CHAPTER 21

Country Mart,

Marietta, Georgia, Thursday, August 23, 1979:

Boo Bixby sat behind the register and alternated glances between the magazine on the counter, the clock on the wall, and the beer cooler at the rear of the store. He’d take a case of cold ones with him when he closed for the night, and deciding on the brand broke the monotony of the endless last hour of his shift. Working here was like being the kid in the candy store. He had the keys to the kingdom.

This was the best summer of his life, although he didn’t know it. High school was behind him and college was on hold, although not out of the question. He had a pretty blonde girlfriend, a light blue Pinto, a rented room, and an alcohol problem that was still a couple years away from really being a problem. None of his disappointments had landed yet.

He also had this job. The store’s owner pretty much avoided the place, stopping by every morning to sign purchase orders and collect receipts, but otherwise leaving the place to Boo and a ditch pig named Marsha, who called herself the manager. Boo couldn’t stand her. She was a few years older than he was, fat and unpleasant and probably destined to work here for the next twenty years. She did the early shift, passing the store to Boo at three in the afternoon. By that time the milk, bread, and slushie rush was over, and he only had to deal with the occasional case of beer or pack of smokes.

Late evening was also when the robbery risk was highest, but it wasn’t a huge worry. The Qwik-Mart up the road was a much tastier target. This place was isolated on a secondary highway and mostly catered to foot traffic from the nearby trailer park. If he was held up, the cops would swoop down on the mobile homes. Most of the pot-heads and hookers who lived there would go to jail for one thing or another and they all knew it, so there were seldom problems.

He had heard that the place had been the site of a couple murders years and years ago. The owners had been killed inside the store. It was probably a robbery, but it was before he was born, so he really didn’t give a shit. Some kids had told him the locals thought the place was haunted. Thankfully, he wasn’t from around here and hadn’t been raised on voodoo shit like these people.

The building was ancient, although there had been a few pathetic attempts to modernize it. A couple of crappy self-serve gas pumps had been added to the front, but gas was always a nickel a gallon less just a mile up the highway, so the pump lanes were usually empty. The glass doors opened under the overhang of the original front porch, and the aisles of metal shelves and refrigerated coolers ran underneath the unfinished wood rafters that had always been there. The name on the sign, Country Mart, tried to play up the rustic theme. Country, my ass, he thought. Shit-Hole Nowhere Mart.

He dished out a soft pack of Marlboro 100s to a middle-aged woman with hair the same color gold as the package. She counted coins onto the counter. He swept them into the till and watched her leave the parking lot on foot. The Electric Light Orchestra was shining a little love on the radio, so he turned it up and went back to his magazine.

He heard a voice from the back and thought a customer had come in unnoticed. He lowered the volume.

“I know what you did,” the voice said.

It was a female, sounding neither old nor young. He leaned over on the counter and peered up the beer aisle. Empty. There was a convex spot mirror mounted near the ceiling in the back corner. He thought that maybe he saw movement in its reflective surface, but he could never see anything clearly in it anyway. Stupid thing. He definitely hadn’t noticed anyone come in, and he decided he’d better go look at the back. He came out from behind the counter, snapping off the radio as he went by.

“I know what you did,” the voice said again into the silence. Whoever it was, she sounded upset, although that might have been his imagination.

He went to the rear of the store. It was bright and empty. He stared blankly. The woman’s voice had been quite audible. Suddenly his face cleared, and he headed for the door in the back wall. There was an open space that ran the length of the cooler case, behind the racks of beer and wine fizzies. The cases and bottles were loaded in from behind the display, and someone likely slipped in and was sitting on the floor in there having a secret party. It didn’t occur to him that it was something he might someday try, if he were broke and desperate.

He pulled open the access door. There were a few cases of fast movers, Bud and the silver bullets, Coors Light. Why anyone would pay the same money for this new watered-down beer was beyond him, but so far people did. Light beer was one fad he figured would go away before long. Other than that, the narrow space was empty.

There was a single toilet off the back hallway. It wasn’t really for customers, but the regulars all knew about it. The door was normally ajar when it wasn’t being used. He saw that it was closed, and he relaxed. The owner of the voice was in the can. She had put a scare into him, and if he thought of it when she left the store, he was going to mention that it was an employee-only restroom. Serve her right to embarrass her.

Returning to the front, he looked out the glass doors at the parking lot. Definitely empty. He sat back down, reached for the radio, and froze.

“I know what you did, you little bitch. I know what you did!”

The woman’s voice came faster, pitching upward at the end. “I know...”

The last was softer, almost a croak. It was followed by a muffled thump as something fell. Boo hurried down the aisle to the back hall. The door was still closed.

“Are you okay in there?” he called.

He reached out and grabbed the bathroom doorknob, expecting it to be locked. It turned easily. “Hey! Are you all right?” he hollered and eased it open.

The toilet and sink looked back at him. The room was empty.

Boo Bixby suddenly knew that something was behind him. Behind and up above, near the ceiling. He knew he mustn’t look up. All at once, he felt very, very cold.

