more to t
his, something darker.

  Trish seemed spunky enough though. Not exactly the abused stereotype.

  I decided to push a little. “You ever been to the bottom level of the elevator?”

  “No, and that’s a perfect example of Chigger being a worrywart. He’s afraid I’ll go wandering around down there and get lost. Without his key, the car won’t even go all the way down.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You know, Aramis, my great-granddaddy ran moonshine out of those caves. Least that’s what he told us. He used to exaggerate things, but he was quite a storyteller. Maybe that’s where I got my love of books.”

  “Well.” I looked at Freddy, then back at the fourposter. “Guess we should get going now that we’ve done our good deed and checked on you. Anything you need before we head out?”

  “I can make my way around, thanks.”

  “Just offering.”

  “I’ll show you to the door.” As if to prove she was capable, Trish flipped back the bedspread and hitched her legs over the mattress. The sweatshirt caught and exposed soft, youthful thighs. She shifted the shirt back down over her knees.

  I found something else on the far wall to look at. “You need a hand?”

  “What’d I tell you? I’m fine.”

  “What happened? If you don’t mind. In the accident.”

  “My brother’s never told you? I’m not surprised.” She stood, slipped into a long housecoat, then braced a hand against the bedpost. “We were in New York. He’d always dreamed of going to see Radio City Music Hall and those places. When he finally signed on here with one of the big labels, he said we were going to celebrate. Of course, I had no idea that’s where he was taking me.”

  “Pretty cool.”

  “I was thirteen.” She took a breath. Her cheeks looked rosy in the lamplight. “It was exciting stuff—the Statue of Liberty, the Stock Exchange, Times Square, all the touristy places. The morning we were supposed to fly home, Chigger insisted on taking a cab to the Twin Towers. Didn’t even care about going inside. He just wanted to look up at them. We’d never seen anything that tall. I mean, the BellSouth Tower’s nothing in comparison.”

  “You know that Signature Tower’s gonna be a thousand feet tall.”

  “In Nashville? Ooh, I’d love to go to the top of that.”

  “I interrupted you.”