The Devil's Punchbowl

  “Can I help you?” asks a middle-aged woman sorting dresses on a circular rack.

  “I’m looking for Darla McRaney.”

  “Darla mostly stays over in housewares.”

  Caitlin quickly navigates the empty aisles until she reaches an area filled with thin metal pots and imitation Tupperware. In the next aisle, above a rack of blenders, she sees Darla McRaney’s head. She knows it’s Darla because a girl would have to be almost six feet tall to be seen above the blenders.

  Making a U around the end of the aisle, Caitlin approaches Darla cautiously, like a naturalist trying not to spook a timid animal. In spite of this, Darla looks up sharply and takes a step back, blushing scarlet.

  “I didn’t see you,” she says. “Can I help you?”

  “Darla, my name is Caitlin. I’m a very good friend of Penn Cage.”

  The girl stares back for several moments, neither breathing nor blinking. Then she starts to back away.

  “Wait,” Caitlin says. “Please, wait. I know you gave Penn that note at the Ramada Inn. I know you tried to disguise yourself, but he recognized you. He thought you worked at a restaurant, but I found you anyway.”

  “I used to work at a restaurant,” the girl says in a dazed voice. “Franky’s Pizza. I liked it there, but I kept putting on weight. I had to quit.”

  Caitlin nods with empathy.

  “But I don’t know nothing about no note,” Darla says, twice as loudly as she’d spoken before.

  Caitlin can’t help but smile at this obvious lie.

  “But you knew exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned the Ramada and Penn Cage.”

  Darla licks her lips, then looks around as though suspicious someone is watching her.

  “I was at the Ramada,” she says. “So were a lot of people. And I did see the mayor there. But I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no note. I haven’t passed notes to men since grade school.”

  Caitlin takes a step forward and speaks with sisterly intimacy. “I’m trying to help Linda Church. She’s in terrible danger, more even than she knows. I know you’ve been trying to help her, you and your friends. But she needs more help than that.”

  Fear glitters in Darla’s eyes. “I told you, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout any a that. I gotta get back to work. I got customers.”

  “I don’t see any customers,” Caitlin says gently. “But I’ll be glad to buy something if you’ll tell me just a little bit of the truth.”

  “I did,” Darla insists.

  “Have you seen Linda yourself? The reason I’m asking you is because of your eye makeup. I saw you didn’t know how to put it on, and I figured that if Linda was with you, she would have fixed it for you.”

  Darla looks on the verge of tears. Her neck is splotchy, and her breath is going shallow. “I can’t talk anymore. Please, go away. Leave me alone.”

  Caitlin reaches into her purse and hands Darla a card with her cell number on it. “I want the same thing you do, Darla. I want Linda to be safe. Please call me later. Think about all this. You’ll know it’s the right thing to do.”

  Darla accepts the card with a shaking hand, then turns and hurries down the aisle toward a collection of Chinese lawn mowers.

  Caitlin knows the girl is lying, but sometimes you have to stop pushing and let the source make her own decision. With a girl as skittish as Darla McRaney, it shouldn’t take long.

  CHAPTER

  40

  Car doors close with a disturbing finality in cemeteries. Tim lies under the earth now, a few flowers on top of his coffin, dropped in by family and friends. He wasn’t buried on Catholic Hill, but he does lie within sight of it. This wasn’t a punishment, but a matter of limited space. Green Astroturf carpet conceals the mound of dirt that the backhoe will use to fill in the grave. The familiar green canopy of McDonough’s funeral home keeps the sun off the few people who remain: Dr. Jessup and his wife, some relations from California, Julia and the baby.

  A second knot of people stands several yards away, mostly pallbearers, myself among them. These men I knew as boys flew so far to do their somber duty, and though most of us haven’t seen each other much in the past twenty-five years, we’re as comfortable as brothers who live on separate coasts. Paul Labry stands with us, waiting, as I asked him to do at the cathedral.