Very, very slowly, he turned himself around, keeping his eyes on the floor. He didn’t pick his feet up, but shuffled and slid them. He made his way up the center aisle under the bright fluorescent light, his eyes glued to the linoleum under his shoes. He slid his left foot forward, then his right. The store was deadly quiet. The silence was so complete that he imagined he could hear the blood rushing around his body. Cans and boxes on the very bottom shelves rolled by in the periphery of his vision in agonizing slow motion.

It was so cold that he could see his breath.

At the halfway point, there was a creaking noise above him, and then another and another, as if something heavy--her--was swinging back and forth, suspended from one of the exposed rafters. Boo fought the urge--command--to look up. He finally made it to the front and unglued his feet from the floor. He went through the door and cleared the steps to the parking lot in a single motion. The night air was incredibly warm.

He stood beside the driver’s door of his Pinto and gasped. He looked up at the lighted building for several minutes, and then he climbed the steps to the door. He locked it, and then peeled the key off of his ring and dropped it through the mail slot.

A woman’s voice came from inside of the store. It had a strange quality, almost as if a crow were talking. “You’re a bad girl!” it said. “I know what you did, you bad girl!”

The voice went on and on, but the Pinto’s tail lights had already receded up the highway until they were out of sight, and there was no one there to hear it.

***

Present Day:

We walked slowly through the old cemetery. Roy moved between the stones, bent slightly at the waist. He was using a cane today, feeling his age. He stopped here and there, stooping to read an inscription or to pick up a piece of trash. The grass was high and brushy outside the burial ground, but the inside was surprisingly well-tended.

The lot was enclosed by a black wrought-iron fence that appeared to be freshly painted. The area farthest from us was dotted with mature trees, and the headstones there were varied and ornate, red and black and white marble. The section we were in was populated by simpler markers, mostly concrete. The lettering on some of these was nearly gone.

“I’ve never been by here, that I remember,” I said.

“No reason you should have. Not really a white part of the world out here, and the highway doesn’t really go anywhere.” He gestured at the church. The white paint was peeling from the clapboard in places, but it didn’t really look abandoned.

“This started out as a Catholic church,” he said, “once upon a time. Catholics don’t stand a whole lot higher than black folks do down here, you know, but by the 1920s this part of the county was mostly black, and they left. That’s their section over there.”

He gestured toward the elaborate monuments at the far end. “I give them credit for leaving their dead behind when they moved the parish. Everyone all together now. All equal.”

“Like Heaven,” I said.

He looked at me appraisingly. “Something like that, yes. Here’s my little brother, Eli.”

I looked at the worn cement marker. The weathered inscription read:

Elijah Tull

February 11, 1936 - July 4, 1946

Love Lives On.

“My mother always hated this stone. She tried to change the dates, but they wouldn’t let her.”

“Change the dates?” I asked. “Why?”

“He was taken from us late on a Wednesday night, July third. He got pulled out of the house and we never saw him again. July third is the last of him for us. They killed him sometime in the early morning of July fourth, and when she saw that date she was reminded of the missing hours. July fourth was a reminder of the time he was lost to us, off being tortured. She wanted the date of death to read July third so she didn’t have to remember what really happened.”

He pointed at the adjoining headstones. “There’s my mama, and my daddy next to her.”

“When did they stop using this place?” I asked.

Roy looked up at the old church building. “I couldn’t say for sure. Twenty years ago, maybe? The congregation got bigger, and folks started to have a little money. It was a big deal, building the new church. I still have feelings for this one. Survived the Catholics and the Baptists both.”

“I’m surprised your mother’s here. I thought she died fairly recently,” I said.

“She did, yes, she did. The graveyard’s still a going concern, for those that want to use it. My father and my mother and my brother are all here, and it’s where I’ll be, too. There’s no cemetery at the new church. The congregation still owns this property. We do basic maintenance on the building, enough it doesn’t get to be too much of an eyesore.”

He moved off a few feet, and I followed. “Here’s my daddy.”

We looked another cement marker. This one was harder to read.

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” I said. “I thought they buried executed men in some corner of the prison yard.”

“Maybe they do. Remember this was a hurry-up execution. They hung him here in Milton, when Georgia executed people in the chair down in Reidsville. There was something not right, and I don’t think they cared who took the body away as long as someone did it quick. I think the sheriff at the time fixed it so we could take him home.”

He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on. His voice was suddenly cold, almost hostile. “Not really fair he died for something he didn’t do,” he added.

I was startled. “I guess they executed him for something my dad did, didn’t they? I’m sorry.”

“Guess they did,” he said. “My daddy was the only blameless one in the whole mess, and he died for it, anyway. No sense in sorry now. Done has been done for more’n sixty years. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Not at all.”

“Where did you inter your daddy?”

I felt a stab of guilt. I hadn’t even given it a thought. It was something I still needed to take care of.

“I have to pick up his ashes from the funeral home. I flew his body down here to bury him, but I found out my mother was cremated, so I had the same thing done for him. She wasn’t interred. He kept the ashes. I’ll put them in the same place.”

