CHAPTER 9

Jacob Tull,

Marietta, Georgia, Sunday, August 4, 1946:

Jacob was arrested for the murders of the two white men in the afternoon of the same day that they were killed. He was taken from his home in the hot afternoon, cheating the mob that would have taken him by nightfall. He was not treated roughly or unkindly.

“You know why we’re here, Jacob,” the sheriff said. “I’m taking you in for killing Floyd Sutton and Willard Davis.”

“The girl knows I didn’t do it, suh.”

“The girl doesn’t know who did it. You won’t give me any trouble, will you?”

“I didn’t kill them, but you’re taking me anyhow?”

“I have to, Jacob,” Ben said. “I have to take you. You know that.”

“It isn’t Christian to say it, but I’m glad they dead. Those men were trash, and they killed my boy. I wish it was me did it.”

“Put your hands behind you.”

When the handcuffs were tight, the sheriff straightened and looked Jacob in the eyes. “I’m a father, too. I might have done the same, but that don’t change things.”

“I know, suh,” Jacob said. “I told you I don’t mind.”

“Where’s the gun at?”

“I don’t have any gun, suh.”

“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” the sheriff said. “Let’s go.”

Jacob was glad that his wife Dottie, and surviving son Roy, were not at home to see him bound and taken. Once he was in the jail, they were not permitted visitation, and he never saw them again. His thirtieth birthday came and went during his trial and brief imprisonment.

Sixty-two days after his arrest, he stood quietly and waited. He was surrounded by uniformed men. He considered praying, but decided that it was unnecessary. He thought instead of his wife and his two boys as the waxed rope was drawn over his head and snugged tight behind his left ear. A rough hood was pulled down, and the world left his sight. It was hot underneath the cloth, and it smelled musty and old.

A constant pounding noise began, and Jacob supposed that people were stamping their feet. The rhythm became louder and louder and began to hurt his ears. He had still not realized that it was his own pulse that he heard booming in his head when the trap door opened and he fell straight down.

He felt a sharp crack through his whole body as the rope caught and his neck broke, and then he tumbled onto soft grass. It was an astonishing green, and he saw that it had been raining, although the cloud cover had that luminous quality that preceded the sun. He picked himself up and started running.

He knew he had to head uphill to get where he was going. He had been here before, although he couldn’t have said when. He ran up the hillside effortlessly. When he crested it, the grass had thinned out and it was sandy underfoot. He stood at the top and was confused. What should have been there was not.

A stunning vista of green hills stretched before him, but it was empty of what he had expected. Then he glanced to his left, and there it was. The rooftops were exactly as he remembered, although he had never seen them before.

Jacob turned his steps downhill toward home.

***

Present Day:

The day passed in a blur.

The Simcoe County coroner, dressed for golf and mildly irritated, straightened from beside the deck chair my father still sat in, nodded his head, and got back in his boat. The police, with their flashing lights and noise of their radios, got ready to leave the island.

They put my father’s body onto a stretcher and loaded him awkwardly for the trip down the lake to the marina. I followed in my own boat. A silver hearse waited on shore, backed onto the dock by the gas pump. Like an insane guest at a party, it spoiled the summer mood at the marina, and people passing on boats either avoided looking at it or else stared at it, open-mouthed.

From her living room window a mile across the water, Molly had seen the first strange boats landing at my dock and intuited the trouble. She met me at the marina and stayed, often with a hand resting on my arm or my back. Her touch was a profound comfort.

Eventually, I was able to call Angela from the marina office. I sat at Diane’s desk and looked at a calendar that showed native turtles while I talked.

“Dead? What do you mean, he died? How could he just die? It happened this morning and you’re just calling me now?”

“He was sitting on the dock. I went to check on him, and he was gone. I’d just been talking to him--he slipped away. It was fast. I don’t think he felt anything.”

Angela burst into tears. “Why didn’t you call me?” she sobbed.

“It’s been non-stop crazy,” I said. “I’m sorry. It took a long time to get people out to the island. The police wouldn’t move him until the coroner said it was a natural death. I haven’t had even a minute to think since it happened. I feel numb.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“He’s on his way to a funeral home in Huntsville. I’m just heading over there now.”

“You’re burying him up there?” I could hear her tears dry--her practical side was stronger than her sentiment.

“No,” I said. “I’m going to take him home to Atlanta. He was never even here before. This is a foreign country to him. No one should get buried in a strange place.”

“Atlanta’s the one place he shouldn’t go, Mike. He was running from there. He ran away and now you’re dragging him back. Don’t take him to Atlanta.” Her voice was rising. “He was scared and he came to you for some kind of help, or shelter, and look what happened. Look what it got him, and now you’re--”

“Enough!” I snapped. I felt like she had punched me in the stomach. “Let me start over,” I went on, my teeth clenched. “I have to go to Atlanta to sell his house and pay his bills, to close it and wrap up all the things he was running away from. He also left behind a body. Out of respect, I’m taking it down to put it with his wife’s body. That’s all.”

“You don’t even know where his wife is. Your own mother--and you don’t know where she’s buried. You told me that, years ago.”

The worst part of divorce was that the person who liked you least in the whole world was the one who knew the most about you, knew all of your hidden corners and cracks and vulnerabilities.

“I’ll find out where my mother is,” I said. “There’s a record somewhere.”

“I’m booking a flight down there,” she said. “I’ll meet you, assuming you can get this much done without my help.”

I was genuinely surprised. “You’re going to Atlanta?”

“I loved him,” she said. “He’d expect me to be at his funeral.”

“Why don’t you fly down with me? I’ll--”

She hung up on me. I closed the phone and walked across the parking lot to where Molly waited in her pickup. I got in and related some of my conversation with Angela to her. I had no idea how to start looking for my mother’s remains, but it was starting to feel important.

“It is kind of weird,” Molly said. She started the truck and put it in gear.

“What’s weird?”

“That you don’t know where your mother is. I don’t even remember my mother, but I know where she’s buried. I still bring flowers on Mother’s Day.”

“I guess we weren’t much into all that, my dad and I. I remember her funeral. I don’t know what arrangements he made with her body afterward. We never talked about it.”

She kept her foot on the brake and leaned her head on the steering wheel, looking sideways at me. Her eyes were luminous. Incongruously, I thought about kissing her. It wasn’t the right time, and I shook it off.

“I’ll find out where she is,” I went on. “It shouldn’t be hard. I’ll put him with her.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“No. Angela’s going to be there. She can be...unpleasant. I’d rather you weren’t exposed to that.”

She straightened in her seat and looked out the window on her side.

“Who cares about the funeral? It’s just a body, Molly. It’s words over a body. You and I see ghosts. Of all people, you and I know it’s meaningless.”

She shook her head. Without replying, she took her foot off of the brake and wheeled the truck toward the road.

“Of all people,” I repeated, “we know that the cemeteries and graveyards and funeral homes are all empty. You don’t need to go to Atlanta with me.”