  After a couple of quiet jokes, well-concealed smiles, and well-meant but empty promises to stay in touch, the guys head for their rented cars. After the short line of vehicles disappears up the lane, I turn to Paul, but find myself facing Julia Jessup. She’s left Tim junior with his grandmother. Her eyes are bloodshot, the skin around them raw and swollen.

  Labry takes a step back out of courtesy, but one hard glance from Julia sends him back another twenty feet.

  “I know I look bad,” she says in a cracked voice. “I’m not getting much sleep. Tim used to help me with the baby. A lot more than most men do, I think. And Tim junior’s not sleeping well at all now.”

  “I’m sorry, Julia.”

  “Are you?” Her hollow eyes probe mine. “I came over here because I want you to know something. I didn’t want Tim doing what he did. The thing that got him killed. But he did it anyway. I think you should know that he did it for his father, and for you.”

  A wave of heat goes through my face. “Me?”

  She nods with conviction. “Tim really had you up on a pedestal. A lot of people do, I think. He never forgot how close you were when you were young, and when you stopped being friends, he blamed himself. He thought he’d let you down somehow. You went on to be a big success, and he wound up dealing cards on a casino boat. I told him that was honest work and nothing to be ashamed of, but it didn’t help. He was ashamed. And after he found out whatever was really going on with that boat, it just ate at him until he had to do something.”

  “I’m truly sorry, Julia. Tim was a good man, and I wish he hadn’t gotten involved with any of that. I wish I hadn’t let him.”

  “I just want to know if it did any good,” she says. “Because my son is going to have to live the rest of his life without a father. Was it worth it, Penn? Did Tim accomplish one goddamned thing by dying?”

  While I try to find a suitable answer, Julia says, “What about you? Have you done what you promised you would do?”

  As I try to recall exactly what I promised Tim that night, his widow turns and walks back to his grave without waiting for an answer.

  “What was that about?” Labry asks, coming up behind me.

  “Did you hear any of it?”

  He shakes his head. “She made it pretty clear that was a private conversation.”

  I take deep breath and blow out a long rush of air, trying to flush the guilt from my system. “Let’s go over there, away from the family.”

  We walk a little way up the lane, then climb some steps to a hill shaded by cedar trees. Like most of the names in this cemetery, the one engraved on the stones in this plot is familiar to me. A cool but gentle breeze blows over the hill, and the sun shines bright enough to warm the bricks of the wall around the plot. Leaning back against the wall, I regard Paul Labry.

  Where most of the Catholics in Natchez are Irish or Italian, Paul is of French descent. By marriage, he’s related to the Acadians forced by the Spanish to live near what would become the infamous Morville Plantation. Labry has dark eyes and skin and he’s still handsome despite losing some hair and putting on weight. He looks more like an aging poet than the manager of an office-supply business, but I never cease to be amazed by how poorly some people fit the stereotype of their occupation.

  “Paul, I want to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else.”

  “I thought you wanted to ask me something.”

  “That too. I’ve decided to step down as mayor.”

  “What?” He looks me from head to toe. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  Tim asked me the same thing the night we met here. “No, it’s not that. My reasons are personal, mostly to do with Annie and Caitlin.”

  Paul’s watching me like a man who still can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Are you guys getting bac
k together? You and Caitlin?”

  “If she’ll have me.”

  “Are you kidding? You know she loves you.”

  “Not enough to live here with me.”

  He purses his lips while he mulls this over. “Is that it, then? You want to stay in Natchez, but you feel you can’t?”

  “No. It’s time for me to go. The reason I’m talking to you is that I want you to stand for mayor in the special election after I’m gone.”

  Labry draws back, his face pale. “Are you serious?”

  “It should have been you two years ago. I should never have run.”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re the man for the job, Paul. I think you should announce on the same day I resign, and I’ll throw you my full support.”

  Labry turns away, looking thoughtfully toward the tent over Tim’s grave. “I used to think I might try it,” he says. “But I’m forty-four now, and I’m starting to think I don’t understand the world anymore. My father’s business is going down, Penn. Wal-Mart and the rest have about killed it. I’ve tried to save it, but the hole just keeps getting deeper.” His cheeks redden in embarrassment. “All the old retail places are going down. Hell, we don’t have more than a handful of Jewish families left in town, and they were the backbone of the retail economy when we were growing up.”