His voice warmed and sounded normal again. “You can leave them here if you like, in this cemetery. I’m on the church board that administers it.”

I was touched, and said so.

“And, Mike,” he said, “It does matter what you do with a body. When we die, we leave it behind. There’s no more use for it, that’s true, and it’s wrong to attach too much significance to it.” He stopped and touched my arm. “But--and it’s a big but--it’s the same as any other favorite possession the dead person had. They don’t use their favorite wrist watch any more, or look at their favorite painting. Still, we honor those keepsakes and treat them respectfully. Same with their body. It was the most important thing to them on earth, and there can sometimes be a sentimental connection. It’s best to handle earthly remains with some care, some respect. I think the dead know.”

This place was worth thinking about. This graveyard might appeal to them, being so eclectic and forgotten. Additionally, maybe resting near the Tull family, central to the story my dad had tried to tell me before he died, might be healing.

“I can give you a little piece of ground over in the corner there. And don’t worry about the cost. We don’t charge for plots here. We have a fund at the church for families that need help with funeral expenses. You can make a donation to that if you want to. I won’t hold you to it, though.”

A yellow dog nosed its way among the grave markers in the far end. I watched him as he found a shady spot to his liking under one of the trees and lay down. After a minute, he stretched out on his side and went to sleep. The breeze gently rustled the leaves and grass, and insects hummed softly. I thought that I’d like to join the dog under his tree and drowse the afternoon away.

“This would be a good place for them,” I said. “Thank you.”

We started heading slowly back to the car.

“The store is near here, right?” I asked.

“The old general store? Scene of the crime? Yes, just up the road. Empty now. Like to see it?”

“I would, yes.”

“No problem. I could use some lunch. We can stop on the way.”

“Do you remember your brother?” I asked.

He stopped and turned to face me. “Remember Eli? Sure, I do. The sad thing is that I can mostly remember the night they took him, terrified and crying. My mama begging and him being dragged out of the house. I don’t remember much about him during happy times. That’s always the way, isn’t it?”

I agreed.

“Sometimes,” he said. “I remember him more clear when I come here. I even remember his voice. Guess that’s why I come here as often as I do.” He leaned up against a marker. “She never forgave me. My mother. Eli was the favorite, the good child. She always thought that if one had to be taken, it should have been me.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “You were how old when it happened?”

“Eleven. Eli and me were less’n a year apart. We even looked alike. That may have been part of the problem. My mama looked at me and saw him. I don’t know how awful it is. It’s the way of families. She did her best by me for a few months after we lost my father, and then she sent me away to live with her sister. She couldn’t look at me anymore.”

He drew a figure eight in the dirt with his cane, looking down as he thought. “For a long time after that, I lay in my bed at night and prayed that I could go back in time. I’d make those men take me instead, and none of the bad stuff that came after would ever happen. I was the older brother, stronger and smarter. They should have taken me, and it would all have turned out all right.”

“It would have made no difference, Roy. It isn’t what was in the cards. They would have killed you.”

“I know that now. I didn’t know that when I was eleven.”

“So many victims,” I said. “So many victims of one moment. So much guilt. All of this over a couple of kids kissing behind a store. And my dad dies sixty-five years later being threatened about it. Dies terrified and broke.”

“Sins of the fathers,” he said heavily. “Echoing down.”

“Oh, come on, Roy. These were children. There was no sin. It was just a tragedy. Tell me something if you know. I got my father’s story second-hand, but I understood that young Wanda kissed your brother. She was being precocious because my dad didn’t want to play whatever kissing game she proposed. Yesterday, Wanda contradicted that. She said that your brother was the instigator. Do you know which is true, or have a guess?”

“She kissed my brother,” he said. “He did not kiss her. I guarantee it.”

“Why? Did he tell you about it when he came home that day?”

“No. He never said anything to me. I don’t have any memory of that day, just that night. It was a normal day. I would have remembered if he told me about kissing a white girl, though. Anyway, he couldn’t have. It isn’t possible.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. “He was too shy?”

He laughed. “No, not generally shy. My brother loved his fun. That’s why everyone loved him. He didn’t so much as talk to white folks, though. Never a word. He would never have gotten fresh. Never.”

He pointed back in the direction we had come from, back at his family’s graves. “My father,” he said. “His own father and mother were lynched in the ’20s, and he saw it. He lived with the absolute conviction that it was going to happen to him, too. In the end, if you think about it--it did. He was lynched by a group of white men in uniforms. His voice shook if he had to speak to a white person.”

“And the kiss?” I prompted.

“My father was terrified of white folks, beyond any reason. My brother and I grew up with that. I don’t think it ever really affected me, but my brother was scared sick of white people, too. He wouldn’t have willingly spoken to a white girl, let alone kiss her. Let’s go.”

He levered himself up from the headstone he had propped himself on and began to walk slowly. “That, to me, is the worst thing of all. He was dragged out of the house by a couple of white men. To him, it must have been like the worst monsters or bogey men came to life and took him away. Poor baby. Poor, poor child.”