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to play the next card, but Paul’s not giving me any choice. “I’m sorry to hear that. Because if you don’t run, you know who’s going to get the job.”

  Paul blanches again. “Shad Johnson?”

  “Yep.”

  “Christ.”

  “Who knows? Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

  “Bullshit.” Paul lowers his voice. “I was talking to Father Nightingale, from out at Mandamus Baptist? He speaks for a lot of the black community. He doesn’t even like Shad being district attorney. Said you can’t trust him as far as you’d throw him. I’m not sure the blacks would even turn out for him.”

  “They will if you’re not in the race. But if you’re in it, they’ll vote for you. They know where your heart is.”

  Labry looks away for a while, then turns back to me. “Penn, if you can’t accomplish the things we dreamed about, what chance do I have?”

  “That’s the wrong way to look at it. I aimed too high. I wanted to solve the education problem because that’s where salvation lies, but I couldn’t do it. I used to blame the whites for that, but there’s blame on both sides.”

  He nods dejectedly. “You know what I think the real obstacle is?”

  “Does it even matter? The existing public facilities couldn’t absorb the kids from the private schools even if their parents decided to send them.”

  “Oh, hell, that’s just a matter of money. If we really brought all those kids into one system, what you’d have is a bunch of white kids who couldn’t make the athletic teams and a bunch of black kids who couldn’t make their grades. You talk about something nobody wants? That’s it.”

  There’s truth in what Labry says, but he knows the reasons run deeper. “Paul, if I was going to live up to my principles, I would have moved Annie to the public school on the day I was elected. But I didn’t. I was unwilling to risk my child’s education, and maybe her safety, unless there were a dozen other white kids in there with her. It’s time for someone with more conviction and a different list of priorities to give it a shot. And that’s you.”

  Labry’s blushing now. “You know, I think when we lost the Toyota plant, we lost the mandate you had after the election. We’ll eventually get there on education. But people’s first concern is high-paying jobs.”

  “You’ll never get the latter without the former. But there are lots of other things to be done. Annexation of county land. Pushing through the eco-preserve on the creek. Keeping the selectmen from covering the bluff with RV parks. Schmoozing people like Hans Necker. You’re twice as good as I am at that stuff. Be honest, Paul. Don’t you want the job?”

  Labry looks down and twists the toe of his shoe into the grass. “From what I’ve seen these past years, being mayor’s about dealing with a bunch of people who all think they’re something special.”

  “Well, aren’t they? If anyone still believes that, I figured it was you.”

  “Sure they are. But no more special than anybody else. We get in trouble when we start thinking we’re better than our neighbor. Or that somebody else is better than the rest of us. But that’s what people always do.”

  “Is that how you see me? As a guy who thinks he’s better than other people?”

  Paul laughs softly. “That’s the funny thing. You are better, in a lot of ways. Oh, I’m sure you’ve got your secrets; everybody does. But knowing you like I do, knowing all you’ve accomplished in your past, and then seeing you fail in your own eyes ”

  “I’m not a politician, Paul. That’s why I never ran for DA in Houston. I was a lawyer at heart. Now I’m a novelist, and I think that spoiled me. When you write a book, you have total control of the universe and everyone in it. When you’re mayor of a town, you’re lucky if you can control yourself, much less anyone else.”

  Labry steps onto a low concrete wall and sweeps his hand to take in the whole of the cemetery. “Look out there. Jewish Hill, Catholic Hill, Protestants between. Colored Ground. Babyland, where the unwed mothers’ babies went if they died. We try so hard to stay separate from each other that we even do it in death. It’s tribal, man, and it’s not just the South.” Paul turns and points toward the rear of the cemetery. “But the truth is over there behind Catholic Hill, in those thick woods. Paupers’ Field. There’s three thousand bodies back there, just dropped in holes in the ground. In the dark under those trees, there’s no separation. The roots are growing down through all of them, just alike.”

  “I’m not sure I see where you’re going. But it doesn’t sound like you’re too interested in being mayor.”

  “We’re all equal before God,” Labry says. “That’s what I’m saying. But nobody walking this planet seems to get that. Everybody sins, Penn. Everybody. That’s the great leveler. Not death. Sin.”

  “I was hoping for a more definitive answer.”

  Labry gazes into the forest for a while. Then without warning he springs off the wall and looks up at me with a grin. “Hell, yes, I’ll do it. I’ll be the damnedest mayor this town ever had!”

  I look back in amazement for a few moments, then we both burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Caitlin hunches low behind the wheel of her car and takes a sip from a can of diet Dr Pepper. She’s parked between two trucks in the lot of the Bargain Barn on Highway 15. She knows Darla was lying. The girl was so flustered that she’s bound to panic and leave the store at her first opportunity. Forty minutes have passed since Caitlin left the store, but her cell phone has not rung. Despite Caitlin’s promises of confidentiality, Darla was too rattled for that. But Caitlin has dealt with enough sources to recognize the signs of panic. This is a lot like fishing, or what she remembers her father trying to teach her of it during the summers she stayed with him. Only out here there’s nowhere to pee.

  Using her cell phone, she’s trying to Google some more recent information on local Pentecostals when Darla McRaney hurries through the door of the Bargain Barn, looks right and left, then runs to an ancient Pacer hatchback parked in the corner of the lot. Once she’s inside, Caitlin starts her own car but stays low behind the wheel until the Pacer reaches the highway turn.

  Darla crosses the westbound lanes, then turns east toward Vidalia and Natchez. Caitlin follows, but since there aren’t many traffic lights on this road, she leaves ten or twelve car lengths between them.

  Less than a mile down the highway, the Pacer turns into a used- car dealership. It’s a small operation with older-model cars and pickup trucks parked on a vacant lot with the grass worn down to mud in many places. Garish signs scream EASY TERMS! and NO MONEY DOWN! while the banner over the gate reads NO CREDIT, NO PROBLEM!

  Caitlin pulls onto the shoulder fifty yards from the entrance, then gets out and walks into the parking
lot of the adjacent business, a small engine-repair shop. Its parking lot is crowded, making a covert approach to the car lot easy.

  Ten yards from the border between the lots, she sees Darla gesturing vehemently at a silver-haired, red-faced man. They’re standing between a van and a large SUV, apparently to shield their conversation from anyone in the trailer that serves as the dealership’s office, but Caitlin has a good view of them both. She creeps along the side of a trailer until she hears Darla call the man Pastor Simpson. That’s got to be right, Caitlin thinks, because now she remembers Simpson from the story she did on charismatic religions.

  Having heard enough to be sure of what she’s seeing, Caitlin steps out of cover and walks right up to the pair. “Pastor Simpson?” she says. “I’d like to speak to you for a minute.”

  Simpson looks up sharply, as though prepared to respond angrily, but then he mistakes Caitlin for a customer.

  “Ma’am, I’m busy just now, but if you’ll wait a minute, I’ll be right with you.”

  “I’m not here about a car.”

  “That’s her,” Darla says anxiously. “The newspaper lady.”

  “Aw, hell,” Simpson says. “What do you want with me?”

  “I’m here about Linda Church.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I never heard a nobody by that name.”

  Caitlin sighs wearily. “I find that hard to believe, since the first person Darla ran to after I questioned her about Linda was you.”

  “Well, you flustered this poor girl. I’m her pastor. She’s afraid you’re going to put her in the newspaper or somethin’.”

  Caitlin holds up both hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not here to put anybody in the newspaper.”

  “That’s a bald-faced lie,” says Simpson with conviction. “That’s what you live for, to see your name in the paper. I remember the story you did on our church, don’t think I don’t. You twisted the truth ever which way to make us look like fools. I got nothin’ to say to you.”